THE COMPLETE AND ENTIRE “True Game Series”  by sherri S. Tepper
Contains 1-3 of the Mavin Many shape Trilogy
Contains 1-3 of the Peter Books
And finally 1-3 of the Jinian Books
The entire nine book saga and a few unessasary line breaks we didn’t need…but its all here.
-Winterborn

THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED
CHAPTER ONE

  

 Around the inner maze of Danderbat keep—with its hidden places for the elders, its sleeping chambers, kitchens and nurseries—lay the vaster labyrinth of the outer p’natti: slything walls interrupted by square-form doors, an endless array of narrowing pillars, climbing ups and slithering downs, launch platforms so low as to require only leaping legs and others so high that wings would be the only guarantee of no injury.

  

 Through the p’natti the shifters of all the Xhindi clans came each year at Assembly time, processions of them, stiff selves marching into the outer avenues only to melt into liquid serpentines which poured through the holes in the slything walls; into tall wands of flesh sliding through the narrowing doors; into pneumatic billows bounding over the platforms and up onto the heights; all in a flurry of wings, feathers, hides, scales, conceits and frenzies which dazzled the eyes and the senses so that the children became hysterical with it and hopped about on the citadel roof as though an act of will could force them all at once and beforetime into that Talent they wanted more than any other. Every year the family Danderbat changed the p’natti; new shaped obstacles were invented; new requirements placed upon the shifting flesh which would pass through it to the inner maze, and every year at Assembly the shifters came, foaming at the outer reaches like surf, then plunging through the reefs and cliffs of the p’natti to the shore of the keep, the central place where there were none who were not shifters—save those younglings who were not sure yet what it was they were.

  

 Among these was Mavin, a daughter of the shapewise Xhindi, form-family of Danderbat the Old Shuffle, a girl of some twelve or fourteen years. She was a forty-season child, and expected to show something pretty soon, for shifters came to it young and she was already older than some. There were those who had begun to doubt s he would ever come through the p’natti along the she-road reserved for females not yet at or through their child-bearing time. Progeny of the shifters who turned out not to have the Talent were sent away to be fostered elsewhere as soon as that lack was known, and the possibility of such a journey was beginning to be rumored for Mavin.

  

 She had grown up as shifter children do when raised in a shifter place, full of wild images and fluttering dreams of the things she would become when her Talent flowered. As it happened, Mavin was the only girl child behind the p’natti during that decade, for Handbright Ogbone, her sister, was a full decade older and in possession of her Talent before Mavin was seven. There were boys aplenty and overmuch, some saying with voices of dire prophecy that it was a plague of males they had, but the Ogbone daughters were the only females born to be reared behind the Danderbat p’natti since Throsset of Dowes, and Throsset had fled the keep as long as four years before. Since there were no other girls, the dreams which Mavin shared were boyish dreams. Handbright no longer dreamed, or if she did, she did not speak of it.

  

 Mavin’s own mother, Abrara Ogbone, had died bearing the boy child, Mertyn—caught by the shift-devil, some said, because she had experimented with forbidden shapes while she was pregnant. No one was so heartless as to say this to Mavin directly, but she had overheard it without in the least understanding it several times during her early years. Now at an age where her own physical maturity was imminent, she understood better what they had been speaking of, but she had not yet made the jump of intuition which applied this knowledge to herself. She had a kind of stubborn naivete about her which resisted learning some of the things which other girls got with their mother’s milk. It was an Ogbone trait, though she did not know it. She had not before now understood flirting, for example, or the reasons why the men were always the winners of the processional competitions, or why Handbright so often cried in corners or was so weary and sharp-tongued. It wasn’t that she could not have understood these things, but more that she was so busy apprehending everything in the world that she had not had time before to make the connections among them.

  

 She might have been enlightened by overhearing a conversation between two hangers-on of the Old Shuffle—two of the guards cum hunters known as “the Danderbats” after Theobald Danderbat, forefather and tribal god, direct line descendent, so it was said, from Thandbar, the forefather of all shifters—who kept themselves around the keep to watch it, they said, and look after its provisioning. So much time was actually spent in the provisioning of their drinking and lechery that little enough energy was left for else.

  

 “Everytime I flex a little, I feel eyes,” Gormier Graywing was saying. “She’s everwhere. Anytime I’ve a mind to shift my fingers to get a better grip on something, there she is with her eyes on my hands and, like as not, her hand on mine to feel how the change goes. If there’s such a thing as a’ everwhere shifter child, it’s this she-child, Mavin.” Gormier was a virile, salacious old man thing, father of a half-dozen non-shifter whelps and three true-bred members of the clan. He ran a boneless ripple now, down from shoulders through fingers, a single tentacle wriggle before coming back to bone shape in order to explain how he felt. Some of the Danderbats would carry on whole conversations in muscle talk without ever opening their mouths. “Still, there’s never a sign she knows she’s female and I’m male, her not noticing she gives me a bit of tickle.”

  

 “ ‘Tisn’t child flirtiness.” The other speaker was Haribald Halfmad, so named in his years in Schlaizy Noithn and never, to his own satisfaction, renamed. “There’s no sexy mockery there. Just that wide-eyed kind of oh-my look what you’d get from a baby with its first noisy toy. She hasn’t changed that look since she was a nursling, and that’s what’s discomfiting about her. When she was a toddler, there was some wonder if she was all there in the brain net, and she was taken out to a Healer when she was six or so, just to see.”

  

 “I didn’t know that! Well then, it must have been taken serious; we Old Shuffle Xhindi don’t seek Healers for naught.”

  

 “We Danderbats don’t seek Healers at all, Graywing, as you well know, old ox. It was her sister Handbright took her, for they’re both Ogbones, daughter of Abrara Ogbone—she that has a brother up Battlefox way. But that was soon after the childer’s mother died, so it was forgiven as a kind of upset, though normally the Elders would have had Handbright in a basket for it. Handbright brought her back saying the Healer found nothing wrong with the child save sadness, which would go away of itself with time. Since then the thought’s been that she’s a mite slow but otherwise tribal as the rest of us. I wish she’d get on with it, for I’ve a mind to try her soon as her Talent’s set.” And he licked his lips, nudging his fellow with a lubricious elbow. “If she doesn’t get on with it, I may hurry things a bit.”

  

 The object of this conversation was sitting at the foot of a slything column in the p’natti, in full sight of the two old man things but as unconscious of them as though she had been on another world. Mavin had just discovered that she could change the length of her toes.

  

 The feeling was rather but not entirely like pain. There was a kind of itchy delight in it as well, not unlike the delight which could be evoked by stroking and manipulating certain body parts, but without that restless urgency. There was something in it, as well, of the fear of falling, a kind of breathless gap at the center of things as though a misstep might bring sudden misfortune. Despite all this, Mavin went on with what she was doing, which was to grow her toes a hand’s-width longer and then make them shorter again, all hidden in the shadow of her skirts. She had a horrible suspicion that this bending and extending of them might make them fall off, and in her head she could see them wriggling away like so many worms, blind and headless, burrowing themselves down into the ground at the bottom of the column, to be found there a century hence, still squirming, unmistakably Mavin’s toes. After a long time of this, she brought her toes back to a length which would fit her shoes and put them on, standing up to smooth her apron and noticing for the first time the distant surveillance offered by the two granders on the citadel high porch. She made a little face, as she had seen Handbright do, remotely aware of what the two old things usually chatted about but still not making any connection between that and herself. She was off to tell Handbright about her toes, and there was room for nothing else in her head at the moment, though she knew at the edges of her consciousness the oldsters had been talking man-woman stuff.

  

 But then everyone was into man-woman stuff that year. Some years it was fur, and some years it was feathers. Some years it was vegetable-seeming which was the fad, and other years no one cared for anything except jewels. This year was sex form changing, and it was somewhat titillating for the children, seeing their elder relatives twisting themselves into odd contorted shapes with nerve ends pushed out or tucked in in all sorts of original ways. Despite the fact that shifters had no feeling of shame over certain parts—those parts being changed day to day in suchwise that little of the original topography could still be attached to them—the younglings who had not become shifters yet were tied to old, non-shifter forebear emotions which had to do with the intimate connections between things excretory and things erotic. It could not be helped. It was in the body shape they were born with and in the language and in the old stories children were told, and in the things all children did and thought and said, ancient as apes and true as time. So the children, looking upon all this changing about, found a kind of giggly prurience in it despite the fact that they were shifter children every one, or hoped they were soon to be.

  

 All this lewd, itchy stuff to do with man and woman made Mavin uncomfortable in a deep troublesome way. It was by no means maidenly modesty, which at one time it would have been called. It was a deeper thing than that—a feeling that something indecent was being done. The same feeling she had when she saw boys pulling the wings off zip-birds and taunting them as they flopped in the dust, trying, trying, trying to fly. It was that same sick feeling, and since it seemed to be part and parcel of being shifter, Mavin decided she wouldn’t tell anyone except Handbright she was shifter, not just yet.

  

 Instead, she smoothed her apron, pointedly ignored the speculative stares of old Graywing and Haribald, and walked around the line of slything pillars to a she-door. At noon would be a catechism class, and though Mavin made it a practice to avoid many things which went on in Danderbat keep, it was not wise to avoid those. Particularly inasmuch as Handbright was teaching it and Mavin’s absence could not pass unnoticed. Since she was the only girl, it would not pass unnoticed no matter who was teaching, but she did not need to remind herself of that.

  

 Almost everyone was there when she arrived, so she slipped into a seat at the side of the room, attracting little attention. Some of the boys were beginning to practice shifter sign, vying with one another who could grow the most hair on the backs of their hands and arms, who could give the best boneless wriggle in the manner of the Danderbats. Handbright told them once to pay attention, then struck hard at the offending arms with her rod, at which all recoiled but Tolerable Titdance, who had grown shell over his arms in the split second it had taken Handbright to hit at him. He laughed in delight, and Handbright smiled a tired little smile at him. It was always good to see a boy so quick, and she ruffled his hair and whispered in his ear to make him blush red and settle down.

  

 “I’m nye finished with you bunch,” said Handbright, making her hair stand out from her head in a tangly bush which wriggled like a million little vines. “You’re all coming along in one talent or another. I have to tell you today that it looks like Leggy Bartiban will be going off to Schooltown to be fostered. Seems he’s showing signs of being Tragamor. Not unexpected, eh Leggy?”

  

 The boy ducked his head, tried to smile through what were suspiciously like tears. True, it wasn’t unexpected. His father had been a Tragamor, able to move great boulders or pull down mountains by just looking at them, but it was still hard for him to accept that he must forget the shifters, forget the Danderbat citadel, go off to a strange place and become something else again when all he knew was shifter. He could take comfort from the fact that he wouldn’t grieve. He wouldn’t even remember a week hence when the Forgetters had done with him. Still, looking at it from this end, it must seem dreadful. Mavin ducked her head to hide her own tears, feeling for him. It could have been her. She might not have been shifter, either. No one knew she was, not yet.

  

 “All right, childer. I’m not keeping you long today. Elder Garbat Grimsby is coming in for a minute, just to ask a few simple questions, see how you’re coming. Since two of you are off to Schlaizy Noithn in the morning, he’ll just review two or three little shifter things and let you all go. Sit up straight and don’t go boneless at the Elder, it isn’t considered polite. Remember, to show politeness to elders and honored guests, you hold your own shape hard. Keep that in mind. ...” She broke off, turning to the door, as she heard the whirring hum of something coming.

  

 It came into the room like a huge top, spinning, full of colors and sounds, screaming its way across the room, bumping chairs away, full of its own force, circling to stop before them all and slowly, slowly, change into old Garbat, hugely satisfied with himself, fixing them all with his shifter eyes to see if they were impressed. All of them were. It was a new trick to Mavin, and when reared in a shifter stronghold those were few and seldom, with every shifter challenging every other to think of new things day on day. The Elders came infrequently out of their secret place deep within the keep, or at least so it was said. Mavin thought that if she were an Elder, she would be around the keep all day every day, as a bit of rock wall, a chair, a table in some dusty corner, watching what went on, hearing what was said. It was this thought which kept her behavior moderately circumspect, and she looked hard at the Elder now. He might have been the very pillar she had sat under to shift her toes. She shivered, crouching a little so as not to make him look at her.

  

 Handbright managed some words of welcome. Old Garbat folded his hands on his fat stomach and fixed his eyes on Janjiver. “What about you, Janjiver. You tell me what shapes shifters can take, and when.”

  

 The boy Janjiver was a lazy lout, most thought, with a long, strong body and a good Talent which went largely unused. There were those who said he would never come out of Schlaizy Noithn, and indeed there were some young shifters who never did. If one wanted to take the shape of a pombi or a great owl or some other thing which could live well off the land, one might live in Schlaizy Noithn for all one’s life without turning a hand.

  

 “A shifter worth his net,” said Janjiver in his lazy voice, “can take any shape at all. He can bulk himself up to twenty times bigger, given a little time, or more if the shape is fairly simple. He can conserve bulk and take shape a quarter size, though it takes practice. The shape he cannot take is the shape of another real person.”

  

 “And why can’t he do that, Janjiver?”

  

 “Because it’s not in our nature, Elder. The wicked Mirrormen may mock mankind but we shifters do not. All the Danderbats back to the time of Xhindi forbid it.”

  

 “And you, Thrillfoot. What is the shifter’s honor?”

  

 “It is a shifter’s honor to brook no stay, be stopped by no barrier, halted by no wall, enclosed by no fence. A shifter goes where a shifter will.” Thrillfoot threw his hair back with a toss of his head, grinning broadly. He was looking forward to Schlaizy Noithn. In the citadel he was befamilied to death, and the desire for freedom was hot in him. He rejoiced to answer, knowing it was the last answering he would do for many a year.

  

 “And what is a shifter to the rest of the world, Janjiver?”

  

 “A shifter to the rest of the world, Elder, is what a shifter says he is, and a shifter always says less than he is.”

  

 “Always,” agreed Thrillfoot, smiling.

  

 This was just good sense and was taught to every shifter child from the time he was weaned. The shapes a shifter could take and the shapes he would let the outside world think he could take were two different things. Shifters were too sly to let all they could do become general knowledge, for in that shiftiness lay the shifters’ safety. One wouldn’t look for a tree-shaped shifter if one thought shifters couldn’t shift into trees. So it was that most of the world had been led to believe shifters could become pombis or fustigars or owls, and nothing much more than that. Indeed for some shifters it was true. It was possible to fall in love with a special shape and ever after be able to take only that shape besides one’s true one—or for a few, only that shape forever. It had been known to happen. Shifter children were warned about it, and those who indulged themselves by staying pombis or fustigars for a whole season or more were pointed out as horrible examples. So now in the classroom everyone nodded in agreement.

  

 Garbat manifested himself as pleased, gave each of the boys who were off to Schlaizy Noithn a handmade Danderbat token—at which they showed considerable pleasure, intricate handmade things being the only things shifters ever bothered to carry—and then took himself away, soon followed by most of the others.

  

 Leggy Bartiban did not go out with them. He had tears running down his cheeks openly now. “That’s a shifter secret, teacher, not letting the world know what shapes we can do. How do you know for sure I won’t tell all the shifter secrets when I’m gone away from you?”

  

 “Ah, lad,” Handbright came to hug him, drawing him tight into the circle of her arms. “You’ll not remember. Truly. I have never lied to you, Leggy, and I’ll not lie now. It is sad for you to go, and sad for us to lose you, but you will not suffer it. We have contract with the good Forgetter, Methlees of Glen, who has been our Forgetter for more seasons than anyone remembers. You’ll go to her house, and the people from the school will be there, and she’ll take your hand, like this, and you’ll know the people, and remember them, and will forget us like a dream. And that’s the way of it, Leggy, the whole way of it. You’ll be a Tragamor child born, always friendly to the shifters, but not grieving over them a bit.”

  

 “Do they need to forget me my mother?” The boy was crying openly now. 

  

 “Shush. What silliness. Of course they’ll not forget you your mother. You’ll remember her name and face and the sound of her voice, and you’ll welcome her happily to visit you at Festival. You’ll see her as often as you do now, and most of the other boys at school will be the same, except for those who came to the Schoolhouses as infants and do not know their mothers at all. Now go along. Go ask anyone if that isn’t so, and if anyone tells you otherwise, send them to me. Go on, now, and stop crying. I’ve got things to do.”

  

 Then all had gone but Mavin, who sat in her seat and was still, watching the back of Handbright’s head until Handbright turned to see those keen eyes looking into her as though she had been a well of water. “Well, little sister, and you still here?”

  

 “It was a lie, wasn’t it, Handbright, about his mother?” Her voice was not accusing.

  

 Handbright started to deny it, then stopped, fixed by that birdlike gaze. “It was and it wasn’t, she-child. He will remember her name, and her face, and the sound of her voice. He’ll welcome her at Festival, if she chooses to visit him. But all the detail, the little memories, the places and times surrounding the two of them will be gone, so there’ll be little loving feeling left. Now that may build again, and I’ve seen it happen time after time.”

  

 “And you’ve seen the other, too. Where no one cares, after.”

  

 After a long weary silence, Handbright said, “Yes, I can’t deny it, Mavin. I’ve seen that, too. But he doesn’t see his mother now but once or twice a year, at Assembly time. So it’s not such a great loss.”

  

 “So why can’t he stay here, with us. I like Leggy.”

  

 “We all like him, child. But he’s not shifter. He has to learn how to use his own Talent or he’ll be a zip-bird with wings off, all life long, flopping in the dust and trying to fly. That’d be hateful, surely, and not something you’d wish for him?”

  

 Mavin twirled hair around one finger, shook her head from side to side, thinking, then laid her hand upon Handbright’s own and made her fingers curl bonelessly around Handbright’s wrist. Handbright stiffened in acknowledgement, her face showing gladness mixed with something so like shame that Mavin did not understand it and drew her hand away.

  

 “Lords, child! How long?”

  

 Mavin shrugged. “A little while.”

  

 “How marvelous. Wonderful.” Handbright’s voice did not rejoice; it was oddly flat and without enthusiasm. “I have to tell the Elders so we can plan your Talent party ...”

  

 “No!” It came out firmly, a command, in a voice almost adult. “No, Handbright. I’m not ready for you to do that. It hasn’t been long enough yet ... to get used to the idea. Give me ... some time yet, please, sister. Don’t do me like Leggy, throwing me into something all unprepared for it.” She laughed, unsteadily, keeping her eyes pleading and saying not half of the things she was feeling.

  

 “Well...” Handbright was acquiescent, doubtful, seeming of two minds. “You know the Elders like to know as soon as one of us shows Talent, Mavin. They’ve been worried about you. I’ve been worried about you. It isn’t a thing one can hide for very long. As your Talent gets stronger, any shifter will be able to tell.”

  

 “Not hide. Not exactly. Just have time to get used to the ideas. A few days to think about it is all. It won’t make any difference to anyone.” And she saw the dull flush mounting on Handbright’s cheeks, taking this to mean that yes, it did make a difference, but not understanding just what that difference might be.

  

 “All right. I won’t tell anyone yet. But everyone will have to know soon. You tell me when you’re ready, but it can’t be long, Mavin. Really. Not long.” She leaned forward to hug the younger girl, then turned away to the corridor as though more deeply troubled than Mavin could account for. Mavin remained a long time in the room thinking of what had happened there that day. The tears of Leggy, sent away to forget. The words of Janjiver, in answer to the question of the Elder, what is a shifter, to the world?

  

 “A shifter to the rest of the world, Elder, is what a shifter says he is, and a shifter always says less than he is.”

  

 “I, too,” she said to herself, “could be wise to follow the words of the catechism. I could say less than I am.”

  

 She went out into the day, back to the alleys of the p’natti, fairly sure that though Handbright would be upset and worried for a time, she would say nothing about Mavin’s Talent until Mavin told her yes. And Mavin had begun to feel that perhaps she did not want to tell her yes. Not today. Not tomorrow. Perhaps, though she did not know why, not ever.

  

 CHAPTER TWO

  

 Had it not been for the fact that Assembly time was only days away, Handbright would have worried more over Mavin, would have been more insistent that the Elders be told that Mavin had shown Talent, was indeed shifter, might now be admitted to full membership in the clan Danderbat and begin to relieve some of the endless demands made upon Handbright for the past half-dozen years. Though she was fond of Mavin—and of eight-year-old Mertyn, too, if it came to that—it did not occur to her that Mavin knew no more than Mertyn did about what would be expected of a new shifter girl by Gormier and Haribald, and by the others. Though Handbright had never told Mavin any of the facts of life of shifter girl existence, she assumed that Mavin had picked it up somewhere, perhaps as she herself had done, from another young she-person. In making the assumption, she forgot that there were no other shifter girls to have giggled with Mavin in the corners, that Handbright could have been the only source of this information unless one of the old crones had seen fit to enlighten the child, an unlikely possibility.

  

 Indeed, if she had had time to think about it, she would have known that Mavin was as innocent as her little brother of any knowledge of what would happen when it became known she was shifter. Who could she have observed in that role except Handbright herself? Who else was there behind the p’natti to share responsibility or provide company? Had there been a dozen or so girls growing up together, as there should be in a clan the size of Danderbat, Handbright herself would have been far less weary and put upon for she would have been sought out by the old man things no more often than she could have found bearable. Part of the problem, of course, was that she had not conceived. If she had been pregnant, now, or had a child at the breast. ... Or better yet, if she had borne three or four, then she could have gone away, have left the keep and fled to Schlaizy Noithn or out into the world. Any such realization made her uncomfortable. It was easier simply not to think of it, so she did not consider Mavin’s ignorance, did not consider the matter at all except to think without thinking that with Mavin coming to a proper age, the demands on herself might be less. When Handbright had been a forty-season child there had been others near in age. Throsset of Dowes. The twin daughters of old Gormier, Zabatine and Sambeline. At least three or four others. But the twins had soon had twin children, two sets of sons, had left them in the nursery and fled. And Throsset had simply gone, with a word to no one and no one knowing where. And all the others had had their children and gone into the world, one by one, so that for four years Handbright had been alone behind the p’natti—alone except for a few crones and homebound types who were too lazy to do else than linger in the keep, and the Danderbat granders who were there to keep watch. That was all except for peripatetic clan members who visited from time to time. Well, at least the last of the babies was now out of loincloths and into trowsies. And Mertyn was eight. And Mavin now would be available to help ... help. So she thought, in the back of her head, not taking time to worry it because Assembly was so near and there was so much to do. Of course more hands were assembled to do it, too, for the Danderbat were beginning to gather. The kitchens were getting hot from fires kept burning under the ovens. Foods were being brought by wagon from as far away as Zebit and Betand. All during the year shifters might eat grass in the fields or meat off the bone, but at Assembly time they wanted cookery and were even willing to hire to get it done. That was the true sign that Assembly was near, when the cooks arrived by wagon from Hawsport, all wide-eyed at being surrounded by shifters. Of course the kitchens were underground and there were guards on them from morn to night so they didn’t see what non-shifters shouldn’t see, but the gold they were paid was good gold and more of it than a pawnish chef might make in a season otherwise.

  

 Mavin, aware that Handbright was distracted by all this flutter, decided it would be best to lose herself in the confusion. She knew a half-hundred places in the keep in which one might crouch or lie totally unobserved and watch what went on. Now with the Danderbat gathering from all the world, and sensing that it was a time of great change for herself whether she wished to change or no, she took to hiding herself, watching, staring, learning from a distance rather than being ever present and handy as old Gormier had noticed her being. But he was now so mightily enthralled by gossip from a hundred places in a hundred voices, so distracted by the clan members gathering in their beast-headed cloaks of fur, full of tall tales and babble, that he forgot about Mavin or any intentions he may have had toward her. Mavin, however, had merely exchanged ubiquity for invisibility, hiding herself in any available cubby to see what it was that went on as the Danderbat clansmen came home. As Gormier was a man of restless, lecherous energy, full of talk, a good one to watch if one wanted to learn things, she followed him about as she had done for years, peering down on him from odd corners above rafters or from rain spouts. It was thuswise she finally lost her stubborn naivete.

  

 Gormier and Haribald were helping unload a wagon of vegetables which had been hauled all the way from Zebit up the River Haws and the windy trail to the top of the table mountain on which the keep sat, just east of the range of firehills which separated it from Schlaizy Noithn. As they were about this business, they heard a drumming noise and looked out through the p’natti to see a vast brown ball, leathery hard, with arms at either edge, cudgeling itself to make a thunder roar. They set up a hail which Mavin heard, hid as she was under the edge of the keep roof in a gutter, and the drum ceased pounding upon itself to make a trial run at the p’natti. It assaulted the launching ramps, rolling upward at increasing speed, propelling itself by hand pushes along its circumference, to take projectile form as it left the ramp, then a winged form which snagged the top of a slything pillar with a hooked talon only to change again into a fluid serpent which slythed down the pillar before launching upward once more in a flurry of bright veils which floated upon the sky, the veils forming a brilliant parachute against the blue. Even Mavin gasped, and the granders made drum chests for themselves, beating with their arms, an answering thunder of applause. So the falling parachute, making itself into a neat bundle as it dropped, became a shifter man on the ground before them, the parachute veils gathering in and disappearing into the general hard shape. Mavin recognized him then as Wurstery Wimpole, for he had won the tournament in a previous year and been much glorified then by the Danderbat.

  

 “Damfine, Wurstery. Damfine. Like that parachute thingy, soft as down.” Gormier, pounding him on his hard shape back, shaking his hand in sudden pain as Wurstery made a shell back there to take the blows. “Haribald was just saying he hadn’t seen veils used so—or such a color!—in a dozen years. Amblevail Dassnt used to do some parachute thing, but his was pale stuff beside yours. You going to use that coming in during procession?”

  

 “Oh, might, might. Have another trick or two I’ve been practicing. Might use them instead. Anyhow, that’s days away and there’s days between! I’ve been bringing myself eager cross country thinking of the drink and the cookery and the Danderbat girls.”

  

 Gormier shook his head, sadly, Mavin peering down on him from the height and hearing him breathe. “No girls, Wustery. Not a one save Handbright, and she’s tired of it. Hardly worth the effort. She doesn’t make it enjoyable. I’ve been at her bed this past two, three years, and Haribald, too, seeing she’s of breeding age, but there’s no good of it at all.”

  

 “You don’t mean it! Only one girl shifter behind the p’natti? Lords, lords, what are the Danderbat coming to. Last time I was here, there were a dozen—two dozen.”

  

 “Naa. Last time you was here was four years—twelve seasons ago, and there weren’t all that many. Throsset was here then. And my daughters, but they were just weaning the twins, one set each. And there was a flock of visitors, of course, but right after Assembly they left. After that there wasn’t another girlchild behind the p’natti save Mavin, and she’s only now maybe coming of age or maybe not. Lately the Danderbats’ve borne nothing but boys. Who would have thought there could be too many boys! There’s talk among the Elders that the Danderbats may be done, Wurstery. Talk of that, or of bringing back the women who’ve gone out, whether they’re willing or no ...”

  

 “So how come Handbright’s stayed so long? What is she, twenty-four or so?”

  

 “She doesn’t bear. Never been pregnant once, so far as we know. One of these days, she’ll give up hope and take off for Schlaizy Noithn, I doubt not. She’s thought of it before, but we’ve discouraged her, Haribald and me.” Gormier gave his head a ponderous shake at the pity of it all. “So if you’re looking for female flesh, best ask a friend to shift for you, old Wurstery, or visit some other keep of some other clan, for there’s naught here for you save one old girl not worth the trouble and one new one not come to it yet.”

  

 And it was in this wise that Mavin realized what Handbright’s flushed face had meant and why it was that Mavin’s being a shifter would make a difference. The truth of it came to her all at once, a complete picture, in vivid detail and coloring. She went inside to the privy and lost her lunch.

  

 There was no time to steam over it then, for Wurstery had been only one of the latest batch of Danderbats who were flowing in from all directions, laughing and shouting in the Assembly rooms downstairs, drifting up and down to the cellars to see what the cooks were preparing and whether the wine was in proper supply, taking their chances on the lottery which told them off into food service crews day by day during Assembly. Mavin, no longer invisible, was hugged, kissed, hauled about by the shoulders, congratulated on her growth, questioned as to her Talent, and sent on a thousand errands. It was impossible to escape. There were eyes everywhere, Danderbats everywhere, both grown ones and childer ones, for some Danderbat shes chose to take their childer with them rather than leave them in the nurseries of the keep. And a good thing, too, thought Mavin exhaustedly as she counted their numbers and went for the twentieth time escorting a small one to the privy. It was only that night, long after darkness had come and the keep had fallen into an almost quiet that she went to find Handbright, waking her from an exhausted drowse.

  

 “Mavin? What’s wrong? What do you want?”

  

 “Sister. I need to ask things.”

  

 “Oh, Mavin, not now! I’ve been standing on my own feet since before dawn, and weariness has me by the throat. You’ve asked questions since you were born, and I can’t imagine what’s left to ask!” Handbright pulled a shawl around her shoulders and sat up in her narrow bed. This room at the top of the keep was her own, seldom visited, mostly undisturbed, and it was rare for anyone, Mavin included, to come there. Handbright herself usually slept near the nurseries, and she had sought this cubby now only because there were visitors aplenty to care for the children. Mavin, slightly ashamed but undeterred, drifted to the window of the room and looked out across the p’natti to the line of fire hills upon the western horizon. Beyond them was Schlaizy Noithn, the ground of freedom where her schoolmates had gone to try their Talent and learn their way. Of course, she ones could go there too, if they liked, after they had had a lot of childer, or when they knew they could not. This had never been important before. She had known that fact as well as she knew her own name, or the sight of Handbright’s face, or the feel of a fellow shifter through a changed hide, knowing this was shifter kin even though he looked or smelled nothing like himself. But it had never really meant anything to her until now.

  

 “Handbright, I want to go to Schlaizy Noithn.” And she waited to hear the proof of all her assumptions.

  

 “You can’t do that, child. You’re a she-child. Danderbat womb keepers don’t go. You know that.”

  

 “Of course I know it. But I said, I want to go to Schlaizy Noithn. I want to go regardless of what the Danderbats say. Suppose I go to a Healer in the Outside and ask her to take my womb away.”

  

 “She wouldn’t do it. If she did, the Elders would kill her.”

  

 “Suppose I changed me, so that I don’t have a womb at all.”

  

 Handbright made the ward of evil sign, her face turning hard and wooden at the thought. Her voice was no longer kindly when she replied. “That’s a disgusting thought. How could you think such a thing?”

  

 “Ah. Well, as to that, sister, answer me this. If I have my Talent party in a day or so, or say right after Assembly, when the visitors are gone, how long before I have to do man-woman stuff with old Gormier? Or Haribald? Or maybe old Garbat himself?”

  

 The older girl turned away, face pale. “Ah, Mavin. I don’t want to talk about it. You’ll learn to manage. It’s part of being a shifter girl, that’s all. You’ll live through it. Besides, you’ve known all about that ... you’ve known. ...” Seeing Mavin’s face, she stopped, reddening. “You didn’t know?”

  

 “No. I didn’t know. Not until this morning. I should have known, maybe, but I didn’t. I need to understand all this, Handbright. I have to know what this change is going to mean to me. Suddenly it’s me the old Danderbats are leching for. Now if I’d been Tragamor, you’d have turned me over to the Forgetter to take all my memories and send me out in a minute. Wouldn’t you?”

  

 “Yes. It’s necessary. We always do that.”

  

 “Even if I was a she-child Tragamor, you’d do the same. Womb or no womb, you’d turn a Tragamor she-child away to Schooltown in a minute.”

  

 Handbright nodded, stiffly, seeing where the argument was going.

  

 “But because I’m shifter, a she-child shifter, the Elders have said I have to womb-carry for them. I can shift my legs and arms, grow fur or feathers, make me wings for my shoulders, but I can’t fly or leap or turn into any other thing, for it might change womb and make it unfavorable for carrying baby shifters. If I’m biddable, though, after I’ve had three or four or so, or once I can’t have any more, they’ll let me go to Schlaizy Noithn. Or out into the world. Isn’t that right?”

  

 “You know it is. You’ve known those who went.”

  

 “Oh, yes. I’ve seen them when they went, Handbright, and I’ve seen them when they come back. They say Throsset fled, and there’s a penalty on her if she comes back. She’s gone away far, and none have seen her.”

  

 “Throsset was in love with a Demon, and he took her with him into the Western Sea. That’s what’s said.”

  

 “She went. That’s what I mean. She didn’t stay here in the keep and carry babies for the Elders.”

  

 “The word is she couldn’t. She had no proper parts to do it.”

  

 “Then maybe I’m not the first to think of disposing of the proper parts,” Mavin said angrily. “Handbright, remember how you used to tell me you’d shift into a great sea bird when you had your Talent? You’d be a great white bird, you said, and explore all the reaches of the western sea. You used to say that. But here you are, teaching, baby watching, cooking and carrying for the Elders, and I know for a fact that there’s been much breeding done on you and no end of it planned, for I heard old Gormier talking of it and of how he’d discouraged your leaving ...”

  

 The older girl turned away, face flaming, half angry, half shamed. Undaunted, Mavin went on.

  

 “You stayed here, and let yourself be used by old Gormier, and Haribald, and I don’t know how many others—and because you didn’t have childer, they kept at you. And the years go by, and it gets later and later. You don’t shift, you don’t do processionals, you don’t go to Schlaizy Noithn to learn your Talent, you don’t practice, and it still gets later. And maybe it’s too late to dream of becoming a great bird and going exploring, too.”

  

 “Don’t you understand!” Handbright shouting at her, face red, tears flowing freely down the sides of her tired face. “I stayed because of Mertyn ... and you. I stayed because our mother died. I stayed because there wasn’t anyone else!” She turned, hand out, warning Mavin not to say another word, and then she was out the door and away, so much anger in her face that Mavin knew it was the keep angered her, the world, the Elders, the place, the time, not Mavin alone. And yet Mavin felt small and wicked to have put this extra hardship upon Handbright just now during Assembly, when she must be bearing so much else. Even so, she did not regret it, for now she knew the truth of it. It was a hard bit of wisdom for the day, but it came to Mavin as a better thing than the fog she had been wandering about in until the overheard conversation of the morning. “Still,” she whispered to herself, “I have doubts, Handbright. For you may have stayed out of grief for our mother, and out of care for baby Mertyn ... and me. But there have been eight long years since then. And four long years since Throsset left. And I have been strong and able for at least four or five of those years. So why not have gone, Handbright? Why not have taken us with you? There must be some other reason.”

  

 “Perhaps,” said the clear voice which had spoken to her from within her own mind that morning, “She is afraid or too tired or believes that it is her duty to stay in the Danderbat keep, oldest of the Xhindi keeps. Or because she believes she is needed here.”

  

 Mavin left the room thoughtfully, and went down the long stairs past the childer’s playground. Mertyn was there, sitting on the wall as he so often did, arms wrapped around his legs, cheek lying on his knees while he thought deep thoughts or invented things, a dark blot of shadow against the stars. Mavin considered, not for the first time, that he did not look like a shifter child. But then, Mavin had not thought of herself resembling a shifter child either and had grieved over that. Perhaps Mertyn was not and she could rejoice. She sat beside him to watch the stars prick out, darkness lying above the fireglow in the west. “You’re sad looking, Mertyn child.”

  

 “I was thinking about Leggy Bartiban. He was teaching me to play wands and rings, and now he’s gone. They took him to the Forgetter, and he’s gone. If I see him again ever, he won’t know me.” The child wiped tears, snuffling against his sleeve, face already stained. She hugged him to her, smelling the fresh bread smell of him, salt sweat and clean breath.

  

 “Ah. He may know us both, Mertyn. Handbright says they don’t forget everyone. He’ll know us. He’ll just forget the shifter things it’s better he forgets, anyhow, if he’s not shifter. Why clutter up your mind with all stuff no good to it? Hmm? Besides, I can teach you to play wand-catch.”

  

 He looked at her in surprise. “Well if you can, why didn’t you? I should’ve learned last year. I’m getting old fast, Mavin. Everyone says so.”

  

 “Ah. Do you think you’re getting older than I am? If you could manage that, it would be fine, Mertyn. Then you could take me with you and we’d go travel the world.”

  

 “I’m not catching up to you, Mavin,” he said seriously. The boy had little humor in him, and she despaired sometimes that he would ever understand any of her little jokes. It upset him if she told him she had been teasing so she pretended serious regard.



  

 “No, of course you’re not. I was just wishing, thinking it would be nice to go traveling and shifting.”

  

 “Oh, it would. If you go, you mustn’t leave me all alone here, Mavin. I had Leggy, and he’s gone, and there’s only Handbright except you. I want to go traveling and shifting more than anything. I dream about it sometimes, when I’m asleep and when I’m awake. I want to go. But you can’t go until you’ve had childer, Mavin. Girls aren’t supposed to. Janjiver says it messes up their insides.”

  

 Mavin bit her lip, wanting to laugh at his tone of voice, unable to do so for the tears running inside her throat. “Tell me, Mertyn, why it is it doesn’t mess up a boy shifter’s insides? Boys have baby-making parts, too, don’t they? But I’ve seen them shift their parts all over themselves and then put them back and make a baby the same day. So why is it only she-shifters have to be so careful?”

  

 The boy looked doubtful, then thoughtful in that way he sometimes had. “I don’t know. That would be very interesting to know, wouldn’t it. What the difference is. I’ll ask Gormier Graywing ...”

  

 “Don’t,” she said harshly. “Let me find out, brother child, I’d rather.” She left him sitting there under the stars, went out only to return and whisper to his shadow crouching dark against the wall, “Mertyn, if I were to figure out a way to go traveling, would you go with me?”

  

 His voice when he replied was all child. “Oh, Mavin, could you? That would be fun!”

  

 Could she? Could she? Could she do what Throsset of Dowes was said to have done? Leave in the dark of night, slipping away in silence, losing herself in the fire hills or the roads away north to Pfarb Durim. Oh, the mystery and wonder of Pfarb Durrni, city of the ancients!

  

 This was only dream stuff, only thoughts and ruminations, not intentions. She was not yet at the point of intention. Meantime it was Old Shuffle time, Assembly time, and she no less than any in the keep would watch the processions on the morrow.

  

 For it was tomorrow that the visitors would come, tomorrow that the first procession would come through the p’natti, through Gormier’s new pillars and doors. Even now those of the younger clans were probably roaming about in the fire hills in pombi shape or fustigar shape or flying high overhead, endlessly circling like great waroo owls, ready to assemble with first light, making themselves a great drum orchestra to beat the sun up out of bed. She went to sleep in a cubby which faced the sunrise, so that the coming of the shifters should not take her by surprise.

  

 They began before dawn, drumming, hooting, whistling, a cacophonous hooraw which woke every person in the keep and brought them all to the roof where today’s kitchen crew gave them hot spiced tea and biscuits made of ox-root, all nibbling quietly in the pre-morn darkness while out in the firehills that un-gamish hooraw went on and on, rising and falling. Mavin huddled in her blanket, perched within the rainspout once more, out of sight and therefore out of anyone’s mind at all, she told herself. She did not want to see Handbright’s face.

  

 It came toward dawn, and the Elders put their score pads on their laps, ready to note what it was they liked about the procession, already seeing shifting shapes out beyond the p’natti, high tossed plumes, lifted wings, whirlings and leapings just at the edge of the light. Mavin waited, holding her breath. She had told herself that she was not so childish as to be excited, but the breath stuck in her throat nonetheless.

  

 Full light. Out at the edge of the p’natti a hedge of prismed spears arose, shattering light in a thousand directions, then broke into shapes which came forward to the music of their own drumming. They came low, then upward to fly, to catch, to slide down, to rear upward again, to sparkle in jeweled greens and blues, fiery reds and ambers, scales like emerald and sapphire—the mythical jewels of heaven—and eyes which glowed a hundred shades of gold. Beyond the narrowing pillars they thrust upward into trees of gems, glittering from a million leaves, slid forward between the pillars and confronted the square-form portals in contracting shapes of bulked steel, gleaming gray and shiny. Around the slither-downs they came, erupting now into different shapes, some winged, some coiled like leaping springs, some vaporous as mist, all to break like water upon the barrier of the slything walls and take the shapes of fustigars and pombis and owls, tumbling and leaping over the walls and the ways until they were at the walls of the keep itself where they became whirling pools of light and shadow, towering higher and higher, drawing up, up, up to meet at the zenith above the keep in a dome, a shining lattice of drawn flesh, all the time the drumming going on and on, louder and louder, until a crash came to make their ears fall deaf.

  

 And in that moment the high lattice fell, drew in upon itself like shadow to become the visitors from Bothercat the Rude Rock and Fretowl the Dark Wood and a dozen other Xhindi keeps, laughing outside the walls and demanding entrance. So was the first proces­sional ended. Mavin sat in the high hidey hole, mouth open, so full of wonder at it that she could not wake herself from the dream.

  

 Still there were some hundreds to be fed, and it would have taken advance planning and great determination to hide from so many. She was winkled out and set to carrying plates within the hour, and thereafter was not let alone for so much as a moment during the days or nights.

  

 It was on the last day of Assembly that one of the Xhindi from Battlefox the Bright Day sought her, making a special thing of asking after her and begging her company for a walk in the p’natti. He told her his name was Plandybast Ogbone. “Your thalan, child. Do you know what that is?” 

  

 She looked at him mouth open. “Full brother of my mother? But she was Danderbat! Not Battlefox!”

  

 “Oh, and yes, yes, child. True. But your grandma, her mother, was Battlefox right enough. Bore six for Battlefox, she did, before taking herself away into the deep world for time on her own. And it was here she met a scarfulous fellow called young Theobald, so it seems she told Battlefox Elders. And he got twins on her, which was your mama and me, and then she died. And young Theobald, he took the girl child and brought her back to the Danderbats knowing their deep scarcity of females, but me he kept with the Battlefoxes, reminding me frequent that I was thalan to any of her childer. He died some time back. And so I am thalan to Handbright, and to you, and to young Mertyn.

  

 “Time ago I invited Handbright to come visit Battlefox the Bright Day, but she pled she could not leave young Mertyn. Today I asked her to bring him, and you, if she would, but these here have convinced her the walls of Danderbat keep are Xhindi gold. It seems a slavey in Danderbat is equal to an Elder in Battlefox—or so she believes. No, no, I lie if I say that’s true, for I’ve talked with her and talked with her, and it’s something other than that. Something is awry with her, and she seems unable to decide anything. She simply does and does and tries not to think about it. Well, you know the old saying, ‘Vary thought, vary shape.’ Since we do not take the same shapes, it is silly to expect us to think alike.” He shook his head. “Though, weary as she looks, I would expect her to have accepted my invitation. Though I have a kinsman or so there who may be a bit difficult—most particularly one kinswoman, of whom the least said the best—she would have companions and help at Battlefox.”

  

 “She’s the only girl behind the p’natti,” whispered Mavin, so moved by this intelligence that she forgot to be wary of telling anyone, and him a stranger man for that. “Until she tells them about me.” So Plandybast Ogbone looked at her, and she at him, sharing a wordless kind of sympathy which she had not felt from any of the Danderbats.

  

 “So that’s the way of it. And when they are told about you, all the oldsters will be at your bedroom door night on night, won’t they? Ah, surely Danderbat keep may be the oldest and the original, but it has fallen into a nasty sort of decay. We do not so treat our she-children at Battlefox and would have you welcome there. Or are you too convinced that the keep walls are Xhindi gold?”

  

 “No,” she whispered. “I want out.”

  

 “Ah. Well. There’s young Mertyn. He’d miss you no doubt.”

  

 “Bring him with me,” she said. “I would. Couldn’t leave him here. To hear unkind things. About me, as I have heard about mother.”

  

 “What is it they say about my sister Abrara?”

  

 “That she shifted forbiddens while she carried Mertyn, and died from it.”

  

 “Oh, Gamelords, what nonsense. I’ve known many who shifted before and during and didn’t die of it, though the Healers do say the child does best which isn’t shifted in the womb. This all reminds me of my other sister, Itter, going on and on about Abrara whom she never knew and knows little enough about. There are some who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living. Abrara died because she was never strong, shifter or no. That’s the truth. They should have had a Healer for her when she was young, as they did for me, but they didn’t, for the Danderbat Xhindi set themselves above Healing. Lucky I was the Battlefoxes are no such reactionary old persons, or like I’d have died, too. She should have been let alone, not made to have childer, but the Danderbats are so short of females these two generations, and she had had daughters. She should have been let alone.”

  

 “At the Old Shuffle, we are not let alone.”

  

 He looked at her seriously, walked around in a circle, as though he circled in his thoughts. “You know, child, if I took you away from Danderbat with me, there’d be fits and consternation by the Elders. Particularly since Danderbat is so short of females just now. There’d be hearings and meetings and no doubt unpleasant things for me and you both. That’s if I took you. Stole you, so they’d say, like a sack of grain or a basket of ripe thrilps. If you came to me, however, at Battlefox the Bright Day, you might have a few nasty words from Itter, but I’d not send you away empty-handed or hungry. You’ve seen maps of the place? You know where it is?”

  

 She stared at him, but he did not meet her eyes, merely seeking the sky with a thoughtful face as though he had said nothing at all of importance.

  

 “Yes,” she said finally in a voice as casual as his own. “I know where it is. It lies high upon the Shadowmarches, northwest of Pfarb Durim. If I came to visit you some day, you’d be glad to see me?” she offered. “More or less.”

  

 “Oh. Surely. More or less. I would be very glad to see you. And Mertyn.”

  

 “Ah,” she said. “I’ll remember that, my thalan, and I thank you.” She turned to leave him, full of dignity, then turned to hug him briefly, smearing his face with unregarded tears. “Thank you for telling me about my mother.” Her gait as she left was perfectly controlled, and he looked after her, aware of a kind of envy at her composure. It was better done than he had seen from many twice her age.

  

 CHAPTER THREE

  

 The Assembly was concluded. The visitors left. The cooks departed in their wagon looking weary and half drunk, for they had had their own celebration when the last banquet was over. Up in the small room at the top of the tower, Handbright slept in total exhaustion, and for once the old ones were so surfeited with food and frolic that they left her alone. Mavin, watching, made sure of this. She had set herself to be Handbright’s watchdog for the time Mavin remained at the keep. That would not be long. She had resolved upon it. But she was still too untried a shifter to take child Mertyn into the wide world trusting only on her own abilities to keep him safe. As the shifter children were often told, there were child markets operating in the Gameworld, and whether a child might be shifter or no, the bodies of the young were saleable.

  

 She knew that when they went safety would depend on covert, quiet travel over many leagues, for the way to Battlefox the Bright Day lay a distance well beyond Pfarb Durim through the Shadow-marches. And covert travel would be totally dependent upon Mavin’s Talent, child Mertyn having none of his own save a sensible and thoughtful disposition. Her Talent had to be tried, and exercised, and practiced. Each night when the place was still, Mavin went beyond the p’natti into the woods—a forbidden excursion—or deep into the cellars—empty now—to try what it was she could do with herself.

  

 It took her several nights to learn to damp the pain of shifting, to subdue it so that it did not distract her from what she was attempting. She spent those nights copying herd beasts from the surrounding fields, laying her hands upon them and feeling her way into their shapes, hide first as it were, the innards coming along as a consequence of the outer form. She learned to let discomfort guide her. If there was a feeling of itchy wrongness, then she could let the miraculous net within her sort it out, reach for a kind of Tightness which felt both comfortable and holdable. There were parts which were difficult. Hooves were troublesome. And horns. They had no living texture to them, and making the hard surfaces took practice. She learned the shape of her own stomach by the forms it took in shifting, the fineness and texture of her own skin, the shape and function of her own female parts, for she had determined to ignore the proscription against shifting placed upon females by the Danderbat. Reason said that if men could do it and still produce progeny, then women could do it also. And if not, then not. She would do without childer. Whatever she might do or not do, she would not end like Handbright.

  

 Each morning she woke Handbright with a cup of tea—aware that this sudden solicitude evoked a certain suspicion—and repeated that she did not want the Elders told, not just yet. Each day Handbright would reluctantly agree, and Mavin would go to sleep for a few hours before finding some deserted place to practice in. Day succeeded day. Gormer and Haribald were gone from the keep on a long hunting expedition, for the food storage rooms were virtually depleted. In their absence Handbright stopped insisting that the Elders must be told, and Mavin relaxed a trifle, sleeping a few more hours than she would have done otherwise.

  

 She developed her own systems for rapid acquisition of Talent, reminding herself how quickly the babies in the nursery learned to talk once they had begun. If one spent hours every day at it, it came fast. Even the boys who began to show Talent were not usually allowed as many free hours for practice as Mavin took for herself, for they had to attend classes and spend time with the Elders listening to history tales. With the Assembly so recently over, however, everyone was tired. The Elders themselves were off in the woods in easy shapes which required no thought. The children were left to their own devices and seemed to spend endless days playing Wizards and Shifters. In a few days the keep would pull itself together to resume its usual schedule, but just now it was open and relaxed, ideal for Mavin’s purposes. She thanked the Gamelords, prayed to Thandbar it would last as long as she needed, and practiced.

  

 She knew she did not have time to learn many different things. She could not trifle with herself, learning the shape of a whirlwind or a cloud. She must take what time she had to learn a few things well, learning even those few shapes in wonder and occasional chagrin. She worked endlessly at her horse shape, believing that a boy the size of Mertyn could best be carried farthest on some ordinary, acceptable animal. Besides, horses could fight. Horses with hooves honed to razor sharpness could fight particularly well, and she spent prodigious hours rearing and wheeling herself, striking with forefeet and back ones, all in absolute silence so that no one would hear and come to investigate. She practiced gaining bulk, all the bulk one needed to become a horse, practiced doing it quickly and leaving it just as quickly. Taking bulk was not an easy thing. One had to absorb the extra bulk, water or grain or grass—organic things were best. Then one had to pull the net out of the extra bulk to return to one’s own shape, quickly, neatly, with no agonizing tugs or caught bits of oneself lingering. It was not an easy thing, but she learned to do it well. Not knowing what she could not do, she did everything differently than other shifters would have done it, comforted herself by naming herself “Mavin Manyshaped,” and did little dances of victory all alone.

  

 She began to pay attention to other shifters, to the way she knew them, could identify them, even inside other shapes, and discovered at last a kind of organ within herself which trembled in recognition when another shifter with a similar organ was near. It was small, no bigger than a finger, but it was growing. A few days before, she would not have known it was there. Desperately, she set about shifting that organ itself, veiling it, muffling it, so that it could not betray her. She wanted to be horse, only horse, with no shifter unmasking her as anything else. The difficulty lay in the strange identifier organ, for when she muffled it directly, it was as though she had become deaf and blind, unable to walk without losing her balance. Not knowing that it was impossible—as any Elder of the Xhindi would have told her—she invented a bony plate to grow around it which allowed it to function inside her body without betraying itself outside. The plate was bulky. She could not contain it in a small shape or a narrow one, but she could do it as a horse, and the night she achieved it she slept for hours, so drowned in sleep that it was like waking from an eternity.

  

 Waking to find that Gormier and Haribald had returned, and with them Wurstery and half a dozen others. The hunt had been successful; the kitchen courtyard was full of butchery, with smoke fires under the racks of meat, drying it for storage. And Handbright was there with great black rings around her eyes, looking cowed and beaten, as though she had not slept for days.

  

 “I told them,” she said to Mavin, not meeting her eyes. “I had I to. I can’t go on.”

  

 Mavin looked up to find Gormier’s eyes upon her, full of a gloating expectation. Ah, well. She had had more time than she had expected. “When?” She did not reproach Handbright. The strange identifier organ would have betrayed her sooner or later, and what she intended to do would be reproach enough.

  

 “They want to have your Talent party today. They’re drawing lots who stays with you first tonight. Well, it’s time for you, Mavin. You’ll live through it, though. We all have.”

  

 “I’m sure I will. Of course I will. Don’t fret. Come with me to the kitchen and have a cup of something hot. You look exhausted.”

  

 “They woke me in the middle of the night, the three of them. They ... they put ... I ... I had to tell them.”

  

 “Of course.” Soothing, kindly, hypocritical, Mavin led her to the kitchen. “Handbright, listen to me. I want you to go to Battlefox keep in the Bright Day demesne. Our thalan, Plandybast Ogbone, wants you to come. Promise me?”

  

 Handbright shook her head, a frantic denial. “Mertyn. Mertyn needs me.”

  

 Mavin thought it was only habit and a weary inertia which made Handbright speak so. “He doesn’t need you, Handbright. He’s fine. The youngest child in the nursery is five years old, and you’ve spent long enough taking care of them. You should know by now you’re not going to conceive, and you’d have been long gone if you had conceived. So you must go. There are lots of Danderbats can come in to take care of the childer. Besides, I’ll be here.”

  

 “But ... alone. It’s so hard alone ... and Mertyn ...”

  

 “You did it alone. After you have some rest, you can come back and help me if you like. But I want you to go, Handbright. Either to Plandybast, or to the sea, as you once said you would do. Today.” She bent all her concentration upon her sister, willed her to respond. “Now, Handbright.”

  

 “Now?” Hope bloomed on her face as though this had been the secret word of release; but there was a wild look in her eyes. “Now?” 

  

 Mavin wondered what had happened to make the woman respond in this way. It could not be her own pleading, for she had pled before and nothing had happened. No. Something else had happened. She did not take time to worry about what it might have been.

  

 “Now. Become a white bird, Handbright! Fly from the tallest tower. From your bedroom, up there in the heights. Nothing carried, nothing needed—to Battlefox. Or to the sea.”

  

 Handbright rose, a look almost of madness in her face, eyes darting, hands patting at herself. “Now. Mavin. Now. I’ll go. Someday, I’ll... you’ll come. Mertyn’s all right. He’s a big boy. He’ll be fine. Now.” And she fled away up the stairs, Mavin close behind but unseen, as though she had been a ghost.

  

 Clothes fell on the stone floor. Handbright stood in the window, naked. From the doorway Mavin gasped, seeing bruises and bloody stripes on the naked form which changed, shifted, wavered in out­line to stand where it had stood but feathered, long neck curled on white back, beak turned toward Mavin, eyes still wild and seeking.

  

 “Fly, sister,” she commanded, fixing the maddened eyes with her own. “Fly, Handbright. Go.”

  

 The wings unfurled slowly, the neck stretched out tentatively, cautiously, then all at once darted forward as the wings thrust down, once, twice, and the great bird launched itself into the air, falling, falling, catching itself upon those wide wings at the last possible moment to soar up, out, out, away toward the west.

  

 Mavin found herself crying. She flung herself down on Handbright’s narrow bed, aware for the first time of the basket in the corner, the ropes, the little whip carelessly thrown down upon the stones. It was a punishment basket, the only true punishment for a shifter, to be confined, close confined, unable to move, to speak, to change into any other shape. The baskets were woven in Kyquo, tightly woven, tightly lidded. And this one had been used on Handbright, or she had been threatened with it.

  

 So. Threatened or used; what did it matter. Handbright was gone. Mavin wiped her face in a cold, unreasoning fury and without knowing how she did it, or even that she had done it, took on the very face and features of Handbright; the well known expression, the tumbled hair, the tall, slender form bent with work and abuse, the eyes dark-ringed with pain to look upon herself reflected there—Handbright’s own form and face.

  

 “Everyone knows,” she whispered, “that it is impossible for a shifter to take the form of another living person. Everyone knows that it lies outside our nature, that it is forbidden. Everyone knows that. But—but, someone has done it.” She smiled at herself in the mirror, a cold smile, and went slowly, with fearful anticipation, down into the smoke of the kitchen court to confront Gormier’s truculent stare.

  

 “Well?” he demanded. “She’s been told there’s been enough of this holding back, has she? Celebration for her this day and for me this night. I’ve won the draw.” And he grinned widely at her as he displayed the red-tipped stick he had drawn. “Time I had a little luck after too long of your dead body, old girl. Time we had some fresh blood behind the p’natti.”

  

 “She doesn’t want a celebration.” This in the very tone and substance of Handbright’s own voice, dull and without emotion. “She’s sick to her stomach. She’s up in my room, and you can go up there, come dark, but she’ll have no celebration.”

  

 “Well, and go up I will. And after me Wurstery, and after him Haribald, for that’s the way it falls.”

  

 Still in Handbright’s voice Mavin let her curiosity free to find the limits of the old ones’ abuse. “Couldn’t you have pity on her this night? Make it only one of you?”

  

 Wurstery had overheard this from his drying rack duties and intervened to make his own demands. “We’ve been days in the woods, old girl. Make a nice homecoming for us. Besides, best begin as we mean to go on.”

  

 “Well then,” Mavin said in Handbright’s voice, “she’ll have to bear it, I suppose.”

  

 “Let’s hope she bears better’n you’ve borne, old girl.” And they went back to their smoky work in a mood of general self-righteousness and satisfaction. Mavin went back into the keep, into a shadowy place, and leaned against the wall, weeping. When she had done, the Handbright shape had dropped away, and though she tried, she could not bring it back. She went to find Mertyn to tell the boy they would leave Danderbat keep that night.

  

 She went over it with him several times, though the boy understood well enough even at first. “The horse will come to the corner of the p’natti wall farthest toward the fire hills. You’ll have all your clothes and things in this sack, everything you treasure, lad, for you’ll not be back. And I will meet you on the road ...”

  

 “And I must not say anything about it to anyone,” he con­cluded for her, puzzled but willing. “Especially not to any of the Danderbats.”

  

 “That’s right. Especially not to the Danderbats. And you’re to wait. Even if it gets very late and scary, and you hear owls or fustigars howling. Promise.”

  

 “Promise.” He put his small hand in hers, cold but steady. “I’ll wait, Mavin. No matter how late.”

  

 She left him, trusting him. Then to the cellars for two more of the punishment baskets, thick with dust, hardly ever used. Except by shifters like Gormier, for Mavin had no doubt it had been his idea—to spice things a bit. Then to the kitchens for a sack of grain. Then to Handbright’s room. She would have to be ready by dark, and it would take that much time to gain the bulk she would need to become a horse—to become a horse, but first to become something else indeed, only a part of which would resemble Mavin.

  

 She did not know that what she was doing was impossible. She knew only that she would not rest and could not go until Gormier and Haribald and Wurstery knew what Handbright had known, the sureness of pain, the tightness of confinement. And another thing. One other thing. When they knew that, it would not matter that there were no Danderbat girls behind the p’natti in future.

  

 In the deep middle of the night her horse shape came to Mertyn, exactly where she had told him to be. She whinnied at him, pushing at him with a soft nose, letting him feel her ears and neck to reassure him that all was well. He scrambled clumsily onto the low wall, and from that to Mavin’s back, the sack of possessions balanced in a lump before him.

  

 “Nice horse,” he said doubtfully. “Are you going to take me to Mavin?”

  

 The horse’s head nodded, and the beast stepped away from the wall, into the forest which Mavin knew as few others of the keep had ever known. By dawn they would need to be leagues away, down the cliff road which led to Haws Valley and well buried in the woods which lay along the upper stretches of the River Haws. She could not let the boy know she was shifter. His mind would be open to any Demon riding along who might choose to Read him, and it was better if he simply did not know. So, there would be play acting aplenty in the hours and days to come.

  

 They would be safe from pursuit for at least this day. The three in the tower room would not be found for hours, perhaps not for days. Each one of them had struggled, frightened half out of his wits and mad with the pain of missing vital parts of himself. Struggle had been useless. Mavin had prepared for the encounter by taking more bulk than the three of them put together, part of that bulk a Mavin-shaped piece, and the rest a huge, tentacled thing which swumbled them up and thrust them into the baskets no matter how they howled, pushing and squashing until they were forced to take the shape of the basket, without lungs or lips or eyes. Gormier had been first, arriving full of explicit, lewd instructions for the cowering girl, ready to force them upon her, only to be thrust into agonized silence by the hugeness that was Mavin. Then Wurstery, then Haribald, each coming into the dark room expecting nothing more than a bit of the usual. Well, usual they now had. Handbright’s usual. They would probably live, if they were found before they starved, but they would not father any more Danderbats. A shifter might shift as he would: once that part of his self was gone, it was gone forever. He might shift him a part which looked similar, but he would take no pleasure from it. Beneath Mertyn’s drowsing form the horse shuddered, half in horror, half in satisfaction.

  

 Now that the boy was soundly asleep, Mavin grew tentacles again, small ones to hold him securely on her back, and began to run. The horse shape was well and fully practiced, constructed for fleetness with eyes that could spy through the dark to see every hollow or bit of broken ground. Night fled past.

  

 Behind them in the keep a hysterical Wurstery managed a hair-thin tentacle to lift the latch of his basket. Behind them in the keep was consternation, fury. The Elders were summoned out of their inner privacies by bells.

  

 “Handbright,” they said. “It was Handbright!” No one was thinking to look for Mavin or for Mertyn. A shifter girl only just come to Talent could not have done this thing. It could only possibly have been done by someone older, someone who had practiced secretly. Ah, yes, that is why she never conceived. Surely it was Handbright. The Danderbats had only thought the creature looked like Mavin. The room had been dark. It had been Handbright, shifting shape, desirous of protecting (protecting?) her little sister.

  

 Jealous, Gormier offered. Jealous that the younger girl would get all their attention. At which there was much clucking of agreement, save among the crones who looked knowingly at one another but said nothing.

  

 The Xhindi did not believe in Healers, but one was sent for nonetheless. The three Danderbats were in too much pain to let nature heal them. Pain and fury.

  

 Far off to the north, the horse ran on, the boy cushioned soft on its wide back, as dawn leaked milky into the edges of the sky. She stopped, laid him down, went off into the woods to give up bulk and clothe herself. When she came out into the clearing, he was rubbing his eyes, looking up at her in gladness. “Mavin. You said you’d be here, but I thought maybe you’d forget.”

  

 She took him in her arms, glad that he could not fully see her face. “Oh, no, Mertyn,” she said. “Never fear that about Mavin. Mavin does not forget.”

  

 He slept curled in her arms, as secure as though he had been in the childer’s rooms at the keep, waking full of deep thoughts about the day. Mavin had brought with her a handful of the seeds of the fruit of the rainhat bush, used by the crones in the keep whenever shallow, quiet sleep was needed by someone ill or wounded. She fed half a dozen of these to Mertyn with his stewed grain, and then made him up to look like quite another boy. She had brought dye for his hair and bits of false hair to tuft his eyebrows out and a brush to make freckle spots on his clear skin. When she had done, he smiled at her in his sleep, quite content, looking utterly unlike himself. She wanted him passive, unable to take fright or betray them by recognizing someone, For they would need to travel part of the day on the Hawsport Road which led along the River Haws all the way from the far northern lands over Calihiggy Creek and down to the sea. Later, when there was time, she would explain it all and trust to his own good sense, but there was no time now for any explanation, and she dared not trust his guile.

  

 The horse form she took was sway-backed and old, with splayed hooves which turned up at the edges. A horse ridden by an unaccompanied child might be coveted by someone stronger, but this horse could be coveted by no one. So she took bulk and changed, scooping the sack and the child onto her back with a long, temporary tentacle and holding them in place with nearly invisible ones thereafter. Then they wandered down through the woods to t he road, empty in either direction. She began to plod along it, heading north, the river on her right and on both right and left, leagues away, the crumbly cliffs of Haws Valley. On that western height, well behind her, lay Danderbat keep. It was from that height that search would come, if search came, but it did not cross Mavin’s mind that the search might be for Handbright.

  

 The sway-backed horse shape was unbearable. It was inefficient and it ached. Without in the least meaning to do so, Mavin changed herself to remove the aches and make it easier to move along the road, only to come to herself with a sense of impending danger at the sounds of something coming along the road after her. A quick self check—she thought of it as a kind of patting the pockets of herself to see what she had in them—showed her a form so unnatural and strange as to have evoked immediate interest in anyone except a blind man. Hastily, and barely in time, she shifted back into the old horse form, plodded off the road and into a clump of bushes to let the travelers pass her by. She knew them for shifter the moment they came into view as dark, moving splotches against the moon-grayed loom of the forest. She even knew which shifters they were, Barfod Bartiban, thalan to Leggy Bartiban, and Torben Naffleloose. She knew them by the fustigar shapes they had taken, ones often seen in processionals at the Danderbat keep, as familiar in their way as the actual shapes of the two shifter men. The two shapes were hard run, panting, lagging feet in the dust to stir up a nose-tickling cloud. Mavin repressed a sneeze and tightened her grip on Mertyn, praying they would not see her, know her, somehow spy her out in the horse shape with the bony plate around her shifter organ.

  

 They did not. Instead, they slowed to a dragging walk, and then into a breath-gulping halt, sagging into the dust of the road with heaving moans of exhaustion.

  

 “No way Handbright could have come so far north lugging two younglings,” panted Barford. “So we’ve got to figure we’re in front of her if she came north. Not that I think she did.”

  

 “Think she went west? On no more than that crone’s say so?”

  

 “Only place she ever talked of going. Beyond Schlaizy Noithn to the sea. Wanted to do a bird thingy over the ocean. Fool idea, but that’s what the crone said.”

  

 “What’d she expect to do with the childer? Put them in a nest on a cliff and feed them fish?” Torben Naffleloose chuckled, hawking through the dust phlegm of his shifted throat. “Take a big bird to carry a girl the size of Mavin.”

  

 “Well now, you’re forgetting Mavin had turned shifter herself. Wasn’t that what all the ruckus was about?”

  

 “Oh, well, still. A just turned shifter is useless, Barfod, useless as tits on a owl. All they do for the first half year or so is fiddle with fingers and toes. You know that.”

  

 “I remember that. Fingers, toes, and some other interesting parts, eh, Torben. Remember when you was a forty-season child? Out behind the p’natti? Hah. All the shifter boys seeing who could ...” He paused, listening. Mavin had shifted her weight, rustling some branches. “What was that?”

  

 “Owl, prob’ly. No shifters around. I could feel ‘em if there were. No. Just night noises. Owls. Maybe a shadowman, sneaking around behind the bushes like they do. This is the kind of mild night they like, I hear. They come out and sing on nights like this. Did you ever hear ‘em?”

  

 “Oh, sure, when I was in Schlaizy Noithn. Playing flutes, playing little bells, singing like birds. There’s lots of them around the Schlaizy Noithn hills. There was one or two shifters when I was there claimed they could talk the shadowman talk. All full of babble-pabble it is, goes on and on. They’ll sing for a half night, words and words, and then you ask what it was all about and get told it was shadowman talk for ‘Look at the pretty moon.’ Ah, well. Now that we’re as far north as Handbright could have come, what’s the next thing, old Barfod?”

  

 There was a moment’s silence while the two sat quiet, thinking, then Bartiban replied, “Now I think we start off through the woods heading south again, you on one side of the road and me on the other, casting back and forth to see can we smell hide nor fang of whatever Handbright is up to. There’s others gone away west, and I’m betting my coin that they find her there. She’s an unpracticed female, Torben, and unpracticed females aren’t up to much, as you well know. Which is why we keep ‘em unpracticed, right?” And he chuckled in a liquid gurgle before rising once more to take another, more forest ready shape. The two went off into the underbrush, and Mavin stayed silent, hardly breathing, to let them get clear of her. So. They were seeking Handbright, a shifter burdened with two children. They were not seeking Mavin. Then so much for the horse shape, not-Mavin shape of the journey. She laid Mertyn upon the shadowed grasses and went away a little to give up the bulk she had taken, most of it, keeping some, for she wanted not to appear a child. There were child hunters, child takers in the world, and it would be better not to appear a child. Better not to appear a woman, either, for that. So. Well, first she would need to explain to Mertyn, and after that they would decide. She lay down beside him and let the night move over her like a blanket, quiet and peaceful, with no harm in it except the little harms of night-hunting birds doing away with legions of small beasties between their burrows; the slaughter of beetle by night-stalking lizard; the trickle of melody running through the forest signifying of shadowmen, shadowmen unheard for Mavin was asleep.

  

 In the morning she woke to the child stirring in her arms, woke to a crystal, glorious morning, so full of freedom that her heart sang with it and she thought of Handbright wonderingly. How could she have waited so long? How could she have given up all this to stay prisoned within the p’natti, within the keep, prey to those old granders and their salacious whims? It was a puzzle to her. She, Mavin, would not, ever, could not, ever. She tickled Mertyn awake and fed him from their small stock of foodstuffs, knowing she would have to hunt meat for them soon, or gather road fruits, or come to some place where such things could be worked for.

  

 “Where are we going, Mavin? You never said.”

  

 “Because I didn’t have time, Mertyn. You see, you and I are running away from Danderbat keep.”

  

 “Running away! Why are we doing that? I didn’t know that! You mean we can’t ever go back?” The child sounded crushed, or perhaps only surprised into a sense of loss.

  

 “You said you wanted to go traveling more than anything, Mertyn child.”

  

 “I know. I just—just thought I’d come back to Danderbat keep and tell everyone where I’d been and what I’d been doing. Like the shifters do at Assembly. Like that.”

  

 “Unlikely for us, Mertyn. We are going to Battlefox the Bright Day, high on the Shadowmarches, for there is your thalan and mine. Plandybast Ogbone.” She patted the boy while he thought on this, chewing away at the tough dried meat they had brought with them.

  

 “He was at Assembly. He gave me a thingy.” The boy rummaged in a pocket, coming up at last with a tiny carving of two frogs grinning at one another on a leaf. It was the kind of intricate handwork which the shifters loved, tiny and marvelous, done with fanatical care and endless time in the long, dark hours of the keep nights of the cold season. “He told me he had brought it for Handbright, but that I looked as though I needed it. What did he mean by that, Mavin?”

  

 “He meant that he thought you were still young enough to be tickled by it, child, and to keep it in your pocket forever. He could see that Handbright was beyond such things, beyond hope, beyond saving, perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  

 He looked questions at her, started to ask, bit his lip and did not. Mavin, sighing, took up the story. He would need to know, after all, child or not. “You see, Mertyn child,” she said, “this was the way of it with Handbright. ...” So she told him, everything, he flushing at the harsh telling of it but knowing well enough what it was she meant. Once in a while she said, “You know what that is? You understand?” to which he nodded shamefaced knowledge.

  

 When she had done, he whispered, “You know, the boys ... they say ... the ones like Leggy and Janjiver ... they say the girls like it. That’s what they say. They say that the girls may say no, but they really like it.”

  

 Mavin thought a time. “Mertyn child, you like sweet cakes, don’t you?”

  

 He nodded, cocking his head at this change of subject.

  

 “Let us suppose I put a basket of sweet cakes here, a big one, and I held your mouth open and I crumbled a cake into your mouth and pushed it down your throat with a piece of wood, the way the crones push corn down the goose’s neck to fatten it, so that your throat bled and you choked and gasped, but I went on pushing the crumbled cakes down your throat until they were gone. You could not chew them, or taste them. When I was done and your throat was full of blood and you half dead from it all, I would take the stick away and laugh at you and tell you I would be back on the morrow to do it all again. Then, suppose you came crying to someone and that someone said, ‘But Mertyn, you like sweet cakes, you really like sweet cakes... .’ ”

  

 The boy thought of this, red-faced, eyes filling with quick tears. “Oh, Mavin. Mavin. Oh, poor Handbright. I hope she has gone far away, far away ...”

  

 Mavin nodded. “Yes. She was bruised and the blood had spotted her skin, Mertyn. She had had no joy of the granders, nor they of her except the ugly joy of power and violence and the despising of women that they do. So. We have run from Danderbat keep, but they do not know that we are gone one way and Handbright another. So, we will stop going as boy and horse and go as boy and something else. For I am a shifter, Mertyn, and shift I will to keep us safe and fed and warm of nights.”

  

 “But Mavin, you are only a beginning shifter. Everyone says they are not up to much.”

  

 “Well. Perhaps they are right. So, I will not shift much. I will only be your big brother instead of your big sister, and that only so that no one disturbs us as we walk along.”

  

 “What will we do with the poor horse?” he asked gravely.

  

 She began to laugh, then stopped herself. No. Let him go on believing there had been a horse. “I turned it loose back in the woods. It will graze there happily all the rest of its life, so we will leave it. Come, now. Let’s pack all this stuff and be on our way. We have spent long enough in one spot, and it is many such spots before we come to the Shadowmarches.”

  

 She pulled him to his feet and busied him about the camp, burying the scraps and packing all the rest. Then, when she had changed herself under his wondering eyes into something not unlike herself but indisputably male, they went out onto the road to take the way north.

  

 CHAPTER FOUR

  

 The road was thick with dust of a soft, pinky color, powdered rose as it fluffed upward in small clouds around their feet, coating them to the knees with a blushing glow and velvety texture. At the sides of the road grew luxuriant stands of rainhat bush, the conical leaves as stiff as funnels, furry tan fruit nestling in each. The fruit was blue-fleshed and sweet beneath the furry, itchy skin, and they amused themselves as they went, spiking the fruit out without touching it and slitting the skin away to reveal the turquoise juiciness beneath. Small boys considered it great fun to hide rainhat fruit skins in one another’s beds or clothing, laughing uproariously at the frenzied scratching which would ensue. Mavin warned Mertyn with a glance when she saw him furtively hiding a fingerlength of skin, and he flushed as he threw it away.

  

 Beyond the stands of bushes to the west the forest began, first a fringing growth of yellow webwillow, then the dark conifers building gloom against the bronze red cliffs which reached upward at their left. The cliffs were crumbly-piers eaten away by ages of rain and sun into angled blocks stacked far upward to the ivory rimrock where the brows of the forest peered down into the valley. To their right the river ran silver, silent, slithery as a great snake, making no murmur save at the edges where it chuckled quietly under the grassy banks, telling its own story. Small froggy things polluped into the pools as they passed. Reeds swayed as though lurkers traveled there, though nothing emerged from the green fastnesses but stalking birds, high on their stilts, peering and poking into the mire with lancelike beaks. Sun glittered, spun, wove, twisted into a fabric of light and air and shining water, and they walked as though at the center of a jewel to the muffled plopping of their own steps.

  

 Beside the river were hayfields, few and narrow between the water and the road. Across the river were more fields, with twisty trails leading onto the high ridge where villages perched upon the rocks like roosting owls, windows staring at them as they passed. That was the Ridge of Wicking, between the River Haws and the Westfork, which lay in a great trough north of Betand. Not far ahead, to the east, the high plateau at the north end of the Ridge bulked vastly against the sky, its black stone and hard outline menacing, the bare rocky top fisting the sky like a blow. There was supposed to be a Wizard’s Demesne on Blacktop, but Mavin thought it unlikely anyone would nest there save Armigers, perhaps, or other Gamesmen who flew. Dragons or Cold-drakes, perhaps. Gamesmen of that kind. There appeared to be no comfort in the place, no kindness of wood or water. She preferred it where they were and said as much to Mertyn, who sighed, hummed, trudged along the road not talking and seeming unthinking in the warm and the light.

  

 “Elators, maybe,” she mused. “Perhaps they are initiated by being taken up there on some long, climby trail, and then once they have seen the place and can remember it, they flick up onto the high rock from the far places, flick, and there they are, the place full of Elators as a thrilp is full of seeds ...”

  

 “I think Seers,” Mertyn offered. “It would be nice for Seers, up there, where they could really see for a thousand leagues in every direction.” He hummed again, smiled up at her as though drugged, and trudged on once more. She thought that she herself must seem as drugged as he on the sunlight and the quiet, for she was in a mood of strange and marvelous contentment, so quietly peaceful that she almost missed the sound of hooves behind them on the road.

  

 Mavin moved into the bushes at the side of the road, pulling Mertyn along with her. “Remember,” she cautioned him. “I am your older brother. You may still call me Mavin, for that could be man or woman, but do not for the love of all the powers and freedom call me ‘sister’.” It was easy enough for her to seem male, the changes were superficial and easy; and if Mertyn did not forget, she would pass well enough. The horse sounds came on, more than one animal, and she turned at last to see what moved toward them in the morning.

  

 They were two Tragamors, one male and one female peering through their fanged half helms, and a rough-looking man dressed in a strange garb which Mavin did not recognize. She had been told that the school in Danderbat keep was not good for much except teaching some shifterish skills and policies, and she knew that they had paid little enough attention to the Index. She wished at the moment that they had spent more time upon it, enough time at least to recognize what he might be. Not Tragamor—their fanged helms were unmistakable—therefore probably not having the Tragamor skill of moving things from a distance or tossing mountains about at will. It would probably be some complementary talent. The man was clad in skins and furs, and he had a long glass slung at his shoulder. She had barely time to look him over before the horses pulled up and the male Tragamor leaned from his saddle to hail them in a voice both unpleasant and challenging.

  

 “Hey there, fellow. We are told there is a way into the highlands along this River. Would you know how far?”

  

 Just as Mavin was readying herself to reply, Mertyn spoke, his childish treble firm and positive. “Just before you come to Calihiggy Creek, Gamesman, there is a trail leading back to the southeast onto the heights. Or, if you need a better road than that, there is one which goes south from Pfarb Durim to Betand, but that is many leagues to the north.”

  

 “Ah, a scholarly scut, isn’t it,” drawled the skin-clad man. “And where did you learn so much about the world, small one.” He seemed to be struggling with his face, attempting to keep it in its frowning mold.

  

 “I studied maps ... sir. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what your title should be, Sir Gamesman. I mean no offense ...” Mavin looked at the boy, fascinated, for he was smiling up at the men, a kind of light in his face, and they all smiled back, kindly, with no hint of trouble.

  

 Mavin shook herself, drew herself into the persona she had adopted and said, “Indeed, we mean no offense, Gamesmen. We are country people and see few travelers.”

  

 The skin-clad one turned his eyes from the child to Mavin, face still kindly and happy. “No offense, young man. No offense. I am an Explorer, and there are few enough of my kind among all the Gamesmen in these lands. We go into the high country in search of fabled mines, and we must find a way the wagons can come after, for why should Tragamors delve when pawns can dig? Eh?”

  

 “Why, indeed,” caroled Mertyn. “Well, it is more than one day’s journey to the trail, Gamesmen. We wish you speedy journey and comfortable rest.” And he smiled, and the Gamesmen smiled and rode away, and Mavin was once more trudging in the dust which had been so full of sparkling light and peace.

  

 She shook herself. “What did you do to them?”

  

 “Do?” He was all innocence. “Do?”

  

 “Do, Mertyn. When that Tragamor spoke to us first, his fanged helm practically dripped menace at us, ready to bite us up in one gulp if we did not tell him what he wanted to know. Then, in moments, in a breath, he was all kindly thalan to us both, full of good will as a new keg is of air.”

  

 The boy frowned, seemed to concentrate. “I don’t know, Mavin. It’s just something that happens sometimes when I don’t want people to be cross. It’s nicer to be happy and contented, so I do the thing and everyone feels better.” He stared at his feet, flushed. “I guess I make them love me.”

  

 For a moment she did not understand what he had said. She confused it in her mind with something natural and childish he might have said, “I guess I make them love me. ...” What could he have meant? Some childish game? Some pretend magic? Then came a sickening combination of horror and understanding as she understood what he meant, a kind of nausea, yet with fascination in it. “Did you ... did you do that to Handbright, Mertyn?”

  

 He nodded guiltily. “Otherwise she would have gone away. I would have been lonely. That’s the real reason she stayed, Mavin. I made her stay.”

  

 She could not keep the words inside. They spilled out. “I wonder if you have any idea how horrible that was for her ...” Her anger went away as quickly as it had come at the response she saw. The boy wept, his face flushed and red, tears flowing in a stream, his thin chest heaving with the pain of it, all at once bereft and cast down by tragedy, lost to it.

  

 “I’m so sorry, Mavin. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, really until you told me. They said ... they said it wasn’t so bad, not really. They said women just complained to be complaining. When I saw her so sad, I should have known better, Mavin. Truly. Shall we find her and tell her? Will she forgive me?”

  

 She was distressed at his grief, as distressed as she had been at what he had said. A child. Eight years, perhaps twenty-five seasons in all? Certainly no more than that. And yet, to have bewitched Handbright, kept her behind the p’natti to be abused, used, beaten ... She pulled herself together. “There, child. There. No one really expects that you should have known better. I don’t myself. Handbright is gone. I told her she must go away ... as soon as we were gone. She isn’t there any more, so we needn’t go back. I’m all adrift, Mertyn. I don’t know what to say to you. I’m just amazed that you can do this thing. But I’ve never felt you do it to me, Mertyn.”

  

 “I wouldn’t do it to you, Mavin. You’re childer, like me. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  

 “Ah. Do you know what it means, Mertyn child? It means you’re probably not shifter. It means you must be Ruler, King or Prince or one of those high-up Beguilers. But you only eight years old? A twenty-four or -five season child, and showing Talent already? I’ve never heard of that.”

  

 “I didn’t think it was Talent. I thought it was just something I could do.”

  

 “Well, that’s what Talent is, boychild. That’s all Talent is, something we can do. Well.” She looked at him in amazement, seeing that the world around them had become less shining, less marvelous, less peaceful. “You were doing it this morning.”

  

 “Not to you. Just to me, to the world. To make it prettier for us. You know.”

  

 “What I know, Mertyn, is that you’d better keep that thing you can do very quiet to yourself. Don’t use it unless there’s need. I’m worried now that those men may begin to think, there on the road, of how sweet a child you were, and thinking may lead them to more thinking, which might lead them to deciding you have a Talent. And there’s a market for any child, much more a child with Talent. I worry they may start thinking and come back for us. Me they’d hit over the head and leave for dead, but you they’d sell, I think.”

  

 He considered this, thinking it over gravely before saying, “I don’t think so, Mavin. Truly. No one has ever thought it was Talent. Not in all this time ...”

  

 “All this time? How long have you been doing this thing?”

  

 “Oh, since I was a fifteen-season child, at least. I used to do it at Assembly, to the cooks, to get sweets. They didn’t mind. And I did it to the shifters, too, and to the granders when I wanted something. And to Handbright.”

  

 A fifteen-season child. Five years old. And already with a Talent seeming so natural that no one knew he had it. Mavin tried this thought in a dozen different ways, but it made no sense to her. Children did not have talent. That was one of the things that made them children. And yet here was Mertyn. Slowly, hesitantly, she moved them on their way. “It will still be best to use it only when we must. Elsewise you may do some unconsidered damage with it. So. Agreed?”

  

 He nodded at her, rather wanly, and they went on their way, Mavin cautioning herself the while. “He is only a child. Because he seems to have this Talent, you will begin to think that he is more than a child, that he understands more than a child can understand. You will make demands upon him, you will expect things from him. He will make childish mistakes, and you will blame him. Don’t do it, Mavin. He is child, only child, and that is quite enough for the time being. Let him live with his thalan, Plandybast, at least for a little time. Let him not have to make people love him ...”

  

 Shaking her head the while, impressing it upon herself, demanding that she remember. The light had gone out of the day, and she longed for it, longed to have Mertyn bring it back, but would not allow him to do it even if he would. “Child,” she said to herself yet again. “A child.” She had the feeling that she herself had never been a child, having to remind herself what she had been until the past few days. Before the Assembly she had been a child. Before she overheard the granders she had been a child. Before she had seen Handbright’s body striped with the whip, before she had known what it would be not to be a child ...

  

 “Don’t worry, Mavin,” he whispered to her. “It’s really a good thing to have. You’ll see. I’ll only use it to help us.”

  

 They went on toward the north for that day and most of the day following. The latter part of that day they accepted a ride on a farm wagon hauling hay from the fields along the river to the campground at Calihiggy Creek. Mavin had grown used to her boyish shape, had managed to hold it constant even while sleeping. Mertyn nagged at her from time to time. “I thought shifters couldn’t take other people shapes, Mavin. They taught us that. Handbright taught us that.”

  

 To which she replied variously, as the mood struck her. “I think most shifters can’t,” or “It was a lie,” or “I think it’s only other real people we can’t shift into,” knowing that this last was as much a lie, at least, as any other thing he had been told.

  

 “You need a fur cloak,” he said seriously to her. “With a beast head. Barfod had one with a great wide head on it, he said it was a monstrous creature from the north. I like pombi heads best. Let’s get you one of those.”

  

 “Mertyn, child, I don’t want anyone to know I am shifter. I don’t want anyone to know that either one of us are anything except—just people.”

  

 “Pawns?” he asked in a disgusted voice.

  

 “Well, maybe not pawns. But whatever is next to pawns that would make the least problems. I don’t want anyone carrying tales about us back to Danderbat keep. I don’t want any child stealers coming after you. I don’t want any woman stealers to be taking me. So, we’re just two—whats?”

  

 He began to think about this, laying himself back in the haywagon and staring at the sky. It was growing toward evening, and the lights of the campground were showing far ahead of them on the road. “I know,” he whispered to her at last. “You shall be a servant to a Wizard. No one wants to upset a Wizard or trifle with a Wizard’s man. I shall be the Wizard’s thalan, son to his sister. That way no one will trifle with me either.”

  

 She considered it. It had a certain audacious simplicity which was attractive. “Which Wizard? We’d have to say which Wizard?”

  

 “It couldn’t be a real one with a Demesne around here, or we might get caught. I heard of one. There’s one called Hagglefree who has a Demesne along the River Dourt.”

  

 “You know some very strange things,” she said.

  

 “There are lots of old books and maps at the keep that no one paid any attention to,” he replied. “We should have learned all about them at school. Someone must have learned about them long ago, or they wouldn’t have been there.”

  

 “We had become decadent,” she said. “That’s what Plandybast said to someone at the last dinner. That Danderbat keep was decadent. That we hadn’t any juice anymore.”

  

 He nodded solemnly. “So. If he’s still alive, Hagglefree, I mean, then we should be all right.”

  

 “If he had a sister. If she had a boy. If he keeps servants, for some do not. We might be better to make up a name, Mertyn. Make one up.”

  

 He thought for a moment, said, “The Wizard Himaggery. That’s who we are connected with.”

  

 “And where is his Demesne?”

  

 “Ah ... let’s see. His Demesne is down the middle river some­where, toward the southern seas. There’s lots of blank space on the maps down there. No one knows what’s there, really.” He put his hand in hers, “Shall we swear it, Mavin? Shall it be our Game?”

  

 “Let it be our game, brother. The campground is ahead, and we will see how it sits with the people there when I buy us supper and a bed.”

  

 “Do you have money, Mavin? I brought a little. I didn’t have much.”

  

 “I didn’t have much either, brother boy, but I took some from the cooks’ cache before they left. It will get us to Battlefox the Bright Day—if we are careful.”

  

  

  

 The wagon driver leaned back toward them, gesturing toward the firelights down the road. “That the place you were going, young sirs? There it is. Calihiggy Campground. I’ll take the wagon no further, for I’ve no mind to have my hay stolen during the dark hours. I’ll sell it to the campmaster come morning.”

  

 They thanked him and left him, then wandered out of the gloaming into the firelight before a half hundred pairs of eyes, both curious and incurious.

  

 It was the first time Mavin had been anywhere outside the keep of the Danderbats where she had needed to speak, bargain, purchase, seem a traveler more widely experienced than in fact she was. She did it rather creditably, she thought, then noticed that the man to whom she spoke smiled frequently at Mertyn with a glazed expression. Shaking her head ruefully, she accepted the bedding she was offered and allowed them to be guided to a tent pitched near the western edge of the ground, near Calihiggy Creek and a distance from the privies.

  

 “I thought I told you not to do that,” she hissed.

  

 “I had to,” he said sulkily. “The man was beginning to think you were a runaway pawn from some Demesne or other. You stuttered.”

  

 “Well. I haven’t practiced this.”

  

 “You’ve got to seem very sure of yourself,” he said. “If you seem very sure of yourself, everyone believes you. If you stutter or worry, then everyone else begins to stutter and worry inside their heads.”

  

 “I thought you had Ruler Talent, not Demon Talent to go reading what’s in people’s heads.”

  

 “It isn’t like that. I can just feel it is all. Anyhow, it didn’t hurt anything. Now you’ve got to practice walking as though you knew just where you were going, and when you talk, do it slowly. As though you didn’t care whether you talked or not. And don’t smile, until they do. I’m tired. What did you get us to eat?”

  

 “I got hot meat pies, three of them, and some fruit. You can have thrilps or rainhat berries.”

  

 He had both, and two of the pies. Mavin contented herself with one. They weren’t bad. Evidently some family from a little village along the road brought a wagonload of them to the camp every day or so, and the campmaster heated them in his own oven. When they had done, they wandered a bit through the camp, trying to identify all the Gamesmen they saw, and then went back to their tent.

  

 “No one is looking for us,” Mavin said. “No one at all. They’ve all gone back to Danderbat keep. And likely we will not see Handbright again until we come to Battlefox. Well, it’s less adventurous than I’d thought.”

  

 “It’s adventurous enough,” the child responded, voice half dazed with sleep. “Enough. Lie down, Mavin.”

  

 She sat down, then lay down, then pulled the blankets up to her chin. They were only three days away from the place she had lived all her life, and already the memory of it was beginning to dim and fade. She was no longer very angry, she realized in a kind of panic. The anger had fueled her all this way, and now it was dwindled, lost somewhere in the leagues they had traveled. Something else would have to take its place.

  

 She thought about this, but not long before the dark crawled into her head and made everything quiet there.

  

 When morning came, she went out into it, telling herself what Mertyn had told her the night before. She watched how the men of the camp walked, and walked as they did, watched their faces as they talked and made her face take the same expression. She went first to the campmaster to ask whether he knew of a wagon going to Pfarb Durim, following his laconic directions to a large encamp­ment among the trees in the river bottom. There she confronted a dozen faces neither hostile nor welcoming and had to take tight control in order that her voice not tremble.

  

 “I greet you, Gamesmen,” she began, safely enough, for there were a good many Gamesdresses in the group. “My young charge and I travel toward Pfarb Durim. Our mounts were lost in a storm in the mountains through which we have come, and we seek transport and company for the remaining way.”

  

 There was among the group a gray-headed one, still strong and virile-looking, but with something sad and questioning about his face. He looked up from his plate—for they were all occupied with breakfast—and said, “As do we all, young man. You have not told us who you are?” He set his plate down beside him, the motion lead­ing Mavin’s eyes to the spot, and she saw a Seer’s gauze mask lying there, the moth wings painted upon it bright in the morning light.

  

 “Sir Seer.” She bowed. “I am servant of one Wizard, Himaggery of the Wetlands and I have in my care thalan to the Wizard, the child Mertyn.”

  

 “So. Would you have us escort you against future favors from your Wizardry master? Can you bargain on his behalf?” This was shrewdly said, as though he tested her, but Mavin was equal to this.

  

 “Indeed no, sir. He would have me in ... have my head off me if I pretended such a thing. I ask only such assistance as my master’s purse will bear, such part of it as he entrusts to me.” She felt a small hand creep into her own, and realized that Mertyn had come up beside her. A quick glance showed that he was simply standing there, very quietly, with a trusting expression on his face.

  

 “Ah.” The Seer seemed to think this over. He had a knotty face, a strong face, but with a kind of strangeness in it as though it were hard for him to decide what expression that face would wear. His hair was a little long, thrust back over his ears in white wings, and he had laid the cloak of the Seer aside to sit in his shirt and vest. The others around the fire watched him, made no effort to offer any suggestion. These were mostly young men, no more than nineteen or twenty, with a few among them obviously servants. The horses at the picket line were blanketed in crimson and black, obviously the colors of some high Demesne around which Gamesmen gathered. At last one of the young men walked over to them to stand an arm’s-length from Mavin and look her over from toe to head, his own head cocked and his expression curious and friendly.

  

 “Windlow, our teacher, does not make up his mind in any sudden way. You still have not told him who you are—your name.”

  

 “His name is Mavin,” said Mertyn in his most childlike voice. “He is very nice, and you would like him very much.”

  

 “My name is Mavin,” she agreed, bowing, and pinching Mertyn’s arm a good tweak as she did so. “A harmless person, offering no Game.” She glared at Mertyn covertly.

  

 The man who had been named Windlow spoke again from the fire. “There is always Game, youngster. The very bunwits play, and the flitchhawks in the air. There is no owl without his game, nor any fustigar. You cannot live and offer no game.”

  

 “He means ...” began Mertyn.

  

 “I meant,” she said firmly, “that I seek only transport, sirs. Nothing more.”

  

 “Surely we can accommodate them, Windlow?” the young man said. “After all, we’re going there. And we have extra horses. And neither of them weighs enough for a horse to notice, even if we had to carry them double.”

  

 “Oh, ah,” said Windlow. “It isn’t the horses, Twizzledale. It’s the vision. Concerning these—this. I had it the moment they walked into view. Curious. It seems to have nothing at all to do with anything happening soon, or even for quite a while. And it wasn’t this one at all”—he pointed to Mavin—“but what seemed to be his sister. Looked very much like his sister. And this child grown up and teaching school somewhere. Most unlikely. But you were in it, too, Twizzledale, and you didn’t seem unhappy about it, so one can only hope it is for the best.”

  

 The young man laughed and turned back to offer his hand, which Mavin took in her own, grasping it with as manish a pressure as she could, so that he winced and shook his own in pretended pain. “So. Then it is settled. You will come with us the day or two to Pfarb Durim. I am Fon Twizzledale, like to be, so they tell me, Wizardly in persuasion. Yon is Prince Valdon Duymit, thalan of High King Prionde of the High Demesne. Our teacher, Seer Windlow, you have met. These are our people, all as kindly in intent as you yourself claim to be. Welcome, and will you join us for breakfast?”

  

 Mertyn let his childish treble soar in enthusiasm. “Oh, yes sirs. I am very tired of smoky meat.” And more quietly to Fon Twizzledale, “Did he truly have a vision about us?”

  

 “He truly did,” the young man asserted, “if he said he did. I have never known Windlow to say anything which is not strictly and literally true.”

  

 “I thank you for your kindness,” Mavin interjected, “but you have not yet told me what price you place upon your company.”

  

 Windlow shook his gray head impatiently, as though the idea were one which did not matter and distracted him from some other idea which did matter. “Oh, come along, come along. There is no payment necessary. The Fon is quite right. We have extra mounts, and neither of you appears to be a glutton. Have you eaten? Did they say they had eaten?” he appealed to Prince Valdon, saturnine in his dress of red and black.

  

 That one’s mouth twisted in a prideful sneer of distaste. “The child seems ready to eat, Gamesmaster. Children usually are, if I remember rightly.”

  

 “Yes, please,” said Mertyn, casting his grave smile at Valdon’s face, on his best behavior, edging away from Mavin’s clutching fingers toward the Seer. “I would like some of whatever you are having. It smells very good.”

  

 The Seer’s face lightened, an expression of surprising sweetness which drove away the slightly peevish expression of concentration he had worn since they had walked into the camp. Mavin thought, “He was having a vision, but he couldn’t quite get it, and it was like a dream he was fishing for. Now it is gone.” In which she was quite correct, for Windlow had had a vivid flash of Seeing somehow wrapped around the two of them, but it had eluded him like a slippery fish hi the stream of his thoughts. Now it was gone, and he turned from it almost in relief. Too often the Seeings were of future terror and pain.

  

 “Well, come fill a bowl, then,” he said to Mertyn. “And tell your sister—no. No. How stupid of me. Tell your ... cicerone to join us, too.” He turned to Mavin. “Forgive me, young sir. Sometimes vision and reality confuse themselves and I am not certain what I have seen and am seeing. I seemed to see the boy’s sister. ...”

  

 Mavin bowed slightly, face carefully calm. Across the fire she could see Twizzledale’s face fixed on her own, an expression of bemusement there, of thoughtful calculation. “No forgiveness necessary,” she said. “The boy’s sister is far from here.” And that, she thought, is very true. She accepted a bowl of the food. It was indeed very savory smelling.

  

 “My good servant, Jonathan Went, that scowling old fellow over there by the wagon, saves all the bones from the bunwits whenever we have a feast. I’m talking about you, Jonathan! Well, he saves the bones and cooks them up into a marvelous broth with onions and lovely little bulblets from the tuleeky plant and bits of this and that. Then he uses the broth to cook our morning gram, and sometimes he puts eggs and bits of zeller bacon into it as well. Remarkable. Then we are all very complimentary and cheerful, and he goes over by the wagon and pretends he does not hear us. Modest fellow. The best cook between here and the High Demesne. King Prionde himself made the fellow an offer, but he would not leave me and the King was kind enough not to press the matter. Ah. Good, isn’t it?”

  

 “Very,” gasped Mertyn, his mouth full.

  

 “It is delicious,” agreed Mavin. The grain was tender, rich with broth and bunwit fat, and she could taste wood mushrooms in it as well. She sighed, for the moment heavily content. Across the fire Fon Twizzledale stared at her, his head cocked to one side. Farther away the proud Prince sat looking toward her but across her shoulder as though she did not exist, his small crown glittering in the early sun. She found herself liking the one, wary of the other. “Careful,” she warned herself. “There was a time you liked old Graywing, too.”

  

 The meal was soon done. In her role of servant, Mavin moved to help those who were packing the wagons and loading the pack animals. There were indeed many extra mounts, and she found herself atop one of them with no very clear idea what to do next. Being a horse and riding a horse were two different things, but she kept her face impassive and paid careful attention to those around her. With Mertyn on the pad before her she clucked to the horse as others around her were doing, and it moved off after them, head nodding in time to its steps in an appearance of bored colloquy. Mertyn leaned comfortably against her and whispered, “You won’t need to do anything, Mavin. This horse will follow that one’s tail. I heard some of the visitors talking at Assembly time, too. About riding horses, I mean. They say you’re supposed to hold on with your legs. Can you hold on with your legs?”

  

 “Brother mine,” she whispered in return, “remember that I am the well schooled servant—upper servant—of a Wizard. Of course I can ride a horse. Didn’t you tell me I can do anything I think I can?”

  

 He giggled, then lapsed into silence, rolling his head from side to side on her chest to see the country they were traveling through.

  

 Calihiggy Creek was a sizeable flow, emptying into the River Haws at the conjunction of two valleys, the narrow north-south one of the Haws, the wide, desolate east-west one of the Creek. Here the waters had cut deep ravines into the flat valley bottom so that the water flowed deep below the surface of the soil. What plants grew there were dry and dusty looking, more suited to a desert than a river valley, though at the edges of the cliffs there were scattered groves of dark trees. They clattered briefly over a long wooden bridge, high above the Haws.

  

 “Why is it so high up?” Mertyn wanted to know.

  

 The Fbn had ridden alongside and answered him promptly. “Are they not built so high in your country? Here it is built high to escape the spring rains which come in flood down those barren gullies. The water is so low now that we might have waded over, as it always is at the turn of the seasons, but when the spring rains come it will be a muddy flood once more. I have seen it almost at the floor of such bridges after the rains.” He adjusted the flowing sleeve of his Wizardly robe, burnishing the embroidered stars at the cuff with a quick rub and breath from his lips.

  

 Mertyn, remembering that he was supposed to be thalan of a Wizard of the Wetlands, very sensibly shut his mouth and merely smiled his understanding.

  

 “Why do you go to Pfarb Durim?” the Fon went on. “Does the Wizard travel there?”

  

 Mavin had been prepared for this question. “We are to await further instructions in Pfarb Durim. Young Mertyn has been visiting his mother.”

  

 “Ah,” said the Fon. Mavin had the distinct impression that he did not believe her. “A very small entourage for a Wizard’s thalan. If the boy were my thalan, I would not send him so little accompanied.”

  

 “Mavin is quite enough,” said Mertyn in a firm voice. “It isn’t nice for you to say he isn’t. Besides, what is a Fon, anyhow?”

  

 “Sorry,” laughed Twizzledale. “I withdraw my comment, young sir. As for Fon, it is only a word used in my southernish Demesne for eldest-important-offspring. It means I will inherit certain treasures and lands held by my family and learn if I can hold them in my turn. Good travel to us all.” And with that he was off at top speed, raising the rosy dust in a great cloud as he sped past the other riders and dwindled away on the northern road between the two lines of cliffs, Prince Valdon in pursuit.

  

 Now the Seer Windlow was riding beside them, his gauze mask draped on the saddle before him, casually picking his teeth with a bit of wood. “A bit along the road here,” he remarked, “where the woods begin to thicken once again, we will need to climb the cliffs. If we stay on this road along the valley it will take us to the place called Poffle, below Pfarb Durim, and it is my understanding that one would do well to avoid the place.”

  

 “Why is that, sir?” Mavin asked politely.

  

 “Ah, well, the place has a bad name. Said to be a den of Ghouls. Old Blourbast rules there, and he is not a Gamesman others speak of with friendship.”

  

 “Is that the place called Hell’s Maw?” piped Mertyn. “I saw it on a map.”

  

 “Shhhh, my boy. Not a name which is generally spoken aloud. However, yes. You’re right. People speak of Poffle, but they mean Hell’s Maw. At any rate, it will not matter. We will not come near the place except to look down on it from the walls of Pfarb Durim, for it lies in the chasm below those walls, shut away from light and sun as it properly should be if all that is said of it is even half true.

  

 “I heard you say to Twizzledale you will be met in the city. I think that is well. Travel is safer in larger numbers. Not that you are not fully competent, I’m sure. Merely that ... well, you are young.” He smiled to take the sting from what he said. “Forgive my mentioning it. If you are like most young men, you hate having it mentioned.”

  

 Mavin could not help laughing. “I hate having it mentioned. Yes. Perhaps ...” She paused a moment before going on, “it is because young people are not that sure they are competent.”

  

 “There is always that,” agreed the Seer. “But that feeling does not necessarily diminish with age. It is merely challenged less frequently. When one has over sixty years, as I do, then the world assumes we would not have survived without competence. With someone your age, it could always be sheer luck.” He patted Mavin’s arm and nodded at her. Mavin soberly thought it over. Next time she shifted, it would be into something more bulky and older-looking. Why tempt fate?

  

 “May I ask why your group travels to Pfarb Durim, Sir Seer? Do I understand you are Gamesmaster to the young men in your party?”

  

 “Ah, well yes, in a manner of speaking. At the moment I am sworn to the High King, Prionde, he of the High Demesne away south in the mountains near the high lakes of Tarnoch. Prince Valdon Duymit is son of Valearn Duymit, full sister to the King, therefore thalan to the King. The boy riding off there to the left is his full brother, Boldery Duymit. We call him Boldery the Brash, for his thirty seasons have been full of troubles as a cage of thrilpats. You have met the Fon, offspring of some great Demesne away south where I have never traveled though I would much like to go. He says he is a Wizard, and one does not ask too many questions of Wizards, as you know. I am inclined to believe much of what he says although he is given to flowery passages and glittering nothings. A good boy, though. I like him.

  

 “There are two other young men awaiting our group in Pfarb Durim, thalani of Demesnes to the north and west high in the Shadowmarches, and a youngster named Huld whose schooling has been arranged through negotiators with the King. I know nothing about him save that he shows early signs of becoming a Demon. Well, when we have all the students there, we will swing down through Betand—Betand? Yes. That is where the Strange Monuments are. You know of the Monuments? Ah. One of the wonders, so it is said, of the world. No one knows who built them or what their purpose is. Some hint that they were not built by men at all. Well, then we go on to the south picking up another student in Vestertown and then up into the mountains to the High Demesne to my newly built school. A small school. Only a dozen young men and a few boys. The young men have mostly shown Talent already, so much of the confusion and exasperation of teaching is eliminated thereby. I remember ... seem to remember my own schooldays. What a time, wondering whether there would be any Talent at all, wondering whether it might be some horrible kind one would rather not have, some Ghoulishness or other ... Though, come to think of it, I have never known one who would be repelled by Ghoulishness to receive that Talent. It is almost as if our Talents prepare us for their coming. Well, all that is of no import. It will be a small school, as I said, mostly for the benefit of the King’s thalani with a few others to keep them company. This trip to Pfarb Durim is likely one of the last few I will make.”

  

 All of this was explained in a slow, ruminative fashion which Mavin could hear with half her attention while her busy mind attended to the road and the river and the canyon at either side. Valdon and Twizzledale were still far ahead, Boldery the Brash riding back from time to time to inspect the face of the sleeping Mertyn and inquire whether they might ride and play together, at which Windlow shook his gray head and warned him away. “Let the boy sleep, Boldery. Time enough for your games when he wakes. Likely he slept little enough last night. Campground beds are hard as stone.” Then, to Mavin, “It would probably do your charge good to have some boyish company, even of such mischievous kind as this. I have no doubt they will be deep into trouble before supper.” And he nodded to himself as if in considerable satisfaction at this prediction.

  

 The canyon walls, which had been close upon their right, began to retreat into the east; they had come to a widening of the river bottom, and fields began to appear once more between the river and the cliffs to the east of the river even as the cliffs drew closer to the river on the west. Boldery came riding back toward them in a cloud of pink, his face and short cloak liberally dusted, only his eyes shining at them in the rosy fog. “The trail to the top is only a little way on. Valdon says we need not take it. There is a road between Poffle and Pfarb Durim we can pick up beneath the walls of the city ...”

  

 “No,” Windlow said firmly. “We do not wish to approach ... Poffle ... so closely. We have allowed time for the extra leagues, and we are not short of either energy or provisions.”

  

 “But Valdon says ...”

  

 “I am Gamesmaster here, Boldery. We know that Valdon seeks adventure, always, believing that the name of the High King is enough to protect him. It may not always be so. The Ghoul Blourbast holds ... Poffle. He may care little for the High King “

  

 “Everyone fears the name of the High King,” the boy asserted, flushed skin showing through the pink dust.

  

 “Not everyone, lad.” Windlow patted him gently. “I mean no disrespect to your thalan to say so. You have not been so far from the High Demesne before or you would know. If you think I am telling you fibs, then go ask Twizzledale. He will tell you aright, for he has traveled far enough to know that what I say is the truth.”

  

 “Valdon says he’s a pawnish churl, no Wizard at all.”

  

 “If Valdon said that, then Valdon was either silly or drunk.” Windlow’s voice held anger, and the boy flushed again as he turned away.

  

 “He was drunk, Gamesmaster. He would be angry I told you. Please don’t tell him.”

  

 “I won’t mention it. You might remember it, however. It is never wise to drink so much that you say things others remember to your discredit. Now—ride on back to the young Gamesmen and tell them we take the cliff trail.”

  

 Mavin had been somewhat embarrassed by this interchange, not knowing where to look, whether to seem interested or not to notice, though it would have been impossible not to hear. Windlow shook his head as the boy rode away. “Do not attach too much importance to that, Mavin. The boy worships his older brother, as is often the case. The brother is not worthy of such worship, as is often the case. Valdon is prideful. Over prideful. It would have been better had he not known since childhood that he would be a Prince.”

  

 “Known since childhood?” She was startled. “How could anyone know in childhood what Talent they would manifest later? Why even in ... the places I have been, they have not ...” Her voice trailed away into betraying silence. She had almost spoken of Danderbat keep.

  

 “I will tell you,” he said, seeming not to notice her confusion. “Prionde, when he was no older than Valdon is now, took his own full sister to wife, she being Queen in her own right and talent. My studies of history lead me to believe that such breeding is often unwise. It is true that traits—perhaps Talents—are intensified by such breeding. It is also true that dangerous and deadly tendencies are also intensified. There is a certain rashness in Prionde and in his sister-wife, Valearn, as well. It is amplified, greatly, in both Valdon and Boldery. I fear for them sometimes.”

  

 “And so, the King was sure his children—his thalani would have the Talent of Ruling, Beguilement?” Within her arms she felt Mertyn stir and knew that he had heard the conversation. “He knew it when they were children and let them know it?”

  

 “He was so sure that if they had not, I think he would have sent them away and not have seen them ever again.”

  

 Mavin gulped, possessed by a frantic curiosity which she did not attempt to find reason for. “What did she think about it. Her. His sister?”

  

 “She has not spoken of it in the High Demesne. She seemed to like her life well enough. However, she had complained of illness since bearing Boldery, and the Healers have been unable to cure her. Which makes me believe it is not her body which ails her.” He fell silent, biting his lip, then adopted a more casual tone. “Well, what a conversation to be holding with a casual acquaintance. I would appreciate it if you did not repeat what I have said. I am a loquacious old man, and on occasion I forget myself.”

  

 Mavin nodded her agreement, feeling Mertyn tense against her, then relax. A shout from close ahead drew their eyes forward, and there at the beginning of the cliff trail Twizzledale waited for them. One of the wagons had already turned behind him and was lurching upward on the narrow way.

  

 “We cannot get by the wagon,” he called. “The way is too narrow. Shall we have tea to give them time to get to the top?” His laughing eyes met Mavin’s. She flushed and looked away, though she did not know why.

  

 From between her arms Mertyn spoke calmly, his shrill voice carrying over the sound of hooves and wheels. “Thank you, Wizard, sir. I am very thirsty. Besides, I have to get off this horse.”

  

 And as Mavin followed him to the ground she thought that she, too, had to get off the horse. The world seemed to move beneath her feet, and she was hard put to it to seem balanced and secure upon her legs. Still, she managed a manly smile of thanks for Twizzledale’s hand and a cheerful offer to collect some wood along the slope to make them a fire. Once away from them all, she sighed deeply and let her face sag into its own girlish shape, just for a moment, just to know who and what she was. This role-playing demanded more of her than she had guessed it might, and the strain of it tugged at her muscles, tugged at the shifter net within her, making concentration difficult. She breathed deeply, heard Mertyn call, “Mavin? Where are you?” and managed to find both an armload of wood and a feeling of calm before she walked back toward the group, waving to the child with one hand.

  

 CHAPTER FIVE

  

 They came to the city of Pfarb Durim at noon of the day following, for they had lingered on the road to investigate the Strange Monuments which the Seer Windlow had longed to see. The wagons had taken some time to get up the narrow path, and Valdon had been throwing unpleasant glances at the Seer long before the way was clear, sprinkling his displeasure with remarks made just loudly enough to be heard concerning the width and smoothness of the road along the valley floor. Perhaps Windlow did not hear them, but at the least he gave no evidence of hearing the sneering remarks, and when the trail to the highlands was clear, they made their way upward in some appearance of amity. The first of the Monuments stood over the road within spitting distance as they came over the lip of the cliffs, and from that time on the journey was one of continual expostulation and wonder.

  

 “I had no idea they were this close to Pfarb Durim,” marveled Windlow. “I had always thought they were further south, nearer Betand. Though, as I think of it, some of the authorities—if any are to be considered authorities on such subjects as this—have said that these Monuments have a strange tendency to wander, seeming first nearer and then farther away.”

  

 “Oh, come, Gamesmaster.” Twizzledale laughed. “You do not expect us to believe that. The things are ten man-heights above the road, anchored on pedestals which appear to be part of the mountain we ride upon. Surely you don’t take such stories seriously.”



  

 The older man shrugged, eyebrows high to indicate his own wonder at the idea. “I repeat only what I have read, Gamesman. At certain seasons, these arches glow. All authors agree to that. At certain seasons, those who live hereabouts are in agreement that it is wise to avoid this road. Since that season coincides with the time of storms, during which wise persons avoid travel in any case, perhaps no one has seriously tested the notion that the arches are dangerous then. Or, if not dangerous, something else. Something stranger, perhaps.”

  

 Mavin was following along behind, marveling as much as the two riding ahead, but less vocal about it. “Did you know these things were here?” she whispered to Mertyn.

  

 “I read about them,” he answered. “But the book didn’t say much. Just that no one knows who built them or why. I can’t even figure out how anyone could have put them here.”

  

 Mavin agreed. The arches might have been made of green stone, or metal, though they seemed more crystalline than metallic, giving an impression of translucence without actually letting any light through. Two man-heights broad at the base, they narrowed as they rose, dwindling to a knife’s edge straight above the road. Where the shadow of the arches lay upon the way, the horses hopped and skipped like zeller kids, sidling across the shadow as though it formed some mazy barrier which only they could see and only such frolicking progress could penetrate. Each transit of the shadow made Mavin think she heard twanging chords of music, rapidly blending, echoing briefly on her skin when they had come through, and—most interesting she thought—each passage of shadow seemed to take time totally out of keeping with the actual width of the shadow on the road.

  

 “Remarkable,” breathed Windlow, trying to stay on his jigging horse. “I hear music. Quite remarkable.”

  

 “Shadowpeople,” breathed Mertyn to Mavin. “Shadowpeople are supposed to have all kinds of musical magic, Mavin. Could the shadowpeople have built these?”

  

 “Shadowpeople aren’t builders, are they? I thought they just sang in the wilderness and made music and ate a few travelers now and then.”

  

 “I don’t think so. I don’t think they eat travelers, I mean. They trick people. Lead them over cliffs, or into bogs, but only if the people are doing something bad to them.”

  

 “Children’s tales, brother boy.”

  

 “Maybe. There’s some truth in children’s tales, though, or they wouldn’t go on being told. You’re right, though. No children’s tale I ever heard mentioned the shadowpeople building anything. Just the same, whenever the horse dances through one of those shadows, I think of shadowpeople.”

  

 “Wise beyond your years, young one,” said Windlow, coming up from behind where he had stopped yet again to inspect one of the Monuments. “I, too, think of shadowpeople. As a Seer, I have learned thinking of some oddity is often prelude to other oddity following. It is tempting to wonder what actually does happen here in the season of storms.”

  

 “I’d like to know where the road goes,” said Mavin.

  

 “Why, it goes to Pfcrb Durim.”

  

 “No, I mean the other end.”

  

 “To Betand?”

  

 “Betand is just a human city. If the Monuments were built on a road, then it must have been important where the road went. It couldn’t have gone to a human city, because the human city wasn’t there. So it must have gone somewhere else.” She fell silent, noting that Windlow had fixed her with a somehow calculating eye, as though she had surprised him. Before he could reply, however, a cry came from before them.

  

 “Pfarb Durim!” A cloud of dust bustled toward them, full of hoof clatter. It was Boldery. “Pfarb Durim is just down the hill.”

  

 They jigged through the last of the arches to see the city spread before them, its high walls bulking hugely in the center of a saucerlike depression resulting from some long ago subsidence of the cliffs edge. Around the rim of this saucer the road ran, making a wide circle to the east before turning north once more. To their left they could see a narrow road winding up from the valley, from Poffle, and from the circling road several broad avenues ran downward to the city which gulped them in through strangely shaped gates. These gates and the many doors made tall keyholes of black against the lighter stone. Vast iron braziers stood on the wall at each corner, twisted iron baskets hung before the gates, all stuffed full of grease-soaked wood which would be lit at nightfall to send a smoky pillar hovering over the place. The smell of burned fat reached them first, then the smell of the markets outside the gates, spices and fish, raw hides and incense, the stench of commerce carrying a wild babble of voices which rose and fell as the sound of moving water.

  

 “Pfarb Durim,” said Windlow. “City of legends. Here, so it is said, when our forefathers came to this place a thousand years ago, they found the city already built by other than we, by not-men, perhaps by those who built the arches.”

  

 “It smells very human to me,” said Mertyn, wrinkling his nose.

  

 “It has been occupied by humans for some time,” he replied.

  

 They led their animals through the market, fascinated to see so many things being bought and sold, hearing the cries of the merchants as they would have heard strange birds in a forest, with as little understanding. The gate was guarded by several red-nosed men who looked them over casually, inquired whence they had come, and seemed inclined to accept Mavin and Mertyn as part of Windlow’s group without any special inquisition as to their origins. Once inside the walls, Mavin handed the reins of her horse to Twizzledale, who was riding a bit behind the others, and bowed to him from the street.

  

 “We appreciate your kindness, Gamesman. Now we must leave you with our thanks.”

  

 “Where are you meeting your ... whoever?” he asked, looking more closely at her than she found comfortable. “You’re welcome to stay with us until you are met.” Giving the lie to this, Prince Valdon shouted from the street corner.

  

 “Leave the pawnstuff, Wizard! There’s wine waiting!”

  

 Twizzledale flushed, but did not move. Mavin said, “Thank you again, Gamesman. But we will not inflict ourselves upon you further. I must obey the instructions I was given.” She smiled, more warmly than she had intended, backed away from him, and set out around the corner, Mertyn’s hand clutched firmly in her own. There she took refuge in a deep doorway while she tried to decide where to go next.

  

 “Brother child, we need some cheap lodging to roost in while we find the best road to the Shadowmarches and Battlefox.”

  

 “If you don’t want to run into the Seer and his students, we’d better see where they go,” said Mertyn, leaning around the corner, his voice betraying the sadness he felt. He had been looking forward to a few more hours with Boldery in pursuit of some form of exciting mischief. “It would have been nice to ...”

  

 “Yes, it would have been nice to. But I didn’t dare. That Twizzledale kept looking at me as though he could see through to my smalls. I don’t think I made a convincing man. There’s something more to it than shape, and he was suspicious of something the whole time. I could smell it.”

  

 “But he liked you.”

  

 “That might have been the trouble,” she answered. “If he’d despised me, as Prince Valdon does, he would not have looked at me so closely.”

  

 The boy was peering around the corner still, then turned to her, sighing. “They’ve gone into a big inn right at the wall. I guess we should go on into the city. Should we ask someone?”

  

 “We should,” she agreed, and set about doing so. Within a few moments she had the names of three cheap lodging houses, all within a short distance of one another, as well as three sets of instructions how to reach them. They set off in a hopeful frame of mind which changed to a kind of dismay as they left the open ways near the gate and began to wend down damp alleys, shadowed by protruding stories in the buildings to either side and threatened by a constant shower of debris from the windows and roofs. “Gamelords, what a warren,” she said. “I had no idea.”

  

 As they made a last turn, Mertyn ran full into a staggering man who gurgled ominously, supporting himself against the wall. Mertyn reached out to catch him, then drew back, fastidiously wiping his face where the man had drooled on him. “Play ... play ...” the man gasped, his eyes protruding with the effort. “Play ... ch’owt ...” And then he crumpled onto the stones, fingers scrabbling weakly at the slimy cobbles.

  

 “Come on!” ordered Mavin. “We can’t help him, but we can send help.” And they ran on, coming into a wider area in which the lodging houses they had sought all stood, one bearing a sign THE BALD BADGER near at hand.

  

 The door jangled as they opened it, and a voice screamed at them from some other room. “Wait! Don’t move, now, just wait and I’ll get to ya. A minute. That’s all. I swear, only a minute, and I’ll get to ya. Are you there?”

  

 “We’re here,” Mavin replied in a doubtful voice.

  

 “A minute. I’ll get to ya. Everybody’s so impatient. Run, run. I’ll get to ya.” There was no sign of the person getting to them immediately. They looked at one another, then turned as a soft footfall whispered on the stairs behind them.

  

 “Sirs,” said a gray voice. “You desire lodging?”

  

 “Just a minute,” screamed the other voice. “Run, run.”

  

 “A thrilpat,” exclaimed the colorless woman who owned the gray voice. “Over trained. A vocabulary of over twenty phrases, none of which are in the least useful. I’d sell it, except it has the mange.”

  

 “Are you there?” screamed the voice hysterically. “Everyone is so impatient.”

  

 “We need a room,” said Mertyn. “And there’s a man down the alley who fell down. I think he’s sick.”

  

 The gray woman smoothed her tightly knotted hair, slick upon her skull as paint. “A room I can provide. Assistance for men who fall ill in alleys is outside my competence, young sir. When I have shown you what we have—little enough, but cheap. Lords, yes, cheap is the name of the house—when I have shown you, I’ll get the kitchen girl to run tell the watch about the sick man. Will that satisfy your sense of the appropriate? The honorable? The kindly? This way. Watch the step, second from the top. It wants nailing down.”

  

 They followed through half darkness until a door opened, flood­ing the corridor with light. “Step in. You’ll need to share the bed, there’s only one, but it’s fresh straw and linens washed only last week.” The slant-roofed room peaked over the open window which let in the turmoil of the street. The bed was low, wide, and the place smelled clean.

  

 “How much?” asked Mavin, in her bargaining voice.

  

 “Coin or trade? Three minimunt in coin. If you were a Healer, I’d give it to you for a bit of work. You’re not, though, nor anything else useful to me at the moment. Well, then, three minimunt. With a bit of supper thrown in. Nothing fancy, a cup of this and that and some beer. By the by, my name is Pantiquod Palmfast. They call me Panty. Nothing to do with intimate trousering, young sir, so do not giggle in that unfortunate way. No, it has to do with breath, with breathing, with climbing these ghastly flights of stairs. Well, enough. Three minimunt, is it?” She smiled, a smile as gray as her voice, and went away, closing the door behind her. Mertyn was already on the bed.

  

 “Will you remind her about the sick man, Mavin. I think she’ll probably forget it.”

  

 “I think you’d better not worry about it, brother child. I’ve a feeling there are more unfortunates in Pfarb Durim than you could possibly give worrying time to. Still, I’ll remind her, for what good it may do. Next thing is to see where we might get some maps, don’t you think?”

  

 “Shadowpeople, too,” he said drowsily, burrowing into the bed. “I’ll pull the latchstring in behind you and take a nap.”

  

 “It isn’t like you to sleep in the bright day, child.”

  

 “Well, Boldery was telling stories last night, about ghost pieces. Boldery tells good stories, but I didn’t get much sleep.”

  

 “All right then,” she agreed. “But I’ll hammer on the door when I come back, so be ready. And you’re not to go out by yourself, even if I’m late.” She did not leave the door until she saw the end of the latchstring slide through the hole, then she went down the way they had come, stopping for a moment to speak to the gray woman who emerged, like a phantom out of smoke, at the bottom of the stairs.

  

 “Yes, I’ve sent the girl to tell the watch, young sir. Not that it will do much good. They’ll send a wagon after him, sooner or later, and it will take him to the infirmary of the Healers—though with all the Healers gone, who knows what good that will do.”

  

 “Healers gone? Why?”

  

 She put on a mysterious face. “There is talk in the marketplace of a dispute between the Healers and a certain inhabitant of ... Poffle. You know of Poffle?”

  

 “I’ve heard of it,” she admitted.

  

 “Ah. Well, Healers were summoned there from Pfarb Durim. Evidently they did not go or would not heal, it is uncertain which. Then others were sought and brought—some say involuntarily, which is a mistake in dealing with Healers—and something unfortunate happened, so it is alleged, which caused all the Healers to leave Pfarb Durim and set a ban on the city.”

  

 “But if the dispute is with Poffle, why set a ban on this city?”

  

 “The connection is always assumed, young sir. The place below is somewise dependent upon Pfarb Durim. Or, other end up, possibly. Whatever. May I offer you any help or direction?” she added, looking curiously at Mavin’s cloak. And, upon Mavin’s telling her that she needed a mapmaker or guide or geographer or any combination of them, the lodging keeper gave her directions to Chart Street.

  

 It was almost dusk when she returned, the lights of the city were being lit and the great firebaskets upon the walls had been set ablaze. In the red, smoky glare, ordinary citizens began to assume the guise of devils. Every face seemed either frightened or menacing or closed around some ominous secret. Laughing at herself for these fantasies, Mavin nonetheless hurried to return to the lodging house, thinking of Mertyn and dinner with about equal intensity. She had purchased half a dozen cheap maps of the Shadowmarches, from different chartmakers, on the theory that the features common to all might be assumed—only might be assumed—to indicate a close approximation to reality. On the other hand, she told herself, it might not be wise to discount the odd, dangerous feature shown on only one. That one might have been the result of an exploration while the others were only popular fiction or speculation.

  

 She knocked at the door of their room for a long time before Mertyn dragged it open. He stood peering at her blearily, eyes and face swollen and red. She touched his forehead and cheeks and felt a feverish heat. He seemed unable to focus on her.

  

 “Brother child, what’s the matter with you?”

  

 “I feel—all sort of sick,” he said. “Everything keeps fading.”

  

 “Have you been asleep since I left?”

  

 “I slept a long time,” he said, staggering back toward the bed. “Then I woke up feeling funny, and it comes and goes.”

  

 “Stay here,” she instructed him, though he showed no inclination to go anywhere. “I’ll get you some broth from the kitchen and see where the nearest Healers are to be found.”

  

 “Danderbats don’t seek Healing ... ” he murmured.

  

 “Battlefoxes do,” she said grimly, remembering her conversation with her thalan. As she went down the stairs, however, she remembered a more recent conversation, the one with Pantiquod. The woman came out of her hidey hole as though summoned.

  

 “You’ll be wanting supper, young sirs,” she began.

  

 “I’ll be wanting some broth for Mertyn,” Mavin cut her off. “He’s sick. Did you tell me true, earlier, when you said there were no Healers in Pfarb Durim?”

  

 “According to the tittle-tattle of the marketplace, there is not one Healer left in Pfarb Durim. Healers are clanny, young sir, and if one of them was injured in Poffle, why—I suppose none would come near us after that. ‘Who injures a Healer goes without Healing.’ Isn’t that the old saw? Well, perhaps not. Maybe it’s only something I thought I had heard somewhere.”

  

 “But the end of all this is what you said earlier. No Healers in Pfarb Durim. Where would the closest ones be, then?”

  

 The gray-faced woman nodded in mixed sympathy and satis­faction. “He’s truly ill, then. I thought that might be coming. We seem to have ghoul-plague in the city. So rumor hath.”

  

 “Ghoul-plague? I have never heard of it.”

  

 “I thought of it when the boy spoke of the sick man in the alley. I was almost certain of it when the wagon came suspiciously soon. Plague has been muttered of for days. They say it began in Poffle. The Healers were summoned and would not—some say could not—heal. An attempt was made to force them. Now the plague has come to Pfarb Durim, and the Healers are gone.” Then, seeing the horror on Mavin’s face, she relented. “Let us not be so quick. Come, I’ll get you some broth. Perhaps he is only weary from his journey.”

  

 But when they returned to the room, Mavin could not get Mertyn’s attention at all. He was in some deep well of delirium from which she could not arouse him.

  

 “It’s too quick,” complained Mavin. “We only arrived today.”

  

 “The disease is sudden in those it takes,” said Pantiquod from where she hovered in the doorway, not coming any closer than she needed to see the boy’s face. “And he said he touched the man in the alley.”

  

 “Do they recover?” Mavin whispered. “Does it kill many?”

  

 “Some recover,” Pantiquod said. “Most die. It is said that the shadowpeople can cure it, which is like saying a flask of sun will gild thrilps. First one has to fill one’s flask.” The woman left her, turning in the doorway to say, “Do not try to move him. Sometimes, so I have heard, persons ill with ghoul-plague are transported, perhaps in search of a Healer, or some more salubrious air. If they are moved, they invariably die. So I am told. Do not move him. In any case, you could not. The gates will soon be locked against any leaving.” And the door swung shut behind her, leaving an impression upon its surface as though she stood there still, dim and smokelike, inhabiting the lodging house like mist, a smile almost of satisfaction upon her face.

  

 It did no good to feed Mertyn the broth. It ran out of his mouth. She could not get him to swallow. She sat with him cradled against her, terrified and helpless, not knowing what to do next. When she began to pull herself together, it was fully dark outside.

  

 She did not know whether to believe the woman or not, but for the time being she would not attempt to move Mertyn. He was hot, unconscious, but he breathed steadily and when she put her ear to his chest, his heart thudded away evenly. So. She covered him warmly, set herself frantically to make some sensible plan.

  

 First she must determine whether what the woman said was true. She left the room, wedging the door shut behind her. At the foot of the stairs, she looked inside Pantiquod’s hidey hole. It was empty, more than merely empty. It had an air of vacancy about it. Suddenly suspicious, she found her way to the rear of the place. The kitchen was empty also, and the little area way opening from it. She went back up the stairs, opening each room she came to. Empty. So. If there had been plague rumored for the past days, then those who heard the rumor would have left the city. The woman herself? Had she stayed? Or did she have some secret way out?

  

 No matter where she might be, Mertyn and Mavin were alone in the place now, and the street outside was quieter than it had been since she had entered the city. She opened the heavy door onto the street. It creaked, and the wall torch showed her the crudely painted words, “Plague here,” on its rough outer surface. The warning had been painted after she had returned, within moments, perhaps of that time. Mavin found some curse phrases she had not remembered knowing and used them freely, harshly, whispering into the silent street. She would have to leave Mertyn alone in the place while she sought some kind of help. Perhaps the sign on the door would protect him as well as anything could. She closed the door softly behind her and went back down the dark alley, the way they had originally come, unaware until she was halfway to the city wall that she was going to find the Seer Windlow. Then she realized that it was the only sensible thing to do.

  

 She found the inn at the city wall without trouble, could not have avoided finding it, for there was a great mob gathered around it full of threats and brandished weapons, like a gathering of devils in the light of the great braziers and the torches. Above them the city walls were crowded with people looking outward, shouting down to those below. “It’s King Frogmott from the north. He has Armigers and Elators with him.” And these cries were contradicted by others, “No, they come from the Graywater Demesne of the Sorcerer Lanuzh!” Mavin forced her way through the crowd, tucking in a rib here and bending a shoulder there. Everyone was so full of panic that they paid her no attention. From the wall she looked out to see the City gates guarded from some distance by an array of warriors and Gamesmen, torches flickering along their lines, lighting the pennants flickering over their heads.

  

 “Why are they here?” she asked the nearest watcher. “Who are they?”

  

 “I’ve heard six people say six different things about who they are,” her informant muttered. “As to why, well, young man, that should be obvious to anyone. We’ve plague in the city, and those out there are determined we shall not bring it out of these walls.”

  

 “Surely there are Elators within the walls who could transport themselves away in an instant? Armigers who could fly over their lines? Others, perhaps, who escape such sieges as this every day of their lives? The place cannot be closed tight!” Mavin was beginning to feel the crowd’s panic as her own. Her heart pounded and her muscles twitched with the need to do something.

  

 “Well, and if it gets bad enough, they’ll probably try. The Healers have set a proscription on all who leave the city, however, and not many will risk that until they must. Even an Elator must come out somewhere, and it is said they have the countryside for leagues around under watch.”

  

 “It’s true, then? What someone told me. A Healer was injured—forced, down in Poffle.”

  

 “So the story goes. There is plague there, in Poffle. And now there is plague here.”

  

 “Has anyone approached the Healers? Surely they know there are people here innocent of any involvement with Poffle. Travelers.”

  

 “Young man, ask someone who knows. I am a merchant, here doing trade, and as innocent of involvement as yourself. Wait! See there. A Herald comes. Now you will have some answer, and so will I.”

  

 A knot of glaring light had separated from the flaming line along the hill and was coming toward them, lighting the upper half of a Herald’s body so that he seemed a half person, floating upon the dark. The light came from a large, shallow brazier floating between two Tragamors, and its evident purpose was to light the Herald’s face so that he could be recognized. He stopped outside the walls, far enough away that all could see, yet close enough to be heard. Mavin had been told of Heralds’ Talent, but she had never heard the trumpet voice with which Gamesmen of this persuasion made their pronouncements. When the voice came, it startled her as well as others along the wall so that they moved as one with a reflexive grunt.

  

 “People of Pfarb Durim give ear,” the Herald cried. “I am the Herald Dumarch-don, servant of the great King, Frogmott of the Marshes, and of his allies in this endeavor, the Sorcerer Lanuzh, the mighty Armiger, Galesbreath of Rockwind Demesne, and other Gamelords and men of unquestioned honor and unlimited might. I cry siege upon the city of Pfarb Durim and upon that pit of Hell which lies at its feet. Siege shall be maintained until all within have died or until a cure has come. Let none within seek to escape, for our vengeance will be dreadful upon him and upon his house, his Demesne, and his kindred.” The Herald wore a tabard of jewels. His face was proud and high-nosed, and his voice like an orchestra of brass, mellow and challenging at once. Mavin could not get her fill of looking at him, so marvelous he was, but he turned his back on all within the city and rode away, back to that flickering line of light along the mountain.

  

 When she turned back to ask yet another question, the man had gone, and she stood for long moments upon the wall staring out at the gathered host. Even as she watched, a hilltop was crowned with moving figures, newly arrived besiegers tightening the grip upon the city. She fought her way down the stairs and through the crowd gathered around the inn. Huge, burly men guarded the door, pretending not to hear her as she asked for the Seer Windlow. Giving up in frustration, she slipped away, around the side of the place and into a narrow, blank alleyway where the trash from the place was dumped. There was a small window, high above. She looked around to see that she was not observed, then lengthened an arm and used it to pull herself up and through the narrow opening. She came down into the place, casually, stopping a scurrying servant in the hall.

  

 “I am seeking the Seer Windlow. I carry an important message for him. Can you tell me where he is?”

  

 “There’s no Seer here, young sir. Was you wanting that one with the young men and the boy? He was here eating a meal, but then he went with the others. To the Mudgery Mont, so they said at dinner. And sensible it was of them, too, for the Mont is above all this clamor.” And she was off down the hallway, answering a screamed summons from below.

  

 Mavin used the same window to leave the place and set about finding the Mudgery Mont, growing more frantic by the moment as she thought of Mertyn left alone.

  

 Now it was necessary to fight her way through the streets, packed from wall to wall with the inhabitants of the inner city as they tried to get to the walls, to the gates, to learn for themselves that the city had been closed like a trap with themselves inside. She gave it up before she had gone two streets, melting into a dark sideway and from that swarming up the side of a building and onto the roofs. When she had come to a less crowded place, she descended, picking out a small group who seemed disinclined to join the general pack.

  

 “The Mudgery Mont? Surely. At the top of the hill which caps the cliffs, young man. They’ll never let you in there, though. It’s guarded like a treasury.”

  

 Mavin nodded her thanks and was off again, swarming onto the roofs once more to lope across them in some long legged form more usual in forests than in such a place as this. She could see the hill against the western sky, crowned with squat towers and another set of walls. It was closer, actually, to the place she had left Mertyn than the gateway inn had been, and she wasted some small breath giving thanks for this as she ran and climbed and swung across gaping chasms of street.

  

 Behind her came the hooting of a great horn, an outcry of bells, a welling shout as from a thousand throats. Something had happened where the mob was gathered, but she did not look back. Soon she was at the foot of the hill where streets widened to sweep upward around mansions and palaces and one brightly lit and elegant hotel. Before it stood a dozen Gamesmen in livery, Heralds and Tragamors, leaping to do the bidding of those who went in and out. Mavin came to ground and walked into the light, approaching the door as though she had business there. They did not let her go by unchallenged.

  

 “Just hold a minute there, young man,” said one of the Tragamors, moving toward her purposefully. “What business have you here?”

  

 “I have come to Mudgery Mont to find the Seer Windlow. I have ... a message for him.”

  

 “Does he expect you?”

  

 “I think—yes, he may well. Can you tell me if he is here?”

  

 “Give me your name. Wait here. It may be he will receive you, and it may be he will not.”

  

 “Tell him, please, that Mavin waits without. With news which he should have.”

  

 She waited. The Tragamor showed no indication of passing on her message or of going himself. Time passed. She fidgeted from foot to foot, strode back and forth. Then she saw another petitioner approach the Tragamor, give him money, and the man went within on the moment.

  

 “Gamelords,” she said to herself. “I have no coin to pay the man. What I have must be kept for Mertyn’s sake.” She melted back into the darkness, into the shadows of the streets and up to the roofs once more. Trees grew in the gardens of the Mont, and she was able to go across to the roof of the hotel itself, leaping like some great thrilpat among the branches. From there it was only a few moments to find a stairway leading down, and from there only a matter of time until she encountered a servant.

  

 “I seem to have lost my way,” she said, trying to give an appearance of puzzled calm. “I am looking for the Seer Windlow, or any of his party.”

  

 “Certainly, young sir,” she replied. “Will you follow me.” She trotted away, down a flight of stairs, to knock on a door and beckon Mavin forward. The door opened and she said, “This young man wandering about the hotel, sir, looking for a guest.” Before she could react, Mavin found herself held fast by yet another Tragamor in the livery of the place confronting an irritable-looking Armiger who held a glass of wine in one hand and a sword in the other.

  

 “A spy,” he grated. “The hotel is full of them. They gather in closets and leap out at one from under the stairs. And who are you working for, young spy?”

  

 She had no time to invent anything new. Taken by surprise, she fell back upon the story she knew. “I am the servant of the Wizard Himaggery, sir. I traveled here in company with the Seer Windlow and his group of students. I seek him now, with a message.” She tried to keep the face which she wore calm, slightly aloof, not dismayed, even though her nerves screamed at the thought of Mertyn, alone in the empty lodging house, burning with fever.

  

 “Humph,” the Armiger snorted. “A silly tale, but silly enough to be true. How did you get in?”

  

 “The guards were busy talking with someone, sir. I just came in.” She tried to sound surprised at this. Evidently the propensity of the guards for unguardly behavior was sufficiently well understood that they believed her.

  

 “Raif, go up and get someone from the Seer’s party to come down here and vouch for this youngster.

  

 “You’d better be telling the absolute truth, young man, for if you are not we’ll have a Demon delving into your skull within the hour, and he’ll not rest till he knows who spies upon the guests of Mudgery Mont.” He went grumpily to his chair, taking the wine with him, but sheathing the sword. Mavin breathed a bit more freely, and the two men who held her relaxed somewhat. It was not long before the door opened, and the Tragamor called Raif returned with a youth, scarcely more than a boy, whom Mavin had not seen before.

  

 “Gamesman Huld offered to take a look at him,” said Raif, standing aside. Behind him the youth paused, posed in the doorway, and fingered the jeweled dagger hung at his golden belt. He was elegantly, almost foppishly dressed, wearing a Demon’s half helm so over ornamented that it appeared top heavy. Beneath it a narrow, white face looked out through swollen-lidded eyes, a lizard’s look, calculating, without warmth.

  

 “Who does he say he is?” The voice was as chill as the eyes, as uncaring. “Who does the pawnish churl say he is?”

  

 Mavin took tight rein on her temper, recoiled within herself as if she had seen a serpent rearing before her, and spoke quietly, without emphasis. “I am the servant of the Wizard Himaggery, Gamesman. I seek the Seer Windlow to give him a message.”

  

 “You can give it to me,” he said carelessly. “The Seer is occupied.”

  

 She breathed deeply, aware of danger. “My deepest apologies, Gamesman. I may give the message only to the Seer.”

  

 Anger flared in the pale youth’s face, turning it into a livid mask. He turned to the Armiger, sneered, “It does not know its place, does it, Armiger? I suggest you teach it its place, and bring it to me when it is ready to give me its so-called message. This is no Wizard’s servant, for Wizards have better taste ...” His hand began to play with his dagger, half drawing it from its sheath, and Mavin knew he was about to Read her to find the truth.

  

 “Do they, now?” The drawling voice came from the doorway, which still stood open. Seeing the tall figure which lounged there brought sudden tears of relief to Mavin’s eyes. It was Twizzledale. “Do Wizards indeed have better taste? The youth told you, I suppose, that he is the servant of the Wizard Himaggery. Did he not, Huld?”

  

 “Nonsense,” spat the Demon. “Lies and trickery. Likely there is no Wizard Himaggery ...”

  

 “Oh, indeed there is, Huld, and I am he.” Twizzledale strolled into the room, one hand playing with the knife at his own belt, almost in mockery of the Demon.

  

 The pale youth barked laughter. “You? You are the Fon, whatever a Fon may be, of some place no one has ever heard of.”

  

 “Am I a Wizard, Huld?” Twizzledale’s voice purred, all the mockery gone from it, menace dripping from every sound.

  

 “So you say!”

  

 “Would you care to test the notion, Huld?”

  

 The bulky Tragamor crossed the room in one heaving motion. “My lord, Huld. The revered Ghoul Blourbast, your thalan, would not forgive us if some misunderstanding were to result in any injury to you, or even any discomfort. Surely the matter is not worth a major confrontation. The Seer is here under the protection of the High King Prionde. The High King’s sons travel with him. This Wizard is with them, also, and it is said that you will join the group ...”

  

 “I will not,” the Demon sneered. “I have looked it over. I have smelled it. It was my thalan’s wish that I be educated at some advanced school, but this Seer is no Gamesmaster. He is a charlatan, a fake. I will have nothing to do with it.” He turned and stalked from the room, leaving the Armiger still mumbling.

  

 “Raif, go with him. No doubt he’ll leave the city by way of the tunnel. Let him go. But double the guard behind him.” Baring his teeth, he frowned at the man’s back, then turned back to Twizzledale and Mavin. “You say you’re this man’s master? Well, then get him out of here, and I don’t want to find him wandering about the hotel again. You’ve just put me between the jaws of a cracker, and I like not the feel of it. Do you know who he is?” And he pointed the way Huld had gone.

  

 “I learned,” said the Fon. “Tonight. When the Seer learned. We had not been told that the young Demon, Huld, was ward or thalan or what have you of the Archghoul, Blourbast, holder of Hell’s Maw.”

  

 The Armiger lifted off the ground, hung in the air, burning with annoyance. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that word.”

  

 “Hell’s Maw,” repeated Twizzledale. “From which no good thing comes. Is that not the saying here in Pfarb Durim? I have heard it seven times since entering the city, Guardmaster. Come now. Settle. You are using power to no purpose. We will leave you in peace.”

  

 He took Mavin by the shoulder and led her out of the room. “Mavin, what possessed you to try that here? The place is guarded like an old pombi’s one kit.”

  

 “I know,” she whispered, reaching for his hand. “Listen, Fon. There’s plague in Pfarb Durim ...” And as they walked she murmured rapidly of all that had brought her to Mudgery Mont.

  

 When they came to the door of the suite of chambers which were occupied by the Seer and his students, Twizzledale opened the door softly, peering around it before entering. He drew her into a side room, shut the door behind them, and then went to still another door, half hidden behind a hanging. “I didn’t want Valdon to see you,” he explained. “It was he who sent Huld down to identify you. There was much sympathetic feeling between the two.” He passed through the door, leaving it ajar, and she heard a rapid murmur of voices, Windlow saying “No! Here!” and more rustling of clothing as the voices went on. The Seer came into the room, belting a robe around him.

  

 “Where is the place young Mertyn lies ill?” he demanded.

  

 She went to the window, oriented herself by the slope of the hill and the line of distant towers, pointed. “There. Near the round-roofed building. Perhaps six or seven streets over. The woman who runs the place—who ran the place. She left—said not to move him.”

  

 “I doubt it would hurt him to be wrapped well and carried here, if it were done quickly. Twizzledale will go, and I’ll send men from the Mont.”

  

 “Valdon won’t like it,” said the Fon. “He grows more annoyed with every passing hour.”

  

 “Valdon is frustrated that the world has not yet lain at his feet,” said Windlow. “His expectations of this journey were unrealistic. He awaited some great event, some recognition of himself. He must blame someone. Well, we will not speak of it to him.”

  

 “What will they think?” Mavin murmured. “About your going out to get a boy, just a boy.”

  

 “Why, Mavin.” Windlow was surprised. “What would they think if the Wizard Himaggery did not go out to rescue his thalan? Since the Fon has said he is the Wizard Himaggery—and who am I to say he is not, particularly if both you and he say he—and since everyone, including Boldery, knows that Mertyn is the Wizard Himaggery’s thalan, why then of course he must be rescued.” He turned to Twizzledale, frowning. “Though how you will explain it all to Valdon, I do not know. I leave it to your necessarily fertile imagination.”

  

 And from that moment it was only a short time before they came to the empty lodging house with a troop of the Mont’s guards and carried Mertyn back to that place, up the back way, quietly, into a room separated from the body of the hotel, where the Seer awaited them. Only Twizzledale had touched him, though the Seer now laid a hand upon his forehead and sighed.

  

 “The woman said ghoul-plague, did she? And that is what the host outside the gate is besieging us for? Then I am deeply worried, lad.”

  

 “What is this disease?” Mavin asked. “I had never heard of it.”

  

 “It begins, some say, with the eating of human flesh. For this reason it is called ghoul-plague. In my reading of history, however, I have found that it may not be human flesh but the flesh of shadowpeople which causes the disease. Once begun, it is like other plagues, crossing from those who have eaten the forbidden flesh to those who have not. It is carried from place to place, and none know how.”

  

 “Mertyn touched the sick man, in the alley. The man drooled on him. On his face.”

  

 “That may have been enough. A very ancient book spoke of disease being spread by the bites of small creatures, little blood suckers or flitter bats. I have seen plagues of similar kind. Some do recover.” He did not sound hopeful. 

  

 “The woman said the shadowpeople are said to cure this plague,” said Mavin. For the past hour she had been making plans, moving pieces of information about in her head. “I’m going to go find them, Gamesmaster.”

  

 “Find the shadowpeople?” The Fon was amazed. “They can’t be found by anyone wishing to do so.”

  

 “Perhaps not. But I must try. Will you care for Mertyn while I am gone? I would not ask this thing of you, except that you are kindly and good, and you cannot leave the city anyhow.”

  

 “And you,” murmured Windlow. “How will you leave the city?”

  

 “The way that Demon did,” she said. “The Armiger said he went through tunnels.”

  

 “By all the Gamegods, child. Those tunnels lead to Hell’s Maw. And I do not know, nor do any in this city know for all I can tell, whether there is any way out of Hell’s Maw at all.”

  

 CHAPTER SIX

  

 Though both of them tried to dissuade her, speaking quietly so as not to disturb Mertyn, she would not be moved.

  

 “I must go. Never mind about Poffle. I’ll get through Poffle. Never mind about shadowpeople, I’ll...” And still they argued.

  

 Until suddenly old Windlow stiffened where he stood, his face turning rigid and pale, his hands stretching out as though to touch something the others could not see.

  

 “He’s having a vision,” whispered the Fon. “Quiet. It affects him in this way sometimes when he is very upset.” They watched, not touching him, as he swayed upon his feet, his eyes darting from side to side as though watching some wild movement or affray they could not see. Then his eyes shut, he swayed, caught at the bed to keep himself from falling, and gasped deeply, like a man coming from under water and desperate for air.

  

 “We must let her go, Twizzledale,” he said at last.

  

 “Let ... her go? Mavin? Oh, come now, Windlow. Or have I been unwizardly?” He turned to give Mavin a keen look, swiftly up and down.

  

 Mavin, staring at the Seer, knew that the Fon had penetrated at least part of her identity, but let the feminine identification go by without protest. “You saw something. What was it?”

  

 “I’m not sure,” he sighed. “It was dark and there was a great deal of confusion. But Mertyn was there, and his sister, Mavin. And Mavin had a trick or two in her left ear, or so Mertyn said. There was something evil. Valdon was involved. Something ter­rible, huge. Lords, Twizzledale, but at times I hate being a Seer.” He grabbed at his head with both hands as though he would tear it off. “Sometimes I think I am not a Seer at all, but something else.”

  

 The Fon accused her, quoting Windlow. “His sister Mavin, eh? What are you, young person? Charlatan, as Huld accused us of being? Or something else?”

  

 “Hush,” said Windlow distractedly. “Don’t snarl at her, Wizard. Whatever she has done, she’s done for the boy. Go with her. Help her if you can. But don’t snarl. Don’t worry about Mertyn more than you can help, Mavin. Whatever can be done for the boy, I’ll do.”

  

 “You won’t move him, Seer?”

  

 “No farther than he’s been moved, child. Go with Twizzledale. Take what you need from our goods, food, whatever. There’s a puzzle about you that my Seeing didn’t do a thing to solve, you know. Until we meet in happier times, then.” He embraced her. She felt a dew of clammy perspiration on his cheeks, a trembling in his hands, but his mouth was firm as he turned her out the door, Twizzledale following, still in his mood of irritation.

  

 “I don’t like it when people don’t tell me things,” he grumbled. “Particularly important things.”

  

 She sighed, moved by his exasperation, not to an answering anger but to some soothing words, some kindliness. He looked so spiky, hands rooting at his hair, eyes sparking with annoyance.

  

 “Wizard. I know you are angry with me, but how could I trust you? Someone just met on the road? I barely felt I could trust the Seer, and I wouldn’t have come to him if I had had any choice. Please.” She stopped, holding him by his arm. “Where are we going?”

  

 “Back to our rooms. To pack you some—whatever you need. Food, I suppose. A change of clothing.”

  

 “I won’t need any of that. Wizard, if you want to help me, come with me to the entrance, the tunnels, the way to go through that place ... Poffle. Don’t go on being angry. It has nothing to do with you, truly.”

  

 They stood in confrontation, he clenching and unclenching his fists, shifting his weight as though he wanted to hit her; she, head cocked, poised, prepared for flight if he decided to grab her. So they stared, glared, until he began to smile, then to laugh. “I’d like to strangle you.” He coughed. “You’re impossible.”

  

 She smiled warily. “I’m really doing the only thing I can.”

  

 “You’re shifter, aren’t you? I should have guessed. The minute Windlow said ‘sister,’ I should have guessed. I did guess. Except that ...”

  

 “Except that you don’t like shifters,” she said in a flat, emotionless tone. “Other Gamesmen, yes. But not shifters.”

  

 “Hold! I’ve never known a shifter. Surely, shifters are supposed to be—well, what are they supposed to be. Stranger than the rest of us? Less understandable?”

  

 “Less trustworthy?” Her smile was sweet, poisonous. “Less reliable? Less honorable?”

  

 “More tricky,” he said, amused again. “More devious, more challenging, more entertaining.”

  

 “Less destructible,” she said in a firm voice, putting an end to the catalogue. “Which is why I think I can get through Poffle to the outside world. Which is why I think maybe I can find shadow-people, though others possibly have been unable to do so.”

  

 “How old are you?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

  

 “Fifteen,” she said, before she thought.

  

 “Young. Have you had talent long? I mean ...”

  

 “You mean, have I had it long enough to learn to use it. Yes, Wizard, I have. Probably better than you have learned to use your own. I had to.” And she turned away from him to march out into the dark through a side door, he following mutely, feeling it a better idea to hide his curiosity than to annoy her with any more questions. Once outside he led her in a circuitous route through the grounds of the Mont and onto a narrow walkway curving along the rim of the escarpment. The way was unfrequented, littered with small trash, ending in a parapet surrounded by a low wall.

  

 “Down there.” He pointed.

  

 She looked over to see the narrow crevasse which fell below the wall, a walkway there lined with needled, misshapen trees. At the end of the walkway a lonely lantern burned beside a grilled arch, and outside the grill a platoon of guardsmen moved restlessly back and forth. The archway led into darkness.

  

 “This is the Ghoul Blourbast’s private highway into Pfarb Durim,” said the Fon. “It was pointed out to us by Huld. The Seer was not happy to learn of that young man’s true identity.”

  

 “How was it that you did not know?”

  

 “The arrangements were made through third parties, Negotiators and Ambassadors. That alone should have warned Windlow that something was amiss. What use has an honest Gamesman for Ambassadors!”

  

 “It seems Huld didn’t care much for the arrangement either.”

  

 “Valdon is an example of humility compared to Huld. After some time in Valdon’s company I thought him the epitome of arrogance, but I was wrong. I believe Huld has never asked for anything, no matter how outrageous, which he has not been given. Who is he, really? No one seems to know, except that Blourbast holds him dear. And he went back down that hell hole, Mavin, so watch out for him.”

  

 “He will not see me,” she said soberly, then, taking him by the arm, “Fon, can you help me? With the shadowpeople? What language do they speak? What would they ask of me in return for healing Mertyn?”

  

 He shook his head. “I wish I knew, Mavin. I would help you in any way I could, if only because you tricked me and teased me and made my mind work in odd ways. You must find them first and then try to do them a service, as you would for anyone, Gamesman or pawn. If they are peoplelike—and I have heard that they are in some ways—then they will seek to do you a service in repayment. How you will speak with them, I do not know. I have never seen one of them. At times I have doubted they exist.” He pulled her to him and squeezed her, quickly releasing her, so that she felt only breathless and wondering at the suddenness of it. “Let us make a pact, however. If you have need of me, you will send word—let me think! The word shall be the name of that place you stayed, BALD BADGER. Or, if there is no way to send word, then the first letter of your name in fire or smoke or stone or whatever. Given that word, that signal, I’ll get to you somehow.”

  

 “You can’t get out,” she said. “The city is closed.”

  

 “You can’t get out either,” he replied. “And yet you are going. So. Strange are the Talents of Wizards. Leave the way of it to me.” And he released her, standing away from her, and looking at her in a way no one had looked at her before. Mavin shook her head, trying to clear it, then gave it up and turned from him to slide over the low parapet at the edge of the declivity. She cast one look over her shoulder to see him walking steadily away. She had not wanted him to watch her as she changed. Seemingly he had understood that.

  

 She shifted into something which could climb walls, rather spiderlike if she had thought about it, which she had no time to do. At the bottom of the ditch, she skulked along behind the twisted trees until the light of the torches splashed amber on the stones before her. She had already decided what to do next. Using an arm much stronger than her own, she heaved a paving stone high onto the opposite bank, some distance behind her. It crashed through the branches with a satisfactory sound of someone thrashing about. The guards ran toward it, not looking behind them, and she slipped through the bars of the gate into darkness, resuming her own shape once hidden in shadow. Only a shifter could have come through the gate—a shifter or a serpent. The bars had been set close together.

  

 There was no light in the tunnel. Far ahead she thought she could see a faint grayness in the black. She fumbled her way forward, stopping close to the walkway, feeling a slimy dampness on her hands where they touched the walls or floor. Furred feet made no sound. Soon she was walking four-footed, making a nose which would smell out trails and paths. A sharp sound broke the silence, echoed briefly like a shout into a well, and was gone. Still, it had given her direction in the darkness. The grayness grew more light. She turned toward it, out of the widened corridor and into a side way. It was torchlight, reflected off wet walls around several sinuous turns. The torch burned outside another barred gate which was no more trouble than the first had been. Now the corridor was lighted, badly, with smoky torches at infrequent intervals.

  

 She became aware of sound, a far, indefinite clanging, an echoing clamor, a whumping sound as though something heavy fell repeatedly into something soft. Through it all came a thin cry of song, high, birdlike, quickly silenced. She shivered, not knowing why. The sounds were not ugly or threatening, and yet heard together they made her want to weep. She sneaked along the way, now finding windows cut into the stone which looked out into black pits. As she went, she tossed bits of gravel through the openings, listening for the sound. Her ears told her some were merely small rooms or closets while others were bottomless. The sounds came closer, and suddenly—

  

 “Wait a minute, will ya. I’ll be with you. Run, run, So impatient. Wait a minute!” The voice screeched, whined, almost at her shoulder, and Mavin fell against the wall, crouched, ready to be attacked.

  

 “I’ll be right with ya,” the voice screamed.

  

 She reached out, patting the air around her. Another of the openings was just above her head, and hung inside it, far enough inside that no light struck it at all, was a cage. Mavin found the ring on which it was hung, drew it down and into the light. Inside it crouched a ragged-looking beasty, eyes dilated into great, brown orbs, teeth bared, patches of its hide missing as though they had been burned away. “Run,” it screamed at her. “Run, run.”

  

 Without thinking, Mavin opened the cage and shook the creature out onto the stones where it lay for a moment, too shocked to move. Then in one enormous leap, it crossed the corridor and disappeared down a side way, shrieking as it went. Thoughtfully, Mavin hung the open cage back where she had found it and followed. “Run, run,” it screamed, fleeing at top speed into darkness. “I’ll get to ya.”

  

 “I hope you do,” she muttered. “To one Pantiquod, one strange, gray woman. To one someone who talks, who can be overheard, who knows the way out of here.”

  

 She had need of her nose again, for the little animal lost itself in darkness. The stench of it—part illness, part dirty cage, part the beasty itself—lingered on the stones, however, and Mavin tracked the little animal through dark ways into lighter ones to a heavy door upon which the little creature hung, still trying to shriek, though its voice had wearied to a whisper. “Run,” it whimpered. “Run. I’ll get to ya.”

  

 Mavin stood to one side, pressed down upon the latch and let the door swing open. The thrilpat was through it in an instant. Hearing no alarms, Mavin followed. She was now in a well lit corridor ending in a broad flight of stairs. A small balcony protruded to her left, half hidden behind embroidered draperies. She oozed into the cover of these, hearing voices from below.

  

 “I thought I told you to get rid of that animal!” The voice was heavy gasping, full of malice and ill humor. Peering between the railings, Mavin could see where the voice came from—a vast, billowy form lying in a canopied bed. Only the bottom half of the form was visible to her. She could see all of the other persons in the room, however, and was unsurprised to recognize the gray woman from the lodging house, now dressed in an odd, winged cap with a feathered cape at her shoulders. It was Pantiquod, the mangy animal now clinging to her ankle as it sobbed and pled.

  

 “I gave it to one of your servants, brother, and told him to dispose of it.”

  

 “Which servant was that?”

  

 “I don’t really know. One of those who stand outside this room from time to time.”

  

 “Well, find out which one. Have hin chained to the long wall in the tunnel. If you can’t find out which one, have the whole lot of them chained. Let them hang there till they rot.”

  

 “Which they assuredly will. Have you not had enough of rottenness, brother Ghoul? Has it not brought you to this pass? Perhaps it would be well to dwell less on rottenness for a time?”

  

 “Shall a trifle of sickness make me forsake my life’s work?” The bulk upon the bed heaved with laughter, and Mavin, watching it, found a kind of fascinated nausea in the sight. The figure heaved itself upright, and the sight of its face made her stomach heave, for it was covered with hideous growths from which a vile ichor oozed. The hands which stroked an amulet at the creature’s throat were as badly afflicted. “My bone pits are not yet full, Panty, my sister, my dove. Panty, my dear one, mother of my delicious twins, Huld and Huldra, my dear boy and his delightful sister. And though she has obviously learned aplenty about the world—and will soon enough bear us yet another generation—my dear boy is not yet fully educated. Though it seems he does not want to go into the world to mix with his inferiors.”

  

 “It was a foolish idea,” she said calmly, seemingly unafraid of this monster on the bed. “You have not reared him to care what others do, or think, or say. How then should he care for education, for is that not the study of what others care about? Hmmm?”



  

 “He says we have taught him enough, you and I. Har, ahrah, enough, he says. Enough that he can use what we have taught him to conquer the world. Harar, aha.” The vast figure shivered with obscene laughter, and Mavin trembled upon the balcony.

  

 “I have taught him to dissemble, my lord. To pretend. To play the Gamesman of honor. To mock the manners of others, if it seems wise—or amusing—to do so. What have you taught him?”

  

 “To care for nothing, my love. To be sickened by nothing, repelled by nothing, to be capable of anything at all. Between us, he has been well educated.”

  

 “Well then, why this mockery? Why all this effort expended to put him in the company of Prionde’s sons? He cared not for them. Should he have?”

  

 “Softly, my dove, my cherub. He did all that was needed. He found in Valdon’s mind the way to the King, to Prionde. That was all he needed to do for now. It will be useful for some future Game. They will not suspect him of plotting, not at his age. But he and I—we have planned, sister. We have planned.”

  

 “But does it not seem now all those plans are for naught?”

  

 “Araugh,” the man screamed in rage. “Beware, sister. Do not be quick to condemn me to death. Blourbast does not die of ghoul-plague. My thalan made me immune to ghoul-plague when I was younger than Huld. I have eaten forbidden meat all my life, and the plague has not touched me!” The bulk heaved, quivered, drew itself upright, then collapsed once more.

  

 “It has not touched you until now,” she said, her face as cold and empty of emotion as a mask. “Until now. It amused you to hold the shadowpeople to ransom for their relic. So they came at your command. I told you they were sick, but you sent them to your kitchens nonetheless. You gave the meat to those destined to be sent above, to Pfarb Durim. Well enough. But it was foolish to dine from the same dish, brother. You have not had ghoul-plague before, but you had not used the disease to empty a city before, either. In fact,” she turned an ironic glance upon him, “there had been no ghoul-plague for some tens of years. For most of our lifetimes, yours and mine, Blourbast. Now the disease comes again. Perhaps it is a new strain to which you are not immune.”

  

 “Ghoul-plague is ghoul-plague,” he growled. “I am immune, I say. I ate only what was necessary so that they should not suspect what meat I fed them. I have eaten this meat many times before.”

  

 “No,” she contradicted him. “You have not. I tell you again, brother, this is not any disease which has come upon us before. You are not immune, and now the Healers have spread the ban against you. You should not have tried to force healing out of them.”



  

 “In Hell’s Maw, Gamesmen play as I will.”

  

 “But in Hell’s Maw they did not. I told you that shadowpeople are reputed to cure this disease. What have you done to learn the truth of this?”

  

 “I have a few dozens in my cellars, madame. Since they speak no tongue I can understand, what good to question them? I had a little man once who spoke their tongue, but he is dead now. My Demons have attempted to Read their little minds, to no end. So let them hang there and starve.”

  

 “You have given up eating them, then? You do not fatten them in their cages?”

  

 “Let them starve, I say. I hold their relic here,” and he stroked his breast once again, the motion of those horrid hands holding Mavin’s eyes fixed. “Here. So let them starve. Let them all die. It is nothing to me.”

  

 “Nothing? What if you are ill to death, Blourbast?”

  

 “I will recover, woman. I will recover, shadowpeople or no. This is only a temporary inconvenience.”

  

 “But there is Huld, brother. If he sickens, will he recover?”

  

 “You are late with your motherly concern, sister. He is gone to the far reaches of Poffle where the ways open upon the woodlands. I sent him thence, with his lovely sister-wife. He will be served only by his own people. Then, when Pfarb Durim is emptied and the winds have washed it clean, I will give it to him for a gift, as I promised him. He may fill it with his Mowers, and the revenues will be his and his fortune great, for no city garners more from trade than Pforb Durim.” Exhausted by this speech the bulky form seemed to collapse in upon itself. “Leave me, woman. You were ever contentious.”

  

 The woman bowed, moved out of the chamber through a door at the far side, taking one of the torches with her as she went. A kind of gloom fell in the chamber, a heaving dusk, the thick breathing of Blourbast filling it as might the petulant waves of a foul and polluted sea.

  

 Mavin waited for that breathing to soften before creeping down the stairs and into the chamber. She was invisible against the shadows, silent as a shadow herself, as she crept around the chamber and to the door Pantiquod had left through. She eased it open, but it shrieked at her, and she found herself confronting the mad eyes of the little thrilpat, shut in with the Ghoul and dying on the floor.

  

 “Harrah?” from the bed. “Who’s there? Come into the light, you vermin.”

  

 She did not wait, but oozed through the crack and pulled it shut behind her, hearing the whisper, “Run, run, run,” as she ran indeed, down the long way which arched into emptiness before her. What she had heard had been enough to give her an idea. Now she had only to find the place the shadowpeople were kept. After all, had not the Fon told her to do some service for them? What better service than to save them from this place?

  

 Which was easier thought of than accomplished. Pantiquod walked for a great distance, through balconies which stretched over vast audience halls, down twisting corridors, up curved flights of stairs and down similar ones, but at the end of it she came only to a wing of the place devoted to suites of ordinary rooms, small kitchens, servants’ quarters, more luxuriously furnished bedrooms and sitting rooms among them. Here there was a certain amount of coming and going, and Mavin’s journey was interrupted by the constant need to hide. After the fifth or sixth such occasion, she decided that too much time was being wasted. It took only a little creeping and spying to see what livery the servants of the place wore, and then only a brief time more of experimentation to shift into that livery and guise. Thereafter she walked as a servant, obsequious and quiet, so ordinary about the face as to be anonymous. Pantiquod entered a set of rooms which were evidently set aside for her use, and did not emerge from them. She was obviously alone, and there was nothing Mavin could overhear or oversee to her advantage.

  

 Well then, one must risk something. She returned the way she had come, stopping at the first large hall in which there was any appreciable traffic. “I have taken a wrong turning,” she said to an approaching servant. “I was told by the woman, Pantiquod, to carry a message to the guard of the chambers ... below. Where the shadowpeople are.”

  

 The servant stopped, stared, at last opened his mouth to show a tongueless cavity there. Mavin’s first reaction was to run, or to vomit. She restrained herself, however, and grasped the man firmly by one shoulder. “Do you understand what I say?”

  

 He nodded, terrified.

  

 “Do you know the place, the door?”

  

 He nodded again.

  

 “Then lead me there. You may return here and none know the difference.”

  

 Still fearful, shivering, the man set out at a run, Mavin striding alongside. They twisted, turned, then the man stopped just before coming to a corner and pointed around it, keeping well back, face white and contorted. Though she had no Demon’s talent for reading minds, his was easy to read. “You were down there? That’s where they cut out your tongue? I understand. Go.” And he scurried back the way they had come, in such frantic haste that he stumbled, almost falling.

  

 Mavin lay down upon the floor, peeked around the corner from floor level. At the end of the hallway was another of the guarded grills like those at the tunnel entrance to Hell’s Maw. Before this gate however, was no casual assembly of guardsmen but an armed line of Armigers, shoulder to shoulder, naked swords gleaming in their hands, a line of lounging Sorcerers behind them, blazing with power in that silent place.

  

 “Oh, pombi piss,” she muttered. “Filth and rot and foul disaster.” Then she simply lay against the wall, exhausted, unable to think what to do next. How long had it been since she had had anything to eat? How long since she had slept? Probably a full day. They had had breakfast the day they entered Pfarb Durim. She had not eaten after that. Nor slept. She sighed. Well enough to know the way into the dungeons, but no help if one were too weak to go there. “Food,” she murmured. “Food first. Then whatever comes next.”

  

 CHAPTER SEVEN

  

 She cursed herself tiredly for not having brought the food which Windlow had offered. What food she might find here in the depths of Hell’s Maw had little likelihood of being healthful. “You are too rash, my girl,” she lectured herself in silence. “You have done well so far, but what have you had to oppose you? A few old lechers in Danderbat keep, that’s all. Now, here you are, run off in a sudden frenzy without any thought at all.” Sighing, she rose and went skulking off in search of something to fill her empty belly.

  

 The woman Pantiquod had looked more or less normal, that is, unghoulish, and she had seemed to live in a part of the caves and tunnels which was cleanly, not smelling of rot and mold. Mavin returned there, staying out of sight, poking about until she found a larder with fruit in it and loaves of bread smelling of the sun. Evidently not all those who lived in Hell’s Maw were of Blourbast’s persuasion. Perhaps only a few were, or none except the Ghoul himself. She wondered what diet the arrogant Huld had eaten, whether he had been cossetted with dainties from Pfarb Durim or fed from childhood on the horrors of the pit. None of this wondering did anything to destroy her appetite, which was ravenous. The tunnels were chill, and her shifting had drawn what power she carried with her, leaving her weary and weak. After a short rest, she began to feel stronger. “Able to shift for yourself again, girl,” she said. “Able to shift.” She created a capacious pocket to carry some of the food with her, knowing it might well be a long time before she would find more. She thought longingly of sleep, then rejected the idea. There was no time, not with Mertyn lying sick in Pfarb Durim and the image of Blourbast’s ravaged face before her as a threat. Mertyn might come to this if she did not find help for him.

  

 When she returned to the guarded hall it was to find the entrance to the lower realms unchanged. The line of Armigers still stood shoulder to shoulder; the Sorcerers behind them still lounged against the wall. They seemed not to have moved while she had been gone, as though some power she could not sense kept them in that utter stillness and concentration, entranced to their duty. It did no good to speculate. She had to get past them, preferably without alerting the warren to her presence.

  

 Nothing came to her. She peered down the sides of the cor­ridor, searching for any gap in the line. There was none. None. Except above the guardsmen’s heads where the corridor arched into gloom above the glare of the shaded lanterns. Stretching from side to side below the vaulted ceiling was a line of wooden beams which tied the walls together, knobby and convoluted in the shadow, for they had been carved into likenesses of thick vines and bulbous fruits with pendant sprays of leaves fanning across the stone walls at either end. She examined them, then began to thin herself, to flow upward, to draw in upon herself while stretching out, becoming limbless, earless, hairless, softly scaled and quiet as a dream, relentlessly pouring up and onto the beam where she twisted about it in a bulky knot no different in outline from the carved vines.

  

 The beam on which she rested was in the cross corridor. Now her serpent’s head reached out into the guarded corridor, hidden in the gloom above the light, weaving out a little, silent, silent, until it rested on the next beam and anchored there. A long loop of body followed, knotting and unknotting slowly, moving forward as the sinuous body bridged the shadowy space, beam by beam. At last she lay above the guardsmen, twined onto the last of the beams, her endless neck reaching into the shadow behind them, over the Sorcerers heads. There was nothing to hold her there except the lintel of the arch itself, and she descended by tiny tentacles sent deep into the mortar between the stones, holding herself to the wall as a vine holds, pulled tight to the rock until her serpent’s head could pass through the iron grill, fingerlength by fingerlength. She lay at last beyond the grill and behind the guards, they not having moved during all that time. When the last scale of her tail slipped through the grill, her head was halfway down the flight of stairs behind, body stretched between the two points like a single reaching arm. Now she heard again the sounds she had heard on first entering Hell’s Maw, the clangor, the heavy pounding, the fragment of birdlike song, cut off abruptly. The stairs wound around a pit, down onto the floor of a well from which more of the arched corridors spread in all directions. The place was lit by the omnipresent torches. There were torches and lanterns everywhere in Hell’s Maw, an insufficiency of light in all those depths, a gelid half shade thick with fumes and smoke. After a time she had stopped noticing the light, had only moved through its dusky inadequacy like a fish moving through water, not noticing the medium. Now, however, as she came to the bottom of the well, she saw that one of the tunnels to her left was lit in a stranger way, by a flickering which receded and advanced, receded and advanced, accompanied by a sound as of clattering wooden twigs upon stone. She stared toward this way, then stopped as a stench poured out of the tunnel toward her, an effluvium so dense as to seem impenetrable. The wisp of birdlike sound came from behind her, and she turned, seeking the sound, finding any excuse not to go toward that flickering light.

  

 Song led her into a darker way, one smelling of soil, but a cleaner stench than the corruption behind her. Roots dangled through the ceiling stones, brushes of dense hairy fiber dragging across the lean furred form she had taken. Snakes were all very well, she told herself, but stone was cold upon belly scales and the placement of the eyes left something to be desired. A twitter sounded ahead, and she melted into the darkness behind a pillar, searching. Nothing. No, perhaps a tiny movement. A scampering. Song again, a single, disconsolate trill. Then again. Silence. She snaked out a lengthened arm and grabbed into the gloom, then bit back a howl as needle teeth sank into her hand. Fighting down her instinct to drop whatever it was and run, Mavin toughened the flesh around the small thing she had caught and dragged it into the half light.

  

 To stare in wonder, for it was like nothing she had ever seen before. Huge, fragile ears; wide lipless mouth; large dark eyes wild with fury and fear; teeth bared, slender form fluffed with soft fur, crying, crying words ... words. She knew in an instant that it was no mere animal she held. The eyes, while frantic, were full of alert intelligence, and the sounds were too consecutive, too varied to be mere animal cries of panic. She sat down on the chill stone and crooned to it, without thinking, using the same tone she had used to Mertyn when he had hurt himself. “Ahh, ahh, it’s all right. I won’t hurt you. Shh. Shh. See, I’ll hardly hold you at all. Now, who are you?”

  

 She asked the question with an interrogative lilt and a cock of her head, waiting for an answer. The little creature stopped shaking and regarded her quietly, chest heaving with enormous sobs, quieting until only an occasional tremor ran through the muscular limbs she held so gently. “Mavin,” she used one hand to point at herself. “Mavin.” Then she pointed to her captive and cocked her head once more. “Who?”

  

 “Puh-leedle-addle-proom-room-room,” it warbled. “Puh-leedle-addle-proom-room-room.”

  

 Mavin shook her head, laughing. “Proom!” she pointed to him, relaxing her grip. “Mavin. Proom.” This matter settled, she sat with the manikin on her lap, wondering what to do next. A final, sobbing breath passed through the creature, then it collapsed into her lap, sighing, such a sigh of despair and sadness as she had never heard. “What’s the matter, little one?” she asked. “Are you as lost in this terrible place as I am?”

  

 Proom tilted his head—Mavin was sure it was a “he,” though she could not have said why—and thought about this for a moment. Then he reached up to lay one slender, three-fingered hand across her lips. The other he held behind his ear, the delicate pink nails curved above it. More clearly than with words he said, be still and listen. Then he sang, birdlike, a clear warble of sound in the ponderous dusk of the cavern. Mavin held her breath. She thought she heard a reply, or was it only an echo? No, it was a reply, for Proom’s hand whipped away from her ear to point into the dark. A reply. There were others here, others in this place, and she knew already that they were not here by chance. Something tickled at her mind, fled away.

  

 Proom started to leap away, but she held him, placing him on her shoulder as she stood and moved in the direction he indicated. “I’ll help you,” she said, forgetting everything for the moment except the longing and despair in the little one’s voice. “This way?” And she strode into the darkness. Torches were fewer along this way, but she compensated for the lack of light by making her eyes larger, her ears wider, not noticing Proom’s astonishment at this, nor his obvious interest as she brought her reaching arms back to a more normal length. ”Andibar, bar, bar,” he murmured.

  

 She paid no attention. She was busy listening. They came to a fork in the way and she paused, looking to Proom for guidance. He warbled again, and again she heard a ghostly reply, thin, almost directionless, but Proom seemed to have no trouble knowing where it had come from, for he pointed down one of the branching ways without hesitation. They went on in this way, turn after turn, branch after branch, until Mavin had lost all sense of direction or place. Still, the answering voice grew more distinct each time they turned, and Proom’s excitement was manifest as they went into the almost total dark. So it was Mavin almost impaled herself upon the spiked gate before she saw it. It was another of the ubiquitous grilled gates, this one with a mesh so small even a creature the size of Proom could not get through. He had pressed himself against it with a piteous cry, fingers thrust through the mesh as though he would pull himself through by an act of will. She knew he had been this far before. His despair could mean nothing else.

  

 “Shh, shh,” she said, tugging him away. Pressing herself against the mesh, making her eyes wide to gain all the available light, she could see the latch, high inside the gate. “Nothing to it,” she murmured to the little one. “Nothing at all.” A finger extended into a tentacle which wove its boneless way through the mesh, pushed upward and outward until the latch opened with a satisfying tlock. At first the gate would not move, but then as she threw her full weight against it, it screamed at her and sagged open on rusty hinges. Mavin stopped pushing to listen. Proom pushed past her and ran on down the corridor, the quick birdsong running before him in greeting. This time she heard the answer clearly, no mistake about it and no confusing echoes. Whoever sang in reply sang close before them.

  

 She followed the sound, the two sounds, call and reply, as they grew louder, rounding a dim corner to find herself in a room hung with cages like that one which had held the unfortunate thrilpat, cages hung high on slender chains. They were out of reach of little Proom, no matter how he jumped and warbled to reach his imprisoned kin, and all the cavernous room thrilled with their birdsong twittering until Mavin was dizzy with it.

  

 The song was interrupted by a monstrous clanging, as though from a gong unimaginably huge. All the little people writhed in pain on the bottom of their cages, tiny hands clamped across their ears. The clanging stopped, but the little creatures still cowered, sobbing, Proom also from his place on the stones. From some distance came a burst of evil laughter and the word “Silence ...” shouted in a great voice. Then there was quiet, broken only by despairing whimpers from dozens of throats.

  

 Mavin, at first confused by the noise, was now angry. Without stopping to think about it she began to stork upward, taller and thinner, so that she teetered to the height of the cages, then above them where they were fastened to rings in the high ceiling. She began to lower them, one, two, a dozen, twenty. Some of the cages held only one of Proom’s people while others held two or three. She let them all down into the troubled quiet, and Proom gathered himself up to move among the cages, whispering, gesturing. He tugged at her ankle, pointing high where the ring of keys hung, and she passed them down to him, almost falling, for she had forgotten what a stiltwalker she had become. She folded into herself, suddenly weak and wan, aware that she had used up her strength and power again, depleted as it was in this chill place. She fished a piece of fruit from her pocket, bit into it, then saw some dozens pairs of eyes focused hungrily upon her. She gave them the other food she carried, watched with amazement as each creature took a single bite before passing it on. The food circled quickly, came back to her to be urged upon her again. She took her single bite and gave it back once more. Proom climbed into her lap and patted her on the head. “Mavin,” he said. “Mavin, vin, vin.”

  

 “Introductions are all very nice,” she said, “but I assume what you really want is to get out of here.” She staggered to her feet and went back into the corridor, turning the way they had come. At once a dozen hands patted at her, pushing her in the opposite direction. Proom chattered, sniffed at the air, then agreed, following the others in their scamper toward a break in the corridor wall, thence into root-hung tunnels, and finally between two great knobbly tree roots into a rocky cavern of a different kind. Sunlight came upon them from above, the warm amber light of a distant afternoon. Around them hung icicles of stone, bulging buttresses of rock, walls of ochre and red and a long, straight path leading upward into leafy forests. She found strength she did not know she had to follow them up and out into a clearing among great trees. On a distant hill she could see the bulk of Pfarb Durim rising beyond its walls.

  

 “Ahh?” called the little ones. “Ahh? Ahh?” They looked around, jigged uncertainly, called again and again, in some distress. It was obvious they did not know where they were. They had smelled their way out, but could not identify this location. Mavin hoisted Proom high on her shoulder where he could see the city through the trees. “Durim, rim, rim,” he called, leaning down to give a hand up to others of his kindred. Mavin staggered under the load as twenty of them climbed her like a tree. There was pointing, argument, finally agreement, and most of the burden dropped away and vanished in the brush. Proom waited with her, regarding her with thoughtful eyes. After a time he beckoned, vanishing like the others in the shadow of the trees. The answer came then, simply, as if she had known it for some time. “ Shadowpeople,” disbelieving, yet knowing it was so. “These are the shadowpeople, and I have already done as the Fon suggested. I have done them a service. Now, shall I follow to see if they will do one for me?”

  

 They traveled for a time in an arc, a long, curving line which kept Pfarb Durim always visible, high on its cliffs to their left. Once Mavin heard water, the sound of a considerable flow, making her believe that the River Haws ran no great distance from them in the forest. Others came back to them from tune to time, bringing nuts and fruit and loaves of bread. Others came with messages, after some of which they changed direction. Mavin followed, uncomplaining, telling herself that now was a time for patience, for waiting to see what might happen next of its own accord, without her intervention. This patience was about to be exhausted when they arrived. The place of assembly was a hollow in the woods with a straight, tall tree at one side. The shadowpeople were gathered near it, staring upward. Mavin could see nothing from where she stood except a lumpish blob hanging high among the branches, swaying a little in the wind.

  

 “Agirul,” the shadowmen sang, dancing below the tree with its pendant form, swaying their bodies in time to the swaying of whatever it was above them. “Agirul, nil, nil.”

  

 Slowly, so slowly that she was not sure she saw it move at all, the lump turned its head over so that it faced downward, showing a tiny, three-cornered mouth, a shiny, licked-looking nose, two dark lines behind which eyes might be hiding. The mouth opened. “Ahhh, shuuush,” it said with great finality. “Shuuuush.”

  

 “Ahh shuuuush,” sang the shadowmen, laughing, falling down in their laughter. Several of them ran off into the forest to return bearing slender bundles of long grass, the top of each stem tassled like a feather. They began to splice these together, making long, fragile lengths with which they tried to tickle the pendant creature, fluttering the tassled ends around its invisible ears, over its hidden eyes. One shadowman, more venturesome or inventive than the rest, concentrated his attention on the creature’s rear, evidently touching some sensitive spot for the creature opened its tiny mouth once more and roared.

  

 At this sound every one of the shadowpeople, down to the smallest cub, sat down at once with expressions of severity and solemnity sitting awkwardly upon their cheerful faces. Above them the creature went on roaring as it swung to the trunk of the tree and began to descend, ponderously, long leg after long arm, like a pendulum swinging on its way downward, tic by toe, to slump at last on the ground at the roots of the tree, long legs and arms sprawled wide and helpless. It began to draw itself into some more coordinated posture, and two of the shadowpeople ran to help, murmuring, patting, easing the creature onto its haunches with its monstrously long arms folded neatly into its lap.

  

 “Naiii shuuush,” it complained, scratching its head with two curved nails, “Mumph, mumph, who is this person?”

  

 A warbled answer came from the assembly. The beast considered, then turned its head to Mavin.

  

 “I suppose you’ll insist that this wasn’t your idea,” it bellowed at her in a petulant voice. “The little beasts won’t let me alone.”

  

 “No—it was not my idea. Not letting you alone, I mean. Since I didn’t know that you exist, I could hardly ...”

  

 “No. No, of course not. No one has any idea, not ever. Don’t they teach languages in the benighted schools you people attend? Why shouldn’t you learn to speak shadow-talk? Why shouldn’t they speak whatever ugly tongue we are speaking now? But no. No, it’s always come to Agirul for translation, because that’s easier. Shush. Get away, you,” and it pushed ineffectually at the crowd of shadowpeople who were still busy propping it up and cushioning its back with leafy twigs. It did not look comfortable. Its arms and legs were not designed for living on the ground, sprawling uncontrolled as though the muscles would not work out of the trees. One look at its hands told Mavin that it was a tree liver which never came to the ground of its own will, for it had curved hooks of bone growing from each palm.

  

 “They didn’t hurt you, did they?” she asked.

  

 “Of course they didn’t hurt me. They woke me! They know I dislike being wakened. It has been sleeping weather recently, good sleeping weather, and I hate having it interrupted. I’m not unwilling to accede to emergency, however, and these little people always seem to have one. I suppose it’s you they want to talk with?”

  

 Mavin cast a wondering glance around. “I suppose so. I helped them get out of Hell’s Maw. I want to talk to them, very much. I need their help.”

  

 The Agirul sighed. “Hell’s Maw. Blourbast the Ghoul. I heard he had ghoul-plague. Why isn’t he dead?”

  

 “I don’t know. He looks half dead. His hands and face are covered with sores, but he claims he will recover. Does it always kill? The plague, I mean?”

  

 “Obviously not always. Ah, you brighten at that? It means something to you that some recover? Well, we will explore the notion soon. Just now it seems that Proom is ready to explain why I was awakened.”

  

 There was a brief colloquy, then the Agirul murmured to Mavin that it would attempt to make a simultaneous translation of the explanation which was about to follow. “Woman, it may be you will understand nothing at all, in which case I will explain when they have finished. It is the desire of Proom that you be honored by a song—and since his people are quite decent in the matter of gifts, fruits, you know, and nuts, and even a bit of roast meat from time to time—I will accommodate them. Sit comfortably now, this may take some time.”

  

 The hooked hand drew her gently close, and she squirmed about until her head lay near the Agirul’s mouth. For a moment, she feared she would go to sleep, thus disgracing herself, but once the singing started, she did not think of sleep again.

  

 “Hear the song of Proom!” It was a solo voice which sang this phrase, each syllable dropped into the clearing as a stone may be dropped into still water. The echoes of it ran in ripples across the gathered faces, gathering force, returning from the edges to the center amplified. Agirul murmured the words, but she did not hear the words, only the song. When the echoes had died, the voice sang again.

  

 “Summoned, Proom, by those who live forever. Summoned, Proom, on a great journey. Far to go. Many seasons spent. Doubt shall he return. Ah, Proom, Proom, keeper of Ganver’s Bone.” Now those gathered in the clearing took up the song, a full chorus. Some of these little ones had deeper voices than she had heard before, and these deeper voices set up a drone beneath the song, dragging, ominous.

  

 “Shall the Bone go? Far from the people? Shall the Bone travel far from its own place? Shall the Bone depart from Ganver who gave it?” Three voices sang alone, joined by flutes and bells. “Leave the Bone, Proom, before answering the summons. Leave the holy thing among its people. If Proom does not return, the Bone remains.” Now there were drums, little and big, cymbals ringing, and a solo voice, awe filled, chanting. “Now see, listen all, Proom left it in the high place. In the sacred place. Forbidden place. Guarded place. Farewell, Proom. Go with song around you.” Now a solo drum, high-pitched, frenetic, full of panic, one voice, very agitated.

  

 “See who comes. Blourbast the Ghoul. Riding. Riding. Blourbast does not see the things which guard. Blourbast does not feel forbidden place. Blourbast cannot tell sacred from his excrement hole.” Full chorus once again, full of wrath. “The Ghoul sees it. The Ghoul takes it. Ganver’s Bone, Bone, Bone, Gone, gone, gone, alas.” Now the voices lamented, high, keening.

  

 “Terror, tenor, monstrous this evil. The holy thing lost in dreadful’s hands. One must go recover what is lost.”

  

 Now drums, fifes, cymbals clashing, something that sounded suspiciously like a trumpet, though Mavin thought it was a voice. “Come to the place, the evil place. Call out for the return of Ganver’s Bone!”

  

 Now an old, old female rose, her voice a whispery chant in the clearing, barely heard over the humming of the multitude. “Comes one from Hell’s Maw, An old, gray man, Servant of Blourbast, Lo, he sings the words of Blourbast. Lo, he sings them in the people’s song. ‘Let twelve of the people come or Ganver’s Bone will be destroyed!’ “ Now a quartet of strong voices, in harmony.

  

 “Ah, ah, Proom, thou art far away. Ah. Ah. Aloom is old, is sick, Aloom sings. “I will go, I will go, that Ganver’s Bone shall never b e destroyed.”

  

 Aloom goes, and behind her others go. Twelve gone. Old ones, sick ones, twelve gone. This is one time. Time passes.”

  

 There was a moment’s silence, then the voices went on. “The old, gray man sang once more, ‘Let twelve come. Ah, ah, Proom, thou art far away. Ah. Ah. Duvoon is quiet, is loving, Duvoon sings. 7 will go, I will go, that Ganver’s Bone shall never be destroyed.’

  

 Duvoon goes, and behind him others go. Twelve gone. Male ones, female ones, twelve gone. This is two times. Time passes.” Again silence, again the voices.

  

 “The old, gray man sang once more, ‘Let twelve come.’ Ah, ah, Proom, thou art far away. Ah. Ah. Shoomdu is Proom’s child. Shoomdu sings. “I will go, I will go, that Ganver’s Bone shall never be destroyed.” Shoomdu goes, and behind her others go. Twelve gone. Children ones, little ones. This is three times. Time passes.”

  

 Now the chorus again, ugly in wrath, full of fury, quickly, almost shouting.

  

 “Oft, behold, plague conies on Blourbast. Oh, behold, Ghoul has eaten our flesh. Oh, behold, he is maddened, he kills the old gray man. Oh, behold, Proom, Proom, Proom returns.” Hearing his name sung, Proom stood up and began to chant, waving his arms high, leading the chorus and the drums.

  

 “Hear the song of Proom, Voice of the Songmakers. ‘No more shall go to Hell’s Maw. All who went shall come again to us if yet they live. Holy Ganver will forgive us this.’ Hear the song of Proom, ‘I will go in.’ “

  

 “Daroo, roo, roo,” sang the multitude. “Daroo, roo, roo, pandillio lallo lie, daroo.”

  

 “So he went, wandered, wandered, wandered, i n the dark, the smell, the pain, Lost, he wandered into the very hands of her Mavin who takes many forms. Now of her we sing. Now we sing the song of Mavin.”

  

 “I suggest you make yourself comfortable,” said the Agirul. “They are about to begin singing.”

  

 “Gamelords,” whispered Mavin. “What do you call what they have been doing?”

  

 “Oh, that was just getting warmed up,” it replied. “They have sung their song. Now they will sing the song of Mavin who ...”

  

 “Mavin Manyshaped,” she said to the beast. “Mavin Manyshaped.” He did not hear her. The chorus was already in full cry. Afterwards, Mavin supposed it had been a kind of enchantment. Certainly while it was going on there was nothing she could do about it or herself. She was the center of a whirlpool of song, drawn down into it, drowned in it, surfacing at last with a feeling that some heavy, nonessential part of her had been washed away leaving her as light and agile as the shadowpeople themselves. When they had finished their song, they went away into the forest, leaving only a few behind.

  

 “I could translate for you the words of the song they have just sung, Mavin Manyshaped, but the words do not matter.” The Agirul nodded to itself. “They have, made a song of you, and that is what matters, for they do not make songs of every little happening or every chance encounter. Quite frankly, I do not know why they have honored you in this way. You were at little risk of your life in that place, so far as I can tell. Whatever their reason, you are now brought into their history, and your song will be sung at the great convocations on the high places until you are known to all the tribes wherever they may be. You may call upon the people for help, and they will be with you in your times of need.

  

 “I trust that now I may be allowed to go back to sleep.” And with that, the Agirul turned to begin climbing back up the tree.

  

 Mavin cried out, “No. Don’t go. I came for a reason, Agirul. I have need now. I must talk to them.”

  

 Proom had heard the tone of her voice, and he came to her with brow furrowed. Mavin reached out to him even as she began speaking, hastily, words tumbling over one another. “Mertyn,” she said. “Brother ... sick ... woman said shadowpeople ... cure ... graywoman ... Pantiquod ...”

  

 “Hush,” said Agirul. “Start again. Slowly. What is the trouble?”

  

 So she began again, telling it more slowly, giving Agirul time between thoughts to translate her meaning. Proom’s face changed, gave way to horror, then despair. When Mavin said that Mertyn lay ill with ghoul-plague, he cried out, tearing at his fur with both hands. Others ran toward him, questions trilling on their tongues, only to begin keening when he explained.

  

 “What is it?” cried Mavin. “What’s the matter?”

  

 Agirul shook its narrow head. “Mavin Manyshaped, you have come on a fruitless quest. The disease you speak of is one which long ago took great toll of their lives. Then came Ganver, Ganver the Great, Ganver of the Eesties, to tell the people he would give them a gift in return for a song. So they made a song for Ganver, and he gave them his Bone. It is only by using the Bone they may cure the illness, and the Bone is gone—gone down there, in Blourbast’s hands, where you may have seen it yourself.”

  

 “Is that the thing Blourbast took? The thing he wears around his neck? The thing he was holding for ransom?”

  

 “It is. And Proom believes that when Blourbast found the shadowpeople had escaped, he probably destroyed the Bone as he threatened to do. Proom says he could not leave his people, his own child, to be eaten, not even for Ganver’s Bone, but now he is unable to repay his debt to Mavin Manyshaped. He says he will kill himself at once.”

  

 “No!” she shrieked. “Tell him no. Mavin forbids it. Ganver forbids it. Tell him whoever forbids it so that he won’t do it. That’s terrible. Oh, Gamelords, what a mess.”

  

 She set herself to think. It did not come easily. There was too much in her head, too many squirming thoughts, Blourbast and Pantiquod, the caverns below, the flickering lights and horrible smells, Pfarb Durim high on the cliff surrounded by the host, the song of the little people, the face of Agirul. Too much. “I want the Fon,” she said, not even knowing she had said it.

  

 “The Fon?” asked Agirul.

  

 “A Wizard. But he’s shut up in Pfarb Durim, so even if I sent the message we agreed upon, it would do no good.”

  

 “A Wizard? I would not be too sure about that. If I were you, I would send the message and leave it to the Wizard to decide whether it will do any good or not. Is there not a saying among your people? ‘Strange are the Talents of Wizards?’ What was the message?”

  

 “The letter M, in any form, set so he could see it.”

  

 “Well then. Dark comes soon. We will send him a message he cannot fail to see.”

  

 Though she fumed at the delay, she could think of nothing else to do. She had not slept since leaving Pfarb Durim, and when the Agirul suggested she do so, and when Proom’s people made her a leafy nest cradled in the roots of a great tree, she told herself that she would need to sleep sooner or later, so it might as well be done now. Though she was sure worry would keep her awake, the shadowpeople were singing a slow, calm song which reminded her of wind, or water running over stones, and she sank into sleep to the sound of it as though she had been drugged. She went down and down into dreamless black, and did not come up until the stars shone on her through windwoven trees.

  

 “Be still,” said the Agirul from a branch above her. “Look through the trees to your right.” She sat up, stretching, seeing through the branches a long slope of meadow on which dozens of tiny fires burned in long lines.

  

 “You cannot see it from where you are,” the lazy voice from above her mused, “but the fires make your name letter on a slope which faces the city. They have been burning since dusk, half a night’s length. The shadowpeople have been bustling about dragging branches out of the forest for hours. They will keep the fires alight until dawn.”

  

 “No need,” said a firm voice from the trees. “They may let the fires die.”

  

 “Twizzledale!” cried Mavin. “How did you get out? How did you find me? How ...”

  

 “Ah,” as he came silently across the grass, a moving blackness across the burning stars, “it took much longer than it should have done. However, when I went to one of the watchtowers, I found that the watchmen had gone—for tea, perhaps, or to quell some disturbance in the city. They had left a rope ladder there, useful for climbing down walls.”

  

 “But the armies? The besiegers?”

  

 “Evidently there had been some attempt to leave the city by some half-score merchants, and a group of the besiegers had gone to drive them back, leaving the road unguarded. Quite coincidental, of course, but fortuitous ...”

  

 “Fortuitous,” murmured the Agirul. “Coincidental.”

  

 “Whom have I the honor of addressing?” asked the Fon in meas­ured tones, as though he were a Herald preparing to announce Game.

  

 “The Agirul hangs in the trees above you,” said Mavin. “It is a translator of languages. The shadowpeople wakened it so that they might talk with me.”

  

 “And kept me awake,” said Agirul in an aggrieved tone. “I will not catch up on my sleep for a season or more.”

  

 “I have great honor in speaking with you,” said the Fon, “though I would not have wished your discomfort for any purpose of my own convenience ...”

  

 The Agirul tittered. “Wizards. They all talk like that. Unless they are involved in some Game or other.” The titter turned into a gurgle, then into a half snore.

  

 “Well, Mavin,” said the Fon, seating himself close beside her in the nest. “What have you been up to?” As she spoke, the fires died. Proom returned to sit beside them, ashy and disconsolate. The Agirul was roused from time to time to ask a question or translate a response. Night wore on and the stars wheeled above them, in and out of the leaves like lantern bugs. At last the Fon had asked every question which could be asked and had set to brewing tea over a handful of coals, humming to himself as he did so. Proom crouched by the fire, humming a descant, and soon a full dozen of the shadowpeople were gathered at the fire in full contrapuntal hum, which seemed to disturb the Fon not at all. When he had the tea brewed to his satisfaction, he shared a cup round with them then brought a full one to share with Mavin.

  

 “Blourbast has not destroyed the Bone,” he said.

  

 Over his head, Agirul murmured, and a sigh went round the fire.

  

 “He would not. He would think that a thing held in such reverence by the shadowpeople must be a thing of power or value. Blourbast would not destroy anything which might be a source of power. He is vicious, wantonly cruel, irredeemably depraved, but he is not stupid. He would not discard a thing of value merely to avenge himself upon those he despises. He would keep it, study it, perhaps even seek out those who might know of such things. Now I have heard of Eesties, as have we all. Myths, I thought. Legends. Stories out of olden time. This thing, whatever it may be, whether Eesty bone or artifact or some natural thing, must be obtained if we are to work a cure upon your brother and the others who lie ill and dying in Pfarb Durim. There are some hundred of them in the city. Mertyn is no worse than he was, but he is no better either. So a cure is needed, and if not for him then for the others. The Healers will not relent. Heralds have been sent to them—even Ambassadors, with promises of magnificent gifts—but they stand adamant. Until Blourbast is dead they will bring no healing to Pfarb Durim.”

  

 “Why?” cried Mavin. “Pfarb Durim is not Hell’s Maw. Why hold the city ransom for what Blourbast has done?”

  

 “Because the city profits from what Blourbast does,” replied Twizzledale. “It stands aloof, pretends it does not share in Blourbast’s depravity, murmurs repudiation of his horrors, but sells to Hell’s Maw what Hell’s Maw buys and takes in return the coin Blourbast has stolen or extorted or melted out of the bones of those he eats. The Healers lay guilt where guilt is due. No. Pfarb Durim is not innocent, nor are those who trade there innocent.”

  

 “And we,” mumbled Mavin, white-lipped, “we who came there unknowing, but still spent our coin on lodging, on food? Are we guilty?”

  

 The Fon shook his head, smiling, reached out to touch her face—then thought better of it, for she was close to tears. “Mavin, did you know of all this before entering the city? Well, neither did I, nor Windlow either. I do not hold us guilty of anything but ignorance, though we will be guilty indeed if we come this way again or buy anything which comes from Pfarb Durim. Enough of this conscience searching. We must find this thing, this Bone.”

  

 “Blourbast had a thing around his neck, something long and white, which he stroked. He spoke of it to that woman, his sister, stroking it with his awful-looking hand, covered with sores. She wore a kind of cap with birds wings at the side, and there were feathers on her shoulders. I don’t know what Talent she has ...”

  

 “Harpy,” he replied. “His sister, a Harpy, mother of that Huld whom we so much enjoyed meeting. Not only Blourbast’s sister, seemingly, but his emissary as well. She who arranged for the plague to be spread in the city. Did she assume herself immune?”

  

 “Probably she was simply careful not to touch anything, not to become infected. But Blourbast thought himself immune. Even now he thinks he will recover.”

  

 “Perhaps,” mused the Fon while the Agirul translated what they said to the shadowpeople amid much twittering and warbling. “And perhaps he only blusters. If what you say is true, however, if he wears it upon him, touches it, then we may not think of your going to fetch it. You would become ill and we would be no better off. No, we must get him to bring it out, find a way to use it without touching it ...”

  

 The Wizard got up to stride to and fro, rooting his hair up into spiky locks with both hands, as though he dug in his brain for answers he could not find. “He sought to compel healing from the shadowpeople, what would happen if it were offered to him? Can Proom tell us in what way the Bone is used in preparing the cure?” He waited for the usual twittering exchange before the beast replied in a sleepy voice.

  

 “It is a matter of music, Wizard. One note of which is summoned from Ganver’s Bone.”

  

 “Need the Bone be in Proom’s hands? Could any person holding it summon the note as needed?”

  

 This time there was a lengthy colloquy, argument, expostulation, before the beast said, “Proom acknowledges that the note could be struck by any. He denies that any has that right except himself, but it is hot a matter of impossibility.”

  

 “Ah,” said the Fon with satisfaction, “Then, then ...” And his hands waved as he sketched a plan, improvising, leaping from one point to the next as the Agirul muttered along and Mavin watched in fascination.

  

 When he had finished, Mavin said, “But ... but, your plans call for several shifters. Three, four, more perhaps.”

  

 “That is true,” he murmured. “No help for it. We must have them. Well, shifter girl? Have you no kin to call upon?”

  

 “Danderbat keep, from which I came, is not within a day’s travel,” she replied. “I was traveling to Battlefox keep, somewhere in the Shadowmarches to the north. My thalan is there, and my kindred and Mertyn’s. Is it within hours of travel? I do not know. Shall I run there seeking help which may arrive too late?”

  

 The Agirul began its murmuring and twittering while the little people chattered and trilled. “Battlefox is within a few hours, Mavin,” it said at last. “One or more of the people will go with you as your guide.”

  

 The Fon was staring at the ground where his busy hands made drawings in the dust. At the edge of the world dawn crept into the sky. “When must it be done?” he asked of Proom. “What time of day or night?”

  

 “In the deep of night,” replied the beast. “When the blue star burns in the horns of Zanbee. Do I say that right?”

  

 “You do.” The Fon smiled. “Were you translating, or did you think of that yourself? It is an odd bit of esoterica for you to know. Well then, Mavin, you must return to that road south of Pfarb Durim which we have traveled once before. Beneath the Strange Monuments there, at midnight, we will find a cure. Come with whatever help you can muster. You do understand the plan?”

  

 “As well as I may,” she said distractedly, “having heard it only once. You will probably change it, too, as the day wears on. Nonetheless, I will do what I can. Do you, also, Fon, for my hope rests in you.” She was very sober about this, and the tears in the corners of her eyes threatened to spill.

  

 He took her hand in his to draw her up but then did not release her. Instead he pulled her tight to him. At first she struggled, fighting against the strength of his arms as she would have fought the constraints of a basket in Danderbat keep, full of panic and sudden fear. Then something within her weakened, perhaps broke, and she found herself pressed against his chest, hearing the throb of his heart beneath her ear, aware for the first time that he was seeing her, holding her, in her own shape, in her essential Mavin-ness. He did so only for a moment, then let her go with a whisper.

  

 “Go, then. Trust in me so for as you may, Mavin. It is your Wizard, Himaggery, who promises it after all. Bring what help you can and we will put an end to this.”

  

 She did not trust herself to say anything more, but turned to run from him in that instant. From him, or in order to return to him, but she did not really think of that.

  

 CHAPTER EIGHT

  

 “I run,” she said between her teeth, putting one foot before another on her long-legged form, feeling the clutch of shadowperson knees behind her shoulders where the little creature rode astride, whooping its pleasure at the speed of their movement. “I run,” concentrating on that, trying not to think of the plan the Fon—Himaggery—had sketched before them, vaporous now, too many details missing, too many things that could go wrong. “I run,” chanting it like an incantation, moving in the direction the little heels kicked her, up long slopes under the leaves spangled with sun, out into green glades where flowers bloomed higher than her head, then into shade again and down, down into gullies where gnarled black branches brooded against the sky, making a cold shade over the wet moss. The way tended always upward, coming at last to a leg-stunning climb beside a tumbling fell of water, all white spray and wet, slick rock where ferns nodded in time to the splashes. “I run,” she panted, trying to convince herself, making the back legs longer to kick herself up with and the front ones clawed to scratch at the slippery rock. It was not a run, more like a scrambling climb. At the top, however, the land leveled into long shadowy rides among the groves of sky-topped trees, and the little heels kicked her into a lope once more.

  

 “Away northwest,” the voice on her back trilled, and she needed no Agirul to translate the song. It sang of sky, tree, and direc­tion, and she understood it in her bones. The shadows dwindled but it was still short of noon when she topped a long ridge to look downward upon Battlefox keep sprawled wide in the center of its p’natti. And here she was, come to Plandybast’s place—not with a modest appeal for lodging and food, perhaps for friend­ship if kinship should not be enough. No, here she was to beg followers, warriors, fighters, shifters to shift for something they had probably not heard of and would not care for.

  

 Well then. How did a shifter enter a keep? Or, how best might Mavin enter a keep to make such demands upon short acquaintance?

  

 She urged the little one down from her back so that she might sit herself down, back against tree, to eat a bit and think. The shadowperson sat comfortably beside her, snuggled close for warmth, but making no protestations at the sight of the place before her. After all, she told herself, the creature had guided her here. It probably knew as much about the place as Mavin did. Once it trilled, but her hand stilled it, and it merely hummed quietly like a kettle boiling.

  

 Suppose that Battlefox Demesne was not so hidebound as Danderbat keep. Still, they were shifters, full of shifterish Talent and seeming. Would they respect her need? Could they offer help where they did not respect? Could she ask from weakness what she could not demand from strength? How did Plandybast stand within the walls? Was he high up in the way of things, or a mere follower after? All in all, well—all in all, would it be better to do something shifterish and fail at it or to do nothing shifterish at all and leave them wondering? She chewed and ruminated, unable to make up her mind, wishing the Wizard were there to give her some firm instructions to take the doubt away.

  

 Finally she swallowed, sighed, pointed firmly at the base of the tree where they sat and said to the shadowperson, “You stay here.”

  

 The little head cocked. A narrow hand was placed on the trunk of the tree, and a voice warbled, “Quirril?”

  

 “I suppose,” she said. “Quirril. Until I come back.”

  

 She stood long upon the hill, remembering the way Wurstery Wimpole had come into Danderbat Keep, the drumming, the rolling, launching, flying, slything down, then up once more into veils which fell as soft as down. She sighed. She had never flown, had no idea how. Serpent forms were easy, but those immediate transitions were something she had never practiced. Better not to try anything of the sort.

  

 And there was always the she-road, cutting through the p’natti straight as a shadow line. But if Plandybast had been correct, then only pregnant women used that road coming into Battlefox. What to do, to do, to do?

  

 “Well, girl,” she said to herself. “What would you have done if you and Mertyn had come here as you planned? You’d have walked up to the gate in your own shape, holding Mertyn by the hand. For aren’t you the thalani of Plandybast, and hasn’t he invited you to come? There’s no time for anything else, no time for making a show of yourself, so go, go, go.” And before she could talk herself out of it or think of anything else to worry about, she stepped out into the light of the sun and began walking toward the keep.

  

 The drum sounded when she was only halfway there. It boomed once, then once again, not in any panic sound, more as a warning to let those in the keep know that someone was on the road. She did not hurry, merely kept walking, her eyes upon the walls. Forms materialized there as she watched, dozens of them, still as stone and as full of eyes as an oxroot. No sound. No welcome, only those eyes. What were they looking at? Nothing to see upon the road but one girl, dressed in whatever old thing she had shaped around herself. Mavin stopped suspiciously. They were entirely too silent. She turned her head slowly. There, behind her, was her guide—her guide and two or three dozen of his kindred.

  

 “Gamelords,” she said. “What have I done now?”

  

 The shadowperson who had ridden her shoulders so happily came forward to take her dangling hand. “Quirril?” it asked. “Quirril?”

  

 For a moment she could not think what to do. Then she shrugged and hoisted the little one onto her shoulders, beckoning the others to come on. “Come,” she cried aloud, “Let us visit my thalan, Plandybast.”

  

 She stopped within a few man-heights of the gate, peering upward at the watchers along the wall. “Plandybast,” she cried, making her voice a trumpet, full of sonority, dignified and pleading at once. “Plandybast, I come at your invitation, I, your sister’s child, Mavin.” Then she waited, ready, so she told herself, for someone to call down in a cold voice that Plandybast was not at home, or had never lived here, or was long dead.

  

 Instead the gate began to creak, and she saw the almost familiar face peering at her from around the corner. “Mavin? May I come out? Will I frighten them? Some are saying they are ... shadowpeople? Could that be true?”

  

 She wanted to giggle. All her worry and concern, and here was her thalan as full of wonder as some child seeing Assembly for the first time. “Come out, Plandybast. I don’t think they’ll frighten, not so long as I am here.”

  

 He came to her, put his hand out to her, watching the little rider on her shoulder the while. “Where’s Mertyn?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  

 “Thalan, there is no time to tell you everything that has happened. I can only tell you two important things. Mertyn lies ill of ghoul-plague in Pfarb Durim. That is the first thing. The second is that a cure may be wrought by these little ones, if I bring some of my kindred to help. I need you, you and some others.”

  

 Plandybast looked up, called to the watchers, “It is as we heard. Ghoul-plague. In Pfarb Durim.”

  

 There was an immediate outcry, a kind of stifled protest or moan, and he turned back to her; shaking his head in a kind of fussy sympathy which hid his curiosity only a little.

  

 “You must be frantic with worry,” he said. “I can see that. You say there’s little time? Surely you have time to come in? To eat a little something? Have a warming drink?”

  

 She shook her head, looking sideways at the shadows, seeing how they stretched now a little east, a little past high noon. “We must be there by midnight. The Agirul said when the blue star burns in the horns of Zanbee. A Wizardly saying, evidently. Midnight. No later than that, and it is a way from here. As far as I have run since dawn, and farther. We must be there. Will some of you come, Plandybast? Do we have other kin here who will help us?”

  

 “I will come with you if you need me, of course. But to ask others—we must at least tell them where. And what the plan may be. And why they are needed. They will be so curious, so delighted to see you. Can you come in?”

  

 She moved toward the gate, a bit uneasily, at which all the assembled shadowpeople began to cry out, moving away from her, and her shoulder rider began to scramble down, bleating.

  

 “They won’t come in,” she sighed. “They have no good experience of walls. If I come in, they may all go—and I need them to guide me back. No. Better I stay out here. Could you bring us something to eat? I had some food with me, but not enough ...”

  

 “Don’t distress yourself, child. Or them. This is so great a wonder, why should we spoil it with ordinary behavior. If they will not come in, we will come out.” He called up to the watchers again, and there was a bustling among them as some went off at his request. It was not long before two or three of the shifters came out of the gate carrying baskets laden with fresh loaves split open and filled with roasted meat. There was no need for the shadowpeople to pass the food about or share it for each of them had both hands full. By that time a dozen of the Battlefox shifters had gathered at Plandybast’s side, and Mavin found herself trying to explain once more.

  

 There were long looks from the Battlefoxes. Long looks and pursed lips, shaken heads and skeptical eyes. Among the most doubtful-looking was one Itter, a narrow-faced woman introduced as Plandybast’s sister—at which Plandybast merely looked uncomfortable, saying nothing to confirm or deny this claim. “Who is he?” the woman asked when Mavin spoke of the Fon.

  

 “A Wizard,” she replied for the third time. “From the southlands.”

  

 “A Wizard,” the questioner repeated after her, making the words sound slick and unreliable. “From the south.”

  

 “Yes,” Mavin said, beginning to be angry. Everything the woman said was an accusation, an allegation of dishonesty or stupidity, unspoken but most explicitly conveyed in her words. “A Wizard. A young Wizard. Perhaps too young to be much regarded by the dwellers of Battlefox. As I am young. As Mertyn, who will die if a cure is not found, is young.” She clenched her fist, turning from them to her thalan who stood shifting from one foot to the other at the edge of the group. “It comes to that in the end, doesn’t it, Plandybast? The Fon and I are young enough to need help, therefore too young to be trusted when we ask for it.”

  

 “Now, child,” he objected, “don’t be so quick with blame. Itter didn’t mean to sound ...”

  

 “Oh, but I did,” said Itter sweetly. “Your other sister, Plandybast, was known for her eccentricity, her individuality. Are we to assume that her child—her children—are any less ... individual?” In the woman’s mouth the word became a curse, an indictment.

  

 “Now, now, no need to rake up old troubles. Let’s take a little time to talk this out.”

  

 “There’s no time!” Mavin cried. “Tonight it will be done. The little people will be there, and the Fon, and old Blourbast with his armies and his foul sister. And I am supposed to be there, too, with help from the shifter kindred. They will expect me, and I will not fail them no matter what the people of Battlefox do or don’t do.”

  

 “Why not let the Ghoul alone?” the woman asked in her sharp, accusing voice. Her eyes were calculating and cold. Her mouth curved but her eyes were chilly, and the shadowperson cringed away from her when she stepped closer. “The Ghoul does no more than any Gamesman. He plays in accordance with his Talent. From what you say, the Wizard’s plan will work well enough without shifters. The cure will be wrought. The people will be healed. What matter that the Ghoul returns to his tunnels? What business is it of ours? Our business is the education of our young, not interfering with Ghouls. When he is cured, you bring Mertyn here to be educated, and forget the Ghoul. All will be as it was before.”

  

 “But it will not be as it was before,” said Mavin, gritting her teeth. She had already said this twice. “The disease is one which afflicts the shadowpeople from time to time. They have always been able to cure it before, with the Bone. If Blourbast is left alive, if he returns to his tunnels with the Bone, then the disease will strike again, and again. As it returned again and again in the ancient time.” The little creature on her shoulder trilled, and Mavin understood the meaning. “My friend says it may strike next time at you, Madam Itter, and at the children you are so eager to see educated, perhaps your own. It would not be wise to return to that ancient time, before Ganver.”

  

 Hearing this name the shadowpeople began to sing, a lamenting song, full of runs and aching sadness, so engaging a song that they put down the food they held to put their arms about one another and sway as they sang.

  

 “What are they doing?” asked the woman in sudden apprehension.

  

 “They sing of Ganver. A god to them. Perhaps Ganver would have been a god to us as well. It is Ganver’s Bone the Ghoul has. Listen to them, woman! Listen to them, Plandybast! To you they were legends? Myths? Now they are here before you, singing, and you owl me with those doubtful eyes and will not promise to help me.” She flung her arms wide in a despairing gesture and moved away from them toward the shadowpeople.

  

 Plandybast came after her. “Some of them will probably come, Mavin. Just give them a little time. Itter is a kind of sister to me. At least, her mother said she was my father’s child. But you’ve heard her. She always assumes that others are stupid, or evil, or both. It isn’t only you, she behaves so to all of us. And she does have a point, you know. There seem to be a lot of details you’re not sure of. And none of us relish the idea of having anything to do with the plague, or with the Ghoul, come to that. We don’t really interfere in the business of the world that much, we Battlefoxes. Oh, we hire ourselves out for Game from time to time, but there seems to be no fee and no honor in this ...”

  

 “Fee! Honor! I have seen these little ones so frightened that their faces run with tears and shuddering so hard with sobs they can scarcely stand, and they go on while they are crying! I call that honor, Plandybast. You would respond better to a call to Game? If I had come with a Herald, announcing challenge, would that have made it easier? I could have done that! Watch, now, thalan. See the Herald come?” She was angry and tired. She shifted without thinking as she had done once before in Danderbat keep, without planning it, letting her shape become that of the Herald she had seen outside the walls of Pfarb Durim. She made her voice a bugle, let it ring across the walls of Battlefox keep. “Give ear, oh people of Battlefox Demesne, for I come at the behest of the Wizard Himaggery, most wise, most puissant, to bring challenge to the sluggards of this keep that they stay within their walls while Game moves about them!” Then she trembled, and the shape fell away. There was only silence from them, and astonishment, and—fear.

  

 “Impossible,” Plandybast quavered. “Shifters cannot take the form of other Gamesmen. But your face was the face of the Herald Dumarch-don. I know him. Your voice was his voice. Impossible. You’re only a child.”

  

 “I’m a forty-six-season child,” she agreed. “It is said to be impossible, but I can do it. Sometimes. You have not asked how we escaped from Danderbat keep, thalan. You have not asked how I came out of Pfarb Durim, a city under siege. It is better, perhaps, that you do not know, but I made use of this Talent to do it. I have been long on the road to you, coming to you at your invitation. Now look to your kin. They are all fainting with shock.” And she turned away bitterly, knowing that fear had done what politeness might have prevented—made them refuse to help her.

  

 Itter was already cawing at the group. “You see! What did I tell you! She is no true shifter! Can a true shifter take the shape of other Gamesmen? Can they? I said her mother was guilty of individuality, and so she was. Now will you believe me?”

  

 “Go with them,” Mavin said wearily to Plandybast. “I will wait out here for an hour, perhaps two. I will sleep here on this sun-warmed hill and make strength for the journey back, among my small friends who account themselves my kindred while my kindred sort out whether they are my friends or not. Any who will come with me will be welcome. If none will come—well, so be it.” And she turned away from him to move into the welcoming arms of the shadowpeople who snuggled about her on the slope, a small hillock of eyes watching the walls of Battlefox Demesne.

  

 A voice spoke calmly from above her head. “They are not eager in your aid, your kinsmen.”

  

 She looked up. The Agirul hung above her head. “How did you get here?” she cried. Around her the little people twittered and laughed.

  

 “I have been here,” said the Agirul. “All along.”

  

 “Then you’re not ... the one who ... you don’t know ...”

  

 “What the Agirul knows, the Agirul knows,” said the creature in a voice of great complacency. “Which means all of it, wherever its parts may be.” It released one long, clawed arm to scratch itself reflectively, coughing a little, then twittering a remark to the shadowpeople which made them all sigh. “I said that you are saddened by your reception in this place.”

  

 “Old Gormier would have been biting on the bit by now,” she said. “Him and Wurstery and the others. They may be evil old lechers, but they would have been full of fire and ready to move.” Then she added, more honestly, “Of course, I don’t really know that to be true. They might have been willing to be involved, but might not have responded to a plea from me, or Handbright, or any girl from behind the p’natti.”

  

 “Wisdom,” growled the Agirul. “Painful, isn’t it? We assume so much and resist learning to the contrary. Well, neither Danderbat nor Battlefox meets our needs at the moment. Shall we consider other alternatives?”

  

 “Our needs, Agirul? I didn’t know you were involved.”

  

 The beast swung, side by side, a furry pendulum, head weaving on its heavy neck. “Well, girl person, if we were to speak strictly of the matter, I am not involved. If we speak of curiosity, however, and of philosophy, and of being wakened and not allowed to go back to sleep—there are consequences of such things, wouldn’t you agree? And consequence breeds consequence, dragging outsiders in and thrusting insiders out, will we or nil we, making new concatenations out of old dissimilitudes. Doesn’t that express it?”

  

 She shook her head in confusion, not sure what had been expres­sed. “Are you saying I shouldn’t bother to wait for Plandybast?”

  

 “Leave him a note. Tell him to meet you on the road south of Pfarb Durim tonight with any of his people who will assist or to go to Himaggery and offer himself if you are not there. In that way, you need not linger, wasting tune, and it is indeed a waste. If one may not sleep and one may not act, then what use is there sitting about?”

  

 After a moment’s thought, she did as the Agirul suggested, finding a bit of flat stone on which a charcoaled message could be left. He could not fail to see it. The letters were as tall as her hand, and the Agirul assured her there would be no rain, no storm to wipe them away in the next few hours. “Where, then?” she asked him. “Back to Pfarb Durim?”

  

 “I thought we might seek assistance from some other source,” the Agirul replied, lapsing into shadowperson talk while the little ones gathered around in a mood of growing excitement. “I have suggested they take you to Ganver’s Grave. It is not far from here, and the trip may prove helpful.”

  

 “Ganver’s Grave? We have no dead raisers among us, Agirul. And truth to tell, after Hell’s Maw, I have no desire to see or smell any such.”

  

 “Tush. The place may be called Ganver’s Grave, girl, but I did not say he is dead. Go along. It is not far, but there is no time to spend in idle chat.”

  

 “Are you coming?” she inquired, offering to help it down from the branch it hung upon.

  

 “I’ll be there,” it said, humming, still swinging. “More or less.”

  

 Shaking her head she allowed herself to be led away, following the multitude which scampered ahead of her into the trees. A tug at her hand reminded her that a small person waited to be carried, and she lifted him onto her shoulder once more. He kicked her, and she shifted, making it easier for him and herself to catch up to the fleeing shadows before them. They led east, back toward the River, she thought, and the long valley in which it ran. The land was flat, easy to move across, with little brush or fallen wood to make the way difficult. After they had run for some little time, Mavin began to wonder at the ease of the travel and to look at the land about her with more questioning eyes. It looked like—like park land. Like the land at the edge of the p’natti, where all the dead wood had been cut for cook fires and all noxious weeds killed. It looked used, tended. “Who lives here?” she panted, receiving awarble which conveyed no meaning in answer. “Someone,” she said to herself. “Something. Not shadowpeople. They would not cut brush or clear out thorns.” Someone else. Something else. “Maybe some Demesne or other. Some great Gamesman’s private preserve.” But, if so, where were the thousand gardeners and woodsmen it would take? She had run many leagues, and the way was still carefully tended and groomed and empty. “If there are workers, where are they?”

  

 She heard a warbling song from far ahead, one which grew louder as she ran. The shadowpeople had stopped, had perhaps arrived at their goal. She ran on, feeling the warmth of her hindquarters as the sun rolled west. There through the trees loomed a wall of color, a towering structure which became more and more visible, wider and wider, until she emerged from the trees and saw all of it, an impossibility, glowing in the light. “Ooof,” she whispered, not believing it.

  

 “Ooof,” carolled the shadowpeople in sympathy, coming back to pat her with their narrow hands and bring her forward.

  

 It was stone, she thought. Like the stone of which the strange arches were made. Although they were green and this was red as blood, both had the same crystalline feel, the misleading look of translucence. The wall bulged toward her out of the earth, then its glittering pate arched upward at the sky. “A ball,” she marveled. “A huge ball, sunk a bit in the ground. What is it? Some kind of monument? A memorial? Agirul called it Ganver’s Grave. Is Ganver buried here?”

  

 “Unlikely,” said the Agirul from a tree behind her. “I don’t think the Eesties bury their dead. I don’t think Eesties die, come to think of it. At least I never heard one of them saying anything to indicate that they might. Not that I’ve been privileged to hear them say that much. No, I’ve probably not heard a word from an Eesty more than a dozen times in the last two or three thousand years.”

  

 “You’re that old! Two or three thousand years!”

  

 The beast shifted, as though uncomfortable at her vehemence. “Only in a sense, Mavin. What the Agirul knows, the Agirul knows. It may not have been precisely I who spoke with the Eesties, but then it was in a sense. The concept is somewhat confusing, I realize. It has to do with extracorporeal memory and rather depends upon what filing system one uses. None of which has any bearing on the current situation at all. We came, I believe, to seek some help, and should be getting at it.” The Agirul came painfully out of its tree and began dragging itself toward the red ball, moving with so much effort and obvious discomfort that Mavin leaned over and picked it up, gasping at the effort. The Agirul was far heavier than its size indicated, though she was able to bear the weight once it had positioned itself upon her back. She would need more bulk if she were to bear this one far, but the creature gave her no time to seek it. “Around to the side, to your left. There’s a gateway there. It will probably take all of us to get it open.”

  

 The gateway would have taken all of them and a hundred or so more to open, had it not stood open already, a curved section a man-height thick, peeled back like the skin of a thrilp to show a dark, pointed doorway leading inside. “You want us to go in there?” she asked. “In the dark?”

  

 “Not we,” said the Agirul. “You. Mavin. Don’t worry about translation. If you meet an Eesty, you’ll be able to understand him. Or her. Or thir. Or fle. Or san. Whichever. The polite form of address is ‘aged one.’ And the polite stance is attentive. Don’t miss anything, or you may find you’ve missed it all. Go on now. Not much time left.” It dropped from her back and gave her an enormous shove, one which propelled her to the edge of the black gateway, over which she tripped, to fell sprawling within, within, within ... There was no within.

  

 She stood on a shifting plain beside a row of columns. Upon each column rested a red ball, tiny in comparison to the great one she had entered, and translucent, for she could see shapes within, moving gently as though swayed by a quiet sea. A gravel path ran beside the column, gemmy blue and green and violet stones, smoothly raked. Mavin turned to see a small creature pick up a round stone from the side of the path, nibble at it experimentally, then nip it quickly with his teeth, faceting the stone, polishing it with a raspy black tongue before raking it to the path with its claws. It moved on to another stone, taking no notice of her. When she knelt to look at it more closely, it did not react in any way. It had no eyes that she could see, no ears, only two pale, clawed hands, a mouth like a pair of steel wedges, and two pudgy legs on which to move about. It faceted another stone, then extended its neck and its hands to roll rapidly away on its feet, its hands, and the top of its head, like a wheel, disappearing into the distance.

  

 This drew her eyes to the horizon, a very close one, as though the ground beneath her curved more than what she was used to. On that horizon marched a line of towers, each tower topped by a red ball, in each ball a hint of movement as of something moving slightly in its sleep or a watchman shirting restlessly upon a parapet. Between these towers giant wheels were rolling, creature wheels, stopping now and then to polish one of the towers with great, soft hands or trim the grassy verge with wide, scissory teeth before rolling on like huge children turning endless handsprings. Mavin moved toward them, noticing the sound her feet made on the jeweled gravel, an abrupt, questioning sound, as of someone saying “what’ over and over again. She moved to the grass, only to leap back again, for the grass screamed when she stepped upon it, a thin wailing of pain and outraged dignity. So she went on, the gravel saying “what” beneath her feet, the grass weeping at her side, each section taking up the complaint as she passed.

  

 Flowers began to appear along the verge, gray blossoms the size of her hands, five-petaled, turning upon their stems like windmills with a shrill, determined humming. Creeping, grublike things lay upon the stems of the flowers. Mavin watched as the creepers extended long, sharp tusks into the whirling petals, cutting them into fragments which floated upon the air only an instant before opening like tiny books and flying away.

  

 Bushes along the road began to lash their branches, each branch splitting into a bundle of narrow whips which exploded outward into a net. The nets cast almost to the road, missing her, though not by much. Some of the flower creepers were caught and dragged back toward the bushes while they plied their tusks frantically, trying to cut free. The gravel went on saying “what”. She came near to the first of the towers, stepping aside to avoid the nets, paying no more attention to the crying grass. The gravel fell silent beneath her feet, and she stood gazing upward at the ruby globe, twice her own height in diameter, with something moving in it. Was this an Eesty? Was it alive? How did one attract its attention? There was nothing in this place to tell her the time, to tell her how many hours there might be between now and midnight. How many of these globes dared she knock upon, if knocking was the thing to do?

  

 Then she remembered what Agirul had said. Remembered, stood back from the globe, and cried in a voice which would have broken rock had any been present to be broken, “Aged one. Oh, oho, aged one! I cry for assistance!”

  

 At first there was only an agitation within the globe, as though a bubble of air had burst or some small thing whipped around in its shadowed interior, but then lines began to glow down the sides of it, golden lines, from the apex down the sides, running beneath the globe where it sat on its pillar, glowing, brightly and more brightly until she could see that they were actually lines graven into the globe, pressing down into its mirror-smooth surface. The lines darkened, deepened, turned black with a sudden cracking sound as of breaking glass. Then the sections began to fold outward, five of them, opening like a flower’s petals to the sky, crisp and hard at first, turning soft, beginning to droop over the pillar to disclose what sat within.

  

 Which was a star-shaped mound, one leg drooping over each opened petal, the center pulsating slowly as though breathing, the whole studded with small, ivory projections. As she watched, the thing began to draw itself upright, one limb rising, two more pushing upright, until what faced her was a five-pointed semblance of her own shape, two lower limbs, two upper ones with a protrusion between them containing what might be interpreted as a face. At least it had a slit in it which could be a mouth. Or could equally well be something—anything else.

  

 She waited. Nothing further happened. Taking a stance which she defined in her own mind as attentive, she tried once more. “Aged one. Most honorable and revered aged one. I cry for help.”

  

 The voice formed in her brain, not outside it, a whispery voice, like wind, or the slow gurgle of a stream over stones, without emphasis, constantly changing yet unchanging. “Who calls Ganver for help? Ganver who gives no help? Ganver who does not interfere?”

  

 “I was sent,” she said. “Agirul sent me.” There was no response to this. She tried again. “My name is Mavin. I am a shifter girl, from the world”—she waved vaguely behind her—“out there. The Ghoul Blourbast has stolen Ganver’s Bone.”

  

 There was nothing, nothing. Beyond the pillar she could see another of the little jewel cutters, or perhaps the same one, burrowing into a pile of stones at the side of a branching path. It nibbled and scurried, paying no attention to her or to the star-shaped creature which confronted her. Finally the voice shaped in her mind once more.

  

 “What is a Ghoul?”

  

 “A Ghoul—well, a Ghoul is a person with the Talent of dead raising. Not only that. Most Ghouls eat dead flesh. And they kidnap people and kill them. And Blourbast is particularly horrible, because it is said he fastens live people to the walls of his burrows and leaves them there forever, animating the bones. And ...”

  

 “Such a creature, how did it come by Ganver’s Bone?”

  

 “Proom had the Bone. Do you know Proom? No, probably not. Well, Proom is a shadowperson. It is he who had the—what would you say—the custody of Ganver’s Bone. But someone, someone very powerful, I think perhaps some one of you, that is of the Eesties, sent Proom on a journey, and he didn’t want to take the Bone. So he put it in a safe place—an old, sacred, guarded place. But Blourbast came riding, and he didn’t care whether it was sacred or not, so he took it. And the little people went to sacrifice themselves to get it back, but it didn’t do any good. He won’t give it back. And if he doesn’t they’ll all die of disease. Of ghoul-plague.” She ran out of words, unable to go on without a response. She did not know whether the thing before her had even heard her. Again she waited. Again it was long, long before the voice formed in her head.

  

 “It is not ghoul-plague. It is a disease of the shadowpeople.

  

 “Long before there was any such thing as Ghoul, there were shadowpeople.

  

 “Long before Ghoul ate shadowperson flesh, shadowpeople ate shadowperson flesh. Small creatures, beasts, with such aspirations, such longing for holiness. 

  

 “Ah. Sad. So sad, such longing for holiness. So it was Ganver came to them and made them a bargain. If they would stop eating flesh, Ganver would give them a Bone, a part of Ganver, a thing to call a note from the universal song that they might sing. And holiness would follow. In time. In forever. But you say the sickness is returned.”

  

 “We call it ghoul-plague, because Ghouls get it. Some of the shadowpeople were sick, but not with the plague.”

  

 “So. Then they have kept their bargain. How long? Do you know how long ago I bargained with Proom’s people?”

  

 She tried to think. What had Agirul said, that there had been no plague among the little people for what? A thousand years? More, perhaps? “A thousand years,” she said. “Since Proom’s many times great-grand-father. But they still do eat meat.”

  

 “True,” whispered the voice. “Their bodies require it. But they do not eat each other. That is good. Good. Thank you for coming. I will relish this news of the shadowpeople, for it has been a thousand years or more since I have seen them.”

  

 The petals on the pillar began to harden, to draw upward. Mavin cried out in a voice of outrage: “No. You can’t go. Don’t you understand, the Bone is in Blourbast’s hands. The little people believe they cannot cure the illness without it.”

  

 “They cannot,” said the voice unemotionally. “What matter is that? If they do not eat one another, they will not become sick with it.”

  

 “The Ghoul ate shadowpeople, the Ghoul became sick with it,” she cried. “And he has given the sickness to my brother, a boy, only a child. And others. Others who have done nothing wrong. Innocent people ...”

  

 “We do not interfere,” whispered the voice.

  

 “You did interfere,” she shouted, stamping her foot on the gravel so that it shrieked, kicking at the grass until it wailed beneath her feet. “You gave them the Bone in the first place. That’s interference. If you hadn’t given it to them, they’d all have died. Then they wouldn’t have been around for Blourbast to eat, and he wouldn’t have gotten sick, and Mertyn wouldn’t be lying in Pfarb Durim, dying, my own brother. You did interfere!”

  

 This time there was a long silence. One of the wheel things rolled up to the pillar, lowered itself onto four limbs and polished at the pillar with the fifth before standing up once more and rolling away. As it rolled, it made a whipping sound, like the wings of a crow, receding into the distance.

  

 “It is hard to do good,” the voice whispered.

  

 “Nonsense,” she muttered. “You have only to do it.”

  

 “Shhhh,” the voice hissed, sounding rather like Agirul. “Think. Ganver heard the music of the shadowpeople and saw them dying. Ganver longed to help them. Ganver gave them his Bone. Was that good? At first, perhaps. Then the Bone was stolen, the shadowpeople were sacrificed, now they are in danger of their lives once more—and so is another people who were not even there when the Bone was given. If the Bone had not been given, you have said what would have happened.”

  

 “They would have died,” she said, mourning. “They would all have died then.”

  

 “And their song with them. All their songs. The song of Ganver, the Song of Morning, the Song of Zanbee, the Song of Mavin Manyshaped.”

  

 “But if they die, the songs will die,” she argued. “We must save them. We must save Mertyn.”

  

 “A good thing. Of course. And what evil thing will come of that? Oh, persons of the world, why do you pursue the Eesties? Have we not yet learned to do nothing, not to interfere?”

  

 “It seems to me,” she said, “if you ever interfere at all, you just have to go on. You can’t just say, ‘Well, it isn’t my fault,’ and let it go at that. It is your fault. You admitted it. And aged one or not, you’ve just got to do something about it.”

  

 There was a feeling of sighing, a feeling beside which any other sigh which might ever be felt was only a minor thing, a momentary discomfort. This sigh was the quintessential sigh, the ultimate sigh, and Mavin knew it as she heard it. She had asked more than she had any right to do, and she knew that as well. Gritting her teeth, she confronted the drooping Eesty and said it again.

  

 “It’s up to you to fix it.”

  

 “Tell me,” whispered the voice, “what is to be done.”

  

 So she told, for the manyeth time, what was to be done. The armies of King Frogmott assembled to confront the armies of Blourbast. Blourbast himself led beneath the monuments on the road, settled there with his immediate retinue. The ritual—whatever that might be—conducted by the shadowpeople. The cure wrought—Mavin had no idea how; presumably the Eesty did, since it was the Eesty’s bone which was involved. Then, when the cure was wrought and Blourbast tried to leave, then the shifters would rise up about him from their disguise as stone and tree and earth, rise up and consume him, all but Ganver’s Bone. Which would be returned to the shadowpeople ...

  

 “Which will be returned to me ...” whispered the voice. “I did not intend it to be used in these games of back and forth. I am not a bakklewheep to be used in this way, cast between players in a Game I do not choose. Oh, I have been long asleep, Mavin Manyshaped, but I know of your Game world. Tell me, if I gave you my Bone, would your people cease their Game of eating one another as Proom’s people stopped their own?”

  

 She bowed her head in shame. “I do not know, aged one. Truly I do not know.”

  

 “No,” it said sadly. “You do not know. Perhaps in time. There are some of you who talk with some of us. Perhaps in time. Now I have interfered once, and my holiness is dwindled thereby. I may not take myself away from it all but must continue in the way my foolishness led me. So. We will come to your place of monuments, which is also my place of monuments—for they are my people as well—when the blue star burns in the horns of Zanbee. And later, Mavin Manyshaped, I will regret what I have done, and you must pray peace for me.”

  

 The thing came down from its pillar, all at once, so quickly that she did not see it move. It rolled, as the smaller creatures had rolled, and it made a music in its rolling, a humming series of harmonic chords which caught her up into them so that she could not tell where she was. She felt herself move, or the world move beneath her. It was impossible to tell which. There were stars overhead, and a sound of singing, and she heard Himaggery’s voice crying like a mighty horn.

  

 CHAPTER NINE

  

 It was dark. She could hear Himaggery shouting at someone, his voice carrying fitfully on the shifting wind which whipped her hair into her eyes. There were stars blooming above her, and Zanbee, the crescent moon, sailed upon the western edge of the sky. She searched for the blue star, finding it just below the moon. Soon it would hang upon the moon’s horns, or appear to do so, and she had no idea where the hours had gone since afternoon.

  

 She stared into the dark, making her eyes huge to take in the light, blinding herself at first on the arcing rim of fire which burned at one side until she identified it as the torches of King Frogmott’s army gathered on the high rim about Pfarb Durim, between her and the city. Soon her eyes and mind began to interpret what she saw, and she located the place she stood upon, a small hill just west of the road where the Strange Monuments loomed among lights which moved and darted, hither and thither, and from which the Wizard’s voice seemed to emanate.

  

 “The Agirul says they’ve left the place below. It will take them almost till midnight to get here. Help the shadowpeople with that cauldron. ...”

  

 She couldn’t see enough through the flickering lights to know what was going on. But the closer she came the more confused things became, and when she stood at Himaggery’s side while he fumed over some drawing in the dust, she knew less than she had to begin with. She laid a hand upon his shoulder and was surprised to feel him leap as though he had been burned.

  

 “Mavin,” he shouted at her. “You ... where have you ... they said you might not...” Then as she was about to make soothing sounds, he said more quietly “Sorry. Things have been a bit hectic. I had word that you probably wouldn’t make it back, and that you wouldn’t bring any of your kin to help. Except the fellow who brought the message, of course. Your thalan, is it? Handybast? Nice enough fellow. A bit too apologetic, but then it doesn’t seem that the Battlefox branch of your family has much to recommend it outside himself, so perhaps he has aplenty to apologize for.”

  

 “Plandybast came then,” she said in wonder. “I really didn’t think he would.” She leaned over the dirt where he had been draw­ing diagrams. “What are we doing? Have you changed the plan?”

  

 “Of course. Not once or twice, but at least six times. At first we couldn’t find a Herald, but then I managed to locate one I knew slightly. Subborned him, I suppose one might say, right out of Frogmott’s array.”

  

 “And you sent him to Blourbast.”

  

 “To the front door. What there is of it. Most of Poffle is underground, as you well know, and what shows above ground isn’t exactly prepossessing. Well, the fellow went off to Blourbast full of Heraldish dignity and made his move, cried challenge on the Ghoul to bring the amulet—that’s what we decided to call it, an amulet. Why let the Ghoul know what he’s holding?—to the Monuments at midnight tonight to assist in preparing a cure for the plague. We didn’t let on that we know he has the disease himself. The Herald just went on about honor and Gamesmanship and all the rest.”

  

 “Was there a reply?”

  

 “Not at first. We thought there’s wasn’t going to be, and I’d started to re-plan the whole thing. Then this woman came out. It must be his sister, the Harpy ...”

  

 “Pantiquod.”

  

 “Right. She came out and gave us a lot of double talk which meant that Blourbast would show up but that he didn’t trust us. So he would come with a retinue. That’s what she called it. A retinue. By that time it was getting on evening, and Proom showed up with the Agirul. Or rather Proom showed up and we found the Agirul hanging in a tree by the side of the road. Fortuitous.”

  

 “Fortuitous,” repeated Mavin, not believing it.

  

 “Among the three of us, we decided that ‘retinue’ probably means the entire army of Hell’s Maw as well as a few close kin and men sworn to the Ghoul. And about that time your thalan arrived to tell us you probably wouldn’t be coming if you weren’t here already. You’d left him a note or something?”

  

 “Or something, yes.”

  

 “Which meant I had to plan it again. And then Proom’s been busy with his kindred. Evidently this ritual hasn’t been performed for a thousand years, and there’s only a song to guide them in the proper procedures, so it’s been sing and run, run and sing every moment since dark. Now we’ve just received word that Blourbast and his retinue—we were right, it is the army—are on the road coming up from Hell’s Maw. So. Now here you are.”

  

 “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, starting to tell him about the Eesty, wondering why the Agirul and Proom had not already done so, only to find that she could say nothing about it at all. The words stuck. She thought them clearly, but her throat and tongue simply didn’t move. She did not choke or gasp or feel that she was being throttled. There was not any sense of pain, but the words would not come.

  

 Then for the first time she wondered about the Eesty and looked around for it. Nothing. Dark and stars and the flicker of torches: shouting, fragments of song from the area around the arches, nothing more. And yet the darkness was not empty. She could feel it boiling around her, something living, running its quick tentacles through her hair, its sharp teeth along her spine. She shivered with a sharp, anticipatory hunger, a hunger for action, for resolution, a desire to make something episodic out of the tumbled events of her recent past.

  

 “You’re forgiven,” he said distractedly. “Some day you must tell me all about it. But right now we’ve got to figure out how to accomplish everything that needs doing in this one final do.”

  

 She crouched beside his diagram. “Show me.”

  

 “King Frogmott’s army is here,” he said, retracing a wide circle just inside the line that was the arc of road outside Pfarb Durim. “From the cliffs edge south of the city, all along the inner edge of the road, curving around and then over to the cliff at the north side of the city. On high ground, all the way, able to see everything.”

  

 “Except a Wizard who may want to get out,” she remarked in a quiet voice, not expecting the hand he raised to stroke her face.

  

 “Except that,” he agreed in a satisfied voice. “There’s another line back a few leagues, one which encloses Pfarb Durim and Poffle, but those besiegers cannot see what is going on. Now, the road which comes up from Poffle to the top of the cliff is outside Frogmott’s lines, so Blourbast can bring his ghoulish multitude up and along toward the Monuments. The Agirul and I believe he will marshall his own army in a long array between him and King Frogmott’s men. He will want to be protected against the besiegers, for they have threatened anyone who comes out carrying the plague. Then, having protected himself against King Frogmott, he will bring a considerable group with him to the Monuments—to protect himself against whoever is here. The Herald challenged him in my name. Huld may have mentioned me to him. I don’t know who else he expects to find here, but he certainly won’t come alone.”

  

 “I was supposed to shift ... where he’d be.”

  

 “You were supposed to shift. Right. You and a dozen more just like you. Well, two of you just aren’t enough, that’s all. I had hoped we could make a very natural-looking setting, one he wouldn’t hesitate to sit himself down in comfortably, but with only two of you, what could we manage? A couple of rocks, trees?”

  

 “I’ve never tried a tree,” she said in a small voice. “Or a rock either. I haven’t had much time for practice.”

  

 “Rocks aren’t easy,” said a voice from behind them. “I hate to do them myself. Trees are easier, but they do take practice. I could probably show Mavin how in an hour or so. ...”

  

 “Plandybast.” She turned to him gladly. “I didn’t think you’d come. I really didn’t. I thought Itter would talk you out of it.”

  

 “Itter is always perfectly logical,” said Plandybast, rather sadly. “But she’s frequently wrong, and after a while I just get very tired of listening to her. The others haven’t been disillusioned, not yet, but the time will come. Until then I’ll just have to do what I think is right and let her fuss if she wishes. And she will.”

  

 “What are the shadowpeople doing?” she asked. “Is it anything we could help with?”

  

 “I think not,” said Himaggery. “They located an ancient cairn near the road and moved it to disclose a huge old cauldron underneath. They rolled that over to the middle of the road under the arches, dragged in a huge pile of wood for a fire, and now they’re out on the hills gathering herbs and blossoms and who knows what. Meantime they’ve assembled an orchestra all over the hills—I have never seen so many drums in my life—and what seems to be the greater part of several other tribes. For a creature that I have always considered to be mythical, it seems to be extremely numerous.”

  

 “I doubt we’d ever have seen them in the ordinary way of life,” Mavin said. “If it hadn’t been for Blourbast and the plague.”

  

 “And Mertyn,” he said, touching her face again. “And Mavin.”

  

 She flushed and turned away toward the dark to hide it. She wanted, didn’t want him to touch her again; wanted, didn’t want him to look at her in that particularly half-hungry fashion; wanted, didn’t want the time to wear on and things to happen which would take him from her side and throw them both into violent, unthink­ing action. “Why should I feel safer fighting Ghouls,” she asked herself, rhetorically, not seeking an answer, not wanting an answer.

  

 “You’ll have to give me something to do,” she said. “I can’t have run all this way just to sit and do nothing.”

  

 He sighed, looked for a moment older than his years as the firelight flickered across his face. She could imagine him as he would be at age forty, tall, strong, but with the lines deep between his eyes and at the sides of his mouth, lines of both laughter and concentration. And some of anger, she told herself. Some of anger, too. He said, “Whenever Blourbast and his crew get themselves settled, try to get close to him, as close as you can. Then when the cure is done or made or created, if you can do it without getting hurt—remember, there are no Healers closer than Betand—if you can do it without getting hurt, try to get the Bone. Then get away from him.”

  

 “You don’t want us to try to dispatch him?” asked Plandybast.

  

 “If there were a dozen of you, yes. With two of you, no. Just get the Bone and get out. The dispatching of Blourbast will have to wait for another time.”

  

 They sat, the three of them, staring down at the lines in the dirt, the curving arc of the road, the waving line of the cliffs edge, the x’s marking the army of the King. The Strange Monuments loomed beside them, and on the road the shadowpeople scampered and sang to one another, short bursts of music which sounded harsh and dissonant.

  

 “One of Proom’s people says the Ghoul is almost at the cliffs top,” said the Agirul from behind them. Mavin had not known it was there, and she tried to see it, but saw only the massed bulk of foliage against the lighter sky.

  

 “Who does he have with him?” asked the Fon.

  

 “In addition to the army, there is his sister and her twins, Huld and Huldra. Then there are a few guards, a Sorcerer, two Armigers, two Tragamors.”

  

 “And here, with us?”

  

 “Me,” said Himaggery. “And you two shifters. Proom and his people. The Agirul. And my friend the Herald. He is waiting in the trees to make whatever announcements may seem most useful.

  

 “Windlow?” she asked. “Mertyn?”

  

 “I haven’t been back in the city,” he said softly. “I don t know, Mavin. Believe me, Windlow will have done everything possible f or him.”

  

 “I know,” she admitted. “Except that it is hard to let someone else do it while I am out here, not knowing.”

  

 “We’d better get out of the light,” he said. “I’ll go down near the road. We found some logs to use as seats for Blourbast, arranged where we want him, in the middle of the road. We’ll try to get him there. Once he is there, do what you can ...”

  

 He left the two shifters, taking the torch with him. They sat for a moment silent, then Mavin said, “A log should be easier than a tree.”

  

 “It is,” Plandybast admitted. “Much.”

  

 “We couldn’t be much closer than to have him sitting on us.”

  

 “If the small ones do not make the cure ...” Plandybast said, “and he is sitting on us ...”

  

 “They’ll make it. Plandybast, I’ve seen them do wonderful things. Don’t doubt it for a moment.” And she drew him up to follow her down into the darkness of the road where the shadowpeople had lighted the fire beneath their cauldron and a pungent smoke poured into the night sky, making her dizzy yet at the same time less troubled. It was not difficult to become a log. She slutted once or twice, then simply lay there and let the smoke wreath her around, driven as it was by a downdraft of the fitful wind.

  

 She heard Huld’s voice first, a petulant whine, a sneering tone, “They have made a place for you, dear thalan. The seats are not what you are accustomed to, I fear. There is no velvet cushion.”

  

 “Hush, dear boy. I have no need for velvet cushions. Does one need a velvet cushion to witness a wonder? Hmmm? And are we not to witness a wonder tonight? The making of a plague cure? Who has heard of such a thing? The Healers will be frantic with embarrassment and envy. Not a bad thing, either. I am not fond of Healers.”

  

 Another voice, so like Huld’s that it might have been mistaken for his, yet higher, lighter. “Dear brother, dear thalan, indeed we would all dispense with cushions to see this thing. And to take—what may I say?—advantage of it.”

  

 “Be silent, girl,” said Pantiquod, following them down onto the road where they clustered around the logs with their guardsmen, all staring suspiciously into the darkness. “Say nothing you would not like to have overheard. The dark is all around us, and it trembles w ith ears.”

  

 “Of course, mother,” said the voice sweetly. “One would not wish to be overheard saying that a cure of the plague is of great i nterest to us.”

  

 “Your mother said hush,” grated the Ghoul. “Now I say to you hush, Huldra. You may think that child in you protects you from my displeasure, but I have no care for that. If you trouble me, girl, both you and the child may go into hell for all me.”

  

 “Not so quick, thalan,” purred Huld. “I am thalan to the child in her womb, you know. Mine own. And mine own child, too—as is the teaching of the High King, away there in the south—a child linked to me doubly if not to you at all. So, Blourbast, go quietly with my gentle sister or I will make your sickness seem a day’s walk in the sun.”

  

 “Let us all be still,” said Pantiquod. “We are here for a reason. Let the reason be manifest. I see nothing except fitful torches and scampering shadows. Is this a mockery?”

  

 “No mockery, madam,” came Himaggery’s voice from the dark. “The blue star moves towards the horns of Zanbee. The little people of the forests have lit their fires beneath the great cauldron. They will begin to sing soon. There will be drums, voices, manifestations. At some point in the ritual, I will call to you to strike the ... amulet you carry. Strike it then, and the cure will be made.

  

 “I will return in time. Until then, seat yourselves and do not disrupt what must occur.” They heard him moving away into the shadows.

  

 “Where will this cure be made?” asked Huldra, seating herself on Mavin’s back with a moue of discontent. “What form will it take?”

  

 “They have spoken of a cauldron,” said the Harpy Pantiquod. “Undoubtedly the cure will be therein. When it is made, we must move quickly to take it. If the cauldron is too heavy to be carried, then we will take what we can in our flasks and dump the rest upon the ground.”

  

 “How dreadful for Pfarb Durim,” said Huld. “They will not receive their portion.”

  

 “I have promised you Pfarb Durim,” said the Ghoul. “When it is empty.”

  

 “I am glad you remember that promise,” said Huld, fingering the dagger at his side. “It is a promise I hope much upon. There are some in that city who may not die of plague, and I wish to be first among them like a fustigar among the bunwits. They have not pleased me.”

  

 “Did the old Seer speak nastily to my dear brother?” the woman beside him drawled. “Did the little Wizard make him unhappy?”

  

 “Be still, girl. There are things I could do to you which would not affect the child, so do not count too much upon my forbearance. Hush. What is that?”

  

 The sound was of many drums throughout the hills near the road, drum heads roaring to the tumbling thump of a thousand little hands, like soft thunder far among mountains. Flutes came then, softly, a dawn birdsong of flutes, then gentle bells, music to wake one who had slept a long sleep.

  

 The fire beneath the cauldron blazed up, and they could see the tiny shadows which crossed before it, black against the amber light, some dragging more wood to the fire, others tossing their burdens into the cauldron. Steam rose from the cauldron to join the smoke of the fire, and this moist, woodsy mist waved back and forth across the road, wreathing the bases of the Monuments, seeming to soak into the crystalline material of which they were made, making them appear soft and porous. One could almost see the mists sucked up into them, the softness moving upward on each arch, out of the firelight into the high darkness.

  

 The smell of the mist reached them at the same time the voices began to sing, taking up the bell song and repeating it, close, far, close again, first the highest voices and then the deeper, again and again. A lone trumpet began to ride high upon the song, higher yet, impossibly treble above the singing, while some bass horn or some great stone windpipe blew notes almost below their hearing so that the ground trembled with it.

  

 The earth trembled, trembled, then moaned.

  

 Beside them the base of the Strange Monument shivered in the earth. The pedestal beneath it shifted, groaned, and then was still. Mavin created eyes in the top of her log shape and looked up. The arch was glowing green: diagonally across the width of it a dark line appeared, deeper with each moment. Then the sound of breaking glass cracked through the music and the top of the arch split in two lengthwise, each part coiling upward like a serpent to stand high above its base, each arch becoming two tapered pillars which waved in the music like reeds in wind.

  

 The watchers shivered. The Monuments danced, reaching toward one another across the road, beside the road, bowing and touching their tips, two great rows of tapered towers, dancing green in the night as the drums went on and on and the mists from the cauldron rose more thickly upon the shifting wind.

  

 “Keep your eyes on that cauldron,” hissed the Ghoul. “Move to capture it as soon as I strike the amulet.” The men behind him murmured assent even as they shifted uneasily, feeling the earth teeter beneath them.

  

 Now the contents of the cauldron began to glow, a pillar of ruby light rising out of the vessel toward the zenith. The singers had moved closer to the road, their voices rising now in an almost unbearable crescendo. Mavin held herself rigid, though she wanted to weep, feint, curl up where she lay into as tiny a space as she could. She heard the voice of Himaggery calling from the sidelines. “Be ready, Blourbast.”

  

 Then all that had gone before faded in a hurricane of sound, a storm of music, a shattering climax in which there were sounds of organs and trumpets and bells so huge that the world shivered. “Now, Blourbast!” came Himaggery’s voice, barely audible over the tumult, and the Ghoul held up the amulet and struck it with his dagger.

  

 One sound.

  

 One sound, piercing sweet in silence.

  

 Tumult over, singing over, all the terrible riot of drum and trumpet over, and only that one sound singing on and on and on into the quiet of night. The cauldron blazed up in response, the red light pouring out to spread like an ointment across the sky, into every face, onto every surface, high and low, hidden or visible, like water which could run everywhere, over the drawn battle lines of the armies, over the walls of Pfarb Durim, onto every roof, down every chimney, into every window and door, closed or open, through every wall. Only Mavin heard the whip, whip, whip as of great wings and only Mavin saw the huge, cloudy wheel flick through their midst in an instant, taking Ganver’s Bone with it and leaving the Ghoul standing, his mouth open, his hands empty except for the dagger he had used to strike that note.

  

 And Mavin knew why the Eesty had taken its Bone back again. It would not have done to leave that note in the hands of Gamesmen. Among the shadowpeople, perhaps, for they were attempting to be holy, though they failed from time to tune, but not among the Gamesmen.

  

 In the silent flicker of the distant fire, they saw the shadowpeople tip the cauldron over and let it empty itself on the roadway.

  

 The Ghoul roared, spitting curses. From the roadside, Himaggery said, “You need not threaten and bluster, Ghoul. The bargain was kept. You are cured.”

  

 And Huld’s voice, hissing with a scarce concealed fury, “And are those in Pfarb Durim cured as well?”

  

 “All,” said Himaggery. “All within reach of the light, and it spread as far as my eyes could see.”

  

 Huld turned on the Ghoul, dagger flicking in his hand, “Then you have not kept your promise, thalan. You have undone what you promised me.”

  

 “But, but...” blustered the Ghoul, the only words he had time to say, for the dagger stood full in his throat and the blood rushed behind it in a flood, soaking his chest and belly, spurting upon those who sat near him so that they recoiled, Mavin recoiled, becoming herself near the place that Himaggery stood, both to stand with shocked eyes while Huld drew his dagger out again and turned toward Himaggery with madness in his eyes.

  

 “Your fault, Wizard. You tempted him with this cure. Pfarb Durim would have been mine except for you.” And he came rushing toward Himaggery, dagger high, and Himaggery with no protection at all—save Mavin, before him, furious, suddenly taking the shape of another Gamesman, without thinking, without planning, so it was Blourbast stood before Huld’s onrush and roared into his face like some mighty beast with such ferocious aspect and horrible, bleeding gash of throat that Huld stopped, eyes glazed, screamed, and turned to stumble away into the night. The others, also, Pantiquod and Huldra and the guardsmen, frantic, overwrought, driven half mad by the music and then fully mad to see Blourbast’s body stand before them again.

  

 The shape dropped away. Mavin found herself standing bare in the roadway, covered with Blourbast’s blood, too weary to shift a covering for herself. She felt Himaggery’s cloak swing around her, his arms draw her close. A quivering voice asked, “Is it all right to change now?” and Himaggery replied, “Yes, Plandybast. It’s all over. You can unlog yourself.”

  

 “I’m glad there wasn’t any real violence,” said Plandybast. “I’ve never been able to handle violence.”

  

 “I’m glad, too,” said Himaggery, lifting her up and carrying her away to the comfortable shelter of the trees.

  

 “Is she all right?” asked the Agirul.

  

 “She’s covered with blood,” said Himaggery. “See if you can get someone to bring water.” Then he sat beneath the tree, cuddling her close in his arms. She could not remember being so held, not ever, not even by Handbright in the long ago. She sighed, a sigh very like the Eesty’s sigh, and let all of it fade away into dark.

  

 CHAPTER TEN

  

 When morning came, they went into Pfarb Durim. The armies of King Frogmott were no barrier. The sickness had been spreading among the besiegers, and the cure was as evident to them as it was to those in the city. Indeed, when Mavin and Himaggery passed, they were already taking down the tents and putting out the fires, preparatory to the long march back to the marshes of the upper Graywater, to the northeast.

  

 They found Mertyn still in the room in which they had left him, Windlow still by his side, though both were sound asleep on the same bed, and Himaggery forbore to wake them. Instead, he ordered a room for Mavin, and a bathtub, and various wares from clothiers and makers of unguents. By the time Mertyn wakened, she was more mistress of herself than she had ever been in Danderbat keep or since.

  

 All of this had gone to make her a little shy, not least by the fact that she knew things the others did not, and could not tell them. She had been unable to speak of them even to the Agirul when she had wakened beneath his tree that morning. She had tried, and the Agirul had opened one slitlike eye to peer at her as though it had never seen her before and would not see her again.

  

 “Many of us,” it said at last, “remember things that cannot be shared. Sometimes we remember things that did not really happen. Does that make them less true? An interesting philosophical point which you may enjoy thinking about at odd times.” Then it had gone back to sleep, and she had given up. She did not for one moment believe that she remembered a thing which had not happened, but she was realist enough to know that it would be her own story, her own memory, and only that.

  

 Now she sat at Mertyn’s side in her luxurious room—he had been moved as soon as he woke—looking out across the cliff edge to the far west. “Schlaizy Noithn is there,” she said to him. “South­west, there beyond the firehills. Perhaps Handbright is there.”



  

 “There was more to her leaving Danderbat keep than you told me, wasn’t there?” He was still pale and weak from not having eaten for some days, but his eyes were alert and sparkling. “Are you going to tell me?”

  

 “Perhaps someday,” she said. “Not now.”

  

 “That Wizard is in love with you,” he said. “I can tell. Besides, he was talking to Windlow about it.”

  

 She didn’t answer, merely sat looking at the horizon. The sea was there, beyond the firehills. She wondered if she could find her way back to Ganver’s Grave. She wondered if Ganver’s Grave had not been moved elsewhere.

  

 “He’ll probably ask you to go with them.”

  

 “Where are they going?”

  

 “Windlow has a school at the High Demesne, near the Lakes of Tarnoch. That’s far to the south, west of Lake Yost.”

  

 “That’s right,” she mused. “Valdon is the King’s son. And Boldery. Windlow is to educate them both.”

  

 “Not Valdon,” Mertyn went on, a little cocky, as though he had had something to do with it. “Valdon and that Huld got along so well that Windlow had words with Valdon about it, and that made Valdon mad, so he took the servants and went riding out at dawn. He says Windlow may school Boldery all he likes, but Valdon will have none of it.”

  

 “That’s too bad,” she said. “If he follows Huld, it will be the death of him.” She turned to find the boy’s eyes fixed on her in wonder.

  

 “That’s what Windlow says. He had a vision about it,” he said.

  

 “It doesn’t take a vision. Anyone would know. Huld is walking death to anyone who comes near him. Well, he’s gone, for a time at least.”

  

 “And the plague is cured. And Windlow says so long as no one eats shadowpeople—yech, I wouldn’t—no one will ever get the plague again. You don’t think anyone ever will, do you?”

  

 She shrugged. “Many strange things happen, Mertyn, brother boy.”

  

 There was a light knock on the door. She opened it to let Windlow and the Fon come in, Boldery close behind them bearing a wrapped gift. ”I brought it for Mertyn,” he said. “Really, it’s for us both.” Then, “It’s a game,” he announced proudly to Mertyn. “I came to play it with you.”

  

 “The Seer and I thought—that is, we felt the boys might like to play together for a time while we have a meal downstairs.” The Fon held out his hand to her, but she only smiled at him, using her own hands to gather her skirts. They had not been much for skirts at Danderbat-keep. She rather liked the feel, the luxurious sway of the heavy material at her ankles and the warmth around her legs, but they still took a bit of managing.

  

 “I’d like that.” She smiled at them both, going out the door and preceding them down the stairs. There was a table set for them on a paved terrace beside a fountain, and the servants of the Mont were busy in attendance. There was fruit and wine already on the table. She sat and stared at it, smiling faintly, not seeing it.

  

 “Mavin.” She did not reply. “Mavin, what are you thinking about? Are you troubled by the Ghoul’s death?” She looked up to find Windlow’s eyes fixed on her, his face full of concern.

  

 Briskly she shook her head, clearing it, giving up the dreamy fog she had moved in since waking. “I’m sorry, Seer,” she said. “Today has been ... today has been like a dream. It is hard to wake up.”

  

 “It’s the first time in days you have not had to do something outrageous,” he replied, spooning thrilp slices into his mouth. “Quite frankly, it’s the first such day for me, too, in a very long while. Prince Valdon was not an easy traveling companion. Huld was worse, of course, but not by much. I understand he made off into the woods?”

  

 “No doubt he is back in Poffle by now,” she said. “His sister is pregnant. By him, he says. Their mother the Harpy is with them. I would say Huld is master in Hell’s Maw now.”

  

 “I had hoped the place was empty.”

  

 “Not now, not soon,” she said. “Though it is bound to come, one day.”

  

 “Aha,” he laughed. “So now you are a Seer.”

  

 “No.” She frowned. “Now I am beginning to learn to use my brain.” She laughed in return. “It is like Seeing in one way. It, also, can be wrong from time to time.”

  

 The Fon sat while they talked, watching her hungrily, eating little. When the waiters had brought fresh bread and bits of grilled sausage, he said, “Mavin, will you be going to Battlefox keep, now that you have been there once and seen the people?”

  

 “No. No, our thalan, Plandybast, is a good fellow, as you yourself said, Fon. But that is not what I want for Mertyn. Mertyn has Talent, you know. Beguilement. He has had it since he was a fifteen-season child. It is a large Talent, and he must learn to manage it. They could do nothing for him in Battlefox save savage him and make him vicious with it. No. He must have a good teacher.” She was looking at Windlow as she said it, half smiling. “I spoke with him about it, and he told me what teacher he would prefer. Of course, I cannot pay much in the way of fees.”

  

 “I will pay the fees,” choked the Fon. “In return for saving my life, Mavin. Huld would have killed me.”

  

 “He would have tried. I think you might have stopped him quite successfully.”

  

 “And you, Mavin?” asked Windlow, quietly, softly, like a child trying to capture a wild bunwit without scaring it. “You?”

  

 “Will you come with Mertyn?” The Fon, less wary, too eager.

  

 “No,” she said.

  

 “No? Never?”

  

 She shook her head, biting her lip over an expression which might have been part smile. “I did not say never. I only said no, I will not come with Mertyn.” She folded her napkin as she had seen other diners do, reached out to take their hands, one on each side.

  

 “I am Mavin of Danderbat keep? What is a Mavin of Danderbat keep? What shape is it? What color is it? What does it feel and know in its bones? Does it fly? Crawl? Does it grow feathers or fur?

  

 “What places has it seen? What Assemblies has it attended? You who are not shifters do not know what an assembly is, and neither really does a shifter girl who has not left her keep to go into the wide world.

  

 “What is in Schlaizy Noithn? For me?

  

 “No, Fon. I will not come with Mertyn now. Though I may, some day. Some day.”

  

 And she would not let them try to dissuade her, nor would she let the Fon be near her with the two of them alone, for she knew what her blood would do and how little her head could manage it. Instead, a day or two later, she stood beside the parapet with him, with Boldery and Mertyn playing at wands and rings nearby, and told him farewell.

  

 “My sister is out there somewhere. I would like to find her, see if I can help her. She may need my help. As for you, Fon, you do not need my help, not now.”

  

 “Do not call me Fon. You named me before. I am the Wizard Himaggery, and I will be that Wizard until you name me else.”

  

 “The Fon is dead.” She laughed shakily. “Long live the Himaggery.”

  

 “So be it.” He was not laughing at all.”Will you make a bargain with me, Mavin?”

  

 “What sort of bargain?”

  

 “If you go out into the world, and if the world is exciting, and you forget me, and time spins as time does, and the world passes as the world does, will you return to this place twenty years from now and meet me here if you have not seen me before then?”

  

 “Twenty years? So long? Do you think I will not seek my friends out long before that?”

  

 “Well, and if you do, better yet. But will you promise me, Mavin?”

  

 “I’ll be old, wrinkled.”

  

 “It will not matter. Will you promise me?”

  

 “Oh, that I’ll promise!” She laughed up into his unlaughing face.

  

 “On your honor?”

  

 “On my honor. On my Talent. On my word.”

  

 “Twenty years?”

  

 “Twenty years.” She turned away, biting her lip, afraid that her calm might break and the tears spill over. “Now. I am going west, my friend. I have made my farewells to Mertyn.” She reached out to stroke his face as he had done so many times to hers, then turned down the stairs and away down the street of the city, without looking back.

  

 Windlow came to him where he stood, looking after her. “Did she make the promise?”

  

 “Yes.”

  

 “Did she know it was a Seeing of mine?”

  

 “I didn’t tell her.”

  

 “Does she know she will not see you again until then?”

  

 “I didn’t tell her,’* he said. “I could not bear to say it. I can not bear to think of it now.” 

  

 The road south of Pfarb Durim is arched by great, strange monuments. Mavin Manyshaped walked that way, seeing the arches with new eyes. She felt eyes from the branches of the trees watching her pass. On the hills, voices added to a song, spinning it into a lazy chant which made small echoes off the Strange Monuments, almost like an answer.

  

 As for her, her eyes were fixed on the horizon where Schlaizy Noithn lay, and the western sea. There was something in her mind of wings. And something of places no other eyes than hers had ever seen. “I am the servant of the Wizard Himaggery,” she sang, quoting the Mavin of a younger time. “Perhaps,” she sang, making a joyful shout at the sky. “But not yet!”

  

 THE FLIGHT OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED

  

 CHAPTER ONE

  

 From her perch on the side of the mainroot, Beedie could lean back at minor peril to her life and look up the Wall, the mainroot dwindling away in perspective until the solid, armspan width of it had shrunk down to a mere hair’s breadth line at the rim of the chasm. So much height above was dizzying, and she slapped at the right piton to hear the comforting thwunging sound which indicated it was solidly set. Setting her spurs more deeply into the bark, she thrust back against the strap to look up once more at the light fa lling through the leaves of the flattrees, huge even at this distance, a ten-day climb from the rim. She didn’t want to miss the noonglow, that vivid, emerald moment when the light came directly down through the leaves, making the whole chasm shine with the same verdant light it now shed on the western, morning-light, wall. Sometimes birds could be seen in the noonglow, enormous white ones, messengers—so the Birders said—of the Boundless.

  

 It was in the noonglow that the birdwoman had come, slanting down in the green rays, white plumes streaming from the edges of her wings, to alight on the bridge rail of Topbridge, almost within the arms of Mercald the Birder. And Mercald had had her ever since, ever since he caged her that day only to find a girl in the cage the following morning. It had been either bird or girl every day since, with no one able to say for sure what it meant or why she had come in the first place. Still, the Birder caste had gained more status from that event than they had in all the history of the bridges—so much so that there was serious consideration of elevating them to the same high status as the Bridgers, Beedie’s own caste. Not that she cared. “Not that I care,” she advised herself. “It makes no difference to me,” knowing that it made considerable difference to some. There were three Bridger families in the chasm, and while the Beeds and the Chafers were not jealous of caste status, the Banders certainly were. She would bet that old Slysaw Bander would do everything in his power to prevent any Birder being considered his equal. “Thank the Boundless he isn’t the eldest,” she reflected. “If old Slysaw were the eldest, the whole chasm would regret it.”

  

 Judging noonglow to be some time off yet, she dug in her spurs and began climbing upward; chuff, heave, chuff, heave, chuff. The roll of measuring cord at her belt had unreeled almost to its end. Chuff, heave, chuff. Left, right, heave the strap, left, right, heave the strap. The measuring cord began to tug. She leaned out on her strap once more, judging how close she had come to her starting mark. Immodest self-congratulations. Within an arm’s reach; not bad. She began to set pitons on the mark, right and left. Might as well set them deep. She would be back to this place with others of the Bridgers soon, getting ready to set the lines, tackle and winches. Topbridge had become crowded, too crowded, many thought, and the elders wanted the bridgetown widened. Even from this distance she could hear the sounds of the crowd from Topbridge, cries from the market, the rasp of a saw from the middle of the bridge where the Grafters House stood, hammers banging on anvils. She took up her own hammer, concentrating on the job. When the pitons were set deeply she leaned on her strap once more, waiting for the noonglow.

  

 High above the bridgetowns the rim of the chasm was edged with flattrees, wider than they were high, one set of roots anchoring the trees to the rock of the plain, another set dropping down the chasm wall into the dark pit of the bottom with its unseen mysterious waters. Here and there the mainroots bulged into swollen, spherical water-bellies, sole source of water for the bridge people. At intervals the mainroots sent out side roots, smaller though still huge, which grew horizontally along the wall before plummeting downward. The side roots put out ropey, smaller roots of their own, and the ropey roots were heavily furred in hair roots, the whole gigantic mass curtaining the sides of the chasm like a monstrous combed pelt, a matted shag of roots so dense that none of the chasm wall could be seen. In shadow, the roots appeared dark and impenetrable, but now in the emerald light of glorious noonglow the shaggy mass blazed out of shadow in jeweled greens as bright as the high glowing leaves, each strand an individual shining line. A chorus of floppers began to honk somewhere in the mass; flocks of birds from the distant rim to circle in the light like devotees circling the altar of the Boundless. All the noises of Topbridge ceased—the other cities were too far down to be heard except as a murmur—the sound of the bell and the call to prayer coming from the Birder’s tower in a thin, cutting cry, sharp as broken glass.

  

 Below her right foot she could see the Bridger house of Topbridge and the bridge itself, wide and solid, diminishing into a long wedge stretching across the chasm to the far wall, 2000 paces away. On either side of it were nets looking like lace, dotted with the fallen flattree leaves they were put there to catch.

  

 Below her left foot she could see the narrower wedge of Nextdown, too tiny to seem real, and beyond it to the left, up-chasm, the thin line of Midwall. Down there somewhere lay Bottommost, barely visible, shining sometimes at noonglow as the merest thread. Potter’s bridge and Miner’s bridge were up-chasm, hidden by the bulk of Topbridge, but she could see Harvester’s far off to her right, just at the place the chasm began to turn away west. Seven cities of the chasm. And the broken one above. And the lost one below. The lost one which had disappeared, so it was said, all in one night into the depths of the chasm together with all its people and all its fabled treasure—punished, the Birders said, because of some insult to the Boundless. Lately, though, there had been talk of other reasons, perhaps other bridgetowns in jeopardy—talk of something down in the depths which threatened them all. She made a religious gesture, a ritual shiver at the thought of the lost bridge, then put it out of mind.

  

 The Birder had finished calling prayers. Already the glow had moved from morning wall to evening wall. Time to get on with the task.

  

 She had begun the job the day before by climbing the great mainroot which supported Topbridge in order to measure it from midpoint to the place it left the wall in its long catenary. She had started early in the morning, shivering a little in the mists at the edge of Topbridge commons as she fastened on her belt and spurs. None of the Bridgers had been out and about yet. She had touched the bell outside the Maintainer’s door as she came by, and a ‘Tainer had come running—or giving that appearance. Hairroot Chafer gave as his opinion that ‘Tainers were bred for slowness, like the slow-girules the Harvesters used to gather root nodules, and only gave the impression of running by leaning forward, wherever they went—to give her a cup of nodule broth and a crisp cake of wall moss.

  

 “A fine morning, Bridger.” It was the Maintainer called Roges, a tall, strong man, who seemed often to be the one available when Beedie needed something.

  

 “Fine enough,” she had answered shortly. It did not do, she had been told, to become too friendly with the Maintainers. Pity. This one seemed to have good sense and he was not slow, no matter what Hairroot Chafer said. “I seem to be about the business early.”

  

 “It was the Birder feast last night,” the Maintainer murmured, looking politely away while she finished the broth. “To discuss the elevation of the Birder caste. Everyone drank a great deal. You had not yet returned from the mainroot, Bridger.” Though he did not breach courtesy, she could tell he was curious about that. She toyed with the idea of making up some story to keep the ‘Tainers occupied in myth-building for a day or two—everyone knew they were frightfully superstitious—but her sense of fairness prevented.

  

 “I broke a spur, ‘Tainer. Unfortunately, I also broke the strap. I had a spare spur, as what Bridger would not, but not a spare strap, and it took a little time to braid one out of root hair.” She was a little embarrassed at his look of concern. A broken strap was nothing. “True, I was late returning. Was it you put the meat and moss cake by my bed?”

  

 He nodded. “I saw you had not returned. It is difficult to sleep if one is hungry.”

  

 “And difficult to sleep if a hungry Bridger comes hammering on your door,” she said, grinning. Roges must have been thinking of his own sleep as much as of hers. She handed him the cup, checked the fastening on her belt, then began to climb the side root. The great mainroot of the city was only a little above her head at this point.

  

 “May the roots support you as they do the city,” the ‘Tainer called from below, looking up after her for longer than necessary before moving away toward his house. Beedie did not reply. Getting from the side root to the mainroot took a bit of tricky maneuver, and she wanted her attention on her work. Once on the top of the mainroot, she fastened the end of her measuring cord to the root just over the bulge that marked the center point and then began to walk along the root toward the evening-light wall, slightly uphill.

  

 When the curve grew steeper she threw her strap around the root, dug in her spurs and started to climb, the measuring cord unreeling from its container at her waist. It was a good climb, steeper the closer to the wall she came, higher and higher above the bridgetown, until at last she could reach out and touch the wall through the tangle of rope roots and hairs. She marked the place.

  

 Now she had to locate a new mainroot, one straight and supple, with no soft spots or water-bellies, and measure it downward from a place on the wall even with her mark, her own white-painted signs which showed bright even against the shadow. She had spent the rest of the day prospecting among the likely mainroots for the best possible one as close to the existing bridge as possible. That had been yesterday’s work.

  

 Today she had started early again, climbing to the mainroot she had selected and marking it carefully. She fastened her measuring cord at that point, then climbed down as she checked each arm-length of the root for imperfections. Sometimes a mainroot would look solid, with unblemished bark, but there would be soft spots hidden away. One tapped with the hammer while listening for the telltale dullness, the soggy sound which would hint at rot. One tapped and listened, tapped and listened, and then one prayed anyhow, for there were rots set so deep no Bridger could find them except by luck and the help of the Boundless. The root she had chosen seemed good throughout its length. She had fastened her cord at the bottom and climbed back up the root, measuring once more to come to her present perch. “Measure twice, cut once,” she told herself wearily. Bridger youngsters were reared on the story of Amblebee Bridger who measured once, cut once, and found he had cut too short the only mainroot near enough to use. “Measure twice, cut once.” Well, she had measured twice, and tomorrow she would start preparing for the cut. She thwapped the pitons with her hand one final time, then started the climb down. On the far side of the chasm, Byle Bander should have completed his own measure­ment today. Likely he would be preparing to cut soon as well.

  

 After they were cut, the two great roots would be hauled up, the cut ends rising, coming closer and closer in the middle of the chasm until they almost touched. Then one end would be shaped into a socket, the other into a join, the join would be doused with plant glue, the two would be hauled together and secured with lines while they grew together. In a couple of seasons the join would be callused over, bulging a little, stronger than the mainroot itself.

  

 She hoped Byle Bander would cut his mainroot long enough to make a good socket. Last time he hadn’t left enough to allow chopping away all the wood they had set hooks into, and roots made a better join if all the hook-damaged wood was cut away before socketing. Last time had only been a side root, one meant to carry a footbridge and stairs between Topbridge and Nextdown. It hadn’t had to carry much weight. Still—it would have been better to cut a little longer. And a mainroot, one meant to carry a city, well——she just hoped he cut it long enough. It wouldn’t do to suggest it to him. Though Byle Bander had received his tools and titles in the same season Beedie had, to hear him talk he’d been rootwalking two lifetimes at least. Any thought of Byle Bander made her uncomfortable and brought back a memory of the summer that the root broke, one she would rather not have recalled.

  

 The summer the root broke, Beedie had been about ten, living in the Bridger House on Nextdown with her father, Hookset, her mother, Rootwalker, and assorted aunts, uncles, cousins and remoter kin. Uncle Highspurs was the eldest Bridger on Nextdown, which made the Beed family head of caste and main occupiers of Bridgers House. The other Bridger family on Nextdown was the Bander family who said they preferred to live by themselves in a wallhouse at the far, evening-light, side of the chasm. They had moved up from Midwall, some said, though others thought it was from Bottommost itself, and they did not talk as the Nextdowners did. There were only half a dozen Banders in the family: Slysaw and his wife, two grown sons, one old aunt and a boy Beedie’s age, Byle. There were known to be many more members of the Bander family at Topbridge, and still more at Miner’s bridge, but the family at Nextdown was neither numerous nor considered very important. Beedie thought about that sometimes, how common and unimportant the Banders had seemed.

  

 The elders had decided to expand Nextdown on the up-chasm side. The discussions about it had gone on for a long time, at least a season, with a good deal of exploration among the mainroots to locate proper candidates to carry the new part of the bridgetown. Beed had even been allowed to try her own little spurs up and down the roots, being shown the water-bellies and how to find soft spots, l earning how to judge the direction of side roots. Both the first and second pair of support roots had been located, and the first pair was due to be cut, morning-light side first, then the evening-light side. The Beed family had made the decisions, but they’d invited old Bander, him they called Slysaw, to be part of the cutting crew. He’d told them no thank you very much, but his family had planned to visit kin downstairs at Potters’ bridge that day and some days to follow.

  

 “Besides, you Beeders have plenty hands,” the man had said, sneering a little, the way he always did. “Mighty prolific family, the Beeders. You’ve got hands aplenty. Just take Highspurs and Hookset and a few uncles and you’ve got the job done in a jiffy.” Then he and his family had gone off to the stairs, seeming eager to make the two-day climb it would take with the old woman, though the younger ones might have made it in a day, going down.

  

 “Well,” said Beedie’s dad. “We offered, ‘Walker. You heard me make the offer. The old fart won’t cooperate worth a flopper’s honk. We try and make work for him to earn his space and he goes to visit kin. We don’t make work for him and he complains to the elders we’re shutting him out. Don’t worry what would satisfy the Bander family, tell true, and I’m about tired of trying to find out.”

  

 Beedie remembered it, all of it, the conversation around the hearth where the deadroot fire gleamed and the ‘Tainers were stirring the soup pot. Next morning six of the Beeds, including Uncle Highspurs and Beedie’s parents, went down-root to make the cut, and that was the last anyone saw of them, ever. Hookset and Rootwalker. Uncle Cleancut, Uncle Highspurs, Cousin Rootcutter, Cousin Highclimb, the one who had gone all the way to the rim and brought back most of a fresh leaf from a flattree to astonish them all with the color of it when she unfolded it and it covered the bridgetown from side to side.

  

 All the elders of the family were gone, including the eldest Bridger. They had started the cut right enough, but seemingly the root had broken, broken away while they were working, and carried them all to the bottom, into the dark and mystery of the Bounded, among the rejected dead but without the ceremony of the flopper-skin kites, the memorial clothes. Six of them, gone, gone with all the tools and the hooks and the Unes. All but one rootsaw that Aunt Six found wedged in the cut and brought back to Beedie, for it had been her mother’s.

  

 “Something wrong there, Beedie,” she had mourned. “That root is all black up inside, as though it had been burned. Looky here at what I found. .. .” She had shown the black lumps. “Charcoal. I took that right out of the root at the back, next to the wall, down a little lower than they started the cut. Oh, from the cut side it looks solid, but from the back, it’s only a shell ...”

  

 “Daddy wouldn’t have cut burning wood,” Beedie had objected. “Mother wouldn’t. It isn’t safe.”

  

 “Oh, no, child, they wouldn’t have done it. Not if they’d known. If it was burning up inside when they got there there’d be no smoke to smell. Not until the saw cut through to the center, where the fire was, and then the smoke ...” She didn’t need to say anything more. Greenroot smoke was lethal. Everyone knew that.

  

 A day later, Beedie had put on her spurs and climbed down against all custom and allowances, for she was too young to be allowed on a mainroot by herself. Still she went, chuff and heave until she thought her arms would drop off, to come at last to the end of the mainroot and see for herself. Someone had been there in the meantime. Someone had chopped away all the char with an adze, leaving only clean root, but Beedie went on down a side root and found pieces of the char caught in the root hairs, back near the wall. She looked down, sick and dizzy from a climb considerably above her strength, seeing not far below her the stair to Potter’s bridge. It would have been easy to climb onto the stair from the mainroot. Easy to get to the mainroot from the stair, come to that. Easy. She cut the thought off. Why would anyone burn a mainroot? Greenroot made poisonous smoke. Deadroot was always dried for a long time before burning. Besides, Nextdown needed that root. Meddling with it was unthinkable, so she resolutely did not think it.

  

 The Potter’s bridge stairs were so close, so easy in comparison to the long climb upward on spurs that she almost decided to get back to Nextdown that way, but something dissuaded her. Afterward, it was hard to remember what the reason had been, but she connected it to the return of the Bander family that night. Nothing was the same after that. Slysaw was now the eldest Bridger on Nextdown, which meant he held Bridgers House. He wasn’t the most even-handed of holders, either, though elders weren’t supposed to play favorites, and it wasn’t long before the r emaining Beed cousins were moving up to Topbridge or down to Potter’s or Midwall. Finally, there had been only Beedie and Aunt Six left, and when old Slysaw told Aunt Six she had to move out of her old rooms because he meant to give them to a Bander cousin from Midwall, Aunt Six decided to leave. The two of them moved up to Topbridge next day, carrying what they could on their backs and leaving the rest for the Banders. “Ill-wished on them,” said Aunt Six. “Every table and chair ill-wished on them, and may those who sit there have the eternal trots.”

  

 On Topbridge the Bridgers were more mixed; there were some Banders, true, but there were more Seeds and more Chafers and plenty of housing for them all. The Bridgers House was held by Greenfire Chafer—who was killed soon after, some said by a rogue flopper — and Beedie and Aunt Six were given rooms in the Bridgers House at the morning-light end of the bridge right away. Then Beedie got on with her schooling. Still, every now and then she would wake in the chasm night to the sound of floppers honking in the root mat, half dreaming about hiding on the rootwall, lumps of charcoal in her hands, looking up at the adze-cut end of the mainroot while hearing from below that phlegmy chuckle as Slysaw Bander came climbing up the stairs.

  

 And now it was a Bander again, Slysaw’s son Byle, come to work on Topbridge, cutting the roots too short, putting his hands on Beedie every chance he got, and bragging as though he were a Firstbridger himself. Beedie wondered, not for the first time, if she and Aunt Six moved to Bottommost whether they might escape from Banders once and for all.

  

 The bridgetown grew larger and louder as she climbed down toward it, chunk, chunk, chunk, the spurs biting into the bark. She felt lucky to have found a mainroot right where it was wanted, with good, clean length and no water-bellies. Sometimes, so she had heard, there were no suitable mainroots within a great distance of the existing bridge. Then it was necessary to build elsewhere, or haul a distant root closer with hooks and ropes, a procedure which took half a lifetime and was as deadly as it was dull. Well, it wouldn’t be necessary. As one of the youngest Bridgers, prospecting had been assigned to her, and she had found a good root. That one and the one Byle Bander had found would make up the first pair. After the haulers were started, she’d have to start looking for her half of the second pair. From what the elders had said, this could be a four or five pair job. They wanted the expansion built wide, they said. Enough to absorb all the growth Topbridge might make for the next several lifetimes. Of course, to hear Aunt Six tell it, elders were always like that, always planning more than other people could build. Since the elders didn’t actually have to do the job, it was always easy to plan large.

  

 She amused herself going over the steps it would take to make the cut on the morrow, how the Bridgers would ring the root with hatchets, then fit the loop saw into the groove, two of them braced against the root as they pulled alternately, cutting through the main-root until the whole massive weight of it fell away into the chasm with roaring echoes which seemed to go on forever. It would be the first town root Beedie had helped cut, but she well remembered the sound from the time the root fell at Nextdown. What happened to the roots that fell, she wondered? Did they end up propped against the chasm wall? Or fallen over into the bottom river? Did they rot? Or dry? Did floppers build nests in them? No matter, really. They ended up far below Bottommost, and whatever might happen below Bottommost could not be reckoned with at all. Except, she reminded herself, for whatever this new worry was. Though whether that was coming up from below Bottommost was anyone’s guess.

  

 After cutting the root, the Bridgers would bore hook holes in the end of it, set the great hardwood hooks in place, then run rope from the hooks back and forth through the tackle and across the chasm to the hooks set deep in the other root end there. After which everyone on Topbridge would spend a span of their days hauling at the windlass. Everyone, that is, but the Bridgers.

  

 The Bridgers would be making a detailed chart of every side root on the mainroots, every bud, every ropey growth. Once the mainroot was hauled into its long supporting curve, the Bridgers would use many of the verticals hanging from it to support the base of the new bridge. There would have to be other verticals reaching all the way to the distant Bottom and its nourishing waters if the mainroot was to be kept alive and healthy. Still other side roots would be needed for the stairs which were planned to link Topbridge directly to Potter’s bridge, replacing the current link by way of Nextdown. Any side roots that didn’t fit the plan would have to be trimmed away as they budded; otherwise the mainroot would turn into an unmanageable tangle which could never be maintained properly.

  

 “Hey, skinny girl,” came a call from below. She looked down to see Byle Bander leaning from the bridge rail, staring up at her with the half sneer he always wore. “Hey, Beedie, slow-girule. What are you doing, girl? Harvesting nodutes?”

  

 There were several slow-girules in the roots nearby, their hooked hands tight around the side roots, moving now and then to clip root nodules from the root with the sharp edges of their claws, like scissors. One just below her had a pouch almost full, and she whispered to it, “Nice giruley. Give us? Give us, hmmm?”

  

 “Hnnn,” it growled at her, half in complaint. “Hnnno. Minnnne.” *

  

 “Ah, come on, giruley. Give us one little root mouse to tide us until supper time. One little juicy one. Hmmm?” She reached out to scratch the creature in the one place its own claws could not reach, the middle of its back. The whine turned into a purr, and the creature handed her a green, furry nodule. She leaned against her belt once more to peel it with her Bridger’s knife. Anything for delay’s sake. She didn’t want to descend with Byle there.

  

 “The Harvesters’ caste will be fining you, Beedie,” Byle Bander called. “You know you’re not supposed to fool with the ‘rulies.”

  

 “I’m not fooling, I’m hungry,” she replied, her mouth half full of the juicy, crunchy root nodule. “I could have picked it myself.” If she had behaved in accordance with the rules, she would have picked it for herself. It was uncastely for a Bridger to receive food except from a Maintainer’s hands, though the rules did permit harvesting from the roots if one was kept past meal time. The rules did not allow Bridgers to invade Harvesters’ caste by taking food from the slow-girules, however, and Beedie flushed. Though it was something all the Bridgers did from time to time, it was precisely the kind of thing Byle Bander would make an issue of, or harass her about until she would be heartily sorry for having done it. He liked to couple his attempts at fondling with threats, and neither were welcome. His presence on the walkway below her made her uncomfortable. Still, delaying any longer wouldn’t help. She finished the nodule and wiped her hands on her trousers, moving on down the root to the edge of the bridge. Bander reached out a hand to her, which she ignored. He had the habit of pulling one off balance and then laughing, or, worse, grabbing parts of her she didn’t want grabbed.

  

 As she stepped onto the bridge, she saw a group of Bridgers striding toward her at the same time she saw the expression of amused superiority on Byle Bander’s face. All of the Bridgers in the group were Banders, interesting in itself. What were they up to?

  

 She waited little time for an answer. One of the Bridgers, a ruddy, fussy little man called Wetwedge, bustled up, peered at her as though he had never seen her before, then said,”You getting ready for the cut, girly?”

  

 “That’s what I’ve been doing,” she replied, wondering what this was all about. Certainly it was no chance encounter. It had the feeling of a delegation.

  

 “Not today, girly. No. Big business, this. Got to have it checked at least twice, you know. Can’t cut until we check it twice.”

  

 “I did,” she said, amazed at his open-faced stupidity. What did the man think? That she was witless?

  

 “No, no. I mean you got to have it checked by someone else. Gotcher measuring cord?”

  

 Something deep inside Beedie sat up and looked around with sharp eyes and a sharper nose. Something smelled. “My measuring cord is put away safe, yes.”

  

 “Well, trot it out, girly, and we’ll check it. Old lady Slicksaw here will climb it down for you, down to your mark, just to check.”

  

 “That’s not the way it’s done,” she said, somehow keeping her voice from shaking with anger. “If you want Slicksaw Bander to check my measure, go ahead with my blessing. But she’ll use her own cord and compare it to mine before witnesses from Bridgers House, and any difference will be checked by an impartial eye. That’s the way it’s done, Wetwedge Bander-Bridger, and I’m surprised you should suggest anything different.”

  

 The man looked quickly from side to side, seeking support from one or another of them, but they shifted feet uncomfortably, not looking at him. He laughed, trying to put a good face on it. “Well then, takes more time that way, but it’s according to rule. So, take a day off, then, Beedie.”

  

 She saw deceit on his face, an evil intention which she couldn’t read but one made clear in those shifty eyes, darting up and down like a flooper’s wings. Besides, he wasn’t enough elder to her to tell her to take a day off, and him not even from her own family.

  

 “My mark is sealed with my knot,” she announced loudly. “Slicksaw can’t mistake it.” Or alter it, she said to herself. One might mistake an accidental scarring for a hatchet mark, but one would not mistake any accidental tangle in the hair roots for an individual Bridger’s own knot, complicated as an alphabet, tied and then doused with paint to make it stand out. “It’s tied once at each side, top and bottom,” she said. Then, as they began to turn away, “Of course, I’m going to Bridgers House to see that they check Byle Bander’s measure as well. Otherwise it would be unfair, wouldn’t it, and not something the elders would tolerate. Since you’re all Banders checking a Beed, I’ll ask the Bridgers House to send Chafers or Beed to check Bander. Fair’s fair, after all.”

  

 She had the satisfaction of seeing Byle Bander’s face full of anger as she stalked away. Nor did she miss the hesitation among the other Banders, the glances, the stuttering lips as one or another of them tried to think of something to say. She did not look back, contenting herself with a call. “Good day to you, Bridgers.”

  

 As she walked away to Bridgers House, she could hear their whispers behind her. Well, what had they thought? That she would let a clutter of Bander hangers-on presume to double-check her competence without having some Beed fellows check on Byle’s ability as well? Did they think if they called her girly, as they would some curvy Maintainer wench, wriggling her hips between the tables at dinner, that she would not hear what it was they were really saying? Not likely.

  

 She went directly to Bridgers House. She wanted to talk to Rootweaver Beed, second eldest, a white-haired woman with young eyes whom Beedie admired for her good sense and friendly demeanor toward the younger Bridgers. The woman was curled up on a windowseat, weaving carded hairroot fibers to make a new climbing belt.

  

 “Checking you, are they?” Though Rootweaver was not young, she was straight and supple as a side root, and Beedie had seen her using spurs not four days before. Rootweaver considered the matter now, frowning a little. At last her face cleared and she said, “With all the troubles from below we have to worry us just now, leave it to the Banders to come up with something fretting. Well, it’s never a bad idea to check a measure, ‘specially when it’s a mainroot in question. We’ll take it as though it were friendly meant and send a crew along to check the Bander whelp as well. Have a day off, Beedie. You might help your Aunt Six with the moving. She’s found a place she likes better than Bridgers House again.” The woman laughed, not least at Beedie’s expression of dismay.

  

 Aunt Six had moved house at least two or three times a year since they had come to Topbridge, never able to settle into the same comfort she had known in the Bridgers House on Nextdown. She had moved into and out of Bridgers House on Topbridge seven times—this would make eight. Having Aunt Six behaving as usual made the day somehow merely annoying, an almost customary irritation taking the place of that extraordinary discomfort she had been feeling since she had been hailed by Byle Bander. If Aunt Six was moving house, it must be assumed the world was much as usual.

  

 So she spent the afternoon with a cart, hauling Aunt Six’s bedding and pots and bits and pieces from the pleasant rooms in Bridgers House to some equally pleasant ones on the far edge of Topbridge, about mid-chasm, from which the latticed windows looked out toward Harvester’s bridge, a lumpy line against the bend of the chasm wall behind it. Beedie wondered what the view was like from Harvester’s. Since it was at the turn of the chasm, could the chasm end be seen from there? Was there a chasm end? Odd. She’d never wondered about that until this very minute.

  

 “Beedie! What are you dreaming about, Bridger-girl? You’ll only have this one day to help me, so help me! I’ve got all the rugs yet to bring.”

  

 “Aunt Six, do you think this place will suit you? Will you stay here for a while? Now that I’ve got my tools and tides, I’d like to get some things of my own for this room, but not if you’re just going to move us again.”

  

 “Girl, you get your own things and make it your place, you can stay whether I go or not. For Boundless’ sake, Beedie. You’re a grown-up girl.” She compressed her lips into a thin and disapproving line and began to bustle, accomplishing little but giving a fine appearance of activity.

  

 Beedie smiled to herself. The only time Aunt Six referred to Beedie as a grown-up girl was when there was moving to be done, or something else equally boring or heavy. Still, the new place did have that marvelous view of the chasm, being right at the edge this way. Shaking her head, she went to fetch the rugs.

  

 Slicksaw Bander said she found no fault with Beedie’s measure. Rootweaver Beed was not so favorable about Byle’s. The Seeds found him marked short, as Beedie had feared, and told him so in front of half the Bridgers and a full dozen Maintainers with their ears flapping. Byle was so angry he turned white. Beedie tried not to look superior, failing miserably. Perhaps now he would keep himself to himself and pay attention to his own Bridger business rather than hers. It had a consequence she had not foreseen, however, when she was called to Bridgers House for conference. “Byle’s root was marked short, Beedie,” said Rootweaver, the half-dozen assembled Bridger elders behind her nodding and frowning. They had summoned her without warning, always a slightly ominous occurrence, but this time there had been nothing discomforting in it for her. “Not merely a little short,” Rootweaver went on, “but far short. As though he had not measured at all, and certainly not twice—or got his cord tangled up on the climb, and that’s a child’s trick. So we’re going to go down there with him tomorrow, check his measuring technique and check his axe work, too. Short in one thing, short in all, isn’t that the saying? So. You can go ahead and start cutting a groove on the root you’ve measured, but we’ve no one to help you cut root. After we get young Byle straightened out, you’ll get your crew. Do what you can alone, and we’ll send the crew next day.”

  

 “Byle’s in the classroom right now,” said one of the other elders, indignantly. “Fulminating and fussing. We’re keeping him here tonight, doing a little review of technique, and he’s mad as a hooked flopper. Madder than he should be. You’d think he’d been planning a lovers’ meeting or something the way he’s carrying on. Demands to be let go home.”

  

 “Bridgers House is home for all Bridgers,” said Rootweaver calmly. “Let him go get a change of clothing if he pleases, but I want him to stay here tonight. We’ll see if we can’t talk some sense into him.” All of this made Beedie quite uncomfortable, and she was glad Byle hadn’t seen her with the elders. If he thought she had been privy to his embarrassment, he’d never have permitted her a peaceful day. Since she thought he didn’t know, she had a peaceful night. Come morning, though, she thought he had probably found out, for she was visited by a Harvester elder with an annoying sniff and his pen ready to record her words.

  

 “It’s been reported you’ve been interfering with the slow-girules, girl,” he pinch-mouthed at her, pulling his nose back as though she smelled.

  

 “You may call me Bridger,” she said, holding her fury carefully in check. “And I have never interfered with a slow-girule in my life. I did take a nodule from one, yesterday, when I was delayed on the root and missed a meal.”

  

 “Report is you interfered with it. Rassled it about. Maybe bothered it in its work.”

  

 “I scratched its furry back, and it purred at me. So much for your ‘interference.’ ”

  

 “You could have injured it.” The man was white around the mouth, wanting to storm and yell at her, but afraid to do so seeing her own anger and knowing what Bridger wrath meant.

  

 “Nonsense,” snapped Aunt Six from behind her. “You can’t injure a slow-girule with an axe. Be done, Harvester. Beedie took a nodule from one of your beasties and she must pay a fine for it, for it’s against the rules. So impose your fine and be done. It’s no large thing, and you’d best remember it. The good will of Bridgers is given freely, but it’s taken freely, too, when there’s cause.”

  

 The Harvester did not reply, merely threw the piece of paper at them and stalked away. “Parasites,” hissed Aunt Six, just loud enough that he could not help to hear. “No skills of their own, so they must live by preventing others from using common sense. Sorry the day the Harvesters ever became a caste, Beedie. And sorry the day any Bridger takes one like that seriously.”

  

 The man heard. He turned and made a threatening gesture, mouthing something they could not hear.

  

 “Still,” Beedie said, “I did break the rule, Aunt Six. It was seeing that Byle Bander waiting for me on the bridge, like some old crawly-claw, hiding in a root hole. I didn’t want to come down where he was, so I played with the ‘rulie instead. They like it.”

  

 “Of course they like it, child. The Harvesters may think they own the slow-girules, but no one has ever convinced a slow- girule of that yet. It’s that which makes the Harvesters so angry. They’d like nothing better than to have the ‘rulies turn clipper-claws on all except the Harvesters. That would suit them right to the bridge floor. And what kind of a Bridger is Byle Bander to report one of his own caste.”

  

 “A miserable one,” Beedie replied in a grim voice. “A miserable bit of flopper flub, for all he’s a Bridger.”

  

 All this caused Beedie some delay, and it was late in the morning before she started down, chuff, heave, chuff, humming to herself, throwing a glance upward now and then to see if there were birds. It would be wonderful, she thought, to fly like that, up to the flattrees and the plain—not even dangerous for a bird. A bird wouldn’t have to fear the gnarlibars, the giant pombis, the ubiquitous d’bor hiding in every pool and stream, the poison bats, the were owls. A bird wouldn’t be bothered by the monsters of the plain, the monsters who had almost wiped out the people, would have wiped them out if they hadn’t moved down into the chasm to build the bridgetowns where the monsters couldn’t get at them. Not the Firstbridge, of course. That hadn’t been built far enough down the chasm, and the monstrous forest pombis had climbed down the mainroots to it as they would have climbed a tree. The site of that disaster was the broken city, still hanging high against the light, a network of black in the up-chasm sky. Then there had been the lost bridge, the one that had disappeared one night, never to be seen again—disappeared between dark and dawn without a sound. Built too low, some said, though legend said it had been built only slightly lower than Bottommost. Trouble in the depths, they said. Then and now, they said. Well, all this conjecture wouldn’t help get the job done. She spotted her marks, moved beyond them, readied her hatchet to make the groove, then clung to the root with a sudden, giddy disquietude, overcome by a wave of tamihar horror. She had felt like this before. There was something. Something wrong? Something not as usual? Uneasily she shifted on the root, moving around it as a flopper moves when hiding from the hunters, listening to silence, tasting the air, smelling... smelling.

  

 What was it? An odor so feint she could hardly detect it? But what? She wished for the crew, the other Bridgers, suddenly aware of her solitude.

  

 She began to move lower on the root, sniffing, tapping at the root with her hammer. The sound was wrong, wrong. She moved lower still, still tapping, then abruptly astonished, feeling the heat beneath her palms as a hallucination, an unreality, outrageous and impossible. Roots were cold, her mind said, and therefore ... therefore ...

  

 Even as her mind toyed with a dozen irrelevant notions, her body reacted, leaping upward in three quick movements of arms and legs, chuff, heave, chuff, heave, chuff, hands frantically feeling for cool, not sure they had found it, upward once more in that same panic-ridden gallop, until there was no possibility of mistake. She smelled it then for the first time, that harsh scent of poison smoke, barely detectable. She longed in an instant to be one of the slow-girules, able to turn head down on the root, able somehow to see below her feet. And yet she didn’t need to look. She could smell it. The mainroot was burning.

  

 Back in the old times, she had heard, this was the way roots were severed. A Bridger would climb in between the root and the wall, hack away a hole in the root, then put burning charcoal in there to burn away and burn away until the thing dropped. Sometimes the fire didn’t go out, however. Sometimes it got into the heartwood and kept on going, poisoning the air, no matter how one cut at it and chopped at it. So the Bridgers had stopped burning roots and began cutting them. But someone had burned a mainroot at Nextdown, and someone had set fire to this one Beedie sat upon, the one Beedie should have arrived at with a full crew of Bridgers, earlier than this. If she went back and told about it the fire would have burned the root away by the time they returned, burned it too high, and it was the only useful one in the right place on this side.

  

 So—so what? So cut it off before it went any further. Cut it off right below the mark, working against time, trying to get it cut through before the fire reached the saw cut and the smoke killed her. Her body began it, even while her mind was thinking through the right procedures. She was high on the root in a moment, setting her pitons and hooks for safety tines, one after the other, running the lines through and down to her belt, checking the buckle, checking the lines, setting them high above the mark, so high that no matter if the root fell, she would be left hanging—if a side root didn’t lash her head off, or a tangle tear her away from where she hung.

  

 The axe in her hand flew at the bark, making the first cuts, up and down, overhand, underhand, chips flying out into the chasms to flutter away like crippled birds, down and out of sight forever. The pungent smell of the milky root juice made her nose burn, a corrosive stench. She shifted rapidly to the right, cutting around, keeping her tines straight. When the root was ringed, she went back, d oing it again, cutting deep so the saw loop wouldn’t slip. Then the hatchet went into the belt, the saw loop came out. She had to throw it from behind the root, with free space all around. She held one handle in her right hand, whipped the length of the saw out and left, praying it would wrap around the root, smacking the handle into her left hand.

  

 No. The saw tangled in a mass of root hairs, dangling. She moved down a little, lashed the saw outward again. The loop spun out, around the root, came back into her waiting left hand with a solid thwack. She eased the blade into the groove, dug her spurs deep and began to pull, right, left, tugging against the saw line with its myriad diamond teeth, seeing the puffs of sawdust fly into the air.

  

 The sawline resisted her for a moment, then bit deep, cutting its own groove deeper, dust puffing at either side. At first she thought the amount of sawdust ridiculously large, then saw that it was mixed with smoke, smoke rising in little clouds from the cut, making her eyes stream, her throat burn. It was deadly. Deadly. Everything in her urged her to get away, to climb outward, away from that hideous smoke, but instead she moved around the root to find an updraft of clean air and went on heaving at the saw. It was well used, supple, only recently reglued with jeweled teeth for which she had paid a pretty price, the supply of gems being so short. Aunt Six had always said that good tools repaid their keeper, and she chanted this to herself as she went on heaving, feeling the root beneath her spurs begin to grow warm. The fire was eating its way up, toward the mark.

  

 “Bite teeth, cut deep, saw line chew, job to do, pull, Bridger, pull ...” then six deep breaths and chant again, over and over. This was not a job for one Bridger! She should have had a full crew, spelling one another as they tired, encouraging one another. “Bite teeth ...” It was getting a little easier as the groove bit deeper, there was less surface to pull against. “Bite teeth, cut deep, saw line chew ...” In older days, there had been plenty of gems, plenty of saw gravel. Maybe she should have paid for another dipping. Pull. Pull. The root quivered.

  

 Quickly she shifted her feet upward, bracing out above the groove, lying almost horizontally from the root as she heaved the line, heaved, heaved, feeling her shoulders start to burn and bind, beginning to choke in the smoke once more, unable to move from t his stance, unable to shift her position, trying to hold her breath against that one too many which would bring the poison full strength deep into her lungs.

  

 A quiver again, this time a mighty one, a shaking, a groaning sound, a rending as the world began to drop from beneath her. The root below her fell away—but only a finger’s width, whipping the entire root to one side as it did so, throwing her to the end of her lines, breaking two of them with lashing side roots. She hung, nose dripping blood, suspended between her remaining two lines, turning like a hooked flopper, gagging at the smoke. One incredibly strong cable of fiber held the root, kept it from falling away, one bundle no thicker than her leg, groaning as though it had human voice, toward which the fire crept, upward, upward—taking what seemed an eternity to burn it through.

  

 She feinted, came to herself, began to go in and out of blackness as though it were a garment put on and took off. Through a veil of swimming gray she saw the mass of the mainroot dropped away down the endless depth of the chasm, lashing side roots as it went so that they twitched and recoiled, knocking Beedie against their rough sides. She swung still at the end of her lines, thrashed into semiconsciousness, eyes staring upward at the rim.

  

 Far above the noonglow came, through emerald light, a kind of singing. Was it the Birder on Topbridge or the singing of her own blood? High in the light she saw wings, white wings, circling down and down, huge and mysterious, wonderful as a myth, beautiful a s a song.

  

 “It will stop at Topbridge,” she told herself in her dream, “like the other one.” But it did not. It came down and down until it perched on a side root spur just beside her and turned into something else. Something with a woman’s face, but with hands and arms like a slow-girule, arms to hold fast, and legs to reach out and pick Beedie from her lines as though she had been no heavier than a baby. Then the bird person wiped the blood from her fece and cradled her, cradled her there on the root and whispered t o her.

  

 “My name is Mavin, little root climber. It seems to me you need some help here, whatever strange wonderful thing it is you are so determined to do.”

  

 CHAPTER TWO

  

 After a time Beedie came to herself lying on a horizontal shelf of side root, carefully fastened to it with her own belt and pitons, having the blood washed from her fece and neck with something that looked suspiciously like a furry, wet paw. The paw owner went away. There was a sound of water near by, splashing and trickling, then Beedie’s head was lifted and a cup thrust at her lip. She drank, trying not to look at the cup, for it had appeared magically where the paw had been. When the paw/cup/person retreated from her side again, she turned her head to follow the creature/woman/bird as it went to the water-belly and burrowed into it through a sizeable hole in the tough shell which had not been there when Beedie had passed it earlier in the day.

  

 “How did you cut it?” she asked, her voice a mere croak in the sound-deadening mat of the rootwall. “It takes a drill, and a blade saw ...”

  

 “Or a sharp beak and determination,” said the bird/person/creature. “You reached toward this place when I carried you past, mumbling something or other about being thirsty, so I figured there was water inside this what you call it ...”

  

 “It’s a water-belly,” Beedie murmured. “It stores the water the root brings up from the bottom, down there. ...”

  

 “Down there, eh? A very long way, root climber. Do you go down there often?”

  

 “Never.” She shook her head and was frozen into immobility by the resultant pain. “Never. No. Too far. Too dark. The Boundless punished the Lostbridgers by sending them down there, so they say. Maybe for greed, because of the gemstones. We’re running out, you know. All the ones left from that time have been used up. Dangerous. Dangerous creatures on the Bottom, they say. As dangerous as the plain, up top, where you come from.”

  

 “Plenty of creatures up there, all right. Gnarlibars. Bambis bigger than any I’ve seen elsewhere. There’s a kind of giant bunwit with horns on its rear feet, did you know that? Strangest-looking thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen wonders, oh, root dangler, but I’ve seen wonders. Oceans and lands, lakes and forests, all and everything in a wide world full of wonders. Among which, may I say, is this place of yours, what you call it?”

  

 “The chasm? We just call it the chasm, that’s all.” If Beedie lay perfectly still, she could speak without really feeling discomfort. So she assured herself, at least.

  

 “Do you know what it looks like from up there?” the bird/woman/person asked. “Let me tell you, it’s a remarkable sight. To start with, the roots from those trees extend out onto the plain like great cables, bare as pipes. I saw them from up there, my soaring place, and had to come down just to see my eyes didn’t lie to me. Leagues and leagues of these great roots laid out side by side, like the warp threads of some giant loom all ready for the weaving. Then, after leagues of nothing but bare root, a few little stalks pop up; short, stubby things, with one leaf, maybe, or two, gossamer leaves, spread to the sun like the wings of something bigger than you can imagine. Then the stalks grow higher, higher yet, bigger and bigger, until all you can see is the leaves, overlapping each other like scales on a fish, thin as tissue, and green—Gamelords, girl, but it’s a lovely green.”

  

 “I know,” murmured Beedie, entranced by the rough music of that voice. “We see it every day, at noonglow.”

  

 “And then a shadow in the green, slightly darker, with a mist rising up through it. At first I thought it was only a river under there, but then I saw how wide the shadow was, a long, dark stripe on the forest, going away north to tall, white-iced mountains; bending away to the south west into a desert hot and hard as brass, and that mist coming up full of food smells and people smells.

  

 “Well, I came down, girl, working my way down through those gossamer leaves, eyes all sharpened to see what I could see far down, and what should I see but this great root thrashing about and a small girl person hung on it being smoked like a sausage, the smoke roiling nasty to my nose.”

  

 “I saw you coming down,” said Beedie. “At first I thought I was dreaming it, that you were the other one.”

  

 There was a long silence, then the bird/creature/person said, in a voice even Beedie recognized as carefully noncommittal, “What other one is that?”

  

 “The white bird. The great white bird who came down, oh, a long time ago. A year, almost. It came down in the noonglow, and it perched on the railing of Topbridge commons. Mercald was there, Mercald the Birder?” She started to make an inquiring gesture, to move her head questioningly, but desisted at the swimming nausea she felt. The expression on the bird/person’s face had already told her it did not know what Birders were. “White birds are the messengers of the Boundless, you know?” Beedie tried again. The bird/person nodded helpfully, indicating this was not impossible. “And the Birders are the servants of the Boundless. They do our judging, and our rituals, and dedicate the festivals, things like that. So, birds being sacred, and Mercald being a Birder, naturally, he took the white bird to the Birders House. Only later on it changed into a person, a woman. Like you did.”

  

 “Ah,” said the bird/person in a flat, incurious voice. “Tell me your name, will you girl? And call me by mine. It will make it easier on us both. I’m Mavin.”

  

 “Mavin,” said Beedie. “I’m Beedie. Beed’s daughter, really, but they call me Beedie. I’ll get some other kind of name after I’ve worked at Bridging a while—something like, oh ...”

  

 “Smoked sausage? Root dangler?”

  

 “Probably.” She raised one trembling hand to feet along her ribs. They were bruised, terribly tender, and it hurt when she took a deep breath or moved her head. She put the hand down, carefully, and was still once more. “More likely something like “Rulie-chaser’ or ‘Strap-weaver.’ We like to be named after big things we’ve done, but some of us never do anything that big.”

  

 “Well, Beedie, what did this other bird have to say for itself? When it changed into a woman, I mean?”

  

 “It never said anything, not that I heard of.” The question made her a little uncomfortable, as though there were a right answel to it, one she didn’t know. “It sings. Mercald used to bring it out in the noonglow and it flew. It circled around and around in the light, singing. Lately, though, it hasn’t changed into a bird at all. It’s stayed a woman.”

  

 “What does the woman do?”

  

 “Sits. She sits in the window of the Birders House and brushes her hair. They feed her fruit and moss cakes, and bits of toasted flopper. They give her nodule beer to drink, and water. They dress her in soft dresses with ribbons woven by the Weavers’ caste, especially for her. At festival times she watches the processions, and the jugglers, and the root walkers. And she sings.”

  

 “And never speaks? Never at all?”

  

 “Never at all,” said Beedie, in a definite voice. “Now, best you tell me what she is to you, for the people up there”—she moved her eyes to indicate the woven bottom of the great bridge above which threw an enormous shadow across them—“those people think she’s sacred. You go asking too many questions, like you have with me, and they won’t be contented just wondering where you came from, like I do. They’ll wonder if maybe you’re a devil from the Bottom. Or another messenger from the Boundless, in which case they’ll lock you up, jusr to keep you safe, until they decide you’ve delivered the message, whatever it’s supposed to be.” She fell into a gray fog, exhausted by this speech.

  

 “Dangerous, then, to be a messenger! Well, who else could I be? Who could visit you without stirring any curiosity at all?”

  

 Beedie’s head was swimming, but she tried to consider the question carefully. “You could be someone from Harvester’s bridge. We hardly ever see anyone from Harvester’s, because it’s such a long way down-chasm. There’s a Harvesters House on Topbridge, so you’d have someplace to stay.” She sighed, the pain pulsing insistently.

  

 “Ah. Well now. Tell me, Beedie, do you owe me for saving your life?”

  

 She had not thought about it until that moment, and it was an odd question, all things taken into account, but still it was a question she could answer. “Yes,” she said. “I owe you.”

  

 “Good. I want you to tell me all about this place, the chasm, the—what did you call them?—the bridgetowns. About Harvesters and Bridgers and whatever else there are about. Then, when you’ve done that, you won’t owe me anymore and we can talk about some other arrangement.”

  

 “You’re ... strange,” Beedie commented. “If you hadn’t pulled me off that root and got me out of the smoke, I’d be dead by now, though, so I guess strange doesn’t matter.”

  

 “A remarkable conclusion for one so young. So, sausage girl, tell m e about this place. I am a stranger. I know nothing. You must tell me everything, even the things you know so well you never think of them.”

  

 It was an odd session, one Beedie was always to remember. Later in her life, the memory was evoked by smoke smell, always, or by sudden jolts of pain. Even after, she was to recall this time whenever she was ill or injured. Now she lay as quietly as she could on a furry root, soft as her own bed, cushioned somehow in the arms or person of whoever it was called herself Mavin, and talked through her pain about the chasm, sometimes as though she were present, sometimes as though she were dreaming, in both cases as she had never talked or heard anyone talk before.

  

 “Our people came here generations ago,” she said. “Down from the plain above. I didn’t know about the trees and the roots up there, because all the records of that time were lost when Firstbridge was destroyed. All we know is that the people were getting eaten up by the beasts, so the Firstbridgers came down into the chasm and built a bridge. Firstbridge. It wasn’t far enough down, and the beasts got at it, so the survivors came down further to Nextdown while they built Topbridge. You can see Firstbridge if you look, way up against the light. We call it Brokenbridge sometimes. There isn’t much left of it but the mainroots and a few dangling verticals. When my cousin Highclimb went to the rim, she saw it. She says the mainroots are still alive.”

  

 “Ah. Humm. Are there any—ah—Gamesmen, among you?”

  

 “Gamesmen? You mean people who play games? Children do, of course. There are gambling games, too. Is that what you mean?”

  

 “Are there any among you who can change shape? Who can fly? Who can lift things without using their hands?”

  

 “Demons, you mean. No. There’s a story from before we came down into the chasm, there were Demons or something like that over the sea. We used to trade with them in the story, but it’s only a story. According to the story, we came to this world before they did. When we came, the animals weren’t so bad, so we lived on top. Then, later, the animals got bad. That’s when we moved down.”

  

 “All of you? All the persons this side of the sea?”

  

 Beedie shook her head and winced. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. We keep hearing stories about lost bridges or lost castes . People who survived some other way. Aunt Six says it’s all m yths, but I don’t really know. Do you still want to hear more about the chasm?”

  

 “I didn’t mean lo interrupt. It was just a thought. Yes, go on.”

  

 “Well, let’s see. After Topbridge was built, they finished Nextdown. Then the Potters built their bridge down-chasm, because there were clay deposits in the wall along there, and coal. They use that for the firing. Then came Miner’s bridge, further down-chasm, because that’s where the mines were. Metal, you know. And gems for the saws, though they don’t seem to find many of those ...

  

 “Then Midwall, up-chasm, the other side of Nextdown, then Harvester’s bridge, away down-chasm where it bends, and last of all came Bottommost. Aunt Six says Bottommost is rebels and anarchists, but then she talks like that about a lot of things. I think it’s Fishers, mostly, and Hunters, and some Grafters, and Banders and casteless types.” She stopped to take a deep breath before continuing, gasping. Her ribs cut into her like knives.

  

 The arms around her tightened, then pillowed her more deeply. “Tell me about castes. What are they?”

  

 “Top caste is Bridgers. They’re the ones who build the bridgetowns and maintain them and build the stairs and locate the water-bellies and all that. Then there are Grafters, who make things out of wood, mostly, though they use some metal, too. And Potters, and Barters, and Miners, and Teachers. And Harvesters. They train the slow-girules to harvest the nodules from the roots, and they harvest the wall moss, and fruits from the vines and all like that. And the Messengers. They have two jobs to do. We don’t talk about one of them. The other—well, they fly. Not how you meant it when you asked. They put on wings, and then they jump out into the air when it rises, and they fly between the bridgetowns with messages or little things they can carry. Medicine, maybe. Or plans, to show the Bridger in the other city what’s going on. Maintainers. They’re the ones who take care of the Bridgers, feed them, clean their houses and all. Birders I already told you about. Then there are the Fishers, two kinds of those, one that fishes for floppers from the Fishers’ roosts and those who drop their lines from Bottommost into the river down there, so far they can’t even see it, and bring up fishes. And the Hunters who track game through the root mat ...” She stopped, exhausted.

  

 “And you said something about casteless ones?”

  

 Beedie sighed, weary beyond belief. “There are always some who don’t fit in. Weavers—did I mention Weavers before?—who can’t weave. Or Potters who can’t do a pot. Or even Bridger children who get the down-dizzies when they look down. They may get adopted into some other caste, or they may ask to become Maintainers—some say Maintainers will take anybody, though I don’t know if that’s true—or they may just stay casteless. It’s all right. No one hates them for it or anything. It’s just that they don’t have any caste house to live in or any special group to help them or take them in if they’re sick or old or have a baby.”

  

 “Do people marry?”

  

 “Oh, yes. In caste, usually, though not always. They say if you marry in caste, your kids will have the right aptitudes. That isn’t true, by the way. Aunt Six says it never was true. She says having a child is like betting on a flopper’s flight. They always go off in some direction you don’t count on.”

  

 “What are caste houses?”

  

 “Oh, like Bridgers House on Topbridge. Whenever there are enough of any one caste on one bridge, they build a caste house. Usually the elders of the caste live there, and any other caste members there’s room for. One elder from each castehouse makes up the bridge council, though we usually just say ‘the elders,’ and they decide when to expand the bridgetown or build new stairs or pipe a new water-belly. I don’t know what else to tell you. Except I hurt. Please let me stop talking.”

  

 “Just a moment more, sausage girl. What about clothing? Do the castes dress differently?”

  

 Beedie could not understand the question. She tried to focus on the question and could not. Dress? How did they dress? “Like me,” she whispered. “More or less. Trousers. Shirt. Only Bridgers wear belts like this. Harvesters wear leather aprons. Potters have very clean hands. Miners have dirty ones ... I can’t ... can’t ...” There was only a heavy darkness around her, a sense of vast movement, easy as flying, as though she were cushioned in some enormous, flying lap. Then there were voices.

  

 “Are you her Aunt Six? The root she was working on ... burning ... the smoke ... don’t think she’s seriously hurt ... from Harvester’s Bridge myself ... just happened to see her as I was coming up the stairs ... thank you, very kind of you. Yes, I would b e glad to do that. Boneraan, you say? In the yellow house next to Bridgers’? Never mind, ma’am, I’ll find it ...”

  

 Inside the darkness, Beedie felt herself amused. The bird/woman/person was leading Aunt Six about by the nose, pretending to be a Harvester from Harvester’s Bridge. Beedie was enjoying it, even through the black curtain. It was very humorous. They had sent for the Boneman, to find out if anything was broken. So, she was home, home on Topbridge, in Aunt Six’s new place. Now that she knew where she was, she could let the darkness have its own way. Though the voices went on, she stopped listening to them.

  

 There seemed to be no next day, though there was a day after that. She swam lazily out of quiet into the light, feeling hands holding her head and the rim of a cup at her lips once more. This made her laugh, and she choked on the broth Aunt Six was trying to feed her, then couldn’t explain what the laughter was about. “Lucky you were, girl, that a doer-good came along just then. I was in little mood to trust any Harvester, as you can imagine, seeing what an arrogant bunch they are, as you well remember from just a few days ago. But this one, well, she told me someone had fired the root ...

  

 “I sent the elders. They saw no sign of it, except the smell of smoke clinging. Greenwood smoke does cling, so they don’t doubt the story at all, or the word of the doer-good, Mavin, her name is. I suppose you wouldn’t remember that, being gone to all intents and meanings from that time to this.” Aunt Six used her handkerchief, blowing a resounding blast. “A bad thing to take almost a whole family that way, your daddy and mother, all the uncles, then to try it with you, girl.” The pillow was patted relentlessly into a hard, uncomfortable shape. “We can’t imagine who. Who would it be?”

  

 For some reason, all Beedie could think of was that phlegmy c huckle of old Slysaw Bander, the sneering eyes of Byle Bander, t he two of them like as root hairs. Making mischief. But why? Why?

  

 Why would even a Bander do hurt to his own caste? What could h e gain from it? How did he know I’d be going down there alone?

  

 “Well, fool girl,” a voice inside her head said, “He knew no such t hing. He thought there’d be six or seven Bridgers, including a few e lders.” Then her head swam and accusations fled through it like b irds through air. He must have thought he’d take six away with the root ... the way he did before ... the way he did before ... the way he did before.

  

 Gradually her mind slowed and quieted. Well, if it hadn’t been for the doer-good, one Bridger would have fallen to the Bottom, but there could be no proof it had been planned or who by. Byle had probably been companied by five or six Bridgers all day, including at least one or two Chafers or Beeds. No proof. No proof, and all a waste, for the trap hadn’t killed six, hadn’t even killed one. Was that why Byle was so eager to get away from Bridgers House last night? To get someone else to set the fire he had planned to set himself?

  

 Could she accuse him? Them? Byle hadn’t had a chance to set that fire, so someone else had. Who? Slicksaw and her friends, while they were down there checking her measure? No. Too early to set it then, though they may well have made ready for it. And if so, was it a general thing, then? A conspiracy among all the Banders? To accomplish what? To kill Bridgers, evidently, but why?

  

 Dizzy from the unanswerable questions in her mind, Beedie drifted off into gray nothing again, unable even to be curious about Mavin, the person/bird/woman who might be doing anything at a ll while Beedie slept.

  

 She awoke to find a leather-aproned Harvester sitting in the window, the Harvester sipping at a cup while reading one of Aunt Six’s books about religion; the steam from the tea curled over the lamp beside the bed. At first Beedie did not recognize the woman, but then something in the tilt of head said bird/person/creature, and Beedie smiled. “Good morning.”

  

 Mavin put down the tea cup and turned to pour another, offering it to the swaddled figure on the bed. “Say ‘good evening,’ sausage girl. You’ve spent a good time muffled up there, recovering from your wounds, I thought, but then, hearing your Aunty Six talk for a time, I figured it was only to escape the constant conversation.”

  

 Beedie tried to laugh, turning it into a gasp as her ribs creaked and knifed at her. “I don’t think I’m better.”

  

 “Oh, yes. You’ve got a few cracked ribs where you hit the mainroot with the side of your ownself. The Boneman strapped them. He says they’ll heal. You’ve got a nasty blue spot on your forehead spoiling your maidenly beauty. The Skin-woman put a f oul-smelling poultice on that. Aside from that, there’s not much wrong with you a few days lying about won’t cure. Meantime, I’ve met the people at your Bridgers House and been thanked by them for saving you. There’s been a good deal of climbing up and down as well, trying to figure out what set the roof afire—or maybe who set it afire. Far as I can learn, no one knows for sure, though there seem to be whispered suspicions floating here and there.

  

 “Your Bridger elder, Rootweaver, says I have a strange accent and must come from the farthest end of Harvesters where no one talks in a civilised manner, but she was kind enough for all that.”

  

 “Rootweaver is a good person.”

  

 “True. She is such a good person I told her some of the things I had seen ‘on my way up from Harvesters.’ To which she replied by trading confidences, telling me that something seems to be eating the verticals of the bridgetowns. Killing them dead, so she says. Giving me a keen look while she told me, too, as though she thought I might have been eating them myself. Had you heard about that?”

  

 “Something of the kind,” murmured Beedie. “The Bridgers are very upset about it.”

  

 “Indeed? Well, I heard her out. Since then, I have waited for you to recover so that you can take me to see the greatest wonder of Topbridge.”

  

 “And what’s that, Mavin doer-good?”

  

 “Doer-good, am I? Well, perhaps I am. The wonder I speak of is the birdwoman, sausage girl. I’d rather visit her with someone discreet by my side. Someone who knows more than she says. That is, unless your praiseworthy silence results from inability to talk rather than discretion.”

  

 “Oh, I can talk,” Beedie said, proving it. “But when there are strangenesses all about, better maybe to keep shut and wait until talk is needed. My father used to say that.”

  

 “Pity he didn’t tell your Aunt Six. Why was she named Six, anyhow?”

  

 “She was named Six because when she was a girl, she always insisted on carrying six spare straps for her spurs. Not four, nor five, but six. And if my father had tried to tell her anything, she wouldn’t have listened. She would have been too busy talking. And”—she shifted uncomfortably—“I have to go.”

  

 “If you mean you have to go, the Boneman who looked at you s aid you could. Get up, I mean. Just take it easy, don’t lift anything, don’t bump yourself. Is there a privy in here?”

  

 “Of course. Do you think we live like floppers?” Beedie struggled out of the bed and across the room, feeling the cold boards on her feet with a sense of relief. Until that moment she had not been sure she could stand up. She left the privy door ajar, letting the heat from the bedroom warm all of her but her bottom, poised bare over the privy hole, nothing but air all the way to the Bottom and all the night winds of the chasm blowing on her. “All the houses on all the bridges have privies, That’s why we don’t build bridges one under the other, and that’s why we put roofs on the stairs.”

  

 When she returned to the bed, Mavin handed her a piece of paper and a pen. “Draw me a plan, girl. Looking end on, how are these bridges of yours arranged? How do we get from one to another supposing—as it would be wise for us to suppose—neither of us can fly?”

  

 Beedie sipped at her tea, propped the paper against her knees and thought. Finally, she drew a little plan on the paper and handed it to Mavin. “There. These are the ends of the bridges. There’s a stair from Topbridge to Nextdown. There are two staffs from Nextdown; one on down to Midwall, another winding one across under Topbridge to Potter’s. From Potter’s there’s a stair down to Miner’s; and from Miner’s there’s a stair up to Harvester’s. Then, from Midwall, there’s a stair down under Nextdown to Bottommost. There are rest places on that stair, and from Bottommost there’s a long stair which leads along the Wall to mine entrances way below Miner’s and then goes on and meets the Harvester’s trail way below Harvester’s. Some of these stairs are at the morning-light end, and some at the evening-light end of the bridgetowns, so it can be a long walk between Potter’s and Topbridge. That’s why we have messengers, if word needs to be carried quickly on wings. There’s one hot spot right below us, off the edge of Topbridge.”

  

 “Hot spot?”

  

 “Where the air rises, where the Messengers fly. Remember, I told you. There are other hot spots here and there, every bridge has at least one close by. There’s a big one near Harvester’s, around the corner of the chasm. No one knows what causes hot spots, though some of the old books say it’s probably hot springs, water that comes out of the ground hot.”

  

 “And you’ve never been to any of these places?”

  

 “I was born on Nextdown. And I came here. And that’s all.”

  

 “Ah. Well, if I go journeying while I’m here, perhaps you’d like to g o along? But first, you’ll sleep some more and recover entirely. I hear y our aunt coming. Time for me to get along to Harvesters House ...”

  

 “They took you in then, at Harvesters House?” Beedie whispered.

  

 “Why shouldn’t they? I’m a Harvester, aren’t I? I work well with t he slow-girules, don’t I? Besides, you can tell by my apron.” And Mavin winked at her, making a droll face, strolling out of the room a nd away.

  

 “A very pleasant doer-good,” said Aunt Six. “Well spoken and kindly. You’re a lucky girl, Beedie, to have had such a one climbing the stairs from Nextdown just at the time you needed help. And one not afraid of root climbing, either. What if it had been a Potter? Or a Miner? Not able to climb at all for the down-dizziness in their heads?”

  

 “I’m very lucky,” Beedie agreed, saying nothing at all more than that.

  

 By afternoon of the third day from then, her ribs rebandaged by the Boneman, she was able to visit the Skin-woman who lived just off center lane, midchasm, by the market, in order to have another poultice put on her forehead. A train of Porters had brought in a greatload of pots from Potter’s bridge, and the Topbridgers were out in numbers, bargaining in a great gabble for cook pots and storage pots and soup bowls. Mavin and Beedie walked among the stalls, half hearing it all, while they spoke of the birdwoman at Birders House.

  

 “Of course they’ll let you see her!” said Beedie. “As a messenger of the Boundless, she can be seen by anyone, for any person might be sent a message from the Boundless, and the Birders wouldn’t know who.”

  

 “I’ve been in places they would tell you they did know,” said Mavin in a dry voice. “And tell you what the message was, as extra.”

  

 “Why, how could anyone know? Would the Boundless give someone else my message to tell me? Silly. Of course not. If the Boundless had a message for me—which I am too unimportant to expect, mind you—it would give it directly to me, no fiddling about through other people.”

  

 Mavin laughed. “There are things about your society here that I like, girl. Your good sense about your religion is one of them.”

  

 Beedie shook her head in confusion. “If a religion doesn’t make s ense, what good is it? It has to make sense out of things to be helpful, and if it isn’t helpful, who’d have it?”

  

 “You’d be surprised, sausage girl. Very surprised. But here we are. Isn’t this Birders?” They had stopped outside a tall, narrow house which reached up along the Wall, its corners and roof erupting in bird houses and cotes, its stairs littered with feathers and droppings, and with an open, latticed window just before them behind which a pale figure sat, smiling heedlessly and combing its long dark hair. “Aree, aree,” it sang. “The boundless sea, the white wave, the light wave, the soundless sea.”

  

 “Can we get closer?” asked Mavin in a strange, tense tone. “Where she can see us?”

  

 “We can go in,” Beedie answered. “We’ll have to make an offering, but it won’t be much. I’ll tell them you have confusions and need to be blessed by the messenger.”

  

 “You do that, sausage girl. For it’s true enough, come to think of it.”

  

 They went up the shallow stairs to the stoop and struck the bell with their hands, making it throb into the quiet of the street. A Birder came to the door, his blue gown and green stole making tall stripes of color against the dark interior. When Beedie explained, he beckoned them in.

  

 “I’m Birder Brightfeather,” he said, nodding to Beedie. “I know you, Bridger, and your parents before you. Though that was on Nextdown, and I am only recently come to Topbridge to help in the House here, for young Mercald was no longer able to handle the press of visitors. Will you offer to the Boundless before seeing the messenger?”

  

 “If we may,” answered Mavin easily, moving her hand from pocket to Birder’s hand in one practiced gesture. The Birder seemed pleased at whatever it was he had been given.

  

 “Of course. Go in. Stay behind the railing, please. She becomes frightened if people come too close. If you have a question, ask in a clear voice, and don’t go on and on about it. The Boundless knows. We don’t have to explain things to It. Then if there’s an answer, the birdgirl will sing it. Or perhaps not. The Boundless does not always choose to answer, but then you know that.” The Birder waved them into the room, through heavy drapes that shut away the rest of the House. They found themselves behind a waist-high barrier, the birdgirl seated before them, half turned away as s he peered out through the lattice at the street, still singing as she combed her hair.

  

 “No sorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow go free, to high flight, to sky flight, the boundless sea.”

  

 “Handbright,” said Mavin, in a husky whisper. “Handbright. It’s Mavin.”

  

 “Aree, aree,” sang the birdgirl, slowly turning her head so that she could see them where they stood. She was dressed in a soft green robe, the color of the noonglow, with ribbons of blue and silver in her hair. Her face was bony, narrow, like the face of a bird. She looked like something out of the old tales, thought Beedie, something remote and marvelously beautiful, too wonderful to be human. And yet, this Mavin spoke to her ...

  

 “Handbright. Sister. See, it’s Mavin. Come all the way from the lands of the True Game, all the great way from Danderbat Keep, from Schlaizy Noithn, from cliffbound Landizot and the marshy meadows of Mip, over the boundless sea to find you. It’s been more than fifteen years, Handbright, and I was only fifteen when you saw me last.”

  

 “No sorrow, no sorrow, the soundless sea,” sang the birdgirl, her eyes passing across them as though they did not exist. “Aree, aree.” She stood up and moved about the room behind the railing, around her chair, half dancing, her feet making little patterns on the floor. Then she sat back down, but not before Mavin had seen the way the soft gown fell around her figure, no longer as painfully thin as it had been when Mavin had seen her last, no longer slender at all. Her belly bulged hugely above the thin legs.

  

 “Ah,” said Mavin, in a hurt tone. “So that’s the way of it. Too late for you, Handbright. So late.” She stood in a reverie, seeing in her head the great white bird, plumes floating from its wings and tail, as it dived from the tower of Danderbat Keep, as its wings caught the wind and it beat itself upward into the blue, the high blue; a colour which these people of the chasm never saw, preserved only in these ribbons, in the ritual garments of their Birders. She saw herself, pursuing, asking here, there, high on the bounding cuffs of Schlaizy Noithn; among the seashore cities of fishermen who wore fishskin trousers and oiled ringlets; in Landizot, the childless town; high in the marshy mountain lands near Breem; among the boats of the hunter fleet which never came to land but plied from Summer Sea t o Winter Sea, its children born to the creak of wood and the rattle of sheets; along the desert shore of this other land beyond the western Sea, where there were no Games nor Gamesmen, coming at last to this people living pale and deep, beyond the light of the fructifying sun; fifteen years spent in searching, asking, following. “Well, I have found you at last, sister,” she said to herself. “And your face is as peaceful as a candle flame in still air, burning with its own heat, consuming itself quietly, caring not. You sing and your voice is happy. You dance, and your feet are shod in silk. Oh, Handbright, why do I need to weep for you?”

  

 She turned to take Beedie by the arm, her strong hands making pits in the girl’s flesh so that she gasped. “Sorry, sausage girl. It is a sad thing to come too late. Ah well, let’s go back to your place, my dear, and drink something warming. I feel all cold, like all the chasm night winds were blowing through me.”

  

 “What is it, Mavin? Why are you so upset? Do you know her? Is she truly your sister?”

  

 “She is truly my sister, girl. Truly as ever was. I was fifteen when she left, when I told her to leave, but she is my sister, my Shifter sister, mad as any madman I have ever seen, and pregnant as any mother has ever been. And if I understand your religion, my dear, and the respect that would be due to a messenger of the Boundless, the fact that my sister will bear now—though she did not bear in years past, to her sorrow—bodes ill for the Birders. And, sausage girl, from what I have seen traveling the width of the world for fifteen years, when a thing bodes ill for the religion of a place, trouble follows, and anarchy and rebellion and terror.” Her voice rang like a warning bell, insistent and troubling.

  

 Beedie trembled at her tone. “Oh ... surely, surely it is not such a great thing ...”

  

 “Perhaps not. We will hope so. But I think best to consider it, nonetheless. There is time to be tricksy, child, and best to have plans made before needs must.” She smiled and laid a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. Strange, to have come so far and made such an odd alliance at the end of it all. “Tush. Don’t frown. We will think on it together.” And she squeezed Beedie’s shoulder in a gesture which, had she known it, was one Beedie’s father had once used and thus won the girl to her as no words could have done.

  

 CHAPTER THREE

  

 Trouble came more quickly than Mavin had foreseen, more quickly than Beedie would have thought possible. It was the following morning that they left Beedie’s house on their way to take a breakfast cup of tea at one of the ubiquitous stalls, when they saw a Birder—not a person they would have recognized except for her robes—fleeing with loud cries of alarm from a group of youngsters intent upon doing her some immediate harm. The expressions on their snarling faces left no doubt, and when Mavin and Beedie came among them like vengeful furies, pushing and tossing them about like so many woodchips, they responded with self-righteous howls. “They’re blasphemers, the Birders ... They’ve blasphemed the Boundless … else she’s no messenger ... need to be taught a lesson... . My dad says they should be whipped.” Indeed, one of the leaders of the child pack had a whip with him.

  

 “And who are you to be judge of the Birders? And what have they done that is blasphemous?” Mavin demanded in a voice of thunder, drawing a good deal of attention from passers-by, including the parents of some of those cowering before her who shifted uneasily from foot to foot wondering how far they might go in interfering with this angry stranger. Beedie, throwing quick looks around, was horrified to note that a good part of the child pack was made up of Bridgers—Bander whelps—as good a guarantee as any that they might go about their evil business without being called to account for it.

  

 “My dad says ... no fit judges for us anymore ... did a bad thing ... Either that or she’s no messenger ...”

  

 Mavin seized the speaker and shook him. “Before you decide to run a mob behind you, boy, better wonder what vengeance the Birders might take if you are wrong! Have you thought what may come from the Boundless as messenger ... to you ... in the dark n ight—with no mob about to protect you?” Her voice shivered like a maddened thing; wild-eyed, her hands shook as though in terror. The boy began to tremble in her grasp, eyes widening, until he broke from her to fall on his knees, bellowing his fear. Beedie was amazed. Anyone within reach of Mavin’s voice could feel the terror, the awfulness of that messenger who might come. The boy took his fear from her pretended feeling, cowering away as though she had threatened him with immediate destruction. The adults gathered about were no less affected, and several of the young ones were hauled away by parents abruptly concerned for their own welfare though they had been egging the children on until that moment.

  

 The other whelps ran off down an alley, yelping as they went. Mavin spun the boy with the whip around, kicking him off after them, and wiped her hands in disgust. The Birder, who had paused at the turn of the street, returned to thank them.

  

 “This riot and attack is all up and down the chasm,” she said, still breathless. “I came to warn the Birders House here on Topbridge, for our house on Nextdown is virtually under seige, and no sooner set foot upon the street than that gang attacked me. They were set on me! I saw their fathers or older brothers urging them on from a teahouse door.”

  

 “You’d best let us take you to the Birders House,” ventured Beedie.

  

 “You’d best stay there when you arrive,” Mavin instructed her. “There is a kind of animal frenzy can be whipped up sometimes among fools and children, often using religion as an excuse for it. When it happens, it is wise to be elsewhere.”

  

 They escorted the Birder to the House, much aware of gossiping groups falling silent as they passed, much aware of eyes at windows, of chunks of root thrown at them and easily fended off by either Mavin or Beedie, who walked virtually back to back in protection of the robed woman. Once at the Birders House, Mavin asked for Mercald and learned that he had been sent to the far end of Topbridge to gather the shed plumes of gongbirds, used by the Birders in their rituals.

  

 “He will return momentarily,” dithered Brightfeather. “I told him to set his robes aside and go. With all this confusion and the violence outside, I wanted some time alone, to think. I don’t understand what is happening.”

  

 “Violence outside?” The newly arrived Birder was peering from the window. They could see no sign of trouble, but the Birder assured them there were small groups of ill doers lurking just out of sight.

  

 This was confirmed as they came from the house after the visit. They encountered a group of Topbridgers skulking just inside an alleyway, keeping watch upon the Birders House.

  

 “There’s some. Ask’m” muttered one of the loiterers, thrusting another out of the alley at them. “Ask’m whether it’s true. She’s puff-belly, right? Ask’m.”

  

 “ ‘Ja see the birdgirl?” panted the thrustee. “There’s some saying she’s swole. Been havin’ at her, those Birders, some say. Mercald’s had atter. ‘Ja see her?”

  

 Beedie started to say something indignant, but the pressure from Mavin’s hand stayed her. “Oh, I have indeed,” said Mavin. “There are three schools of thought, good people, among those from Harvesters. One school teaches that the birdwoman was pregnant when she came to us, but a long pregnancy of a strange, messengerial kind, and that it is the desire of the Boundless that we foster her child. Then another opinion teaches that she became pregnant sometime after she came, and that it will be her child who carries the message from the Boundless. And a third opinion teaches that it was the intention of the Boundless she become pregnant, but only to illustrate that the holy and the human are of like kind. Be wary, people, for we do not yet know the truth of this, and it would not be wise to anger the Boundless.” And Mavin fixed them with eyes which seemed to glow with a mysterious fire even as she, herself, seemed to grow taller and more marvelous. It was less overt than the technique she had used upon the youths, but it worked no less well. The men stopped muttering and merely gazed at her, their mouths gaped wide like that of the puffed fish lantern above them, working over the phrases they had rehearsed, now impotent to arouse themselves with their litany of hate. When they had thus gazed for a little time, Mavin brought them back to the present. “You might ask,” she said in a voice of portentous meaning, “among your acquaintances, which of these theories they subscribe to. Which, for example, do you yourselves believe? You may be held accountable for your belief.”

  

 There was a muttering, a scuttling, and the two of them were quite suddenly alone.

  

 “I’d love to know where you learned to do that with your voice,” Beedie said. “Where you learned to do that trick you did earlier, w ith the boys, and this one, with these fellows. It’s in your eyes and your face. Suddenly they forget what they were about to do. They get real worried about themselves. You’d been planning that, hadn’t you? You were ready for those brats, for these folk. You knew they’d been put up to that talk.” Then, in a voice of sudden revulsion, “Someone’s been stirring a vat of chasm air about the Birders.”

  

 “Oh, assuredly they’d been put up to it. But I’ve given them other matter to chatter on. The interesting part of it is, who did it? Who blamed the Birders right off? Who blamed Mercald? And why?”

  

 “To prevent the Birder caste being raised,” she answered, sure of it. “Though why it should matter to them, I cannot tell.”

  

 “Ah. Tell me, Beedie, what is this lantern we stand under, and why have I not seen them before?”

  

 “Because there aren’t many of them, Mavin,” she replied, confused at this change of subject. “Most of them are very old and rare. They come from the Bottomlands. Fishers catch them sometimes. They glow, you see. The Fishers take out the insides and blow up the skin, then when it’s dark, the skin glows. The fishers say there are many glowing things deep in the chasm. These are about the only one they can catch, however.”

  

 “Interesting. It glows. You know, root dangler, the bottom of your chasm is a wonderful and mysterious place, wonderfully attractive to such an adventurer as I.”

  

 “I told you before, it’s dangerous down there, Mavin.”

  

 “I think it’s going to get dangerous up here, girl. Now use your head to help me think. Why would anyone not want another caste raised up? You told me that the Bridgers were top caste. What does that mean in simple language?”

  

 “Simple language is all I have,” she said with some dignity. “It means the eldest Bridger is the head of the chasm council.”

  

 “That’s all?”

  

 “That’s enough. Head of the chasm council can do almost anything. The head can decide to build a new bridgetown. Or send off an expedition. Or assess new taxes. Or get up an army, not that we’ve ever needed one since we came down from Firstbridge. Or assign duties to a caste, or take duties away.”

  

 “All by himself, he can do this?”

  

 “Or herself, yes. Not that they do go off all on their own like that. Mostly they’re quiet kinds who do a lot of talk before they d ecide anything, You’ve met Rootweaver. Likely, she’ll be next head of council. Her cousin, old Quickaxe, is head now, but he’s getting very feeble. Either he’ll resign or he’ll die or become so ill the council will declare him honorably dis-casted.”

  

 “And how old is Rootweaver?”

  

 “How old? I haven’t any idea.”

  

 “How old is—oh, the Bander from Nextdown, Byle’s daddy, Slysaw?”

  

 “Almost as old as Rootweaver, I suppose.”

  

 “So, if Rootweaver died, and maybe a few others younger than she but older than Slysaw, who would be the eldest Bridger in the whole chasm? Hmrnm, girl?” Mavin paused, smiling dangerously while Beedie considered this. “And you think the bottom would be dangerous, do you? I’ll tell you, nothing is so dangerous as ambition in a man who cares not who stands in his way.”

  

 “Slysaw Bander? Oh, the day he became eldest Bridger is the day we would all change caste. It’s disgusting! No one would have him.”

  

 “Oh, girl, girl. So speaks the naivete of youth. Why, I have seen such tyrants as you would not believe cheered and carried on the shoulders of their countrymen in that same frenzy the boys were whipped up to this morning. I’ll wager you, girl, you’ll find some in the teashops today who are talking of Slysaw, telling of his generosity, and what good ideas he has, and how much things would be improved if he were eldest Bridger. I’ll wager there are tasteless ones and bitty members of this caste and that one, including more than a few Bridgers, probably, all with sudden coin in their pockets and free time to talk endlessly, all talking of Slysaw Bridger and what a fine fellow he is.”

  

 Beedie, who had learned something about Mavin in the last day or so, said, “You’ll wager what they’re saying in the teashops because you’ve heard them.”

  

 “Right first time, sausage girl. There seem to be many visitors from Nextdown in your bridgetown, more than I can figure why they’ve come. They seem to have no business but talk. But they are talking, endlessly.”

  

 “But why—I still can’t figure why, Mavin. If old Slysaw lit the fire that killed my daddy and mother, well, I’ll believe anything of him including he’s a devil. But I can’t figure why.”

  

 “Because there’s power to be had, girl. I’ll tell you a tale, now. Suppose these talkers go to the teashop and go on with their talking, fuming and blowing, saying how terrible it is what the Birders have done, maybe how terrible it is what the birdgirl has done ...”

  

 “Maybe saying she’s no messenger from the Boundless at all?”

  

 “Words like that. The sense of it doesn’t matter much, so long as the sound is full of indignation and fire. So, they talk and talk, getting fierier and fierier, until at last some of them go to set matters right. How will they do that?”

  

 “Bring Mercald and the Birders up before the judges.”

  

 “Ah. But it’s Birders are your judges, girl, and Birders they claim are doing evil. So, what is it they’ll cry then?”

  

 “They’ll cry the judges are corrupt; they’ll say they’ll have to do justice on their own ...”

  

 “Right again. And their justice will mean killing someone, maybe Mercald, maybe half a dozen other Birders or all of them, maybe the birdwoman ...”

  

 “Which you won’t ... you can’t let happen,” whispered Beedie, beginning to understand for the first time what a tricksy person sat beside her.

  

 “Which I won’t let happen. Meantime, there’s confusion and t hreats and maybe a few little riots. You’ve got no kind of strong a rms in this chasm except the Bridgers themselves, perhaps, and—you’ll have to forgive my saying it, girl, but they seem half asleep t o what’s going on.”

  

 “They’ve never—had to ...”

  

 “That’s obvious. Well then, with all the confusion, this one and that one could get killed. And wouldn’t it be strange if among those killed were a number of elderly Bridgers? And at the end of it strange that Slysaw Bridger would happen to be eldest Bridger in the chasm and thus head of council. And in the meantime, of course, everyone too upset and confused to wonder who fired the mainroot you almost died on.”

  

 “How could any Bridger do such a thing?” she demanded, white around her eyes, mouth drawn up into an expression of horror and distaste. “Even a Bander shouldn’t be able to think of such things. I wouldn’t have thought that, ever.”

  

 “Which is what he counts upon, sausage girl. He counts on no one believing ill of a fellow caste member. He counts on being able to sow distrust without being suspected of it or blamed for it. He c ares nothing for the religion, so does not fear to meddle with it. He’s no believer, that one. Else he wouldn’t have trifled with a messenger of the Boundless.”

  

 “I thought she wasn’t—that she was just your sister, Mavin. I’m all confused ...”

  

 “She’s my sister right enough. But who’s to say what messengers the Boundless sends? Why not my sister?”

  

 “Why not you?” asked Beedie, whispering.

  

 “Ah. Why not me, indeed. Well, then, this messenger needs a word with your lady Footweaver, and it’s up to you to arrange, it, Beedie. Arrange it quietly, and in a way no one will wonder at, for I’ve things to tell her and her fellows, things to ask of her as well, and I want no prying ears while I’m doing it.”

  

 “You’re not going to tell them that you ...”

  

 “I’m not going to tell them anything except what any Harvester might have overheard, in a teashop, say. Or at a procession. And if you’re asked, girl, you know nothing about anything at all except that I saved your skin on the mainroot one day as I came climbing up from Nextdown. That way, whatever I say, you know nothing about it.”

  

 “I could help you,” Beedie pleaded.

  

 “Not yet. Come necessary time, then yes, but not now. Just go along to Rootweaver, child, and give me the space of a few minutes to think what I’m going to say to her.” She turned to lean on the railing of the bridge, leaning out a little to let the updraft bathe her face in its damp, cool movement, full of the scent of strange growths and pungent herbs. Behind her, Beedie dithered from foot to foot for a moment before moving off purposefully toward the Bridgers House.

  

 Mavin put her face in her hands, letting herself feel doubt and dismay she would not show before the girl. She felt disaster stirring in every breath of air and was not completely sure she could save Handbright, either her life or the life she carried. Far out on a Fishing bridge, which jutted from the mainbridge like a broken branch, she saw a Fisher blowing into his flopper call, making a low honking that echoed back from some distant protrusion of the wall. He put the call away to stand quiet, flicking his line above his head in long, curled figures as a chorus of honks came from inside the root wall. Too quickly for the eyes to follow, a flopper dropped from the root wall, planing across the chasm on the skin stretched from forelegs to backlegs, folding up from time to t ime to drop like a plummet in the intermittent flops which gave the creatures their name, then opening the stretched skin to glide over the chasm depths once more. The fisher’s line snapped out, the weighted hooks at the end of it gleaming in the evening light, missing the flopper by only an arm’s breadth. Another flopper fell from the root wall, and this time the hook caught it firmly through the skin of its glider planes. The flopper honked, a long, dismal hoot into the dusk, and the Fisher began hauling in against the struggling weight.

  

 “Caught,” breathed Mavin. “Handbright, you dropped out of Danderbat Keep on wings, on wings, girl, and you’ve been hooked here in this chasm, the hook set so deep I may never get you loose.” She fell silent, thinking about the technique she had used in diverting the mob of boys, the one she had used on the men. When had she learned to do that? And how? It seemed a long time past, a great distance gone.

  

 There had been a town, she remembered, along the coast north of Schlaizy Noithn, separated from the world of the True Game by high cliffs and from the sea by a curving wall of stone around a placid harbor, such a wall as might have resulted from the inundation of some ancient fire mountain. The people of that town had called it Landizot. She came there seeking Handbright and the company of humankind but found a people hesitant and wary, uneasy with strangers and as uneasy among themselves. Yes, they said, there had been a white bird high upon the cliffs—those they called the dawn wall— earlier in the year. The young people had pursued it there, setting nets for it, mimicking its call in an effort to entice it down, but the bird had avoided them easily, circling high above the cliffs in the light of early morning or at dusk, when it gleamed like silver against the mute purple of the sky.

  

 When had it last been seen, Mavin asked, only to be confronted with shrugs and disclaimers. The children had not been allowed to play outside lately, she was told. Not for some time. So they had not seen it. No one went outside much, certainly not alone at dusk, and the bird had always avoided groups. Perhaps it was still there. Perhaps not.

  

 Mavin decided to stay a while and look around for herself. When she asked why people no longer ventured from their locked houses with the barred windows and doors, she did so in that flat, i ncurious voice she had learned to use in her travels, one which evinced a polite interest but without sufficient avidity to stir concern among casual talkers.

  

 “Because,” she was told, “they have released the Wolf.” The person who told her this glanced about with frightened eyes and would say nothing else. Stepping away from this encounter, Mavin looked into the faces of others to find both fear and anger there.

  

 When she enquired, they said they were not Gamesmen, that they repudiated Gaming as a wicked thing, if indeed even a tenth of what was said about it was true. They did not want to be thought of as pawns, however. They were an ancient people, they said, with their own ways of doing things. Mavin smiled her traveler’s smile, said nothing about herself at all, but made a habit of sitting about in the commons room of her inn at night, listening.

  

 At first there was little conversation. The people who came there at the supper hour were the lone men and women of the town, those without family. They ate silently, drank silently, and many of them left once they had eaten so that the room was almost empty by dusk. As the evenings wore on, however, a few truculent men and a leathery woman or two found their way to the inn to drink wine or beer and huddle in the warmth of the fire. Mavin, with a laconic utterance, offered to buy drink for those present. Later in each evening that courtesy was returned. On the third or fourth night she sat near one old couple who, when the wine had bubbled its way through to their tongues, began to talk, not much, but some.

  

 “Stranger woman, you’ll stay here in the place after dark at night, won’t you?”

  

 “I’d planned on it,” said Mavin.

  

 “Don’t go out at night. You’re not young as most of the girls or children who’ve been et, but you’re female, and the good Guardians witness the Wolf has eaten older.”

  

 Mavin thought about this for a while, not wanting to seem too interested. “Is that the same Wolf I’m told was let out?”

  

 “There is no other,” said the old woman. “And thanks be to all the Guardians for that.”

  

 “What had he done, to be locked up?” She kept her voice calm, almost uninterested, so the woman would not feel it would be troublesome to tell her.

  

 “Killed a woman. Drank her blood. And after crying remorse a nd swearing he would not do such a thing again.”

  

 “Oh,” said Mavin. “Then the Wolf had been locked up before.”

  

 “Aye,” responded the oldster. “Twice, now. First time he was young, the wolf. There were those said young ones find society troublesome and strange, so it wouldn’t do to set him down too hard for it. So, that time they locked him up for a season, no time at all.”

  

 “And the second time?” Mavin prompted.

  

 “Well second time they locked him for a full year. A full year. That’s a weary long time, they said. A full year. Tssh. Seems years go past like autumn birds to me, all in a flock, so fast you can’t see them clear. But then, I’m old.”

  

 “So they’ve let him out?” Mavin prompted again.

  

 “Well, the time they set for him was done. Since it’s done, they l et him out.”

  

 “The time seems very short. For one who ate a young woman a nd drank her blood.”

  

 The oldsters shifted uncomfortably on their chairs, and Mavin changed the subject. Still, she thought a year seemed a very short t ime indeed.

  

 When all had gone save the innkeeper himself, she yawned her way past him on the stairs, remarking as she did so that the two oldsters had seemed upset at the short confinement of the Wolf.

  

 “Those two,” snorted the innkeeper, wiping his hands on his protruding, apron-covered belly. “They’re among those howling loudest at the cost of it. Wolf isn’t eating them, they say, so why should they want to pay for it?”

  

 “Pay for what?” asked Mavin, unable to keep the curiosity out o f her voice.

  

 “Pay to keep him locked up, woman! You think it comes free?” And he snorted his way to his rest, shaking his head up all three flights of stairs, calling back down to her, “Tell truth, though. They’ve got nothing. It’s all they can do to keep their own hovel warm without buying firewood for the Wolf.”

  

 Next day Mavin had strolled about the town, seeking among the children for any who might have seen the white bird. In her walk she passed the prison lately vacated by the wolf. Though it looked like a dreary place, it had every comfort in it of warmth and food and drink and soft mattresses and a shelf of amusements and a place to run in for exercise. Seeing it, Mavin well knew it had cost treasure t o keep it, for the wood to burn to warm for it for a winter alone would have cost many days’ labor, and the food many days’ labor more, to say nothing of the guards who would have been needed night and day.

  

 A number of children claimed to have seen the bird. One lovely girl of about ten years believed it had flown away south. Her name was Janine, called Janny, and she tagged after Mavin for the better part of five days, talking of the bird, the dawn cliffs, of life and the ways of the world while begging for stories of that world in return. The child was artless and delightful, full of ready laughter. Though Mavin had learned all there was to learn about the white bird, she put off her travels for a time out of simple joy in the girl’s company.

  

 One night there was a new face at the inn, a local preacher of Landizot, one Ristor Kyndle, whose house had been burned down by someone or something and would live at the inn while it was being rebuilt. Seeing Mavin was a stranger to the place, he set about making himself pleasant with the intent of converting her to the faith of Landizot and the Guardians. Talk turned, as it often did, to the Wolf.

  

 “Why didn’t they kill the Wolf when they caught him?” she asked. “Or, if they won’t do that, why don’t they lock the Wolf in a cage of iron here in the village square and let him shiver when the nights are cold. Surely he would be no colder than the corpses of the young women and children who lie in your burying ground?”

  

 The pastor was much disturbed at this. “It would be cruel,” he said. “Cruel to treat a person so. We are good people. Not cruel people.”

  

 Mavin shook her head, but withheld any judgment. If there was anything she had learned in long travels here and there, it was that to most people in the world, every unfamiliar thing was considered unacceptably strange. She told herself she was undoubtedly as odd to them as they were to her, and let the matter go. She determined to continue her search for Handbright as soon as the weather warmed only a little. She stopped asking questions and settled into the place, merely waiting for the snows to melt.

  

 But before the thaw came a wicked murder of a young girl child of the town. Her body was found at the edge of the woods, dragged there by something. There was blood on the snow, and tracks of someone who had struck her down and drunk her blood. The t racks disappeared in the hard-packed ice of the road, however, and could lead them nowhere. The little girl was Janny, and Mavin learned of it with a cold horror which turned to fury.

  

 That night in the inn were only murmurings and sideways glances, and more than once Mavin heard this one or that one speaking the Wolf’s name. She expected before the night was over to hear he had been taken into confinement once more, but such was not to be.

  

 He had not left the tavern, they said. He had been in his room drinking with his friends. All night. Never alone, not for a minute. His friends swore to it—Hog Boarfast, and Huggle, the brick-maker’s son, and Hot Haialy, the son of Widow Haialy who had beggared herself trying to help him out of one scrape after the other.

  

 “With them all night, was he?” murmured Mavin, controlling her voice with some difficulty.

  

 “So they say.”

  

 “Trustworthy men, these? Those who say the Wolf was with them?”

  

 “Well ... there’s no proof not. I mean, who’s to say not?”

  

 “Where did they get to know one another? The Wolf and these f riends of his?”

  

 “By the hundred devils, traveler, how would I know? All of’em w ere born and raised here. Wolf, now, he came more lately, but I don’t keep track of him. Most likely they got to know one another while they were locked up—all of ‘em have been at one time or another. Or over the wine jugs at the Spotted Fustigar.”

  

 Mavin smiled a narrow smile and bought the man a drink. As days wore on, her fury did not abate. In a few days was another killing, and once more the three friends of the Wolf swore he had been with them in the tavern. Mavin had known this child, too—one like Janine, trusting, joyous, kind. The next day Mavin left town with some noise about it, saying she would return in a few day’s time. Instead, she returned that evening in the guise of a wastrel youth who took a room at the Spotted Fustigar and bought drinks for all and sundry in the tavern. It took no time at all to be introduced to Hog, Huggle, and Hot, and when one met them, one met the Wolf.

  

 He had yellow eyes, and a slanted smile. His eyebrows met over his nose, and he had a feral, soft-voiced charm which had the new young barmaid, who was scarcely more than a child herself, b emused and troubled before the evening was half done. Hog, Huggle, and Hot were youths of a type; one fat, one meaty, one lean, but all as ignorant of the world as day-old bunwits and covering that ignorance with noise. Mavin set herself to be agreeable—which no others in that place did—and before much had been drunk or more than a dozen disgusting stories told, Mavin too, was among the Wolf’s close friends. During the fits of lewd laughter, Mavin had looked deep into the faces of the other friends of the Wolf to see the mindless excitements stirring there, gleaming in their eyes like rotten fish on tide flats.

  

 Each day that passed there were fewer people on the streets, each night was closer locked and tighter fastened. The childlike barmaid seemed to stop breathing when the Wolf came near, yet she could not stay far from him. She was always within reach of his hands, always seeking his eyes with an open-lipped fascination. Mavin, watching, made angry, silent comments to herself.

  

 Came an evening the Wolf said, “I’ll be here all night tomorrow, won’t I, Huddle?” He giggled, a high-pitched whine of excitement. “It’s time for a good boozer, eh, Hog, all us good friends together, up in my rooms. Time for hooraw till the cock tries to get up and can’t!”

  

 There was a shifting, eager laughter among the three, in which Mavin joined beneath Wolf’s speculative eyes. “I’ll be back for it,” she gasped from her wastrel’s face, pretending drunken amusement. “Got to go to Fanthooly in the morning, but I’ll be back before dark.”

  

 “What’s of such interest in Fanthooly?” drawled the Wolf, his suspicious eyes burning in his face so that they seemed to whirl like little wheels of fire. The others hung on his words, ready to laugh or strike, as he bid.

  

 “Old aunty with money, Wolf. Every year, money left me by dead daddy. She has it ready for me, same time, every year in Fanthooly.” Mavin appeared too drunk to have invented this, and the four had been drinking at Mavin’s expense for some days, so they laughed and believed, saying they would save a drink for him. Mavin, in her wastrel guise, set off in the direction of Fanthooly the following morning.

  

 Only to return, under cover of the forest, entering Landizot once more at the first fall of dark.

  

 She went to the alleyway behind the Spotted Fustigar. There was a door into an areaway in which the trash could be dumped, and if Mavin had read the signs aright, it was there the young barmaid would come, charmed as a bird is said to be charmed by a serpent. And she came, sneaking out without a lantern, wrapped tight in a thick shawl, face both eager and apprehensive. Mavin took hold of her from behind in a hard, unpleasant way which would leave her with a headache but do no other damage, then dragged her unconscious form into the stables. Shortly, the same shawl was in the areaway once more, wrapped around someone else.

  

 The Wolf came there, as she had known he would.

  

 He did not waste his time with words or kisses. The knife was in his hand when he took hold of her, and it stayed in his hand when she took hold of him.

  

 Mavin had been curious about his eyes. She wanted to know if they would glow in that way if he were afraid, if he were terrified, if he knew he was about to die. She found he could not believe his own death—later she thought that might be why the deaths of so many others had meant nothing to him—so, she tried her voice to see whether she could convince him. After a time she caught the knack of it; by the end of it, the Wolf was truly convinced.

  

 It was Hog who found him later that night, lying in his blood, yellow eyes filmed over and tongue protruding from between his slanted lips, the knife still in his hand.

  

 In the morning, Mavin returned to Landizot as herself, full of tsks and oh-my’s at the Wolf’s sad end. She was questioned about the Wolf’s death, as were others, but there was no proof. A stranger young man had been among the Wolfs friends, and it was thought he might have committed the deed except that he had been seen leaving for Fanthooly earlier that day.

  

 As far as Mavin was concerned, the matter was done with. She could not restore Janine to life, but no other Janine would die. She was no longer angry, and she felt she had repaid whatever hospitality had been shown her.

  

 One of the officials of the town came to Mavin afterward, however, with many suspicious questions and lectures on morality. Mavin was sure Pastor Kyndle had cast suspicion on her because of her views. She was sure of it when the official talked on and on about the Wolf’s demise.

  

 “Why?” he asked, attacking her, apropos of nothing.

  

 “Why was he killed? Why, I suppose because he made a habit of killing others. Surely no one except himself expected him to do it forever?” Mavin asked it as a question, but it seemed only to agitate the man.

  

 “We had no proof he was still killing, perhaps it was someone else who was killing the women.”

  

 “ P erhaps,” Mavin shrugged.

  

 “Whoever killed the Wolf had no right ...” the official began.

  

 “Explain to me again,” asked Mavin, “because I am a stranger. Why was it you could not subject the Wolf to the cruelty of a cage? Why did you not simply kill him the first time? You had proof then.”

  

 “Because he is—was human.”

  

 “Indeed? How did you know that?”

  

 “Why, because his mother was human, and his father.”

  

 “Ah. And is that all humanity is? To be born from others who appear human? What does it mean, humanity?”

  

 “It means,” said the official with some asperity, “that he was born in the ordinary way and therefore had a soul. We cannot subject someone with a soul to cruel or horrible punishment.”

  

 “Ah,” said Mavin, cocking her head in a way she knew to be particularly infuriating. “And the young women and children he killed? Did they also have souls?”

  

 “Of course.”

  

 “And by Landizot’s failure to restrain the Wolf, were they not cruelly treated and horribly punished? Was your town not guilty, therefore, of a grievous and very cruel punishment of the innocent? Ah—I see from your face I have missed some subtlety and fail to understand. Forgive me. I am a stranger and quite stupid.” By this time she was also very angry, for the man had begun to bluster and threaten.

  

 Though she had intended to leave the town at the first thaw, the thaw came while she lingered near Landizot in a cave high upon the dawn wall. The town had acquired a new Wolf. She spent the next season and a half stealing all the children of that town up to the age often or so and carrying them away, far away, to be fostered in desmenes beyond the mountains, over the chasms in the world of the True Game. The people of Landizot were much upset, but they had no proof, so could do nothing. When she had taken all the children to the least, newest baby, she enticed the inhabitants i nhabitants of the town out onto the beach, then burned the town behind them, leaving them weeping upon the shore.

  

 She appeared to them then, only that once, in the guise of a terrible, wonderful beast, using the voice she had learned to use in the alley with the Wolf. “I will teach you my teaching, people,” she roared at them. “No man gets a man’s soul by birth alone. That which behaves like a Wolf is a Wolf, no matter who bore him. I have judged you all and found you guilty of foolishness, and this is the punishment, that you shall walk shelterless and childless until you learn better sense.”

  

 After which she left them.

  

 She remembered this now as she stood beside the rail on Topbridge, roiling with the same kind of fury she had felt in Landizot, seething with a hundred ideas for intervention, wondering how much of it she could justify to herself. She had been young then, only eighteen. Even so, she had not been able to excuse having been judge and executioner as a youthful prank. It had not been without consequence. There were still nights when she wakened from a dream of the Landizot children mourning that they would not see their people again. And yet, even so, she still believed they were better in the lands of the True Game, whatever might befall them, than in the town of Landizot beside the ancient sea. At least in the lands of the True Game, people who gambled with women’s lives did not claim to do it out of morality.

  

 In the last several days she had stood in the Birders House more than once, hands resting upon the railing, listening to the voice of Handbright singing. There was no sorrow in that voice, and it was that as much as anything that had stayed Mavin from precipitous action. She had not yet seen Mercald. With Beedie off talking to the Bridger elders, perhaps now would be time to do it, though Mavin dreaded it. When she thought of Handbright and her pregnancy, she could think of it only in terms of the abuses of Danderbat Keep, and her anger envisioned what the man would look like and how she would hate him.

  

 In which she was wrong.

  

 He was slight and pale as a boy, soft-spoken, mild as mother’s milk, timidly diffident, stuttering, his fingers perpetually catching to twist on one another as a baby’s do in the crib. He was dressed in the blue and green of the Birders, but on him it looked like f estival dress, a child got up in costume, at once proud and shy, and his smile was a child’s smile abruptly radiant. In that instant, Mavin knew she had been wrong and in what degree, for Mercald was like Mertyn, Handbright’s younger brother and her own, Mertyn who had held Handbright in Danderbat Keep out of love long after she should have left it out of pain.

  

 “You’re Beedie’s doer-good,” he said breathlessly, holding out his hand, trembling in his desire to thank her. “We have all blessed the Boundless that you were there when needed to help her and save her.”

  

 “Yes,” she said, changing her mind suddenly, as she sometimes did. “I am Beedie’s doer-good. I am also the sister of the person you call the birdwoman. Her name is Handbright.”

  

 His skin turned white, then flushed, the hot blush mounting from his neck across his face to the tips of his ears, onto his scalp to glow through his light hair like the ruddy glow of a lamp. His hands went to his mouth, trembling there, and his eyes filled with tears. Mavin found herself wondering who had beat him as a child, why he felt this fear, finally deciding that it was merely an excess of conscience, an over-sufficiency of religious sensibility.

  

 “Come” she said harshly. ”If I can forgive you, surely the Boundless will do no less.”

  

 “Forgive ...” he muttered in a pathetic attempt at dissimulation. “What ... is there to forgive?”

  

 “She’s pregnant, Birder. Having seen you, I can tell you how and why and even when, mostlike. You didn’t plan it, did you? Didn’t even think of it. It was just that she had been here for some time, sometime weeping, and you held her, and then—well, whist, it happens. She didn’t mind at all, no doubt.”

  

 “No,” he wept. “I prayed forgiveness of the Boundless, so to have treated his messenger with such disrespect, but then as time went by, I thought perhaps it had been intended. Oh, but I am soiled beyond all cleansing …”

  

 “Nonsense,” said Mavin impatiently. “You are silly beyond all b elief, but that is your sole sin I am aware of, young man. I have no d oubt that even now you do not know what trouble this will cause.”

  

 “I will be disgraced,” he said in a sorrowful voice. “And it is r ight I should be.”

  

 “If that were all, we could possibly bear it with equanimity,” s he said, “but there is more to it than that. There is a deal of riot and murder involved. Well. I have seen you, Mercald. Having seen you, I may not become angry with you, for I do not become angry with children.”

  

 He flushed again, this time offended.

  

 “Ah,” she thought, “so he is capable of anger. Well and good, Mercald.” To him, aloud, she said, “Think, now, if you are disgraced, will you be disgraced alone?”

  

 “It was my fault alone. No other Birder would ...”

  

 “Tush, boy. I wasn’t talking of Brightfeather out there. I was speaking of her, Handbright. If you are disgraced, so will she be disgraced. If you are punished, so will she be punished. If you are put to death—as I have no doubt someone will try to do—then do you think they will not try it with her as well?”

  

 His expression took on all the understanding she could have wished, horror and terror mixed. “But she is a messenger of the Boundless. They would not dare so offend the Boundless ...” Then he thought of this and his expression changed. She knew then that there was a functioning mind behind all the milky youth of him, for his eyes became suddenly aware and cold. “By the Boundless, but they would. Those piles of flopper excrement would try it, to discredit our judging of them ...”

  

 Mavin smiled. “Who? Who are they, boy?”

  

 He drew himself up, blazing. “I am not ‘boy’. I am a Birder of the third degree, judge of the people of the chasm. I will examine mine own conscience, doer-good, if that is warranted, but I will not submit to disgrace which uses matters of conscience as a starting point for revolt. As to who they are, if you know so much, you know as well as I. The ones from Nextdown. Bridgers, mostly, though with casteless ones mixed in, and Barters and people from Bottommost.”

  

 “Led by whom?”

  

 “I don’t know. Nor why. But led by someone, I have no doubt.”

  

 “As to that, I can enlighten you. Which I will do, young judge, if you will come with me towards Bridgers House. Beedie has gone there to arrange a meeting with the Bridger elders—only those of Topbridge, mind you.”

  

 “It is customary for Bridgers to wait upon the Birder caste,” he replied in a stiff voice, now growing accustomed to his anger and m aking use of it.

  

 “Come off it, Birder. If the rebels have used Handbright’s condition to discredit your caste, it was you who gave them the opportunity. Take off your robes. Put on something dark and inconspicuous, and we will walk outside the light of the lanterns. We are sneaking away to a secret meeting, not leading a procession of dignitaries.” And she smiled at him, nodding toward the door to give him leave to go, listening throughout all this to the voice of Handbright behind her, threading endless chains of unstrung words with her song.

  

 They left Handbright singing, making no attempt to guard her, Mavin doing so in the hope the skulkers had not been directed to start overt trouble so soon, and Mercald with the conviction that she was safe, would always be safe in a Birders House. Leaving dignity behind, they skulked down the twisty ways among the dwellings and shops, up and down half flights of stairs, out onto Fisher platforms and back again, staying out of the light of the lanterns, away from the alley corner gapers and chatterers. They encountered Beedie only a little way from the Bridgers House. “Rootweaver says she can meet with us in about an hour, Mavin. Mercald. You look very different without your robes. Was it you got Mavin’s sister pregnant?”

  

 He began the stuttering, fluttering, pale then red once more, only to be stopped in midflutter by Mavin’s saying, “Of course he did, sausage girl. He’s the only one innocent enough to have done it without realizing what a mess it would make. Don’t tease him about it. He’s troubled enough as is, and will be more when we finally figure out what needs to be done.”

  

 CHAPTER FOUR

  

 The buildings of Topbridge burgeoned at the edges of the bridge like growing things, room atop room, lump on lump, anchored by fine nets of twig roots to the buildings below, connected across alleys by twisting, tendril-like flights of Fishers’ roosts jutted like rude tongues from this general mass; every roomlet sprouted corbeled parapets; machicolations perforated the edges, allowing a constant shower of debris to float downward. The city was fringed with vertical roots which fell from the great supporting catenaries into the everlasting murk of the far-below, pumping life up into the mainroots and thus into the city. Along some of these verticals, new towers spun themselves in airy insubstantiality, a mere hinted framework of hair roots and a plank or two awaiting the day they would be strong enough to support a floor, a wall, a roof.

  

 Water fell occasionally from the green leafy sky, a kind of sweet rain or sticky dew, and children ran about in it with their mouths open and tongues stuck out, whooping thier pleasure at the taste as their elders made faces of annoyance and wiped the dew from their hands with gestures of fastidious displeasure. Everyone wore fishskin hats on days like this, to keep the sticky rain from coating their hair, and all the awnings were put up, adding to the general appearance of haphazard efflorescence.

  

 This clutter of room upon room, tiny balconies jutting over other such balconies, flat roofs forming the front porch of still other dwellings, all the higgledy piggledy disarrangement of the place gave way here and there to more open spaces, commons where market stalls surged at the foot of the surrounding structures, flapping with woven awnings and banners like a net full of fishes. Wide avenues ran the length of the bridgetown; narrower alleys twisted across it. Carts rumbled up and down, hawkers cried the flavour of tea, the strength of liquor, the fieriness of exotic spices f rom Midwall—culled from the parasitical vines which grew there and there alone. Harvesters stalked about vending quantities of root nodules from gaping sacks, or wall moss in bulk, as well as vine fruits, thickic herb, dried strips of net-caught flattree leaves and fifty other viands as strange and odd-smelling.

  

 The favourite place for meetings, whether planned or spontaneous, was Midbridge Market, and the most favored of the stalls there was that of Tentibog the Teaman. There were those who said Tentibog traded with the pombis aloft, that nothing else would explain how he obtained herbs unobtainable by other men, at which Tentibog only laughed and talked of the quality of his water, procured at great expense from some distant, secret water-belly. Whatever his secrets, his place was so crowded that it virtually assured anonymity. Anyone might be there, might meet anyone else, might engage in a moment’s conversation or a morning’s philosophical discussion without anyone else wondering at it or commenting upon it. So it was that Beedie and Mavin encountered Rootweaver there, and the three of them happened upon Mercald the Birder—dressed in simple trousers and shirt and unrecognizable therefore—and the four of them drank Noon Moment tea while deciding the fate of the chasm.

  

 Rootweaver had ordered the third pot by the time Mavin had finished talking, Beedie marveling the while at the things she had said and had not said. “Because we are what we are, my sister and I,” Mavin had emphasized, “does not mean we are not what you supposed my sister to be—a messenger of the Boundless. Indeed, by this time, I believe we are both such messengers, sent to help you out of a difficulty.”

  

 “Out of mere kindness, I suppose,” Rootweaver had said, somewhat cool in manner.

  

 “Oh, I think not. If the Boundless uses us as its messengers, surely it takes into account what will make us act. I am moved out of sympathy for my sister, whom I owe a debt. And out of regard for your people, who until now have treated her kindly.”

  

 Rootweaver toyed with her teacup, one of the Potters’ best, circled with lines of rippling colour and pleasant to the touch. When she spoke at last, it was with some hesitation. She did not wish to offend Mavin, nor the Boundless, if it came to that, but she was acting eldest, and that carried certain imperatives. “Mavin—see, I call y ou by your name, thus offering a measure of friendship and trust—you ask that we take your ... sister into Bridgers House. You make a persuasive case that her life is in danger where she is. No! You need not cite further incident. I’m inclined to believe you. We are not so blind in Bridgers House we cannot see unrest or hear the result of manufactured demonstrations of discontent.

  

 “So, well and good. But what would occur if this woman were taken into Bridgers House? Those responsible for rumor and riot would soon learn she is gone from Birders. They would seek her out. Our house is full of Maintainers and workmen who come and go. There is no locked room so remote that its existence might not become known if a search were going on. So on the one hand a woman will have disappeared, on the other hand there will be a locked room at Bridgers House. What will the rumormongers make of that?”

  

 There was a lengthy silence. Beedie sighed, tapping the table with her own teacup. “She’s right, Mavin. That wouldn’t keep the birdwoman safe.”

  

 “Besides which,” Rootweaver went on in her calm voice, “you give us no real reason to assist you in this way. We would be more sensible to disinvolve ourselves, to stand remote from this Bander-Birder conflict so that our own position would not be threatened.”

  

 “The Banders killed my family,” Beedie burst out, in a barely suppressed whisper. “Tried to kill me ...”

  

 “Where is your proof? What proof do you have, child? A cough heard on the stair from Potter’s bridge? A sneering look? Suspicious absences? A bit of harassment by officious Banders? Well, here is a judge. Tell me, Mercald, would you convict the Banders on this evidence?”

  

 Mercald flushed, then turned pale. “I could not,” he whispered. “As you know, Bridger.”

  

 “You see,” said Rootweaver. “If we have no proof, we cannot take action against the Banders. We cannot even be sure to prevent what evil they may attempt in the future. Because we have not proof, we Beeds and Chafers must protect ourselves. We cannot openly ally ourselves with Birders who may fall into disrepute. We cannot have ourselves accused of blasphemy because we offer protection to a person alleged to be a false messenger, perhaps a servant of Demons ...”

  

 “I have said Handbright means much to me. I cannot take her away with me until she is delivered of the child she carries. If she remains here, it is at peril to her life. And you say you will not help me?” Mavin spoke in that flat, incurious voice Beedie had heard before, an ominous voice in that it gave nothing away.

  

 “I didn’t say that,” replied Rootweaver, pouring Mavin more tea. “I merely said that you asked a great deal and offered nothing much in return except information we were already aware of. Now—if you were willing to take on a job of work for us ...”

  

 “Ah,” said Mavin. “So now we come to it.”

  

 “We come to it indeed, if you wish. I have something in mind.” Rootweaver leaned forward to speak softly, intendy, making closed, imperative gestures with her fingers, hidden from others in the room by their huddled bodies. Mercald and Beedie listened with their mouths open.

  

 Mavin feigned uninterest. When Rootweaver had done, however, she leaned back, stared at the ceiling for a time, then dried her hands on her trousers and held them out. “Done,” she said. “Agreed. If you will keep Handbright safe.”

  

 “We can only try,” the Bridger replied. “We may not succeed once it is known she lodges with us.”

  

 Mavin gave her one, brilliant smile. “I think we can improve her chances in that regard. It may not be necessary for anyone to know that the birdwoman is with you at all. And while we are at it, may we test to see if proof of our belief may be found?”

  

 “You may test. You may not forment insurrection merely to see who falls into your mouth.” Mercald said this firmly, without doubt, and Beedie gave him a surprised look. For all his milky youth, still he had some iron in him.

  

 “Very well then,” agreed Mavin. “Here is what we will do ...”

  

 The following day, an hour or so before noonglow, a procession o f Bridgers and Birders was seen to enter the marketplace, dressed i n the full regalia of office, obviously on some portentous mission.

  

 The assembly of so many top caste persons was enough in itself t o attract attention, and by the time the call for prayer cried silence u pon Topbridge, there were people in every alley and every market s tall, on every roof and balcony, waiting to see what would happen.

  

 It was Rootweaver who mounted to the announcement block on t he market floor at the very center of the commons, she who cried i nto the attentive quiet of the place. “People of Topbridge, I speak for the eldest Bridger, Quickaxe, head of chasm council, who is too feeble with age to attend upon you. I am next eldest, next in line to be head of chasm council. I am here to speak about disorder, for disorder has come to the chasm. There has been talk and dissention. A Birder has been assaulted—no, do not draw horrified breath. There is not one of you who did not know of it.

  

 “As you all know, Mercald the Birder received a visitation from a messenger of the Boundless. This is a mystery. We do not understand why the messenger has come. Some, in their foolishness, have accused the Birders of ill doing. Others have gone so far as to question the validity of Birders’ judgments, their place to judge at all.

  

 “I come to you all with a message. Tomorrow, during noonglow, the messenger will depart Topbridge. It has come to lead a small group on a quest, toward a greater mystery than any we have spoken of. Mercald, the Birder, will attend upon that quest. Beed’s daughter, Bridger, will attend upon it. The Maintainer Roges will attend upon the quest. They go to find the lost bridge. I invite you to witness the going forth.

  

 “There will be no disorder! I serve notice here upon you all. If there is language unfitting the occasion, if there is unruly behaviour, if there is childish rebelliousness displayed, those responsible will be brought before swift judgment under chasm rule.” Then there was indrawn breath from everyone present. Mavin had been prepared for that, and she heard it with satisfaction. Chasm rule allowed immediate execution of rebels against the order of the bridgetowns by tossing them into the chasm. Privately, she thought it a bit too good for the Banders—at least, those involved in the conspiracy, as she felt most of them probably were. From the corner where she stood, she watched faces, eyes, searching for the quick sideways glance, the covert whisper, the betraying signs of those who had plans that were upset by this announcement. There were many. Too many. Most of them casteless ones, but there were Bridgers among them, and Fishers, and a knot of belligerent-looking Harvesters. She shook her head. Proof! She had all the proof she needed.

  

 “Ah, well. Much to do before the morrow. Much explanation, much preparation. Rumor must be spread in the market place c oncerning the treasures of the Lostbridgers. Beedie must be outfitted for travel, and Mercald, and the ‘Tainer Roges.” Beedie had not wanted him along, had become rather flushed about it, as a matter of fact, but Rootweaver had insisted. “Where a Bridger goes, a Maintainer goes, Beedie, and that’s the rule. In times of danger, a Maintainer is a Bridger’s spare eyes, a Bridget’s spare nose.”

  

 “I can take care of myself,” she had replied rebelliously. “I don’t need Roges.”

  

 “If you will not accept him as a quest mate, then we must send some other Bridger,” Rootweaver had replied. “We will not begin a holy quest by breaking the rules. You may be sure someone would notice, and it would throw doubt upon the whole endeavor.”

  

 “Rootweaver is right,” Mavin had said. “Let be, Beedie. I’ve met Roges. He’s strong, sensible, and seemingly devoted to you, though why he should be, I cannot tell you.” At which Beedie had flushed bright red and shut up.

  

 In the night, at the darkest time, a small group of people left Birders House unobserved, carrying something fairly heavy. They placed it in a cart with muffled wheels and took it along the main avenue. The avenue was much darker than usual, for all the lanterns had gone out simultaneously. This happened rarely, but it did happen. If anyone lay wakeful at that time to hear the muffled squeak of a wheel, no one remarked upon it at the time or later. At Bridgers House the cart was unloaded and those who had accompanied it dispersed into the dark. When morning came, there was no evidence of the trip. The cart was back behind Harvesters House from which it had been borrowed. The visiting Harvester, Mavin, who had enquired about the cart, had departed the evening before. There were those in the house sorry to see her go. She had been interested in everything, a good listener to all their tales, all their woes and dissatisfactions, and she had been remarkably good with the slow-girules, almost as though she understood their strange language. Two of the Harvesters, meeting over breakfast tea, remarked that it was sad she would miss the beginning of the quest which was to start at midday.

  

 “Though she’s probably on the stairs to Nextdown by now, and from there she’ll probably see as much as we will. Likely more. With the crowd there’ll be, likely we’ll see nothing or less.” Mavin, p reparing herself in the back room at Birders House, would have been amused.

  

 Time moved toward noonglow. Mercald came out of the Birders House, together with Brightfeather and half a dozen others of the Birders, all in their robes and stoles, tall hats on their heads with feather plumes nodding at the tips. In their midst walked a bird-woman in her green dress, silver and blue ribbons flowing as she walked, calm and easy, humming her song in a quiet voice.

  

 The woman who had once worn that dress now sat in a high, comfortable room at Bridgers House, guarded both day and night. She wore clothes of quite a different kind. Her hair had been cut and dyed. She did not resemble the birdwoman at all.

  

 Anyone who went to the Birders House would find it empty; any­one who looked at the birdwoman in the procession saw that she was lean as a sideroot. There was murmuring, consternation in some quarters. How could one accuse the Birders of having interfered with a messenger of the Boundless when the messenger did not seem to have been interfered with? Byle Bander, watching from a convenient doorway, slipped inside the house to report to his dad.

  

 “No sign at all, Dah. None. She was swole like a water-belly three days ago. I swear. Saw it myself. Not now, though.”

  

 “There’s some can use herbs,” said the old man in a dire voice. “We can give it out that they used herbs on her, made her lose it.”

  

 “Ah, but Dah, those herbs come nigh to killing anyone who takes ‘em. Everybody knows that. This one is healthy as anything. No sign she was ever sick, and there are those know she was swole three days ago. They’re saying it’s a miracle already on the street.”

  

 The man heaved himself up, face dark with fury. “What are they up to, those Beeds, those Chafers? I ask you. What do they know?”

  

 “Nothing, Dah. How could they?”

  

 “Well it’s strange, I tell you. All suddenly now, after doing nothing for days and days, the whole Bridger bunch is talking quest. Talking miracle. Talking to the Birders as though they was cousins. And you noticed how they go around? There’s never a time they don’t have a Maintainer within reach, knife in his belt, looking, looking. What are they suspecting?”

  

 “Well ... a lot of ‘em have died, Dah. You can’t expect they shouldn’t notice.”

  

 “Accidents,” said the old man, sneering. “All accidents. It’s that Beeds daughter girl. She’s come up from rootburn all full of fury, spreading stories.”

  

 “I haven’t heard any, Dah. Swear I haven’t.”

  

 “Well, hear it or not, it’s her, I’ll tell you. Come up on the roof, boy. We’ll see what they’re about.”

  

 Outside, the procession moved into the commons. The birdwoman moved toward the railing to stand framed by two verticals, posed, all soft as feathers in dress and demeanor, gazing around her with mild eyes. Some of those who had been busy assaulting the Birder only days before had the sense to look ashamed of themselves, and more than one wife whispered angry words to her husband. “You see! You can tell she’s holy. You men, putting your filthy mouths on everything wonderful ...” “Pregnant, is she? Well, she’s about as pregnant as my broom handle, husband. If you’d spend more time making nets and less rime in chatter, we’d be better off and the Boundless would be gratified, I’m sure.” Mavin, looking at them out of Handbright’s face, read their lips, their expressions, and smiled inwardly.

  

 The Birders moved toward her, setting up poles, banners, making a screen around her on all sides except outward toward the chasm. They roofed it with scarves, and Mavin was hidden from their view. The call for prayer sounded, a narrow cry, a climbing sound which rose, rose, upward into the green sky. Floppers honked in the root wall. Birds sang. High above them a breeze shook the leaves of the flattrees and the sweet dew fell. Noonglow came. The Birders drew the screen away.

  

 All the assembled people gasped at the white bird which perched at the edge of the chasm, unbelievably huge and pure, more a symbol than a living thing, hierarchic and marvelous.

  

 Mercald moved forward, a traveler’s pack on his back, Beedie coming to stand beside him, then Roges.

  

 “Show us the way,” Mercald called to the bird in his high, priest’s voice. “Show us the way, messenger.”

  

 Mavin spread her wings, dived from the edge of the bridge, caught the air beneath her and whirled out into the hot, uprising draft. She circled upward, twice, three times, gaining height with which to circle above the bridge, crying in a trumpet voice as she did so, then outward once more and down, down into the depths a nd out of sight. Mercald struck the bridge floor with his staff, cried, “We follow, messenger. We follow.” The three of them moved resolutely toward the stair to Nextdown as the crowds pushed back in religious awe. A group of ordinary people Messengers assembled at the chasm side, strapping on their flopperskin wings, leaping one by one out into the same warm updraft to circle away up-chasm and down-chasm, carrying word of what had happened.

  

 Behind the questers on the roof of his house, Slysaw Bander pounded the parapet with his fists. “They know something, Byle, I tell you they know something. They’ve got something in their teeth. Something big. Something wonderful. The lost bridge went down in the long ago, so they say, with treasure on it. Treasure we can’t even think of, boy, because we’ve lost the secrets of it. Can you imagine? Well, I’ve need of treasure right now. I need to put it in many pockets, boy, and the Banders are running shy of enough of it. So I’m not going to let them get it all by theirselfs. Pack us some gear, boy, and go tell your cousins. There’ll be two expeditions going down, one to lead and one to follow—one to find, and one to take it away from them.”

  

 “But, Dah! It makes me fearful to hear you talk so. Fearful to think what they may be up to. There’s only a few of the old Beeds and Chafers to have done with and you’ll be eldest. Why go away now? We’re close, Dah. Real close.”

  

 “Because they’re onto something, boy. And whatever it is, we’ve got to know. The other’ll wait. None of ‘em’ll get younger while we’re away. Come on now, hop.” And Byle Bander hopped, unaware that when the group left the house and headed for the stairs down which Mercald had gone, they were observed with considerable satisfaction by Rootweaver herself.

  

 “You see, cousin,” she said to the eldest, who sat well wrapped in an invalid chair at the teashop table. “While it won’t do as proof, still it goes far to establish that Mavin was right.

  

 “But who is she?” the old man said wonderingly. ‘What is she?”

  

 “A wonder, a Demon, a messenger of the Boundless,” replied Rootweaver. “Mavin Manyshaped. One who can see farther than we have had to learn to do, cousin.”

  

 “Well then,” he said, “what is to happen now?”

  

 “According to Mavin, the announcement of a quest, particularly one rumored to have treasure as a part of it, will draw the villains o ut where they may be seen and proof assembled against them. Mercald goes with the questers to witness such proof and to remove him as a subject of rumor. Beedie goes because Mavin asked for her, and because the girl has an adventurous spirit. Roges goes where Beedie goes.” Rootweaver refilled their cups, meditatively, gazing at the stair head, now almost vacant. She remembered her own youth, her own adventurous spirit. With her, too, there had been a certain Maintainer ...

  

 “Actually, Eldest, they go to find out what is killing the roots of the bridges. We do not say that, for to say it would mean panic, but that is why they go—that is the bargain we have made with Mavin. ‘Find out’, we said, ‘and put a stop to it.’

  

 “Privately, I believe Mavin would have gone into the chasm to explore it whether we asked her to do so or not,” she said. “She is an adventurer first, and whatever else she may be second. This is in her eyes, in the very smell of her skin. Well, as for us, we will wait and see. Guard the pregnant birdgirl, guard ourselves against assassination, warn our fellows on the other bridges, and wait and see.”

  

 The old man shook his head. Despite his fragility, his concern for the people he had so long cared for, he found himself in a curious mood. After thinking about it for a very long time, he decided the feeling was one of envy. Wait and see was not what he really wanted to do, and he thought of Beedie and Roges as he had seen them marching off to the stairs with a longing so sharp that he gasped, and Rootweaver had to put his head between his knees until he recovered.

  

 CHAPTER FIVE

  

 There was no one else on the stairs when the small group began the descent. They looked back to see the whole rim of the bridge edged with white disks of faces, mouths open in the middle so that it looked like hundreds of small, pale O’s along the railing and at every window. “We are already a legend,” said Beedie, not without some satisfaction.

  

 “I pray there will be more to the legend than a last sight of us disappearing into the depths,” commented Roges. He was staying politely behind her, and Beedie was surprised to find that the thought of him so close rather pleased her. Well, it was a new thing she was doing, unused to travel as she was. It was always good to have familiar things about, rugs, bits of furniture, ones own ‘Tainer. With uncustomary tact, she did not mention this to him, knowing that he would not like being compared to cooking pots and sleeping mats. Then, too, perhaps the comparison was not quite fair. Roges was a good deal more useful than a sleeping mat. She flushed, and began to think of something else.

  

 “Do I understand that the white bird was not actually the ... the messenger which we had received before?” Roges asked. “Actually, Bridger, Rootweaver told me very little.”

  

 “Maintainer, the white bird we are following into the depths is named Mavin. She, whatever she is, is sister to that white bird Mercald had in Birders House—the one all the fuss was about. However, everyone thinks it is the same white bird, so if they are intent on doing it harm, they’ll have to follow us into the depth to do it.”

  

 “And we are not actually upon a quest to find the lost bridge? I gathered that much.”

  

 “Roges,” Beedie sighed, calling him by name for the first time in her life without noticing she was doing it, “We’re going to find w hat’s eating the roots. Because Rootweaver and all the elders are frightened half out of their wits. And they’re afraid to talk about it or go down into the depths themselves for fear it will cause an uproar. So they’ve maneuvered Mavin into doing it for them. Now that’s the whole truth of it.”

  

 “Ah,” said Roges, turning pale, though Beedie did not see it, for which he was grateful. “There’s been talk about something eating the roots. Whispers, mostly. No one seems to know anything about it, except that some of them are dying. Well. How ... interesting to be going on such a mission.”

  

 Then he fell silent and said nothing more for quite some time while he tried to decide how he was going to act now that he knew what the mission was about. Eventually he reached the conclusion that he would still have volunteered to come even if he had known the whole truth; that being part of the group selected for such a mission was gratifying; and that while the journey had suddenly gained certain frightening aspects, he did not regret that aspect of it. Besides, nothing could have kept him from going wherever Beedie went, though he carefully did not explain this to himself. After a little time he felt better about it, and actually smiled as he followed Beedie on down the seemingly endless stair.

  

 “What was it you said about not stopping at Nextdown?” Mercald asked her. “I didn’t understand that part.”

  

 “Mavin said she would meet us on the stairs before we get to Nextdown, and she doesn’t want us to go to Nextdown at all if we can help it. She thinks old Slysaw has been building strength there, and likely we’d be set upon. It’s important that they not lay hands upon you.”

  

 “How would they know we are coming? Are the Banders set to assault any Birder who shows up?” Mercald was edgy with uncertainty, fearful and made touchy by his fear.

  

 “Mavin thought old Slysaw had probably hired a Messenger or two. We know Slysaw is up on Topbridge. One of the Chafers from Bridgers House saw him. So he might have sent word ahead of us to Nextdown. She says she’ll be very surprised if he didn’t.”

  

 “I didn’t know there was a way around Nextdown,” commented Roges, hearing this for the first time.

  

 “Neither does she. But Mavin says if there is a way, she will have found it by the time we get there. She thinks there may be some c onstruction stairs used by the Bridgers in times past that will duck down this side and join the stairs to Midwall farther on.”

  

 “If so,” said Mercald, “I’ll wager they’ve rotted away by now. Nextdown is the second oldest of all the bridges, and it hasn’t been renewed at all. Any construction stairs would be lair for crawly-claws by now.”

  

 “I thought Topbridge was the second bridgetown built,”said Roges. “Before the fell of Firstbridge.”

  

 Mercald shook his head. “Nextdown had been started before Firstbridge was destroyed. There were already stairs down to it, which is how a few Firstbridgers escaped. Then, it was from Nextdown they moved up to build Topbridge. It’s all in the records we have left at the Birders House. Not that they’re complete in any sense. Mostly they’re things that were rewritten from memory after Firstbridge was broken.”

  

 “Do they say where we came from, Mercald?” Beedie had been curious about this ever since Mavin had spoken of the wide world above the chasm.

  

 “Only that we came from somewhere else, long ago. We lived on the surface under the trees until the beasts drove us out. And why that happened is a mystery. Some say it’s because we sinned, disobeyed the Boundless. Others say the Demon Daudir brought it upon us out of wickedness.”

  

 “I haven’t ever heard of the Demon Daudir!” Beedie was indignant. “If it’s an old story, why haven’t I heard it?”

  

 “Because it’s accounted heresy,” replied Mercald. He had stopped for a moment at a place the stair root they were on switched to another one, heading back along the root wall. Stairs were made by pulling a sideroot diagonally along the root wall as far as it would go, then cutting steps into it and building rails where necessary. Except for the short stretch between Potter’s bridge and Miner’s bridge, one root was not sufficient for the whole distance and crossovers were needed. At these crossover points, small platforms gave space to rest. Travelers caught between bridges by nightfall sometimes slept there, too. Mercald stopped to take off his high feathered hat, folding it up with some care and slowing it away in his pack wrapped in a handkerchief. His robes were next, and when he had finished all the regalia was hidden away and he appeared to be merely another traveler. “Daudir was supposed to be a Demon w ho arrived out of the Boundless in the time of our many-times-great forefathers. She brought disaster upon our world, so it is said, and our own troubles were the result. However, this is not in accordance with the Birders’ teaching, so we don’t talk of it.”

  

 Beedie wondered if Mavin knew the legend, and if so what she thought of it. “Why isn’t it in accordance, Mercald? Is it a story?”

  

 “Everything is a story,” muttered Roges, unheard.

  

 “It isn’t a story,” Mercald said. “But it is doctrine. Do you want to hear it?”

  

 “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

  

 “As a Birder, I have no choice. Trouble or no, I must tell what is to be told. That’s what Birders are for. So. Let me follow you and Roges, and that way you can hear me as I talk...

  

 “The Story of the Creation of All. Ahem. Time was the Boundless lived alone, without edge or limit, lost in contemplation of itself. Time was the Boundless said, ‘I will divide me into parts and compare one part against the next to see if I am the same in all parts of me, for if there is difference in anything, in this way may I discover it.’

  

 “So the Boundless divided itself, one part against another part, and examined all the parts to see if difference dwelt among them, and lo, there was difference among the parts for what one part contained was not always what another part contained.

  

 “So the Boundless was lost in contemplation, until the Boundless said, ‘Lo, I will divide me smaller, in order to see where the difference lies.’ And the Boundless divided itself smaller yet, finding more difference the smaller it was divided ...”

  

 “I don’t understand that at all,” murmured Beedie to Roges.

  

 “It would be hard to tell the difference between Beedie and Beedie,” Roges whispered. “But if you divided yourself in pieces, I suppose it would be easy enough to tell your left foot from your elbow.” He smiled behind his hand.

  

 “Until at last,” Mercald went on in full flight of quotation, “the Boundless was many, myriad, and the differences were everywhere. Then did the Boundless hear the crying of its parts which were lost in the all and everything. ‘Woe,’ they cried, ‘we are lost’.”

  

 “I should think so,” muttered Beedie. “What a thing to do to oneself.”

  

 “So it was the Boundless created Bounds for its parts and its differences, and places wherein they might exist, that the differences might have familiarities in which to grow toward Boundlessness once m ore ...”

  

 “And a good thing, too,” said Beedie. “Now, what has that to d o with not believing in Daudir the Demon?”

  

 Mercald shook his head at her, provoked. “Obviously, this chasm is a familiarity, a Bounded place which was created for us by the Boundless. We are the differences who live here. If it was created for us by the Boundless, then it can have nothing to do with Demons or devils or anything of the kind. All of that is mere superstition and beneath our dignity as people of the chasm. Doctrine teaches that all differences are merely that—differences. Not necessarily good or evil.” He then fell silent, climbing a little slower so that the other two drew away from him

  

 “Try not to tread on him,” said Roges. “All the really religious Birders are sensitive as mim plants. You touch them crooked, and they curl up and ooze. As judges go, Mercald isn’t bad. He’s true t o the calling.”

  

 “You speak as though some might not be,” she said, surprised.

  

 “Some are not. I come from Potter’s bridge, and we had Birders there as judges I would not have had judge my serving of tea for fear they’d condemn me under chasm rule. It was pay them in advance or suffer the consequences, and those among us too poor to pay suffered indeed.”

  

 “Wasn’t it reported to the chasm council?”

  

 “Oh, eventually. Before that, however, there was much damage done. In the end, it was only three of them were judged by their fellows and tossed over, two brothers and a sister, all corrupt as old iron.” He moved swiftly to one side of the stair, reaching out toward a ropey root that hung an arm’s length away. It was dotted with tender nodules, the green-furred ones called root mice, and he cut them cleanly from the root to place them in the pouch at his belt. “Enough for the three of us,” he said. “And some left over for breakfast .” He knelt, peering through the railings. “Ah. Look there, Bridger. In that little hole in the biggest root along there, see—behind the three little ones in a row.”

  

 She knelt beside him, searching until her eyes found the waving claws, moving out, then in, then out once more. “A crawly-claw,” s he whispered. “Do you suppose we could get him?”

  

 “Do you suppose we should? With a judge following after? We’re not Hunter caste.” He was laughing at her, she knew, but at the moment she didn’t mind.

  

 “I caught one once,” she confessed, blushing at the memory of her illicit behaviour. “A little one. I had to hunt all up and down the root wall for enough deadroot to cook it, but it was worth it. Isn’t it all right if we’re out on the root wall?”

  

 “We’re not on the root wall. We’re on the stairs. And there’s likely t o be a party coming up or coming down past us any time. No. Likely h unting a crawly-claw would take longer than would be prudent.”

  

 “It’s true. They pull back in and disappear, and you have to b urrow for them. Well, all right,” she agreed. “But we’ll keep an eye out for any wireworms. And if we see any, we get them, whether there’s a Hunter around or not.” Beedie had never had enough fried wireworms, and there were never enough in the market to satisfy her appetite, even if she had had enough money to buy them all.

  

 Mercald had caught up with them, evidently restored to good humor by his time alone. He moved ahead of them now, after admiring the crawly-claw and quoting in great details several recipes for preparation of the beasts, and they continued their downward way. Beedie, her legs accustomed to hard climbs by hours each day spent in spurs, did not feel the climb, but she noticed that both the others stopped from time to time, wriggling their legs and feet to restore feeling numbed by the constant down, down, down.

  

 They had not come far enough yet for the quality of light to change much. It was still that watery green light the Topbridgers knew as daylight, full of swimming shadows cast by the leaves as they moved in winds from outside the chasm. Beedie remembered the light on Nextdown as being less watery and more murky, darker. She had heard that on Midwall and Miner’s bridge, lanterns were used except at midday, and of course on Bottommost they were needed at all times. She had heard, also, that the eyes of the people on Bottommost were larger, but this might well not be true. Surely travelers from Bottommost would have come to Topbridge from time to time, but she had never noticed any strangers with very large eyes. They went on. A group of chattering Porters passed them going up, followed not much later by a second group, their legs hard and b ulging with climbing muscle. A Messenger swooped by on flopperskin wings, calling to them as they went, “Luck to the quest, Bridger ...” before fairing away out of sight in the direction of Potter’s bridge. The light began to tail; the stairs became hard to see. Far below them lights began to flicker in a long line, stretching from the root wall out across the chasm in a delicate chain, growing brighter as they descended. They stopped at the railing to look down, hearing the voice behind them without surprise, almost as though they had expected it.

  

 “What took you so long?” asked Mavin. She stood in the shadow, half-hidden behind a fall of small roots, almost invisible.

  

 “We had no wings, ma’am,” said Roges, grinning at Mavin with what Beedie considered astonishing familiarity.

  

 “Fair blow Maintainer. Well, I had hoped to tell you of a sideway by this time, some kind of trail or climb around Nextdown. I’ve looked. Up the wall and down it, behind the roots and before them. Nothing. What was there has rotted away and been eaten by the wireworms long since.”

  

 “So we must go to Nextdown after all,”said Beedie.

  

 “Where needs must, sausage girl. However, we’ll not do it without a little preparation. There’s a house full of Banders near the stair—the very house your Aunt Six told me you used to occupy, Beedie. Evidently all the Bander kin from upstairs and down have come to fill it full, and every window of it has eyes on this stairway. They’ve been warned we’re coming. There’s talk of assault and the taking of a Birder hostage. So, lest harm fall ...”

  

 “Lest harm fall?” questioned Mercald, fearfully.

  

 “We shall commit a surprise. As soon as we figure one out. However, why don’t we have something to eat first. Have you supplies, Maintainer?”

  

 “Fresh root mice, ma’am. And things less fresh brought from Topbridge. We can have a cold supper.”

  

 “No need for that. There’s a cave in the wall, just here, behind these roots, and a pile of deadroot in it enough to warm twenty dinners. There is also a convenient air shaft which guarantees we will not suffocate in our own smoke. Even if all this were not so near and so convenient, I would want it to be a good bit darker before we attempt to go past that Bridgers House. So we might as well rest a while and enjoy our food.”

  

 “We saw a crawly-claw, Mavin. I wanted to hunt it, but Roges said the Hunter caste might catch us at it.”

  

 “Are they especially delicious, girl?”

  

 “They are the best thing next to wireworms. Even better, sometimes.”

  

 “Then we’ll have to try and hunt one down, somewhere along the way, Hunter caste or no.” She wormed her way behind the bundle of roots, showing them the way into the cave. The sight of it surprised them all, for it was lit with one of the puffed fish lanterns glowing softly to itself in the black. Snaffled from Nextdown by a strange bird, said Mavin with some amusement. There was also a vast pile of deadroot, looking as though it had fallen there rather than been gathered in. Roges set about building a fire, laying his supplies ready to hand on a spread sheet of flopperskin.

  

 “I didn’t know there were caves in the root wall.” Mercald was indignant, as though the existence of anything he did not know of was an affront to his priestly dignity.

  

 “I think your people have become so caste-ridden, priest, that they do not use their humanish curiosity any longer. You have no explorer caste, do you? No. Nor any geographers? Your adventurous young are not encouraged to burrow about in the root wall?”

  

 “Well, in a manner of speaking,” Beedie interrupted. “Bridger youngsters climb about from the time they can walk. I did.”

  

 “Always under supervision, I’ll warrant. Always learning methods or perfecting skills. Well, it doesn’t matter; it’s only a matter of interest to me. In looking for a way around Nextdown, you see, I have found a number of curiosities, and I merely wonder that the people of the chasm seem unaware of them. For example, there is another cave somewhat below us which happens to be occupied by a strangeness.”

  

 “Occupied?” Roges looked up from his folding grill, interested. “Someone living in the wall? A Miner, perhaps?”

  

 “A person. He tells me his name is Haile Seiklik; by profession, a theoretician; in actuality a stranger, an outlander, not belonging in this chasm at all. He tells me he has come here for difference, for where he was before was same. I invited him to join us for supper.”

  

 Roges made a face and turned to his pack for another handful of the root mice. He was slicing them into a pan with bits of dried f lopper meat and a bulb of thickic. He did not comment. Mavin watched their faces, interested in the ways they received this news: Mercald fearfully; Roges with housekeeperish resignation; Beedie w ith delight. “How wonderful! What is he, Mavin? I don’t know what a theo— a theor whatever is.”

  

 “I’m not at all certain, sausage girl. That’s why I invited him. He looks hungry, for a start, so I presume a theoretician is not anything practical like a Harvester or a Bridger. He is living in an unimproved cave, so I presume it isn’t something useful like a Miner or Grafter. There is a sort of dedication in his expression which reminds me of you, Mercald, but he has no regalia at all.”

  

 “What is he doing, then? In his cave?”

  

 “So far as I can tell, he sits and thinks.”

  

 “Only that?” asked Mercald, scandalized.

  

 “Only that. He’s being fed by the slow-girules. I saw two of them come in and leave him a few nodules while I was there. They talked at him, and he talked back at them, and they purred.” She smiled again, then held up one finger. “Shhh. I think I hear him on the stairs.” There was a slow tread on the stairs, interrupted by frequent stops. Beedie ran to the cave entrance and peered between the roots, seeing a dark shape silhouetted against the lights of Nextdown, below them. “I know why it does that,”said a voice in a tone of pleased amazement. “It’s obvious.”

  

 “You know why what does what?” asked Beedie, coming out onto the stairs. “Why what does what?”

  

 “I know why it feels colder here than it does up above, among the trees. They always say it is because we are closer to the river, here, with more moisture in the air. Nonsense. We’ve come down a long way. There’s more atmosphere, more heat capacity, and the thicker air cools us faster. That’s all. I hadn’t thought about that until now. Interesting, isn’t it.” The person turned toward her, not seeing her. “Different. Not the same at all.” He moved blindly toward the place in the roots from which she had emerged, feeling his way between them to the firelit space beyond.

  

 “Who’s they?” asked Beedie. “I never heard ‘they’ say that, about the river and the moisture.”

  

 “They,” said the man, moving steadily toward the fire and food, “You know. Them.”

  

 Beedie had no idea about them. She shook her head and followed him, seeing Mavin grasp him by one arm and lead him to a convenient sitting stone. He was dressed all in ragged bits and pieces, and his face was one of mild interest, unfocused, as though he did not really see any of them even while he took food from Roges’ hands. He had shaggy, light hair and a wild-looking moustache and beard which drooped below his chin, wagging gently when he spoke. The colour of his eyes was indeterminable, somewhere between vacant and shadow. After a long pause during which no one said anything, he murmured, “Perhaps it was some other place they said it about. That it was cooler lower down. Because it was wetter. Perhaps that was it.”

  

 “What other place was that?” Mercald asked, suspiciously. “Nextdown? Midwall?”

  

 The man chewed, swallowed, spooned another mouthful up before considering this question. “Oh, not any place very local, I’m afraid. Elsewhere, I think. Before I came here at all.”

  

 “You came from elsewhere,” commented Mavin. “Perhaps from the place the ancesters of these chasm dwellers came from? Or from the southern continent?”

  

 “Elsewhere,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the rock around them, as though he had permeated it recently. “It started with liquids. They didn’t understand liquids. Local geometry is non-space-filling. Icosohedra. Triginal bipyramids. Oh, this shape and that shape, lots of them. More than the thirty-two that fill ordinary space, let me tell you. That’s why things are liquid, trying to pack themselves in flat space, and that’s what I told them.

  

 “They couldn’t deal with it. They wanted order, predictability, regularity. Silly. Local geometry can be packed, I said, just not in flat space. So, I said, give them a space of constant curvature and they’ll pack. All they did was laugh. I took some liquids to a space of constant negative curvature to show them it would crystallize, and it sucked me up. One minute, there. Next minute, somewhere else. Somewhere different, thank the Boundless. Boundless. That’s a local word for it. Picked it up from someone off the stairs out there. Boundless. Good name for it.”

  

 “I’m sure the Boundless would be gratified at your approval,” said Mercald, much offended.

  

 “Shhh,” calmed Mavin. “The man’s a guest in our midst.”

  

 “They said every place was like the place I was. Infinite replications of sameness. They called it translational symmetry. Well, I determined to find difference no matter what it took. So I left there and came here. It’s different here. It’s local. Rx>f and feh on translational symmetry.”

  

 “I thought you said you got here by accident,” said Beedie, trying to make sense out of the person. “By some curvature or other.”

  

 “Yes. Both. Hardly anything is mutually exclusive when you really think about it. You can’t look at things too closely. The more precisely you look at one thing, the more uncertain the others get. If we locate me precisely here, how I got here becomes increasingly unsure. Tell you the truth, I don’t remember.”

  

 “ ‘Reality has many natures,” said Mercald in his most sententious voice.

  

 “That’s the truth,” said the theoretician, focusing on the priest for a moment before drifting away again.

  

 “That’s the truth, so far as it goes, at least.” He chewed quietly to himself, smiling at his own thoughts. “Surfaces,” he murmured. “Edges. Reality has edges.”

  

 “That’s the truth,” Beedie muttered to herself. “So far as it goes.” She glared at Mavin. “What did we need him for?”

  

 “Need? Well, sausage girl, what do we need you for? To make life more interesting. He’s different, isn’t he?”

  

 Mercald circled the theoretician in slow, ruminative steps, eating, staring, eating. At last he said, “What do you mean, reality has edges?” Receiving no response, he repeated the question, finally driving it through with a kick at the stone the man was sitting on. “Edges?”

  

 The theoretician put his plate down, picked up a length of root from the floor of the cave. “You see this? This is a system. It has surfaces. It has extent. It has size and corners and edges and impurities and irregularities.” He put it down, searched for a stone, found one. “This one, too. Here’s another. Not the same, not the same at all. And another one yet. All local. Everything’s local. Local.”

  

 The other three looked at one another, Mercald kept on with his circling; at last it was Roges who said, “So?”

  

 “Not to them! Oh, no, not to them. To them, everything is the same. In all directions. For ever. No edges. No corners. They used to scream at me. ‘What do you do about surface states?’ As though that meant something. I thank the Boundless for the surface states. Show me something, anything without surface states! Anything at all! There’s nothing like that in reality. But they didn’t understand. Just went on inventing ‘ons. Palarons. Plasmons. Phonons. Exitons. Vomitons and shitons soon to come. Feh.”

  

 Beedie murmured,”I don’t know, Mavin. It seems to me we ought to let him go back to his cave and start worrying about the Banders.”

  

 “Banders,” screamed the theoretician in a sudden expression of fury. “Infinite lattices. Homogeneous deformation. Idiots.”

  

 “I really think it’s something religious,” said Mercald to Mavin in a thoughtful voice. “There’s a fine kind of frenzy about it. Of course, it might be heretical, but it sounds quite like doctrine.” He regarded the theoretician almost with fondness.

  

 “We’ll take him with us,” said Mavin. “If he wants to go. Thinker, do you want to come with us?”

  

 The man shook his head, then nodded it, reaching into the general pan for the last of the fried root mice. “If it will be different where you are going. I’ve modeled this place. There’s nothing left to do here.”

  

 “He means he has realized it,” said Mercald with satisfaction. “I’m beginning to understand him. It is definitely religious, after all.” He stroked the theoretician’s shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the feel of the rags. “I’ve got an extra shirt I can lend him.”

  

 “Ah,” said Mavin. “I’m glad you find him sympathetic, Mercald. I wonder if he has any practical use at all.” She stretched herself on the cave floor, seeming, to Beedie’s eyes, to flow a little, as though she shaped herself to the declivities of the place. “Thinker, will you solve a problem for me? Give me an answer?”

  

 “Answers? Of course. I always know the answer. After I see the problem, of course. Not before. They’re always terribly simple, answers. Which one do you need?”

  

 “We need to get to the stairs below Nextdown—that’s the bridge just below us— without being seen by anyone on Nextdown. There is no other stair and no root climbable by any of us but perhaps Beedie here.”

  

 “Ah,” said the theoretician. “Might one ask why?”

  

 “There are a dozen large men at the end of this stair who are determined to do us harm,” said Mavin, without changing expression. “Is that reason enough?” She had been watching Beedie’s bright, excited face, and was determined not to change into some huge climbing shape which would solve all problems and take all the fun out of the expedition. Besides, shifting was too easy. Sometimes it was more fun to plot one’s way out of trouble. This praiseworthy thought was interrupted.

  

 “Shhh,” said Roges, moving to throw his jacket over the fish lantern. “I hear voices. Someone coming down.” They fell silent, listening, hidden as they were in the dark of the cave, the last glowing coals of the fire hidden from the entrance by their bodies. There was the sound of a dozen pairs of feet, a malignant mutter, a phlegmy cough.

  

 “I smell smoke,” said someone from outside. Byle Bander’s voice. “Smoke, Dah.”

  

 “Well of course you smell smoke, idiot boy. There’s Nextdown no more than a few hundred steps down. This time of evening when don’t you smell smoke? Everybody’s cooking their dinner, and good time to do it, too. I’m hungry enough to eat for six.”

  

 “You think the Birder’s gone on down? You think our family took ‘em at Nextdown, Dah?”

  

 “I think that’s probable, boy. In which case, we’ll have a high old time finding out from that Birder what they’re going after.”

  

 “And Beedie. I get to ask Beedie, Dah. That and a few games, huh? She’s one I’ve been wanting to play a few games with for a long time ...” The voices faded away into silence, footsteps echoing up the stair for a time, then nothing.

  

 “Ah,” whispered Mavin. “So we are not only expected below, but followed after as well.”

  

 “They won’t find us down there,” said Beedie. “But they’ll know we have to be somewhere.”

  

 “It’s all right, sausage girl. They won’t come searching back up the stairs until morning. Well, Birder. Was their conversation proof enough for you?”

  

 Mercald gestured impotently. “What did they say? They would ask me questions. They would play games with Beedie. Can I prove dishonorable intent?”

  

 “Rootsap,” said the theoretician. “I’ve been thinking about rootsap. The way down, you know. Rootsap.”

  

 “Poisonous,” said Beedie. “Eats through your skin.”

  

 “Not at the temperature of the chasm at this altitude at this time b efore midnight,” said the theoretician. “Which is the coolest time of the daily cycle in the chasm. A phenomenon which awaits explanation but is undoubtedly the result of a warming and cooling cycle on the surface.” He stood up and patted himself, as though taking inventory, though he carried nothing at all. “Knife,” he said. “Or hatchet. We need several good sized blobs.”

  

 “Knife is quieter,” commented Mavin. Beedie nodded. Mavin took a knife from her hip and went out of the cave, Mercald following her silently. The theoretician merely sat by the coals, his eyes unfocused, staring at the stone around them, muttering from time to time. “Suitable viscosity. Alpha helix. Temperature dependent polymerization. Glop. All local.”

  

 Beedie dumped her pouch on the ground and re-packed it, taking a moment to put her hair in order, coiling the dark wealth of it neatly into a bun when she had finished. She caught Roges looking at her, and he flushed. “You have lovely hair,” he whispered. “I’ve w anted to say that, you know.”

  

 “That ... that kind of talk isn’t customary, Maintainer,” she s aid stiffly. Then, seeing the pain in his face, “Roges. You embarrass m e. I’m sorry. Nobody ever said I had nice hair. Aunt Six always s ays I’m a scatter-nonny.”

  

 “You’re not a scatter-nonny,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s just ... just, I’ve never had anyone trying to do me harm before. If anything happens, I wanted ... I wanted to have said ...”

  

 “I don’t think they’re going to do you harm, Roges. I think it’s m e they’re after. And Mercald, maybe. They don’t even know Mavin is here.”

  

 His face darkened in a kind of remote anger. “Harm to you, Beedie, is harm to me. Maintainers are not mere servants. We are a good deal more than that.”

  

 “Polymer,” said the theoretician, loudly. “About now.” Mavin reentered the cave, carrying a huge milky blob of rootsap o n a piece of bark, Mercald just behind her similarly burdened.

  

 They put the blobs down where the theoretician could see them.

  

 “Well, Thinker?”

  

 “Cooler,” he directed. “Wherever it’s cooler.”

  

 Beedie rose, moved around the cave. “It’s coolest just at the e ntrance, Mavin. There’s a draft there.” They put the rootsap down and waited as the theoretician w andered about, examining roots that came through the cave top, smiling at rocks. At last he came to the cave entrance and peered at the blobs. “There,” he said with considerable satisfaction. “You can see the polymerization beginning.” They looked at the whitish blobs which were turning transparent. “Cut it,” he suggested in his mild voice. “Into four pieces. No. Five. I’ll go with you.”

  

 Mavin shrugged, took her knife and cut the blobs into five parts. They resisted cutting, piling up around the blade. She pushed the blobs apart, for they seemed to want to rejoin.

  

 “That’s funny,” said Beedie. “I’ve never seen it behave that way before.”

  

 “Nighttime,” said the Thinker. “You’d have to have seen it at nighttime, when it’s cool.”

  

 “You’ve seen it at nighttime before?”

  

 “Well, no. But I thought about it.”

  

 “Now what?” asked Mavin. “We’ve got five blobs, rapidly turning transparent. What now?”

  

 “When they are totally clear, you’ll need to pull it through a hole of some kind. Lacking any method of precise measurement, I would say something roughly finger size. Small finger size.” He watched with interest as Mavin carried the blobs and the fish lanterns out into the dark. There she found a chunk of tough rootbark and drilled a hole in it with her knife.

  

 “So?” she asked. “Why don’t you do one.”

  

 “Madam, I am not an experimentalist!” The theoretician turned his back on her, as offended as Mercald had been earlier.

  

 Mavin snorted. “Well, if you won’t soil your hands, you won’t. Have you any suggestion what I should do next?”

  

 He turned, very dignified in his rags. “You’ll need to push the blob through the hole. You’ll need to fasten that chunk to something that will hold your weight.”

  

 She found a convenient fork in a root and wedged the chunk behind it after pushing some of the blob through the hole with a stick of deadroot.

  

 “That should do,” said the theoretician, taking a firm hold on the part of the blob which protruded from the hole and leaning outward into space. “Be sure to make all the holes in the bark just that size. The yield at that diameter will be approximately one hundred man heights ...” The blob stretched. He grasped it f irmly. It stretched further. He stepped into air, and the blob stretched, becaming a thick rope, a line, a line that went on stretching, bobbing him gently at the end of it like a child’s balloon as he sank down below the light of the lantern into darkness. “I thought it would do that,” his voice came plaintively up. “I could theorize, but does anyone know what’s down below?”

  

 “For all our sakes, I hope it’s the stair to Potter’s bridge,” muttered Mavin, leaning out into the chasm. “Well, let’s make another chunk with a hole in it, sausage girl. However, let me try it first. What works for our strange guest might not work for us. He’s fond of saying everything is local.”

  

 After another session with knife and bark chunk, Mavin stepped into the chasm and dwindled away at the end of the stretching line, bobbing as she went. The sapling made a thin humming noise as it stretched, a kind of whirring. After a time, when the blob had shrunk almost to nothing, the whirring stopped, and Beedie heard a muffled call from below.

  

 “I guess we try it,” she said to Roges, wiping her hands up and down her trousers.

  

 Mercald was dithering at the edge of the drop, peering down once more. “I ... I ... can’t ... let ... I can’t …”

  

 “Oh, foof,” she spat. “He’s got the down-dizzies. I might have known. Mercald. Don’t look. I’m pushing some of it through, now take firm hold of it. Wipe your hands, ninny. They’re all slippery and wet. Here. I’ll use my belt to fasten you to it so you can’t drop. Now. Roges and I are going to hold you by the hands. Shut your eyes. Now! I mean it. Do what I say, or I’ll call the Banders and let them have you. We’re holding you. Now. I’m going to let go. You’re going down. Just keep your eyes shut. Shut!”

  

 She checked the straps of her pack, wiped her hands once more. “Are you ready, Roges? Roges?”

  

 “Hnnn,” he whined through his teeth. “As ready as I’m likely to be, Bridger. I, too, suffer from the down-dizzies, but I suppose it’s time to get over it.”

  

 She surprised herself, and him, by touching his face, stroking it. “Honestly, Roges. You can get over it. It just takes getting used to. Do what I told Mercald. Just don’t look down.” She watched as he eased himself over the edge, teeth gritted tight, sweat standing out on his face. He began to drop, and she took firm hold of her o wn blob, jumping outward with a strong thrust of her legs, stretching it abruptly, so that it twanged, bobbing her up and down in midair. She clung for dear life, cursing her own stupidity.

  

 When she stopped bobbing, she was beside him, falling down the side of the wall in a dream drop, the hairs of the roots tickling her face, occasional small creatures fleeing with squeaks of alarm. She could see only the light of the fish lantern above them, fading into distance, and the lights of Nextdown which came nearer and nearer on her left, until she and Roges were bathed in their glow. He still gritted his teeth, but his eyes were open, darting this way and that, and she knew that he searched for danger to her even as he fought fear for himself.

  

 Then the lights of Nextdown were above them, becoming only a glow against the root wall as the bulk of the bridgetown eclipsed the lanterns. From below she could hear the voice of the Thinker raised in complaint.

  

 “They would never have thought of that. Their systems have no surfaces, and it’s totally dependent upon surface ...”

  

 “I think I’m going to get very tired of that voice,” she said to Roges plaintively.

  

 “I’m tired of it already,” he agreed. “Still, we’re past Nextdown. We didn’t get captured or tortured or held for ransom. We’re all alive. And I’m confident we’ll find out what’s eating the roots, and then we can go home.”

  

 Beedie was silent, watching the glow of Nextdown fade above her. “I’m not sure I want to think about ... home, Roges. Not just yet. I know you get the down-dizzies, but ... isn’t it exciting? Aren’t you enjoying it at all?”

  

 There was no time for him to answer. Mavin’s voice came out of the blackness nearby. “The stairs are to your right, sausage girl. I’ll toss you a line.” Then they were drawn down onto the stairs, and she forgot she had asked the question.

  

 CHAPTER SIX

  

 “Where are we?” asked Mercald, his voice still trembling.

  

 “On the stairs to Potter ‘s bridge. Which is not where we particularly want to be,” said Mavin. “Nextdown is slightly above us on one hand, Potter’s bridge a long way below us on the other hand. Midwall, which is where I need to go in order to reach Bottommost, eventually, is beyond Nextdown, quite the other direction.”

  

 “We can work our way along the root wall under Nextdown,” said Beedie, not looking at all sanguine about it. “That will bring us to the Midwall stairs.”

  

 “I think not,” said Mavin. “At least two of us, possibly three, would find such a traverse difficult. I’d rather find another way, if possible.”

  

 “Is the idea to escape from those who followed? Who may follow?” The theoretician seemed only mildly interested in the answer to this question.

  

 “No,” said Mercald firmly, surprising them all. “The idea is to stay out of reach, but not out of touch. We need proof they are murderers, and for that we must remain within distance to see and hear what they do, but I’d just as soon not fall into their hands.”

  

 “Hurrah,” said Mavin, laughing a little. “Mercald, you put it cogently. We don’t want to lose them, Thinker. Only avoid them. Which means I must go up yonder and leave a few clues or whisper a few rumors indicating we’ve passed them by, don’t you think? I suggest the rest of you curl up on the steps—they’re rather wide along here—and sleep if you can. I’ll return before light.”

  

 “Couldn’t we go all the way to the Bottom on the rootsap?” Beedie had enjoyed the drop, once she had quit bouncing. Even that had been interesting. Now she saw with disappointment that the Thinker was shaking his head.

  

 “Limits,” he sighed. “Surface to volume, temperature changes, w eight a factor, of course. We came about as far as one blob will allow. And now it’s too warm.”

  

 Beedie hadn’t noticed, but the midnight cool had passed. The winds which swept down the chasm each day from midafternoon to midnight had stopped, and now the warm mists were rising once more. “What would happen if you tried that in the day time?” she asked.

  

 “Plop,” said the Thinker, making a vividly explanatory gesture. “Plop. Nothing much left of you, I should think.”

  

 Mavin had already gone. They settled themselves upon the step, backs against the stair risers. Knowing Mercald’s fear of heights, Beedie planted pitons and belted him to them. Knowing Roges’ pride, she did not do the same for him. Instead, she placed herself between him and the edge, as though unintentionally, a little dismayed at his quiet, “Thank you, Bridger.” They settled, not believing they would sleep, but falling asleep almost at once out of sheer weariness.

  

 In remembering it afterward, Beedie was never sure quite what had wakened her. Was it a scratching sound from the stair root itself? Something moving in the root wall? A slight shaking of the stair they rested upon? As though tugged by something pulling at it from below? At first she thought it a dream and merely dozed in it, without concern, waiting to see what odd thing would happen next. Then her eyes snapped wide against the glow of Nextdown, and she felt Roges stiffen behind her, his foot kicking at her involuntarily as he awoke.

  

 “What is it?” he hissed.

  

 “Mnn, um,” said Mercald. “Wassn. Morning?”

  

 “Unlikely to be volcanic or tectonic,” said the Thinker calmly. “Biologic in origin, I shouldn’t wonder. Probably zoologic, though there’s too little evidence to be sure.”

  

 The mists were rising around them, bringing the odors of Bottom, a rich, filthy smell, of rotted things, a soupy odor of growth. Suddenly a miasma struck them, a stench, foul as decaying flesh, sweetly horrible, and they all gagged and gasped in the moment before a rising draft of air wafted it away. The root trembled again, purposefully.

  

 “Something climbing on it, I should say,” said the theoretician. “I can compute the probable bulk, knowing the modulus of the r oot stair we are on, and the degree of movement ... say something on the order of a thousand two hundred man weights, give or take a hundred.”

  

 “How big would that be?” gasped Beedie as another wave of stink flowed over them.

  

 “Oh, something roughly six or seven men long and a man height and a half through.”

  

 Seeing her look of incomprehension, Roges said, “Put another way, something about as long as a four-story building is tall, and as thick through as the Bridgers House living room.” The root shook beneath them, a steady, gnawing quiver accompanied by aching vibrations of sound.

  

 The noise covered the sound of Mavin’s return, but they heard her voice as she said, “Gamelords! How long has this been going on?”

  

 “Just started,” said Roges through his teeth. The smell had grown worse in the last few moments.

  

 “Stay here,” she hissed at them in a voice of command. “Don’t move. I’ll be back in a moment.” They had not seen her leave, or return, or leave again, but Beedie’s mind flashed quick images of the white bird, and she thought she could hear the whip of air through feathers. They clung to the stair, waiting. It was not long before Mavin returned, calling urgently, “Up. We’ve got to get off the stair. Either back into the root wall or up onto Nextdown, one or the other. There’s a something eating the stairs, something too big to fight.” They heard a frantic fluttering among the roots along the wall, exclamations, expressions of fury, a quick hammering, water falling. “Beedie, light a bit of deadroot and get over here.”

  

 Roges had it ready, even as Beedie wondered why they had forgotten the fish lantern. Sparks flew, went out, flew again, as Roges cursed at them. Then they caught and the deadroot flared up, centering them in a weird, shadowy dance of light. They saw Mavin along the root wall, perched on a water-belly, a round hole carved into it and another at its bottom draining the water away.

  

 “Tie something to Mercald and I’ll haul him over. Roges, help the Thinker. Beedie, put your spurs on.”

  

 “I already have them on,” she said. “I put them on when the shaking started.” She tied Mercald to her with a safety belt and thrust him along a side root, hissing at him. “Close your eyes and c rawl, Birder. Crawl, and don’t look at anything. Pretend you are crawling under Birders House to check for wall rot. It is very quiet and unexciting, and you’ll get to Mavin in just one moment. There.” She turned to find Roges at her heels, teeth clenched, eyes fixed ahead. Behind him the Thinker walked along the root, examining the bark as though he had been a Bridger since birth.

  

 “Do you know, the formation of water-bellies occurs at precises intervals dependent upon the diameter of the root involved. I’ve been thinking ...”

  

 “Later,” snarled Mavin. “Get in here with the rest of us and think about it silently.” They slithered together into the water-belly just as the last of its contents drained away, piled untidily in the spherical space, still wet, feeling the tickly brush of little capillary hairs as they huddled, each trying to see out. Mavin had gone out as they came in, and she was perched well above them now, holding the burning deadroot to cast a light upon the quivering stair. The light blinded them; they could not see what shape she had, and only Beedie knew enough about Mavin to wonder. The thought distracted her, and she did not see what the others did until their indrawn breath drew her attention.

  

 It was vast and gray, covered with scabby plaques of hardened ichor or flaking skin, oozing between the plaques thin dribbles of greenish goo which stank. It had an upper end, but no head that they could see. Still, from beneath the upper end came the sound of chewing, gnawing, the rasp, rasp, rasp of hardness biting into the stair root. The thing moved up, up, not seeing them, not looking for them, merely chewing blindly as it came. Then the chewing stopped. The thing quivered obscenely. Its top end began to rise up, sway, a horrible tower of jiggling jelly ending in a circular mouth which sucked, chewed, sucked—and somehow sensed them. The terrible head moved in their direction, cantilevered out from the root stair toward the water-belly, toward the place they crouched, staring, unable to breathe.

  

 Then something flew at the creature’s head, something bearing flame, beating at it, burning it. The monster screamed a hissing agonized sigh like a kettle boiling dry. It lashed itself upward, striking blindly, without a target. The torch darted upward, back, down once more, striking at the mouth, again and again. With a last, horrible scream, the mass began to withdraw down the stair faster than it had come, folding in upon itself, sliding on its own slimy juices, a trail it had laid as it climbed up, going now away and down and out of sight.

  

 Beedie shuddered and then embarrassed herself by beginning to cry. Roges held her tightly, and she could not tell if the wetness on his face was from her or from them both. Mercald was beneath them, his face hidden at the bottom of the water-belly, half suffocated, and she could not imagine how he had come there. The Thinker had withdrawn a pad from among his rags and was making notes, murmuring to himself as he did so.

  

 “Lignivorous. Purulent dermatitis. Unlikely to be a survival trait, therefore pathological. Recently invaded areas would indicate a newly arrived natural enemy perhaps? Or, possibly, use of a toxic substance ...”

  

 “What do I understand you to say, Thinker?” demanded Mavin, arriving at the opening in the water-belly, panting, holding the torch high so that she could see them. She wore her own shape, or one Beedie thought of as hers.

  

 “The thing is sick,” said Thinker, putting his pad away. “If not dying, at least not at all well. That skin condition is not normal to the species. So much is evident.”

  

 “It wasn’t evident to me,” muttered Beedie with some hostility. “Does he know everything?”

  

 “Within certain limits, yes,” replied the Thinker. “Your attitude of irrelevant hostility is one I have encountered before.” He sniffed.

  

 “It’s not sick enough that it wouldn’t have eaten us, is it?”

  

 The theoretician cocked his head, ruminated over this for a little time, then pronounced; “No. It was eating voraciously. I imagine it will eat almost anything it can get at, though my guess would be it prefers flesh, moist roots and whatever small creatures live upon them.”

  

 “There are places not far from where I grew up where they domesticate things like that,” said Mavin thoughtfully. “Not exactly like that, of course. Not so big. Rock eaters. There are said to be smaller ones that eat plants further north. I’ve never seen them....”

  

 “Quite possibly the same genus,” said the Thinker.

  

 “What did you think made the thing sick?”

  

 “A natural enemy, or some accidental ingestion of a naturally toxic substance, or some purposeful contamination by a toxic substance. In other words, something is eating it, it ate something which disagreed with it, or someone is trying very hard to kill it.”

  

 “Whoever it is, I’m for them,” said Beedie. “I don’t blame them a bit.”

  

 “Whoever?” asked Mercald, slightly dazed. He had burrowed his way up from the bottom of the water-belly and was now one of them once more, though slightly slimy in aspect. “We would have heard! Where? Even on Bottommost, we would have heard! If anyone had seen one of these things, we would have been notified!”

  

 “Something was destroying the roots, the verticals, Mercald. Rootweaver told us. It’s just—no one supposed anything like this.” Beedie fell silent, suddenly aware of the implications. “You mean ... someone is trying to kill those things ... besides the people on the bridgetowns? Thinker? You mean someone else?”

  

 “My dear person, I have no idea. The who is unimportant. I merely recited the possibilities. If you want me to extrapolate probabilities, it will take me a few moments.”

  

 “I don’t think we need to belabor our ignorance,” Mavin said, heaving Beedie out of the water-belly. “One reason that we came upon this journey was to find this thing—these things. So. We’ve found it. One. Perhaps there are more. But to find the cause of peril was not the main reason for coming; the main reason is to put an end to that peril, and we are a very long way from knowing how to do that. That we are not alone in the attempt changes nothing, really.

  

 “A thing I do know, however, is that the creature didn’t climb all the way up here in one night. That means it didn’t go all the way back down, either. I think I saw it ooze itself into a hole some distance below. It’s probably been working its way up, night after night, for a long time. It’s likely no other of them, if there are more of them, has worked up this high until now, which would explain why they have not been seen or smelled before.”

  

 “But now that we have seen, we must send word,” said Roges. “The Bridgers must be told.”

  

 “Yes, we must send word,” agreed Mavin. “We can leave a note nailed to the stair. The first group up from Potter’s bridge this morn­ing will find it—and word will be sent. The chewed stairs alone would probably be enough, but we’ll describe the creature for them.”

  

 “Tell them it fears fire,” said Roges. “They’ll need to know that.” He fell silent, thinking in horror of a bridgetown invaded by such a monster, or monsters, the crushing of little houses, the shrieking of children, the steady rasp, rasp, rasp of its teeth, the stink.

  

 “Light,” said the theoretician. “The thing avoids light. It shrank not only from the heat of the torch, but also from the light of it. At least, so I think.”

  

 “We will say fire, certainly, and light, possibly,” agreed Mavin. “Now. It is written. Do you have a spare piton, Beedie? So. Nailed fast. No one could possibly miss it. I see light above, green light through the leaves. It’s time for us to move on before the Banders arrive. Like it or not, we’re going to cross the root wall.”

  

 “Madam,” said the Thinker, “Is it your desire to reach Bottommost?” At her nod he continued, “Bottommost is almost exactly beneath us now.”

  

 “Down,” said Beedie indignantly. “Three days climb down. Past that thing. Maybe dozens of them. And I’m the only one of us with spurs.”

  

 “Down,” agreed the Thinker. “With warm updrafts and otherwise calm air, and Bottommost precisely below. I suggest we float.”

  

 The others in the group turned to Mavin, exasperated, annoyed, yet despite their annoyance sure that the weird creature had thought of something. “Mavin ...” Beedie pleaded. “I don’t know how to talk to theo-theor-whats-its. Will you talk to him? He makes me tired.”

  

 Mavin sighed. “Well, Thinker. Explain yourself. In short and sensible words.”

  

 “Well, in layman’s terms, there are flattree leaves lying in the Nextdown nets, which are slightly above us. Climbable, I should think. By the young woman with spurs. Or even reachable from the stairs, for that matter. There are half a dozen of them there, at least, very large, tissuey things, soft, pliable, almost like fabric. It has occurred to me that they might be used to manufacturer a kind of hyperbolic air compression device ... let me see, ‘wind catchers.’ Then, we leap off, one by one, and after an interesting float, we arrive at Bottommost.”

  

 “Splashed into a puddle on the commons, no doubt,” said Beedie. “Going about a million man heights every heart beat.”

  

 “Dropping at about one man height per heart beat,” said t he Thinker, annoyed. “Please do not dispute scientific fact with me. It is annoying enough when qualified people do it.”

  

 “Would it work?” Beedie pleaded to Mavin. “We could always work along the root wall to the stairs to Midwall. If we take it carefully ...”

  

 “If we take it carefully, it would take us five days,” sighed Mavin, muttering almost inaudibly. She knew that she could solve the problem in a number of ways, all of which required that she gain bulk and shift into something large, crawly or winged, which would involve her in endless explanations. She preferred to remain only a messenger from the Boundless, bird or woman, nothing more than that. It would be safer for Handbright if her sister was not thought to be a devil of some kind even by this friendly group. “Look, I’ll test the Thinker’s idea. I can always become a bird, so there’s no danger. If it works for me, then the rest of you can try it.”

  

 “Become a bird?” asked the theoretician. “Is that metaphorical?”

  

 “Never mind,” said Beedie, irritated. “Just explain to Mavin what this ‘wind catcher’ thing is!”

  

 By the time she had climbed to the net, folded and extricated five of the flattree leaves and returned them to the stair, light was shining clearly through the flattrees high above. Rigging the wind catchers seemed to take forever, and Beedie kept reminding herself how long a traverse of the root wall would have taken. Mavin had more or less figured out what the Thinker had in mind and had drawn a little diagram of the way the cords should be strung, from the edges of the leaves to a central girdle. When the first one was done, Mavin fastened the cord girdle around herself then spread the folded leaf along the railing as she climbed over.

  

 “This should be very interesting. It would probably help to jump out as far as possible.” The Thinker had observed all this rigging with great interest but without offering to help. “It should unfold nicely, if it doesn’t catch on the railing.”

  

 “If it doesn’t tear, if the ropes hold, if the leaf doesn’t rip in the air, if Bottommost is really straight down,” muttered Beedie. “Mavin, are you sure you want to do this?”

  

 “It’s all right, sausage girl. Besides, I think you can rely on the white bird to help out if anything goes wrong. Now, if it works well for me, rig the others in the same way. You come last. That way you can help the rest of them.” And with that she leaped out into t he chasm, the faded green of the flattree leaf trailing away behind her. The leaf was small as flattree leaves went, only large enough to carpet a large room, and it caught the air, cupped it, turned into a gently rounded dome that seemed to hang almost motionless in the air as it dwindled slowly, slowly downward.

  

 “Lovely,” came Mavin’s voice. “Toss Mercald over.”

  

 They had already decided that Mercald would have to be tossed. He had turned up his eyes and gone limp at the thought of being dropped into the chasm and was now completely immobile. It was Roges who heaved him over, out into the chasm like a lumpy spear, and they all held their breaths until the leaf opened above him.

  

 “I thought that would work,” said the Thinker, tying himself to the girdle. He waited with no evidence of impatience while Mavin spread the leaf behind him, then stepped far into the chasm.

  

 “All right, Roges,” she said, knowing without looking that he was sweating again. “Don’t look down.”

  

 “Beedie.” He reached out to touch her shoulder. “You’re very pretty, did you know that? Ever since you were little, when you first came to Bridgers House on Topbridge. Even then, you were pretty.”

  

 She stared at him, disconcerted again. “I always had skinned knees,” she said. “And Aunt Six said my face was never clean from the time I was born.”

  

 “Maybe,” he replied, trying to smile. “But pretty in spite of it.”

  

 “Is this like the hair business?” she asked, growing angry. “You think you’re going to get badly hurt or die, so you want to tell me now? Well let me tell you, Roges, I don’t go throwing my friends over railings if I think they’re going to die. Mavin says she’ll catch any of us who have trouble, so if there is trouble just yell and keep yelling. Get up there over that railing and let me spread this thing out.” She pushed at him, getting behind him so that he couldn’t see the tears on her face. All she seemed to do lately was cry! When he was poised to go, however, shaking so uncontrollably that she could not fail to see it, she could not let him go without a word.

  

 “Roges. When we’re down. When we’re finished with all this. When we’ve got the proof that the Banders are murderers and Mavin figures out how to kill those things, tell me then that I’m pretty, will you?” And she pushed him. He fell silently, without a sound, and she found her nails cutting small, bloody holes in her p alms until the leaf billowed behind him, cupping air, and he floated after the others.

  

 She spread her own leaf carefully, being sure it would not snag on the railing, then leaped outward—into terror. Her heart thrust upward into her mouth, clogging her breathing. She gasped, sickened, eyes wide with fear, horrified at the weightless, plunging feel of felling, she who had never been afraid of heights before. “You n ever fell before,” she screamed at herself. “Oh, I’m going to die.”

  

 Then the leaf opened above her. Warm air rose around her, and the root wall drifted past.

  

 Silence. It was the first thing she noticed. Stairs drummed and clamored beneath feet. Bridgetowns were full of chatter and whine. On the root there was always the noise of the spurs digging in, the chafe of the straps, the blows of hammers or hatchets. But here, here was silence, only the drum of one’s blood in one’s ears, only the far, falling cry of a bird. Below her, slightly to one side, she could see a movement in the root wall as small creatures burrowed there, then a bare spot where a strange rock ... a scabrous, oozing rock—the creature. There it was, piled into a cave in the wall, only part of its horrid hide exposed. It heaved, breathed, lived, and she dropped below it. The peace of the drop had been destroyed and her stomach heaved in sick revulsion.

  

 She heard Roges calling, twisted herself around to find him. The mound of his leaf was below her, and she called down to him. “Just above you, Roges. Can you see Mercald?”

  

 “Under ... me ...” came the call. “Hear ... town ...”

  

 She listened, hearing it at last, the far, rattling clamor of a town. What was the word Mavin used? “Gamelords!” More and more lately it seemed like a game, some strange, silly game in which no one knew the rules. Would old Slysaw come down after them? Likely he would, if the stairs were passable. She considered for the first time that the creature, whatever it was, might have cut the stair root, eaten the stairs themselves. In which case, Slysaw couldn’t follow, and where would their proof be then? And Mercald might be permanently out of his head, in which case they didn’t have a judge. So, so, “Gamelords,” she swore fervently.

  

 The sounds from below grew louder, even as the light around her grew dimmer, more watery. Now it was dusky, shadowy, an e vening light. She searched the darkness below her for lights, lanterns, torches, seeing nothing. She looked up at the wall once more, watching it float past, thinking.

  

 She had to think about Roges. Roges, by the Boundless. A Maintainer. Though she knew some Bridgers who were married to Maintainers. Several of them. Quite happily. Rootweaver herself had been married to a Maintainer, so it was said. He had been killed during a storm, a great storm of rain which had almost drowned Topbridge and all who lived there, but he had saved Rootweaver’s life, so it was said. She recalled what Roges had said. “We are more than servants, much more.” That was true. It wasn’t always remembered, but it was true.

  

 “Beeeedieeee,” came a call from below. Roges’ voice again. She looked down, seeing the lights now, glowing fish lanterns making green balls of light, yellow and blue balls of light all along the bridgetown mainroots, two glowing necklaces of lights in the depths. She was not quite above the town, and for a moment she felt panic, believing she would fall on past, but then there was a brush of wings and a voice, “Well, sausage girl. You and Mercald are the only ones I’ve had to fish in. Roges and the whatsit fell straight as a line. Hold on, now, I’ll tow you a little. ...” Her straight line of fall turned into a long, diagonal drop that brought her over the open avenue of Bottommost.

  

 “I’ll not appear like this,” Mavin called in a whisper from above. “Join you later ...”

  

 The bridge grew larger, larger, more light, more sound, wondering faces looking up, a great tangled pile of flattree leaves below with Roges reaching up from the middle of it, reaching up, to grab her—then they stood together as the leaf fell over them, closing them in a green fragrant tent, away from the world. He was holding her tightly. She was not trying to get away. Neither of them were saying anything, though there was much chatter from outside.

  

 Mercald was saying, “Get them out from under there before they suffocate,” and Beedie was thinking quietly that she would like to suffocate Mercald and to have done it yesterday. Then the leaf was pulled away amid much shouting, and Roges untied the lines from her waist.

  

 “I’ll save the cord,” he said in a strangely breathless voice. “We’ll need it later, I don’t doubt.”

  

 She needed to say something personal to him, something real. “The fall—I was scared. When I jumped, all of a sudden, I was really frightened.”

  

 He looked at her with a kind of joyousness in his eyes that she didn’t understand at all. “Were you really, Bridger? So was I.” Then Mavin in her persona of birdwoman came calmly through the crowds and the moment’s understanding was behind them.

  

 “Come on,” she whispered. “Though I must pretend to be the birdwoman once more, I have serious need of breakfast, and tea, and a wash. And poor Mercald needs a change of clothing. Unfortunately for him, his unconscious state did not last until he landed. And then we all need to revise some plans, or make some. It seems things are worse then we knew.”

  

 They had landed just outside the Bridgers House of Bottommost. It was a small house, not as well kept as the one at Topbridge, but with a guest wing, nonetheless, though one barely large enough for all five of them.

  

 After a quick wash, they went along to the House dining hall, Mercald resplendent in his robes and hat—the only garb he had to wear while his others were being washed. As for the rest of them, they were only cleaner, not otherwise changed except that Mavin was once more playing her silent role of birdwoman. The food was quickly provided and almost as quickly eaten before Roges and Beedie were taken aside into a smaller room where the eldest Bridger of Bottommost awaited them, wringing his hands and compressing his lips in an expression of concern.

  

 “The Messenger came yesterday, Bridger. We did not expect you for many days still, and yet here you are! I thank the Boundless you have come, for it was only two days ago we first saw the thing. I have sent word to the head of chasm council, but we cannot expect a response from old Quickaxe—or from his junior, Rootweaver—for some days.”

  

 “By thing” said Beedie, “I suppose you mean the gray monster with the oozing hide.” At his expressions of awed dismay, she went on, “We encountered it on the downward stair. Eating the stair, I should say. Just the other side of Nextdown.”

  

 “Is it true what my Bridgers say?” the old man asked, hoping, Beedie knew, that she would say it was all an exaggeration.

  

 “It is a thing some six or seven man heights long, as big around as this room, Elder. A ... man who is with us says he believes it is sick. He believes it has been poisoned, perhaps purposely, by ... Roges, what can I say? By what?”

  

 “By people, Beedie. The ... ah, the messenger of the Boundless who is with us says that there may be ... people in the depths. That is, if it was not done by people from this town, Elder.”

  

 Beedie sighed. “Elder, have you made any attempt to kill this thing? Or have you had any word of any intelligent creatures living below you in the depths?”

  

 “Never.” He wriggled the thought around in his mouth for a time, trying it between various pairs of teeth, finally spat it back at them. “No, never. As for killing the thing, I would not know where to begin. As for the other, my Bridgers go down the roots as Bridgers do, and up, and out across the root wall. We see the usual things. Crawly-claws. Slow-girules. Wireworm nests, sometimes. Leaves fell from above, and sometimes the nets of Topbridge or Nextdown miss them so we catch them. It is true that the Fishers bring up strange things from time to time, oddities which we cannot explain. But intelligence below ... well, I’ve never heard any allegation of it.”

  

 “The lost bridge?” prompted Beedie. “That would be below you, wouldn’t it?”

  

 “Oh, but my dear Bridger. What is the lost bridge? Sometimes I wonder if it ever existed! And if it did, is it not surely gone? No one has seen or heard of the lost bridge for what?—hundreds of years.”

  

 She shook her head. “When there was a lost bridge, before it was lost, Elder, how did people get to it? Was there a stair?”

  

 He made a face at her, age grimacing at the silly ideas of youth. “There is said to have been a stair. Yes. At the morning-light side. We even have some books with adventure tales for children concerning the stairs and the lost bridge and all the rest of it. Would you like to see them?”

  

 Beedie started to say no, indignantly, then caught sight of Roges’ face, intent upon the old man’s words. “I would, yes, Elder. If you would be so kind.”

  

 4 ’I will have them sent to the guest rooms. Have you any other word for me, Bridger? We are very much afraid of these creatures ...”

  

 “They are afraid of fire,” said Beedie firmly. “It is thought t hey might be afraid of light.”

  

 “Not of our lanterns, I’m afraid. The one we saw two days ago was on the stair trail which leads to the mines below Miner’s bridge. It is a little used way built for the convenience of the Miners, to bring loads of some materials across to us for processing. It was lit by fish lanterns, and the thing had eaten great pieces of the stair, lanterns and all, when first we saw it. Fire—that’s a different thing. Torches. We do not use torches. It is damp this far down in the chasm. Except during the wind, smoke lies heavy upon Bottommost. Still, if fire will drive the monsters away, we must somehow learn to use fire once more ...” And the old man turned away, weary and fearful, yet somehow resolute.

  

 They walked back toward the guest rooms, Beedie’s hand finding Roges’ as they went, silent, dismayed not a little. They slipped into the room Mavin shared with Beedie and told her what had transpired.

  

 “So the Thinker was right,” said Mavin. “The things have only recently been seen so far up in the chasm. Well, they must somehow be made to go back where they have been. We will stay here in Bottommost today, perhaps tonight. Read the books when they are brought, sausage girl.” Then, seeing her annoyed expression, “Read them to her, Roges, if you will. I will return after dark. If anyone asks, the messenger of the Boundless is asleep,” and she slipped out of the room, disappearing down the corridor.

  

 “Do you want to sleep, too?” asked Roges. “Our rest last night was interrupted.”

  

 “Later perhaps. Not now. Now I want to see Bottommost, the my­sterious bridgetown I have heard of since I was a child! Aunt Six says it is all rebels and anarchists here, that there is no custom worthy of the name, that bad children gravitate to Bottommost as slow-girules to root mice. We are here and I must see if she lied to me.”

  

 They left Mercald curled up on a clean bed, quietly asleep. They left the Thinker sitting in a window, staring at nothing, a small muscle in his left cheek twitching from time to time. Beedie had had the generous intent of asking him if he wanted to go with them. One sight of him changed her mind. The two of them went out together, out of Bridgers House onto the main avenue of Bottommost.

  

 “It’s narrow!” she exclaimed. “It’s little.” Compared to Topbridge, it was narrow and confined, the lines of lanterns which marked the mainroots only two hundred paces apart, beads of light s oftly glowing in two arcs that met at the far wall. “And it’s like night-time!” Far above them the light of the chasm could be seen as a wide line of green, slightly shifting, as though they looked upward into a flowing stream, but the light upon the bridge came more from the ubiquitous fish lanterns than from the sky. Every corner carried at least one of the scaled globes; every market stall was lined with them, blue orbs and green, with an occasional amber one here and there. Those which were amber, Beedie noticed, bore horns and warts and protuberances of various shapes and kinds as well as a discouraging set of fangs. “I would not like to be the Fisher who caught one of those,” she remarked to Roges.

  

 Bottommost was quieter then Topbridge. It buzzed with a muted sound, as though it did not wish to attract attention to itself. The cries of the hawkers were melodious and soft, a kind of repetitive song. “They don’t look like rebels and anarchists,” said Roges. “They look rather sad.”

  

 “It’s because there’s so little light. It’s an evening sadness, a perpetual dusk. If I lived here, I would cry all the time.” The colours of the place were strange to her high chasm eyes. Soft greens and grays and blues. No white or red, no yellow. “Look how narrow their nets are.” The nets on either side of the railing were mere handkerchiefs, of no extent.

  

 “Look up and you’ll see why,” murmured Roges. High against the light were the twin bars of Topbridge and Nextdown, bracketing Bottommost on each side. “If the nets were any wider, they’d be catching all the fell-down from up there. Not very pleasant for the net cleaners.”

  

 “Well, there’s got to be something good about the place. Let’s try a teashop.” And in the teashop they began to appreciate the true flavor of Bottommost as the calls of the hawkers, the bells in the Birder House, and the soft light blended into music. If there were rebels in Bottommost, they were rebels of an odd sort, rebels of silence, of shadow, of gentle movement. “I haven’t seen any Banders,” she said. “None in the House.”

  

 “There are some here,” he replied. “I asked the Maintainer who brought us blankets whether there had been any unrest on Bottommost concerning the messenger of the Boundless. She said yes, rumor and story telling, a small attempt to whip up frenzy, resulting in nothing much. Still, there are some of them here, e nough to do us harm if we are not careful.”

  

 “Enough to carry the word back to old Slysaw?”

  

 “I should judge so.” He did not sound as though he cared greatly about it, about anything. He had been sitting, sipping, smiling at her for hours. She blushed. She, too, had been sipping, smiling. Resolutely, she got to her feet. “Roges. We promised Mavin we would read the books about the lost bridge.” She took his hand, dragged him upright.

  

 They went out onto the avenue, still hand in hand, lost in the gentle music of Bottommost, to remember it always as magical and wonderful, more wonderful than any of the truly wonderful things which were to follow.

  

 CHAPTER SEVEN

  

 Lantern-eyed, fluff-winged she flew along the root wall, soft as down, observant as any owl in the dusk, peering at this, that, the other thing. There were many small creepies, many larger ones as well—claws gently waving, and things that came to the claws thinking they were something else; shelves of fungus in colours of amber and rose, washed into grays by the green light; other fungoid growths hanging upon the roots themselves in pendant fronds, projecting horns and antlers and mushroomy domes, pale as flesh, moist as frogs.

  

 There was a chorus of smells, rich and fecund stenches, rot and mildew and earthy green slime. There were greens innumerable, bronzy green and amber green and the blue-green of far seas not remembered by the people in the chasm. The air was wet, wetter the lower she went, full of mist wraiths which seemed in any instant almost to have coherent shape. Her wings were wet and heavy, and she changed the structure of her feathers to shed the damp, bringing a clear set of membranes across her eyes at the same time.

  

 Those who might have known her in the white bird shape would not have known her in her present form, and she took pleasure in this, in this renewed feeling of anonymity, of remoteness. Beedie was a good girl; Roges a treasure; the theoretician an interesting find; Mercald a necessary burden—and not good enough to be a partner for Handbright as she had been, though perhaps better than one could have expected for Handbright as she was now—but there was much to be said for solitude. There was time for contemplation, time for feeling the fabric of the place, time for memory.

  

 There had been another place, not unlike the chasm in its watery light, a pool-laced forest, green under leaves, full shadowed in summer warmth and breathless with flowers. Mavin had come there in the guise of a sweet, swift beast, four-legged and lean, graceful a s the bending grass. It had been a shape designed for the place, needful for the place, and her body had responded to that need without thinking. So she had, unaware she was observed, wandered, unaware until she came one dawn to the shivering silver pool and saw her own image standing there, head regally high, crowned with a single spiraled horn like her own, male as she was female, unquestionably correct for that place, that time, without any requirement for explanation.

  

 And there had been a summer then, without speech or thought or plan for the morrow; a summer which spun itself beneath the leaves and over the welcoming grass, sparkling with sun shards and bathed in dew. Morning had gone into evening, day into day, as feet raced upon the pleasant pastures and across the mysterious hills. And then a day, a day with him gone.

  

 She had never named him in her mind, except to believe that whoever he was, he was Shifter like herself, for there was no such supernally graceful beast in the reality of this world, had never been, probably now would never be again. And when a certain number of days had gone without his return, she had shifted herself and left the place behind her, sorrowing that she would not know him again if she met him in a street of any town or upon the road to anywhere at all. Outside of that place, that stream-netted garden of gold-green light, what they had been together would have no reality.

  

 It was the sight of Roges’ face that had made her think of this, Roges’ face as he brooded over Beedie who, though she was beside him, did not see the way he looked at her. In that silken passionate look which reverberated like soft thunder was what she had felt in the summer garden. And it made her think of something more, of that same expression seen fifteen years before on the face of the Wizard Himaggery. Twenty years, he had said. Return to him in twenty years. Over three-quarters of that time was gone. Well, she could not think of that now, not with Handbright’s child soon to be delivered, and Mavin soon to take it away to be safely reared as a Shifter’s child should be reared—not with the chasm to be explored—and all these lands beyond the sea.

  

 She moved out into the chasm, away from the root wall, attracted by a hard-edged shape which spiraled down toward her. It was one of the rigid frameworks webbed with flopperskin which the Messengers used to fly between bridgetowns, gliding on the warm, u prising air to carry messages from Topbridge to Harvester’s. She flew close, wondering what brought a Messenger to these depths.

  

 It was no Messenger. The kite held a young man’s body, shrouded in white upon the gliding frame, staring with unseeing eyes into the misty air. There were embroidered shoes upon his feet, a feathered cap upon his head, and his hands were tied together before him with a silken scarf. Someone had decked the beloved dead for this last flight. Someone had set dreams aside, love aside, to grieve over this youth, and in that grieving, had realized there would be no more time in which to dream.

  

 She flew aside, eyes fixed upon those dead eyes, as though she might read something there, accompanying the body down as it fell, turn on wide turn into the narrowing depths. At last she let it go, watching as it twirled into the chasm, softly as a leaf fells, the bright feather upon the cap catching at her vision until it vanished in mist.

  

 No more time in which to dream. Twenty years. The bird body could not hold the pain which struck at her then, a shiver of grief so great that she cried out, the sound echoing from root wall to root wall, over and over again, in a falling agony of sound. She did not often think of herself as mortal.

  

 “I will return,” she promised herself. “I will return.”

  

 And was Himaggery still alive in that world across the sea? Must be, her mind told her sternly. Must be. I would have known if anything had happened to him. I could not have failed to know.

  

 There, in the chasm mists, the Mavin-bird sang its determination and decision, even while it sought for mystery in the chasm with wide eyes.

  

 Back in the guest rooms of Bridgers House, Roges lay with his head in Beedie’s lap and read to her.

  

 “ ‘In the time of the great builders, the outcaste Mirtylon (he whose name came from the ancient times above the chasm) took captive the maiden daughter of the designer of Firstbridge, the Great Engineer, she whom he called Lovewings after the love he bore her mother who had died. For the Great Engineer had forbidden his daughter to marry Mirtylon, though he had sought her in honor and in love, for the Great Engineer feared to lose her from his house.

  

 “ ‘And Mirtylon fled from the wrath of the Great Engineer, into the bottomless depths of the chasm, root to root, with his f ollowers, losing themselves in the shadowy lands beneath the reach of the sun. Then it was the Great Engineer wept and foamed in his fury, for taken from him was what he held most dear in all his life, for Lovewings had gone with them. And he fell into despair. And in his despair he failed to set the watch upon the bridge, and in the night the great pombis came, lair upon lair of them out of the darkness, driving the people of Firstbridge down into the chasm to the half-built city of Secondbridge, called by some Nextdown. And though many came there for refuge, the Great Engineer was slain together with the Maintainers of his house.

  

 “ ‘But unknowing of this was the outcaste Mirtylon and unknowing of this was Lovewings—who would have been greatly grieved, for she loved her father—so she married Mirtylon of her own will and lived with him in a cave at great depth upon the root wall while those who followed him drew great mainroots together for the establishment of the town of Watertight. In those depths the light was that found deep in river pools of their former lands, mysterious and shadowy. And in time the bridgetown of Watertight was built, and Bridgers were sent from it to build a stair along the morning-light wall which should reach from Watertight upward to the run of the chasm. And in time the Bridgers so sent met the Bridgers of Nextdown upon the root wall, and the news of the death of the Great Engineer, her father, came to Lovewings.

  

 “ ‘Then did she feel great guilt and great despair, accounting herself responsible for what had occurred, for she well knew with what value her father had held her. And she went to Mirtylon and told him she would go away for a time, to expiate her guilt in loneliness after the manner of her religion, but he would not let her go.

  

 “And by this time the stair which Mirtylon had ordered to be built stretched upward from the depths into the very midst of the chasm, to the new-built bridge of Bottommost. Forbidden to expiate her guilt Lovewings took herself to the highest point which had yet been built and threw herself into the depths so that none saw her more. This is the story told of her, for none knew the truth of it save that she had climbed the stair and came no more to Watertight.

  

 “ ‘And Mirtylon despaired, ordering that the stair be shattered, that none might walk that way again. So it was broken, and all connection between Watertight and the other cities of the chasm was cut off.

  

 “ ‘Still the Messengers flew between the bridges, and there was trade of a kind between them, with much gathering of gems and dia­monds from the Bottom lands by those of Watertight, and much trading of this treasure for the foodstuffs which grew high above. And though people of the bridgetowns were curious as to the source of the treasure, the secret was well kept by the people of Watertight who would say only that the treasure was gathered at great danger to themselves from that which dwelt in the Bottomlands below.

  

 “ ‘Until came a day the Messengers flew to Watertight to find it gone, its place empty, the roots severed, the people gone, all in one night, vanished as though taken by a Demon or devil of the depths.

  

 “ ‘And of Mirtylon many songs are sung, and of Lovewings, and of the vanished bridge which is called Lostbridge, and of the shattered stair ...”

  

 “And that,” Roges said, “is that. There’s another story here about Lovewings. You want to hear it?”

  

 “No,” said Beedie definitely. “It’s depressing. All that guilt and foolishness and throwing themselves about. I would like to know where the bridge went, though.”

  

 “So would Mavin,” said Roges. “And I doubt not she’ll find out, one way or another. Whatever she may be, she is very positive about things. I wonder who she is—what she is ...”

  

 “I don’t know. She’s like the birdwoman. I mean, there are two of them, sisters. That’s all I know. What I think about how she came when I was caught on the root, dying in the smoke, I know I should be frightened of her. But I’m not. She’s just not scary.”

  

 “I think she’s scary.” Roges was serious, worried. “Though I try not to show it. She knows things. That’s scary.”

  

 “Oh, the theo ... theor ... the whatsit knows things, too. And I know things. And some are the same things, and some are different things. That’s all. It doesn’t matter to her.  It shouldn’t matter to you.”

  

 Roges laughed, burrowed the back of his head into her lap, reached up to touch her face. “Beedie, you don’t have any doubts at all, do you?”

  

 “Hardly any,” she agreed, in surprise that he should ask. “It seems an awful waste of time. You just do things, and if it doesn’t work, then you do something else next time. Sitting around having doubts is very wasteful. At least, it seems so to me.”

  

 “Don’t you ever worry about whether things are right or wrong?”

  

 “Daddy and mum taught me what wrongs are. I don’t do wrongs. I take care of my tools, and I don’t risk my neck on the roots, and I’m castely in my behavior—mostly—and polite to my elders. I don’t tell lies. What else would you like to know about me?”

  

 “Are you religious?”

  

 “Oh, foof, Roges. You know I’m not. Just enough to make sort of the right responses to noon prayers, and that’s about it. Are you?”

  

 “Some,” he admitted. “I wonder about the Boundless a lot.”

  

 “Maybe you should have been a Birder.”

  

 “Maybe I was born a Birder. No one knows. I was found on the root wall, a foundling.”

  

 “Oh, Roges. That’s very sad. Why, do you suppose?”

  

 “I don’t know. Never knew. Tried not to wonder.”

  

 “I’m sure I know,” she said, grinning at him, not letting him see she was beginning to tear up again. “You were so beautiful a baby that everyone looked at you all the time. Your aunt had an ugly baby no one ever looked at, and it made her so jealous that she stole you away from your mum and daddy and hid you on the root wall, giving out the slow-girules had carried you away. And ever since then they’ve been longing for you, unable to find you at all.”

  

 “Not very likely,” he said. “They’d have found me by now.”

  

 “That could be true. Well then, we’ll say they got very sick from their loss, and they both almost died from despair. And their elders told them they had to give the mourning up.”

  

 “Now who’s making stories about guilt and despair?” he asked her in mock fury. “Beedie. You’re a crazy child.”

  

 “I’m not a child,” she said, suddenly deciding it was time to prove it to him. “Not a child at all.”

  

 They were interrupted by Mavin’s voice from the doorway, warm and amused. “I see I interrupt. Well, such is my fete. I have found the broken stairway, young ones.” They turned to her, a little dizzy and unaware, not believing her at first, faces questioning. “True! Surprisingly, it is still there. Nothing has eaten it. It hasn’t rotted. It is hatcheted away at the top end, but the rest of it goes down and down—overgrown a little, true—into the depths.”

  

 Then they were both on their feet, the books—and other things—forgotten for the moment. “Did you go to the bottom? Have you seen it? Shall we go now?” asked Beedie, ready as ever for action.

  

 “I saw only a little. The light is scant enough at this depth, and what is there is waning. I think we will go at first light tomorrow. While I saw no signs of the gray oozers on the morning-light wall, it should be easier to avoid them in light. So. Let us go in light, such as it is.” And she stretched herself upon the bed in the room. “Go on with whatever you were doing ...”

  

 “Oh, Mavin,” Beedie growled. “You are not always very funny.”

  

 “Not always,” agreed Roges in a wry voice. “I think it would be a good idea for all of us to get some rest and a good meal here at Bridgers House tonight.” He took up the books, placing them in a neat stack on the table beside Mavin’s bed.

  

 Mavin leafed idly through one of the books, scanning a few pages while Beedie talked about the story of Lovewings and Mirtylon and how sad it was, then let her eyes close.

  

 “Mavin ... Mavin. Are you asleep?”

  

 “Trying very hard to be, sausage girl.”

  

 “Do you think old Slysaw is still following us?”

  

 “I can guarantee he is, child. At this moment, he is two-thirds of the way down the stair to Midwall. He will rest in Midwall tonight. Two nights hence he will rest here in Bottommost. And the day after that, someone will show him where the broken stair is.”

  

 “Do you think we will get proof he killed my family? That he set fire to the mainroot?”

  

 “I don’t think it matters, root dangler. Whether we get proof Mercald would accept or not, I have enough to suit me. You may depend upon it. Old Slysaw Bander will not return from the depths.” And then there was only the gentlest of snores, like a dragon purring, as Mavin slept.

  

 There was a traverse of considerable extent across the root wall between the morning-light end of Bottommost and the place the old stair began, its splintered end well hidden behind a cluster of side roots and a fountain of fungus. The Bridgers of Bottommost were so excited at the thought of finding the old stair, however, that they had worked most of the night while the expedition slept to build a temporary footbridge across the root wall. Except for Mercald, the expedition crossed it without difficulty, and Roges solved the Mercald problem by carrying him over on one shoulder. Once the stair was reached and they had burrowed into it with h atchet and knife and much flinging aside of great blobs of fungus, Mercald was able to stand once more, though it took him a little time to be steady on his feet.

  

 “It’s hidden,” Beedie said, looking down the stair in the direction they would go. “The roots have grown all over the outside of it.” Indeed, it was like walking through some dusky cloister, the roots on the outside of the stair making repeated windows into the chasm so that they walked first in shadow, then in half light, then in shadow once more. “How far down does it go, Mavin?”

  

 “I didn’t find out. Just found that the stair was here, then flew up above to check out old Slysaw. Shh. Here’s the Thinker coming along behind. I’d as soon not talk with him about my private habits. Hush now.”

  

 They set a slow pace at first, warming up to it as the day warmed, easing up again when they had eaten their midday meal, then slowing still further when the afternoon wind began to blow down the canyon, whipping the root hairs over the stairs, making their eyes water.

  

 “I postulate a desert at the lower end of this chasm,” said the Thinker, wiping his eyes so that he could see his notebook. “Quite large, very dry, very hot. At the upper end of the chasm a range of mountains, perhaps a tall, snow-capped range ...”

  

 “Actually,” said Mavin, “it’s a glacier. A monstrous big one.”

  

 He did not ask her how she knew, but simply plunged on with his explanation. “The sun heats the air over the desert. It rises. The air in the chasm, being cooler, flows out onto the desert. The air over the glacier, being cooler still, flows down into the chasm. We have wind each day from afternoon through about midnight, by which time the desert has given up all its heat. Then the hot springs in the chasm begin to warm the chasm air once more. The lower we go in the chasm, the stronger the winds will become. That is, unless there are many barriers down there, narrowings, turns, fallen rock. In that case, it might be strongest above the bottom ...”

  

 “Is that true?” Beedie whispered to Mavin. “Is that really why the wind blows every day? The Birders say the Boundless does it to move the smoke away, so we won’t suffocate.”

  

 “Is there any reason it couldn’t be both?” laughed Mavin. “I suppose the Boundless can use deserts and glaciers to sweep smoke away if it wants to.”

  

 “The way I would use a broom,” said Roges. “Why not. Still, it makes traveling difficult.” He wiped away a clot of wet root hairs the wind had driven into his face.”It wasn’t this strong on Bottommost.”

  

 “It was stronger than you felt. The buildings on Bottommost are all built facing down-chasm, away from the wind. Besides that, they’re all built with curved backs, I noticed, and there are wind shields along the streets.” Mavin leaned out into the chasm to look down. She was now the only one of the party not constantly wiping streaming eyes, though the others had not noticed the clear lids she had closed to protect her own eyes from the wind. “We may have to find a sheltered place and wait until the wind drops before we go on. I’ve brought fish lanterns, so we needn’t camp in the dark. Hss. What’s that?” She pointed away along the root wall, toward a distant shadow. Roges and Beedie thrust their heads out, drawing them in immediately.

  

 “I can’t see anything,” Roges complained. “What did you think it was?”

  

 “A shape,” she replied, still peering into the chasm. “Only a shape. Vaguely manlike. Perhaps it was nothing, only a shadow.”

  

 “Probably just a shadow. Our eyes are tired. I think stopping for a time would be a very good idea,” said Mercald apologetically. “We’ve been climbing down since early this morning, and my legs have cramps in them. Both.”

  

 “Well then, why not. Start looking for some kind of declivity or protected spot. We’ll stop as soon as we find one.” Mavin drew her head in and clumped along behind them, her face both thoughtful and apprehensive.

  

 Beedie moved ahead, Roges close beside her, searching the root wall. There were many small holes, but none large enough to offer shelter to the group. Then they came to a fairly flat stretch of stair solidly overgrown on the chasm side with only a shrill shiver of wind entering from the bottom end. “We could close that off,” said Beedie, measuring it with analytical eyes. “I can cut some short lengths of ropey root, and weave a kind of gate across it, then we can put a blanket or two across it to shut out almost all the wind.” Without waiting for the others, she began to hack at the wall, pulling down lengths of shaggy root. Roges tugged them to the opening, thrust ends into the root wall and began weaving them together, hauling and tugging until the woven gate was in place.

  

 By this time the others had arrived, and Mavin fastened her blanket to the gate, tying it along the sides. It felt as though the temperature on the stair went up at once, just from excluding the cold wind.

  

 “I suppose it would be too much to hope for that there’d be some deadroot along here,” Mercald commented. “I’m thirsty for tea.”

  

 There was usually deadroot up under the thatch along the wall, and a few moments’ scratchy burrowing brought a pile of it to light. It was brittle enough to break and dead enough not to threaten them with lethal smoke, but it was soggier than they were accustomed to burning. Roges had trouble lighting it upon the portable hearth. However, once started, it burned readily enough, the smoke roiling upwards along the stair. They sat in the firelit space, hearing the wind howl outside, all of them aware of some primitive, fearful feelings concerning darkness and the creatures which dwelt in it. Mavin found herself listening to the wind, listening through the wind, trying to hear what other sounds there might be in the chasm. There had been a manshape upon the root wall, and yet not exactly a manshape. It should not have been there. There were no men in the bottoms. She knelt, thrust her ear against the root stair, but there were no hostile sounds, no rasp of great slug teeth, only the thrumming of the wind upon the root fibers, the monotonous hum of steadily moving air.

  

 They sat, dozed, woke with a start only to doze again. The light faded and Mavin took the fish lanterns out of her basket to hang one upon the staff she carried, one upon Mercald’s staff. The light was not the warming amber-red of firelight but the chill blue-green of water, and they found themselves shivering.

  

 “The wind will let up about midnight,” said Mavin. “I suggest we wrap up tightly, get as close together as possible to share warmth, and wait until then to go on.” She heard no dissent, not even from the Thinker, though he did not lie down among them but sat under the chill green lanterns muttering to himself, making notes in his little book.

  

 The wind began to howl loudly, rocking the stair, moving it in a curiously restful motion, so that they all slept as in a cradle, or, thought Mavin, as on the deck of a sea-going ship.

  

 It was the cessation of motion that wakened Mavin, that and the stillness. The Thinker still sat, still muttered, eyes fixed on s omething the rest of them could not see. In the darkness, she could see firelight glittering on Beedie’s open eyes. “So. You’re awake, sausage girl.”

  

 “I’m sore,” she complained. “Next time I’m going to bring something softer to sleep on.”

  

 “How often do you plan to go on such expeditions?”

  

 “Whenever I can. Don’t you think it’s exciting?”

  

 “Umm,” said Mavin. “What does Roges think?”

  

 “I’m sure he thinks he’ll be very glad when he can get me back to Topbridge and maybe marry me and probably talk me into having babies.”

  

 “What do you think about that?” Mavin sat back, pulling her own blanket around them so that they half reclined between Roges and Mercald, warmed by their sleeping bodies. “Is that something you would enjoy?”

  

 “When Roges and I are—when we’re ... ah ... involved, I don’t mind the idea. Then, other times, like now, I do mind the idea. I want to go to Harvester’s bridge and around the chasm corner and see what’s there. I want to see that thing you told the Thinker about, that glacier. I can’t do that if I’m all glued down on Topbridge with babies and Aunt Six being grandma. Whoof. I’d sooner eat dried flopperskin.”

  

 “By that, I presume you mean the idea lacks flavor.”

  

 “Flavor, and chewability, and a good smell. Oh, Mavin, I don’t know. Were you ever in love?”

  

 Mavin considered this. In the lovely summer forest, once, she had loved. In the long ago of Pfarb Durim, when she had been the age Beedie was now, she had looked into love’s face, had heard its very voice. Since she had seen the dead youth fluttering like a dry leaf into the chasm, she had been aware of mortality in a way she had never been before. If she were honest, she would admit that the five years which stretched between now and that time she would meet Himmaggery seemed a very long time, a time she would shorten if she could. And yet it would be hard to say why, for little had passed between them in that long ago time. Little? Or perhaps much?

  

 Finally she answered. “I believe ... believe that I love, yes. Someone. And yet, I have not sought him out in many years. I do not go to him or call him to me.”

  

 “How do you know he’s still alive? People die, you know. Things happen to them.” Beedie had thought of this in the night hours, had wondered how she would feel if she put off Roges until some future time and then found there was no future time for them. “If I had to choose, I suppose I’d rather have a child now than never do it at all.”

  

 Mavin shivered at this expression of her own thoughts. “You would rather love Roges now than never a do it at all? Even though it might keep you from that far turn of the chasm?”

  

 “Hmm. I think so. How do I know? Would there be someone else who would make me feel the same way? Would I have cheated him if I did not?”

  

 Mavin chuckled, humor directed at herself rather than at Beedie. “I know. Since I met ... the one I speak of, all other men have seemed to have ... too much meat on their faces. I find myself longing for a certain cast of feature, a strong boniness, a wide, twisty mouth, eyes which seem to understand more than that mouth says ...”

  

 “Eyebrows which meet in the middle over puzzled, sometimes angry eyes,” whispered Beedie. “A certain smell to skin. A certain curl of hair around an ear ...”

  

 “Ah, yes, sausage girl. Well, I will say only this one thing to you. If you would regret forever not having done a thing, then do it. But you need not give up your dreams in order to have done it. Go, if you will, and take your man and babies with you.”

  

 “Roges has the down-dizzies .” She said it sadly, as though she had announced a dire and deadly disease.

  

 “Well then, leave him at home with the babies and tell him you’ll see him when you return.” She stood up, stretching her arms to hear the bones crack. “Midnight?” she announced loudly into the silence. “Are we ready to go on?”

  

 They rose, groaning from the hard surface. “Stairs should be carpeted,” said Beedie. “Either that, or they should put way stations with beds every half day along them.”

  

 “Shhhh.” Mavin’s hiss quieted them all. She had pulled the makeshift windshield aside and was leaning out over the stair rail, peering into the depths. “Look.”

  

 Below them in the suddenly calm air, the chasm was full of lights, globes of pearly luminescence which swam through the moist air, c ollected in clusters like ripening fruits, then separated once more to move in long, glowing spirals and curving lines. As they watched, several of the globes swam up to their level, peered at them from the abyss with wide, fishes’ eyes from bodies spherical and puffed as little balloons of chilly light. One of them emitted a tiny, burping sound, then dropped with a sudden, surprised swoop to a much lower level and fled. The other, a smaller, bluer one, with quick, busy fins, followed them as they continued the downward way. There were smaller things in the chasm, also, vibrations of trans­lucent wings, shivering dots of poised flight, darting among the glowing fish to be gulped down whenever they approached too near. Other blue fish joined the one which followed them, and then still others, until they were trailed by a long tail of blue light, shifting and glowing. “There,” said Mavin suddenly, pointing ahead of them. After a moment they saw what she had seen, huge stumps of mainroot, projecting into the chasm like broken corbels. “This is where the city was.”

  

 “Watertight.” said Beedie and Roges together.

  

 “What was that?”

  

 “Watertight,” said Roges. “The name of Lostbridge was really Waterlight. At least, according to the books up in Bottommost.”

  

 “I can see why,” murmured Mercald. “I haven’t seen a bird of a ny kind since way before Bottommost. Do you think these fishes k eep them away?”

  

 “I think the air is too wet for them,” said Mavin, not bothering to tell him that she knew so from experience. “Feathers would get soggy, heavy in this air. It would be almost impossible to fly.”

  

 “No Birders, then,” he said. “I wonder what religion the people had to come uncomplaining into this depth.”

  

 “Follow the leader, I should think,” said Roges. “The man who built Waterlight was named Mirtylon. From the tone of the stories we read, the people followed him and him alone.”

  

 “Always a mistake,” said Mercald. “To follow men instead of the Boundless.”

  

 “On the other hand,” remarked Beedie, “if you’re following a man, he can at least tell you what he really expects you to do. Sometimes it seems to me the Boundless is a little vague.”

  

 Mavin was examining the end of the severed mainroots, noticing that they did not appear to have been chopped through or sawn. The ends were blunted, as though melted.

  

 She shivered. “Down,” she said. “We’re spending too much time in chitchat. This was the level of the qty; now we’ll find out where it went.”

  

 Though Beedie had expected the stair to end at the site of the ancient bridgetown, it went on down, doubling back on itself onto a new root system. They clambered around the turn, carrying the lantern fish which seemed to attract other, living ones, so that they continued to walk with a growing tail of lighted globes.

  

 “Electron transport,” said the Thinker suddenly, almost yelling. “Hydrogen segregation through cytochromes.”

  

 “What are you saying now?” asked Mercald in a kindly tone. “What is it, Thinker?”

  

 “That’s how they float. Hydrogen. They crack it out of water, using heme or hemelike proteins ... remarkable.” He did a little jig on the stairs, scratching himself as he sought his little notebook among his rags. “We could test it, of course. Try lighting one of them. It should go up in a puff of flame.”

  

 “Difficulty to light a flame down here, Thinker. Have you noticed how damp you are? How damp everything is?”

  

 He had tried to separate the pages of his notebook which sogged into a kind of pulp in his hands, and he merely looked at her with an annoyed expression. Beedie felt the increasing weight of her hair, the knot on her neck as waterlogged as it was possible to be. Also, the air had grown warmer during the past hours so that they seemed to move through a thin soup, almost as much liquid as gas. “I’ve been in fogs as thick as this before,” said Mavin, as though talking to herself. “But not many. I hope we’re nearly down, for if it gets any thicker, we’ll be swimming.”

  

 She stopped, amazed, for the light of the fishes showed a net reaching out from the stair in every direction, as far as she could see on every side. Fish swam up and down through the meshes, some large, some small, and below the net they gathered by the thousands. The stair burrowed through the net, and they followed it down, silent, wondering, one man height, two, three, four. Then Mavin stepped off the root onto stone, the others crowding after. “Shhh,” she said. “Listen. Water running.”

  

 The sound seemed to come from all around them, a light splashing, babbling sound, an occasional whoosh of air, a chuckle as of streams over stone. “The fish are all above us now,” said Beedie. “None below us. We must be at the Bottom.” At that moment her feet struck solid stone.

  

 “Look up,” said Roges. “Noonglow.” There, so far above them that it did not seem they could have come from that height, was the narrow ribbon of green, light which meant noonglow, a mere finger’s width shining through the fish-spangled gloom. “Bottommost is only a day and a half from the Bottom. I thought it was much farther than that.”

  

 “No one has tried to find out for a very long time,” said Beedie. “Because everyone believes it is dangerous. I told you that, Mavin.”

  

 “Indeed you did, root dangler. I haven’t forgotten. But I r emember also that you did not tell me why it is dangerous, or for w hom. So—let us go carefully, watchfully.”

  

 “And well prepared,” said Roges, taking his knife from his belt. “I thank the Boundless we have sure footing beneath us if danger comes.”

  

 “I, too,” murmured Mercald. “I thank the Boundless for having seen such wonders. What must we do next?”

  

 “The promise I made to Rootweaver, priest, was that we would put an end to whatever it is that eats the roots of the towns. So much; no less, no more. In return for which she keeps Handbright safe, awaiting our return, Well, we know it is the gray oozers which eat the roots. I have seen none of them on the root wall below Bottommost. So—I presume we must search.” She had been speaking moderately loudly, loudly enough to attract a circle of curious fish, loudly enough that they were not really surprised to hear a voice answering her from outside their circle ...

  

 It was a breathy voice, the kind of voice a forge bellows might have, full of puffing and excess wind. “You need ... not search ... far ... travelers.” The word was stretched and breathed, “traaahvehlehhhrs.”

  

 They turned as one, peering into the shadowy light, seeing n othing at first, locating the speaker only when it spoke again.

  

 “What are ... you looking ... for ... travelers? Is it... only ... the bad beasts ... of the ... Bottomlands?” Bhaaahtahmlahhhnd.

  

 Even Mavin, more experienced than the others in the variety o f which the world was capable, shivered a little at this voice. There w as something ominous in it, though the robed figure which stood i n the shadows of the root wall did not menace them in any way.

  

 It merely stood, occasionally illuminated by a passing fish, its hood hiding its face. Mavin shivered again. “We do indeed, stranger. We seek certain beasts, if they are gray, and huge, and eat the roots on which the bridgetowns depend. And we are greatly surprised to find any ... any person here in the Bottomlands, for we believed them occupied only by creatures ...”

  

 “Ahhhh. But ... you knew ... of Watertight.”Whaaaahtehr laihhht. “Is it believed ...” —puff, puff—“that ... those on ... Watertight ... perished?”

  

 Beedie started to say something, but Mavin clutched her tightly by the shoulder, bidding her be silent. “Nothing is known of Watertight, stranger. Nothing save old stories.”

  

 “Do the ... stories ... speak of ... Mirtylon?”

  

 “They do, yes,” said Roges.

  

 “I am ... Mirtylon,” Aihh ahhm Muhhhrtihlohhn... said the figure, moving a little out of the shadow toward them, stopping as they took an involuntary step back, away from it. It was robed from head to toe in loose folds of flattree leaf; a veil of the same mat­erial covered its face; its hands were hidden in the full sleeves. It regarded them now through mere slits in the face covering, a vaguely manhigh thing, but with only a line of shoulder and head gleaming in the fish light to say that it had anything resembling manshape.

  

 “Ah,” said Mavin. “Watertight has not been heard of for some hundreds of years. If you are indeed Mirtylon, then you have lived a long time, stranger.”

  

 “The ... Bottomlands are ... healthful. Things ... live very ... long here.”

  

 “Enzymes,” murmured the theoretician, patting his pockets in search of the notebook which had turned to moist pulp. “Cell regeneration ...”

  

 “We desire ... to welcome ... you ... properly,” the form went on. “Our ... village is ... only a ... little distance ... toward the wind ...”

  

 “One moment,” said Mavin. “Let us confer for a time.” She drew them into a huddle, watching the robed thing over Roges’ shoulder. “There is something here I do not like,” she muttered. “And I do not want all of us in one heap, like jacks to be picked up on the bounce—Aha, you play that game, do you? Well, I am not about to have it played upon us.

  

 “Beedie, I want you and Roges to go back up the stairs, quick and hard. Keep going until you’re above where Watertight used to be. Keep going until the air is dry enough to get a fire going, then build a deadroot fire on the hearth and keep it burning until you hear from me. Don’t let it go out. If anyone comes from above, it will be Slysaw. Hide yourself and the fire as best you can and let him come down. If anything comes at you from below, use torches. Do not seem surprised at anything I say, and do ... not ... argue with me!” This last was at the rebellious expression on Beedie’s face. “I would send Mercald if I thought he could make the climb fast enough. He can’t. The Thinker would forget what he was told to do in theorizing about something else. I have no choice. Our lives may depend upon having someone up there who can go for help if we need it, so get going.”

  

 Still resentful, Beedie turned toward the stairs, Roges close behind.

  

 “Surely ... you will not... go so soon,” puffed the stranger. “We would ... show ... our ... hospital ... ity.”

  

 “We have others waiting for us a little way up the stairs,” called Mavin, urging Beedie and Roges upward. “I’m sending the young ones to bring them down. Can you have someone meet the party here when they return?”

  

 There was a doubtful pause, almost as though the figure engaged itself in conversation, for the figure poised, bent, poised again in a way that had a questioning, answering feeling about it. Then at last the breathy voice answered, “We will ... meet them. Now ... we will ... go to our ... village.”

  

 Without looking back, the figure moved along the chasm floor, winding its way between rocks and huge, buttress roots which emerged from the root wall like partitions, ponderous in their height, thickly furred with hair. Mavin looked up at the net spread above them, seemingly stretching from wall to wall of the chasm, from which more root hairs dropped into the rocky soil to make fringed walls along the path on either side.

  

 “Protection,” the Thinker muttered. “To protect them from stuff falling off the rim and from the bridgetowns. I would imagine the nets cover the entire area they occupy. And the net is living, of course, because of all these root hairs hanging down, which must mean that they cut these paths through it. No. No. Ah. Look,” and he pulled one of the fringing root hairs up before Mavin’s face.

  

 “Not cut. Rounded. As though it just stopped growing. Hmm. Now, what would make it do that ...”

  

 Mavin did not answer. She was too busy considering that Mirtylon, seemingly so eager to offer hospitality, had not turned to see whether they followed. She looked behind her, seeking Mercald’s face, pale as a fish belly. “Are you all right?”

  

 “No,” he whispered. “My heart is pounding. I smell something strange. It makes me sweat and shiver.”

  

 “Pheromones,” said the Thinker.”Something exuded by a living thing to attract mates or warn predators away. Perhaps exuded voluntarily by some kind of water dweller ...”

  

 “Perhaps involuntarily,” murmured Mavin. “By something that calls itself Mirtylon.”

  

 CHAPTER EIGHT

  

 As they walked through the fibrous hallways of the Bottom following the robed stranger, Mavin felt all her senses begin to quiver and extend. Unseen by Mercald or the Thinker, she sharpened her eyes, enlarging them and moving them outward so that she could have a wider range of vision to the sides. What light there was was not much diminished by the netted roof they walked beneath for lantern fish swarmed through the whiskery jungle, casting pale circles of cold light.

  

 Just above and slightly to her left, Mavin saw a hardedged diamond shape upon the net, a thing of some weight, making the net sag beneath it. One of the rare amber fish nosed at the shape from above, and in that sunny glow she caught a glimpse of bright colour, knowing it at once for what it was—the bright feather upon the cap of the young man whose body she had seen two days before, slowly circling upon its kite into the depths. The hallway led beneath it, and when she was almost below, she looked upward, quickly, to see the cap, the kite, the wrappings of white. There was no sign of the body which had been wrapped and decked in the clothes. She made no comment, merely trudged on, keeping close watch on the figure before her.

  

 The sound of water grew louder, a bubbling and boiling with plopping heavings in it as of seething mud. They set foot upon a wooden bridge which led across this noise, through rising clouds of hot mist and the hiss of escaping steam. The bridge was made of short lengths of root, tied with bits of root hair to long, horizontal beams. The robes of the person before her moved in the rising steam without flapping loose, evidently being fastened at the ankle so that no surface of the body could be exposed. Mavin thinned her lips and marched on. Behind her the Thinker muttered once more about tectonics, rift valleys, plate separation. She had no idea what he w as talking about, but naive intuition told her that the chasm Bottom burrowed near the great, hot heart of the world and was heated thereby. She needed no theorist’s language to tell her that. Her own nose told her, full as it was of sulphurous, ashy stenches and the acrid smell of hot metal.

  

 “We must ... come to ... shelter before the ... winds begin,” puffed their guide. “Else we ... will be crushed.”

  

 “Crushed?” wondered Mavin. Certainly the winds were strong, but they had not been of crushing strength. What kind of creature might be crushed by such winds? She checked the two who followed, seeing them trudging along behind her, the one with his eyes fixed firmly upon his boots, the other staring placidly at everything he could see, muttering the while as though he stored away a million facts for later consideration. They had been walking for some time in a winding path that would have confused anyone other than Mavin. She had opened an additional eye in the top of her head and kept it fixed upon the green sky at the chasm top. Though they had walked a considerable distance, they had not come far from the stair. She estimated the distance Beedie and Roges might have climbed. They should be halfway back to the broken roots of Watertight by now. Keeping her eye fixed on their direction, she went on.

  

 At a conjunction of the hairy hallways they found two other robed strangers waiting. One was silent. The other spoke in a manner no less breathy than the first, but with an unmistakably feminine voice, “We greet you ... travelers. My name … is Lovewings.”

  

 Something tugged at Mavin’s memory, an insistent, nagging thought which she could not take hold of. “It seems our arrival is not a surprise.”

  

 “You were ... seen on the ... Shattered Stair. No one has ... climbed that ... stair for ... a long time. The one who ... saw you was ... surprised. When we thought ... about it ... we knew it ... must happen sometime. Sometime ... bridge people must ... come down.” This short speech took an interminable, windy time. It appeared to have exhausted the speaker, and Mavin wondered if they ever spoke to one another in this watery depth or whether they communicated in some other fashion. Certainly their voices seemed unaccustomed to regular use.

  

 “How long has it been since you had commerce with the bridgetowns?” asked Mercald.

  

 “Since ... since Watertight ... fell. Since then. Except ... there have ... sometimes been ... people fall. Into the ... nets.” For all its breathiness, the voice was wistful. Why did Mavin distrust that wistfulness? Could it not reflect an honorable desire for company?

  

 “Why did Waterlight fall?” demanded the Thinker. “Was it conflict? Rebellion? Something eating the roots?”

  

 “Aaahhh,” breathed the first guide.

  

 “Aaahhh,” echoed the second. There was silence, then the third figure spoke.

  

 “It was ... was the desire of ... those on ... Waterlight. To ... to go into ... the Bottomlands ... and live there. ...”

  

 “In expiation for those who died on Firstbridge?” demanded Mercald eagerly. “Because of all the deaths that were caused then?”

  

 “Oh, yes ... yes,” all three of the figures sighed, in breathless u nanimity. Suspicious unanimity, Mavin thought. They sounded l ike children caught in some naughtiness who seized upon an offered e xcuse with relief that they did not need to make up a story of their o wn. What was going on here? Was it so easy to put words into t heir mouths?

  

 She spoke quickly. “You have lived here, then, since your scouts f irst explored here, before Waterlight was taken down. You took Waterlight down yourselves, of course, after you had moved here.”

  

 “Of course,” sighed the breathy, male voice of the one who called h imself Mirtylon. Ahhhv cohhhhrz.

  

 “Of course,” said the female voice, almost simultaneously. So she calls herself Lovewings, thought Mavin. Lovewings. What was it she could not remember about Lovewings?

  

 The beard-walled hallway opened into a larger space, a clearing near the morning-light wall through which a quick, cool stream ran down into the steamy lands behind them. Mavin’s eye told her that she was only a few wing beats from the stair, though their pathway had wound back and forth across the chasm a dozen times in the last hours. A few score openings gaped in the chasm wall before them, carefully rounded, some of them decorated by a carved fretwork at the sides and top. Around each opening a cloud of fish lanterns hovered, nibbling at the fungus which grew there.

  

 “Saprophytic,” murmured the Thinker. “Living upon waste and decay, to be eaten in turn by the fishes, which may be eaten in turn by the occupants. Though I wonder if they would digest at all well? Phosphorous poisoning? I would need to look that up.”

  

 “Will you ... enter?” The robed figures inclined themselves in a mere hint of bow. “Soon the ... wind will ... blow.”

  

 “My friends will stay here,” said Mavin in a firm voice, “until I have seen whether these accommodations are suitable. Mercald? Thinker? Thinker! Can you concentrate on simply standing here for a few moments?” She had succeeded in jolting his attention away from the lantern fish, at least for the moment. She walked up the little slope to the cave, giving no appearance of hurry or distress. The cave was shallow and sandy-floored with a hinged screen standing ajar. Not large, she thought. Large enough for the three of them to lie down in, not large enough for anyone else to come in. And not furnished with anything. Not a pot of water, not a rag to wash one’s face, not the semblance of a chair or bed to soften the sandy floor.

  

 She knelt, taking a handful of that sand in her fingers. It was dotted with bright, smooth stones which gleamed at her in blues and violets and greens. Gems. Some of them huge. They were not faceted, but smooth, as though worn by water. Looking back through the gate, she saw sparks of light thrown from many places in the clearing. Well now, she thought. That is interesting. No furnishings of any kind. But protected places, out of the wind. And gems. Everywhere.

  

 “Very nice.” She went out. “Very comfortable. Do come up, Mercald. Thinker. We offer our thanks, Mirtylon. And to you, Lovewings.” The robed figures confronted her still, offering no food or drink, no comfort or company.

  

 “Aaahhh,” murmured the one.

  

 “Aaahhh,” echoed the others.

  

 “We will find water when we need it in the stream, of course, and root mice growing upon the wall, and edible mushrooms. You mean us to take food and water as we need ... of course.”

  

 “Of course,” sighed the one.

  

 “Ahhhv cohhhrz,” echoed the others.

  

 Mercald and the Thinker came in as Mavin pulled the gate across the opening and peered through it at the figures outside. For a time, t hey did not move. At last, the three turned away as though joined by invisible strings and moved across the clearing where they halted against the dangling root hairs and did not move again.

  

 “If you notice,” Mavin asked, “no offer of food, or drink. No beds. No chairs.”

  

 “Persons living a life of religious expiation would hardly be expected to think of such things,” said Mercald in a sententious voice. “It is likely that they fast for days at a time. Probably they engage in self-mortification as well, flagellation or something such, and robe themselves both to avoid licentiousness and to hide their wounds from one another’s eyes.”

  

 “I don’t know what they engage in, priest, but I do know that hospitality to strangers is a duty of every religion I have ever encountered with no exceptions. None. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that all your blather about expiation and fasting and what not is just that—blather. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it isn’t religious.”

  

 “Besides which,” said the Thinker, “it’s unlikely that Lovewings, who committed suicide several hundred years ago, could be still alive. To say nothing of Mirtylon, who would have to have lived for about nine hundred years. Unlikely they would still have any licentiousness to cover.”

  

 “Of course!” Mavin struck her forehead with one hand, waving the other at the Thinker. “That story Beedie was telling me about the lost bridge. Lovewings was the one who threw herself off the stairs.”

  

 “The Boundless might extend the life of any worthy ...” Mercald began, only to be cut off.

  

 “The Boundless might, but I’ll bet my socks the Boundless didn’t. No, Mercald. Something other than the Boundless is at work here. Best rest while you can. They say they are concerned about the wind, and yet they stand out there in the clearing, not taking shelter. Something is awry here, so let us be cautious.” She lay on the sandy floor, accommodating herself to it, placing her head where she could see through the woven gate, hearing Mercald burrowing in his pack, smelling the food he unwrapped but refusing a share of it when he offered.

  

 The sides of the sandy clearing were hung with thick mats of root hairs, like the pelt of some giant beast, and against this shaggy b ackground the robed figures stood out plainly, as silent and un-moving as when they had first arrived there. There were some dozen of the forms around the clearing, all standing with hooded heads slightly down, hands and arms hidden in the sleeves of the flattree-leaf robes. Mavin nagged at herself, wondering what was odd about the grouping, realizing at last that the creatures stood at strange, out-feeling angles one to the other, not toward one another as people tended to do in groups. “Thinker,” she whispered. “Look here.”

  

 When he lay beside her, she said, “Look at them. Are they talking with one another?”

  

 He stopped breathing for a time, mouth half open around a chunk of cold fried root mice. Then he sighed. “No. Not talking. But something is happening. Look at the shifting, at the far end of the group, then the next one, then the next, as though they are moving slightly, one by one along that line. You don’t think they are people at all, do you? Well. I have my doubts. We should see what’s under those robes. Do you want me to postulate?”

  

 “No. Better just find out what’s under the robes. I’m going to sneak out, get around through the root wall. I think you’d better stay close to this cave, not wander about, and you’ll probably be safer if you keep the gate shut until I return.”

  

 “The root hairs out there are impenetrable. The mean density of root hairs per square ...”

  

 “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll manage.” She pulled the gate open, slipped through and sidled along the root wall until her relocated eyes told her she was out of direct line of vision from any of the fretted arches. The group across the clearing still stood, heads down. She Shifted.

  

 Spidery feet with sharp claws levered long legs up the rootwall. Spidery eyes, multifaceted, searched for any sign of movement. Once she had climbed above the level of the netted roof, she stopped to peer away toward the stairs, seeking upward for a fugitive gleam of light. There was still too much light in the chasm to tell whether it burned or not. She thought she saw a little, golden gleaming upon the wall but could not be sure. Well, that matter would wait. Both Roges and Beedie were sensible; they would not take chances.

  

 The net bounced beneath her as she moved to the place the kite had rested. Once there she turned it over with angled legs, searching with mandible and claw. Only the wrappings, the clothing. Nothing e lse. Except—except a smell. A scent. Not unpleasant, but odd. Odd. Making her shiver and sweat. What was the word the Thinker had used. Pheromones? Well, and what was that? Stinks. Emitted by things. So, there were stink bugs and stink lizards and perfume moths. Back in the long ago, she had met an Agirule. It had had a strange, fungus smell, earthy and warm. Himaggery had smelled like autumn woods. Pheromones. So, these wrappings smelled like the creature that called itself Mirtylon. Which meant, so far as Mavin was concerned, that Mirtylon or one of his fellows had been here. And now the body of the youth was gone. Only his bravely feathered cap, his funeral wrappings remained. She shifted uneasily on her many legs, jigging upon the net until it quivered beneath her. Then she made her way across the net until she was above the quiet forms where they stood, silent and unmoving.

  

 The wind had begun to blow by the time she reached the place, moving very slowly. The only light lay high upon the evening-light wall, only the eastern end of Topbridge breaking the line of shadow, a hard, chisel shape against the glow. The other bridgetowns hung in darkness. Beneath the net the lantern fishes swarmed in their thousands, moving now toward the walls where they dwindled, diminished, becoming dark egg shapes fastened tightly to the walls. Beneath the net the robed forms stood as they had first arranged themselves, the robes flapping a little in the wind. Mavin lay upon the net, let her legs dangle through it, appearing to be only another set of skinny roothairs dangling into the clearing, invisible among countless others.

  

 She took hold of a sleeve, pulled it gently, gently, tugging in time with the wind. It was fastened tight. She sent an exploratory tentacle along it, not believing what she found. The sleeve had no opening. The two sleeves were joined at the ends. If there had been arms and hands in these sleeves, they had never been expected to reach the outside world.

  

 Her tentacle dropped to the sandy floor, probed up upward at the top of the clumsy shoe shapes. No opening. Shoes and robe were one. The thing was a balloon, all in one piece. On the net, Mavin snarled to herself, a small, spider snarl. Well and well, what was the sense of this?

  

 The end of the tentacle grew itself a sharp, ivory claw and cut a slit in the robe, moving like a scalpel along one rib of the flattree l eaf of which the garment was made. When the slit was large enough, the tentacle probed through.

  

 After which Mavin lay upon the net in furious thought. Whatever she might have suspected, she would not have suspected this. She slid down a convenient root hair, spent some time exploring the area very carefully, with great attention to the boiling springs, then went back up onto the net, finding her way quickly from there back to the cave.

  

 She paused before entering, searching the high wall for the gleam of amber light, sighing with relief when she found it unmistakably. So. Beedie and Roges were there, above harm’s reach if Mavin had reasoned correctly. Above one harm’s reach, she corrected herself. Slysaw would have reached Bottommost by now. On the morrow, he would come down the Shattered Stair. Well and well once more. After midnight, when the wind stopped, would be time enough to worry about that. There were other things to think of first.

  

 She slipped inside the cave, pulling the gate tight behind her and taking time to lash it with a bit of thong. Evidently Mercald had ventured out, for there was a pot of steaming tea upon the sandy floor. She looked around for the fire, before realizing there was no smoke.

  

 “I ventured just as far as that boiling spring,” said Mercald in an apologetic tone. “The Thinker kept watch. It’s only at one side of this clearing. We both wanted something hot. I thought you would, too.”

  

 Mavin listened to the wind rising outside and nodded. It had been sensible of him, she had to admit. If one set aside the man’s fear of heights, he was brave enough for all ordinary matters. Wishing she could like him more, for Handbright’s sake if for no other reason, she crouched beside the steaming pot and took the cup he offered. If one could not have fire, this would do. There was a long silence. At last she looked up to see both pairs of eyes fastened upon her and realized that they were waiting for her.

  

 “Can you still see the figures out there?” she asked Mercald who was sitting near the gate.

  

 He peered into the dusk, nodded. “The wind is fluttering them a little, but they still haven’t moved.”

  

 “They aren’t likely to,” she said. “They’re anchored to the roots. Besides, they’re empty.” She waited for expostulation, surprise. There was none.

  

 “When Mercald went out for the water,” said the Thinker, softly, “he said they looked like the cloak room at the Birders House. Hanging there. The minute he said it, I thought that’s why they were left out in the wind—because there was nothing in them.” Mavin peered through the gate, head cocked to one side. They did have that look, a kind of limpness even though she knew they were supported from within by a framework of wiry greenroot. “They are made like balloons,” she began, going on to describe the framework of flexible strands inside, with the flattree leaves stretched over. “There are two slits in the veil, probably to appear as though the beings have eyes, but I doubt it. Then there are no soles to the shoe parts. There is a smell there, at the bottom of the things, as though something flowed out of them and along the soil, away into the root tangle. There are places along there where the roots don’t reach the ground, places about ankle high and an armspan wide, where the roots look burned off or chewed off. No, the ends are smooth. They look—rounded, somehow.”

  

 “Digested off,” suggested the Thinker.

  

 “Perhaps,” she agreed, silent for a time after that trying to visualize a being shaped like a flatcake, with an odd smell, which could eat greenroot without dying from it. “Of course, once I saw the greenroot framework inside those things, I knew they couldn’t have been people.”

  

 “It would poison people,” agreed Mercald. Fresh greenwood sap on the skin, even small quantities of it, caused ulcers which did not heal. He had been listening to all of Mavin’s discoveries, sadly shaking his head from time to time, not in disagreement but in profound disappointment that what he had thought was a religious community was likely to be something quite different.

  

 “And then,” she went on, “I found a burial kite—what do you call them?”

  

 “Wings of the Boundless,” said Mercald. “Which carry the dead into the Boundless sky. Or, sometimes, into the Bounded depths. Depending upon what kind of life they’ve lived, of course.”

  

 “Of course. Part of the duty of the Messenger caste, as I understand it? Manufacture of wings and dispatch of the dead thereon? Yes. Beedie told me. Well, two days ago I saw one of the ... wings ... descending into the chasm. There was a bright feather on the ... well, on the fellow’s cap. That wing now lies on the n et a short way from here. The cap is there, and the white wrappings, and the other clothing, but the body is gone.”

  

 “Of course it’s gone,” said Mercald with asperity. “It went into the care of the Boundless.”

  

 “I thought the ones that went up went into the care of the Boundless. This one came down.”

  

 “Well, naturally, both end up in the care of the Boundless, it’s just that ... our ... theology is a little indefinite about ...”

  

 “It’s just that you don’t know, Mercald. Do you really think that the Boundless cares about bodies? Well, no matter. In my experience across the lands of this world, bodies invariably vanish because something buries them or burns them or eats them. Beetles, usually. Or things that look like beetles. Except that I could find no beetles around the kite. Excuse me, Mercald. Around the Wing of the Boundless.

  

 “I did find the smell of whatever. Whatever wore those robes. Whatever greeted us in human language. Whatever guided us here. Whatever has now gone elsewhere, probably because the wind has started to blow and whatever is afraid of being crushed.”

  

 “The inescapable hypothesis is, then, whatever ate the people of Lostbridge.” said the Thinker.

  

 “Whatever,” agreed Mavin. She leaned forward to fasten the rattling gate more tightly. The wind kept up its steady pressure on the thong, stretching it.

  

 “How horrible,” said Mercald, making a sick face. “How dreadful.”

  

 “Dreadful, certainly,” she agreed. “But helpful. I think we can draw some conclusions from what we know, can’t we, Thinker?”

  

 “Ahhm. Well. Yes. A form of life which absorbs some—how much, I wonder?—of the mental ability or memory of whatever it eats. Hmmm. Yes. Language for example? Yes. Hmm. Doesn’t manage it any too well, but does have the general idea. Tends to use it reflectively ...”

  

 “They don’t think very quickly,” said Mavin. She had come to this conclusion some time ago. The poor creatures, whatever they were, did not think well. They struggled with thought, struggled to put ideas together, like a partly brain-killed Gamesman trying to do things he had once done easily, not able to understand why these simplicities were now impossible. She had seen that. More t han once. She clenched her teeth at the memory, set it aside.

  

 “What would explain this masquerade? Why the robes? Why the names of the long gone?”

  

 Mercald cleared his throat. “Because, Mavin, they told the truth when they spoke of expiation. No. Listen. Let us suppose these creatures, these whatever, came upon Watertight in the darkness those hundreds of years ago, came upon it and ate the people, only to take into themselves all the memories of those people, and the thoughts, language, feelings. All the sorrows. All the pain.

  

 “Before that, they had been animals. They hadn’t had any ‘thinking’ at all. Now, suddenly, they would have language and thought and guilt. For the first time, guilt. Oh, what a terrible thing. A simple animal of some kind, with only animal cleverness or skill, and then suddenly to have all that thinking. No way to get rid of it. No way to go back as they were before. Only the idea of expiation which they had swallowed at the same time they swallowed guilt, but no way to do that, either. And the thinking perhaps gets less and less useful as time goes on ...” He fell silent, sorrowing, hearing the wind sorrowing outside as though it agreed with his mood.

  

 “Probably asexual reproduction,” said the Thinker. “Which means clones. Which means no change, no natural selection. Every generation the same. as the preceding generation, and every individual—though there really wouldn’t be individuals in that sense—the same as every other. So, whatever ate Mirtylon is still Mirtylon. And whatever ate Lovewings is still Lovewings ...”

  

 “Because she didn’t die when she jumped,” said Mavin. “She landed in the net and the whatevers got to her while she was still alive.”

  

 “Possibly more than one of them,” the Thinker went on. “And possibly learned from her that there was good eating on Watertight bridge. If that was the case, then we have to assume that the total effect of thought didn’t come about immediately. Maybe it took s ome time for it to be incorporated into the beings, the whatevers.”

  

 “Poor things,” said Mercald, sadly. “Poor things.”

  

 “Well, if they are such poor things, tell me how to help them, Priest. Would you have them expiate, finally, what it was they did? Perhaps we could arrange it. That is, provided they don’t eat us first.”

  

 “Surely not. Having once felt guilt ...”

  

 “Having once felt guilt, Priest, there are those who court it, believing that more of the same can be no worse. No, there may be sneaky slyness at work here. I will believe only what these creatures do, not what they say. I do not think they understand words very well, though they use them. I have known people like that in the world above. They say human words, but from an unhuman heart. Even a thrilpat may speak human language, often with seeming sense, but that does not mean I would trust one with my dinner.”

  

 “But you speak of expiation ...”

  

 “Yes. Something is trying to kill the oozers that threaten the bridgetowns, or so Thinker says. We know of nothing which could be making that attempt save these whatevers. So. If these creatures, whatever they are, succeed in killing gray oozers, then they will have expiated their guilt at wiping out Lostbridge—Watertight. We will give them ... what is it you give penitents, Priest? Forgiveness? We will give them that. Perhaps it will satisfy them.”

  

 “Perhaps,” agreed Mercald, giving her a narrow and suspicious look. “And do you intend to give them Slysaw Bander and his followers, as well?”

  

 Mavin smiled a slow smile at him, a wicked smile which burrowed into him until he shifted uncomfortably, unable to bear the stare. “Well, Priest. I thought of it, yes. And I decided against it. Can you tell me why?”

  

 He sighed in relief, wiped his forehead which had become beaded with perspiration. “Because you are a messenger of the Boundless, Mavin, and would not judge without proof?”

  

 “No, Priest,” she said in the same wicked tone. “Because I am a pragmatist. I do not want one of these whatevers sliding about in the Bottomlands with Slysaw’s evil brain alive inside it, moving it. It may be we are fortunate that none of those who were eaten on Lostbridge desired power. If they had wanted power or empire, the creatures that ate them might not have stopped with Watertight. If Slysaw Bander had eternal life, clone or no clone, I would not sleep soundly in my hammock anywhere in this chasm or, it may be, in this world. Even though the things seem to have trouble keeping their train of thought, I would not risk it. It may be they merely find language difficult.”

  

 Mercald flushed. “You mock me, Messenger.”

  

 “I instruct you, Priest. Pay heed. When you believe that messengers arrive from God, it is wise to listen to everything they say, not merely when they recite accepted doctrine.” She was ashamed of herself almost immediately. He turned so pale, so wan. Well. It was only as she had suspected from the beginning. Many men had a strong tendency to tell God how to behave, and religious men were more addicted to this habit than most.

  

 “All of which,” she said, changing the subject, “is not relevant to our current need. We need a way to destroy the oozers. The whatevers evidently have not found a way, not yet. It would help if we knew whether the whatevers think at all. Do they think, Thinker?”

  

 He shrugged. “What is thought? No current theories explain it. I suggest you attempt what it is you wish to do and see whether it works. Though I am not an experimentalist, at times one must simply sit back and observe what experimentalist manage to accomplish. In the interest of acquiring data. No other way. Sorry. Sometimes, one simply must.”

  

 “Well, then, Thinker, we are stymied until the wind stops. Whatever they are, they will not come out until midnight. I suggest we sleep until then, keeping watch turn about. Priest, you seem wide awake.”

  

 “I am troubled,” he said with dignity. “I will watch first. It is unlikely I would sleep in any case.”

  

 “I have abused you,” said Mavin, “if only for your own good. So watch then. Wake me when you grow sleepy.”

  

 She curled into a ball on the sandy floor, covering herself with her blanket. Though the gate of the cave was loosely woven, it seemed to be out of the wind, protected on the up-chasm side by a protrusion of the root wall. The wind was cool but it did not feel as cold as it had the night before upon the stair. She drowsed, half dreaming, half remembering.

  

 Near the source of the River Dourt was a town called Mip. It lay in the valley of the Dourt, below the scarps of the Mountains of Breem, far east of the Black Basilisk Demesne of which the people of Mip spoke often, softly, and with some fear. As far to the east as the Black Basilisk lay west was the Demesne of Pouws, and between the desmesnes a state of wary conflict had become a way of life and death. Mip, lying as it did between, strove quietly to be invisible. The people around were small holders, farmers, those to the south raising livestock while those in the river valley grew vegetables and fruits for towns as far away as Vestertown and Xammer in the south or Learner in the north. Thus the town itself was largely devoted to commerce of an agricultural kind, full of wagons and draft animals, makers of harness and plows, seed sellers, animal Healers and minor Gamesmen who would dirty their hands and Talents with ordinary toil.

  

 Mavin had come there, pursuing the white bird, coming south from Landizot, down the rocky shores of the Eastern Sea, past Hawsport, with its harbor full of fishing boats behind the breakwater, down along the mountains to the Black Basilisk Demesne which was mad with celebration over the birth of a boy child named Burmor to the family of the Basilisks. Mavin went quiet there, anonymous, answering fewer questions than she was asked, learning at last that the white bird had been seen. “Ah, yes, stranger. Seen by the Armigers on duty at the dawn watch. Two of them flew off in pursuit of it, losing it in the haze above Breem Mountains. It would have gone to water along the Dourt, no doubt. But that was some time ago. Ask in Mip.”

  

 So she had gone to Mip.

  

 A quiet little town, on both sides of the Dourt, which so early in its flow was little more than a brook, full of inconsequential babble and froggy pools. A town full of trees, planted there, most of them, generations before by the first settlers in the area. “We feed the Basilisks,” she heard whispered. “We feed Pouws. They have no wish to go hungry, so leave us alone.”

  

 And, indeed, there was little sign of Great Game in Mip. No tumbled rocks to show that Tragamors had heaved the landscape about. No piles of bones to show where Gamesmen had pulled the heat from the very bodies of the townsmen to fuel their Talents. An occasional Armiger from the Black Basilisk Demesne high in the western sky, light shattering from his armor; an occasional highly caparisoned Herald from Pouws stopping for beer at the Flag and Branch on his way to or from some other place. Mavin had settled into the town, found a quiet room on the upper floor of the Flag and Branch and moved about to ask questions.

  

 There was a hunter in Mip. “I saw the bird, Gameswoman, in t he marshes. The source of the Dourt lies there in the ready marshes, and the wild fowl throng there between seasons, moving north or south. I did not attempt to take the bird. I do not take the rare ones. Only the common ones, those we may eat without feeling we have eaten the future and so kept it from the lips of our children. It seemed contented there, though without a mate or nest or nestlings to rear. If you go there, likely you will find it, though if you go to harm it, I would beg you to reconsider.”

  

 “I am a Shifter,” Mavin had said. “As is the white bird. My sister.”

  

 At which the hunter had moved away, with some expressions of politeness, his face suddenly hard and unpleasant. It was not the first time Mavin had seen that expression when Shifters were mentioned. Seemingly no other Gamesmen—no, not even Ghouls and Bonedancers, who moved among hosts of the dead to the horror of multitudes—were held in such disrepute. It was fear. Seemingly some pawns did not believe the carefully constructed mythology which Shifters were at considerable effort to put about. Seemingly some pawns believed they had special reason to distrust, to fear the Shifter Talent. It was a reaction Mavin found curious. She promised herself she would learn the cause of it some day.

  

 Come that day when it would come; she took herself off to the swamps at the source of the Dourt. This was high country, much wooded, with little meadows surrounding the streams and the low, marshy places grown up with reeds. It reminded her a little of another forested place, and she was almost contented there, in one shape or another, searching for the white bird.

  

 The streams came down out of many shallow valleys into a myriad meadowlands. Searching was no matter of high flight and sharpened eyes. She had to seek along each separate creek and gully, among each separate set of marshes. It was not until ten days had passed that she caught sight of the bird, the white bird, helplessly beating her wings against the net which held even as the hunter closed in to take her. If it was not the same hard-faced hunter she had left in Mip, it was his twin, and the anger that was always close to the surface in Mavin boiled up in a fury. Still, she held back, seeing the way he peered about, face sly and full of hating intensity. She knew then what he meant to try. This white bird, a Shifter, was to be bait for another Shifter, herself. The fact that he brought n othing but a net showed his ignorance. He believed, then, only the common knowledge about Shifters, much of it spread by the Shifters themselves. He thought a Shifter could be either human or one other thing—a wolf, a pombi, a fustigar, a bird.

  

 “I am Mavin Manyshaped,” she sang to herself in the treetop from which she watched him. “You have done a foolish thing, Hunter.” Then she followed him as he put the white bird in a cage, a cage too small, painfully too small, and carried it away in a wagon.

  

 Mavin, seeing him through flitchhawk eyes, circling high above him, saw each plodding step of the team.

  

 He did not go far. Only to an open meadow where the white bird would be very visible for a long way, and where he tethered her tightly to a stake driven deep into the ground and set his nets to drop if that stake should be touched.

  

 Mavin, watching him from mountain zeller eyes, merely smiled.

  

 Dusk came, and after that darkness, and the hunter curled beside his dying fire to rest. What did he think? she wondered. Did he believe Shifters could not stay awake at night? Did he think that because one Shifter flew as a bird in the daylight that her sister would also fly only in the day? Foolish man. Her serpent’s eyes saw him clearly by his warmth, even in the dark.

  

 She slid beside the stake, found the thong that bound the white bird’s leg, whispered, “Handbright? Handbright? It is Mavin, your sister.”

  

 There was no whispered answer, only the glare of mindless bird eyes, gleaming a little in the light of the embers. Well and well. It was a thing known to Shifters. Sometimes one took a form too long, too well, and could not leave it again. Well and well, sister, she thought. So you are sister no longer. Still, because of what you were and your protection of me ...

  

 The serpent’s form bound about the white bird, grew little teeth to chew the thong away, slithered away into the night to lead the white bird stumbling in the dark to the forest’s edge as though it had forgotten how to Shift eyes for night vision, only the maddened gleam showing. “Stay,” Mavin murmured, as she would have to some half wild fustigar. “Stay. I will return.”

  

 Then she returned to the stake, began to take on bulk, eating the grass, the leaves of the trees, whatever offered. At last, when she was ready, she trembled the stake and let the nets fell over her howling.

  

 The hunter tumbled out of sleep, half dream-caught yet, snatched up a torch and thrust it into the embers, then held it high, uncertain whether he still dreamed or was awake, to confront the devil eyes within his gauzy net, to see the claws which shredded that net, the fangs which opened in his direction ...

  

 Mavin thought, later, that perhaps he stopped running when he reached Mip, though he might have gone all the way to Hawsport. It had been a good joke.

  

 Too good. The white bird had been no less terrified and had flown. All the search had to begin again, be done again. Still, when next she heard word of the white bird, that word had been clear. The white bird had flown west, over the sea.

  

 Over the sea. To strange lands and far. To this chasm. Outside the wind had dropped. Through the woven gate she could see the glowing lanterns emerging from the root wall. It would not be long before the whatevers sought to fill their strange, manshaped garments once more. She sat up, seeing Mercald’s eyes in the fishlight.

  

 “You didn’t wake me, Priest?”

  

 “I was wakeful enough for both, Mavin. I knew you would be about as soon as the wind dropped. I will sleep in a while, perhaps, while the Thinker keeps watch. If you need me—though I do not suppose you will—call me.”

  

 “Ah,” she thought. “So you are still unhappy with me, Mercald.”

  

 She sidled out through the gate, surrounded at once by a great cloud of blue fish. Across the clearing, one of the flattree garments moved purposefully toward her.

  

 CHAPTER NINE

  

 “You are not Mirtylon,” she cried.

  

 The balloon dress, twitchy upon its framework, stopped where it was, trembling in indecision.

  

 “You are not Mirtylon,” Mavin cried again, “but that doesn’t matter. You do not have to be Mirtylon to talk to us.”

  

 “Am Mirtylon,” it puffed Ahhm Muhhrtuhhlohhn.

  

 “No.” She moved across the clearing, thrusting her way through a cloud of importunate fishes to stand beside it, almost within touch. “No. You ate Mirtylon. Now that you have eaten Mirtylon, you think Mirtylon. You have his name and can use it if you like. But you are not Mirtylon. What did you name yourself before Mirtylon?”

  

 There was only an edgy silence during which the balloon quaked, shifted, and did not answer. At last an answer came, from another of the forms.

  

 “No name ... had no name ...”

  

 “Ah. Well. If you did not call yourself by human names, what other name would you have?” The Thinker had suggested this line of questioning in an effort to determine whether the things thought at all, whether they could deal with conditional concepts. Everything the creatures had said until now might have been mere stringing together of phrases the humans might have said—or so the Thinker thought. She waited. Silence stretched thin. She could feel the Thinker’s eyes, behind her in the cave, watching every tremor.

  

 “We ... bug ... sticky.”

  

 Mavin’s mouth fell open. What in the name of the Boundless or any other deity was she to make from that? She heard the Thinker hissing from the cave. “See if you can get it to come out of cover! Let us get a look at it.”

  

 “Come out of that shape,” she commanded.

  

 “No.” The word was strong, unequivocal, from several of them at once. “No. Ugly.”

  

 She scratched her head. “Ugly” was a human word and therefore represented a human opinion. Which meant it was possibly what the dwellers of Watertight had thought of these creatures. Which had a great many implications. “Ugly is all right,” she said at last. “Thinker is ugly.” She waved at the cave behind her. “Many things are ugly.”

  

 “Ugly ... things ... are ... bad.” Ahhhr bahhhd.

  

 “Not ... always.” She shook her head, understanding what horror these words conveyed. She could visualize what had happened on Watertight bridge. It would have been night, people would have been asleep, then would have come the invasion of these whatevers, the terror of being eaten alive, consumed, only to find after one had been eaten that thought and personality did not end but went on, and on, and on. Still, there must have been some self-awareness in the creatures before. Otherwise they could not have named themselves at all.

  

 “All things which eat us are ugly-bad. Being eaten is ugly-bad. If you do not eat me, I do not think you are ugly-bad.” There, let them chew on that, she thought, turning to rejoin the Thinker. “What do you think?”

  

 He shrugged. “I postulate mentation prior to their having eaten people. However, seemingly they had no visual or symbolic communication. They obviously had some form of language, however, and it may have been in smell. They had a concept of number—the thing said ‘we’. They had a concept of otherness—it said bug. They had a concept of relationship—sticky. It’s possible we’ll find they’re a kind of mobile flypaper.

  

 “However, if the people of Watertight used the phrase ‘sticky-bug’ then these creatures may just be using it because they swallowed it. In that case, all we’re left with is the fact one of them used a plural.”

  

 “All of which means?” sighed Mavin, understanding about one word in five.

  

 “That I can’t say at this point how intelligent they are, leaving aside for the moment that we don’t know what intelligence is. I have always eschewed the biological sciences for exactly that reason; t hey’re unacceptably imprecise.” He peered over her shoulder, eyes suddenly widening.

  

 Mavin turned. Something was flowing out at the bottom of the balloon dress, something thick and oleaginous, shiny on the top, puckered here and there as though the substance of it flowed around rigid inclusions. When it stopped flowing, it was an armspan across, ankle high, and it quivered. Out of the centre of it, slowly edging upward as though by terrible effort, came the shape of an ear, a bellows. The ear quivered. The bellows chuffed. “Not ... eating ... you ...” it puffed. “Not ... ugly ...”

  

 While Mavin considered that, trying to think of something con­structive to say next, a cloud of small flutterers swept through the clearing. As though by reflex action, the thing that had spoken lifted a flap of itself into their path. Wings drummed and struggled. There was a momentary agitation of small bodies upon the surface of the thing, then the smooth shininess of it closed over the disturbance.

  

 “What did I say?” asked the Thinker, triumphantly. “Mobile flypaper!”

  

 “Not ugly,” said Mavin, firmly, trying not to laugh. “Very neat, very good-looking. Very shiny. You are ... Number One Sticky.”

  

 Across the clearing another puddle of glue thrust up its own ear and bellows. “I ... Number ... Two ... Sticky.”

  

 “Well, that answers a lot of questions,” said the Thinker. “They certainly have self-awareness.”

  

 “And they can count,” commented Mercald. “So, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they ...”

  

 “I don’t want to hear it,” said Mavin. “There isn’t time. Whether they are religious or not, Mercald, I don’t want to consider the matter now.”

  

 “Well. So long as you don’t expect them to do anything that would offend against ...”

  

 “I don’t want to hear that, either, Mercald. My understanding of what would offend against the Boundless is at least as good as yours. As you would remember if you reflect upon recent history!” Mercald flushed and fell silent, obviously distressed. Mavin turned to see the ears quivering at full extension, and cursed herself for having yelled. Undoubtly she had confused them. “Pay no attention to the arguments we humans have from time to time. It is our way. Often, it means nothing.”

  

 “We ... remember,” blob said. “Number ... Two ... Sticky ...?” It repeated with an unmistakably questioning rise in tone.

  

 “Number Two Sticky,” agreed Mavin. “But you will have to mark yourself somehow, so that we will know which one you are. We cannot smell the difference as you probably do. We must see it.”

  

 Ears and bellows disappeared into the flat surface. The blobs quivered, flowed toward one another, seemed to confer through a process of multiply extrusions and withdrawals. Finally the surfaces of both began to form a dull fibrous pattern against the overall shine. The figures were clear, a large figure “1,” an even larger figure “2.”

  

 “They’ve moved some of their bottom membrane onto their tops,” said the Thinker. “That stands to reason. They couldn’t move around at all if they were sticky on the bottom.”

  

 The conference among the Stickies went on, and more numbers began to appear, 3, then 4 and 5 in quick succession. When all those in the clearing had identified themselves, there were fifteen.

  

 “Handsome,” announced Mavin in an approving tone. “Very handsome. Very useful.”

  

 “And very fortunate that the poor people of Watertight were literate,” sighed Mercald. “I wonder if any of these creatures ate the babies on Lostbridge. Poor things. They wouldn’t have enough language yet to talk with us.”

  

 “There ... are ... more ...” said One, breathlessly. “In ... the ... place we ... stay.”

  

 “How many?” asked the Thinker. “How many of you?”

  

 The glue blob quivered, shivered, erupted in many small bubbles which puckered and burst, then became calm, slick, only the fibrous identifying number contrasting upon its surface. The bellows gasped, puffed hugely: “Three thousand ... nine hundred ... sixty-two now. One was ... crushed in the last ... wind.”

  

 “And that,” said the triumphant Thinker, “proves they can reason with quite large numbers. Well. Most interesting.”

  

 “Do all talk human talk? All understand?” Mavin’s keen sense of survival quivered to attention. How many people had there been on the lost bridge, after all? Surely not almost four thousand of them.

  

 The ear drooped, the bellows pumped. “Only ... four hundred ... seven. All. We ... want ... ed ... did want ... did want ... not now ... understand ... not now.”

  

 “What did you want?” asked Mavin, already sure of the answer.

  

 “Did want ... people ... to eat. For ... the ... others.”

  

 “Noble,” sighed Mercald. “Risking their lives to help their brethren. Giving it up when they learn it is a greater wrong ...”

  

 “Mercald, I am not at all sure they have learned any such thing,” Mavin hissed at him, cupping her hands around her lips and standing close so that the stickies should not hear her. “They have said they do not wish to be ugly. Very well. But they desire to acquire more of—well, whatever it is they acquired when they ate the people of Watertight. They’re outnumbered nine to one by those who speak only in smells. Now, no matter how ugly I might wish to avoid being, that kind of desire would speak strongly to me. We will do them a courtesy by not putting temptation in their way.”

  

 “Of course not,” he said with offended dignity. “I wouldn’t.”

  

 “Then don’t adopt them, Mercald. Don’t make them into some kind of Bottom-dwelling holiness. I’ve had sortie experience with promises of expiation and reformation. I’ve seen what happens when people act on such promises prematurely. We must not risk our lives on some religious notion you may have.” She realized she was glaring, panting, that her face was flushed. “Oh, foosh, Mercald. I feel like we’ve been arguing about this for days. Can’t you simply leave the religious aspects of it alone until you can get back to Topbridge and have a convocation or something to decide what it all means.” She turned away, sure he had not heard a word she had said.

  

 She turned to the stickies. “We have come here to find the big beasts that are eating the roots.” Mavin had started to say “Great, gray oozers,” and had then remembered what Mirtylon, nee Sticky One, had called them. “Do you know about those big beasts?”



  

 “Beasts ... eat ... stickies ... too,” puffed Sticky Seven, quivering in indignation.

  

 “We put... rootsap ... on them. ...” puffed another. Mavin could not see its number, hidden as it was behind two or three others. “Make little … ones sick ... die. ...”

  

 “There, you see!” demanded Mercald. “Our interests are similar. We can help them!”

  

 “We’re going to have to help one another,” muttered Mavin. “Rootsap won’t kill the big ones? Is that what you’re saying?”

  

 “Too big ...” came the disconsolate reply.

  

 “Can the net hold the beasts? Do the big beasts crawl around on top of the net?”

  

 “Go on ... top, yes.” Puff, puff. “Sometimes, net... breaks ... beasts fell ... down ... eat us. Crawl around ... eat ... everything.” This was the same sticky that had spoken before. By extending her neck a little, Mavin could read its number. It was Sticky Eleven.

  

 “How many beasts?” she asked. “Many?”

  

 There was a quivering conference among the glue blobs, with much extrusion of parts and emitting of smells. At last number Eleven struggled to the front of the group. “Nine ... big ones ... left ... near here. Sap ... killed ... little ones. Always had ... little ... ones here ... making pretty stones. First time ... big beasts ... come here. They come from ... down-chasm.” Puff, puff, puff, collapse. Eleven thinned to a pancake, bellows pumping impotently.

  

 Sticky One took up the story. “Eleven is ... right. Nine big ... ones ... left.”

  

 All right, thought Mavin. I’ll need to think about this. She turned to Mercald and the Thinker, hammering a fingertip into her palm. “Now’s the time to negotiate. None of the three of us is a representative of the bridge people—I speak of the governance of them, Mercald, not their religion. So, we need to get Beedie down here promptly. As a Bridger, she should serve nicely as ambassador. I can think of a few things we can try, but the agreement needs to be between the stickies and the chasm people so that it can’t be repudiated later by some collection of Banders or whatnots.”

  

 “I am glad to hear you say so,” murmured Mercald. “Whoever speaks for us should be open-hearted. There is too little love and trust in you for that. You are too cynical. I do not think you are a real messenger from the Boundless, Mavin. The white bird ... your sister ... now, she is a different matter. I can believe she is a messenger.”

  

 Mavin stepped back, stung, angry. Ah, my sister, she thought. Poor, mad Handbright. Yes. She is a different matter indeed. Besides, she doesn’t argue with you, you pompous, self-righteous idiot!

  

 Aloud, she said, “You have not heard me, Mercald. I’m sorry. I have tried to tell you there are dangers in the unknown.”

  

 “And opportunities,” he said. “Opportunities to extend the hand o f friendship, the hand of ...”

  

 “And I have asked you not to extend anything yet,” she snapped. “Wait until Beedie and Roges get down here. I’ll fetch them now and be back by the time it gets light. Just wait here, both of you, and don’t ... do ... anything.”

  

 She cast one quick look in the Thinker’s direction, remembering that he had not yet seen her change shape. Bidding the stickies loudly to wait until she came back, she drew upon the power of the place to Shift into the great bird-bat form she had put together which could fly even in the soggy air of the chasm. Around her the place grew chill. She saw the Thinker shudder with cold as he stared at her. As she lifted through the cold in a whoosh of wings, she heard him cry out behind her.

  

 “Marvelous! Revolutionary! A verification of the ergotic hypothesis!”

  

 “Oh, by Towering Tamor,” Mavin muttered. “Now I’ve done it. He’ll want to talk to me about how I do this, and I can’t explain be­cause when I try to explain or even think about it I can’t do it at all!” Resolutely, she turned her mind to other things, not thinking about flying as she circled upward toward the amber gleam of Beedie’s fire.

  

 As she came closer, however, she saw that it was the gleam of a torch they carried in a headlong dash down the stairs. She Shifted into her own form and met them.

  

 “Mavin!” cried Beedie. “Whoosh, I’m glad it’s you. There’s a hundred Banders clumping down behind us, and I wanted to warn you. I know you told us to stay put, but we didn’t expect so many.”

  

 “A hundred?” Mavin was doubtful.”Surely not so many as that.”

  

 “One hundred seven,” said Roges, putting down his pack in order to stretch his arms. “When we heard them coming, Beedie went back up to a place she could count them as they crossed a break in the stair. One hundred seven of them, each with much cursing and many weapons. They think they are to find some great treasure down below, something the Beeds and Chafers have kept secret from them for generations.”

  

 “You’re right,” admitted Mavin. “I expected neither so many nor so soon. Let me carry part of that for you. I think we’d best hurry to get as far ahead of them as possible. Throw the torch over; it will go out on the net below. The fish make enough light. Come. ...” She led them on down, carrying some of their burdens so that all could move faster, ignoring all attempts at conversation.

  

 When they had come some little way, she left them in order to fly up along the stair and see the descending Banders for herself. There were over a hundred, as Roges had said, old Slysaw in the forefront, all galumphing down at a steady pace and cursing the stairs as they came. She hovered just out of their sight, listening to their mutinous threats as to what they would do if they were not allowed to rest soon, then dropped on her bat wings down the chasm once more with a feeling of some relief.

  

 “You’ve gained good distance on them,” she told the others. “And they’ll soon stop to rest. Evidently they’ve been climbing in the wind, and even though many of them have strong Bridger’s legs, they are tired and hungry. Come, give me that pack again, and we’ll go a bit more slowly.”

  

 Beedie refused to relinquish the pack until she was told what Mavin and the others had found in the depths. Then there were squeals of astonishment at the descriptions of the stickies and still greater astonishment when she was told they would soon meet Mirtylon and Lovewings—or what remained of them.

  

 “The Thinker is ecstatic at all the new theories he has about them,” said Mavin. “But Mercald is determined that they are something very holy, somehow sanctified through guilt or some such. I have begged him to simply wait until we know a bit more before doing anything, but he accuses me of cynicism.”

  

 “Mercald is such an uneven person,” said Beedie. “He can be brave as a pombi if it is a question of faith in the Boundless, and in the next minute he is peeing in his pants because he has the down-dizzies. I hope he will listen to you, Mavin, because I think he is not very realistic.”

  

 “And I hope you’ve had time to discuss a few things besides theology,” panted Roges. “We may have gained on the Banders, but they will arrive at the Bottom eventually. When they do, they’ll expect to do away with us, I imagine.”

  

 “I have a few ideas,” said Mavin modestly. “A few things that might work out.” Her foot jolted upon the solid floor of the chasm, and she sighed with relief. “Follow me. I’ve found a shorter way than the one we were led in by.”

  

 She led them at a fast trot through the whiskery halls beneath the net, pointing out the features of the place as she did so; the boiling pools—including one very large, deep pond alive with steam—the flopperskin kites that dotted the net, the ankle-high holes connecting between the hallways. Though her way was much more direct than the path the stickies had led them before, daylight was shining through the flattrees on the rim when she brought them into the clearing to find—no one. No Thinker. No Mercald. No stickies.

  

 “Now what?” Mavin sighed in frustration. “Where have they gone? I told them to stay right here. I begged them not to do anything until I returned.”

  

 Roges moved through the open gate into the cave. “Here’s the Thinker behind the door,” he called. “He seems to be Thinking.”

  

 The others came in to see him crouched against the wall behind the gate, gesturing to himself as he babbled a string of incomprehensible words over and over. “Thinker!” Mavin demanded. “Where’s Mercald? What happened to Mercald?”

  

 “Mercald? Does one care? When one has verified the ergotic hypothesis at last, does one care about Mercalds? It seems that in order to describe the statistical state of a system, one needs an ensemble. There are those who believe the ensemble has physical reality, that the occurrence of a particular state corresponds to the frequency with which one observes the phenomenon. Others think the ensemble only a mathematical construct. It is now established that all systems must go through all states in the ensemble. Ergo, you can fly. This place is merely a rare event, sitting out in the tail of distribution of all places, non-representative ... I shall present a paper before the physical society at the fell meeting ...”

  

 “Oh, flopper poop,” Beedie. “He saw you change shape, didn’t he? He doesn’t believe in the Boundless, like Mercald; and he isn’t open-minded, like Roges and me; so he’s theo ... theor ... thinking his way through it and has dropped off his bridge completely. He probably thinks I’m a rare event too, and no more real than anything else.” She shook him. “Thinker! Where’s Mercald? Tell me about Mercald!”

  

 “Absolution,” grated the Thinker distractedly, his eyes unfocused. “He wanted to give absolution to Sticky One. He wanted to lay on his hands in forgiveness, and he did, and he couldn’t take his hands off, and he ... ah ... wah ... aaahhh dissolved ... aaahhh slurp!” The last word was uttered with a hideously descriptive sound which made them all recoil in disbelief.

  

 “By the Pain of Dealpas,” moaned Mavin. “By the Great Flood and the Hundred Devils. By the p’natti of my childhood. By ... by ...” She stuttered her way into silence, beating her head with one hand.

  

 “A paper for Physical Review would be out of the question,” muttered the Thinker. “It would never get by the idiot referees.”

  

 “By the Boundless,” Mavin sighed at last. “Did Mercald think they had voluntary control over their stickiness?”

  

 “I don’t imagine he thought at all,” murmured Beedie sadly. “Often he didn’t, you know.”

  

 “Don’t speak of it as though it were in the past,” Mavin urged. “If he has been slurped up by Sticky One, he is still with us, still Mercald, and he will have a lot of time to consider what he has done.” Oh Mercald, I told you to be careful. Because I did not speak in syrupy words, you would not listen. She shook her head again, then laid down her pack and went out into the clearing.

  

 “Sticky-One-Mirtylon-Mercald! Sticky Two! All the stickies! Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Then she disgraced herself by weeping. Beedie took her hand in sympathy.

  

 “It’s awful, isn’t it. I really want to throw up, but I haven’t anything in my stomach at all.” Across the clearing the whiskery wall trembled. Moments passed. A sticky crawled out, slowly, so flat in aspect that Mavin wondered if it had suffered some accidental crushing. When it emerged completely, she saw that it was Sticky Two. “It’s Lovewings,” she sighed to Beedie.

  

 “Sticky Two,” she said, loudly, then waited for the ear to emerge, which it did only reluctantly. “I know what happened. It was not your fault. Not ... your ... fault.”

  

 “Sticky ... One ... fault ... it was ...” puffed Sticky Two.

  

 “No. It wasn’t any sticky’s fault,” Mavin sighed. “It was the man’s fault. He didn’t think. Where is Sticky One, now?”

  

 “Very ... sick. Sticky ... One has ...” There was a long, long pause . “Has ... too many... things inside ... all at once.” The ear trembled, retracted, the bellows sighed dismally to itself.

  

 “I’ll bet he does,” said Beedie. “Can you imagine trying to digest Mercald? Oh my, I shouldn’t joke about it. But then, it shouldn’t seem funny, and it does.”

  

 “Sticky Two.” Mavin was trying not to hear what Beedie said, f or it made her want to laugh unbecomingly. “There are ugly men coming. We must do things very quickly. We cannot wait for Sticky One, or anything else. We must talk with all the speaking stickies at once. Will you fetch them?”

  

 The glue blob dithered for a moment, then flowed away under the wall. Roges came out of the cave nibbling on a piece of bread, offering some to Mavin and Beedie with the other hand. “Thinker is all tied up in knots talking to himself about you, Mavin, and birds and some law or other he claims you broke. I haven’t seen him like this before, and I don’t think he’ll be much use to us.”

  

 “That’s all right,” Mavin replied distractedly. “At least he’ll be out of the way.” She began explaining to Beedie and Roges what she had thought they might do, with much waving of arms and pointing here and there. Roges did not accept it without question.

  

 “That’s dangerous for Beedie, doer-good. She could be hurt!”

  

 “She won’t be, Roges. I’ll take care of that part myself.”

  

 Beedie had a doubtful comment. “You know how Mercald would feel about doing it this way. We still don’t have any proof he would accept that the Banders are what we know they are.”

  

 “He’s not in any position to complain about it,” she laughed bitterly. “We can give the Banders fair warning, if that would make you feel better. They won’t heed it, but we can try. Then, if it’s the wrong thing to do, Mercald can figure out later how we can expiate for it. All of us, including the stickies who help us do it.”

  

 “Are you sure they will help us?”

  

 “Well, sausage girl, it’s up to your eloquence. I think there’s a good chance for building excellent relations with the stickies. If they do the chasm people a favour, then they’ll be in good odor with all. If we do the stickies a favour, they’ll want to treat us well in future. It’s up to you, Beedie. You’ve been reared to work on the roots, to manage a crew. Now we need you to work on the root net, and the stickies will be your crew. Right now I think they’re very eager to please. Let’s see how eloquent you can be!”

  

 At almost midday the Banders came down to the vast net which spread across the chasm, making a ceiling above the Bottom. The net was made up of many ropey roots, tugged sideways from the forest of verticals, which were knotted or grown together at armspan intervals, again and again, until the whole chasm was divided h orizontally by a gridwork of thick, strong lines, each individual p olygon of rope-sized roots was further connected by a finer mesh o f knotted root hairs. When Beedie had first seen it, she had known a t once it was sufficiently strong to catch something large and flat d ropping from above or perhaps even a person who might fall on h is face while running across the grid. She had known at once it w ould not stop large rocks plunging from the rim—or the crawling g ray oozers whose weight had torn ragged holes in the fabric already.

  

 It was not unlike the floor of a bridge before the main planks were l aid, and the Banders looked across it as a natural and familiar arena f or exploration, whereas the Bottom, with its steams and stinks, was b oth strange and intimidating. Only one small group of the Banders w ent to the Bottom, found themselves in the maze of hallways, and p romptly rejoined the others above the net level where they stood p eering at the distant root wall, wondering where to go next.

  

 It was not long before one of them, more sharp-eyed—or more acquisitive—than the rest, spotted a bright sparkle on the net, bounced his way out to it, and brought it back to be passed around among the others

  

 “Jewels,” shouted Byle. “Dah, it’s jewels. Laying there on the net like so much flopper flub. See yonder, there’s another sparkle.” The gems, in glittering clusters, had been glued onto the grid with rootsap to form a twisting path. They were stones like those Mavin had discovered in the cave—gizzard stones from the small oozers, polished to a fine, high shine by the tumbling of the creatures’ great guts. All the stickies who spoke human language had been at the labor of placing them until moments before the Banders arrived. Now the stickies crouched upon the net, and their shiny tops camouflaged with nonsticky bottom membrane, half-hidden with bits of root hair and leaf. The trail of gems wound out across the chasm; some of the younger Banders were already following it and collecting them.

  

 Slysaw bellowed at them. “You all get off there! I didn’t say go, and you don’t go till I say. Now get back here and let me look at those. Well, well, what a wonder. So this is what the Birder and the Beedie wench were after. I’ll be dropped off a bridge by my ears if this isn’t something ...”

  

 There were mutterings from the others in the band. One or two looked as though they were going to disregard orders, but these were c uffed into line by some of Slysaw’s close kin.

  

 “Now, boys. Now then. Think what a shortage of saw gravel there’s been lately, and all the time pots of it here in the Bottom to be picked up by the pocketful! And won’t we have fun taking all this back and showing it around. All this secret stuff the high and mighty Beeds and Chafers and Birders never told us about. Let’s be orderly, now. Byle, you and your cousin get out there first, and the rest of us’ll come after.” And soon the hundred were moving across the net in a long line which undulated from side to side as jewels were found and picked and popped into pockets—though some were hidden in shoe tops or behind ears in the expectation of avoiding the eventual sharing out.

  

 Up-chasm, others waited. Roges and Beedie were upon the net; Roges at the root wall, securely anchored to the mainroot, Beedie more or less at the center of the chasm, on the up-chasm side of the steamy place above the boiling pool. Before her, and to either side, stickies lay upon the net, almost invisible in the steam, their ears carefully extruded between bits of leafy litter as they listened for the signal.

  

 Mavin, hovering high above, peered down through the veils of steam. The mists made seeing difficult, but she had planned for it to be difficult. She did not want the Banders able to see clearly. They must be greedy, angry, and with obscured vision. She lifted a bit higher to see farther, then dropped down to whisper. “Beedie, are you ready?”

  

 Beedie waved her away impatiently, trying to remember her lines. At her direction, the largest, brightest stones had been placed in the steamy place. Now she could hear the result of that placement; raised voices, argument, the sound of blows. She heard Slysaw’s voice as he intervened, his own greed making him half-hearted. “Doesn’t matter who finds ‘em,” he shouted at his men. “We’ll share alike when we’re done. Just keep gatherin’ ‘em in, and soon we’ll come to the source of it all ...”

  

 The group tumbled on, stooping, grabbing, pushing one another in their haste.

  

 “Stop right there, Banders!” Beedie cried in a fine, trumpety voice.

  

 The men stumbled to a halt, their eyes widening in surprise, searching through the steamy veils for the source of the voice. Then o ne of them glimpsed her, pointed, shouted. Behind him, others pushed close.

  

 “Stop!” she cried again. “You have no business here, Byle. Nor you, Slysaw. The rest of your ruffians should be back at work on the bridgetowns that pay them. I give you warning, you are at peril of your lives, so take care. Go back to the stairs and up where you belong.”

  

 “And who’re you, wench?” Slysaw thrust through the pack, leaning on Byle’s shoulder. “Who appointed you head of chasm council, heh?” The Banders heaved and pushed at one another, drawing into a smaller, tighter group. Behind them stickies moved across the net.

  

 “Yeah,” interrupted Byle Bander, bouncing and posturing on the net. “Who’re you, Beedie? I’ll tell you. You’re gametime for me, that’s what. And after me, as many of these kin of mine as are interested in your skinny body.”

  

 Cheers and animal howls rose at this sally. Mavin, hearing this from above, recalled old, bad memories of Danderbat Keep, and boiled with fury. Still she hovered, close above the place Beedie stood.

  

 “I tell you to go back. You are meddling in things that are none of your business. “You do not belong here. You are in danger here. Don’t be stupid, standing there threatening me. Just turn yourselves around and go!” Beedie no longer needed to remember lines she had rehearsed. She was now so angry that they came of themselves. Beside the root wall, Roges heard her anger and sizzled with protective wrath.

  

 “We’ll see, Beedie girl. We’ll see ...” Byle plunged toward her through the rising steams, the entire pack pressed at his back. Slysaw was carried along in the rush even as his native suspicion made him try to stem the stampede. They came in all together, individually sure-footed yet stumbling against one another, so intent upon their own beastly mob noises they did not hear Mavin’s scream.

  

 “Stickies. Now. Now. Now. Now.”

  

 Roges at the root wall began to echo the sound, through Mavin’s am­plified voice could have been heard by any creature not deafened by its own howls. Beedie, too, cried out, and the three voices rose together. “Now. Now. Now. Now”

  

 Stickies had moved into a circle around the Banders, a circle that had already cut many of the main grid roots supporting the mesh above the boiling pool. Abruptly, with a loud, tearing sound, the fabric ripped to one side of the close-pressed mob. The flap of net they stood upon dropped to one side, throwing many of them flat, dropping others so quickly that arms and legs broke the finer meshes and dangled below, waving frantically at nothing.

  

 Those at the rear of the pack nearest the torn edge were first to realize that there was nothing below but the sound of seething water, occasional glimpses of its bubbling surface appearing through the gusts of steam. Those who saw what lay below tried to climb over the bodies of those above them on the net, shouting and kicking. Those above them retaliated by kicking and pushing in return. Two or three men toppled through the hole and fell, screaming only for a moment before striking the water with a splash, a final agonized gargle and silence.

  

 The entire pack was silent, only for that moment, not realizing what had happened but aware that something was wrong, that the net was no longer horizontal, that Beedie was moving away from them in the veiling mists, her face drawn into an expression of—what was it? Sorrow? Horror? At what? Even as shouts and howls arose once more, Byle, with his usual sensitivity, let voice follow wonder.

  

 “Whatcha starin’ at, bone body? Heh? Run if you like, Beedie, girl, but I’m faster then you are ...” Slysaw was grabbing at his shoulder, but the boy shrugged it off, blind and deaf to any needs but his immediate desire to do violence. Slysaw dropped and was trampled under the climbing hands and feet of a dozen others, kicked downward, beneath half a hundred struggling bodies, to lie at last half-dazed upon the very edge of the tear, clinging with both hands to a mesh of root hair.

  

 The stickies had continued with their work. The tear widened, the finer lacework ripping with an audible shriek, ropey roots breaking under the increased weight with repeated, snapping sounds which made Beedie think of a drum rattling, faster and faster. “Go back,” she screamed, unheard in the general din. “Go back.” It was too late for any of them to go back, and she knew it only briefly before they did.

  

 Now a second tear opened, across from the first. Those who remained upon the net were caught now upon a kind of saddle, l ow at the sides, high at the ends, with those ends growing more narrow with each breath they took. Beedie stood just beyond one end so that she looked straight into Byle’s face when the far, narrow strip broke through and the entire flap of net hung down for an instant’s time, laden with clutching forms, shedding other forms amid shouted words she could not understand and some she could, old threats and obscenities, all ending in a liquid gulping, diminishing echoes, and quiet.

  

 Beedie stood at the edge of the torn net, unable to move. Seeing her safe, Mavin dropped from her guardian’s post through the roiling steams, past fringy edges of torn net and the quivering stickies poised there awaiting her word, down to examine the simmering surface of the pool. Nothing floated in it. She had not measured its depth, but now knew it must be a vast cauldron to have swallowed so many without a sign remaining.

  

 Above, where Beedie stood, the net bounced from some weight hanging below it which jiggled and fought against felling. She looked between her feet to see him hanging upon a remaining shread of root just as his hand took her by the ankle. Byle Bander. She screamed his name.

  

 And Roges drew his knife, cut the root hairs which fastened him safe at the root wall and ran upon the gridwork, sure-footed as any Bridger, not looking down, not remembering to be afraid, thinking of nothing except the sound of her voice. He came to her while she still struggled against the hands that were pulling Byle Bander upward on her body while he cursed at her and called her filthy names.

  

 Beedie’s cry had summoned Mavin back in that instant. She was too late. Her great bird’s beak was too late to strike those climbing hands away. Roges’ knife had already done so, and he stood with Beedie wrapped in his arms on a net which shook and shivered and threatened to collapse beneath them at any moment.

  

 “Come on, young ones,” she said quietly. “There’s other time for that, and better places.” And she led them back to the root wall and down, not letting either of them go until she was sure they were safe.

  

 Later, when they thought of it, they went looking for the Thinker. They could not find him. Mavin was suspicious of the stickies for a time, but they convinced her of their innocence at last. He had g one, gone as he had come, into some other place, through some wall only he could see or understand.

  

 “Now I’ll never know how I do it,” Mavin thought with some disappointment. “I really thought he’d figure it out and would explain it to me.” The disappointment was not sufficient to keep her from curling up upon the cave floor and sleeping for a very long time.

  

 CHAPTER TEN

  

 It was some days later that they sat in the small commons room of Bridgers House on Topbridge. Beedie and Roges were unpacking a small bag they had brought from the Bottomlands, laying the contents upon the table before Rootweaver’s interested eyes. Old Quickaxe sat in one corner where his blanket-wrapped body could catch the last of the day’s light through a grilled window. Mavin sprawled before the hearth, playing with a stick in the deadroot fire which burned there to warm their supper.

  

 “And you think all the great oozers are dead?” asked Rootweaver, fingering the gems on the table. “Though you did not see them killed?”

  

 “We saw the first two killed,” said Mavin. “The first time wasn’t very efficient. The stickies hadn’t quite figured out what smells were most attractive to the beasts, so the first one tended to wander about. The second time—”

  

 “The second time was perfect,” said Beedie. “They stretched a net-road right over the Stew Pot, that’s what we named the boiling pool. Then they laid stink all over it, to attract the oozer. Then more stink to where the nearest oozer was, and it wasn’t close at all. It must have come a long way. Then, when it went out on the net-road, they cut the net, and down it went. Stewed beast. That didn’t smell very good either, but eventually it will all wash away.”

  

 “The stickies will have killed them all by now, ma’am,” said Roges, “even the one we saw on the root wall above Bottommost … The Bridgers from Bottommost were driving it down into the chasm with torches when we came that way. Evidently there was only the one who climbed that high, and both they and the stickies were very eager to have the beast gone.”

  

 “Why now?” quavered Quickaxe from his corner. “What brought the huge beasts into the chasm? We have never had a nything eating the roots before.”

  

 Mavin nodded in time with the dance of the flames. “I knew you would want to know, so I went down the chasm to see. There had been a rock fell there, just beyond the bend of the chasm. Evidently, a few of these very large beasts were trapped on this side of the fall. There are many of them further down, where it is even wetter and warmer and where a different kind of vegetation flourishes.”

  

 “But you say there are small ones below us?”

  

 “Not the same kind,” said Mavin offhandedly. “The little ones are a different beast entirely. They don’t eat the roots deeply, for one thing, and they stay away from the stickies, for another. The stickies have been killing them off with rootsap as long as any one of them can remember—certainly long before they ate the people on Watertight.”

  

 “And it was gizzard stones they traded with the Waterlight people long ago?” Quickaxe asked.

  

 “Gizzard stones, from which our saw gravel is made, yes. And our supply of it had been laid up since that time. Even hoarded and used thriftily, as we did, it would soon have been completely used up ...” Rootweaver sighed. “Now there is enough of it we may deck ourselves in gems as in the old stories.”

  

 “They traded different kinds of fungus, too,” offered Roges. “And fish lanterns. Things like that.”

  

 “We made a treaty with them,” said Beedie. “I hope the chasm council will ratify—is that the word, Mavin?—ratify it. The stickies won’t hurt us if we don’t build a bridge below the level of Bottommost, because it isn’t wet enough for them that high up in the chasm. And if we aren’t silly, like poor Mercald, and try to touch them, they can’t do us any harm.”

  

 Mavin nodded in agreement. “I think you can act on that assumption, ma’am. But take my warning. There are thousands of them down there that still speak in stinks, and they would really like to have living, thinking humans to eat. I don’t think they’re evil, but I don’t think they’re holy, either, and I’d continue to be careful.”

  

 “Poor Mercald,” sighed the old man. “I remember his father. No practical sense at all. Still, Mavin, there is a certain temptation there.”

  

 Mavin rose slowly, looked the old man in the eye, thought carefully before she spoke. “Old Sir, I will not presume to guide you. But before I would consider any such thing, I should have myself carried to the Bottom, and there I would speak with that which was Mercald. He is a confusion now, some Mercald, some Mirtylon, and some Sticky One. Still, he has gained ... insight.”

  

 Beedie and Roges both looked horrified when they finally realized that the old man meant that he felt a temptation to do what Mercald had done, but Rootweaver considered the idea calmly.

  

 “Did he say anything to you? Mercald, I mean. Before you left?”

  

 “He said he could find very little guilt or expiation in Mirtylon. And he said Mavin had been right. And he sounded very disappointed,” said Beedie. “I felt so sorry for him I forgot and almost patted him on the shoulder.”

  

 “He also said,” Mavin spoke for the old man’s ears alone, almost in a whisper, “that it didn’t hurt. It surprised him, of course, since he wasn’t expecting it. But it didn’t hurt.”

  

 The old man gave Mavin a fragile, tremulous smile. “If one were to do such a thing, one would have to do it fairly soon. While there is still time.”

  

 Mavin did not answer. She had found a great poignancy in Mercald’s disappointment. His voice had puffed out of the sticky shape as all sticky voices did, windy and full of huffs, but the intonation had been very much his own. She recalled he had told her she had too little kindness in her, and this made her sad. Perhaps he was right. She had power, and had used it, and had made her own judgments. She did not regret them. But still ...

  

 She remembered the weeping children of Landizot.

  

 The frightened hunter of Mip.

  

 The slim, silver-horned beast she had loved in the pool-laced forest.

  

 “What are you thinking about, Mavin?” Beedie whispered to her.

  

 “I am thinking, sausage girl, that I wish Handbright would hurry with what she is about so that I may take the baby and go. Being among you has made me doubt myself, and that makes me fractious.”

  

 “Oh, pooh. You mean Mercald. That was his job, Mavin. Birders are supposed to make us doubt ourselves so we don’t get too proud. Do you think you are too proud?”

  

 Mavin shook her head, seeing Rootweaver’s eyes on them from across the table. “Perhaps I was.”

  

 The older woman nodded. “Sometimes each of us is. Now, I think from the smell that food is cooked. Will you share it around, Roges?” And she rose to seat them all at the table.

  

 They were only half through the meal when a Maintainer woman entered, beckoning Rootweaver into the hall. She returned with a sad face. “Your sister is not young, Mavin. Among our people, we would not want to bear children at her age.”

  

 “She’s almost forty,” said Mavin “Is there trouble?”

  

 “The birther women are concerned, worried. She has been in labour for a very long time now. She does not seem concerned. She sings, and does not concentrate. She seems to feel nothing. We have medicines, but they are dangerous ...”

  

 “Well,” Mavin rose. “I will come. No—alone. Beedie, you stay here. I’ll see if I can help her, but I must do it with as few as people around as possible.”

  

 Handbright was lying on a white bed, her legs drawn up, the muscles in her belly writhing, but her face was as calm as a corpse as she sang a little, wordless song. Mavin motioned the women out of the room, asking only the head birther to stay. The place smelled of the sea, salt and wet.

  

 “Tell me what she must do,” she directed the birther, taking Handbright’s head between her hands to make the blind eyes stare into her own. She began to speak. It was the voice she had used in Landizot and in Mip; the voice she had used on the Banders mobs, utterly confident and compelling.

  

 “Handbright. White bird. Shifter. Sister. You have seen birthing before. This is a good child. Like Mertyn, Handbright. Mertyn. Mertyn. A good child. You must save this good child, you must birth it, Handbright. Think.” The birther woman gestured, thrusting down. “Push. Birth the good child.”

  

 Something fled behind Handbright’s eyes, the singing stopped. Mavin went on, demandingly. “Save this good child, Handbright. Concentrate. Push. Think. This is a good baby. Handbright always wanted a baby. Think. The birther says now, Handbright. Push. See. That makes it easier. Now again, push.”

  

 Handbright cried out, a sound completely human rather than the strange birdsongs she had made before. The birther nodded, e ncouraged, and felt the swollen belly. Mavin spoke on, and on, and on.

  

 There was a thin cry, and she looked down to see a wriggling form, all blood and wetness, in the birther’s hands. Sighing, exhausted, she released her sister’s hands and sat back. There was a scurrying. Others came in from the hallway. Handbright cried out once more and the birthers moved even faster around the bed, lifting another child in their hands. Mavin looked on only, bewildered.

  

 “Twins,” cried one. “Twin boys.”

  

 “Ah, now, now,” thought Mavin, tears in her eyes. “One would have been quite enough. More than enough.” She rose unsteadily and went out into the hall, breathing deeply. She had seen death in Handbright’s eyes. If not now, soon. Soon. Well, she could have come more quickly. She could have interfered less in the world’s business and paid more attention to her own. She leaned against the wall, weeping, not knowing Beedie was there until she felt the strong young arms tight around her.

  

 The birther came into the hall, her face strained and tight.

  

 “Never mind,” said Mavin. “I know.”

  

 “She’s asking for you,” the birther said. “She’s come to herself. She’s asked for the babies, too.”

  

 “Well then,” Mavin responded. “Well then.”

  

 She sat in that quiet room for the rest of the day, and most of the day following. The birthers put Handbright’s children on her breasts, though she had no milk for them yet and none of them expected that she would have. Still, she asked to have them. And Mavin. She talked of Mertyn and their mother. And died, lying quietly there with the babies in her arms.

  

 The Birders came the next day, expecting to send Handbright’s body to the Boundless. Mavin told them it had already gone.

  

 “What are their names?” asked Beedie, poking one of the babies with her strong, Bridger fingers to make it smile.

  

 “Swolwys and Dolwys,” said Mavin. “Dolwys has hair that is a little darker, I think.”

  

 “Will you let me have them?” asked Beedie, all in a rush. “Me and Roges. We decided together we’d like to have them. We’ll have some of our own, too, of course, but we’d like very much to raise Handbright’s sons.”

  

 “No, sausage girl. You’ll have enough of your own to keep you busy. These are my own kin, my own Shifty kin, and they will need to be reared by those who understand our ways. I’ll take them with me, as soon as they are a tiny bit older and able to travel.”

  

 “How will you carry them, Mavin? How can you manage with two?”

  

 “I’ll manage,” she said. “I’ll figure out a way.”

  

 It was in the summer season that the people of Battlefox the Bright Day, a Shifter demesne on the high downs of the shadowmarches, looked out across the p’natti to see a great beast. The beast would not have been considered extraordinary by any Shifters’ demesne. Shape and size and aspect are all infinitely variable in Shifters’ lives, and they are not surprised by fur or wing or feather. Still, there was something surprising about this beast: the red-haired twin boys who rode upon its back.

  

 The beast opened its mouth and bellowed, “Plandybast!” at which one of the inhabitants of Battlefox Demesne trembled with mixed apprehension and delight.

  

 By the time he had threaded his way through the p’natti, Mavin stood there in her own shape, holding her toddlers by their hands. “Plandybast,” she said. “Thalan. My mother’s brother. You told me once Handbright would have been welcome at Battlefox Demesne. Tell me now that her sons are equally welcome!”

  

 After which was a time of general rejoicing, story-telling, lying, and welcoming home. Plandybast’s half sister, Itter, had left the Demesne long before and was believed dead. Mavin sighed with relief and offered polite consolation. Itter had been the one thing she had doubted about Battlefox Demesne. Now there was nothing to doubt, and even Mavin herself felt at home.

  

 Still, in a few seasons, after the babies were accustomed to the place and had found dozens of kin to care for them, she took quiet leave of the demesne.

  

 “Can you tell me why you’re leaving us?” begged Plandybast, who had grown fond of Mavin.

  

 “Oh, thalan, you will think it a silly thing.”

  

 “I would rather be told and think it a silly thing than think myself not worthy of being told.”

  

 “Well then, hear a tale. Some almost twenty years ago, I came w ith Mertyn to Pfarb Durim. He was a child, and so was I, scared as two bunwits in a bush when the fustigars howl. So, we made it up between us I would say I was a servant of a Wizard. Himaggery. Mertyn made up the name.”

  

 Plandybast nodded. “Not a bad stratagem. Wise men don’t fool with Wizards, or the servants of Wizards.”

  

 “That’s what Mertyn thought. So, I told my tale, but during the next few days I came into danger and told my tale to unbelieving ears. Then came one who said, ‘This is my servant, and I am the Wizard Himaggery.’”

  

 “Ah,” said Plandybast.

  

 “And the end of the tale was I sworn him an oath, thalan, that in twenty years time I would come once more to the city of Pfarb Durim, to find him there.”

  

 After a thoughtful silence, “Will you be back for Assembly?”

  

 “Perhaps not then. But I will be back. I’ll be back for the boys when they’re old enough. I want to take them to Schlaizy Noithn myself, if they turn out to be Shifter. If they turn out to be something else—or nothing else—well, I want to decide what should be done in that event.”

  

 “Not the Forgetter?”

  

 “No. Not the Forgetter. We have tried to convince the world we are ... limited, thalan. So they would not fear us, or hate us. We have woven mystifications around us, and the world does not believe them. Shifters are not well liked in the wide world. That being so, why should we commit evil deeds to protect that which can’t be protected?

  

 “Ah, well. I don’t intend to get the demesne in an uproar raising the question now. It’ll be ten years or more before we know what Handbright’s sons will be. It may be best to take them back oversea to their father’s people.”

  

 “Who is their father?” asked Plandybast, curious about this matter for the first time.

  

 Mavin thought briefly she would tell him, “A glue blob in the bottommost lands of a chasm, over the sea.” Instead she contented herself with a larger truth. “A priest,” she said. “A good and kindly if imperfect man.”

  

 She turned when she arrived at the bend in the road beyond which the demesne dissappeared behind the hill. He was waving to her, s miling, weeping a little. Beedie had wept a little, too, and Roges, when she had left them. It was pleasant to be wept over in such kindly fashion.

  

 And the better part of twenty years was gone since she had promised she would keep tryst in Pfarb Durim, twenty years from then.

  

 And the better part of twenty years was gone.

  

 “I am the servant of the Wizard Himaggery,” she hummed, remembering that refrain. “Perhaps. Almost. But not quite yet.”

  

 THE SEARCH OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED

  

 CHAPTER ONE

  

 The season of storms had begun in earnest when Mavis Manyshaped rode down the Ancient Road, beneath the strange arches, toward the city of Pfarb Durim. It was almost twenty years since she had been there last; twenty years since she had promised to come there again. “The Blue Star hangs upon the horns of Zanbee,” she sang to herself, not sure she was remembering it, correctly. It was something Himaggery had said, was it? Something; Wizardry, a specific time which had to do with the season and the arches? The tall horse she rode tiptoed into the shadow of each arch with shivering skin, dancing as he came out again, and she adjusted to this fidgety movement with calm distraction. Twenty years ago they had promised to meet upon the terrace of the hotel Mudgeif Mont in the city. Looking down from this height upon the labyrinth of walls and roofs, she was not sure she could find her way to the hotel. Ah. Yes, there it was. Upon the highest part of the city, almost overlooking the cliff wall. She chirruped to the horse, urging him to stop fidgeting and move along.

  

 Just beyond the last of the Monuments was a small inn, a dozen empty wagons scattered around it, as though parked there until the weather cleared, and a fork in the road with one branch leading down to the town. A distant rumble of thunder drew her attention to the clouds, boiling up into mountainous ramparts over the city, black as obsidian, lit from within by a rage of lightning and from the east by the morning sun. This was the weather during which the Monuments were said to dance. While it was never alleged that they had any malevolent intent, it was true that certain travelers caught on the Ancient Road during storms arrived at Pfarb Durim in no condition to pursue their business. If they had the voice for it, and unfortunately sometimes when they did not, they tended to lie about with unfocused eyes singing long, linear melodies which expressed a voice of disturbing wind. Mavin shivered as the horse had done, encouraging him to make better speed toward the distant gates.

  

 A few she knew of had actually seen the Monuments dance. Blourbast the Ghoul had seen, only to die moments later with Huld’s dagger in his throat. Huld the Demon and Huldra, his sister-wife had seen, as had their mother, Pantiquod the Harpy. Mavin spat to get the memory of them out of her mouth. She had heard they had gone away from Hell’s Maw, left that warren beneath the walls of Pfarb Durim to inhabit another demesne: Bannerwell, beside the flowing river. It was, so her informant had said, a cleaner and more acceptable site for a Gamesman of power. Kings and Sorcerers who could not be enticed to Hell’s Maw for any consideration would plot freely with Huld in Bannerwell. She spat again. The memory of him fouled her mind.

  

 Two others had seen the Monuments dance, of course; Mavin, herself, and the Wizard Himaggery. They, too, had gone away separately after promising to meet again when twenty years had passed. Now Mavin Manyshaped rode her tall horse along that Ancient Road, so lost in memory of that other time she paid little attention to the clouds towering over the city. Two decades ago there had been wild drumming in the hills, a fury of firelight, and a flood of green luminescence from the dancing arches. The murmur of present thunder and the threatening spasms of lightning merely rounded out the memory.

  

 A challenging shout brought her to herself. A gate guard, no less fat and lazy than those who had been here long ago. “Well, woman? I asked were you bound into Pfarb Durim or content to sleep on your horse?”

  

 “Bound in, guardsman. To Mudgery Mont.”

  

 He gave her a curious glance, saying without saying that he thought her a strange guest for the Mont. Most of those who stayed there came with retinues of servants or with considerable panoply. She gave him a quirky smile to let him know she read his thought, and he flushed slightly as he turned away. “Go then. The gates are open to all who have business within.”

  

 As indeed they always were, she reflected. There was no city in all the lands of the True Game so open, not even Betand, which was a crossroad itself. And, as in other of the commercial cities of the land, there was little large scale Game—though much small scale stuff, Games of two, family duels and the like—and a minimum of Game dress. Helmed Tragamors could be seen around the inns and hotels. Even here guards were often needed. A gaudy band of Afrits entered the square as she crossed it, bound away south, no doubt, to the Great Game lately called in the valley land beside Lake Yost, in the midland. Everyone had heard of that; the first Great Game in a decade and half. The Gamesmen in the land headed to it or from it, as their own needs struck them.

  

 The streets were shrill with hawkers, bright with banners, alive with a smell she remembered, rich and complex, made of fruit both rotted and fresh, smoked meats, hides, the stink of the great cressets upon the wall full of grease-soaked wood. The pawnish people of Pfarb Durim had a distinctive dress; full black trousers thrust down into openwork boots (which let the dust and grit of the road sift in and out while somewhat hiding the dirty feet which resulted) and brilliantly colored full shirts with great billowy sleeves. The women belted these garments with an assortment of sashes and chains, topping all off with an intricately folded headdress; the men used simple leather belts and tall leather hats. Both sexes fluttered like lines full of bright laundry or a whole festival of pennants, and were shrill as birds with their cries and arguments. The tall horse picked his way through this riot fastidiously, ears forward, seeming interested in all that went on around him.

  

 As she came farther into the city, the noise quieted, the smell dwindled, until, between the rumbles of thunder, she could hear the wind chimes and smell the flowers in the Mont gardens. The courtyard wall was surmounted with huge stone urns spilling blossoms down the inner wall where a dozen boys plied wet brooms to settle the dust, though by the look of the sky this task would soon prove redundant. The Heralds at the entry looked up incuriously, and then returned to their game of dice, dismissing her in that one weighing glance. “Of no importance,” their eyes said. Mavin agreed with their assessment, content to have it so.

  

 A liveried stableman came to take the horse, and she let him go thankfully. It was no easy matter to ride upon another’s four legs where she could go easier upon her own. But Shifters were not always welcome guests, not even among Gamesmen notable in treachery and double dealing, so she came discreetly to the Mont, clad in softly anonymous clothing of sufficient quality to guarantee respect without stirring avarice or curiosity.

  

 Now, she thought, I will meet him as I promised, and we will see. What it was she would see she had not identified. What it was she would feel, she had carefully avoided thinking of. Each time her mind had approached the thought it had turned aside, and she had let it turn, riding it as she might a willful steed, letting it have its own way for a time, until it grew accustomed to her—or she to it. She went into the place, shaking her head at the man who would have taken her cloak, wandering through the rich reception halls toward the terrace she remembered. It lay at the back, over the gardens which stretched down to the cliff edge and the protecting wall, bright under their massed trees, their ornamental lanterns. The door was as she remembered it, opened before her by a bowing flunkey—

  

 And she stood upon the terrace, shaken like a young tree in a great storm.

  

 “Gameswoman?” She didn’t hear him. “Gameswoman. Are you well? A chair, Madam? May I bring you something to drink?” Evidently she had nodded, for he raced away, stopping to say something to some senior servant at the doorway, for that one turned to look at her curiously. She took a deep breath, grasped at her reason with her whole mind.

  

 “Come now, Mavin,” she said to herself in a stern, internal voice seldom used, always heeded. “This is senseless, dangerous, unlike you. Sit down. Take a deep breath. Look about you, slowly, calmly. Think what you will say when he returns, how you will set his curiosity aside. Now. He is coming. Careful, quiet.”

  

 He set the glass of wineghost before her and she took it into her hand, smiling her thanks. “I was here last many years ago at the time of the great plague,” she said in a voice of calm remembrance. “It was a tragic time. We lost many dear to us. The memory caught me suddenly and by surprise. You are too young to remember.” She smiled again, paid him generously, and waved him away.

  

 At the door he spoke once more to the other man, shaking his head. The other man nodded, said something with a serious face, but did not look in her direction. So. All was explained. All was calm. She sipped at the wineghost, staying alert. No one was interested in her. The few on the terrace were talking with one another or—admiring the gardens or simply sitting, looking at nothing as they soaked the last of the morning sun slanting below the gathering clouds. Was Himaggery among them? Had he seen her come out without knowing her?

  

 She examined the others carefully, one by one, discarding each as a possibility. She knew what he would look like, had visualized him many times. And yet—could it be that plumpish fellow by the wall? Perhaps it was. Her stomach knotted. Surely not. Not. No. He had turned toward her with his pursey mouth and heavy-lidded eyes. Not Himaggery.

  

 One of the men by the stairs, perhaps? The tall, martial-looking man? “Silly,” she said to herself. “He has a Sorcerer’s crown. Himaggery, if he wore Gamesman’s garb at all, would wear Wizard’s robes.” She finished the wineghost, stood up abruptly and left the terrace. She had been so sure that he would be here when she arrived, so sure. So certain.

  

 Inside she dithered for a moment. She could wander about the place, spend half a day doing it, without knowing whether he was here or not. There was a simpler way.

  

 “Your title?” demanded the porter, officiously blocking the door of his cubby. “Your title?”

  

 “If there is a message for me,” she said, “it will be addressed simply to Mavin. I am Mavin, and my title is my own business.”

  

 He became immediately obsequious, turning to burrow in the un­tidy closet among papers and packages, some of them covered with the dust of years. It was obvious that nothing was ever thrown away on the Mont. She was ready with significant coin when he emerged, the sealed missive in his hand. “Who brought it?” she asked.

  

 His eyes were on the coin as he furrowed his face, trying to rem­ember. “A pawn, Gameswoman. A lean, long man in a decent suit of dark clothes. Many lines in his face. A very sad face, he had. The air of a personal servant about him. He did not stay at the Mont, you understand. He just left the message with me, along with the payment for its safe keeping and delivery.” He looked at the coin once more, his expression saying that the previous payment could not have been considered sufficient by any reasonable person. She flipped it to him, left him groveling for it in the dusty closet as she turned the packet in her hands. So. Not Himaggery. A message de­livered by a man who could only be Johnathon Went, old Windlow’s man. Windlow. Himaggery’s teacher. Himaggery’s friend. The last of the morning light had gone and rain was falling outside. She found a quiet corner in one of the reception rooms, behind a heavy drapery which held away the cold. The note in the tough parchment envelope was not long.

  

 “Mavin, my dear,” it said. “I have no doubt you will be in Pfarb Durim, faithful to your promise. Himaggery will be there, too, if he can. If he is not, it is because he cannot, in which case you are to have the message enclosed. Over the years, each time he has left me to go on one of his expeditions he has left a letter with me for you. This one was left eight years ago. I am sending someone with further information. Please await my messenger upon the Ancient Road—where the Monuments danced ...

  

 “I think of you often and kindly. My affectionate regard.

  

 “Windlow.”

  

 It was sealed with Windlow’s seal. Another letter lay within.

  

 She stuffed them both into the pocket of her cloak, rose abruptly and went out into the courtyard, shouting for her horse, though the threatened rain had begun. When he was brought to her, she mounted without word and clattered through the city, almost riding through the guards at the gate. The rain had become a downpour and the roadway ran with water, but she urged the horse into a splashing canter up the hill toward the crossroad. She would not, could not have stayed in Pfarb Durim another moment. The city seemed to swallow her. She needed a smaller scope, with trustworthy walls around her.

  

 The tiny inn ghosted into existence through the slanting knives of rain. She shouted to bring a stable boy out of the barn; his mouth was half full of his lunch. Inside the inn she found a room, acceptably clean though sparsely furnished, with a fire ready laid upon the hearth. Food was brought, and beer, and then the kitchen girl was gone, the door shut behind her, and Mavin sat beside the fire with the unopened letter in her hand.

  

 “Well,” she said. “Well and well. So all this hurry was for nothing, Himaggery. All this long ride from Schlaizy Noithn, this Shifting into acceptable form with an acceptable face and acceptable clothing. All for nothing. Nothing.” Her thumb nail moved beneath the seal. It broke from the paper with a brittle snap, flying into the fire to sizzle upon the wood, hissing like a snale. “For nothing?” she said again, opening the page.

  

 Mavin, my love:

  

 Though I have called you my love often in these past seasons, you have never heard me. If you read this, the chance is great that this is the only time you will ever hear me.

  

 I am going into the Northlands tomorrow, first to see the High Wizard Chamferton—who, I am told, knows much of the true origins and beginnings of things which have always intrigued me—and then farther north into places which are rumored often but seldom charted. There is a legend—well, you probably are not much interested in such things. If you were here now, Mavin, I would not be interested in them either.

  

 Since it is not likely you will read this—I have been, after all, fairly successful at looking after myself for some dozen years—I will allow me to say the things I could not say to you if you were here for fear of frightening you, sending you off in one shape or another, fleeing from me as you fled from Pfarb Durim so long ago. I will say that you have been with me each morning and each night of the time between, in every branch which has broken the sky to let sunlight through, in every deep-eyed animal I have caught peering at me in the forests, in each bird cry, each tumult of thunder. I will say that the thought of you has held me safe in times of danger, held me soft in times of hardship, held me gently when I would have been more brutal than was wise or fair.

  

 Mavin, if I am gone, treasure how deeply I loved you, how faithfully, how joyously. Live well.

  

 Yours as long as I lived,

  

 Himaggery.

  

 She sat as one frozen into stone, eyes fixed on nothing, the room invisible around her. So she sat while the food chilled and the fire died; so she sat until the room grew cold. “Ah, Himaggery,” she said at last. “Why have you laid this on me, and you not here.”

  

 She rode out at dawn, spending the day upon the Ancient Road, waiting for Windlow’s messenger. That day she did not eat, nor that night. The next day she ate something, though without appetite, and stayed again upon the road. The third day she told herself would be the last. If Windlow’s messenger did not come, then no messenger would come, and she would ride south to Tarnoch to talk with Windlow himself.

  

 So for this last day she sat upon the tall horse as he fidgeted beneath her, sidling in and out of the shadows once more. “Be still, horse,” she said, patting him without thinking. “We are waiting for a messenger.”

  

 The horse did not care. He had waited for three days and was not interested in waiting more. He jumped, hopped, shook his head violently until the links upon the bridle rang and jingled.

  

 She dismounted with a sigh and led him upon the new grass of the hill. “Here then. Eat grass. Founder upon it. I’ll not sit on your twitchiness longer.”

  

 She stretched her arms toward the threatening sky, shifting her ribs experimentally around the soreness remaining from the long ride east. She had left Battlefox Demesne last year, had spent the intervening seasons in Schlaizy Noithn—trying, without success, to remedy an unpleasantness in that tricksy land—and had come out not long ago to Shift into her own shape and equip herself for the journey. So, horse legs instead of her own legs; real clothing instead of mere Shifting; her own face instead of the grotesqueries she had used lately. There was nothing Shifty about her now, nothing to betray her except the quivering Shifter organ deep within her which would announce the presence of another of her kind.

  

 As it did now.

  

 She crouched, ready to assume fangs and claws if needed for her own defense. There was no one on the road in either direction. She searched the dark forest from which a questioning howl rose, abruptly broken off, and her teeth lengthened slightly and her feet dug into the soil. The plump fustigar which trotted from the trees did not threaten her, however. It sat down a good distance from her, peering about itself with attention to the road and the surrounding thickets, then Shifted into a woman’s shape clad much as Mavin was in tight breeches and boots.

  

 “Mavin Manyshaped?” the woman said, beating the dust from her trousers. “I am Throsset of Dowes, and I come from the Seer Windlow.”

  

 Mavin’s mouth dropped open. Throsset of Dowes? From Danderbat Keep? Mavin’s own childhood home? Such as it had been. Well and well.

  

 “Throsset of Dowes?” she asked wonderingly. “Would you remember Handbright of Danderbat Keep?”

  

 The woman grinned. She was a stocky person with short, graying hair, bushy dark brows and eyes which protruded a little, giving her the look of a curious frog. Her shoulders were broad and square, and she shrugged them now, making an equivocal gesture. “Your sister, Handbright! Of course. She was younger than I. I tried to convince her to come with me, when I left the keep. She would not leave Danderbat the Old Shuffle.”

  

 “They said you were in love with a Demon, that you went across the seas with your lover.”

  

 The woman frowned, her face becoming suddenly distrustful. “The Danderbats said that, did they? Well, they’ll say anything, those old ones. Likely Gormier said that. Or old Halfmad. Or others like them. I left, girl. So did you. It’s likely we left for the same reasons, and lovers had no part in it.”

  

 “It was Handbright told me, not the old ones.” Mavin felt an old anger, for Handbright, for herself.

  

 “Ah.” Throsset’s voice turned cold, but her mouth looked tired. “She had to believe something, Mavin. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that I simply went, that I got fed up with it and left. Girls of the Xhindi aren’t supposed to do that, you know. We’re supposed to be biddable—at least until we’ve had three or four childer to strengthen the keep. Well, it would be better to say the truth. I am not only Shifter, Mavin. When I was sixteen or so, one of the old ones tried something I didn’t care for, and I found a new Talent. It seems I had Shifter and Sorcerer Talent both, and the Danderbats didn’t know how to handle that. One Talent more and I’d have been a Dervish, and time was I longed for it, just to teach them a lesson. Still, there’s no basket discipline will hold a wary Sorcerer, though they tried it, surely enough. I burst the basket and the room, and then I left. I’m sorry Handbright didn’t go with me. How is she now?”

  

 “Dead,” said Mavin flatly, not caring to soften it.

  

 “Dead!” The woman slapped at her legs, hands going on of themselves, without thought, as though they might brush the years away with the dust. “I hadn’t heard. But then, I haven’t been back to Danderbat Keep.”

  

 “They wouldn’t have been able to tell you had you gone there. She died far away, across the western sea. She was mad—until the very end. She had two sons, twins. They’re fifteen-season childer now, five years old, at Battlefox Demesne, with Handbright’s thalan and mine, Plandybast Ogbone.”

  

 “So she did leave Danderbat at last. Ah, girl, believe me, I did try to get her to go with me. She said she stayed for your sake, and for Mertyn’s. She loved him more than most sisters love their boy-kin. I could not break her loose.”

  

 Seeing the distress in the woman’s face, Mavin tried to set aside her own remembered anger and to dissipate the chilliness which was growing between them. Handbright’s servitude and abuse had not been Mavin’s fault, or Throsset’s. “Mertyn made her stay,” she said sadly. “He had Beguilement Talent even then, and he used it to keep her there because he was afraid she would leave him. He was only a child. He did not know what pain it cost her. Well. That is all long gone, Throsset. Long gone. Done. Mertyn is a man now. Though his Talent was early, it has continued to grow. He is a King, I hear. Lately appointed Gamesmaster in some school or other.”

  

 “Windlow said to tell you he is in Schooltown.” The woman stopped brushing dust and frowned. “Look, Mavin, I have traveled a distance and this is a high cold hill. There is threat of rain. I have not eaten today and the city lies close below ...”

  

 “We need not go so far as the city. There’s an inn at the fork of the road, called The Arches. I have a room there.” She lifted herself into the saddle. “Come up with me. This twitchy horse can carry double the short way.” The woman grasped her arm and swung up behind her, the horse shying as he felt two sets of knees Shift tight around him. Deciding that obedience would be the most sensible thing, he turned quietly toward the road, going peaceably beneath each of the arches as he came to it with only a tiny twitch of skin along his flanks. The women rode in silence, both of them distressed at the meeting, for it raised old hurts and doubts to confront them.

  

 It was not until they were seated before a small fire in a side room at the inn, cups of hot tea laced with wineghost half empty before them, that old sorrow gave way to new curiosity. Then they began to talk more freely, and Mavin found herself warming to the woman as she had not done to many others.

  

 “How come you to be messenger for Windlow? A Shifter? He was Gamesmaster of the school at Tarnoch, under the protection of the High King. I would have thought he would send a Herald.”

  

 “I doubt he could have found a Herald to act for him. Windlow has little authority in the Demesne of the High King Prionde. Did you know the High King’s son? Valdon?” Mavin shuddered. Memories of that time—particularly of Valdon or Huld or Blourbast—still had the power to terrify her, if only for the moment.

  

 “I met him, yes. It was long ago. He was little more than a boy. About nineteen? Full of vicious temper and arrogance. Yes. And his little brother, Boldery, who was a little older than Mertyn.”

  

 “Then if you met him it will not surprise you to know that Valdon refused to be schooled by Windlow. His pride would not allow him to be corrected, so says Windlow, and he could not bear restraint. He announced as much to the King, his father, and was allowed license to remain untaught.”

  

 Mavin had observed much of Valdon’s prideful hostility when she had been in Pfarb Durim before. “But he wasn’t the only student!” she objected. “Windlow had set up the school under the patronage of King Prionde, true, but there were many other boys involved. Some were thalans of most powerful Gamesmen.”

  

 “Exactly. You have hit upon the situation. Prionde could not destroy the school without hurting his own reputation. He could let it dwindle, however, and so he has done. Windlow is now alone in the school except for the servants and two or three boys, none of them of important families. Since Himaggery left, his only source of succor is through Boldery, for the child grew to love him and remains faithful, despite all Valdon’s fulminations. Valdon is a Prince of easy hatreds and casual vengeance. A dangerous man.”

  

 Mavin twisted her mouth into a sceptical line. “Fellow Shifter, I sorrow to hear that the old man is not honored as he should be, and I am confirmed in my former opinion of Valdon, but Windlow has not sent you all this way from the high lakes at Tarnoch to tell me of such things.”

  

 Throsset gulped a mouthful of cooling tea and shook her head. “Of course not. I owed the old man many things. He asked me to come to you as a favor, because I am Shifter from Danderbat Keep, and you are Shifter from Danderbat Keep, and he believed you would trust my word ...”

  

 “Trust you because we are both from Danderbat Keep!” Mavin could not keep the astonishment from her voice.

  

 Throsset made a grimace. “Unless you told him, what would he know about the lack of trust and affection in Danderbat Keep? That wasn’t what he was thinking of, in any case. He asked me because we were both women there. That old man understands much, Mavin. I think you may have told him more about yourself than you realized, and I certainly told him more than I have told anyone else. He senses things, too. Things that most Gamesmen simply ignore. No, Windlow didn’t send me to tell you of his own misfortune. He sent me to bring to you everything he knows about Himaggery—where he went, where he might be.”

  

 “But he is dead!” Mavin cried, her voice breaking.

  

 “Hush your shouting,” commanded Throsset in a hissing whisper. “It is your business, perhaps our business, but not the business of the innkeeper and every traveler on the road. He is not dead. Windlow says no!”

  

 “Not dead? And yet gone for eight years, and I only hear of it now!”

  

 “Of course now. How could you have heard of it earlier? Did Windlow know where you were? Did you send regular messengers to inform him?” Throsset was good-natured but scornful. “Of course, now.”

  

 “He is a Seer,” Marvin said sullenly, aware of her lack of logic.

  

 “Poof. Seers. Sometimes they know everything about something no one cares about. Often they know nothing about something important. Windlow himself says that. He knows where Himaggery set out to go eight years ago; he Sees very little about where he may be now.”

  

 “Eight years!”

  

 “It seems a long time to me, too.”

  

 “Eight years. Eight years ago—I was ... where was I?” She fell silent, thinking, then flushed a brilliant red which went unnoticed in the rosy firelight. Eight years ago she had wandered near the shadowmarches, had found herself in a pool-laced forest so perfect that it had summoned her to take a certain shape within it, the shape of a slender, single-horned beast with golden hooves. And then there had been another of the same kind, a male. And they two ... they two ... Ah. It was only a romantic, erotic memory, an experience so glorious that she had refused to have any other such for fear it would fail in comparison. Whenever she remembered it, she grieved anew at the loss, and even now she grieved to remember what had been then and was no more. She shook her head, tried to clear it, to think only of this new hope that perhaps Himaggery still lived. “Eight years. Where did he set out for, that long ago?”

  

 “He set out to meet with the High Wizard Chamferton.”

  

 “I know that much; his letter said that much. But why? Himmagery was Wizard himself. Why would he seek another?”

  

 Throsset rose to sidle through the narrow door into the commons room in the inn where she ordered another pot of tea. She came into the room carrying a second flask of wineghost, peeling at the wax on the cork with her teeth. “Two more cups of this and I’ll be past the need for food and fit only for bed. Don’t you every get hungry?”

  

 Mavin made an irritated gesture. It was no time to think of food, but her stomach gurgled in that instant, brought to full attention by Throsset’s words. The woman laughed. When the boy came in with the tea, Throsset ordered food to be prepared, then settled before the fire once more.

  

 “You asked why he sought another Wizard. I asked the same question of Windlow. He told me a tale of old Monuments that danced, of ancient things which stir and rumble at the edges of the lands of the True Game. He told me of a time, perhaps sixty years ago or so, when great destruction was wrought upon the lands, and he said it was not the first time. He had very ancient books which spoke of another time, so long ago it is past all memory, when people were driven from one place to another, when the beasts of this world assembled against them. He spoke of roads and towers and bells, of shadows and rolling stars. Mysteries, he said, which intrigued Himaggery and sent him seeking. Old Chamferton was said to know something about these ancient mysteries.”

  

 Mavin tilted her head, considering this. “I have heard of at least one such time,” she said. “Across the seas there is a land which suffered such a cataclysm a thousand years ago. The people were driven down into a great chasm by beasts which came suddenly, from nowhere.”

  

 “Stories of that kind fascinated Himaggery,” Throsset mused, “as they do me. Oh, we heard them as children, Mavin! Talking animals and magical rings. Swords and jewels and enchanted maidens. Himaggery collected such tales, says Windlow. He traveled all about the countryside staying in old inns, asking old pawnish granddads what stories they remembered from the time before our ancestors came from the north.”

  

 “You say our ancestors came from the north? In Schlaizy Noithnj I have heard it rumored we came from beneath the mountains! And across the seas, in the chasm of which I spoke earlier, the priests say the Boundless—that being their name for their god—set them in their chasm.”

  

 Throsset turned up her hands, broadening the gesture to embrace the space near the table as the boy came into the room with their food. “Ah. Set it here, boy, and bring another dish of that sauce. This isn’t enough for two! Good. Smell that, Mavin? Cookery like this always reminds me of Assembly time at Danderbat Keep.”

  

 Mavin did not want to remember Assembly time at Danderbat Keep. “The food was the best part of it,” she remarked in a dry tone of recollection.

  

 “It was that,” Throsset agreed around a mouthful. “But we have enough sad memories between us without dragging them out into the light. They do not grow in the dark, I think, so much as they do when well aired and fertilized with tears.”

  

 Mavin agreed. “Very well, Kinswoman, I will not dwell on old troubles. We are here now, not at the Keep, and it is here we will think of. Now, you tell me Himaggery had heard all these tales of ancient things. I can tell you, for you are in Windlow’s confidence, that Himaggery himself saw those arches dance, those Monuments where we met today; and so did I—Yes! If you could see your face, Throsset. You obviously disbelieve me. You don’t trust my account for a moment, but it’s true nonetheless. Some future time, I’ll tell you all about it if you like—Well, I saw the arches dance, but afterward I was willing to leave it at that, perhaps to remember it from time to time, but not to tease at it and tear at it. Not Himaggery! Himaggery had a mind full of little tentacles and claws, reaching, always reaching. He was never willing to leave anything alone until he understood it.

  

 “Strange are the Talents of Wizards, so it’s said, and strange are the ways they think. Once he had seen, he couldn’t have left it alone, not for a moment. He’d have been after it like a gobble-mole with a worm, holding on, stretching it out longer and longer until it popped out of its hole. And if he heard the High Wizard Chamferton knew anything—well then, off he’d go, I suppose.” She felt uneasy tears welling up.

  

 Throsset confirmed this. “Yes, he heard it said that Chamferton knew about the mysteries of our past and the past of the world and ancient things in general. So. He went off to see Chamferton, and he did not come back.”

  

 “But Windlow knows he is not dead?”

  

 “Windlow knows Himaggery lives.”

  

 “Not mere wishful thinking?” Mavin turned away from the firelight and rubbed her eyes, suddenly a little hopeful, yet still hesitant to accept it. “Windlow must be getting very old.”

  

 “About eighty-five, I should say. He is remarkably active still. No. He says that Gamesmen, often the finest and the best of them, do disappear from time to time into a kind of nothingness from which the Necromancers cannot raise them, into an oblivion, leaving no trace. But Himaggery’s disappearance is not of that kind.”

  

 “How does he know?”

  

 “For many years, Windlow has been collecting old books. He sends finders out to locate them and get them by beggery, barter, or theft, so he says. During the last several years he has asked these finders to search for Himaggery also. Some of them returned to say they felt Himaggery’s presence, have sought and sought, felt it still, but were unable to find him. And this is not old information; a Rancelman came back with some such tale only a few days before I left there.”

  

 “So Windlow has sent you to tell me Himaggery is not dead but vanished and none of the Pursuivants or Rancelmen can find him.” Mavin said this flatly as she wiped sauce from her chin, keeping both her voice and her body still and unresponsive. The tears were in abeyance for the moment, and she would not acknowledge them. It would do no good to weep over her food while Throsset chewed and swallowed and cast curious glances at her over the edge of her cup. It would do no good until she could think of something else to do besides weeping. Despite her hunger, the food lay inside her like stone.

  

 She pushed the plate away, suddenly nauseated. The firelight made a liquid swimming at the corners of her eyes.

  

 “Tush,” mourned Throsset. “You’re not enjoying your dinner at all. Cry if you like! We don’t make solemn vows over twenty years unless there is something to it besides moon madness. Was he your lover?” She shook her head, tears spilling down her face in an unheeded flood, dripping from her chin onto her clenched hands. Her throat closed as in a vice, almost as it had done when she had read his letter.

  

 Throsset got up and closed the door, leaning a chair against it. Then she walked around the room, saying nothing, while Mavin brought herself to a gulping silence. When that time came, she brought a towel and dipped it into the pitcher on the table. “Here. Wash the tears away before they begin to itch. You have a puddle on your breeches. They’ll think you’ve wet yourself. Come to the fire and dry it. Now, you don’t need any more wineghost, that’s certain. It won’t cure tears. Take some of the tea for your throat. You’ll have cried yourself hoarse ...”

  

 After a time, Mavin could speak again. “I am not much of a weeper, Throsset. I have not wept for many years, even when I have made others weep. I don’t really know why I’m doing it now. No, Himaggery and I weren’t lovers. We could have been. I was very much ... desirous of him. But I kept him from it, kept me from it. I did not want that, not then. There was too much of servitude in it, too much of Danderbat Keep.”

  

 The woman nodded. “Anyone who grew up in Danderbat Keep would understand that. Still, there was something between you, whether you let anything actually happen or not.” She took the towel and wrung it out before handing it to Mavin once more. “Windlow told me of some joke between you and Himaggery. That Himaggery was not his true name at all, that you had made up the name.”

  

 “Mertyn and I made it up on our trip north from Danderbat Keep. To avoid being bothered by child stealers and pawners, I was to say that I was the servant of the Wizard Himaggery—which was a name we invented—and that he, Mertyn, was thalan to the Wizard. In this way, we hoped to avoid trouble or Gaming as we traveled north. For a time it worked. Then we were accused of lying—accused by Huld.” She shivered, remembering the malevolence in that Demon’s voice and manner.

  

 “And then this casual young man came into the room saying the accusation was nonsense; that he was himself the Wizard Himaggery and that I, Mavin, was indeed his servant. And so the threat passed. Afterward, he said he would keep the name. I thought at the time it suited him better than his own.”

  

 “And that was all that passed between you?”

  

 “That. And a night together on a hillside among the shadowpeople. And a few hours in Pfarb Durim at the hotel Mudgery Mont when the plague and the battle and the crisis were all over. And a promise.”

  

 “And yet you wept ...”

  

 “And yet I wept. Perhaps the weeping was for many things. For Handbright, because you knew her. And for the young Throsset of Dowes as well. For old Windlow, perhaps, who has not received the honors he deserves. And for me and the eight years I have wandered the world not knowing Himaggery was gone. I had imagined him, you know, many times, as he would look when I met him again at last. I saw his face, clearly as in a mirror. It is almost as though I had known him during these years, been with him. When I rode to Pfarb Durim, I knew how familiar he would look to me, even after all this time ...” She wiped her face one final time, then folded the towel and placed it on the table near her half-emptied plate. “Well. I am wept out now. And I know there must be more to this than you have told me. Windlow could have put this in the same letter he sent to Mudgery Mont.”

  

 “He could,” agreed Throsset, piling the dishes to one side before returning to her cup. “He could. Yes. He did not, for various reasons. First, there are always those who read letters who have no business reading them. Particularly in Pfarb Durim. Huld still has great influence there, I understand, and every second person in the city is involved in gathering information for him.”

  

 “That’s true. Though I was told at Mudgery Moht that Huld repented of Blourbast’s reputation and will stay in Bannerwell from now on.”

  

 “No matter where he stays, spies who work for him will still sneak a look at other people’s letters. In addition, however, there are those abroad in the world who have no love for Himaggery. I speak now of Valdon. Windlow did not tell me the source of the enmity. Perhaps he does not even know. But Windlow would put nothing in writing which might be used to harm him.

  

 “In any case, that was not the main reason Windlow sent me. He says he had a vision, years ago, when you were all here before, in which he saw you and Himaggery together in Pfarb Durim. Somehow in the vision he knew that twenty years had passed. So, says Windlow, if Himaggery is to come here again and the vision to be fulfilled, then you, Mavin, must be involved in it.”

  

 “He wants me to go searching, does he?”

  

 “He thinks you will. He never said what he wanted.”

  

 Mavin made a rather sour smile, thinking of the leagues she had traveled since her girlhood. “I spent fifteen years searching for Handbright, did you know that? No, of course you didn’t. I could have done it in less time. I might have saved her life if I had been quicker. When that search was done, I was glad it was over. I am not a Pursuivant who takes pleasure in the chase, Throsset. My experience is that searching is weary work. I don’t know what I will do, Kinswoman. As you say, we were not lovers.”

  

 “Still, you made a promise.”

  

 “To meet him here. Not to find him and bring him here.”

  

 “Still, a promise ... well. It is no part of my duty to chivvy you one way or the other. Only you know what passed between the two of you long ago and whether it was enough to send you on this journey. Only you know why you have been crying as though your heart would break. I have done as I promised the old Seer I would do—brought you word. No. I have not done entirely. He sent a map of the lands where the High Wizard Chamferton dwells, if indeed he dwells there still. It is a copy of the one Himaggery took with him. It is here on the table.”

  

 “Are you leaving? So soon?”

  

 “No. I am taking a room in this place for the night, unless you will let me share yours. Whichever, I will go there now to sleep. Which you should do, unless you are determined to linger by the fire and think deep thoughts. If I thought I could help you, I would offer to do so, for long ago I cared about Handbright. Cared for her, foiled her. There should have been something more I could have done, but at the time I thought I had done everything.” She stared into the fire herself, obviously thinking deep thoughts of her own.

  

 Marvin, curious, asked, “Is there a name for this combination of Talents you have, Throsset? I have gone over and over what little I know of the Index, and I cannot remember what Gamesname you should be called.”

  

 Throsset flushed. “There is a name, Mavin. I would prefer to be called simply Shifter, if you must call me. Or Sorcerer, if Shifter is not enough. I sometimes think those anonymous ancestors who made up the Index suffered from an excess of humor. Their name for one of my Talents is not one I choose to bear. Well. No matter what I might have called myself, Handbright would not hear me when I spoke to her. You have not said how it was she left at last.”

  

 Mavin murmured a few words about the lateness of the hour, indicating she did not want to talk about it then. The thought of Handbright saddened her always, and she was sad enough at the moment over other things. Throsset nodded in return, signifying that another time would do. The time did not come, however. When Mavin woke in the morning, the bed beside her was empty and Throsset was gone. The map lay on a chest beside the door. The innkeeper said the account had been paid.

  

 Outside in the stableyard Mavin’s tall horse whickered, and after a time of thought Mavin sold him to the innkeeper. Somehow in the deep night the matter had become decided, and she needed no flesh but her own to carry her to whatever place Himaggery had gone.

  

 CHAPTER TWO

  

 There was a note attached to the map with a silver pin. “Mavin, my dear child, this is a copy of the map Himaggery and I made up before he left. Most of the information is from some old books I had, but we got one or two things from some recent charts made by Yggery, the Mapmaker in Xammer. Himaggery was to go first to Chamferton, who is reputed to have access to an old library. If you decide to go looking for Himaggery, there is no point in coming here. Everything I know is on the map or Throsset will have told you. I hope you will want to go after him. I would do so if these aging legs would carry me, for he is very dear to me.” It was signed with Windlow’s seal, and she stood staring at it for a very long time.

  

 She bought a few provisions from the Arches, more for appearance’s sake than anything else. It was better to let those who saw her upon the road, those who might speak of her to others, think she had had to sell the horse to buy food than that they know her for a Shifter who could live off the countryside as well as any pombi or fustigar. Shifters were not highly regarded in the world of the True Game, not by Gamesmen or pawns, and there was recurrent unpleasantness to remind her of it. Better to be merely another anonymous person and wait until she was out of sight of the inn before Shifting into a long-legged form in which she could run all day without weariness—in which she had run day after day in Schlaizy Noithn.

  

 According to the map, the High Wizard Chamferton dwelt in the Dorbor Range, east of the shadowmarches, in a long canyon which led from the cliffs above the Lake of Faces northward among the mountains. Mavin knew her way to the shadowmarches well enough. She had traveled there before; to Battlefox the Bright Day, where her own kin lived in a Shifters’ demesne; to the lands of the shadowpeople where Proom lived with his tribe, wide-eared and bright-fanged, singing their way through the wide world and laughing at everything; to Ganver’s Grave, the place of the Eesties, or Eestnies as some called them; to that enchanted, pool-laced valley she remembered in her dreams where the two fabulous beasts had lain together in beds of fragrant moss. North. The location did not surprise her. If she had been told to seek out knowledge of ancient things, northward is the way she would have gone. Still, the paths she knew would not help her in coming to Chamferton. She had not been that route before.

  

 Bidding a polite farewell to the innkeeper she stepped onto the road and walked northward on it. The night’s storm had given way to a morning of pale wet light and steamy green herbage dotted with flowers. Far to the west she could see Cagihiggy Creek in a plaze of webwillow, yellow as morning. It was calming to walk, stride on stride, aware of the day without worrying where night would find her. She yawned widely as she turned aside from the road onto the wooded slope of the hills.

  

 She was now a little east of Pfarb Durim, ready to run in fustigar shape along these eastern hills until she came some distance north of Hell’s Maw. Having walked into that labyrinth once, she had no desire to see it or smell it again. Once she was for enough north, she would climb down the cliff in order to reach the Lake of the Faces, a new feature upon the maps, created, so it was said, only within recent years. She had a mind to see it, to learn if what was said of it was true, though half her mind mocked the rest of her with believing such wild tales. Still, there would be no time wasted. The Lake of Faces lay in the valley below the entrance to the canyon where the Demesne of the High Wizard Chamferton would be found. She felt the map, tightly folded in her pocket. Once she abandoned her clothing, she would make a pocket in her hide for it.

  

 Soon she was lost among the trees, invisible to any eyes except small wild ones peering from high branches or hidey holes among the roots. Keeping only the little leather bags which held her supply of coin, she put her clothing into a hollow tree, the boots dropping against the trunk with a satisfying clunk. Fur crept over her limbs, sensuously, slowly, so she could feel the tickling emergence of it; bones flexed and bent into new configurations. She dropped to all fours, set eyes and nose to see and hear the world in a way her own form could never do. A bunwit flashed away among the bushes, frightened out of its few wits by this sudden appearance of a fustigar. Mavin licked her nose with a wet tongue and loped away to the north. A bunwit like that one would make her supper, and she would not necessarily feel the need to cook it.

  

 Dark came early, but she did not stop until she had reached the edge of the cliff and crawled down it in a spidery bundle of legs and claws. Once at the bottom she could smell water and hear many trickling fells, thin and musical in the dark. A shaving of moon lit the Lake of Faces and made silver streamers of the water dropping into it from the cliffs above. The spider shape yawned, Shifted; the fustigar yawned, Shifted. Mavin stood in her own shape upon the shore, ivory in the cool night. She scratched. Whatever shape one Shifted into, the skin stayed on the outside and all the dirt of the road stayed on it. The water welcomed her as she slid beneath its surface, relishing its chill caress.

  

 The lake had been so inviting she had taken no time to look around her. Now, floating on her back with her hair streaming below her like black water weed in the moonlight, she began to see the Faces.

  

 White poles emerged from shadow as she peered into the dark, an army of them in scattered batallions on the shore, in the shallows, marching out into the fringes of the forest. One such stood close beside her, and she clung to it, measuring it with hands which would not quite reach around it, finger to finger, thumb to thumb. She lay on the water and thrust herself away from the pole so she could look up into the face at its top, white as ivory, blind-eyed, close-lipped, its scalp resting upon the top of the pole, a thin strap extending from ear to ear behind the pole and nailed there with a silver spike.

  

 It was a woman’s face, a mature woman, not thin, not lovely but handsome. The face had no hair, only the smooth curve as of a shaved skull, pale as bleached bone.

  

 Though it seemed no more alive than a statue and was no more real, it troubled her. She swam away a little, found another of the white posts and confronted a man’s face, weak-jawed and petulant-looking, the blind eyes gleaming with reflected light. The moon had come higher, making the pale poles stand out against the dark of the forested cliffs like a regiment of ghosts.

  

 From high above the cliffs, a scream shattered the silence; the harsh, predatory cry of some huge bird. Mavin looked up to see two winged blots circling down toward the lake. Shifting herself, she sank beneath the waters to peer at them with protruding, froglike eyes.

  

 Harpies! She edged upward, let her ears rest above the water in the shadow of the pole, drawn by something familiar in the cry. Yes. Though she had not heard that voice for twenty years, she could not mistake it. One of the descending forms was Pantiquod—Pantiquod who had brought the plague to Pfarb Durim, who had almost killed Mertyn, who should have been far to the south at Bannerwell with her evil children—screaming a welcome to another child.

  

 “Well met, daughter! I thought to find you during new moon at the Lake of Faces. And here you are, at old Chamferton’s oracle. Does he send you still to question the Faces?”

  

 The voice in reply was as harsh, as metallic, with an undertone of wild laughter in it. “Pantiquod, mother-bird, I had begun to think you too old to take shape. What brings you?” The two settled upon the shore, folding their wings to stalk about on high, stork legs, bare pendulous breasts gleaming in the moonlight. Mavin became aware of a smell, a poultry house stink, chemical and acrid. Shifting her eyes to gather more light, she saw that the shore among the poles was littered with Harpy droppings, white as the masks themselves.

  

 “Not too old, daughter. Too lazy, perhaps. Since Blourbast is dead, I have luxuriated with no need to Game or bestir myself.”

  

 “And how are my half sister and brother,” the younger Harpy cried, voice dripping venom. “The lovely Huldra, the lovelier Huld?”

  

 “Well enough, daughter. Well enough, since Huldra bore a son, Mandor, she has had little to do with Huld. She hates him, and he her, and both me and I both. I do not let it trouble me. I stay with them for the power and the servants and the comfort. In the caves beneath Bannerwell there is much pleasure to be had.”

  

 “I can imagine. Years of such pleasure you’ve had already. More years than I can remember, yet never a word from you since Blourbast died. Why now, mama? Why now, loathsome chicken?” And she cawed with wild laughter, at some joke which Pantiquod shared, for the older Harpy shrilled in the same tone.

  

 “Oh, does Chamferton call you that still? And me as well? I came not before, dear daughter, because I do not serve him still and would not be caught again in his toils. I come now because you do serve him still and I want to borrow it from you. For a moment or two.”

  

 “I do not serve him. He holds me, as he once held us both. And you want to borrow it? The wand? Foolishness, mother-bird. He would know it in a minute.”

  

 “Would it matter if he did? After eight long years, is he still so violent? Would he punish you? For granting a small request to your own mother?”

  

 The younger Harpy lifted on her wings, threw her head back and screamed with laughter, jigged on her stork legs, wings out, dancing. “Would Chamferton punish me? Would Chamferton punish me? What a question, a question!”

  

 Mavin paddled her way closer to the shore. They were talking more quietly now, the screaming greetings done, and she thrust her ears upward to catch each word.

  

 “I will not lend it to you, Mother. Do not ask it. Try to take it and I’ll claw your gizzard out and your eyes as well. But I’ll use it for you, perhaps, if you have not any purpose in mind Chamferton would find hateful enough to punish me for.”

  

 “It is no purpose he would care a thrilpskin for. Does he care for Huld? Is the Face of Huld still here?”

  

 “He cares nothing for Huld, and the Face is still here, where he had you put it, Mother. Long ago.”

  

 “He has probably forgotten it. But I have not forgotten, and I need to know from it a little thing. Ask it for me: Will it grow and flourish like webwillow in the spring? Or will it shrivel and die? Ask it for me, daughter. And I will then do what is best ... for me.”

  

 The two stork-legged shapes moved away among the poles, Mavin after them flat as a shadow on the ground, invisible as she crept in their wake. They wound their way through the forest of poles, searching for a particular one. At last they found it, cawing to one another excitedly. “Oh, it is Huld’s Face, as he is today. He was handsomer when young, daughter. For a time I thought him a very marvel of beauty, before Blourbast changed him and made him what he is.”

  

 “Ahh, cahhh, ah-haa, mate a Ghoul with a Harpy and blame the Ghoul’s influence for what comes out. Well, Mother. Shall I ask?”

  

 There were whispers. Then the younger Harpy stood back from the pole with its Face and called strange words into the silence of the place, striking the pole three times with a long, slender wand she had drawn from a case on her back. Three times she repeated this invocation. On the ninth blow, the lips of the Face opened and Huld’s voice spoke—Huld’s voice as it would have come from another world, beyond space. It was the timeless ghost of his voice, and it made shivers where Mavin’s backbones might have been.

  

 “What would you know?”

  

 “Will you live or die, Huld?” asked the Harpy. “Will you flourish or wilt into nothing?”

  

 “For a season I will flourish. I will lose that which I now hold precious and discover I care not. I will heap atrocity upon atrocity to build a name and will lose even my name in a dust of bones.” The lips of the Face snapped shut with the sound of stones striking together. The young Harpy spun on her tall legs, snickering.

  

 “So, Mother? Is that enough?”

  

 “It is enough,” Pantiquod said in a dry, harsh voice. “I felt something of the kind. A pity. If one would choose, one would choose a son who would not be so ephemeral. Still. It is he who will dwindle and die, not I. There is time for me to protect myself. I will be leaving Bannerwell, daughter.”

  

 “And your other daughter, lovely Huldra?”

  

 “As she will. She may choose to stay, or go.”

  

 “Where will you go?”

  

 “If I do not wish to share Huld’s eventual ruin, away from him. Into the Northlands, I think. I have heard there are fortunes to be made and damage to be done in the Northlands. And I will not go empty-handed.”

  

 “Ah-haw, cawh, I would think not. Will you wait with me now, Mother, while I do Chamferton’s bidding? Will you keep me company?”

  

 “We were never company, daughter,” said Pantiquod, rising on her wings and making a cloud of dry, feathery droppings scud across the ground into Mavin’s face. “But I fly now to Chamferton’s aerie, and you may return there before I go. Maybe he will have news for me of doings in the north.” She flew up, circling, crying once at the top of the spiral before wheeling north along the valley.

  

 Now the younger Harpy moved among the Faces, chattering to herself like a barnyard fowl, full of clucks and keraws. Three times she stopped before Faces and demanded certain information of them. Three times the Faces replied before returning to their silent, expressionless masks. A man with a young-old Face was asked where he was and answered, “Under Bartelmy’s Ban.” It was a strange Face and a strange answer. Both stuck in Mavin’s memory. An old woman’s Face opened its pale lips and chanted, “Upon the road, the old road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone ... “ There was a long pause, then the lips opened once more. “The daylight bell still hangs in the last tower.” The Harpy chuckled at this before going on to the next Face, that of a middle-aged man with a missing eye who announced that the Great Game being played in the midlands near Lake Yost would soon be lost for all who played, with only death as a result and the Demesne of Lake Yost left vacant.

  

 By the time Mavin had heard the words of invocation said three times for each of these, she could have quoted them herself. The moon was high above. The young Harpy seemed to have finished her assigned duties and now moved among the poles and Faces only for amusement, Mavin still following doggedly, her curiosity keeping her close behind.

  

 She almost missed seeing Himaggery’s Face, her eyes sliding across it as they had a hundred others, only to return, shocked and fascinated. It was the face of a man in his mid years, perhaps forty, with lines from nose to mouth and a web around his eyes. And yet—and yet see how those lips quirked in a way she had remembered always, and the lines around his eyes were those her fingertips remembered. He looked as she had dreamed he would, as she had known he would, and that second look told her it was he beyond all doubt.

  

 She came up from the guano-smeared soil in one unthinking movement, grasping the Harpy with fingers of steel before she could react.

  

 “I will take the wand, daughter of Pantiquod.”

  

 The Harpy did not reply, but began a wild, wheeling struggle, beating her wings against Mavin’s face, thrusting with her strong talons. When she found she could not escape, she began screaming, raising echoes which fled along the lake-shore, rousing birds who nested there so that they, too, screamed in the night. Mavin felt the distant beating of wings, heard a cry from high above, knew that fliers there could plunge upon her in moments.

  

 “Call them off,” she instructed breathlessly. “At once. I have no desire to kill you, Harpy, unless I must.”

  

 There was only a defiant caw of rage as the Harpy redoubled her struggles. Mavin shook her, snapped her like a whip, raised her above to serve as a shield—and felt the talons and beak of whatever had plummeted from the sky bury themselves in the Harpy’s body. Abruptly the struggles ceased.

  

 Mavin dropped the body. Perched upon it was a stunned flitchhawk, its dazed, yellow eyes opaque. Mavin pulled it from the Harpy’s throat and tossed it away. It planed down onto the soil to crouch there, panting.

  

 Mavin turned her back on the bird. She drew the Harpy’s wand from its case. The battle had driven the words of invocation from her memory, and it took a moment to recall them. Then she stood before Himaggery’s Face and chanted them, striking with the wand three times, three times again, and a final three.

  

 The stony lips opened. “What would you know?” asked the ghost of Himaggery’s voice.

  

 “Where are you?” she begged. “Where are you, Himaggery?”

  

 “Under the Ban, the Ban, Bartelmy’s Ban,” said the ghostly voice, and the lips shut tight.

  

 She had heard that meaningless answer before! She tried to open his lips again with the wand and the words, but it did no good. She wandered among the Faces, to see if there were others she knew. There were none. At length her weariness overtook her, and she returned to the water to wash away the harsh, biting smell of the place. After that was a long time of sleep on a moss bank, halfway up the cliff, where no Harpies had come to leave their droppings. And long after that, morning which was more than halfway to noon.

  

 She went down to the lake for water. The Harpy lay where Mavin had thrown her the night before, dried blood upon her throat and chest. That chest moved, however, in slow breaths, and the wound had clotted over. Mavin mused at this for some time before turning to the water. When she had washed herself and found something juicy for her breakfast, she returned to the Harpy’s unconscious form and took it upon her back. “I will return you to your master,” she announced in a cheery tone, Shifting to spider legs which could carry them both up the precipitous cliffs around the lake. “You and your wand—the Wizard’s wand. It may be he will be grateful.”

  

 “And if he is not?” asked some inner sceptical part of her. “And if Pantiquod is there?”

  

 “Well then, not,” she answered, still cheerily. “He can do no worse than try to enchant me, or whatever it is Wizards do. I can do no better than Shift into something horrible and eat him if he tries it. So and so. As for Pantiquod ... likely she will have gone on by now. She did not intend to await her daughter’s coming.” The spider shape gave way to her lean, fustigar form when she reached the cliff top. Before her the canyon stretched away in long diagonals where the toes of two mountains touched, northwest then northeast then northwest once more. The small river in its bottom was no more than a sizeable creek, bright shallow water sparkling over brown stones and drifts of gravel. Fish fled from the shallows where she stood and something jumped into the water upstream, bringing ripples to her feet.

  

 She lapped at the water, feeling it cool upon her furry legs. The water joined her breakfast to add bulk, making the body on her back less burdensome. Squirming to get it more comfortably settled, she trotted up the canyon into the trees, which grew thicker the farther north she went.

  

 At noon she put her burden down, caught two ground-running birds, Shifted into her own form and cooked them above a small fire as she watched the smoke, smelled it, smiled and hummed. The mood of contentment was rare and inexplicable. She knew she should feel far otherwise, but as the day wore on, the calm and content continued to grow.

  

 “Enchantment!” her inner self warned. “This is enchantment, Mavin.”

  

 “So,” she purred to herself. “Let be. What will come will come.” It was dusk when she rounded a last curve of the canyon to see the fortress before her, its battlements made of the same stone it stood upon, gray and ancient, as though formed in the cataclysm which had reared the mountains up. There was a flash of light from the tower, like a mirror reflecting sun from the craggy horizon. In that instant, the mood of contentment lifted, leaving behind a feeling of dazed weariness, as when one had drunk too much and caroused too late. She knew someone had seen her, had weighed her up and determined that the protection of enchantment was not necessary any longer. She snarled to herself, accepting it.

  

 After waiting a few moments to see whether anything else would happen, she trotted forward. A road began just before her, winding, grown over in places, but a road nonetheless. She followed it, tongue out and panting. The way had been long and mostly uphill. Breakfast and lunch were long gone.

  

 The fortress stood very high upon its sheer plinth of stone. From the canyon floor, stairs wound into darkness up behind the pillar. Mavin dropped her burden and lay down at the foot of these stairs, first nosing the Harpy to determine whether she still lived. She stretched, rolled, then began licking sore paws. She would stay as she was, thank you, until something definitive happened. She was not about to get caught in any shape at all on that dark, ominous staircase.

  

 “Is that as far as you intend to bring her?” asked a hoarse, contentious voice from the stairs.

  

 She looked up. He stood there, framed against the dark, in all respects a paradigm of Wizards. He had the cloak and robe, the tall hat, the beard, the crooked nose and the stern mouth. She was silent, expecting sparks to fly from his fingers. None did. He seemed content to stand there and wait.

  

 Mavin fidgeted. Well. And why not? She Shifted, coming up from the fustigar shape into her own, decently clothed, with a Shifted cloak at her shoulders. Let the man know she was no savage.

  

 “I had need to borrow her wand,” said Mavin flatly. “She fought me.”

  

 “So you wounded her. Considerably, from the look of her.”

  

 “She called down a flitchhawk from the sky. It wounded her. I thought her dead until this morning. Then, when I saw she breathed, I decided to return her to you.”

  

 “What did you expect me to do with her in that state?” There was a movement behind the Wizard as someone emerged upon the stair, a tall, gray woman hi a feathered headdress—no longer in Harpy’s shape. Pantiquod.

  

 Mavin shrugged elaborately, pretending not to see her. “If she has value, I presume you will have her Healed. If she has none, then it doesn’t matter what you do. In any case, I have returned your property. All of it.” She took the wand from her shoulder and laid it upon the Harpy’s breast where it moved slowly up and down with her breathing. Pantiquod screamed! She started down the stairs, pouring out threats in that same colorless voice Mavin had heard her use in Pfarb Durim, hands extended like claws, aimed for Mavin’s throat. “Shifter bitch! It was you killed Blourbast! You who set our plans awry! You who have wounded my daughter, my Foulitter. Bitch, I’ll have your eyes ...”

  

 The Wizard gestured violently at the Harpy, crying some strange words in a loud voice, and the woman stopped as though she had run into a wall. “Back,” the Wizard shouted. “Back to your perch in the mews, loathsome chicken. Back before I put an end to you.” The woman turned and moved away, reluctantly, and not before casting Mavin one last, hissing threat. Mavin shivered, trying not to let it show.

  

 Somewhere nearby a door banged. There were clattering footsteps, and several forms erupted from the dark stairway. Servitors. The Wizard pointed to the limp body.

  

 “Take her to the mews. Maldin, see if the Healer is in her rooms. If not, then find her. Fermin, take that wand up to the tower and hang it on the back of the door where it belongs.” He turned to Mavin and gestured toward the stairs. “Well, Shifter, you had best come in. Since you have taken the trouble to return my property, it seems only fitting to offer some thanks, and some apologies for a certain one of my servants.”

  

 Mavin stared upward. The castle loomed high above her, an endless stair length. She sighed.

  

 He interpreted her weariness correctly. “Oh, we won’t climb up there. No, no. We use that fortification only when we must. When Game is announced, you know, and it’s the only appropriate place. It’s far too lofty to be useful for ordinary living. Besides, it’s impossible to heat.” He turned to one of the servants who still lurked in the shadowy stair. “Jowret, tell the kitchen there’ll be a guest for supper. Tell them to serve us in my sitting room. Now, just up one flight, young woman, and through the door where you see the light. To your left, please. Ah, now just open that door before you. And here we are. Fire, wine, even a bit of cheese if hunger nibbles at you this early.”

  

 He took off his tall hat and sat in a comfortable-appearing chair before the tiled stove, motioning her to a similar one across the table; and he stared at her from under his brows, trying not to let her see that he did so.

  

 Uncomfortably aware of this scrutiny, Mavin cut a piece of cheese and sat down to eat it, examining him no less covertly. Without the tall hat he was less imposing. Though there were heavy brows over his brooding eyes, the eyes themselves were surrounded with puffy, unhealthy-looking flesh, as though he slept too little or drank too much. When she had swallowed, she said, “I overheard the two Harpies talking. I know Pantiquod from a former time, from the place they call Hell’s Maw. She called the other her daughter.”

  

 “I doubt they spoke kindly of me,” he said sneeringly, reaching for the cheese knife. “Both of them attempted to do me an injury some years ago. I put them under durance until the account is paid. Pantiquod was sly enough to offer me some recompense, so I freed her, in a manner of speaking. The daughter was the worse of the two. She owes me servitude for yet a few years.”

  

 “She questioned the Faces. I heard her doing it. Three of them for you. One for Pantiquod.” Mavin hesitated for a moment, doubting whether it would be wise to say more. However, if she were to find any trace of Himaggery, some risk was necessary. “And then I took the wand away from her and questioned one myself.”

  

 “Someone you know?” His voice was like iron striking an anvil.

  

 “Someone I’m looking for. He set out eight years ago to find you. His friends have not seen him since.”

  

 “Oh,” he said, darting one close, searching look at her before shrugging with elaborate nonchalance. “That would be the Wizard Himaggery, I think. He stopped here, bringing two old dames with him from Betand. Foolish.” He did not explain this cryptic utterance, and Mavin did not interrupt to ask him to clarify it. “He’d been collecting old talks, songs, rhymes. Wanted to solve some of the ancient mysteries. Well. What are Wizards for if not to do things like that? Hmmm? He wanted to go north. I told him it was risky, even foolish. He was young—barely thirty? Thirty-two? Hardly more than a youth.” He shook his head. “Well, so you found his Face.” He seemed to await some response to this, almost holding his breath. Mavin could sense his caution and wondered at it.

  

 “You put it there?” She kept her voice casual. There was a strange tickle in her head, as though the man before her sought to Read her mind. Or perhaps some other person hidden nearby. She had never heard that Wizards had that Talent.

  

 “Well, yes. I put it there. It does them little damage. Scarcely a pinprick.”

  

 “How did you do that? What for?” Still that probing tickle.

  

 “How do I make the Faces?” He leaned back, evidently reassured that she carried the question of Himmagery’s Face no further. “It would take several years to explain. You said your name was? Ah. Mavin. Well, Mavin, it would take a long time to explain. It took me several decades to learn to do it. Suffice it to say that the Lake is located at some kind of—oh, call it a nexus. A time nexus. If one takes a very thin slice of person and faces it forward, just at that nexus, t hen the slice can see into its future. That is, the person’s future. Some of them can see their own end, some only a little way into tomorrow. And if one commands a Face to tell—using the right gramarye, a wand properly prepared and so forth—then it tells what it sees. Believe me, I use only a very thin slice. The donors never miss it.” Again he seemed to be waiting some response from her.

  

 Why should he care whether I believe him or not, she thought. This question seemed too dangerous to ask. She substituted another. “Why did you want to know his future?”

  

 He paused before answering, and Mavin seemed to hear a warning vibration in her mind, a hissing, a rattle, as when something deadly is disturbed. She leaned forward to cut another piece of cheese, acting her unconcern. This misdirection seemed to quiet him, for the strange mental feeling passed as he said, “Because he insisted in going off on this very risky endeavor. Into places no one knows well. I thought it might yield some new information about the future, you know. But none of it did any good. He went, and when I questioned his Face a season later, all it would say was that he was under the Ban, the Ban, Bartelmy’s Ban.I have no idea what that means. And his quest into the old things is not what I am most interested in.” Again that close scrutiny, that casual voice coupled with the tight, attentive body.

  

 Some instinct bade Mavin be still about the other Face which had also spoken of Bartelmy’s Ban. Was it logical that the Wizard would have two such enigmas in his Lake of Faces?

  

 “That surprises me. I was told that the Wizard Chamferton was interested in old things, that he had much information about old things, that he had much information about old things.” She pretended astonishment.

  

 “So Himaggery said. Which is why he brought the old women from Betand. Lily-sweet and Rose-love.” He paused, then said with elaborate unconcern, “Well, at one time I was interested. Very. Oh, yes, at one time I collected such things, delighted in old mysteries. Why, at one time I would probably have been able to tell you everything you wanted to know about the lost road and the tower and the bell ...”

  

 Still that impression of testing, of prodding. What was it he wanted her to say? What was it he was worried about her knowing? Mavin chewed, swallowed, thanked the Gamelords that she knew nothing much, but felt herself growing apprehensive nonetheless. She went on, “Do you mention roads, towers, bells by accident? One of the Faces your Harpy questioned spoke of a tower, of bells.” She quoted all she could remember of what she had overhead, all in an innocently naive voice, as though she were very little interested.

  

 “Old stories.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “The old women Himaggery brought—they were full of old stories.” He would have gone on, but the door opened and servants came in to lay the table with steaming food and a tall pitcher of chilled wine. Bunwit and birds, raw or roasted, were all very well, but Mavin had no objection to kitchen food. She pulled her chair close and talked little until the emptiness inside her was well filled.

  

 “Well,” she said finally, when the last dish had been emptied—long after Chamferton had stopped eating and taken to merely watching her, seemingly amazed at her appetite; long after the mind tickle had stopped completely, as whoever it was gave up the search—“I must learn what I can from you, Wizard. Himaggery is my friend. I am told by a friend of us both that he came in search of Chamferton because he desired to know about old things and it was thought that you had some such knowledge. Now, you say he went from you on some risky expedition you warned him against. The story of my entire life has been spent thus—in pursuit of kin or friends who have gone off in pursuit of some dream or other. I had not thought to spend this year so, but it seems I am called to do it.”

  

 “Why? For mere friendship?” Prodding again, trying to elicit information.

  

 Mavin laughed, a quick bark of laughter more the sound of a fustigar than a person. “Are friends so numerous you can say ‘mere’, Wizard?” What would she tell him? Well, it would do no harm to tell him what Pantiquod already knew. “A long time ago, a Gamesman helped my younger brother during the plague at Pfarbl Durim.

  

 “You heard of that? Everyone south of King Frogmptt of the Marshes heard of it!” And especially Pantiquod, who caused it, she thought.

  

 “I heard of it,” he agreed, too quickly. She pretended not to notice. “Well, I am fond of my brother. So, even if there were no other reason, in balance to that kindness done by this Gamesman, I will do him a kindness in return. He is Himaggery’s friend and wants him found.”

  

 The Wizard’s tone was dry and ironic, but still with that underlying tone of prying hostility. “Then all this seeking of yours, which you find so wearying, is for the Seer Windlow.”

  

 “That is all we need consider,” she said definitely, seeming not to notice his use of a name she had not mentioned. So, Himaggery had talked of his personal life to this Wizard. Of his life? His friends? Perhaps of her? “Anything beyond that would be personal and irrelevant.”

  

 “Very well then,” he replied. “For the Seer Windlow, I will tell you everything I can.”

  

 As he talked, she grew more certain there was something here unspoken, something hidden, and she little liked the feel of it. However, she did not interrupt him or say anything to draw attention to herself, merely waiting to see what his voice would say which his words did not.

  

 “Himaggery came here, eight years ago. Not in spring, but in the downturn of the year with leaves blowing at his heels and a chilly wind howling in the chimney while we talked. He had a map with him, an interesting one with some features on it I didn’t know of though they were near me in these hills. He told me about Windlow, too, and the old books they had searched. Himaggery had been collecting folk tales for six or seven years at that point. He wanted to hear the ones I knew, and I told him he might have full liberty of the library I had collected. Old things are not what I am most interested in now. Now I am interested in the future! It has endless fascination! Himmagery admitted as much, but he didn’t share my enthusiasm. Nonetheless, we talked, he told me what he had found in the books, and we dined together and even walked together in the valley for the day or two he spent here. I took a mask from him for the Lake of Faces, which amused him mightily.” He fell silent, as though waiting for her to contradict him, but Mavin kept her face innocent and open.

  

 “So! What sent him on? Where did he go from here?”

  

 “Ah. Well, truthfully, he found very little helpful here. I was able to tell him about the road. There is a Road south of Pfarb Durim, with Monuments upon it. Do you know the place? Yes? Well, so did he. And when I told him that the Road goes on, north of Pfarb Durim, hidden under the soil of the ages, north into the Dorbor Range, then swinging west to emerge at the surface in places—when I told him that, he was all afire to see it.” He nodded at her, waving his hands to demonstrate the enthusiasm with which Himaggery was supposed to have received this information. “Like a boy. All full of hot juice.”

  

 There was something false in this telling, but she would not challenge it. She sought to pique his interest, perhaps to arouse enthusiasm which would override his careful talk. “The Road south of Pfarb Durim that has Monuments on it—I saw them dance, once. The shadowpeople made them do it.”

  

 “So Himaggery said! You were there then? I would like to have seen that ...”

  

 “My point, Wizard, is that we were not harmed. Some are said to have been driven mad by the Monuments, though I don’t know the trtth of that, but I have never heard that any were killed. Yet you told Himaggery it was risky? Dangerous?”

  

 “So I believed.” He poured half a glass of wine, suddenly less confiding, almost reticent, as though they had approached a subject he had not planned for.

  

 “Come now. You must tell me more than that. You know something more than that. Or believe you do.”

  

 “You are persistent, “ he said in a tone less friendly, lips tight. “Uncomfortably persistent.”

  

 Mavin held out her open hands, palms up, as though she juggled weights, put on her most ingenuous face. “Am I to risk my own life, perhaps Himaggery’s as well, rather than be discourteous? If it is something which touches you close to the bone, forgive me, Wizard. But I must ask!”

  

 “Very well.” He thought it over for a time, hiding his hesitation by moving to the window, opening it to lean out. There he seemed to find inspiration, for he returned with his mouth full of words once more. “There are many stories about the old road, Mavin. Tales, myths—who knows. Well, I had a ... brother, considerably younger than I. He was adventurous, loved digging into old things like your friend Himaggery. I was away from the demesne when he decided to seek out the mysteries of the old road. I did not even know he had gone until much later, and my own search for him was futile.”

  

 “Ah,” said Mavin, examining him closely, still keeping her voice light and unchallenging. “So, if the truth were told, Wizard, perhaps you did not warn Himaggery so much as you might? Perhaps, respecting him as you did, you thought he might find your brother for you?”

  

 “Perhaps,” he said with easy apology. “Perhaps that is it. I have searched my mind on that subject more times than I care to remember. But I do remember warning him, not once but many times. And I do remember cautioning him, not once but often. And so I put myself to rest, only to doubt again on the morning. I believe I did warn him sufficiently, Shape-shifter. But he chose to go.”

  

 She rose in her turn to investigate the open window. It looked out upon the valley, moonlit now, and peaceful. A cool wind moved the budding trees. Scents of spring rose around her, and she sighed as she closed the casement against the cool and turned back into the firelight. “Your Harpy questioned three of the Faces, Wizard. One was an old woman who spoke of a bell. What does it mean. ‘The daylight bell hangs in the last tower’?”

  

 He gestured to say how unimportant a question it was. “I told you Himaggery brought two old story-tellers with him from Betand. I took a Face from one of them—her name was Rose-love—shortly before she died. It was her Face you heard in the lake, saying words from a children’s story. Old Rose-love told stories to the children of Betand during a very long life, stories of talking foxes and flying fish and of Weetzie and the daylight bell.”

  

 “Weetzie?” She laughed, an amused chirrup of sound.

  

 He barked an echoing laugh, watching her closely the while. “Weetzie. And the daylight bell, not an ordinary bell, but something very ancient. Himaggery had heard of it, and of another one. He called it ‘the bell of the dark,’ the ‘cloud bell,’ the ‘bell of the shadows.’ Have you heard of that?” His voice was friendly, yet she felt something sinister in the question, and she mocked herself for feeling so, here in this quiet room with the fire dancing on the hearth. The man had said nothing, done nothing to threaten her. Why this feeling? She forced herself to shake her head, smilingly. No, she had not heard of it.

  

 He went on, “Nor had I. Well, he had found out something about these mysterious bells from old Rose. I question her Face once or twice a year to see how long it will continue to reply. It says only the one thing. First a little verse, then ‘The daylight bell hangs in the last tower.’ “

  

 “The Blue Star is on the horns of Zanbee.”

  

 “It is not,” he said. “That time is just past and will not re turn for many seasons yet.” His voice was harsh as he demand ed, ”Where did you hear that?”

  

 She remained nonchalant. “It was something Himaggery said once. The night the Monuments danced on the Ancient Road sou th of Pfarb Durim. They danced when the Blue Star was on the ho rns of Zanbee—the crescent moon. Now we have, ‘The bell is in the last tower.’ They both sound mysterious, like Wizardly things.”

  

 He relaxed. “I suppose they are Wizardly things, in a sense. Certainly your friend Himaggery thought so. My ... brother, too.”

  

 “What was his name?” asked Mavin, suddenly curious about this unnamed brother. “Was he a Wizard?”

  

 “Ah ... no. No, he was not a Wizard. He was ... a Timereacher. Very much a Timereacher.” He smiled, something meant to be a kindly smile, at which Mavin shuddered, speaking quickly to hide it.

  

 “His name?”

  

 “Arkhur. He was ... ah ... quite young.”

  

 “And so, Wizard.” She rose, smiling at him, letting the smile turn into a yawn to show how little concerned she was with what she said or what he replied. “You can tell me only that there is a road northwest of this place. That there is a bell somewhere, called variously, which Himaggery talked of. That Himaggery’s Face says only what I heard it say. That your brother Arkhur is gone since his youth. That all of this, you think, is connected with ancient things, old things, things beyond memory. You think. You believe.”

  

 “And that it is risky, Mavin. Dangerous ...”

  

 “Everywhere I have gone they have told me that. ‘It is risky, Mavin. Dangerous.’ I have sought Eesties and battled gray oozers and plotted with stickies and crept through Blourbast’s halls in the guise of a snake. All of it was risky, Wizard. I wish you could tell me something more. It is little enough to go on.”

  

 “If you had not interrupted me, I would have gone on to say there are others seeking the road you seek.” He seemed to wait for her comment or question, to be dissatisfied by her silence. “Also, the other old woman brought here by Himaggery still lives, still chatters, still tells her stories. It is too late to disturb her old bones tonight, but if you will wait until morning, she will tell you one of her stories, no doubt. Perhaps there is something in her story which will enlighten you.”

  

 You mean, she thought, that perhaps it will convince me of your friendship, Chamferton, and make me talk more freely. Well, little enough I know, old fox, but I will not tell you more than I need.

  

 She nodded acceptance of the invitation to hear the storyteller, weary to her own bones. The night before had not been restful, and since she had drunk those last few sips of wine she had been weighted down with sleep. She bowed, an ordinary gesture of respect. He patted her on her shoulder, seeming not to feel her flesh flinch away from him, and then tugged the bell near his hand.

  

 Chamferton’s servants took her to a room with a bed far softer than her bed of moss had been. There was a tub full of hot water on a towel before the fire. She did not linger in it. The shutters were open at the high window, letting the night air flood the room to chill her wet skin, and she shut them, fumbling with the latch to be sure it would not blow open again. She remembered only fleetingly that Chamferton had spoken of someone else on the trail she followed, thinking that curiosity over this might keep her awake. It did not. She did not even dry herself completely before falling asleep between the sheets, as though drugged.

  

 CHAPTER THREE

  

 Very early in the morning, just before dawn, she woke thinking she had heard some sound—a scratching, prying sound. She sat up abruptly, calling out some question or threat. The shutters were open, a curtain waving between them like a beckoning hand, and she rose, only half awake, to look outside. Around the window were thick vine branches, one of which was pulled away from the wall, as though something heavy had tried to perch upon it. She saw it without seeing it, for in the yard at the base of the stairs a group of horsemen was preparing to depart. Even with her eyes Shifted, she could not make out their faces in the dim light, but there was something familiar about one of them—something in the stance. Chamferton she could identify by his tall hat, and he stood intimately close to the familiar figure, their two heads together in conspiratorial talk. Mavin widened her ears, heard only scattered phrases. “... While she is here ... easy enough to get rid of ...”

  

 Then the horses walked away, not hurrying their pace until they had gone well down the valley, and Mavin knew it was for quiet’s sake, so that she would not hear. “Shifter ears, Wizard,” she yawned. “Never try to fool Shifter’s ears.”

  

 After watching the men ride out of sight, she closed the shutters firmly once more, then returned to bed to sleep until the sun was well up.

  

 In the morning she found Chamferton on a pleasant terrace behind the plinth on which the castle stood. There she ate melons grown under glass, the Wizard said, so they ripened even in the cold season. He was all smiling solicitude this morning, and Mavin might have accepted it from one who did not employ Harpies as servants. They were creatures of such malice, she could not believe good of one who kept them, though she asked him whether the injured Harpy lived, trying to sound as though she cared. “Foulitter is recovering,” he told her. “She bears you much malice. Or perhaps me, for not punishing you. I told her her former plots against me earned her whatever damage you had done to her, and to hush and do my bidding.” He smiled at Mavin, showing his teeth, which were stained and crooked. It was not a nice smile, and she did not find it reassuring.

  

 “I would not like to have her behind me when I go,” said Mavin, cursing herself silently for having said so the moment the words left her mouth.

  

 “I will see she does not leave the aerie for some time,” he promised with that same smile. “She is fully under my control. I am less worried about her than about some others who seek the same road you do.”

  

 Mavin put down her spoon with a ringing sound which hung upon the air. “You mentioned that last night. I was so weary, I could not even think to ask who it would be.”

  

 “Did you ever meet King Prionde’s eldest heir? Valdon Duymit, son of the King Prionde?” His voice was deceptively casual, as it had been the night before.

  

 Valdon! Of course. That had been the familiar stance she had recognized. So. Valdon had been the Wizard’s guest until the predawn hours—and he had left surreptitiously. She deducted another portion from Chamferton’s reputation for truth. Do not say too much, Mavin, she instructed herself. But do not lie, for he may know part of the truth already. “I have,” she admitted. “I was there when he and Himaggery came almost to Game duel between them. They did not like one another.”

  

 “So much I guessed,” he said. “Nonetheless, he came here, so he said, in search of Himaggery.”

  

 “Did he say why?” She spooned up melon, trying not to seem interested in the answer to this question.

  

 “Oh, he gave me some reason of other. He lied. However, I encourage my servants to gossip. Sometimes it is the only way to get at the truth. My servants told me he fancied himself wronged for some reason connected with the school set up by Prionde. Do you know anything about that?”

  

 “I know of the school, yes.” She spoke of it as anyone might who knew nothing beyond its location and that Prionde had sponsored it, thinking meantime that it was undoubtedly the Harpy whom he counted upon to gossip among the guests. In her own shape, she was probably not uncomely.

  

 “So I had some knowledge of the school,” she concluded, “though I am told it is not a large one. That is all I know.”

  

 “You are succinct. Would that more of my informants were so terse. Well, I gathered that Valdon has some unfinished anger which moves him. He desires Himaggery’s embarrassment, perhaps even his destruction. I knew that. I could read it in his voice; I did not need a Face from him to learn it.” An expression of annoyance crossed the Wizard’s face, was wiped away in an instant as though he became aware of it and did not want the world to see it.

  

 “How long ago was Valdon here?”

  

 “Oh, a year or two. No. Little more than a year. I tell you so you may be warned.” He turned toward the stairs while Mavin made note he had told her yet another lie.

  

 “Ah. Look over there to the steps. See the old woman, the very old woman being carried up in the chair? She is two hundred years old, that woman. So she says, and so I do believe. Old as rocks, as the country people say. That is Lily-sweet, sister to Rose-love, whose Face you saw in my lake. I have had her carried up here in the sun, which she much enjoys, and promised her all the melon she can eat if she will tell you a story. She and her sister told stories in Betand for all their long lives, stories learned from their great grandmas, who also, if the stories about them be true, lived to be very old. If she were still young and strong, she could talk about Weetzie for several days, for Weetzie had more adventures than a thousand years would have given him time for. Somewhere in all that mass of story-telling is a little verse which says something about there being a road, and on the road a tower, and in the tower a bell, which cannot ring alone. That verse much intrigued your friend Himaggery. You may choose to ask for the story of Weetzie and the daylight bell. She will say she is too old to remember, too tired, that it is only a children’s story, a country tale. You must persist.” He was playing with her now, Mavin knew. All this was so much flummery, to keep her occupied.

  

 “This is the story you mentioned last night.”

  

 “Yes. If you seek Himaggery, you may find something in it. He pretended to do so. If you are to get her to to tell you anything you must say her name in full, caressingly, and do not laugh.” Chamferton went back to his melon, waving her away.

  

 She rose almost unwillingly, strongly tempted to challenge his lies and his foisting nonsense upon her in the guise of information, and yet unwilling to pass by anything in which Himaggery had been interested. That much, at least, might be true and she, Mavin, might find help in it that Chamferton did not intend. So she strolled across the high terrace to the chair where the old woman sat wrapped in knitted shawls against the slight chill of the morning. She was so old her face and arms were wrinkled like the shell of a nut, like the fine wavelets of a sea barely brushed by wind. Thin flesh hung from her arms and neck. Wisps of white hair fringed the edge of her cap. Her eyes were bird-bright though she pretended not to see Mavin’s approach. “Well then,” thought Mavin, “we will lure her as the birder does the shy fowl of the air”.

  

 “Lily-sweet,” she begged, “the High Wizard Chamferton says that you know a tale known to none other in all the lands. The tale of Weetzie and the daylight bell.”

  

 The old woman stroked her throat, made a pitiful shrug and shook her head wistfully. “Ah, girl, but one’s throat is too dry and old for telling tales.”

  

 Mavin rose without a word and went to Chamferton’s table. “I need to borrow a teacup,” she told him, returning with it to the old woman.

  

 “Wet your gullet, Lily-sweet. This is the High Wizard’s own tea, and while it is not good enough for softening the throat of a true story-teller, still, it is the best we have.”

  

 “You are a well spoken child, for all your outlandish appearance. In my day the women wore full trews and vests to show their bosoms. None of this tight man-breeching and loose shirts.” Lily-sweet tugged at Mavin’s shirt, and inside that tug, Mavin twitched. The shirt was herself.

  

 “So my own grandmama has said, Lily-sweet. And much we regret that those days are past.” She sighed. “If we dressed now as true women did in the days of your youth, chance is I would have a ... companion of my own.”

  

 “You’d have a husband, child, and thankful for it. Ah, and well, and sorry the day. What was it you wanted to know of again?”

  

 “The story of Weetzie and the daylight bell?”

  

 “Ah. A children’s story, was it? I’m not sure I remember that one.”

  

 “Oh, it would be a tragedy if you did not, Lily-sweet, for none but you can be found to tell it rightly. Oh, there are those in Betand who pretend to know the story, but the mockery they make of it is quite ...”

  

 “None know that story save me!” The voice was suddenly more definite, and the old hands quivered upon the arms of the chair. “Since sister Rose died, none but me.”

  

 “I know,” Mavin soothed. “So says the Wizard Chamferton. He says the women in Betand are liars and scrape-easies, that you are the only one who has the truth of it.”

  

 “And so I do,” said the old woman. “And so shall you be the judge of it.” She took a deep breath.

  

 “One time,” she quavered, gesturing with a claw to indicate a time long past, “one time a time ago, was a young star named Weetzie, and he went out and about, up and down, wet and dry, come day come night till he got to the sea. And there was a d’bor wife, grodgeling about in the surf, slither on slither.

  

 “And Weetzie spoke polite to her, saying ‘Good morn to you, d’bor wife. And why do you slither here near the shore when the deep waves are your home?’

  

 “And the d’bor wife, she struck at him once, twice, three times with her boaty flappers, flap, flap, flap on the sand, but Weetzie jumped this way and that way, and all that flapping was for nothing. So, seeing she could not get Weetzie that way, the d’bor wife began to sing in her lure voice, ‘Oh, I grodgel here in the surf to find the daylight bell where the shadows hid it.’

  

 “And Weetzie was greatly taken with this idea, so he came close to the d’bor wife and began to help her grodgel. And whup, the d’bor wife wrapped Weetzie up in her short reachers and laughed like a whoop-owl, ‘Oh, little star, but I have you now, I have you now.’

  

 “And Weetzie was sorry to have been so silly, for Weetzie’s forepeople had often said that trusting a d’bor was like betting on the wind. So Weetzie thought quick, quick, and said, ‘But why did you stop me, d’bor wife? Quick, grodgel down, grodgel down, for just as you caught me, I saw the very edge of the daylight bell.’

  

 “And the d’bor wife was so excited, she dropped Weetzie in the instant and began to grodgel again, with the water flying. And Weetzie took his bone and twanged it, so the d’bor wife was all wound up in her tentacles and tied in a lump. Then he sat down and sang this song: ‘Daylight bell in water can’t be; Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie. Give a boon or else you die.’

  

 “And the d’bor wife cried loudly, until all the seabirds shrieked to hear it, and begged the little star to be let go. So Weetzie said, ‘Give me the boon, d’bor wife, and I’ll untie you.’

  

 “So they talked and talked while the sun got high, and this was the boon: that Weetzie could go in the water and breathe there as did the d’bor. So he twanged his bone to turn the d’bor wife loose and went on his way, up and down, over and under, back and forth in the wide world until he came to a forest full of tall trees.

  

 “And there in the top of the tallest tree was a flitchhawk in a nest, grimbling and grambling at the clouds as they flew past. And Weetzie cried out, ‘Ho there, flitchhawk, why are you grimbling and grambling at the clouds?’ And the flitchhawk said, ‘Because I’m looking for the daylight bell which is hung up here in the mist where the shadows hid it.’

  

 “I’ll help you, then,’ cried Weetzie, and he climbed the tall tree ‘til he came high up, and he stood in the nest and reached out for the clouds to grimble and gramble them in pieces. But the flitchhawk screamed and grabbed Weetzie in his huge claws and then laughed and cawed as though to raise the dark, ‘Little star, I’ve got you now.’

  

 “ ‘Why did you grab me, old flitchhawk,’ cried Weetzie ‘just as I was grambling the clouds? I caught a glimpse of the daylight bell just there where I was grambling when you took hold of me!’ And when he heard that, the flitchhawk dropped Weetzie and went back to grimbling and grambling the clouds, looking for the daylight bell and crying, ‘Where is it? Where did you see it?’ But Weetzie took his bone and twanged it and sang this song: ‘Daylight bell in water can’t be Daylight bell in treetop shan’t be Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie. Give a boon or else you die.’

  

 “And flitchhawk was tied wing and claws so he couldn’t move, and he begged to be let loose, but Weetzie would not until the flitchhawk gave him a boon. And the boon was that Weetzie could fly in the wide sky as the flitchhawk had always done. So then Weetzie twanged his bone and turned the flitchhawk loose.

  

 “Up and down he went, in and out, under and over, until time wore on, and Weetzie came to a broad plain where there was a gobble-mole druggling tunnels, coming up with a snoutful of dirt and heaving it into little hillocks. So, Weetzie said, ‘What’s all the tunneling for old gobble? More tunnel there than a mole needs in a million.’

  

 “And the gobble-mole says, ‘Druggling to find the daylight bell, little star. I know it’s right down here somewhere in the deep earth where the shadows hid it.’

  

 “So Weetzie says, ‘Well, then, I’ll help you druggie for it,’ and he started in to druggie with the mole. But the mole pushed Weetzie in a hole and shut it up so Weetzie couldn’t get out.

  

 “And Weetzie cried, ‘What did you do that for, old mole? I caught sight of the edge of the daylight bell, just then, before you covered it up with your druggling.’

  

 “Old mole said, ‘Where? Where did you see it?’ and he uncovered the hole where Weetzie was so Weetzie could twange his bone and sing this song:

  

 ‘Daylight bell in water can’t be.

  

 Daylight bell in treetop shan’t be

  

 Daylight bell in earthways wan’t be

  

 Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie.

  

 Give a boon or else you die.

  

 “And the gobble-mole was all tied up, foot and snout, so he couldn’t move. So the gobble-mole decided upon a boon, and the boon was that Weetzie should be able to walk in earthways as the mole had always done. Then Weetzie twanged his bone and let the mole loose.

  

 “ ‘Well now,’ said Weetzie. ‘All this talk of the daylight bell has made me curious, so I’ll take my three boons and go looking for it.’ And all the creatures within ear-listen laughed and laughed, for none had ever found the daylight bell where the shadows had hidden it, though the beasts had had boons of their own for ever since. But Weetzie danced on the tip of himself, up and down, in and out, over and under, as he went seeking.”

  

 The old woman sighed. Mavin put the teacup to her lips, and she supped the pale brew, sighing again. “That’s the story of Weetzie and the daylight bell, girl.”

  

 “Is there more to the story, Lily-sweet?”

  

 “Oh, there’s enough for three days’ telling, girl, for it may be he found the bell at the end of it, but I’m weary of it now. Let be. He that calls himself Wizard there may tell it to you if you’ve a mind to hear it. I told it to him, and to that other Wizard—real, he was, sure as my teeth are gone—and to people in Betand, and to children many a time when they were no more than mole-high themselves.” And she leaned back in the chair, shutting her eyes. So the old woman did not much care for Chamferton, either. “He that calls himself Wizard ...”

  

 Back at the table where Chamferton sat smiling at her as a fox might smile at a bird, she continued to play the innocent. “I wonder what all that was about?”

  

 “I think it’s about Eesties, Shifter-woman, though I’m not certain of that. Eesties, Eestnies, the Old-folk, the Rolling Stars. Whatever you choose to call them ...”

  

 “They say ‘Eesty’ among themselves,” said Mavin, without thinking. Then her throat closed like a vice and she coughed, choking, gesturing frantically for air.

  

 “You mean you’ve spoken to them, seen them? Gamelords, girl, tell me of it!” His face blazed with an acquisitive glow, and his hand clutched her arm. Now, she thought through her suffocating spasm, now I see the true Chamferton.

  

 She shook her head, trying to breathe as her face turned blue. Then the spasm passed, and he nodded with comprehension, handing her a cup. “Don’t try to talk then. I understand. What you’ve seen, what you’ve heard, they don’t want talked about. Well. Pity.” He took paper from a nearby table and wrote on it, “Have you ever tried to write it out?” He turned the paper for her to read. She shook her head, drawing deep breaths as her throat opened reluctantly.

  

 He put the pen and paper near her hand. She wrote a trial sentence. “I have talked with an Eesty at Ganver’s Grave ...” Nothing happened. She turned the paper to face him, and he nodded eagerly.

  

 “Well, Shifter-girl, there is a bit of additional information which I will trade for an account of your ... experience.” He nodded toward her hand, resting upon the paper as he turned the page toward her again. He had written, “If you will write me an account of your experience, I will tell something else about Himaggery—also, I will pay you well for the account.”

  

 Mavin shook her head in pretended indecision. “You know, Wizard, from time to time I have been asked to Game for this King or that Sorcerer. All have offered to pay me well, but none has yet told me what I am to do with the pay. What do Shifters need, after all? I cannot eat more than one meal at once, nor sleep in more than one bed at a time. I have little need to array myself in silks or gems. What payment would mean something to me?”

  

 “Perhaps hospitality,” he suggested. “A place to rest, or eat cooked food, or merely to stare at the hills.”

  

 “No. It is not tempting,” she said, having already decided what she would give him which might both allay his suspicions of her and make him careless. “But I will do it because you have something to tell me about Himaggery, and for no other reason.”

  

 He nodded, then remarked in passing, almost as though it did not matter. “And—when you go to seek Himaggery, will you seek Arkhur as well? At least, do not close your eyes to him if you see him on the road? And if you see any sign of him, will you send word to me? Again, though it may take time to agree upon a coin, I will pay you well.”

  

 She smiled. Let him take that for assent if he would. She would do no more than write what she had seen of the Eesties and of the dancing Monuments and the shadowpeople upon the hills. She made it brief, leaving most of what had happened out, unwilling to put anything in his hands he might use for ill—as he would. She did mention that the magical talisman, Ganver’s Bone, had been taken back by the Eesty who gave it, believing that it would go ill for the shadowpeople if Chamferton thought they still had it, though why she was so certain of that, she could not have said. When she had finished, it was a very brief account, though Chamferton nodded his head over it, almost licking his lips, when she had finished.

  

 “This goes in my library, Mavin.” Then, after a pause, as though to assure her of his good intent. “And should you not return in a fairly short time, I’ll see that a copy of it goes to Windlow.”

  

 She nodded, in a sober mood. If she did not return in a fairly short time, she doubted Windlow could do much about it. Also, she thought Chamferton would not bother to do anything, no matter what he had promised, unless for some reason of his own. “I’m off north, now, Wizard, so tell me now what thing it is you know.” For a moment she thought he would deny the bargain, but he thought better of it. “It is only this one fact, Shifter. There are runners upon the road to the north. Strange runners. They come in silence, fleeing along the Ancient Road, without speaking. It was those runners Himaggery followed, and if you see them, they may lead you to the place he went.”

  

 So. She wondered what else he might have told her if he had w ished to. How much he had left untold. How many other things h e had lied about. Why say Valdon had not been there for a year w hen he had left only this morning? Why all that careful q uestioning, that covert watching? What had he hoped to learn?

  

 Well, she would not find out by moping over it. Of the two of t hem, Mavin had probably learned the more. She went down and o ut of the place, the door shutting behind her with an echoing slam o f finality. She started to turn toward the north, then whirled at a sound behind her.

  

 It was Pantiquod, in Harpy shape, her head moving restlessly on its flexible serpent’s neck, and her pale breasts heaving with anger. Yellow-eyed Pantiquod. Mavin set herself to fight, ready to Shift in the instant.

  

 “Oh, no, fool Shifter,” the Harpy hissed. “I will not attack you here under Chamferton’s walls, where he may yet come out and stop me. Nor in the forest’s shadow, where you and I might be well matched. No, Shifter-girl. I will come for you with my sisters. When I will. And there will be no more shadowpeople singing to help you, or tame Wizards to do your bidding, nor will Shiftiness aid you against the numbers I will bring.”

  

 There was hot, horrid juice in Mavin’s throat, but she managed somehow to keep her voice calm. “Why, Pantiquod? What have I done to you? Your daughter is recovering, and it was she who attacked me, not I her.”

  

 The Harpy’s head wove upon its storklike neck, the square yellowed teeth bared in a hating grimace. “It was you killed Blourbast, though Huld put the knife in his throat. It was you robbed us of Pfarb Durim. It was you and your forest scum friends who sang away the plague, Shifter-girl. Now it is you who has wounded my daughter, Foulitter. Did you think the Harpies would not avenge themselves?”

  

 “You have not done much for twenty years, loathsome chicken,” Mavin said. “But threats are easy and promises cheap. Do what you will.” Her knees were not as strong as her voice as she turned her back upon the bird, opening a tiny eye in the back of her head to be sure she was not attacked from the rear. Pantiquod merely stood, however, staring after her, her yellow eyes burning as though a fire were lit behind them. Mavin shivered, not letting it show. When she was a wee child, she had been afraid of snakes. Her worn dreams had been of touching snakes. The Harpy moved her with a similar revulsion. She did not want to be touched by that creature. She could not think of fighting it because she would have to touch it. Still, so long as she could Shift, she could not utterly fear the Harpy—even if there were more than one. So long as she could Shift, it would not pay the sag-breasted bird to attack her.

  

 When she had come out of sight of the tower, she entered the trees. There she crouched upon the ground, looking back the way she had come. Two sets of wings circled high above the tower, moving upward upon warm drafts of air. When they had achieved considerable height, they turned toward her and the wings beat slowly as the two figures closed the distance between them. Though she had not shown fear before Pantiquod, now Mavin watched the wings come nearer with a feeling of fatalistic fascination which paralyzed her, that nightmare horror of childhood, that ancient terror children feel when they awake in the dark, sure that something lurks nearby, so immobilized by that knowledge that they cannot move to escape. Only when the Harpies had come almost within hailing distance did she stir herself, melting back into the shadows and changing her hide into a mottled invisibility of green and brown. There had been something hypnotic in the Harpy’s stare, something like ...

  

 “I would advise you, Mavin,” her internal voice said calmly, “that you not look into a Harpy’s eyes again. It would be sensible to kill them now, but if you find them too repulsive even for killing, then you should get moving. If you don’t want to fight the creatures, avoidance would be easier if they didn’t find you.”

  

 This broke the spell and she ran, under the boughs, quickly away to the north, deep in small canyons and under the edges of curling cliffs, until she had left the Harpies behind her, or lost them, or they had gone on ahead. In any case, the feeling of paralysis had passed—at least for the time. Her voice had been right. She should have killed them then. “I must be getting old, and weak, and weary,” she cursed herself. “Perhaps I should settle on a farm, somewhere, and grow thrilps.” This was not convincing, even under the circumstances, and she gave it up. Enough that she had not wanted to touch the beasts. Leave it at that.

  

 She had come some little distance north when she saw the first travelers, paralleling her course to the west. They were higher on the sides of the hills, running with their heads faced forward—though there was something odd about those heads she could not precisely identify, even with sharpened vision, as the forest light dappled and shadowed. They were naked, men and women both, with long, shaggy hair unbound flapping at their backs. At first she saw only four or five of them, but as she went on others could be seen in small groups on the hillsides, emerging into sunlight before disappearing momentarily into shade once more.

  

 There was a sheer wall ahead, one which stretched across her own path and that of those on the hill, a fault line where the land on which she walked had fallen below that to the north, leaving a scarp between, that scarp cut by tumbling streams which had left ladders of stone in their wake. The westernmost such path was also the nearest, and as she went on she saw the others gradually shift direction toward the rock stair, toward her own path, toward intersection. Prudence dictated she not intrude upon a multitude though the multitude seemed utterly unaware of her, so she dawdled a bit, trotting rather than striding, letting the others draw ahead. When she came at last to the stream bed which led upward to the heights, they were assembled there, squatting on the ground in fives and sevens, small intent circles faced inward. She crept into the trees above them from which she could watch and listen without being observed. Their heads were bent. The chant started so softly she thought she imagined it, then louder, repeated, repeated. “Upon the road, the old road, A tower made of stone. In the tower is a bell Which cannot ring alone. One. Two. Three. Four. Five ...” The voices went on, breathy, counting, seemingly endlessly. At last they faded into silence on number one thousand thirteen, as though exhausted. After a time they began again.

  

 “Shadow bell, it rang the night,

  

 Daylight bell the dawn,

  

 In the tower hung the bells,

  

 Now the tower’s gone.

  

 One thousand thirteen, one thousand twelve, one thousand eleven ...” and so on until they came to one again.

  

 Some of the heads came up. She saw then what had been so odd. They were blindfolded, their heads covered as far as their nostrils with black masks, like flitchhawks upon the wrist, hooded. They were silent, faced inward, hearing nothing. Mavin rustled a branch. They did not respond. Then, all at once, without any signal which she could see, they stood up and began to run once more, up the stone ladder toward the heights.

  

 Intrigued, she Shifted into something spidery and went up the wall in one concerted rush to confront them at the top of the scarp. They went past her as though she did not exist, not hearing her challenging cry. She fell in behind them, not needing to keep up, for their tracks were as plain as a stream bed before her. There were hundreds of them, sometimes running separately, sometimes together. She set her feet upon their trail and thought furiously about the matter.

  

 Somehow, without sight, they knew where they were going. But sometimes they ran together, sometimes not. Therefore, her curious mind troubled at the thought, therefore? Sometimes the way was single, sometimes separate? Like strands of rope, raveled in places, twisted tight in others? But where were the signs of it? She put her nose up and sharpened her eyes. Whatever it was that guided them, it couldn’t be smelled.

  

 Now they were running all together, in one long clump, straggling a bit, yet with the edges of the group smooth, feet falling cleanly into the tracks of those before. Something along the edges, then. She paused beside the track, peering, scratching with her paws.

  

 Tchah. Nothing she coud see. Nothing she could feel. She stopped, puzzled, scratching her hide where the dirt of the road itched it. Perhaps from above.

  

 She Shifted, lifted, beat strong wings down to raise her into the soft air, circling high, above the trees, sharpening sight so that she could see a tick upon a bunwit’s back. Circle higher, higher, peering down at the runners, separated again now. She could see their trail cleanly upon the earth, a troubling of the grass, a line of broken twigs. Leaves crushed. Dark then light. And more!

  

 Along their way a scattering of stones. No. Not scattered, tumbled. Heaved up. Some washed aside in spring rains, but still maintaining their relationship to one another. Lines of stones. A slightly different shade of gray than the natural stones of the hills. Lighter. Finer grained. Like the stones of the Ancient Road south of Pfarb Durim. She dropped like a plummet, down onto those stones, then Shifted once more.

  

 Yes. Now she could see the difference. But how did the runners know? She laid her palm upon the stone, shut her eyes, concentrated. It was there, a kind of tingling, a small, itchy feeling as of lightning in the air. Experimentally, she Shifted a human foot and laid it upon the stone. Yes. She could feel it. So then. She did not need to follow the runners, she knew where they would go. They would follow this road, this road, broken or solid.

  

 Satisfied, she trotted in the tracks of those who ran, wanting to see what they would do when night came.

  

 Had Himaggery come this way in pursuit of the runners? Or had he followed the map, which would likely have brought him to the same place? And where was that place? A tower, she thought. There is always something magical about a tower, a stone tower. Magicians and Wizards live in towers. Kings are held captive in towers. Signals come from towers, and dragons assault towers. So it is fitting that on this old road there should be a tower. But now the tower’s gone. So sang the runners. Then what were they looking for?

  

 “Shadow bell, it rang the night, daylight bell the dawn, in the tower hung the bells, but now the tower’s gone,” she hummed to herself between fustigar teeth. Not really gone, she thought. Gone, perhaps, but not really gone. Just as Himaggery was gone, but not really gone. Somewhere. Somewhere. Somewhere.

  

 It became a chant, a kind of prayer which accompanied each footfall. Somewhere. Somewhere.

  

 CHAPTER FOUR

  

 The way of the Ancient Road lay across hills and valleys, sometimes with the slope, sometimes against it, as though the Road had been there first and the valleys had come later to encroach upon it. Sometimes trotting, sometimes scrambling, Mavin followed the way, the tracks of the runners going on before her, the sun crossing above her to sink into the west so that long bars of shadow stood parallel to her path, making a visible road along which she and the runners moved in a silence broken only by far, plaintive birdsong. Beside the road bloomed brilliant patches of yellow startle flower—no seed-pods yet to startle the traveler with noonday explosions. Beneath them lay the leafy lacework of Healer’s balm, a promise that great purple bells would swing above the moss toward the end of the season. Clouds had sailed in from the west all day, full of the threat of rain, but none had fallen. Instead the gray billows had gone on eastward to pile themselves into a featureless veil covering the Dorbor Range. The east was all storm and rumbling thunder while the west glowed softly in sunset. The shadow road was as clear before her as an actual road would have been.

  

 It was a moment before she realized that she ran upon the surface of an actual roadway. In this place the tingling stones had never been covered, or perhaps they had come up out of time to lie upon the earth once more. Among the trees she could catch glimpses on either side of huge, square stones which might once have supported monuments like those which arched the road outside Pfarb Durim. The light glared straight into her eyes from the horizon, blinding her, and she almost strode across the naked runners before she saw them. They lay upon the roadway, prostrate in their hundreds. She stood for a moment, troubled at the sight of so many figures lying as though dead upon the road, barely breathing.

  

 The light faded into dusky gray-purple. The runners heaved themselves onto all fours and crawled into the surrounding forest, scavenging among the litter on the forest floor for the moist carpets of fungus which lay in every sunny glade. Seeing them moving about, Mavin felt less pity for them and set to follow their example, making a pouch in her hide to gather this crop as well. The mushrooms were both delicious and nourishing, known among gourmands as “earth’s ears” both for their shape and raw texture, crisp and cartilaginous. Both the flavor and texture improved when they were cooked, which Mavin intended to do. The sight of the runners groveling offended her, and only after she had found a place to suit her remote from them did she build a fire at last, laying the wood against a cracked stony shelf beside a small pool. Her firestarter was the only tool she carried, the only tool she needed to carry—though she had heard it said in Danderbat Keep that one Flourlanger Obquisk had learned to Shift flint and steel in some long forgotten time. Mavin had never believed it a practical solution. Since one would have to Shift flint and steel into one’s body to begin with, why not simply carry them and have done.

  

 She sat warming herself, lengthening her fur to hold body heat from the evening cool, turning the thin sticks on which the fungus was strung, watching it crisp and brown. A strange sound pervaded the quiet, a soft whirring, as though some giant top hummed to itself nearby. She crouched, trying to decide whether it conveyed some threat, whether the fire should be put out or she herself put remote from it. She compromised by leaping to the top of the shelf and collapsing there into a pancake of flesh, invisible upon the stony height.

  

 Something came into the clearing, a whirlwind, a spinning cloud, a silvery teardrop gyring upon its tip. It glinted in the light of the fire, twirling, slowing, the long silver fringes of its dress falling out of their spiral swirl into a column, the outstretched arms coming to rest, one hand clasped lightly in another. It wore a round silver hat from which another fringe settled, completely hiding the face—if there was a face.

  

 Upon the stone, Mavin stirred in astonishment and awe. She had never seen a Dervish before, for they were rare and solitary people, devoted, it was said, to strange rites in the worship of ancient gods. Still, she could not fail to recognize what stood there, for the dress and habits of Dervishes figured often in children’s tales and fireside stories. Wonderful, remote, and marvelous they were said to be, but she had never heard they were malign. She dropped from the side of the stone and came around it to the fire once more, reaching to turn the splints on which the mushrooms roasted. Let it speak if it would.

  

 “I smelled your fire,” it said. Mavin could not tell if it was man or woman, for the voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “The runners build no fire, so I knew someone followed them. I came to warn.”

  

 Mavin chose to disregard the warning. “Will you sit down?” Mavin gestured at a likely rock beside the flames. “I would be glad to share my supper.”

  

 “Thank you, no. I seldom sit. I seldom eat. Like those runners on the road, I go on and on, without thinking about it very much.” There was a breathy sound beneath these words which, after a time, Mavin interpreted as laughter.

  

 “My name is Mavin,” she offered. “Mavin Manyshaped.”

  

 “A Shifter,” the other breathed. “I could tell from your fur. A pretty beast, you, Mavin Manyshaped. An unusual one as well. Most beasts do not cook their earth’s ears.”

  

 “They taste better cooked,” said Mavin, testing one with her fingers to see if it was done. “Also, when they are cooked, they do not make that noise between one’s teeth that makes one believe one is eating something still alive and resisting.”

  

 “Ah,” laughed the windy voice, “a pretty, sensitive beast. Are you following the runners?”

  

 “I am.” She saw no need for dissimulation. “I am seeking someone—someone who followed these runners eight years ago. Someone who has not been seen since, but who the Rancelmen and Pursuivants say still lives. Have you seen him?”

  

 The figure before her shrugged. “Perhaps, Mavin Manyshaped. I have seen many since first I watched the runners go past. That time, the first time, they sang nine hundred years and twenty. This time they sing one thousand and thirteen. In that time, I have seen many, Mavin Manyshaped.”

  

 Mavin set the splint to one side to cool a little. “These runners—they run each year?”

  

 “Each year, beginning when the Blue Star approaches the horns of Zanbee, from the south city upon the Ancient Road, north, west, then south and east until they come to the south city once more. Many die upon the way, of course. Every year, many die.”

  

 “The road makes a circle?”

  

 “A circuit. Yes.”

  

 “And where is the south city?”

  

 “It is only ruins now. A place in the hills, at the headwaters of the River Banner, north of Mip and Pouws. Do you know that land?”

  

 “I never heard of any ruined city there.”

  

 “No. They hide it well, these devotees. Still, when the Blue Star rises, they assemble in that place for the run. Those who die upon the circuit are assured of bliss, so they say. Even those who live to return to the lands of the south have earned great merit.”

  

 “But ...” Mavin took a mouthful of mushroom and sucked in the juice which spurted on her lips. “What is it all for?”

  

 There was that hint of breathy laughter once more. “What is it for? What is anything for, Mavin Manyshaped. There is something in their eschatology which speaks of rebuilding the tower. You will say, ‘What tower?’ and I will say, ‘What tower, indeed?’ “ The Dervish paused, seeming to invite response or comment.

  

 Mavin felt the question, chose not to indicate interest. “The tower that is gone, I suppose,” she said flatly. “Except that it isn’t gone. I think.”

  

 “What makes you think that?”

  

 Now there was no mistaking the oddly expectant tone in that whispery voice. As though they had been talking in riddles. As though the Dervish were seeking some particular answer. Mavin decided to let the matter go no further. If Dervishes were not malign, still they were not understood. Least said, best handled. For now.

  

 She nodded over her meal. “Oh, just that it seems likely there must be some tower around someplace or other. Sufficient to keep the legends spinning. Don’t you think?”

  

 Something wilted in the Dervish’s stance. Still, it persisted. “Have you come this way before, Mavin Manyshaped? Upon this road? Or any other?”

  

 Surprised by the question, Mavin answered it honestly. “I have not come this way before, Dervish.” She finished chewing, swallowing. “Now. Dervish without a name, can you help me find the one I seek?”

  

 “Perhaps,” said the Dervish with a disappointed breath. “Perhaps.” It began to spin, at first slowly, arms rising until they were straight out from the shoulders, fringes rising, whirling, the figure moving faster and faster. When the fringe rose from the face, Mavin caught a look at it, skeletally thin, huge-eyed, lips curved in an eternal, unchanging expression of calm, and yet—Mavin thought she saw something of disappointment in the face, too, though it blurred into motion too quickly for her to be sure. The Dervish hummed, spun, began to move away through the trees, Mavin let it go.

  

 “If you will, perhaps,” she whispered to herself, “then do, perhaps. Though why you should have expected me to say anything else, I do not know. So, if you will help me find him, do. If not ... well, I will find him by myself.” She lay back upon the mosses, replete, weary, not suddenly full of new thoughts. If the Ancient Road merely bent upon itself and returned to the south, then was Himaggery likely upon it or aside from it? Would he—could he have joined the runners? She would not have thought to look for him there.

  

 Groaning, she rose to her feet and made a torch to light her way. Back upon the road the runners lay sprawled, unconscious, driven into exhausted sleep. She moved among them, making an orderly pattern in her mind to assure that she examined them all. Men, women, even some who were little more than children. Lean as old leather straps, bruised and scratched from the road, with soles on their feet like cured d’bor skin, hard as wood. She turned over lax bodies, pulled hoods aside to peer into faces, and replaced them. There were hundreds of them, and the task took hours. Dawn paled the eastern sky before she was finished. The clouds of the night before had gone; now there was only clear sky to the eastern horizon, flushed with sickly rose. Mavin threw down the torch with a growl of disgust and wandered back to her fire to curl close around the coals and sleep, not caring that the runners woke, chanted, and ran on into the west. She could find them if she wanted to. She was no longer sure she wanted to.

  

 Late evening she wakened, stretched, scratched, built up her fire once more, gathered a new supply of earth’s ears thinking furiously the while. Himaggery had followed the runners. He had come, as she had, to this place on the road. Likely he, as she, had encountered the Dervish. The Dervish who had “come to warn.” The Dervish who had said that the runners would return to the south would likely have said as much to Himaggery. Who had not, at that time, joined the runners. At least he was not among them now. So he had turned aside, say.

  

 “As good a supposition as any other,” she encouraged herself. Himaggery had turned aside, then, after meeting the Dervish. Why? “Because,” she answered herself, “he, too, would have said something about the tower. Being Himaggery, he would not have done as I did, merely put the subject aside. No, he would have said something curious, something more Wizardly than mere chitchat. And if he did, then the Dervish would have replied with something sensible, also, and off Himaggery would have gone. So. Perhaps. At least it is worthy of examining further.” She covered the fire with earth and Shifted intd fustigar shape. The Dervish would not be difficult to track.

  

 The trail was like a swept path, leaves and litter blown to either side by the Dervish’s spinning, a little drift on either side marking the way. The path led away north of the road, down quiet moon-silvered glens and through shadowed copses, up long, dark inclines where the black firs sighed in the little wind, quietly moving as in the depths of a silent sea. Though the way rose and fell, she was neither climbing nor descending overall. Streams fell from higher tablelands into the valleys, ran there as quick streams away into the lowlands beyond. She wove deeper and deeper into the hills. She could not recall ever having come that way before, and yet there was something familiar about a distant crest, the way in which a line of mountain cut another beside a great pinnacle. There was something recognizable in the way a bulky cliff edged up into the moonlight, catching the rays upon one smooth face so that it glowed like a mirror in the night. She stopped, tried to think where she had seen it before. It must have been some other similar place, though it teased at her, flicking at the edges of memory.

  

 From this place the trail led upward, over a ridge. On either side were great trees, those called the midnight tree because of its black leaves and silver bark. The trees were rare, had always been rare, and were rarer now because of men’s insatiable use of the black and silver wood, beautiful as a weaving of silk. Mavin shook her head, troubled. She had seen ... seen such trees before. Not—not from this angle, but the bulk of them seemed somehow familiar, painful, as though connected with something she did not want to remember. Still, the trail led between the trees and down.

  

 Down. There was velvet moss beneath her feet. She could feel it, smell it. The moss was starred with tiny white blossoms which breathed sweetness into the night. Other blossoms hung in long, graceful panicles from the trees, and a spice vine twined up a stump beside the way. Here the Dervish had slowed, stopped spinning. He—she, it had walked here quietly, scarcely leaving a trail. Across the valley was a low stone wall, and behind that wall a small building. Mavin could not see it, but she knew it was there. Discomfited, she whined, the fustigar shape taking over for a moment to circle on the fragrant moss, yelping its discomfort. Across the valley a pombi roared, softly, almost gently, like a drum roll.

  

 The fustigar fell silent, Shifted up into Mavin herself, wide-eyed and bat-eared upon the night, no less uncomfortable but more reasoning in her own shape. “Now, now,” she soothed herself. “Come now. It may be enchantment, or some malign influence or some Game you know nothing of, Mavin. Hold tight. Go down slowly, slowly, into this valley.” Which she did, step by step, pausing after each to listen and sniff the air.

  

 A pool opened at her side, ran lilting into another. The path crossed still another on a bridge of stone which curved upward like a lover’s kiss. Down through the blossoming trees she could see the valley floor, laced with streamlets and pools, like a silver filigree in the light. Beside one of the pools stood a glowing beast, graceful as waving grass, with one long horn upon its head.

  

 Mavin ceased in that moment, without thought.

  

 The place from which she came ceased, and the runners on the road. Windlow and Throsset ceased, and the cities of the world. Night and morning ceased, becoming no more than shadow and light. There was water, grass, the unending blend of foliage in the wind. There was whatever-she-was and the other, two who were as near to being one as had ever been. She was in another shape when she called from the hill, there from the crest where the great black trees bulked like a gateway against the stars, called in her beast’s voice, a trumpet sound, silvery sweet, receiving the answer like an echo.

  

 He ran to meet her, the sound of his hooves on the grass making a quick drum beat of joy. Then they were together, pressed tight s ide by side, soft muzzles stroking softer flanks, silk on silk, this joy at meeting again no less than the joy they had had to meet at first, that other time, so long ago. But that-which-they-were did not think of so-long-ago, nor of the time-past-when-they-were-not-together, nor of the moment-yet-to-come. Time was not. Before and after was not. The naming of names was not, nor the making of connections and classifications of things. Each thing was its own thing, each song in the night, each shadow, each pool, each leaf dancing upon its twig against the sky. They simply were.

  

 Sometimes, in the light of morning, when they had walked slowly across the soft meadows, he would call in that voice she knew, and she would flee, racing the very clouds away from him, ecstatic at the drum of his hooves following; never so fast to flee as he to pursue. Then they would dance, high on their hind hooves, whirling, manes and tails flourishing in a fine silken fringe to veil the light, their voices crying fine lusty sounds at the trees, coming into a kind of frenzy at one another, lunging and crying, to settle at last with heaving sides, hearts thudding like the distant thunder.

  

 Sometimes they would lie in the deep grass, chewing the flowers, head to tail as they whisked the glass-winged flies away, talking a kind of stomach talk to one another, content not to move. Then they would rise lazy at midday to stroll to the pools where they would swim, touching the pebbly bottoms with their feet, rolling in the shallows as they tossed great wings of spray against the trees. And at dusk, when the whirling, humming thing came from the stone building at the edge of the rise, they would stand at the gate to let it stroke them and sing in tune with that humming, a song which the birds joined, and the pombi of the forest, and the whirling creature itself.

  

 And sometimes they would run together, outdistancing the wind, fencing the air with their graceful horns, leaping up the piled hills of stone to stand at last like carven things on the highest pinnacles, calling to the clouds which passed.

  

 Sometimes. Time on time.

  

 Until one night the whirling thing came to the place they lay sleeping. It stopped whirling, and sat on the ground beside them and laid one hand upon her head. Her, her head. Her head only. And began to speak. ”This is the garden, Mavin. The garden. Come up, now, out of this place you are in, the wordless place. Come up like a fish from the depths and hear me. This is a garden you are in—the garden, most ancient, adorable, desired. All here is limpid and bright, all details perfect. There are pure animals here, and trees bright with blossom and fruit, streams which sing a sort incessant music and birds which cry bell sounds of joy. There are lawns here, Mavin, green as that light which burns in the heart of legendary stones, and there are other creatures here as well. They lie upon the knolls soft with moss, garlanded with flowers, eating fruits from which a sweet scent rises to the heights.

  

 “Hear me, Mavin. In this land walks also the slaughterer, Death. He comes to an animal or an other and kills it quietly, leaving the body to be eaten by the other beasts and the bones to bleach in the twining grasses. There is no outcry when he comes, for no creature in the garden sees the slaughterer or knows his purpose or anticipates his intent. No one here knows the end of his action, for none in this garden know one moment from another, none know the next moment from the moment at hand. None fear. None are apprehensive for the coming hour, or the morrow, and none hunger or thirst, but all eat and drink and mate and bear in the perfect peace which this garden has always within its borders. Mavin, do you hear me?

  

 “Listen to me, Mavin. There is only peace, tranquility, and simplicity here. And the end of it is Death, Mavin. Only that. Come up out of that dreamless place, Mavin, and think into yourself once more ...”

  

 And the peace was destroyed. Not all at once, for she rose and trumpeted her song and ran across the meadow to leave the words behind, but they pursued her, slowing her feet. And when she swam in the pool, she looked into the depths of it and thought of drowning, making a panicky move toward the bank. And when evening came again, she did not lie upon the grasses beside him but stood, head down, musing, unaware that she was changing, Shifting ...

  

 The Dervish stood before her, summoning her with a quiet hand. “Come.”

  

 A voice which she did not recognize as her own said, “I cannot leave ... him ...”

  

 “For a time,” said the Dervish. “Come.” And they walked away up the hill toward the low stone building behind the wall.

  

 Inside it was only white space, simple as a box, with a single bench and a cot and a peg upon the wall where clothing could be hung, and one small shelf. The Dervish brought clothing to Mavin, trousers, a shirt, a cloak, a belt and knife. “Put these on.”



  

 Mavin looked stupidly down at her nakedness, began to Shift fur to cover herself, was stopped by an imperative “No,” from the Dervish. “Put them on.” While Mavin was occupied with this, the Dervish took a cup from the shelf, filled it from a flask and gave it to Mavin. “Sit. Drink. Listen to me, Mavin Manyshaped.”

  

 “I must go ...”

  

 “Listen.” The voice was hypnotic, quiet, almost a whisper. “Who is it who lies yonder on the grasses, Mavin Manyshaped?”

  

 “I ... I don’t know. Not a person ...”

  

 “You know better, Mavin Manyshaped. Who is it who runs trumpeting with you through the glades? Who swims with you in the pools of the garden? Who is your companion?”

  

 “Don’t ... I don’t know.”

  

 “Come, woman. Do not try me too far. Did you lie to me? You were here before. Eight years ago. You found him here then because I had brought him here. He had enraged the shadow, and it came after him. There is no way to flee from the shadow, only a way to hide—or be hidden. So, I hid him here in shape other than his own, safe for a time, only for a time ...

  

 “Then I had to go away. There were things I had to do, great goings on which required my attention. When I returned I found him here and took him away, out of the valley, to a place where it would be safe to change him into his own form. He would not change. He could not change. He could not get out of the shape I had given him. So, I brought him back here, thinking to find whatever—whoever it was which had enchanted him more deeply than ever I had intended. I looked here in the valley, but there was no one here. Signs, yes. Tracks so like his own they were made by his twin. But of that beast itself no trace. Whoever had been here was gone.

  

 “And it was you! You who came to him eight years ago! It had to have been a Shifter. Who else? What else!” The Dervish rose, began to spin, to him, the very walls humming with it as though enraged. After a time it calmed, settled, whispered at her once more. “Mavin Manyshaped, what have you done?” Mavin sat frozen, like curdled stone, only half aware of what was said, what was meant. Eight years ago Himaggery had disappeared. Eight years ago she, Mavin, had found an idyll in this place. With ... with ...

  

 “Himaggery!” she sobbed, at once grieved and joyed, lost and found, the world spinning around her as though it were the Dervish. “Himaggery!”

  

 “Ah.” Now the Dervish was quiet. “So you didn’t know. And perhaps you told me the truth when you said you had not been upon the road before? Hmmm. But you had come here, and found him here, and changed, not knowing who he was. Well, having loved you here, my girl, he would not leave the place, would not give up his shape. You did not know it was he. I wonder, somehow, if he knew it was you. Well. Knowing this, perhaps now I can save him.”

  

 “Save him for what?” Mavin cried, anguished. “Save him for what, Dervish? Were we not content as we were in your garden? Could you not have left us as we were?”

  

 “Think on that, Shifter-woman. True, I have set some in this garden who will never leave it. But the slaughterer will come, woman. Age will come, and Death. The youthful you will go, and there will be no joy of the mind to make up for it. Think of it. What would Himaggery have you do, if he could ask?”

  

 Mavin leaned her head in her hands. How long had this gone on? All she wanted to do was return to the garden, leave this simple house and return. If she could not do that? What then? Could she take Himaggery with her?

  

 “Oh, Gamelords, Nameless One. Tell me your name, at least. Let me curse you by name!”

  

 “I am Bartelmy of the Ban, Mavin. It is beneath my Ban that Himaggery was saved from the shadow, within my Ban he has lived these eight years.”

  

 “Can we get him out of it?”

  

 “I believe so. I believe you can. Now.”

  

 “Well then, Dervish, let us do it. All my body longs only to go back to your garden. Oh, it is a wicked enchantment to make such a longing. See. I am sweating. My nose is running as though I had a fever. Yet inside my head is boiling with questions, with summons, with demands. I would be content to leave it, but it will not leave me. Let us get on with it.”

  

 “You are too quick, Shifter. Too quick to Shift, too quick to change, too quick to decide. You came here the second time, and even though I half expected you, you were too quick. Now you would pull Himaggery back into his self without knowing why he was hidden, why that hiding was necessary. No. I will not accept this. Before we try, you and I, to get Himaggery out of the garden I put him in, you must understand why he went there. He was on a search, Shifter. He found at least part of what he was looking for.”

  

 “I don’t care,” Mavin sobbed. “Himaggery is like that. He must understand everything. It doesn’t matter to me, not half of what he cares about. If a thing needs to be done, let us do it.”

  

 The Dervish made a gesture which froze her as she sat, and the voice which came was terrible in its threat. “I said, too quick, Shifter. I, Bartelmy, will say what you will do. It is for your good, not your harm, and I will not brook your disobedience. You may go willingly or I will take you, but you will see what it was Himaggery saw.”

  

 The voice was like ice, and it went into Mavin’s heart. There had been something in that voice—something similar to another voice she had heard long before. When? Was it in Ganver’s Grave? The Eesty? She drew herself up, slowly, feeling the inner coils of her straighten to attention, readying themselves for flight or attack. Oh, but this was a strange person who confronted her. It was both weaponless and fangless, and yet Mavin shuddered at it, wondering that she could be so dominated in such short time.

  

 It commanded. There was no energy in her to contest its commands, no strength to assert her own independence, her own autonomy. Almost without thought, she knew that this one had a will to match her own—perhaps to exceed her own. Too much had happened, too much was happening for her to consider what might be best to do—so let her do what this Dervish demanded. And if a thing must be done, then better seem to do it willingly than by force. She forced down her quick, instinctively shifty response to sit silent, waiting.

  

 “Beyond the crest of the hill, Mavin, is a path leading to the south. Walk upon it. You will go three times a rise, three times a fall. On the fourth rise look away to your left. Something will not be there. Seek it out. Examine it. When you have done so, if you still can, return here.

  

 “If you do not draw its attention, it will not follow you.” The Dervish began to spin, move, away and out the door of the place, down the meadow and into the trees. Mavin looked among those trees for the silver beast, the lovely beast, the glorious one, her own. A pain too complex to bear broke her in two, and she gasped as she ran toward the crest of the hill. Gamelords. She would not live to finish this journey.

  

 Once at the crest, it was some time before she could gather her attention to find the southern path. Once on it, her feet followed it of themselves, counting the rises, the falls. She burned inside, an agony, uncaring for the day, the path. The third rise, the third fall. Gasping like a beached fish she came to the last crest and fell to her knees, tears dropping into the dust to make small dirty circles there. At last she stood again and looked off to the left, wondering for the first time how one could see a thing which was not there.

  

 Her glance moved left to right, to left, to right once more, swinging in an arc to that side, only slowly saying to her brain that there was one place in that arc where no message came from the eye. A vacancy. Nothing. She sat upon a log and stared at it. It vanished, filled in with lines of hill and blotches of foliage. She scanned along the hill once more, and it vanished once more. Her throat was suddenly dry, hurtfully dry. There was a streamlet in the valley below, and beyond that stream a hill, and beyond that the upward slope. She struggled down toward the water, catching herself as she slid, somehow not thinking to Shift or unable to do so. At the stream she drank and went on.

  

 As she reached the last hill, she fell to her belly to crawl the last few feet, masking her face with a branch of leafy herb. Below the hill was ... a road. A side road, a spur leading from the south to end in this place. Upon the road a tower. She thought it was quite tall, but the wavering outlines made it uncertain. If one could get closer ... It seemed almost to beckon, that wavering. One should get closer.

  

 No! It was as though the Dervish’s voice spoke to her where she lay. Himaggery would have gone closer. Being Himaggery, he would have been unable to keep himself away from it. He went down there, saw—something. Something terrible, which did not want to be seen. Something which pursued him.

  

 Then he ran. She could see him in her mind, fleeing down the steep slope, falling, scrambling up to run again, panting, his throat as dry as her own. Run. To the path at the top of the hill, down three times, up three times, growing wearier with each fleeing step, with some horror coming after him. Until he reached the great midnight trees at the entrance to the valley where the Dervish waited ...

  

 Whatever had pursued him from this place could not be misled or outrun. So much she had gathered; so much she understood. No. He could hide from this pursuing horror only by giving up everything which made him Himaggery.

  

 So, go no closer, Mavin, she told herself. Watch from here. Find out from here what is there.

  

 Nothing was there.

  

 Nothing boiled at the edges of vision, blurring and twisting like the waves of heat she had seen on long western beaches, making a giddy swirl of every line. For a time there was nothing more than; this impression of boiling nothingness to hold her attention, making her feel so dizzy and sick that she gripped the ground beneath her, digging her nails deep into gravelly soil which seemed to tilt and sway. Then, when time passed and her eyes became accustomed to the unfocused roiling, she saw there was substance—if not substance, then color—to whatever shifted and boiled. It was not another hue. Greens were not bluer or yellower, browns not more red or ocher. It was, instead, as though all color was grayed, darkened, becoming mere hint and allusion to itself, a ghostly code for the shades and tints of the world. This allusive grayness piled upon the roadway, flickered around the outlines of the tower she believed she saw, coalescing into writhing mounds, fracturing into fluttering flakes.

  

 Breaking away, one such flake flew upward toward her, coming to rest upon the littered slope. Behind it as it flew the trees lost their gold-green vitality to appear as a brooding lace of bones against the sky; at first an entire copse, then a narrower patch, then a thin belt of gray which striped the trees. As it came to rest, the shadow became wider once more, the copse behind it showing gray and grim. After a chilly time, her mind translated this into a reality, a thing seen if only in effect; something leaf-shaped, thin when seen edge on but broad in its other dimensions, something which could lift or fly and was, perhaps, like those other flakes crawling in nightmare drifts upon the roadway.

  

 Shadows. Shadows which moved of themselves. She put her face into her hands and lay there silently, unable to look at them because of the vertiginous dizzyness they caused. She was helpless until the nausea passed, leaving a shaky weakness in its place. Then she could breathe again, and she opened her eyes to watch, not daring to move.

  

 There were birds nesting in the trees behind her. She heard them scolding, saw their shadows dash across the ground as they sought bits of litter and grass. One of them darted near her face. It hopped toward a bunch of grasses on which the shadow flake lay, gathering dried strands as it went. There was plenty of grass outside the shadow. The bird half turned, as though to go the other way, but a breeze moved the grasses. Within the shadow, they beckoned. The bird turned and hopped into the shadowed space. The grasses dropped from its beak. It squatted, wings out, beak open, then turned its head with horrid deliberation to peck at one wing as though it attacked some itching parasite.

  

 All was silent. Mavin lay without breathing, prone, almost not thinking. Before her on the slope in the patch of shadow a bird pecked at its wing, pecked, pecked.

  

 After a time the shadow lifted lazily, hovering as it turned, becoming a blot, a line, a blot once more as it rejoined the clotted shadow at the tower. Behind it on the slope a bird stopped pecking. With a pitiable sound it stumbled away from its own wing which lay behind it, severed.

  

 Mavin drew upon the power of the place without thinking. She Shifted one hand into a lengthy tentacle, reached out for the bird and snapped its neck quickly to stop the thin cry of uncomprehending pain. The piled shadows heaved monstrously, as though someone had spoken a word they listened for. They had noticed something—the draw of power, her movement, the bird’s death. She could not watch any longer. Head down, she wriggled back the way she had come.

  

 When she had returned to the road, she saw shadows there as well, one or two upon the verges, a few moving across the sky from tree to tree. At the top of each rise were a few, and in each hollow. As she approached the great midnight trees at the entrance to the valley, she saw others there, more, enough to shimmer the edges of the guardian trees in an uneasy dance. Between them stood the Dervish. ”You have seen.” It was not a question. It was a statement of fact. Mavin knew what she had seen showed in her face; she could imagine the look of it. Ashamed. Terrorized.

  

 “I have seen something,” she croaked. “I do see. They lie in the trees around us.”

  

 “I know,” the Dervish replied. “In usual times, they lie only upon the tower as they have done for centuries, hiding it from mortal eyes, hiding the bell within. I have seen them, as have others before me. But Himaggery was not content merely to see. He attempted to penetrate, to get into the tower.”

  

 “How is that possible?”

  

 “To a Wizard, anything is possible,” the Dervish said with more than a hint of scorn. “Or so they lead themselves to believe.”

  

 “If you think so little of Wizards, why did you save him from the shadows at all?” Mavin asked this with what little anger she could muster.

  

 “I counted it my fault he went there. He asked about the tower and I answered, not realizing his arrogance. I did not warn. Therefore this disturbance was my responsibility, Shifter. At least for that time. Now it is one I will pass on to you, for it is you who thwarted my releasing him. You will take him away with you. His presence, and yours, disturb my work.”

  

 “If you’ll put him into his own form,” agreed Mavin, not caring at the moment what the Dervish’s work might be. “Though he may immediately try to go back to the tower and finish whatever it was he started ...”

  

 The Dervish hummed a knifelike sound which brought Mavin to her knees, gasping. “Not in his own form! And he will not go back to that tower! How far do you think these will let him go in his own form?” The Dervish gestured at the shadows, making a sickening swooping motion with both arms, then clutching them tight and swaying. “They would have him tight-wrapped in moments. No. It must be far and far from here, Mavin Manyshaped, that he is brought out of that shape. Come!”

  

 There were no shadows in the valley, at least none that Mavin could see. There was a silvery beast waiting beside the flowery pools, and she fought the instinctive surge toward him, the flux of her own flesh inside its skin. There was a pombi there as well, huge and solemn beside the low wall, leaning against it, an expression of lugubrious patience upon its furry face.

  

 “Come out, Arkhur,” commanded the Dervish.

  

 The pombi stood on its hind legs, stretched, faded to stand before Mavin as a sad-faced, old youngster dressed in tattered garments. Mavin gasped. It was the face she had seen at the Lake of Faces, the other which had spoken of Bartelmy’s Ban. So here was Chamferton’s brother, wearily obedient to this Dervish.

  

 “Go back, Arkhur,” said the Dervish.

  

 The youth dropped to all fours and became a pombi once more.

  

 “I didn’t know anyone could do that,” grated Mavin. “Except Shifters, and then only to themselves.”

  

 “No one can, except Shifters, and only to themselves. He only believes he is a pombi. You believe it because he believes it. He believes it because I believe it. Even the shadows believe—no, say rather the shadows do not find in him that pattern they seek. When Himaggery went to the tower, he found this one nearby, enchanted, perhaps, or drugged, or both. When Himaggery fled, he carried this one out with him, though he would have been wiser to go faster and less encumbered. I hid him as I hid Himaggery, though it is probable it was not as necessary. Now both must go. Those you meet upon the road will believe he is a pombi.

  

 “So, too, with the other. He believes he is the fabulous beast he appears to be to others. You believe it also. All others will believe it. The shadows will not sense in him the pattern they seek. But you must go far from here, very far, Mavin Manyshaped. No trifling distance will do. You must be several days’ journey from your last view of the shadows before you bring him out into himself once more. Do it as I did. Call his name; tell him to come out. Make him hear you, and he will come out.”

  

 “A place far from here.” Mavin staggered, too weary to stand. “Far from here.”

  

 “A place well beyond the last shadow, a place where no shadow is,” the Dervish agreed.

  

 She took up a halter which was hanging upon the gate, and wondered in passing whether it was real or whether she only believed she saw it. Whichever it might have been, the fabulous beast believed he felt it, for he called a trumpet sound of muted grief as they went up the road past the guardian trees, the pombi shambling behind them.

  

 CHAPTER FIVE

  

 They could not go far enough. Mavin stumbled as she led the beast, dragged her feet step on step, looking up to see shadows in every tree they passed beneath, on every line of hill, in every nostril of earth. Still, she went on until she knew she could go no farther, then tethered the beast to a tree and coaxed him to lie down as a pillow for her head. The pombi lay beside them without being coaxed, and warmed by the furry solidity she rested. The smooth body beneath her cheek breathed and breathed. She forced herself not to respond to that gentle movement, though she passionately desired to lie right against that body and abandon herself to the closeness, the warmth. Something in the beast responded to her, and he turned to bring her body closer, touching the soft flesh of her neck with a muzzle as soft. She forced herself away, trying to find a position which would not so stir her feelings, found one of sheer weariness at last. Thus they slept, moving uneasily from time to time as night advanced, and it was in the dark of early morning that she woke to begin the trek once more.

  

 The thought of food began to obsess her. She did not know what the beast could eat. She remembered eating grass when she had been his mate, but she had actually Shifted into a form which could eat grass. What did Himaggery eat in this strange shape he thought he bore? Did belief extend to such matters as teeth and guts? Could she feed such a beast on grasses which would not keep the man alive? The pombi did not wait upon her consideration. He shambled off into the forest and returned with a bunwit dangling from his jaws, munching on it with every appearance of satisfaction. Soon after, they passed a rainhat bush. Mavin peeled a ripe fruit and offered it from her hand. The beast took it with soft lips and a snuffle of pleasure. Had it not been for the shadows clustered around them, she would have felt pleased. ”I cannot call you ... Himaggery,” she whispered, giving voice to the name itself. “Not even to myself. To do so starts something within me I cannot hold. And I may not think of you as I did when I was your mate within the valley, for to do so melts my flesh, beast. So. What shall I call you?” She considered this while they walked a league or so, the pombi licking bunwits blood from his bib of white hair, she feeding the other two of them on fruit and succulent fronds of young fern which thrust their tight coils up among the purple spikes of Healer’s balm. Only the rainhat bush bore fruit so early, and she gave some thought to the monotony of the beast’s diet if, indeed, it could not eat grass or graze upon the young leaves.

  

 “I will call you Fon,” she said at last. “For you were Fon when we met. Or I will call you Singlehorn.”

  

 The beast stopped, staring about himself as though in confusion, and she knew her words had reached some inner self which was deeply buried.

  

 “Fon,” she said in pity. “It’s all right. It’s all right, my Singlehorn.”

  

 It was not all right. The shadows had only multiplied as they went, as though attracted by some ripe stink of passion or pain. Something in the relationship among the three of them, perhaps, or between any two of them. Something, perhaps, which sought to surface in either Arkhur or ... Fon. Something, perhaps, which sought expression in herself. She thought of the bird which had severed its own wing, wondering what had motivated the shadow to cause such a thing, or whether any creature, once it had invaded the shadow, would have acted so automatically. Yet Himaggery had sought to invade the tower and had somehow escaped.

  

 The bird had simply gone into the shadow.

  

 How had Himaggery gone?

  

 The shadows had not sought the bird. Or had they?

  

 The shadows were seeking something now. Seeking, following, but not attacking. She wondered at their passivity, knowing they could attack if they would. Their failure to do so was more frightening than the actuality, making heart labor and breath caw through a dry throat without purpose. Running would not help. Conversation would make her feel less lonely, but there was no one present who could answer her. Even her words were dangerous, for either of the beasts beside her might rise to an unintentional inflection, an unmeant phrase, rise into that pattern which the shadows sought.

  

 So, in a forced silence, for the first time since leaving the valley, she began to consider where they were going. Somewhere without shadows. And where might such a place be found?

  

 “We need a Wizard,” she whispered to herself. “One walks at my back, and I cannot use him. Chamferton is far to the east of us. Besides, I cannot like him, dare not trust him. So. Perhaps instead of a Wizard, I need ... a Seer. To find the shadowless place. And who would be more interested than Windlow, Fon-beast, eh? Far and far from here, down the whole length of the land to the mountainous places of Tarnoch. Still, I could rely upon him. And once there—once there we could rest.”

  

 Even though the shadows did not attack, they were present. Weariness followed upon that feet, a weightiness of spirit, a heaviness of heart and foot and hand so that mere bodies became burdens. Mavin wondered dully if she could Shift into something which would be less susceptible to this lassitude and was warned by some inner voice to stay as she was, not to change, not to draw upon any power from the earth or air, for it was such a draw upon the power of the place which had stirred the shadows in her presence once before.

  

 “As we are, then,” she sighed. “As we are, companions. One foot before another, and yet again, forever. Gamelords, but we have come a wearying way.”

  

 They had not come far and she knew it. They had gone up and down a half-dozen small hills, tending always south toward the road of ting­ling stones where the blind runners had been. She did not know why she had set out with that destination in mind except that it was a real place, a measurable distance from other places she knew, not so far that it seemed unattainable even to a group as weary as this one.

  

 One rise and then another. One hollow and then another. Trees blotted dark on a line of hill. Rocks twisted into devil faces; foliage in the likeness of monsters. Clouds which moved faster in the light wind than they three moved upon the earth. Each measure a measure of a league’s effort to cross a quarter of it. Until at last they came to a final rise and saw the pale line of the road stretching across its feet.

  

 The day had dawned without sun and moved to noon in half light. They could go no further, but she led them on until the road itself was beneath their feet. Once there, they dropped into a well of sleep as sudden as a clap of thunder. No shadow moved on this road. No shadow moved near this road. Pale it stretched from east to west, the stones of it cracked into myriad hairline fissures in which fernlets grew, and burtons of fungus, their minute parasols shedding a tiny fog of spores upon the still air. Mavin lay upon them like a felled sapling, all asprawl, loose and lost upon the stones, the beasts beside her. In their sleep they seemed to flatten as though the stones absorbed them, drew them down, and when they woke at last they lay long, half conscious, drawing their flesh back up into themselves.

  

 It was music which had wakened them, far off and half heard on a fitful wind, but music nonetheless. A thud of great drum; a snarl of small drum; blare and tootle, rattle and clash, louder as it continued, obviously nearing. There were no shadows nearby though Mavin saw flutters against a distant copse. She dragged herself up, tugging the beasts into the trees at the side of the road. They stood behind leafy branches, still half asleep, waiting for what would come.

  

 What came was a blare of trumpets, a pompety-pom of drums, three great crashes of cymbals, thrajngggg, thranggg, thranggg, then a whole trembling thunder of music over the rise to the east. They, saw the plumes first, red and violet, purple and azure, tall and waving like blown grass. The plumes were upon black helmets, glossy as beetles, small and tight to the heads of the musicians who came with their cheeks puffed out and their eyes straight ahead, following one who marched before them raising and lowering his tall, feathered staff to set the time of the music. Mavin felt the Fon-beast’s horn in the small of her back, up and down, up and down, marching in time to the music. Looking down, she saw pombi feet, Fon feet, and Mavin feet all in movement, pom, pom, pom, pom, as the bright music tootled and bammed around them.

  

 The musicians were dressed in tight white garments with colorful fabric wrapped about them to make bright kilts from their waists to below their knees, reflecting the hues of the plumes as they swished and swung, left-right, left-right. Polished black boots thumped upon the stones; the musicians moved on. Behind came the children, ranks and files of them, some with small instruments of their own, and behind the children the wagons, horses as brightly plumed as the musicians were, the elderly drivers sitting tall as the animals kept step, legs lifted high in a prance.

  

 She could see no shadows anywhere near, not upon the road nor within the forest, perhaps not within sound of the music. Mavin moved onto the roadway behind the last of the wagons. From the back of it, an apple-cheeked old woman nodded at them with a smile of surprise, tossing out a biscuit which the Fon caught between his teeth. Mavin got the next one and the pombi the third, throwing it high to catch it on the next step, marching as it chewed in the same high, poised trot the wagon horses displayed.

  

 “Are you Circus?” cried the old woman from a toothless mouth. “Haven’t seen Circus in a lifetime!”

  

 Mavin had no idea what she meant, but she smiled and nodded, the Singlehorn pranced, and Arkhur-pombi rose to his hind legs in a grave two-step. So they went, on and on, keeping step to the drums even when the other instruments stopped tweedling and flourishing for a time. The sun dropped lower in their faces, and lower yet, until only a glow remained high among the clouds, pink as blossoms.

  

 Then the whistle, shreeee, shreee; whompity-womp, bang, bang. Everything stopped.

  

 A busy murmur, like a hive of bees. Shouts, cries, animals unhitched and led to the grassy verges of the road. Fires started almost upon the road itself, and cookpots hung above them. Steam and smoke, and a crowd of curious children gathering around the Fon-beast and Arkhur-pombi, not coming near, but not fearful either, full of murmurs and questions.

  

 “Are they trained, Miss? Can you make them do tricks? Can you ride them? Would they let me ride them? Are you Circus?”

  

 “What,” she asked at last, “is Circus?”

  

 “Animals,” cried one. To which others cried objection, “No, it’s jugglers.”

  

 “Clowns.”

  

 “Acrobats, Nana-bat says.”

  

 “It’s marvels, that’s what.”

  

 An older child approached, obviously one to whom the welfare of these had been assigned, for he wore a worried expression which looked perpetual and shook his head at the children in a much practiced way. “Why are you annoying the travelers? One would think you’d never seen an animal trainer before. We saw one just last season, when we left the jungle cities.”

  

 “Not with animals like this, Hirv.”

  

 “Those were only fustigars, Hirv.”

  

 “Nobody ever told me you could train pombis, Hirv.”

  

 “Hirv, what’s the one with the horn. Ask her, will you Hirv.”

  

 “That beast is a Singlehorn,” Mavin replied in an ingratiating tone. “The pombi was raised by humans since it was a cub.” Which is true enough, she told herself. Arkhur must have been raised by someone. “I am not their trainer. I am merely taking them south to their owner.” She had thought this out fairly carefully, not wanting to be asked to have the beasts do tricks. “If it would not disturb you, we would like to go along behind you for a time. Your music makes the leagues shorter.” And she provided another ingratiating expression to put herself in their good graces. The children seemed inclined to accept her, but the one who was approaching next might be harder to convince.

  

 He was the music master, he of the tall, plumed staff and the silver whistle. He thrust through the children, planted the staff on the pave and looked them over carefully before turning to the child-minder. “What does she want?”

  

 “Only to follow along, Bandmaster. She says it makes the leagues shorter.”

  

 The Bandmaster allowed himself a chilly smile. “Of course it does. The Band swallows up the leagues as though it had wings. Music bears us up and carries us forward. In every land in every generation.”

  

 The children had evidently heard this before, for there was tittering among them; and one, braver than the rest, puffed himself up in infant mockery, pumping a leafy branch as though he led the marching.

  

 “What is your name?” the Bandmaster demanded.

  

 “Mavin,” she said, making a gestured bow. “With two beasts to deliver to the southland.”

  

 “I assume they are not dangerous? We need not fear for our children?”

  

 Mavin thought of the murdered bunwit and looked doubtfully at Arkhur-pombi, who returned the gaze innocently, tongue licking his breast hairs, still slightly stained with bunwit blood. “I will keep it near me, Bandmaster. Can you tell me where you have come from? I have traveled up and down this land for twenty years, and I have not run across your like before.” The Bandmaster smiled a superior smile, waving his hand to an elder who lingered to one side, arms clutched tight around a bundle of books. “Where have we been in twenty years, Byram? The Miss wishes to know.”

  

 The oldster sank to his haunches, placing the bundle on the ground to remove one tome and leaf through it, counting as he leafed back, stopping at last to cry in a reedy voice, “Twenty years ago we were on the shores of the Glistening Sea nearby to Levilan. From there we went north along the shore road to the sea cities of Omaph and Peeri and the northern bays of Smeen. And from there,” leafing forward in his book, “to the Qtadel of Jallywig in the land of the dancing fish, thence north once more along Boughbound Forest to the glades of Shivermore and Creep and thence south to the jungle roads of the Great Maze. Oh, we were on the roads of the Great Maze ten years, Miss, and glad to see the end of them at last in the jungle cities of Luxuri and Bloome. And from there south across the Dorbor Range onto the old road where we are now. We have played the repertoire forty times through in twenty years ...”

  

 “How long have you been doing this?” she asked. “Traveling around this way?”

  

 “How long have we been marching,” corrected the Bandmaster. “Why, since the beginning, of course. Since disembarkation or shortly thereafter. At first, so it is written, there were few roads and long, Miss, but as we go they ramify. Ah, yes, they ramify. Used to be in time past, so it is written, we could make the circuit in five years or so. Now it takes us seventy. In time, I suppose, there will be children born who will never live to see their birthplace come up along the road again. Jackabib, there, with his leafy bough pretending to mock the Bandmaster, why, it may be he will never see the city of Bloome again.”

  

 Jackabib did not seem distressed by this thought. He only flushed a little and ran off into the trees where he peeked at them from among the leaves like a squirrel.

  

 “Well then, I would not have seen you,” agreed Mavin. “You have not been this way in my lifetime. I am mighty glad you came this way now, however, for it is a sight I will always remember.” And a sound, she thought, aware of the ache in her legs. The sound had carried them step on step, and never a sign of weariness or hurt until the music stopped. “This pombi is pretty good as a hunter as am I. May we contribute meat for the pot?”

  

 This was agreed to with good cheer, so she led Arkhur beast into the trees and set him on the trail. She poised, then, ready to Shift herself into hunting fustigar shape, only to stop, listening, for it seemed she heard a deep, solemn humming in the trees. The sound faded. She took a deep breath, began the Shift, then heard it once more. The voice came on the little wind like a sigh. “Do not Shift, Mavin. Stay as you are. You risk much if you Shift, the shadows not least.”

  

 When it had spoken, she was not sure she had heard it. When she readied herself once more, however, she knew she had heard it, for her flesh twinged away from the idea of Shift as though it had been burned.

  

 “Well then,” she said to herself, not ready yet to be worried at this. “I will do as the children of Danderbat Keep were taught to do. I will set snares.”

  

 Arkhur-pombi returned to her from time to time with his prey, like a cat bringing marshmice to the door. Each taime Mavin patted him and took the preferred bunwit with expressions of joy, as though he had indeed been some young hunting beast she sought to train. She laughed at herself, yet went on doing it. Her snares, set across burrow runways, were also useful; and they returned to the wagons some hours later, Mavin’s arms laden with furry forms, even after feeding two of them to Arkhur to assure the safety of the children.

  

 She found the people of the band occupied with a myriad orderly duties, cooking, cleaning their musician dresses, polishing boots and helmets, copying strange symbols by firelight on squares of parchment which they told her conveyed the music they played. Mavin had not seen written music before, and she marveled at it, as strange and exotic a thing as she could remember ever having seen. Others of them gathered food from the forest by torchlight, rainhat berries, fern fronds, fungus to be sliced and dried before the fires. “When we play in the cities,” she was told, “we are given coin, and we use that coin to fill the meal barrels and the meat safes. Between times, we must live upon the land.”

  

 The Fon-beast, tethered to a tree, was suffering himself to be petted and decked with flowers by a tribe of children. Mavin offered fruit and bread from her hand, only to be copied by all the young ones. So she could leave the Singlehorn without guilt in their tender hands and sit by other fires to hear what these people knew. She ended the evening telling stories of lands across the sea, of giant chasms and bridge-people who lived below the light, and stickies—one of whom, at least, probably remembered the days of disembarkation. “His name is Mercald-Myrtilon,” she said. “And he has memories in him of that time a thousand years long past.” There was much expression of interest and wonder at this, and the Bandmaster even began to talk of taking a ship to that farther shore to march there, until Mavin told him there were no roads at all.

  

 After which she slept beside her beasts along with half a dozen children who had fallen asleep while petting or feeding one or both. When they woke, it was a brighter world than on any recent morning.

  

 “Come, Arkhur-pombi,” she teased the beast up and into motion. “There are no shadows near this road, and I must risk us both to learn something sensible.” She took him off into the trees, not far, watching all the time for that telltale darkening of foliage or sky, seeing nothing but the honest shadows cast by the sun. There in a sweet clearing full of unrolling ferns she told him in the closest approximation of the Dervish’s voice, “Arkhur, come out!”

  

 It was some time before he did, rising on his hind legs, dropping again, circling uneasily, then at last seeming to set his mind on it. The figure which materialized out of the pombi’s shape was no more impressive than before. It still had that young-old expression of apologetic intransigence, a face which said, “I know you all think this a stupid idea, and perhaps I do also, but I must get on with it.” When he was fully before her, he seemed to have no idea what to do with his hands, but stood waving them aimlessly, as though brushing flies.

  

 “You are Arkhur?” she asked in a gentle voice, not wanting to startle him. “Younger brother of the High Wizard Chamferton?”

  

 She might as well have struck him with a whip. His eyes flashed; his back straightened; the hands came down before him in a gesture of firm negation.

  

 “I am Arkhur,” he said in a furious tenor. “I am the High Wizard Chamferton, younger brother of a foul Invigilator who despised his Talent and sought to usurp mine!”

  

 “Ahh,” she breathed. “So that was it. And how came you to this pass, Arkhur—or should I call you High Wizard, or sir? I called your brother by your name, I’m afraid, but it doesn’t surprise me to learn the truth. He had a slyness about him.”

  

 “I trusted him,” the pombi-man growled, so suddenly angry he was almost incoherent. Mavin had to struggle to understand him as he spat and gargled. “I trusted his pleas for understanding and rest. He told me he was an old man. Beyond scheming anymore, he said. Beyond treachery. Wanting only warm fires and warm food, cool wine and quiet surroundings. And so I took him in. And he stayed, learned, Read me when I least expected it, then drugged me deep and sent me to be Harpy-dropped where the shadows dance. Fool! Oh, much will I treasure vengeance against him, woman. But well will I repay the Gamesman who brought me away from the shadows and the tower.” He seemed to savor this for the moment then demanded:

  

 “Where is he?”

  

 Mavin assumed he meant Himaggery. She shook her head. “He is near, but worse off than you, Wizard. Now, before you say anything more, tell me a thing. The Dervish who hid you told me to bring you out of the pombi shape ‘where no shadow was. ‘ Well, there is no shadow here, but I doubt not they are somewhere perhaps within sight of us. Are you in danger in your shape? And if so, shall I return you to beastliness?”

  

 At first the High Wizard Chamferton understood none of this and it took considerable time for Mavin to explain it. By the time he had climbed a tree to see for himself where shadows lay upon the line of hills, smells of breakfast were wafting from the fires along the road, and they were both hungry.

  

 “My brother used a certain drug on me, Mavin. He knows little enough of his own Talent, and even less of mine, or he would have realized that in that drugged state, the shadows would pay me no more attention than they might pay a block of wood. Though I could see them and even consider them in a dreamy way, I had no more volition than a chopping block. No. They did not care about me and will not be attracted to me. I am certain of that.”

  

 “Certain enough to risk our lives?” she persisted.

  

 He nodded, again solemn. “Certain.”

  

 “Well, that’s something the Dervish didn’t know.” This made Mavin cheerful for some reason. It was good to think that there were some things a Dervish might not know. “Well then, how do I explain the loss of the pombi?”

  

 “Don’t explain it. Put me back as I was, woman, and let us part from these good people amiably. Perhaps in time we will want their friendship. Then, when we have separated from them, you can bring me out again. Next time it will not be such a task, for I will set myself to remember who I am, even in pombi shape.”

  

 Mavin, well aware of the lure of forgetfulness which came with any beast shape, did not totally believe this optimistic statement but was content to try it. “Go back, Arkhur,” she said, needing to say it only once. They emerged from the trees to the welcoming bugle of the Singlehorn and in time for breakfast.

  

 “Have you a map of the way you are going?” she asked the old man, Byram, who seemed to be totally responsible for all matters of record. “Perhaps I might rejoin your party farther on?”

  

 He sniffled, scuffled, laid the map out on a wagon’s hinged side and pointed out to her the way they would go.

  

 “Well, here’s the way of it, girl. Last time we were by here, I was a youngun. ‘Prentice to the manager before me, just as he was to the one before him clear back to disembarkation. He took the notes and went over ‘em with me, and I took ‘em down myself, just to have another copy—he used to say that a lot: ‘one copy’s a fool’s copy,’ meaning if you lost the one, where’d you be? Eh? Well, so I always had my own copy made from then on. Now, though, after fifty years, try and read it! So look here. It goes from where we are on west, and west, bumpety-bump, all through these whachacallems forests. ...”

  

 “Shadowmarches,” offered Mavin. “This whole area west of the Dorbor Mountains and east of the sea, north of the Cagihiggy Creek cliffs, all the way to the jungles.”

  

 “Sha-dow-mar-ches,” he wrote laboriously, spelling it out. “Well now, that’s good to know. So, westward, westward for a long straight way, then we come to the coast and turn away down south. No road north from there, just trails. At least fifty years ago was just trails. Maybe won’t be any road south either, now, but we can usually find flat enough to march on.

  

 “Anyhow, the road goes south and south until it comes to this long spit of land heading right out into the sea, down the west side of this great bay, almost an inland sea. Well, the road goes along south. East across the bay you can see a town, here, at the river mouth. What d’ya call that?”

  

 “Ummm,” said Mavin, puzzling out the map. “That’s Hawsport.”

  

 “Right! See, those little letters right there. That’s what they say. Hawsport. So you know it’s been there a while, don’t you? Well, we go on until we’re well south of Hawsport, then the spit of land turns east a little, coming closer to the mainland, closer and closer until it gets to a bridge.”

  

 “I don’t think there’s a bridge there,” said Mavin. “Not that I remember.” She tried to summon bird memories of the coast as seen from above, as she had crossed it again and again in the long years’ search for Handbright. No bridge. Certainly not one of the length the old man’s map called for.

  

 “Now then, isn’t that what I said to the Bandmaster! I said, likely that bridge’s gone, I said. There was a storm not long after we were here before that would have been a horror and a disaster to any bridge ever built. Even if it isn’t gone, likely it’s in a state of sorrowful disrepair. Oh, the bridges we’ve gone over that trembled to our step, girl, let me tell you, it’s no joke when a band must break step to keep a bridge from collapsing. And the ones we’ve not dared tread on and have had to go around, ford the stream, march along the river to a better place. Bridges! They’re the bane of my life.”

  

 “I truly don’t think there’s one there,” she repeated. “What will you do if there isn’t?”

  

 “Well that’s not my problem,” he said, folding the map with small, precise gestures. “I’ve told Bandmaster, told him in front of half the horn section just this morning, and he paid me no mind. So we get there and no bridge? Well, that’s his problem, not mine.”

  

 “You’ll have to go back?” she asked.

  

 “Likely. And wouldn’t that make him look silly.” The old man giggled into his hands in a childlike way, then harumphed himself into a more dignified expression. “If you don’t find us on the shore, Mavin, you look for us across the great bay. Likely we’ll be there, waiting for boats!”

  

 Mavin had to be satisfied with this. She felt she could take twenty days or more and still meet them somewhere on the road, across the bay or this side of it, safe from shadows. Or so she told herself to comfort the cold sorrow with which she left them. Perhaps she w ould only bring Arkhur into his own shape and let him go alone. Perhaps, she told herself, watching him shamble along behind the wagons, that solemn expression upon his fece, as though he considered all the troubles of the world.

  

 After the noon meal she left the Band, turning aside on a well traveled track as though such a destination had been intended from the beginning. When the Band had tootled itself away into the west no more than a small cloud of dust upon the horizon, she upon the ancient pave and said, “Arkhur, come out.” This time he was less hesitant, and he did remember himself—which somewhat increased her respect for Wizards, or at least for this one—so that their way east could begin immediately. Only Singlehorn stood behind them, crying into the west as though he could not bear the music to be gone. Mavin had to tug him smartly by the halter before he moved, and even then it was with his head down, his horn making worm trails of gloom in the dust.

  

 “There is the one who saved you, Arkhur. We are not fer enough from the shadows to restore him to his own shape, but his name,” she whispered, “is Himaggery, and you may choose to remember it. You will want to return to your own demesne. There is probably little I could do to help you there, and since it is not our affair, we will go on south.”

  

 “It is not your affair,” he agreed in a troubled voice, “if you are sure my brother has not your Face at the Lake of Faces, yours nor Himaggery’s. I need not search the place to be sure he has mine!”

  

 “He does have Himaggery’s,” she confessed. “Though he said not!”

  

 “No more than a pin prick at the time, no more than a year’s life lost each time he questions the Face thereafter. He need only send evil Pantiquod or her daughter Foulitter, to question a Face some forty or fifty days running, and the life of even a youngish person would be gone. I am sure he questions my Face from time to time as I was in the Dervish’s valley. What did my face say?”

  

 The question had been rhetorical, but Mavin answered it ”It said the same as Himaggery’s did; that you were under Bartelmy’s Ban.”

  

 He thought deeply, hands covering his eyes as he concentrated upon this information. “Well, I think it likely that such an answer did not shorten my life nor Himaggery’s. But my brother Dourso will not cease questioning. He may be there now, or tomorrow, asking of my Face. And when he hears I am no longer under—what was it you said?—Bartelmy’s Ban, will he not strip me of what life I have left as soon as he may? And he will not neglect to take yours, Mavin, and Himaggery’s as well. Do not ask me why, for I do not know, but it is no coincidence that all three of us came from Chamferton’s aerie to the Shadow Tower.” He gloomed over this, seeking a solution. “No. We must go quickly to the Lake of Faces, you as well as I, for either one of us alone might be unable to complete the task. Run as we may, are we not six days, eight days from the Lake of Faces? More perhaps?”

  

 “You, perhaps,” she said. “Not I.” Even if she could not Shift, dare not Shift, for some reason only the Dervish understood, she could lengthen her legs and her stride. That was not truly Shifting. It was only a minor modification. “It is likely he has my Face as well. I slept deeply when I was there, too deeply, now I think of it. Perhaps he took my Face ... ”

  

 “I think it probable, “ Arkhur said. “More than probable. In my day I had a dozen Faces there, no more, all of them of evil men and women whose lives are a burden to the world. Even so, I questioned them seldom and only in great need. Not so my brother! I doubt not he has filled the Lake with them, and the forest as well.” Seeing Mavin’s expression, he nodded, confirmed in his belief. “Well then, we must move as quickly as we can. You must go there swiftly, Mavin. Take our masks down from the posts on which they hang and press them deep into the Lake. They will dissolve. Once gone, they are no danger.”

  

 “Can you run faster as a pombi?” she asked, wondering whether he would know.

  

 “No faster than when I am not.” he said, “except that I may run safer.”

  

 “Will you bring Singlehorn as quickly as you can? I can go faster without either of you. It will perhaps save a day or two—a year or two...”

  

 The High Wizard Chamferton looked at her with serious eyes, and Mavin knew she could trust him with her own life or any other she could put in his keeping, to the limit of his ability. She nodded at him. “I will make a trail for you to follow. Watch for signs along the road.” Then she spoke as the Dervish had done once more “Go back, Arkhur.”

  

 She ran away to the east without looking behind her, lengthening her legs as she went. There were still no shadows near nor on the road. It stretched away east, straight and clear, edged by long, ordinary sun shadows from the west, seeming almost newly built in that light. She fled away, stride on stride leaving them behind, hearing the shuffle of pombi feet and the quick tap of Singlehorn hooves fade into the silence of the afternoon.

  

 CHAPTER SIX

  

 She had not gone far before discovering that it was one thing to run long distances when one could Shift into a runner—whether fustigar shape or some other long-legged thing—and quite another thing when one must run on one’s own two legs, even when they were lengthened and strengthened a bit for the job. The road was hard and jarring. She stepped off it to run on the grassy verge, seeing the shadows lying under the trees, wondering if they were of that same evil breed she had seen around the tower, knowing they were only a flutter away from her if they chose to move. The feet that they did not made them no less horrible.

  

 She fell into a rhythm of movement, a counting of strides, one hundred then a hundred more. It seemed to her that she felt weariness more quickly than she had done on other similar occasions. Was it age? Was it only having to run in her own shape? Was it the feet that she ran eastward toward the Harpies once more, toward that paralyzing fascination she had felt once and dreaded to feel again? Was it the presence of the shadows? Was it that other thing—whatever it was—which prevented her Shifting? And what was that other thing? A mystery. Inside herself or outside?

  

 Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven ...

  

 It isn’t the Dervish who speaks to me, telling me not to Shift, she told herself. Even though I hear that strange Dervishy humming all around, it isn’t the Dervish. If the Dervish had known a reason I should not Shift, the Dervish would have said so, just as it said too many other things.

  

 Besides, when she had pulled power there on the hillside above the shadowed tower the chill had attracted their attention, or it had seemed to do so. So it might be her own dream-mind telling her to be careful, telling her things her awake-mind was too busy to notice. Too busy to notice. As for example, how relieved she was to have left the Fon-beast behind ...

  

 “That’s not true!” she tried to tell herself. “That’s nonsense.”

  

 The denial was not convincing. It was true; she was relieved to have left him behind. There was too much feeling connected with his presence, a kind of loving agony which pulled first one way then another, making her conscious of her body all the time. It was easier not to worry about that, easier to be one’s own self for a time.

  

 “Selfish,” she admonished herself. “Selfish, just as Huld and Huldra were thinking only of themselves.”

  

 “Nonsense.” Some internal monitor objected to this. “You have lived for thirty-five years on your own, mostly alone, not having to worry about another person every day, every hour. Thirty-five years sets habits in place, Mavin. It is only that this new responsibilty disturbs your sense of the usual, that’s all.”

  

 But it was not all. If that had been all she could have left the Fon-beast at any time for any reason, and so long as he was cared for, she should have felt no guilt. If that had been all, it would not have mattered who cared for him. But as it was, she knew she would not leave the Fon-beast unless it were necessary to save his life. He was now her responsibility. Set into her care. Given to her. Foisted upon her. She could no more turn her back on that than she could have turned her back on Handbright’s children. “But I did not agree to that,” she said to herself in a pleading voice. “I did not agree to that at all.”

  

 Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three ...

  

 “You agreed to meet him. Of such strange foistings are meetings made.”

  

 She did not know where these voices came from, familiar voices, sometimes older, sometimes younger than her own. They had always spoken to her at odd moments, calling her to account for her actions—usually when it was far too late to do anything about them. “Ghosts,” she suggested to herself. “My mother’s ghost? Ghost of all the Danderbat women, dead and gone.” It was an unprofitable consideration which distracted her attention from covering the leagues east. She tried to think of something else, to concentrate upon counting her strides.

  

 One hundred, and a hundred more, and a hundred more ...

  

 Responsibilty. Who had taught her the word? Handbright, of course. “Mavin, it is your responsiblity to take the plates down to the kitchen. Mavin, you are responsible for Mertyn. Don’t let him out of your sight. Mavin, you must acquire a sense of responsibility...”

  

 What was responsibility after all but a kind of foisting? Laying a burden on someone without considering whether that person could bear it or wanted to bear it. Dividing up the necessaries among the available hands to do it, though always exempting certain persons from any responsibility at all. Oh, that was true. Some were never told they must be responsible. Boy-children in Danderbat Keep, for example.

  

 So it was some went through life doing as they chose without any responsibility or only with those responsibilities they chose for them­selves. Others had it laid upon them at every turn. So Handbright had tried to lay responsibility upon Mavin, who had evaded it, run from it, denied it. She had not felt guilty about that in the past. Why then did she feel guilt because she relished being on her own again, away from the thin leather strap which tied her to the Fon-beast, linking her to him by a halter of protection and guidance, a deter­mination to bring him to himself safely—one hoped—at last. And it was not really the Dervish who had laid it on her; she had it laid on herself—laid it on with that promise twenty years ago.

  

 “Every promise is like that,” she whispered to herself as she stopped counting strides for a moment. “Every promise has arms and legs and tentacles reaching off into other things and other places and other times, strange bumps and protrusions you don’t see when you make the promise. Then you find you’ve taken up some great, lumpty thing you never knew existed until you see it for the first time in the light of morning.” It was easier not to think of it.

  

 Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven ...

  

 A great lumpty thing one never saw before. Not only ecstasy and joy and an occasional feeling of overpowering peace, but also guiding and protecting and watching and hoping, grieving and planning and seeing all one’s plans go awry. “I did not agree to be tied to any great, demanding responsibility,” she said, surprised at how clearly this came. “I don’t want to be tied to it.”

  

 “Come now,” said a commentator. “You don’t know what it is yet. You think it’s likely to be lumpty, but it might not be that bad. You haven’t seen it. How would you know?”

  

 “I know,” said Mavin, scowling to herself. “Never mind how I know, I know.”

  

 “She knows,” said the wind. “Silly girl,” commented the trees. Her inner voices agreed with these comments and were silent.

  

 She tried to estimate how far she might be from the Lake of Faces. Two days perhaps, or three. The Lake was a good way south of Chamferton’s aerie, of course, and the road lay north. It was probable a great deal of distance could be saved if she could cut cross country southeast to intercept the canyons north of Pfarb Durim. Shadows lay beneath the trees to the southeast. Everywhere except on the road. Benign or malign. Both looked superficially the same until they moved, quivered, flew aloft in sucking flakes of gray. Better not tempt them. Run on.

  

 Ninety-nine, one hundred, start over.

  

 “You loved him as Fon-beast,” her internal commentator sug­gested, as though continuing a long argument. “When you ran wild in the forest. Why do you disavow him now, at the end of a halter?”

  

 “Because,” she hissed, “I am tied to the other end of it! If he is tied, we are both tied. Now, voices, be still. Be done. I will think on it no more, care about it no more, worry it no more. I have leagues to run again tomorrow. I run to save my life and Himaggery’s life and Arkhur’s life, and there is no guilt in that, so be done and let me alone.”

  

 This exorcism, for whatever reason, seemed efficacious. She ran without further interruption to her concentration until darkness stopped her feet. She thought she would have no trouble sleeping then, though the stone was of a hardness which no blanket was adequate to soften. She would still sleep, no matter what, she thought, but that supposition was false. She lay half dozing, starting awake at every sound, realizing at last that she heard a Harpy scream in each random forest noise. When she realized that, she remembered also that she was traveling back toward the Lake of Faces, back toward the Harpy’s own purlieus. It would be impossible to avoid them there. Impossibe to avoid those eyes, those mouths, those long, snaky necks. She fell at last into shuddering dream, in which she was pursued down an endless road, Harpy screams coming from behind her, and she afraid to turn and see how many and how near they were.

  

 She woke to music, thinking for a time in half dream that the Band had come to chase the Harpies away, or had not gone on, or had come back for her.

  

 “Now we sing the song of Mavin,” a small voice sang. Actually, it sounded more like “Deedle, pootie parumble lalala Mavin,” but she knew well enough what it meant. In half dream she knew that voice as from a time long past when she had wandered the shadowmarches with the shadowpeople, hearing their song. Half awake, she identified it.

  

 “Proom?” she called, sitting upright all in one motion. “Is that you?” only to have the breath driven out of her as something landed on her lap. Proom. Plus several other shadowpeople, their delighted faces beaming up into her own from between huge, winglike ears while others of their troop pranced and strutted around her.

  

 “Proom, you haven’t grown older at all.” She was astonished at this, somehow expecting that he would have turned gray, or wrinkled, or fragile. Instead he was as wiry, sleek and hungry as she remembered him, already burrowing into her small pack to see what food she had to share. “There’s nothing there, Proom. I’ll have to go hunting. Or you will.”

  

 He understood this at once, rounding up half his troop with a few high-pitched lalalas and vanishing into the forest. She started to cry out a warning, then stopped. There were no shadows within sight. What had seemed ambiguous the day before was clear enough today. Where the shadowpeople had gone there were no shadows except the benign interplay of sun and shade.

  

 A pinching made her gasp, and she looked down to find two of the shadowperson females with their huge ears pressed tight to her stomach. “I know I rumble,” she commented, a little offended. “I’m hungry.”

  

 The two leapt to their feet, smiling, caroling, dancing into and out of her reach in a kind of minuet. “Obbla la dandle, tralala, lele, la,” over and over, a kind of chant, echoed from the forest, “lele, la.” They were back in a moment, one with ear pressed against her belly while the others paraded about miming vast bellies, sketching the dimensions of stomachs in the air. “Lele, la,” making a great arc with their hands. “Lele, la.”

  

 She did not understand. Even when their miming became more explicit she did not understand. Only when Proom emerged from the trees to caress one of the females, gesturing a big belly and then pointing to the baby she carried, did Mavin understand. “No,” she said, laughing. “You’re mistaken.”

  

 “Lele, la,” they insisted, vehemently. “Lala, obbla la dandle.”

  

 “ Oh, by all the hundred devils,” she thought. “Now what idea have they swallowed whole. I am not lele la, couldn’t be. I haven’t...”

  

 “In the lovely valley,” sang one of her internal voices, using the tune of a drinking song Mavin remembered from Danderbat Keep. “In the lovely valley, see the beasties run ...”

  

 “That’s not possible. Himaggery was a Singlehorn. I was a Singlehorn. I mean, he thought he was. I really was. Besides, I was only there a day or two. Or ten. Or ... I don’t know how long I was there. How could I know?”

  

 “Lele, la,” sang the shadowpeople, seeing her tears with great satisfaction. In their experience human people cried a lot over everything. It took the place of singing, which, poor things, most of them seemed unable to do. There was one group of humans who sang quite well—all males, back in a cliffy hollow west of Cagihiggy Creek. And there was a house of singers in the city of Learner. Other than the people in those places, most humans just cried.

  

 One of the females crawled into Mavin’s lap and licked the tears off her cheek. “Lele, la,” she affirmed. “Deedle, pootle, parumble, lalala Mavin.”

  

 She, Mavin, even while being sung of at great length and with con­siderable enthusiasm; she, Mavin, awaiting breakfast; she, Mavin, still disbelieving, stood up to look about her at the world. Some clue was there she had missed. She had been so focused on the shadows, she had not seen the purple lace of Healer’s balm under the trees, the seedpods nodding where yellow bells of startle flower had bloomed twenty or thirty days before. So. It was not a matter of a day or two. The startle flower had carpeted the forest north of Chamferton’s tower. Now it was gone to greenseed, the pods swelling already.

  

 “It’s not possible.” She said this firmly, knowing it was a lie, trying to convince herself.

  

 “Lele, la,” sang the female shadowpeople, welcoming the males back from their foraging in the woods. They came out singing lustily themselves, bearing great fans of fungus, skin bags full of rainhat fruit, and the limp forms of a dozen furry or feathered creatures.

  

 “Celebration,” she said to herself in a dull voice of acceptance. “We’re having a celebration.”

  

 Fires were lit. Mavin was encouraged by pulls and tugs to help prepare food; there was much noise and jollification until she laughed at last. This, was evidently the signal they had waited for. The shadowpeople cheered, danced, sang a new song, and came to hug Mavin as though she had been one of their children.

  

 “Well, why not,” she wept to herself, half laughing. “Why not. Except that I should not Shift for a time, it is no great burden. And perhaps a child will be company.”

  

 “Of course,” soothed an internal voice. “Except that you should not Shift for a time.” Which was what it had been saying all the while. So she had known it herself. With a Shifter’s intimate knowledge of her own structure, how could she not have known it? Known it and refused to admit it.

  

 And that was it, of course. Her protection, her Talent, her experience—all useless for a time. Singlehorn and Arkhur behind her, depending upon her to do a thing which would be easy for a Shifter but perhaps impossible for someone without that ability. Harpies before her, threatening her, quite capable of killing her. If not easy, it would have been at least possible to defeat them so long as she could Shift. And now ... now!

  

 If Shifting were simply impossible, the matter would be simpler. If she couldn’t do it, then she couldn’t—there would be no decisions to make, no guilty concerns about choices that should have been made the other way. She would live or die according to what was possible. But the ability to Shift was still there. If she abstained it was only that an internal voice had told her to abstain—in order to protect what lay within. Old taboos, childhood prohibitions, little brother Mertyn’s voice coming back to her out of time, “Girls aren’t supposed to, Mavin. They say it messes up their insides. ...”

  

 Was that true? Who knew for sure? And how did they know? So now, Mavin, believe in the old proscriptions and you will not Shift until this child is born. So now, Mavin, do not Shift and it may be you cannot accomplish what you have set out to do, in which case Himaggery could suffer, even die because of it. Protect the one, lose the other.

  

 “I did not want this lumpty thing all full of hard choices,” she cried, tears running down her face. “I did not want it.”

  

 “Lele, la,” sang the shadowpeople, happy for her.

  

 When the food was cooked, they ate it. The shadowpeople preferred cooked food, though they would eat anything at all, she suspected, including old shoes if nothing else were available. They licked juice from their chins and munched on mushroom squares toasted above the fires, nibbling rainhat berries in between with dollops of stewed fern. When they had done, with every bone chewed twice, they sat across the ashes, stomachs bulging, and looked expectantly at her. This was Mavin Manyshaped of whom a song had been made, and they would not leave her unless they determined that nothing interesting was likely to happen. There were babies present who had never seen her before, this Mavin who had been to Ganver’s Grave, who had saved the people from the pits of Blourbast. So they sat, watching her with glowing eyes, waiting for her to do something of interest.

  

 At last, in a bleak frame of mind which simply set all doubts aside for the time, she stood up, brushed herself off, and waited while they packed up their few bits and pieces; a pot, a knife, a coil of thin rope, the babies clutching tight to their neck fur. Then she went to the side of the road and built a cairn there with a branch run through its top to point a direction. All the shadowpeople understood this. She was leaving a sign for someone who followed. They chattered happily at this opening gambit, then went after her as she ran off the road toward the southeast, shadows or no shadows. She thought it likely the particular shadows she most feared did not come near the shadowpeople. Perhaps the shadowpeople were immune. Perhaps, like the people of the marching Band, they created an aura which shut such shadows out. For whatever reason, she believed herself safe while with them and chose to use that time in covering the shortest route possible.

  

 The hearty breakfast made her legs less weary, the day less gray than before. The members of the troop gathered foods as they ran close about her, the little ones darting ahead to leap out at them from behind trees or dangle at them from vines broken loose from the arching trees. Mavin stopped from time to time to leave sign along their way, though a blind man could have tracked them by the plucked flowers and the dangling vines. A warm wind came out of the south, carrying scents of grass so strong she might have been running beside mowers in a haymeadow. “Diddle, dandle, lally,” the people sang, skipping from side to side. One who had not heard their songs translated might think them simple, perhaps childish. Mavin knew better. Childlike, yes. But never simple. Their tonal language concealed multiple meanings in a few sounds; their capacity for song carried histories in each small creature’s head. ”Diddle, dandle, lally,” they sang, and Mavin made up a translation, wishing the translator-beast, Agirul, were present to confirm it. “I sing joy and running in the bright day, glory in the sun, happiness among my people.” She would have wagered a large sum that it was something like that. “I sing babies playing hide and seek in the vines.”

  

 This was a good song to run by, and it kept her mind away from her destination. Away from Harpies. The shadowpeople were an excellent distraction and she blessed them as she ran, thanking their own gods for them. It was hard to be really afraid among them, for they faced fear with a belligerent, contagious courage.

  

 When they rested at noon, she acted a play for them, showing herself sleeping first, then acting the part of one who came and stole her face, taking it away, placing it upon a high pole. When she had acted it twice, one of the people began to chatter, dancing up and down, gesturing at the trees, climbing one to a point above her head, hanging there as he mimed a face hanging there, touching the eyes, then his eyes, nose, then his nose, the mouth, then his own, showing them what hung upon the tree. At this they all fell into discussion some pointing eastward of the way they ran, others to the south, waving their arms in violent disagreement. When it was obvious they could not agree, Proom spoke sharply, almost unmusically, and a young one climbed the nearest tall tree to sing from the top of it toward the south and east. After a time, they heard a response, a high, feint warble like distant birdsong. Time passed. The people did not seem distressed or hurried. More time passed. Then, when the sun stood well after noon and Mavin was beginning to fidget, the high, feint birdsong came again, and the shadowman above them warbled his response before plunging down among the branches. He gestured the direction and all of them pounded into movement again, this time guided by infrequent calls which seemed to emanate from distant lines of hill.

  

 Somewhere, Mavin told herself, there are shadowpeople who know the Lake of Faces—perhaps even now they are near there. So the call goes out and is relayed across the forests until someone responds, and then that response is relayed back again. Song-guided, we go toward a place we cannot see. So they went until evening fell and the shade of the trees drew about them. Once more the fire, the foraging, the songs, the laughter. Once more lele-la, and choruses of joy. “I am unworthy of the great honour you do me,” said Mavin, bowing until they fell over one another in their amusement. “I am deeply touched.”

  

 In the night she dreamed once more, starting upright in the darkness with a muffled scream. In dream the Harpies had laid their talons upon her, she had felt their teeth. The dark around her bubbled with small cries of concern, small soothing songs. Poor lele-la, they sang. She is not used to it yet. After a time, the songs became a lullaby and she slept.

  

 When morning came, they could hear the guiding calls more clearly, this time with something of warning in them. Proom pulled at Mavin’s leg, asking to be taken up on her shoulders as he had ridden in the past. At first she thought he was weary of the long run, then she realized he wished to gain height in order to see better what lay before them. Two of the shadowmen ran far ahead this day, darting back from time to time. As noon grew near, they came back from their scouting with a rush of whispered words, and all the troop then went forward at a creep, silent through the brush, seeing light before them at the forest’s edge. It was not only the edge of the trees, but also the edge of the land where it fell away in steep cliffs down which streams trickled in a constant thin melody.

  

 She had not seen it from this angle before, but when she looked down, screening her face behind a small bush, Mavin knew where she was. The Lake of Faces lay immediately below them. Had she been able to Shift, she could have swarmed down the cliff and finished her business within the hour. Had she been able to Shift—had the place been untenanted.

  

 It was not only occupied but guarded. At the edge of the trees below were high, square tents of crimson stuff, main poles poking through their scalloped roofs like raised spears. From these poles limp pennants flapped, the device upon them raising old memories in Mavin. She had seen that Game symbol before. It had been blazoned on the cloak and breastplate worn by Valdon Duymit long ago in Pfarb Durim. So. The Demesne of the High King in the person of his thalan-son, Valdon.

  

 Aside from these tents and the armsmen lounging outside them, there were other occupants of the place. She shuddered, sank her teeth into her arm and bit down to keep from crying out. They were there, like giant storks, their white breasts flapping as they walked among the faces, their heads thrown back in crowing laughter so that she seemed to look down their throats, their endless, voracious throats. And he whom she had called the High Wizard Chamferton, strolling there without a sorrow in the world. Mavin stopped biting herself with a deep gulping sigh. She had hoped it would be easy; she had hoped it would be possible. Now what? She rolled away from the rim of the cliff into the mossy cover of the trees, the shadowpeople following her, silent as their name.

  

 CHAPTER SEVEN

  

 When she had recovered a little, the first thing which came into her head was that she wished to hear what Valdon and the false Chamferton—what had his brother called him? Dourso?—what those two would talk of. The fact they were here together said much: much but not enough. There was Game afoot, Game aswing, Game doing something and going somewhere. Shifty Mavin was angered enough by that to ignore all the lumpty responsibilities and hard choices in an instantaneous retreat to a former self. “I need to get where I can hear them,” she growled to the shadowpeople, adding to herself—purely as an afterthought—“Without being seen by the Harpies. And without Shifting.”

  

 Proom seemed to understand this well enough, even without an Agirul translator present or a lengthy mime session. Perhaps spying out the ground was a routine first step prior to any interesting thing—a bit of sneaking and slying to learn what was going on. At any rate, he fell into discussion with his fellows, much whispered trilling and lalala, hands waving and eyebrows wriggling, ears spread then cocked then drooped, as expressive as faces. Several of them ran off in various directions, returning to carry on further conversation before inviting her in the nicest way to accompany them. She was not reluctant to go, though doubtful they had found any suitable way down those precipitous cliffs, and was thus surprised to find almost a stair of tumbled stone leading down behind one of the falls. The bottom of it was screened behind a huge wet boulder, and this way led to a scrambly warren among the stones and scattered trees at the foot of the cliffs which emerged at last within two strides of Valdon’s tent, the whole way well hidden.

  

 Proom had his neck hair up and his ears high, both expressing self-satisfaction, so she bowed to him, then he to her, then both together, trying not to make a sound, at which all the others rolled on the ground with their hands clamped over their mouths. There was nothing funny in the situation but she relished their amusement. They lay beneath the stone together, waiting for dark. Mavin could hear the Harpies screeching away at the far edge of the lake. They were a good distance away and she could relax enough to plan.

  

 Tomorrow the pombi should reach them, the pombi and Singlehorn. She hoped it would be sooner rather than later, the help of the Wizard being much desired. If she had been able to Shift, she told herself, she would have crept into Valdon’s tent at once, strangled him, then swumbled up his men at arms. Then ... then she would have laid some kind of nasty trap for the Harpies. Yes. Something clever, so that she would not have to touch them. After which the Faces could have been taken care of with simple dispatch. As it was ... well, as it was she would have to think about it.

  

 Just as dark was beginning to fall, there was a clucking Harpy chatter from the shore of the lake, and the false Chamferton came strolling along the water to be greeted by one of Valdon’s men. He disappeared into the nearest tent. The Harpies who had followed him scratched among the poles, pausing now and then to caw insults at the silent Faces. Foulitter carried the wand in its case upon her back. Soon they went back the way they had come, disappearing among the white poles in the dusk. Mavin unclenched her teeth and wriggled from behind the stones, barely aware of the shadowpeople who followed, each mimicking her movements as though they reflected her in a mirror. When she reached the back of the tent she lay still, head resting upon her arms as she strained to hear whatever was said inside.

  

 The false Chamferton was speaking. “Two days ago ... knew something had happened ... should have at the time ...”

  

 “You should have done many things at the time!”

  

 Valdon’s voice was raised, easy to hear, stirring memories in her of a long ago time. He sounded no less arrogant now than he had done twenty years before.

  

 “Had you the wits the gods gave bunwits, you would have done many things differently. Eight years ago you engaged upon this elaborate scheme concerning your brother, the Wizard Chamferton. Why did you not merely kill him? Dead is dead, and it is unlikely a Necromancer would seek him out among the departed. But no. You must do this painstaking stupidity, this business of drugging him and having him dropped by Harpies. Why?”

  

 “Because it could have been to our advantage, Prince Valdon. I set him where he could observe the shadow and the tower, the tower and the bell. I kept his Face here to answer my questions. So we might have learned much of mystery and wonder ...”

  

 “Dourso, you’re a dolt! Mystery is for old men teaching in schools because they have no blood left to do otherwise. Wonder is for girls and pawns. But power and Game—that is for men. Save me from puling Invigilators who seek to outplay their betters ...”



  

 “You are in my demesne, Prince.” The voice was a snarled threat. “Shouldn’t you mind your tongue?”

  

 “I am in my own demesne wherever I go, Dourso. You ate my bread and took my coin for decades among the least of my servants. Oh, it’s true you had some small skill in treachery. Nothing has changed. You have had possession of a tower for a few years. You have learned a few tricks for a time. Do not overestimate the importance of these trifling things.”

  

 “I have them at your instigation,” Dourso hissed again. “Let us say at your command. It was you bid me come here and rid the land of the High Wizard Chamferton, taking his place in order that Valdon, King Prionde’s son, might have an ally to the north.”

  

 “Well, and if I did? I said rid the land, not encumber it further with enchantments and bother. Let be. What is the situation now?”

  

 “It is no different than it was an hour ago, or a day ago. When I drugged my brother—half brother, and on the father side, which makes it no kind of treachery—I had my Harpies drop him in the valley where the Shadow Tower is. None can come near that place without being shadow-eaten, so it seemed safe enough ...”

  

 “Seemed,” snorted Valdon in a barely audible voice.

  

 “Seemed safe enough,” repeated Dourso. “I took his Face before he was drugged, but I never questioned it. There was no need to question the Face. I knew where he was. The Harpies swore to it under pain of my displeasure. That same year came the Wizard Himaggery in search of Chamferton, as you had said he would.”

  

 “In pursuit of an old tale I had taken some pains to see he learned of. His eccentricities were well recognized among more normal Gamesmen. It was not difficult.”

  

 “Well, so he came, bringing with him two old dames from Betand. I fed him the stories we had agreed upon, all of which are true enough, and he went off in pursuit of the runners and the tower. I took his Face before he left, also—though he did not know it—and the Face of one of the old dames as well. She was so far gone that the taking killed her, so it is as well he did not know of that either.”

  

 “So Himaggery came and went, and after a time ...”

  

 “After a time, not long after he left, his Face began to answer that it was under Bartelmy’s Ban. Then I thought to question the Face of my brother, and so spoke the Face of Chamferton also. Thus I knew one fate had taken them both. So, I said to myself, Himaggery and Chamferton have both been shadow-eaten, and my friend and ally, Valdon, will be mightily pleased. As you were, my Prince. As you were. It is not long since you feasted in my tower and told me so.”

  

 “As I might have remained,” sneered Valdon, “if he had not returned from the shadow gullet after eight years like one vomited up out of the belly of death.”

  

 There was a pause. Mavin could almost see Dourso’s shrug. “It was that Mavin, I suppose. You told me years ago she would probably follow Himaggery.”

  

 “As I thought she would eventually. Long and long ago she promised to meet him. My brother Boldery told me of it, full of romantic sighs and yearnings—the young fool. And with her gone there would have been only two left upon my vengeance list—her younger brother, Mertyn, and the old fool, Windlow, at the school in Tarnoch.”

  

 “Why such enmity? If her brother is much younger than her, he must have been a child at the time. Was it not at the time of the plague in Pfarb Durim? Twenty years ago?”

  

 “Child or not, Mertyn is on the list. Senile fool or not, Windlow is there as well. Woman or not, Mavin shares their fate. What care I what they may have been. They offended me. They did me an injury. If it had not been for Himaggery, and Windlow, and Mavin and her brother, Pfarb Durim would have fallen into the hands of my friend, and thence at least partly into mine. So my friend tells me. And if I had the wealth of Pfarb Durim in my hands, I would not be grodgeling now about the northern lands in search of allies.” 

  

 There was a long strained silence. After a time, the false Chamferton spoke again. “Well, so, Mavin came as you know, interrupting your own visit to me. And I did the same with her, feigning friendship and helpfulness, giving her bits and pieces of the story, telling her at the last about the runners. And I took her Face as I had the others and sent her off.”

  

 “But she did not die, and the others returned from the dead.” Prince Valdon spat the words, working himself up into a fury.

  

 “Which is impossible.” Dourso was vehement. “No one returns from the tower. It holds fifty generations of questing heroes sleeping the shadow sleep at its gates.”

  

 “What is it, this tower?”

  

 Again, Mavin could extrapolate the shrug from the expressive silence. “Something old, from the time before men came to these parts. Something to do with the Eesties. You say you do not care for such things. Well then, it doesn’t matter what it is. It is easy enough to stay away from.”

  

 “And to get away from, seemingly. At least your brother and Himaggery and Mavin seem to have done so.”

  

 “We don’t know that. We know only that when Chamferton’s Face was questioned yesterday, it did not speak of the Ban as it has spoken in the past. It said other garbled things, speaking of pombis and music. And when Mavin’s Face was asked, it, too, spoke of beasts and music. Only Himaggery’s face said what it has said for years, that it is under Bartelmy’s Ban.”

  

 “So it may be they have only exchanged one death for another?” Valdon asked, rather more eagerly than Mavin thought mannerly. “Then they may yet be dead, or as good as.”

  

 “I consider it likely. My Harpies consider it probable. They have been full of celebratory laughter all afternoon. I think you have little to concern you, Prince Valdon. Still, we will let tomorrow come and question the Faces once again.”

  

 “You will wait until tomorrow comes and question them, yes,” Valdon grated in a harsh, imperious voice. “And the day after that, and the day after that, until you have used up whatever lives they might have left in the answering, Dourso. There are more ways to plant a hedge of thrilps than by poking the dirt with your nose, and your maybe this, maybe not approach has not proved satisfactory.”

  

 “As my Prince commands,” said the other, conveying more ironic acquiescence than obedience. “I had intended to do so in any case.”

  

 Well, thought Mavin, squirming back from the tent into the gloom of the rocks. Isn’t he a carrier of long grudges. Twenty years of vengeful thought over a few boyish disagreements. “And a lost city,” reminded an internal voice. “At least part of one.”

  

 She looked over the area. Dark had come with a sliver of moon, enough light to find a Face, perhaps. She thought she could remember where Himaggery’s had been, on the far shore of the lake, about halfway between the water and the trees, roughly in line with a great boulder. Where might her own Face be? Somewhere in that forest, hard to see in the dark.

  

 A soft touch on her shoulder turned her. Proom, reaching out to touch her face, then gesturing away to the poles. Touching her face once more, gesturing away, that questioning gesture. She nodded in great chin wagging agreement and reached up behind her ears as though she untied something there. She moved her hands forward as though she stripped a mask away, then pointed at the mimed mask and said, “Mavin’s.” She indicated the poles, then gestured to Proom and his fellows as she raised her eyebrows. Could they find her Face? Could they get her Face? There was colloquy among them while she thought further.

  

 Proom had seen Himaggery once, on the side of a hill above Hell’s Maw. She reached out to him, went through the dumb show once more, this time naming the mask, “Himaggery’s.” He cocked his head, thinking. She did it again. “Himaggery’s.”

  

 Aha. His face lighted up, and he turned to his troop with a lilting quaver of words. “Maggeries, gerries, ees, ees.” Proom was becoming Himaggery, miming him, walking with a graceful stride, chin tilted a little in diffidence, face drawn down in a serious expression. For someone only knee high, he looked remarkably like her memory of the tall Wizard. Mavin tittered, smothering the sound, but it had been enough to set them off. In the instant Proom had a parade of Himaggeries, winding their way among the stones. Mavin lay back against a narrow mossy strip between the rocks, weary beyond belief. So. Perhaps they could find her Face, hers and Himaggery’s. She would have to look for Chamferton’s Face herself. There was no way to describe him to Proom.

  

 The moon sank toward the west. Night birds called from the cliff tops and were echoed from the river bottom. One of the Harpies screamed in the forest, a quavering screech that brought Mavin upright in terror, making her head ache. She pressed her head between her hands, but the pain only worsened, two sharp, horrible stabbings around her ears, as though two knives were inserted there. Just when she thought she could bear it no longer, that she must scream, the pain weakened, became merely sore, throbbing rather than agonizing. Trembling, she dipped a handkershief in the trickling fell and bathed her face and eyes. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She was reluctant to move her head. Pressing the cold, wet cloth around her ears helped a little. She brought it away red with blood.

  

 She was still staring stupidly at the stains when Proom wriggled back through the rocks, holding a thing at arm’s distance from him, his lips drawn back in an expression of distaste and fear. He let it fell at her knees, and she recoiled as her own face looked blindly up at her, ragged holes chewed at ear level. Proom had gnawed the strap away which held it to the post. His lips were red, and he bathed them in the stream with much spitting and wiping. When Mavin showed him the wounds at her ears, he recoiled in mixed dismay and horror.

  

 The mask was paper light, like the shed skin of a serpent, fluttering in the light evening air with a kind of quasi life. She held it under the fells, feeling it squirm weakly beneath her hands, suddenly slick as frogskin and as cold. It became a slimy jelly in her hands, then began to dwindle in the cold water, becoming totally transparent before it dissolved and washed away. As it did so, the pain in her head almost disappeared though a quick touch verified that the wounds remained.

  

 Another of the shadowpeople squirmed through the stones bearing a mask. Yes. Himaggery’s. Ragged about the upper fece as her own had been.

  

 “Gamelords,” she cursed to herself. “Did it hurt him as it hurt me?” Knowing even as she said it that it would, that it already had. “He will not understand,” she whispered. “Oh, Chamferton, pray you have tight hold upon him!”

  

 Once more she held a mask in the flowing water, feeling the foul sliminess of it soften into jelly before it vanished. The shadowpeople observed this closely as they talked it over among themselves, and Mavin knew that they were resolving to steal others of the Faces now that they knew what to do with them. Not now, though. Now was time for sleep. She had not the energy to do more tonight.

  

 They climbed the stones beind the fells and found a softer bed among the trees. There was no fire tonight, but she lay pillowed and warmed among a score of small bodies, sleeping more soundly than she had upon the Ancient Road.

  

 She was wakened by a startled vacancy around her, a keening cry of panic which dwindled at once into shushed quiet. There was hot breath on her face. The pombi fece which stared down into her own had a broken strap in its mouth and an expression of sad determination in its eyes. She struggled out of dream, trying to remember the words of exhortation.

  

 “Come out, Arkhur,” she said at last, still struggling to get her eyes fully open. The pombi shape shifted, lifted to its hind feet, solidified into the figure of Chamfertoa, the strap still in his mouth.

  

 He spat it out. “I lost him. Last night, not far from here. He screamed as though he were wounded, and then dashed away into the trees. The strap broke. I thought of going after him, but it was too dark to trail him and I knew you might need me here.”

  

 The first thought she had was that she should feel relieved. She had wanted to be away from the Fon-beast—wanted not to be responsible for him. Now he had gone, and the matter was settled. Except, of course, that it was not. Her eyes filled with tears which spilled to run in messy rivulets down her fece, puffy from sleep.

  

 “He ran because he was wounded when one of the shadowpeople chewed his mask from the pole. I didn’t know that’s what would happen, but it did to me as well.” She lifted her hair from the sides of her fece to show him. “The masks are spiked to the poles, and the little people couldn’t pull out the spikes, so they chewed the masks off. We’ll have to find him, Chamferton, but it must wait a little. There is Game here against you and Himaggery and me. You were right that we need you here.”

  

 She led him to the cliff s edge. They lay there, peering down at the encampment, and Proom’s people, puzzled but reassured by the pombi’s disappearance, came to lie beside them, waiting for whatever came next. “I don’t know how many times they’ve questioned your Face in the past, Wizard, but they intend to question it every day from now on. More often if they can.”

  

 “They can’t,” he said flatly.”And I doubt if any of the questioning done while I was in the valley will deprive me of life. I feel stronger than when I last saw this place, the strength of anger, perhaps, but nonetheless useful. Now what is to be done?” He began to list.

  

 “First—to get my own Face down from that obscene array. Second—to eliminate one Dourso, and his allies if necessary. Third—to find Singlehorn. Can you think of anything else?”

  

 “Harpies,” said Maviin. “I have some cause to think they are dangerous. Pantiquod brought plague to Pfarb Durim, many years ago. Her daughter Foulitter tried to kill me when I was here last. And Pantiquod has threatened me.”

  

 “Harpies,” he said, as though adding this item to his list. “The first thing I need is my wand. We have no strength to oppose Valdon and his men until I have the wand. Dourso has probably hidden it somewhere in the fortress.”

  

 “He has given it into the keeping of Foulitter,” she said. “Look beyond the largest pile of stones, against the trees. See where she struts about there. Look on her back when she turns. See! That is the wand. He gave it to her so that she might question certain of the Faces. I caught them at it when I came here first.”

  

 “The fool! To set such a thing in a Harpy’s hands. They would as soon turn on him as obey him!”

  

 “He has some hold on one of them,” Mavin said. “Pantiquod flies free but her daughter’s in some kind of durance. He told me he would hold her for some time yet.”

  

 “Still a fool. He learned a few words, a few gestures, and fancied himself a Wizard. What he learned was only thaumaturgy, gramarye. Children’s things, ‘well, even children’s toys may be dangerous in the hands of a fool, so we must go careful and sly. I need that wand.”

  

 Mavin forced herself to move. She wanted nothing to do with the Harpies, but something had to be done. She made a long arm to touch Proom and tug him toward her, pointed at the Harpy, moving back from the cliff edge to mime the storklike walk, the bobbing neck, the head thrown back in cackling laughter. The shadowpeople took this up with great enthusiasm, becoming a flock of birdlike creatures almost instantaneously. She pointed out the wand, then pretended to have one such on her own back, removing and replacing it. Finally, she led them off through the trees. Chamferton had time to grow bored with the view below him before she returned.

  

 “Come on,” she said. “We need simple muscle, and all of it we can get. The shadowpeople will lead her into a kind of trap, but they are not big enough to hold her.”

  

 The plan had the virtue of simplicity. If the Harpy were typical of her kind, she would pursue any small creature with the temerity to attack her, which Proom or one of his people would do. They would flee away, and the Harpy would follow.

  

 “They’ll try to get her when she’s alone, not with Pantiquod. It seems the shadowpeople aren’t particularly afraid of them one at a time, but they don’t want to tangle with two or more. At least that’s what I think all their lalala-ing was about. Proom is down there behind the biggest pile of stones. The others are scattered in a long line leading to that rockfall. The tricky part will be at that point. The shadowman will drop down into the rocks. Then another one will show himself halfway up the slope, then another one at the top. If they time it right, it should seem to be one small person the whole time. She can’t walk up that slope, but if she’s angry enough, she should fly to the top, at which point they’ll lead her between these two trees. Then it’s up to us, Wizard. Proom left us a knife, and some rope ...” She said nothing about her nausea, her revulsion.

  

 “Rope if we can,” hissed Chamferton. “I’ve a use for her alive. But knife if she starts to scream.”

  

 Mavin nodded her agreement. From their hiding place they could see between leafy branches to the valley floor. Mavin sharpened her eyes, not really Shifting, merely modifying herself a little, to catch a glimpse of Proom—she thought it was Proom—perched near the edge of the stones. The Harpy was prodding at some bit of nastiness on the ground nearby. Pantiquod had wandered toward the tents. There was a scurrying darkness, a darting motion, and the Harpy leaped into the air like some dancing krylobos, screeching, head whipping about. Proom had bitten her on the leg. Mavin could see the blood. A palpable bite, a properly painful bite but not one which would cripple the creature.

  

 No! Not cripple indeed. She strode toward the stones, head darting forward like the strike of a serpent, jaws clacking shut with a metallic finality. On the cliff top, they gasped; but she had missed. A small furry form broke from cover and fled toward the cliff. The Harpy crowed a challenge and sped after it. The shadowman fled, darted, dropped into hiding. From another hidey hole not far away, another form popped up and fled farther toward the cliffs. The Harpy strode, hopped, struck with her teeth at the stones, hurting herself in the process so that her anger increased.

  

 “Watch now,” hissed Mavin. “They’re coming to the cliff.”

  

 The quarry disappeared into a cleft between two large stones wet with spray. The Harpy thrust her head into the cleft, withdrew it just in time to see her prey appear briefly halfway up the slope, fleeing upward. It turned to jeer at her, increasing the Harpy’s frenzy. She danced, clacked her jaws, spread her wings to rise in a cloud of spray and dust. The quarry on the slope disappeared, only to reappear at the top of the cliff.

  

 “Get your head down,” Mavin directed.

  

 They could hear Foulitter’s approach, the whip of wings and the jaws chattering in rage. A furry shadow fled between the trees, and the Harpy came after. As she passed between the trunks, Mavin and Chanifertan seized her, Mavin holding tight to the wings as she tried to avoid those venomous teeth—without success! The serpent neck struck at her, and the teeth closed on her hand. Fire ran through her, as though she had been touched by acid or true flame, and she cursed as she slammed the striking head away. Chamferton thrust a wad of cloth between the teeth and threw a loop of rope about her feet which he then wound tight around the wings. When he had done, they stepped back breathlessly. The Harpy glared at them with mad yellow eyes, threatening them with every breath.

  

 “She will kill us if she can,” said Mavin, gasping, cradling her hand; it felt as though it was burned to the bone.

  

 “She would,” agreed Chamferton. “If she could.” He took the wand from its case, drawing it from among the coils of rope. “If you watch me now, you must promise never to ...”

  

 “Oh, Harpy-shit, Wizard! Oath me no oaths. I’ve seen more in your demesne recently than you have. I am no chatterbird and you owe me your life. So do what you do and don’t be ponderous about it.”

  

 “Did she bite you?”

  

 “Yes, damn it, she did.” Mavin stared at him stupidly. “How did you know?”

  

 “Because you suddenly sounded Harpy bit. We’ll take care of it before you leave—must take care of it, or you’ll die. Harpy bite is deadly, Mavin. But you’re right. I have no business demanding sec­recy oaths from one who has saved my life. So go or stay as you like.”

  

 She was curious enough to stay, not that she learned anything. She could not concentrate because of the pain in her hand, now moving up her arm. All she saw was waving of the wand, and walking about in strange patterns, and speaking to the world’s corners and up and down, and sprinkling dust and sprinkling water, at the end of which time he removed the rag from the Harpy’s mouth and turned her loose. “You are my servant,” he told her in a voice of distaste. “My unworthy servant. Now you will serve me by giving me the name of one of those you have questioned down below—the name of any one.”

  

 The Harpy answered in a toneless voice without pause, “I have questioned Rose-love of Betand.”

  

 “Very well,” said Chamferton. “When you next hear the words ‘Rose-love of Betand,’ your servitude is over and you have my leave to die. Do you understand?”

  

 The Harpy nodded, its pale, pendulous breasts heaving. “When I hear the words ‘Rose-love of Betand,’ I have your leave to die.”

  

 “And you will die then,” said Chamferton. “Quickly and without pain.”

  

 “And I will die then,” agreed the Harpy. “Quickly and without pain.”

  

 Chamferton turned away from the empty-faced creature. “The first thing I must do is obtain my own Face.” Turning to the Harpy, “Go to my Face, Foulitter. Pull the silver spike which holds it to the pole, gently, with your teeth. Bring the Face to me here.”

  

 Without a sound the Harpy walked away to the cliff’s edge and dropped from there on quiet wings to the regiment of pale poles on which the Faces hung. To Mavin, accustomed to the constant cluck and keraw of the Harpies, this quiet evoked more foreboding than sound might have done.

  

 “Is she completely at your command?” Somehow she still doubted this.

  

 “Completely. Though nothing would have put her completely at my command unless she had attempted to injure me first—or had succeeded. There is a rule of Wizardry called the Exception of Innocence. We are not allowed to bind the will of one who has never done us ill or attempted it. It is somewhat inconvenient at times.”

  

 “I can imagine it would be,” she rasped, glad she had done the High Wizard Chamferton only good. “And what of those who have actually helped you, aided you?”

  

 “No true Wizard would be so unmannerly as to enchant one such,” he replied with a smile. It was an ominous smile, for all his appearance of grave, childlike stubbornness. Still, she took it as sufficient encouragement to ask a further question.

  

 “You said something earlier about Dourso having learned only thaumaturgy, gramarye—children’s things. Does that mean such things are not the Talent of Wizards?”

  

 “Such things are not. Such things are mere tricks, like the Faces. They are dependent upon a particular place, perhaps a particular time. Did Dourso tell you about the lake? About the nexus here? Blame my stupidity that I bragged to him about it, crowing at my discovery. The crux of the thaumaturgy lies with the lake, with the forces around it. I chose my demesne because of the forces which are here, not the other way around. Away from this place I am no more or less Wizardly than any of my colleagues. Only this place—and that arrogant aerie built halfway to the clouds—gives me the name ‘High Wizard’.”

  

 “How did you ever learn to ... to do things. Make the faces. Or bind Harpies. Or whatever?” It was hard to think through the pain in her arm, but she doubted that Chamferton would often be so patient with questions.

  

 “I have speculated about that,” he mused. “It is my theory that the forces of the place desire expression. That they, themselves, are my tutors, suggesting to my dream-mind what I should try or do.” He gave her another of those quick, ominous looks. “You have said you are no chatterbird, Mavin, and I rely upon that. I do not want half the world of the True Game camped upon my steps, attempting to learn what I have learned, or—worse—finding out and using it to make more pain and tragedy in this world.”

  

 She returned him an enigmatic smile. She had already given him her word; it was not necessary to give it again. Besides, the sound of wings returning drew their eyes to the cliff edge where Foulitter now perched, her teeth broken and bloody around the silver spike and limp Face she carried. Arkhur took it without a word, carrying it to the stream where he pressed it deep into the chill water to let it dissolve, shuddering slightly as he did so.

  

 “I think the shadowpeople intend to remove more of them,” Mavin remarked, more to break the silence than for any other reason.

  

 “It won’t be necessary,” he growled with sudden determination, shuddering again at the feel of the slimy tissue under his fingers. “There will not be any left after today. I have decided that because a thing can be done is not always reason enough to do it.” He rose from the stream, face pale, a small muscle at the corner of his eye twitching again and again. “Do you have any idea whose Faces he has taken down there? Dare I hope they are mostly villains? Gamesmen Ghouls, perhaps? What of that one the Harpy named? Rose-love of Betand?”

  

 Mavin shook her head, almost sorry to tell him the truth. “I think it unlikely they are Ghouls and villains, Wizard. Rose-love is one of the old women Himaggery brought from Betand, a story-teller. I overhead Dourso say he had taken her Face and killed her doing it. Her sister still lives at the aerie—or did when I was there half a season ago. She, too, is full of old tales. Neither of them were Gameswomen. They were merely ... people.”

  

 “So Dourso has taken Faces from peaceful folk, pawns, perhaps even goodly Gamesmen, Healers and the like?”

  

 “I would not doubt it,” she agreed.

  

 “And some of them have lost life, perhaps much life. Some, like old Rose-love, may have lost all life. Whatever is done must seek to set that right. Certainly whatever is done must not put them at further risk. Ah well. I have my wand. I can do what must be done. However, there is a counter spell, and it may be that Dourso has learned it. His understanding is not great, but his sense of power and treachery are unfailing. If he has learned it, then the Faces would be caught between my power and his, possibly injured or destroyed, and their owners would suffer even more.”

  

 “But you have the wand!”

  

 “The counter spell would not require a wand though perhaps he does not know it. Would you risk that?”

  

 Mavin thought of the Faces as she had seen them first in moonlight, unconscious, taken from who knew what persons abroad in the world. “No,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t risk hurting them any more. Not if there were some other way.”

  

 “We will think of some other way. Perhaps we can lure Dourso away from here, back to the aerie, leaving me here alone for a short time ... Yes. Back to the aerie with Valdon. Hmmm. Let me think on that.”

  

 He strode away toward the cliff top, ignoring the Harpy half crouched there, her nipples almost brushing the ground. The Harpy’s face was not unlike those on the poles, blind and unaware, yet full of some enormous potential which was almost palpable. In this case, the potential was for evil, thought Mavin, turning her back on the creature, trying not to vomit at the sight of her. Her arm throbbed and she was full of pain and hunger and annoyance. Waiting on another to take action was foreign to her nature, and she fought down her irritation. She should be away from here, searching for Himaggery.

  

 “Searching for Himaggery,” she snarled. “I have done nothing else since first arriving at Pfarb Durim.”

  

 A tug at her leg made her look down into Proom’s face, wrinkled with concern. Was she sick, unhappy, miserable? Poor Mavin. What would Mavin do now?

  

 “I’m hungry,” she announced, rubbing her stomach and miming eating motions. “Let’s have breakfast.”

  

 He was immediately ready for a feast, slipping away full of song to summon the others. It was not long before they had a fire going, hidden behind piled stones, with chunks of mushroom broiling. Someone had brought in a dozen large, speckled eggs. Surprisingly they were fresh, probably purloined from some farmyard. When the High Wizard finished his solitary walk and sought them out, they were fully engaged in breakfast with little enough left for him.

  

 “I have a plan,” he said.

  

 Mavin nodded, her mouth full. She would listen, the nod said, but she didn’t feel it necessary to stop chewing.

  

 “You will go to the aerie,” he said, ticking this point off on one palm with a bony finger. “Seek the Healer. Tell the ones there you have been Harpy bit, need Healing, and have a message for the High Wizard Chamferton—his demesne is threatened from the north. That should get their attention. Someone there will know where the supposed High Wizard is. Insist that a message be sent immediately. Can you ride horseback?” 

  

 The question seemed a meaningless interpolation, and it took her a moment to respond. “After a fashion. Why?”

  

 “There is a farm a little east of here where you can borrow an animal in my name. Ride hard as you can to get to the aerie by early afternoon. They will send a messenger back here—to my loving brother, Dourso—that messenger arriving by evening. If the message is properly portentous, Dourso will leave here at once for the aerie, arriving there about midnight. It may be Valdon will go as well, but in any case Dourso will go. That will be enough for my purposes.”

  

 “What am I to do there? Merely wait? Or depart again?”

  

 “Well, you are to find the Healer, as I said. You must not let that Harpy bite go untended. The mouths of the creatures are poisonous as serpents’. It is not precisely venom which they hold, but some other foulness which comes from the filth they eat when they are in Harpy shape.

  

 “So, you find the Healer, in private, and tell her I sent you. Say ‘Arkhur’ so she will know which Wizard you speak of. After she has healed you, secret yourself somewhere within sight of the aerie. It may be you will want to see the end of this matter.”



  

 “How will I know when that is?”

  

 “You’ll know,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice. “You will know.” He pulled her to her feet and pointed the direction to the farm he had mentioned. She wiped one hand upon her trousers, cradling the other in her shirt, and awkwardly tied back her hair. Proom had his head cocked in question, and she nodded to him. Yes. She wanted the shadowpeople to come with her. No further word or action was needed. They were packed and ready to go within moments.

  

 She found the farm without trouble. The farm wife heard her out, then went to the paddock and whistled to a sleek brown horse which came to her hand, nuzzling her and her pockets.

  

 “Prettyfoot,” cooed the wife. “Will she carry the nice lady and her pet? Hmmm? High Wizard wants us to help the nice lady. Will Prettyfoot do that? Oh, wuzzums, she will, won’t she?”

  

 Mavin stared in astonishment at this, but Proom—the only one of the shadowpeople to have accompanied her into the yard—stood nose to nose with Prettyfoot and seemed to sort the matter out. The farm wife went so far as to try to pet him. Proom growled deep in his throat, and her gesture became a quick pat of Prettyfoot instead.

  

 “She’ll go best for you at an easy jog,” she said, suddenly all business. “Not fast, but steady. When you’re arrived where you’re going, turn her loose and she’ll find her way back to me. I trust you not to abuse her, woman, you and your pet. The High Wizard has not often asked a favor before, though we owe him much at this farmstead.”

  

 Mavin promised, helped with the saddle and bridle, and got herself and Proom astride, Proom bounding up and down behind her, making her dizzy by tugging at her sides. Then they were away, and Mavin merely sat still while Prettyfoot jogged off toward the north, tirelessly, and happily for all Mavin could tell. They stopped briefly only once, to drink from a streamlet they crossed, and it was still early afternoon when she saw an aerie towering above a low hill. If she were to talk of threats from the north, she would have to arrive from the north, so she circled widely to the east before dismounting, tying the reins loosely to the saddle and patting Prettyfoot on her glossy flanks. The little horse shook her head and cantered back the way she had come, seemingly still untired. Mavin memorized the animal’s shape. It was one she thought she might have use for in the future.

  

 She left Proom in the trees with a stern injunction to stay where he was. Previous experience had taught her to verify this, and she walked part of the distance to the tower backwards, making sure he was not following her. She had no doubt the rest of his family would be with him by the time she returned. If she were able to return. She was staggering rather badly, and her arm felt like a stone weight.

  

 The fortress was as she had seen it last, brooding upon its high plinth, the sun flashing from the narrow windows, the stairway making a pit of darkness into the stone. She approached it as she had before, hammering upon the heavy door with her good hand, hearing the blammm, blammm, blammm echo up the stony corridors within. It was some time before there were other sounds, pattering, creaking, and then the squeak of a peephole opening like an eyelid in the massive wood.

  

 “I come with an important warning for the High Wizard Chamferton,” she intoned in her most officious voice, somewhat handicapped by the fact that the world was whirling around her. “Tell him Mavin is here.”

  

 “Babble babble, Wizard not at home, babble, grumph, go away.”

  

 “When he learns you have disregarded my warning, he will want to know the name of the person who told me to go away. I have no doubt he will repay you properly.” She saw two faces at the peek hole but knew there was only one person there. She held up one finger and saw two. “Healer,” she begged silently. “Please be at home.”

  

 Scuttle from inside, a whiny voice trailing away into distant silence, then the approach of heavier feet. “What do you want?”

  

 “I bring a warning for the High Wizard. First, however, I must make use of his Healer.”

  

 The door creaked reluctantly open. “High Wizard isn’t here.”

  

 “The High Wizard is somewhere,” Mavin snarled. “I have no doubt you know where to find him. Best you do so very quickly. Before giving the message, however, I need to see the Healer. Now!”

  

 Orders were shouted in a surly voice. A search took place. There was running to and fro and disorderly complaints. “Is she in the orchard? Beggle says look in the melon patch. Get Wazzle to come up here.”

  

 Mavin sat herself wearily. The world kept fading and returning. At last they found her. Mavin retreated with her into the privacy of a side room, pulling the door firmly shut behind her.

  

 “Harpy bit?” the Healer questioned. “Nasty. Here, give me your hand.”

  

 “Arkhur sent me,” whispered Mavin, dizzy, distracted, sure there were ears pressed to the door.

  

 “Ahhh,” murmured the Healer, gratified and moist about the eyes. “Is he well?”

  

 “Now he is. Now that his Face is taken down from its pole.”

  

 “That is good news. Be still, please. I am finding the infection.” She nodded at the door, indicating listeners. Mavin sat back and relaxed. There were a few peaceful moments during which the pain lessened, becoming merely a slight twinge, a memory of pain. The throbbing which had pounded in her ears was gone. She sighed, deeply, as though she had run for long leagues.

  

 Then they had done holding hands. The Healer passed her fingers across the wound, already half healed, then across those shallow scrapes around Mavin’s ears. These, too, she Healed, making them tingle briefly as though some tiny, marvelous creature moved about raking up the injured parts and disposing of them.

  

 “Now, what’s afoot?” the Healer asked, brushing the tips of her fingers together as though to brush away the ills she had exorcised. “What can I do?”

  

 “A message must be sent to ... the High Wizard Chamferton telling him his demesne is attacked from the north.” This was loudly said.

  

 “Ah. Do we know who attacks?”

  

 “The attacker is unspecified,” murmured Mavin. Better let Dourso respond to some unknown threat than discount a threat he might know to be false. Loudly: “Unspecified but imminent. He should return here as soon as possible.”

  

 “A messenger sent to him now will reach him by dusk. If he left there at once, the ... High Wizard might return here by midnight.”

  

 “Whatever,” Mavin yawned. “Now, if you have no further need of me, I will take my leave. Send the message quickly, please. Much may depend upon it.”

  

 The Healer gave her one keen glance, then moved away, opened her door to give firm orders to some, quick instructions to others. As Mavin left the place she saw two riders hastening away south in a cloud of dust. She rubbed her face. The area around her ears itched a little, and she smoothed her hair across it self-consciously. Shifters did not make much use of Healers. It had not been as bad an experience as she had thought.

  

 Proom was where she had left him, Proom and his family and his friends. A much wider circle of friends than heretofore. They seemed to enjoy the afternoon, though most of it was spent watching Mavin sleep and explaining to the newcomers that this was, in fact, the Mavin of which many things were sung. Undoubtedly something of interest would occur very soon, and the newcomers were urged to pay close attention. Mavin heard none of it. She had decided to sleep the afternoon away in order to be up and watching at midnight

  

 Night fell, and there was a foray for provisions followed by small fires and feasting. Smoke rose among the trees, dwindled to nothing and died. Mavin rose and led the shadowpeople forth to find a good view of the aerie. Even as they settled upon their perch, Dourso came clattering up to the fortress with Valdon and Valdon’s men making a considerable procession upon the road, two baggage wagons bringing up the rear. A large, grated gate opened at ground level to admit the wagons, the horses and most of the men. Valdon and Dourso climbed to the door Mavin had used, and not long afterward she saw lights in the highest room of the tower.

  

 “May neither of them have time to get their breath back,” Mavin intoned, almost enjoying herself. She had found a grassy hollow halfway up the outcropping on which the aerie stood. She could see the road, the aerie, the doorway—even the roof of the melon patch gleaming a glassy silver in the moonlight. “Now Dourso will be looking north to see what comes.” She sipped at the wine the Healer had given her, offering some to Proom. He took a tiny taste and handed it back, nose wrinkled in disgust. “Well, beastie,” she commented, “to each his own taste. I’ve never really liked those stewed ferns everyone cooks each spring, though most people consider them delicious. Now. What’s that upon the road?”

  

 It was an ashen shadow, a bit of curdled fog, a drift of clotted whey. It moved not with any steady deliberation but in a slow, vacillating surge, like the repeated advance of surf which approaches and withdraws only to approach once more. Though Mavin sharpened her eyes, she could see no detail. It came closer with each passing moment, the shadowpeople staring at it with equal intensity.

  

 “Lala perdum, dum, dum,” Proom whisper-sang. “Ala, la perdum.”

  

 “I don’t know what perdum is.” Mavin stroked him. “But I’m sure we’re going to find out.”

  

 “Perdum.” Proom shivered as he climbed into Mavin’s lap. She had seen him thus disturbed only once before, many years ago in the labyrinth under Hell’s Maw, and she closed her arms protectively around him. “It’s all right, Proom. Whatever it is, it isn’t coming for us.”

  

 The cloud came nearer, still in its clotted, constant surge and retreat. She peered in the dim light, suddenly knowing what it was. “Faces,” she cried. “All the Faces. There must be thousands of them. And they have their eyes open!”

  

 Through the milky cloud she could make out Arkhur’s form on horseback, with the striding Harpy behind him as he set the pace for the floating Faces in their multitude. Proom whispered from her lap, a hushed, horrified voice. She could see why. The mouths of the Faces were open as well, hungering.

  

 From the high tower the northern windows flashed with light, now, again, again. Whoever watched from there did not see the threat approaching on the southern road. Mavin had time to wonder how the Faces would assault the fortress, or whether they would simply besiege the place. She did not wonder long. The cloud began to break into disparate bits, a hundred Faces there, a dozen here, here a line trailing off up the stony plinth like a dim necklace of fog, there a small cloud gathering at the foot of the great door. There was no frustration of their purpose. The door presented no barrier to their paper thinness. They slipped beneath it easily, as elsewhere they slipped through windows and under casements, between bars and through minute cracks in stone. Within moments all were gone.

  

 Silence.

  

 Silence upon the height, the light still flashing to the north.

  

 Silence within the aerie, the stables, the armories.

  

 And then tumult! Screams, shouts, alarm bells, the shrill wheeing of a whistle, the crashing sound of many doors flung open as people tried to flee.

  

 Did flee. Down the steps of the fortress, out of the great gates. Beating with arms and hands as though at a hive of attacking bees while the Faces clustered thickly upon those arms, those hands, around mouths, clamped upon throats. A man ran near the hollow where Mavin sat, screaming a choked command as a Face tried to force its way into his throat. It was Valdon, all his arrogant dignity gone, all his Princely power shed, running like an animal while the Faces sucked at him with pursed, bloody lips, to be struck aside, only to return smiling with manic pleasure as they fastened upon him once more.

  

 Mavin turned away, unsure whether she was fascinated or sick. On the flat below ran a half-dozen others, Dourso among them, so thickly layered with Faces it was only their clothes which identified them. Some of Valdon’s men. Some of Dourso’s. Yet even as these ran and choked and died beneath the Faces, others walked untouched. The Healer, quiet in her white robes, came down the steps to stretch her hand toward Arkhur, to cling first to his hand and then to his body as though she had not thought ever to see him again. So, thought Mavin. So that is what that is all about. Something in her ached, moved by that close embrace.

  

 Valdon had fallen. One by one the Faces peeled away, eyes closed once more, mouths shut. Misty on the air they hung, fading, becoming a jelly, a transparency, a mere disturbance of sight and then nothing. Unable to stop herself, she went to the place the body lay, prodded it with her foot. It swayed like a bundle of dried leaves, juiceless, lifeless.

  

 “There are two ways to dispose of the Faces,” said Chamferton’s voice from behind her. “To dissolve them in running water, or to let them regain whatever life was taken from them. Come in and we will see what has been done.” He turned toward the fortress and Mavin followed, the shadowpeople staying close by her feet. The Harpy stalked behind them without a sound, but still Mavin shuddered to come near her. They passed up the great stairs, through the door, down a long, echoing corridor to stop before a narrow door behind an iron grate. On this door, Chamferton knocked slowly.

  

 “Who’s there,” quavered an old voice. “Who is it there?”

  

 “Who is it there?” Chamferton responded.

  

 “I?” asked the weak old voice, wonderingly. “I? Why I am Rose-love of Betand ...”

  

 Behind them the Harpy slumped dead to the floor.

  

 “What’s in there?” asked Mavin, not really wanting to know.

  

 “The tombs of my demesne,” said Chamferton. “Healer? Will you have her taken out of there and up to her sister’s room? Chances are she will not live out a year, but such time as it is, it is hers. Recovered from Dourso’s blood and bone.

  

 “None of the Faces has lost life. The Faces themselves are gone. Valdon and Dourso are dead. Foulitter is dead. Only Pantiquod was left behind at the lake, and she fled before I could bind her. I believe she has gone to the south, Mavin. It is unlikely she will return to the north.”

  

 Mavin heard him without hearing him. She wanted to believe what he said.

  

 They found the room Mavin remembered from her prior visit, and there were summoned the people remaining in the place, many of them suffering from wounds or minor enchantments. Some were Healed, some disenchanted, wine was brought, and while the shadowpeople roamed about the room, poking into everything—surprisingly free of the place, inasmuch as Mavin had never seen them enter human habitation before—Chamferton turned the talk to Singlehorn.

  

 “It will be a search of many days, I fear,” he said in a tired voice, obviously not relishing further travel. She saw the way his eyes searched the shelves, the corners, knowing that he found it defiled and would not be content until he could replace it as it had been. “A search of many days.”

  

 “No,” Mavin said. “It shouldn’t take that long. I could find him almost at once if I could only tell the shadowpeople what he looks like. I can convey only so much in mime. Trying to describe the beast is beyond me.”

  

 The Healer had followed all this with interest, though never moving from Chamferton’s side. For his part, he seemed to be conscious of her presence as he might be conscious of his own feet or ears, giving her no more of his attention than he paid those useful parts. She laid her hand on his arm.

  

 “Old Inker is still here, Arkhur. Couldn’t he do a picture for the little people?”

  

 So in the end it was very simple. Mavin described while an old, sleepy man drew a picture, this way and that until he had it right; then he put it in her hand and staggered back to his bed.

  

 “I will come with you,” offered Chamferton without enthusiasm, examining a pile of books.

  

 “No,” she said, knowing he would be little help. If he came with her, his mind would be here. “The shadowpeople will find him. I have only to follow. But I would like to know one thing, High Wizard, before I go.”

  

 “If I know whatever it is.”

  

 “What is the tower? The one where you were dropped? What are the shadows? Why did Himaggery want to find it, and how did he get in without being eaten?”

  

 He stared at her for such a time that she felt he had stopped seeing her, but she stood under that gaze neither patiently or impatiently, merely waiting. Proom and his people were lying quietly about, silent for once, perhaps composing a song to memorialize the destruction of the Lake of Faces.

  

 When he replied it was not in the ponderous, Wizardly voice she had begun to associate with him. It was rather doubtful, tentative.

  

 “Do not talk of it, Mavin. When Himaggery is brought back to himself, discourage him from having interest in it. Though I have read much, studied much, I understand very little. I will say only this ...

  

 “Before men came to this world—or to this part of the world, I know not which—there were others here. There was a balance here. You may say it was a balance between shadow and light, though I do not think what I speak of can be described in such simple terms. One might as well say power and weakness, love and hate. Of whatever kind, it was a balance.

  

 “There was a symbol of that balance. More than a symbol; a key, a talisman, an eidolon. A tower. In the tower a bell which cannot ring alone. Ring the bell of light, and the shadow bell will sound. Ring the shadow bell and the daylight bell will resonate. So was the balance kept. Until we came. Then ... then something happened. Something withdrew from this world or came into it. The tower disappeared or was hidden. The bell was muffled ...

  

 “An imbalance occurred. Does the real tower still exist? Is the bell only muffled? Or destroyed? Does something now ring the shadow bell, something beyond our understanding?

  

 “Mavin, do not speak of this. In time the balance must be restored or the world will fail. But I think the time is not now, not yet. Any who attempt it now are doomed to death, to be shadow-eaten. So—when you have brought Himaggery to his own once more, do not let him seek the tower.”

  

 Mavin heard him out, not understanding precisely what he attempted to say—and knowing that he understood it no better than she—yet assured by her own sight and hearing that he spoke simple truth as it could be perceived by such as they. She, too, had seen the shadows. She, too, had heard the sound of their presence. It was not the time.

  

 “I will remember what you say, Arkhur,” she promised him. Then she took leave of the Healer, accepting many useful gifts, and went out into the dawn.

  

 CHAPTER EIGHT

  

 At Chamferton’s invitation—though it was actually the Healer who thought of it—Mavin took several horses from the stable beneath the rock. None was the equal of Prettyfoot, but any at all would be easier than walking. She rode one and led three, the three ridden—or better, she thought, say “inhabited”—by Proom and his people. They did not so much ride as swarm over, up and down legs, around and across backs. The horses, at first much astonished and inclined to resentment, were petted into submission. Or perhaps talked into submission. Mavin had a sneaky belief surpported by considerable evidence that Proom spoke horse as well as fustigar, owl, flitchhawk, and a hundred other languages.

  

 She showed Proom the picture of Singlehorn only after they had found the place from which the Fon-beast had bolted, a place in the woods still some distance northwest of the Lake of Faces (former Lake of Faces, Mavin said to herself, trying to think of a good name for it now). He looked at it with obvious amusement, then passed it around to the accompaniment of much discursive lalala, snatching it back when one infant attempted to eat it.

  

 The search was immediately in motion, with a dozen shadowpeople up as many trees, all twittering into the spring noonday. They descended after a time to swarm over their steeds once more, pointing away to the west and urging Mavin to come along. Calls kept coming throughout the afternoon, always from the west, as they proceeded into the evening until the forest aisles glowed before them in long processionals of sun and shade, the sky pink and amber, flecked with scaly pennants of purple cloud. None of them had slept for a full day and night. Though the guiding song had not yet fallen silent there was general agreement—not least among the horses—that it was suppertime.

  

 They built a small fire and ate well, for the Healer had sent packed saddlebags with them, bags full of roast meat and cheese, fresh baked bread and fruit from Chamferton’s glasshouses.Then they curled to sleep—except that they did not sleep. The shadowpeople were restless, getting up again and again to move around the mossy place they had camped upon, full of aimless dialogue and fractious small quarrels. Finally, just as Mavin had begun to drift away, one of them cried a sharp, low tone of warning which brought all of them up to throw dirt upon the coals of the fires.

  

 “Sssss,” came Proom’s hiss, and a moment later tiny fingers pressed upon her lips.

  

 It took time to accustom her eyes to the dark, though she widened them as much as she could to peer upward in the direction all the little faces were turned, ears spread wide, cocked to catch the least sound.

  

 Then she heard it. The high, shrill screech of a lone Harpy. A hunting cry.

  

 “Pantiquod,” she whispered, questioning their fright.

  

 “Sssss,” from Proom. A shadowperson was pouring the last of Mavin’s wine on the fire while others peed upon it intently, dousing every spark and drowning the smoke.

  

 “Why this fear?” she asked herself silently. “They played tag with Foulitter upon the hill near the lake. They led her into a trap without a moment’s hesitation, yet now they are as fearful as I have ever seen them.”

  

 The horses began an uneasy whickering, and a dozen of the little people gathered around them, talking to them, urging some course of action upon them and reinforcing it with much repetition. Mavin did not understand their intention until the horses trotted away into the darkness, returning as they had come.

  

 “No!” she objected. “I need ...”

  

 “Ssss,” demanded Proom, his hands tightening on her face.

  

 Then she saw them. A line of black wings crossing the moon, beat on beat, as though they breathed in unison, moving from the northeast. From that purposeful line fell a single hunting call, as though only a lone Harpy hunted there upon the light wind. Beat on beat the wings carried them overhead, and as they passed directly overhead Mavin heard a low, ominous gabble as from a yard of monstrous geese.

  

 They waited in silence, not moving, scarcely breathing. After a long time, Mavin tried again. “Pantiquod?”

  

 Proom showed his teeth in a snarl. “Perdum, lala, thossle labala perdum.”

  

 “Perdum,” she agreed. “Danger.” The little ones took this word and tried it out, “ger, ger, ger,” decided they did not like it. “Perdum,” they said, being sure all of them were in accord. Mavin thought not for the first time that she must learn Proom’s language. Perhaps—perhaps there would be a time of peace while she waited for her child to be born. Perhaps then. She considered this possibility with surprising pleasure. It was ridiculous not to be able to talk together.

  

 Be that as it may, she could appreciate the danger. One Harpy could be teased, baffled, led on a chase. Perhaps two or three could be tricked or avoided. But more than that? All with poisonous teeth and clutching talons? No doubt Pantiquod had learned of Foulitter’s death and was out for vengeance. “Fowl, bird-brained vengeance,” she punned to herself, trying to make it less terrible. Proom had sent the horses away because they were large enough to be seen from the skies. So long as those marauders ranged the air, travel would have to be silent, sly, hidden beneath the boughs. She hoped that Singlehorn was not far from them and had not chosen to wander down into the plains or river valleys where there would be no cover.

  

 At last, having worried about all this for sufficient time, she slept.

  

 Proom shook her awake at first light, and they made a quick, cold breakfast as they walked. The twittered directions came less frequently today, and more briefly. Obviously other shadowpeople went in fear of the Harpies as well. Rather than travel today in a compact group, they went well scattered among the trees, avoiding the occasional clearings and open valleys. When it was necessary to cross such places, they searched the air first, peering from the edges of the trees, then dashed across, a few at a time. Mavin judged that the Harpies were too heavy to perch at the tops of trees—and the thought made her remember the broken vine outside her window at Chamferton’s castle—but they could find suitable rest on any rock outcropping or cliff. Proom, well aware of this, kept them far from such places, and they did not see the hunters during the daylight hours.

  

 Nor did they see Singlehorn. That night as they ate another cold meal without the comfort of fire, Mavin remembered that forlorn, bugling call the Fon-beast had sent after the Band as it marched away west. If Singlehorn were following the Band, then he might be moving ahead of them at their own speed. If that were the case, they might not catch up with him until he came to the sea, a discouraging thought. Though the shadows had little interest in him in his present shape, she wondered if the Harpies did.

  

 At midnight she woke to the sound of that lone, hunting cry. There was an overcast, and she could not tell if there were more than one. Around her, the shadowpeople moved restlessly in their sleep.

  

 So they went on. On the third night nothing disturbed them. Proom began to be more his usual self, full of prancing and jokes. The fourth and fifth night passed with no alarms. Mavin had convinced herself that the Harpy flight coming so close to her own path was mere coincidence. As Chamferton had said, Pantiquod had likely gone south to Bannerwell by now. Or somewhere else where her habits and appetites could be better satisfied.

  

 They began to travel on the road which they had paralleled for many leagues. Now they came out upon it, staying close to the edge, still with some nervous scanning of the skies. They could move faster on this smooth surface, and by the time the sixth night fell, Mavin smelled the distant sea.

  

 And on the following morning, a friendly family of shadowpeople drove Singlehorn into their camp, head hanging, coat dusty and dry, tongue swollen in a bleeding mouth. The broken strap of the halter still hung from his head, making small, dragging serpents’ trails in the dust. Mavin lifted Fon-beast’s head and looked into dull, lifeless eyes. She growled in her throat, hating herself for having wanted him gone. There were swollen sores around his ears, and remembering her own pain and the gentleness of the Healer, Mavin cursed her impatience with him. And with herself, she amended. It was not the Fon-beast himself, but her feelings about him that disturbed her. “I will forget all that,” she resolved in a fury of contrition. “I will forget all that and concentrate on taking care of him until we get to Windlow’s.”

  

 They gave him water. She squeezed rainhat fruits into his mouth. Obviously he had not eaten well in the days he had been gone, or rather he had tried to graze on common grasses. Though he thought himself a grazing beast, the grasses had not been fooled. They had cut his mouth and tongue until both were swollen and infected. Mavin made a rich broth of some of the meat they had carried and dropped this into his mouth from a spoon while infant shadowpeople rubbed his dusty hide with bundles of aromatic leaves.

  

 She had not noticed that Proom had left until he returned with a group of the older shadowpeople carrying bags full of herbs and growths, most of which she had never seen before. These were compounded by the tribe in accordance with some recipe well known to them all. It resulted in a thick, green goo which Proom directed be plastered around Singlehorn’s mouth and upon the open sores. Some of it trickled into the Fon-beast’s mouth as well, and Mavin was restrained from wiping it away. Finally, when everything had been done for him that anyone could think of, she covered him with her cloak and lay down beside him. After a time the smell of the herbs and the warmth of the day made them all drowsy—they had been much awake during the past nights—and they slept once more.

  

 When they awoke in the late afternoon, the Singlehorn was on his feet, pawing at the ground with one golden hoof, nodding and nodding as though in time to music. Dried shreds of the green goo clung around his mouth and ears. Beneath this papery crust the flesh was pink and healthy-looking, the swelling reduced; and while his eyes were still tired, he did not look so hopeless. There was a pool a little distance away, and while the shadowpeople yawned and stirred, readying for travel, Mavin led him there. She let him out to the length of the new rope she had tied to his halter but did not release him. “No more running away,” she said firmly. “Whatever I may feel about this whole business, Fon-beast, however impatient it makes me, we are bound together until we reach safety.” And to herself, she said, “And when we reach Windlow’s—then we’ll see if there is a true tie between us.”

  

 Singlehorn, rolling in the shallow water, tossing his head and drinking deep draughts of cool liquid, did not seem to care. She let him roll, unaware of the sun falling in the west, enjoying the peace of the moment. When she returned to the road, the shadowpeople were gone.

  

 “Hello?” she cried. “Proom?”

  

 Only silence. Perhaps a far-off twitter.

  

 “Goodbye?” she called.

  

 No answer. Well. They had observed and assisted while Mavin had done several interesting things. They had introduced their children to this person. They had, perhaps, made a new song or two—the Lake of Faces was surely good for at least a brief memorial—but now the shadowpeople had business of their own. Mavin had found the creature she sought, and now they might be about their own affairs. She sought the edges of the road for any sign, any trail, but saw nothing.

  

 Nothing ...

  

 Except a grayness lying quiet beneath a tree. And another superimposed in fluttering flakes upon a copse, wavering the light which passed through it so it seemed to shift and boil.

  

 Her soul fell silent. Shadows from the tower come to haunt her once more. Not upon the road, which still prevented their presence, but nearby. Perhaps the shadowpeople had been shadow-bane, but without them the bane prevailed no longer.

  

 There was nothing for it except to get on to the south. They must come to Tarnoch at last, or so far from the tower that the shadows would give up. Though what they would give up, or how they were here, she could hardly imagine. Was it she who drew them, or Singlehorn? Were they set to follow any who left the Dervish’s valley? And if so, until when? Until what happened? Perhaps this was only conjecture. Perhaps they had not followed at all but were everywhere, always, ubiquitous as midges.

  

 To which an internal voice said, Nonsense. You have not seen them in your former travels because they were not in this part of the world before. Now they are, because they have followed you here from the Dervish’s valley. But follow you where they will, they did not harm you when you were with the shadowpeople, and they do not harm you if you stay upon the road.

  

 As she walked away, leading Singlehorn, it was to the steady double beat of those words; the road, the road, the road. “On the road, the old road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone. One, two, three, four, five ...” When she reached one thousand she began again. “Shadow bell rang in the dark, daylight bell the dawn. In the tower hung the bells, now the tower’s gone.”

  

 Why a stone tower? Was it important? She hummed the words, thinking them in her head, then saw all at once how thickly the shadows lay, how closely to the road, how they piled and boiled as she sang.

  

 Gamelords! Was that verse of the weird runners a summoning chant? It could be!

  

 Sing something else. Anything. A jumprope chant. “Dodir of the Seven Hands, a mighty man was he; greatest Tragamor to live beside the Glistening Sea. Dodir raised a mountain up, broke a mountain down. See the house where Dodir lives, right here in our town. One house, two house, three house, four house ...”

  

 The shadows were not interested in this. They dwindled, becoming mere gray opacities, without motion beneath the softly blowing trees.

  

 “Dodir of the Seven Hands, a mighty man to know, every tree in shadowmarch, he laid out in a row. One tree, two tree, three tree, four tree ...”

  

 It was true. The shadows were fewer. “Well, Mavin,” she said, “Chamferton told you not to think of it, so best you not think of it. Sing yourself something old and bawdy from Danderbat Keep or old and singsongy from childhood, and keep moving upon the southern way.” She soothed herself with this, and had almost reached a comfortable frame of mind when she heard the scream, high and behind her. She spun, searching the air, seeing clearly the dark blot of Harpy wings circling upon a cloud.

  

 Pantiquod had found her at last.

  

 Oh, damn, and devils, and pombi-piss. And damn you, Chamferton, that you let her get away.

  

 And damn you, Himaggery. Damn you, Fon-beast. I should raise you out of that shape and let you fight for yourself. Why must I do everything for you?

  

 The Harpy circled lazily and turned away north. Mavin knew she would return. That had done it! There was no way she could face even one Harpy without Shifting. Being Harpy bit taught that. Even a scratch could be deadly. There being no help for it, she went on walking, singing over in her head every child’s song she remembered, every chanty learned in the sea villages, even the songs of the root-walkers she had learned in the deep chasm of the western lands across the sea, and these led her to thoughts of Beedie which led in turn to nostalgic longings to be wandering free again. She had not truly wandered free for five years, not since bringing Handbright’s babies back to her kin, and the longing to break away from the rigid edges of the road became almost hysteria by nightfall.

  

 Off the road, beneath the trees, her mind sang, shadows piled up to your knees. Safe from shadows on the road, and you’ll feel the Harpy’s goad. She had not seen Pantiquod again, but she knew the Harpy would return in the dark, or on the day which followed, and she would not return alone.

  

 “Now, Mavin,” she harangued herself angrily, “this hysteria does not become you. Were you nothing but Shifter all these years? Were you a Talent only, with no mind or soul to call upon except in a twist of shape? Your Shiftiness is still there, may still be used if we need it. It is not lost to us, but by all the hundred devils, at least try to figure out if we’re Shifty enough without it. So, stop this silliness, this girlish fretting and whining and use your eyes, woman. Think. Do.”

  

 The self-castigation was only partly effective. She tried to imagine it having been administered by someone else—Windlow, perhaps. That lent more authority, and she forced herself to plan. There were narrow alternatives. If she stayed upon the road to be protected from shadows, she would be exposed to the air. However! “We came a long way from the Dervish’s valley to this road, and though the shadows swarmed all about us, we were not hurt. Use your head, woman!”

  

 She set herself to watch the shadows instead of ignoring them. How did they lie? How did they move? She watched them for many long leagues, and it seemed to her they moved only in random ways, piling here and there, singly here and there, floating like fragments of gray glass between copses and hills. She tried to foretell where floating flakes would fell. Beneath that tree or upon that clump? Upon the other shadow, or beside it? Where that flock of birds sought seeds among the hedgerows, or beyond them? After a time, she thought she was beginning to be able to predict where the shadow would fell. There was a strange, hazy pattern, if not to their movement, at least to their disposition upon the earth.

  

 If there were any sizeable living thing—any bird or small beast, the shadow would not descend upon that place but in a place near adjacent. The large the animal or bird, the more thickly the shadows would pile around it, but never upon it and never completely surrounding it. There was always a way out, a trail of light leading through the dark. She remembered the bird upon the hill. The shadow had not fallen upon it. The shadow had lain there, waiting—waiting for the bird to intrude upon the shadow. And then ...

  

 Himaggery had intruded upon the shadow. So said the Dervish.

  

 So had the drugged Chamferton, presumably, though in such a condition that the shadows had not recognized him as a living thing. She saw that the shadows did not seem to bother very small forms of life—beetles and worms went their way beneath the shadow undisturbed.

  

 But larger creatures near which the shadows fell almost always chose the unshadowed way as they hopped about, even when that way was very hard to see—as when the sun was hidden behind clouds, or when the haze of dusk made all things gray and shadowlike.

  

 So. So. One could walk, if one were careful, among the shadows. One could walk, if one were alert, safely away from the road. She stopped to get food from her pack, to feed Singlehorn, all the time keeping her eyes fixed upon patches of gray in a little meadow to the west of the road. There were gobble-mole ditches druggled through the meadow, dirt thrown up on either side in little dikes, a shower of earth flying up from time to time to mark the location of the mole as it druggled for beetles and worms and blind snakes. The tunnel wound its way among the shadows as though the mole had a map in his snout which told him where they lay.

  

 Could the shadows be sensed in some other way than sight? Perhaps even in the dark? Did they exist in the dark? If one were unaware of the shadows, would one find a safe way among them, without even knowing it? Useless consideration, of course. She did know about them, all too well. But did Harpies—ah, yes, she thought—did Harpies know about the shadows?

  

 Dusk came at last, but well before that she chose the place they would spend the night; a half cave beneath a stone which bulged up from moss and shrub into a curled snout. Shadows lay about it, true, but not in it, and a tiny pool of rainwater had collected at the foot of the stone. They would be comfortable enough, well fed enough, with water to drink and to wash away the dust of the road. They would be unseen from above also, and could lie quiet against the stone, invisible beneath the mixed browns and grays of Mavin’s cloak. Deep in the night she awoke to the first Harpy’s cry. Now the variety of cries was unmistakable; the Harpies had returned in force. Why they flew at night she could not tell, unless they relied upon some other sense than sight to find their quarry. Perhaps they, like the huge ogre-owl of the southern ice, cried out to frighten and then struck at the sound of things which fled. Perhaps they did it only to terrify.

  

 “It won’t work on me, Pantiquod,” she said between gritted teeth. “Go eat a Ghoul or two and die of indigestion.” Ignoring the feet that her nails had bitten bloody holes into her palms, she forced herself to sleep. When next she opened her eyes it was day.

  

 Dull day, overcast day, day in which nothing moved and no shadow could be seen against the general murk. She stood at the mouth of the cave, refusing to feel hopeless about the matter but tired beyond belief, wondering what path they might take back to the road. “No panic,” she grated. “No hysterics. Quiet. Sensible. You can camp here for days if need be ...”

  

 She drew the Singlehorn close beside her, feeding him from her hand. “Fon-beast, sit here by me and keep me warm. We must take our time this morning. I have trapped us by being clever. We must spy out a path.”

  

 Which they did, little by little, over the course of an hour, spying where moles moved in the grass, where birds hopped about, where a bunwit mother ran a set of quick diagonals, her two furry kits close behind. They stepped onto the road at last, Mavin with a feeling of relief, the Singlehorn placidly walking behind her. Twice during the afternoon Mavin thought she heard Harpies screaming, but the sound came from above the overcast, remote and terrible, making the Singlehorn flinch and shy against the halter as though he connected that cry with pain.

  

 Toward evening the sky began to clear; and by dusk it held only a few scattered traces of cloud, tatters of wet mist upon the deeper blue. They came to the top of a rise which overlooked a league or more of road, endless undulations of feathery forest, and to the west the encroaching blue of the sea. Mavin began to put landmarks together in her mental map of the area. Schlaizy Noithn lay to the east. Below them the coast began its great eastward curve, and several days to the south they would come to Hawsport, lying at the mouth of the River Haws, full of little boats and the easy bounty of the ocean. Her heart began to lift as she thought of protective roofs and solid inns, sure that the shadows could not gather thickly where there were so many men.

  

 Her elation lasted only for a few golden moments, long enough to make one smothered cry of joy and draw the Fon-beast close to surprise him with a kiss. Then the cry came from the sky behind her, triumphant and terrifying. The Harpies once more.

  

 Harpies. Many more than one. They would not give her time to reach Hawsport and safety. They had played with her long enough, followed her long enough, and now that she was almost within sight of safety they were readying for the kill.

  

 The kill.

  

 Which she might defeat, even now, by Shifting into something huge and inexorable. They were still circling, still flying to get above her. There were a few moments yet. There was time, still, to gain enough bulk for that. Tie the Fon-beast somewhere hidden. Retrieve him later. Build oneself into a wall of flesh which could gather in one Harpy, or a dozen, or a hundred if need be.

  

 An easy, accustomed thing to do.

  

 And then there might be no Himaggery’s child and her own.

  

 She considered this for some time. It was by far the easiest solution. Behind her, Singlehorn tapped the stones with his hooves, a jittery dance from one side of the road to the other. Mavin went on thinking, adding to a plan half formed the night before.

  

 “Himaggery,” she said at last. “This is as much your doing as mine, and you must share the risk. Come out, Himaggery.” She remembered the Dervish’s words: Make him hear you, and her voice was high-pitched in fear that she would not be able to, in haste and danger.

  

 But the Singlehorn reared to his hind legs, faded, took the form of the man she remembered, the face she had seen a thousand times in reveries, had imagined night and morning over twenty years. His face was full of confusion and doubt. Beyond him on the hillside the air was suddenly alive with shadows, boiling in a frenzy, collecting more thickly with every moment—as she had hoped.

  

 “Go back, Himaggery,” she commanded in a stentorian voice allowing only obedience. “Go back!” The man dropped to all fours to become the Fon-beast once more. It stood with its head dragging, discomfitted at this abrupt transformation. The shadows, seeming confused, piled in drifts at the side of the road. The Dervish had been right. The shadows had been seeking Himaggery, and now they were fully alerted to his presence. Her hazardous play depended totally upon what these alert and ravenous shadows would do now with any creature which intruded upon them.

  

 The Harpy cries came once more, nearer. Whirling around, she saw them descending from the north, close enough that she could recognize Pantiquod in the fore. The next step, she reminded herself. Quickly. Do not look at them, do not become fascinated by them. Do not think of them at all, only of what you must do next.

  

 She spun to search the area near the road. There had to be an appropriate battleground near the road, a patch now occupied by some living thing which the shadows had left clear. It had to be close! And it must have a clear trail of light back to the road. She searched frantically, hearing the sound of wings in the height, the cawing laughter of the Harpies as they circled, savoring their intended slaughter.

  

 There it was! A gameboard of light and shadow to the left of the road. A bunwit’s burrow in the light, the shadow piled deeply about it, alternate bits of shadow and light leading to it, jump, jump, jump. She pulled the Fon-beast close behind her—he unresisting but unhelpful, subdued, his usual grace gone, almost stumbling after her—hauling him by main strength to keep him away from the shadowed squares, only remembering when she straddled the burrow that she could have tethered him at the road. Well and well. No, the Harpies might have attacked him there. Here at least they stood together upon this tiny patch of sunlight surrounded by piled shadows on every side.

  

 She pushed him to the ground and stood astride him, bellowing a fishwife’s scream at the falling fury of wings. He lay dumbly, nose to the ground. “Ho, Pantiquod! Filthy chicken! Ugly bird! Die now as your foul daughter did, and her kin, and her allies. Come feel my claws ...”

  

 She had Shifted herself some claws and fangs, needing them badly and considering it no major thing. It was only fingers and teeth, nothing close to the center of her. If so little a thing could destroy the baby within—well, then so be it. Without this much, there would be no chance at all. She danced over the recumbent Singlehorn, screaming abuse at the skies, trying to make the women-creatures furious, frantic, mad with anger, so they would fall to encircle her, come to the ground to use their teeth and talons. They must not drop directly upon her if she could prevent it. She made a long arm to snatch up a heavy branch from the ground, whirling it above her head.

  

 She had succeeded in infuriating them. Their screams were shattering. They slavered and shat, the nastiness falling around her in a stinking rain. Their breasts hung down in great, dangling udders, swaying as they flew. Beneath Mavin’s knees the Fon-beast trembled at the sound of them, even dazed as he was, drawing his legs tight against his body, as though to get out of her way. Mavin whirled the branch above her and taunted them. “Filthy bird. Stinking fowl. Drag-breasted beast!”

  

 Directly above her, Pantiquod folded her wings and dropped like a flitchhawk. Remembering that other flitchhawk which had dropped upon her at the Lake of Faces, Mavin whirled the branch in a whistling blur of motion.

  

 The whirling branch stopped Pantiquod in her stoop, wings scooped back to break her fall. Around her the other Harpies touched ground, started to strike with talons and teeth only to stop, half crouched, mouths open, panting, panting. Almost all of them had landed in the shadow. Those few which had not beat their wings and leaped on storklike legs to come at Mavin, stepping across their sisters as they did so. Then they too squatted to pant, tongues hanging from wide-opened mouths before they turned their heads to bite at themselves. Then all but the one were so occupied.

  

 She, Pantiquod, was still in the air, still fluttering and screeching threats at Mavin, eyes so closely fixed upon her prey she had no sight to spare for her sisters.

  

 “Filthy chicken,” Mavin grated again from a dry throat. “Cowardly hen. When I have finished with you, I will seek out your other children and put an end to them ...” This broke the bonds of caution which had held the Harpy high, and she plummeted downward again like a falling stone.

  

 “Strike well, girl,” Mavin instructed herself, holding the branch as she had done as a child playing at wand-ball. The stink of the birds was in her nostrils. Her skin trembled with every moment. She gritted her teeth and ignored it. “Strike well ...” As it was, she waited almost too long, striking hard when the foul mouth was only an armspan from her face, swinging the branch with all her strength, unwinding herself like a great, coiled spring.

  

 The branch caught the Harpy full upon her chest. Mavin heard the bones break, saw the body fell away, half into the shadow. Only half. On the clear ground the head and feet. In the shadow the body and wings. Slowly, inexorably, while the mouth went on screeching and the talons grasped at nothing, the wings drew back into the shadow, back until they were covered.

  

 Mavin looked at her feet. She herself stood within the width of one finger from the shadow. Gulping deeply she drew herself away, drew the Fon-beast away, carefully, and slow step by slow step found a safe path back to the road.

  

 Once there she looked behind her, only once. The shadows were lifting lazily, as though well fed. Behind them on the grass the Harpies flopped, as headless chickens flop for a time, not knowing yet they are dead. Pantiquod was eating herself, and Mavin turned from that sight. Something within her wanted to call out, “Remember the plague in Pfarb Durim, Pantiquod? This is your payment for bringing that plague, Harpy!” She kept silent. She was sure that no creature within the shadow could hear any outside voice. She prayed she would never hear the voice that Pantiquod must be hearing; the voice of the shadow itself.

  

 For a long time she lay on the road, at first heaving and retching, then letting her stomach settle itself. The Fon-beast was utterly quiet, not moving at all except for a tiny tremor of the skin over his withers. At last she drank some water from her flask, gave the Singlehorn a mouthful from her palm, then went away down the long slope, pausing to rest once more at the bottom of it as she smelled the salt wind from the sea.

  

 After a time she raised her head, habit turning her eyes to inventory the shadows. She sought them first where they had been easiest to see, along the edges of the road. None. Reluctantly, she looked behind them, seeing whether the shadows followed them only now from that battlefield at the top of the hill. None beneath the trees, or on the stones of the hill. None moving through the air in that lazy glide she had learned to recognize.

  

 None. None at all.

  

 Well, Mavin thought, it is possible. Possible they sought a certain creature; possible they found that certain creature, thus triggering some kind of feeding frenzy. Then they had fed. Would the shadows know that the creature which triggered their frenzy was not the one they ate?

  

 Possibly not. Only possibly. Mavin wondered if they had really gone for good. She considered bringing Himaggery back again. She thought of it, meantime stroking the Fon-beast who had at last recovered his equanimity enough to tug at the halter, eager to be gone.

  

 “No, my love,” she said at last, patting him. “I can handle you better as you are. Let us come to Windlow’s place and ask his help before we risk anything more. Truth to tell, Singlehorn, I am mightily weary of this journey. In all my travels across the world, I have not been this weary before. I do not know whether it is the child, or my own doubts, or you, Fon-beast, and I do not want to blame you for my weariness.”

  

 Which I might do, Himaggery. Which I would do. She had said this last silently to herself, wary of using his name. She believed the shadows were gone, but she could be wrong. Himaggery had come out of the Fon-beast shape more easily than she had expected. She would not risk it again. It would be foolish to assume ... anything.

  

 “I will remember what you told me, Chamferton,” she vowed. “There is much I will tell Windlow when I see him at last, and there is much I will not tell Himaggery at all. Let him find some other quest to keep him busy.”

  

 They came into Hawsport on a fine, windy day, the wind straight across the wide bay from the west, carrying elusive hints of music; taran-tara and whompety-whomp. Singlehorn danced, tugging toward the shore to stand there feeing the waters, adding his own voice to the melodic fragments which came over the waves.

  

 Mavin bought meat and fruit in the market place, where children pursued the Fon-beast with offers of sweets and bits of fruit. “Is there a bridge south of here?” she asked the stallholder. “One which connects the shore with that long peninsula coming down from the north?”

  

 “Never was that I know of,” said the stallholder offhandedly, leering at her while his fingers strayed toward her thighs, making pinching motions.

  

 Mavin drew her knife to cut a segment from a ripe thrilp and did not replace it in her belt. The stallholder became abruptly busy sorting other fruit in the pile. “No bridge there,” he said, putting an end to the matter.

  

 “Oh, yes,” creaked someone from the back of the stall. “Oh, yes there was. It was built in my granddaddy’s time. My granddaddy worked on it himself. They took boatloads of rock out into that shallow water and made themselves piers, they did, and put the bridge on that. Fine it was to hear him tell of it, and I heard the story many times when I was no bigger than a bunwit. It had a gate in the middle, to let the boats out, and the people used to go across it to all the western lands ...”

  

 “What happened to it?” Mavin asked, ignoring the stallholder’s irritation at his kinswoman’s interruptions.

  

 “Storm. A great storm. Oh, that happened when I was a child. Sixty years ago? More than that even. Such a great storm nobody had seen the like before. Half of Hawsport washed away. They say whole forests came down in the east. Dreadful thing. My granddaddy said a moon fell down ...”

  

 “A moon fell down!” sneered the stallholder. “Why don’t you stop with the fairy tales, Grandma. I didn’t even know there was a bridge. Was you planning to go over there? My brother has a boat he rents out. Take you and the beast there in a day or so.” He leered again, less hopefully.

  

 “No,” Mavin told him with a measuring look. “Can’t you hear the music? The Band will need to get over here.”

  

 “The Band?” queried the old voice again. “Did you say Band? Oh, my granddaddy told me about the Band. They came through when my daddy was a boy. Before the storm, when I was just a babby, while the bridge was still there. My oh my, but I do wish I could see the Band.”

  

 “Since there is no bridge,” Mavin said, “I should imagine that if the fishermen of Hawsport were to sail over to the far side, they might find a full load of paying travelers to bring back. It’s only a suggestion, mind, but if the fishermen are not busy with their nets or hooks at the moment, and if they have nothing better to do ...”

  

 She was speaking to vacancy. The stallholder had hurried away toward the quay, shouting to a group of small boys to “Go find Bettener, and Surry Bodget and the Quire brothers ...”

  

 ‘“Tisn’t his brother’s boat at all,” quavered the old voice. “He only says that to save on taxes. Pity you told him about it. He’ll only cheat those Band people, whoever they are, and I would so liked to have seen the Band.”

  

 “That’s all right, Grandma,” Mavin soothed her. “The Band people have been traveling this world for a thousand years. They probably know tricks your grandson hasn’t thought of yet. There’s an old man named Byram with them. He probably remembers the moon falling down. I’ll bring him to meet you, and you two can talk about old times.”

  

 She wandered down to the shore, cutting bits of fruit for herself and for the Fon-beast, counting the little fishing boats which were setting out to sea. Not enough. They would have to make two trips or more. The far peninsula lay upon the horizon, a single dark line, as though inked in at the edge of the ocean. The boats were tacking, to and fro, to and fro. Well, say four or five days at the outside. Time enough to rest and eat kitcheny food. She fingered the coins in her pocket. Time enough to buy some clothing for herself. If she couldn’t Shift fur or feathers when she wished, then she would need more than the Dervish’s cast-offs to dress herself in. Time enough to let the Fon-beast finish healing. She stroked him, feeling his soft muzzle thrust up to nuzzle at her ear. Tempting. Very tempting.

  

 “Not until we get to Windlow’s,” she said, Sighing, she went to find an inn.

  

 CHAPTER NINE

  

 Mavin and the Singlehorn came to Windlow’s school early of a summer evening. Though the way had been wearying, there had been no fear or horror lately, and the companionship of the Band people had replaced fear and loneliness in both their minds. Singlehorn did not shy at the sound of hunting birds any longer. Mavin did not often wake in the night starting bolt upright from dreams of gray shadows and screaming Harpies. Night was simply night once more, and day was simply day. They had come down the whole length of the shoreline from Hawsport, past the Black Basilisk Demesne, and on south to the lands of Gloam where the road turned east once more. Thence they had come up long, sloping meadows to the uplands of Brox and Brom, and there Mavin had left the Band to turn northward along the headwaters of the Long Valley River.

  

 They left the river at last to climb eastward into the hills, and at some point in this journey, the Fon-beast began to lead them as though he knew where they were going. At least so Mavin supposed, letting him have his way. When they came over the last shallow rise looking down into Windlow’s valley, she recognized it at once. Though she had never seen it, Throsset had spoken of it, and Windlow himself had described it long ago in Pfarb Durim. There was the lone white tower, and there the lower buildings which housed the students and the servants. Even from the hill she could see the sparkle of light reflecting from a fountain in the courtyard and a shower of colorful blossoms spilling over the wall.

  

 Singlehorn gave an odd strangled but joyous call, and Mavin saw a small bent figure in the distant courtyard straighten itself and peer in their direction. Windlow was, after all, a Seer, she reminded herself. Perhaps he had expected them. If that were so, the tedious explanations she had dreaded might not be necessary. She had done things during the past season which she found it hard to justify to herself. She did not want to explain them to others.

  

 Fon-beast led the way down the hill, tugging at the rope. She pulled him up for a moment to take off the halter, letting him gallop away toward the approaching figure. Of course he was tired of being tied. So was she. It might have been only stubbornness on her part which had insisted upon it all those last long leagues, but she had not wanted to risk his running away again. Day after day when Singlehorn had looked at her plaintively, wanting to run with the children, she had refused him. “Not again, Fon-beast. I am weary of searching for you, so you must abide the rope for a time.”However, she had told herself, however, that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is you would go back to that same form with him, Mavin, if you could. “You must learn to abide it,” she had said aloud, ignoring the internal voices.

  

 In time he had learned to abide it. Now that time was done. She watched his grace of movement, the flowing mane, the silken hide, knowing she had appeared the same when they had been together. They had had perfection together. Was there anything else in life which would make the loss of that bearable?

  

 Well and no matter, she told herself. That person coming toward you is Windlow, and he is hastening his old bones at such a rate he may kill himself. Come, Mavin. Forget the past. Haste and put on a good face.

  

 So she greeted him, and was greeted by him, and told him what person lay beneath the appearance of Singlehorn and something of what had passed, saying no more than she had to say, and yet all in a tumble of confusing words. He passed his hand across his face in dismay. “But in my vision, long ago, I saw you together at Pfarb Durim!” He had aged since she saw him last, though his eyes were as keen as she remembered them.

  

 “I’m sorry, Windlow. It must have been a false vision. We did not meet in Pfarb Durim. We met in a place far to the north, of a strangeness you will not believe when I tell it to you over supper.”

  

 “And this is truly Himaggery?”

  

 “It truly is.”

  

 “Is he bound in this shape forever? Is it an enchantment we may ...”

  

 “No and yes, Windlow. I will bring him out of that shape as soon as you have heard what I must tell you.” And she stubbornly clung to that, though Windlow said he thought she might release Himaggery at once, and so did Boldery, who was there on a visit, and so did Throsset of Dowes who was likewise.

  

 “I will tell you,” she said to Windlow, granting no compromise. “And then I will release Himaggery and all of you may say whatever you like to him and may tell him everything he should know. When he has had a chance to think about it all—why, then he and I will talk ...”

  

 “I don’t understand,” said Boldery in confusion. “Why won’t she bring him back to himself now?”

  

 “Let her alone,” Throsset directed, unexpectedly. “I imagine she has had a wearying time. It will not matter in the long run.”

  

 So there was one more meal with Himaggery lying on the hearth in his Singlehorn guise during which Mavin told them all that she knew or guessed or had been told about Himaggery’s quest and subsequent captivity, carefully not telling them where the Dervish’s valley was, or what had happened to her there, or where she had seen the tower.

  

 “Chamferton says Himaggery must leave it alone,” she concluded. “I believe him. The shadows did seek Himaggery, and it was a great part luck and only by the narrowest edge that they did not eat us both. The shadows fed upon Pantiquod and her sisters and did not seem to know the difference, but I would not face such a peril again—not willingly.” The telling of it still had the power to bring it back, and her body shook again with revulsion and terror. Throsset put a hand upon hers, looking oddly at her, as though she had seen more than Mavin had said. Mavin put down her empty wineglass and rose to her feet, swaying a little at the cumulative effect of wine, weariness, and having attained the long awaited goal. Her voice was not quite steady as she said, “Now, I have told you everything, Windlow. I will do as I promised.”

  

 She laid her cheek briefly against Singlehorn’s soft nose. “Come out, Himaggery,” she said, turning away without waiting to see whether the words had any effect. She left the room, shutting the door, while behind her a man struggled mightily with much confusion of spirit and in answer to a beloved voice, to bring himself out of the Singlehorn form and to remain upright on tottery human legs. For Mavin, there was a soft bed waiting in a tower room, and she did not intend to get out of it for several days.

  

 The knock came on her door late, so late that she had forgotten what time it was or where she was, or that she was. Aroused out of dream, she heard the whisper, “Mavin, are you asleep?” and answered truthfully. “Yes. Yes I am.” Whoever it was went away. When she woke in the morning, very late, she thought it might have been Windlow. Or perhaps Himaggery.

  

 She had bought clothing in Hawsport, during the days spent there waiting for the Band to be ferried over from the peninsula. Skirts—she remembered skirts from Pfarb Durim a time before—and an embroidered tunic, cut low, and a stiff belt of gilded leather to make her waist look small, though indeed it was already tighter than when she had bought it. When she was fully awake—it might have been the following day or several days, she didn’t know—and after a long luxurious washing of body and hair, she dressed herself in this unaccustomed finery and went into Windlow’s garden.

  

 Someone observed her seated there and went to tell someone else. After a time she heard halting steps upon the stone and turned to find him there, neatly trimmed of hair and beard, walking toward her with the heasitant stride he was to have for some years, as any four-footed creature might if hoisted high upon two legs and told to stay there.

  

 She was moved to see him so familiar, as she had pictured him a thousand times. “Himaggery. For a time, you know, I had not thought to set eyes upon you in human shape again.” She was unprepared for his tears, and forgave him that he was not her silken-maned lover any longer.

  

 They sat in the garden for some time, hours, talking and not talking. He had heard of the journey and was content to ask few questions about it.

  

 She was less content. “Do you remember anything at all about being the Singlehorn?” she asked. “Do you remember anything at all about the Dervish’s valley?”

  

 He turned very pale. “No. And yet ... sometimes I dream about it. But I can’t remember, after I’ve wakened, what the dream was about.” 

  

 She kept her voice carefully noncommittal. “Do you desire to return there?”

  

 “I don’t think so,” he faltered. “But ... it would be good to run, I think. As I ran. As we ran. We were there together, weren’t we?”

  

 She waited, hoping he would go on to speak of that time, even a few words. He said nothing more. After a time he began to talk about other things, about plans for his future, things he might do. He asked about the Lake of Faces, and she described it as she had seen it in moonlight, with the Harpy questioning the Faces. She told him of Rose-love’s answer, and of the man who spoke of the Great Game taking place around Lake Yost. This piqued his interest, for he remembered the place, and they spoke for a time comfortably about things which did not touch them too closely.

  

 When the bell rang to tell them supper was served in the tower, he took her hand and would not let her go. “May I come to your room tonight?” Not looking at her, dignified and yet prepared for her refusal, hardly daring to ask her and yet not daring to go without asking. She was more moved by that pathetic dignity than she would have been by any importunate pleas.

  

 “Of course. I hoped you would.” That, at least, had been the truth. Later, deep in the ecstatic night, she knew it was still the truth, and more than the truth.

  

 Several days later she sat with Throsset in that same tower room, lying upon a pile of pillows, a basket of fruit at her side. Throsset had been nervously stalking about for some minutes, picking things up and putting them down. Now she cleared her throat and said, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you? I’ve been watching you for days. All that nonsense on the road with those Harpies! Any Shifter worth a trip through the p’natti could have handled a dozen Harpies without being touched. But you didn’t Shift. You haven’t Shifted once since you’ve been here. Not even to fit yourself to a chair or lie comfortably before the fire. How far along are you?”

  

 “I don’t know,” Mavin replied, almost in a whisper. “I was Shifted when it happened, not myself. In the Dervish’s valley. It could have been a season I was there with him, or a few days. I don’t know.” She did not mention the time she had visited that valley eight years before. She wondered if Himaggery would ever remember how it had been, they two together in the valley. Somehow it seemed terribly important that he remember it—without being reminded of it.

  

 “Shifted when it happened! Well and well, Mavin. That leaves me wondering much. Time was we would have assumed it an ill thing and believed that no good issue could come of it. I’m not certain of that any more. Still it’s interesting. And you don’t know how long ago? Well, we can figure it out. I left you near Pfarb Durim early in the season of storms. You traveled from there how many days before you found him?”

  

 Mavin counted. “One to the Lake of Faces. One to Chamferton’s tower—or to him who said he was Chamferton. I don’t know after that, three or four days, I think, following the runners. Perhaps two days to find the Dervish, then time got lost.”

  

 “So, the earliest it could have happened would have been still during the season of storms. Only a few days after you left me. Then how long to come south?”

  

 “Forever, Throsset. Days at Chamferton’s tower, straightening out that mess. Days searching for Singlehorn. Days running from shadows. Days trying to hide from Pantiquod, until the shadows ate her. Days and more days following the Band as it came south along the shore. Days following the river courses. Then across country, through the mountains. To here. And the time here, these last few days.”

  

 “So. Perhaps about one hundred days ago. Perhaps a bit more. Not really showing yet, but I can tell that you feel it. Any Shifter-woman can feel it almost from the beginning, of course. A land of foreign presence telling one not to Shift.”

  

 “You have had ...”

  

 “Two. A son, a daughter. Long ago. Neither were Shifter, so after they came of age I left them with their father’s kin. Better that way. Still, sometimes ...”

  

 “Did you use a forgetter?”

  

 Of course not. They were grown, and fond enough of me. They forget soon enough on their own, and if they’re ever ashamed of having a Shifter mother, then bad luck to them.” She laughed harshly enough to show that the thought of this hurt her. “What are you going to do?”

  

 “Do?”

  

 “Do. Are you going to stay with Himaggery? He wants you to go with him to build a great demesne at that place he talks of, near Lake Yost. The place with unlimited power. He says anything is possible to one with a demesne at such a place.”

  

 “And if I go with him, what?” Mavin asked in a bleak voice. Then, rising to stride about, her voice becoming a chanting croon in the firelight. “When I think of him, Throsset, I am afire to be with him. My skin aches for him. It is only soothed when I am pressed tight against him, as tight as we can manage. My nipples keep pushing against my clothes, wanting out, wanting him to touch them. Then, when we are together, we make love and lie side by side, our arms twisted together, and there is such wonderful peace, like floating—quiet and dusky, with no desires for a time. And then he talks of his plans. His plans, his desires, his philosophy. Of things he has read. I listen. Sometimes I think he is very naive, for I have found things in the world to be different from his beliefs, but he does not hear me if I say so.

  

 “So I merely listen. I fell asleep. Or, if not, my head starts to hurt. Soon I ache to be away, in some quiet place with the wind calling, or in some wild storm where I could fly, run, move. And so I go into the woods and am peaceful away from him for a time, until I am brought back like a fish upon a line ...

  

 “If I go with him, what?” she asked. “I keep asking myself that. He has never asked me what I would like to do.”

  

 “That’s not true,” objected Throsset, “I heard him ask you as we dined last evening. ...”

  

 “You heard him ask me, and if you listened, you heard him answer his own question and go on talking. He asked me what I would like to do, and then he told me how useful a Shifter would be to him. He has heard the story of our journey south, but he has not questioned why I could not Shift. He has not questioned why I have not Shifted in the time we have been here.”

  

 “That’s true,” Throsset sighed. “Men sometimes do not see these things.”

  

 “So.” Mavin nodded. “Since they do not see these things, if I were to go with him, then what?”

  

 “You’re planning to go to Lake Yost, aren’t you,” Windlow asked Himaggery. “You haven’t stopped talking about it since you first heard about the place. Not even when you’re with Mavin, at least not while the two of you are with anyone else. Why all this sudden interest in the place?”

  

 “At first I was afire to go back norther,” Himaggery said, laying the pen to one side and shuffling his papers together. Couldn’t wait to try that tower again. I figured out how I got caught the first time, and I had all sorts of ideas that might have worked to outwit the shadows—or distract them. I don’t think they have ‘wits’ in the sense we mean. But the longer I thought about it, the more I decided you were right, Windlow. The time isn’t right for it. So, the next best thing is to set up the kind of demesne you and I have talked of from time to time. And an excellent place to do it is at Lake Yost. There’s more power there than any collection of Gamesmen can use in a thousand years, enough to make the place the strongest fortress in the lands of the True Game.”

  

 “Mavin told you the place has been emptied?”

  

 “She learned of it at the Lake of Faces. Actually, I already knew of Lake Yost. A marvelous location but it was held by a troop of idiots, True Game fanatics, wanting only to challenge and play, come what might of it. They called Great Game a season ago, a Game so large we haven’t seen its like in a decade. With the unlimited power of the place, they succeeded in killing all the players, every Gamesman. The place is emptied and dead, ready for my taking.”

  

 “And will Mavin go with you?”

  

 “Of course! We can’t lose one another now, not after all this time.”

  

 Windlow went to the tower window, stood there watching the clouds move slowly over the long meadows to the west. There were shadows beneath them on the grasses, and he wondered if the shadows hid in these harmless places unseen, when they did not wish to be seen. “Have you thought she might have something else she would like to do?”

  

 “Ah, but what could be more important than this, old teacher? Eh? A place where your ideas can be taught? A place where we can bring together Gamesmen who believe in those words of yours, where we can work together! Wouldn’t anyone want to be part of that?”

  

 “Not everyone, my boy. No. There are many who would not want to be part of that, and that doesn’t make them villians, either.”

  

 “Mavin will want to come with me,” he said with satisfaction. “Windlow, we are so in love. I imagined it, all those years, but I could not imagine even a fraction of it. She wouldn’t lose that anymore than I would.”

  

 “You’ve asked her, I presume.”

  

 “Of course I have! What do you take me for, old teacher? Some kind of barbarian? Kings and other Beguilers may hold unwilling fol­lowers—or followers who would be unwilling if they were in their own minds—but Wizards do not. At least this Wizard does not.”

  

 “I just wondered if it had occurred to you—a thought I’ve had from time to time, a passing thing, you know—that love behaves much as Beguilement does. Mertyn, for example. Do you remember him at all?”

  

 “Mavin’s brother. Surely I remember him. A nice child. Boldery’s friend. Of course, he was only eleven or twelve when I left the School, so I don’t remember him well ...”

  

 “Mertyn had the Talent of Beguilement, you know. Had it early, as a fifteen-season child, I think. And it was Mertyn who kept Mavin’s sister from leaving the place they lived, not a very pleasant place for women to hear Mertyn tell of it. He blamed himself, you know, crying over it in the night sometimes. And I asked him if his sister loved him, even without the Beguilement, and he told me yes, she did. So—mostly to relieve the child’s mind, you understand—I said it could have been love did it just as well. And he was not responsible for that. We may be responsible for those we love, but hardly ever for those who love us. Takes a saint to do that.” He turned from this slow, ruminative speech to find Himaggery’s eyes fixed on some point in space. “Himaggery?”

  

 “Um? Oh, sorry. I was thinking about Lake Yost. There’s a perfect site for a community, as I recall, near the place the hot springs come up. I was trying to remember whether there was a little bay there. It seems to me there was, but it’s not clear. You were saying?” He turned his smiling face toward the old man, eyes alight but already shifting again toward that distant focus.

  

 “Nothing,” Windlow sighed. “Nothing, Himaggery. Perhaps we’ll talk about it some other time.”

  

 “I wanted you to have this account of the Eesties,” said Mavin, hand­ing the sheets of parchment to the old man. “Foolishly, I betrayed myself into giving one such account to the false Qiamferton. He was very excited over it. I think he would have tried to hold me in some dungeon or other if I hadn’t cooperated with him so willingly.” She sat upon the windowsill of the tower room, waiting while he read them over, hearing his soft exclamations of delighted interest, far different from Chamferton’s crow of victory when he received his copy. The washerwomen were working at the long trough beside the well, and a fat, half-naked baby staggered among them, dabbling in the spilled water. She considered this mite, half in wonder, half in apprehension.

  

 “And you can’t speak of this at all?” Windlow asked at last.

  

 “Not at all,” she said. “And yet nothing prevents my writing it down.”

  

 “Let’s see,” he murmured. “You went to Ganver’s Grave and ... ahau, ghaaa ...” He choked, coughed, grasped at his throat as though something were caught there, panted, glared around himself in panic. Mavin darted to him, held him up and quiet as the attack passed. He sat down, put his head upon his folded arms. “Frightening,” he whispered. “Utterly frightening. The geas is laid not only upon you, then, but upon anyone?”

  

 “To speak of it, yes. But not to write of it. That fact makes me wonder strangely.”

  

 “For a start, it makes me wonder if the ... they do not choose to be spoken of by the ignorant. They don’t mind being read of by literate people, however. Remarkable.”

  

 “I thought so, too,” she agreed. “Except that the pawns have a thousand fables about the rolling stars and the Old Ones and the Eesties. Nothing stops their throats. Nothing stopped old Rose-love when she told me the story of Weetzie and the daylight bell.”

  

 “Because fables are fables.” He nodded, ticking the points off to himself. “And facts are facts. You could probably tell the story of your own meeting with them, Mavin, if you fabulized it.”

  

 “Girl-shifter and the Crimson Egg,” she laughed. “The story of Fustigar-woman and the shadowpeople.”

  

 “Quite wonderful. Are you going back there? Seeking the Eesties again?”

  

 “Of course,” she cried in unconscious delight of which Windlow was altogether conscious. “Who could not? Oh, Windlow, you would like that place. As full of marvels as a shell is full of egg. And there are other things, things having nothing to do with the Eesties. There’s a place below the ridge by Schlaizy Noithn like nothing you have ever seen. I call it the Blot. Traders come there—Traders some say. I think them false gifters, myself—and I want to explore it one day. And I left a girl-child friend across the sea. Her I would see again, before I am old, her and her children.”

  

 “And what about your child?” he asked, head cocked to one side, gentle as the wind as he said it.

  

 “How did you know?”

  

 He shrugged. “Oh, I’m a Seer, Mavin. Of one thing and another. In this case, however, it was a case of using my mind and my heart, nothing more. Himaggery doesn’t know, does he?”

  

 “Anyone might know,” she replied in a sober voice. “Anyone who used mind or heart. Throsset knew.”

  

 “You won’t allow that he’s simply afire to get on with his life, so much of it having been spent in a kind of sleep?”

  

 “Why, of course!” she answered in exasperation. “Why, of course I’ll allow it. Do I constrain him to do other than he will? He lost eight years in that valley. Should I demand he turn from his life to look at me? Or listen to me? Windlow. That’s not the question to ask, and you know it.”

  

 He nodded, rather sadly, getting up with a groan and a thud of his stick upon the floor. “Surely, Mavin. Surely. Well. Since it seems you’ll not be Shifting for a time—do I have it right? That is the custom? More than custom, perhaps?—call upon me for whatever you need. Midwives perhaps, when the time comes? I have little power but many good friends.”

  

 “I do not know yet what I will need, old sir. Midwives, I guess, though whether here or elsewhere, I cannot say.”

  

 “You’ll risk that, will you?”

  

 “Risk Midwives? I would not do other. It is a very good thing the Midwives do, to look into the future of each child to see whether it will gain a soul or not. The great houses may scoff at Midwives if they will, caring not that their soulless children make wreck and ruin upon the earth. Of such houses are Ghouls born, Gamesmen like Blourbast and Huld the Demon.” She did not mention Huld’s son, Mandor. Years later, deep in the caves beneath Bannerwell, she was to curse herself for that omission. If Windlow had known of Mandor ... if Mertyn had known of Mandor ... “Of course I will risk Midwives, and count the risk well taken to know I have born no soulless wight who may grow to scourge the earth and the company of men.” 

  

 He smiled then, taking her hand in his own and leaning to kiss her on the cheek, a sweet, old man’s kiss with much kindness in it. “Mavin, perhaps I erred when I had that vision of you and Himaggery in Pfarb Durim. It seems to me that in that vision your hair was gray. Perhaps it was meant to be later, that’s all.” He sighed. “Whatever you need, Mavin. Tell me.” Then they left the place and went to their lunch, spread on a table in the courtyard among the herb pots and the garden flowers. For a quiet time in that garden, Mavin told herself she would stay where she was, for the peace of it was pleasant and as kindly as old Windlow’s kiss.

  

 “You might remember that he’s eight years younger than he seems,” commented Throsset. “All that time in the valley. He didn’t live then, really. In fact, he may have gone backwards ...”

  

 “To become what?” Mavin asked, examining her face in the mirror. She had never before been very interested in her own face, but now it fascinated her. One of Windlow’s servant girls had asked if she could arrange Mavin’s hair, and the piled, sculptured wealth of it made her look unlike herself. “Become a child, you mean?”

  

 Throsset swung her feet, banging her heels cheerfully against the wall below the windowsill where she sat, half over the courtyard, defying gravity and dignity at once as she tempted the laundress’s boy-child with a perfect target for his peashooter. “Children are very self-centered, Mavin. They are so busy learning about themselves, you know, that they have no time for anything else. You were like that, I’m sure. I know I was. Himaggery, on the other hand, went straight from his family demesne into Windlow’s school, and straight from that into continuous study—books, collections. Not Gaming. Not paying attention to other people, you know.”

  

 “ ‘Among,’ but not ‘of,’ “ commented Mavin, touching the corner of her eyes with a finger dipped in dust-of-blue. She turned. “Do you like that? It’s interesting.”

  

 “I like the brown better,” Throsset advised. “Better with your skin. What are you up to with these pawn tricks, anyhow?”

  

 Mavin turned back to the mirror, wiping away the blue stain to replace it with dust-of-brown. She had bought the tiny cosmetic jars from a traveling Trader and was being self-consciously experimental with them. “I’m finding out whether I can get him to look at me.”

  

 “He looks at you all the time. He’s in love with you.”

  

 “I mean see me. He doesn’t care whether I’m Mavin the woman, a fustigar hunting bunwits, or a Singlehorn. He’s in love with his idea of me.” She applied a bit more of the brown shadow, then picked up the tiny brush to blind herself painting her lashes.

  

 “Your eyelashes are all right!” Throsset thumped down from the window, brushing at her seat, not seeing the pea which shot through the opening behind her. “When are you going to tell him?”

  

 “I’m not.” She was definite about this. “And you’re not to tell him either.”

  

 “Oh, Mavin, by all the hundred devils but you’re difficult. Why not?”

  

 “Because, dear Fairy Godmother”—The proper designation for one with both Shifting and Sorcery was “Fairy Godmother.” Mavin had looked it up in the Index and had been perversely waiting for an occasion to use it. Now she took wicked pleasure in Throsset’s discomfiture—“dear Fairy Godmother, what you saw and what Windlow saw you saw by observation. Himaggery is not innocent. He knows where babies come from. He does know we were together in the Valley. It is a kind of test, my dear, which may be unfair, but it is nonetheless a test I am determined to use.”

  

 “And if he passes it?”

  

 “If he passes it, with no advice from either you or Windlow—whom I have been at some pains to silence—then I will go with him to Lake Yost, and see what it is he plans to do there with his thousand good Gamesmen. And I will not Mavin at him, will not flee from him, will not distress him.”

  

 “And if he fails ...”

  

 “Then, Throsset of Dowes, I will know that it really does not matter to him much. He is in love with the idea of me, and that idea will content him. He will be reasonably satisfied with memory and hope and a brave resolution to find me once again—which he will put off from season to season, since there will always be other things to do.” She looked up at Throsset with a quirk of the eyebrows. “Listen to me, Throsset, for I have made a discovery. It may be that Himaggery will prefer the idea of me to the reality—prefer to remember me with much romantic, sentimental recollection, at his convenience, as when a sweetly painted sky seems to call for such feelings of gentle melancholy. In the evenings, perhaps, when the sun is dropping among long shadows and the air breathes sadness. On moonlit nights, with the trees all silvered ...

  

 “A remembered love, Throsset of Dowes, does not interfere with one’s work! A lovely, lost romance is a convenience for any busy man!”

  

 “You’re cynical. And footloose. You simply don’t want to sit still long enough to rear this child.”

  

 “I’ll sit still, Throsset! Where I will and when I will, and for as long as is necessary. And if Himaggery sees the meaning behind this paint on my face or realizes I am carrying his child, well then I will become dutiful, Throsset. So dutiful, even Danderbat Keep would have been pleased.” She made a face, then rummaged in her jewel box for some sparkling something to put in her hair. “I have discovered something else, Throsset of Dowes. And that is that men give women jewels when they have absolutely no idea what might please them and are not willing to take time to think about it.”

  

 They sat beside the fountain beneath the stars. Out in the meadow other stars bobbled and danced, lantern bugs dizzying among the grasses.

  

 “I used to imagine this,” said Himaggery. She lay half in his lap, against his chest, watching the lights, half asleep after a long, warm and lazy day.

  

 “What did you imagine? Sitting under the sky watching bugs dance?”

  

 “No, silly. I imagined you. And me. Together. Here or somewhere like here. I knew how it would be.”

  

 “This isn’t how it would be,” she said, the words flowing out before she could stop them. “This is an interlude, a sweet season. It’s no more real than ... than we were before, in the valley.”

  

 “How can you say that?” He laughed, somewhat uneasily. “You’re real. I’m real. In our own shapes, our own minds.”

  

 She shook her head. Now that she had started, she had to go on. “No, love. I’m in a shape, a courtyard shape, a lover’s shape, a pretty girl shape, a romantic evening shape. I have other shapes for other times. With those other shapes, it would be a different thing ...”

  

 “Not at all. No matter what shape it might be, it would always be you inside it!” His vehemence hid apprehension. She could smell it.

  

 She soothed him. “Himaggery, let me tell you a story. 

  

 “Far on the western edge of the land, there’s a town I visited once. Pleasant people there. One charming girl-child I fell in love with. About nine years old, I suppose, full of joy and bounce and love. She was killed by a man of the town, a Wolf. Everyone knew it. They couldn’t prove it. They had locked him up for such things before, but had always let him go. It was expensive to keep him locked up and guarded, and fed and warm. It took bread from their own mouths to keep him locked away ...”

  

 “What has this to do with ...” he began. She shushed him.

  

 “So, though everyone knew he had done it, no one did anything except walk fearfully and lock up their children. I was not satisfied with that. I took the shape of one of his intended victims, Himaggery, and I ended the matter.”

  

 There was a long pause. She heard him swallow, sigh. “As I would have done, too, Mavin, had I the Talent. I do not dispute your judgment.”

  

 “You don’t. Well, the people of the town suspected I might have had something to do with it, and one of them came to remonstrate with me that such a course of action was improper. So I asked why they had not kept him locked up, or killed him the first time they had proof, and they told me it would have been cruel to do so. And I asked then if it were not cruel to their children to let the Wolf run loose among them. They did not answer me.

  

 “So then, Himaggery, I took their children away from them. All. Far to the places of the True Game. For at least in the lands of the True Game people are not such hypocrites. I thought better those children chance a hazardous life knowing who their enemies were than to live in that town where their own people conspired with their butchers.”

  

 There was another long silence. “You were very upset at the child’s death,” he said at last.
 “Yes. Very.”
 “So you were not yourself. If you had had time to think, to reflect, you would not have acted so.”
Then she was silent. At last she said with a sigh, “No, Himaggery, I was myself. Completely myself. And if I’d had longer to think on it, I would have done worse.”
He tried to tell her she was merely tired, but she changed the subject to something light and laugh-filled. Later they made love under the stars. It was the last conversation they had together.

 Midmorning of the following day, Throsset of Dowes rode with Mavin northward along the meadow edge. They had brought some food and wine with them, intending to take a meal upon the grassy summit which overlooked the canyon lands before Throsset left for the south. Throsset had decided to go visiting her children soon, away in the Sealands. It was a sudden decision.

 “I decided they would scarcely remember me unless I went soon. I haven’t gone before because I feared they would reject me, a Shifter. But if I don’t go, then I have rejected them. So better let the fault lie upon their heads if it must lie anywhere. I will go south tomorrow. I have not run in fustigar shape for a season and a half, not since I met you outside Pfarb Durim. I am getting fat and lazy.”

 Mavin hugged her. “You will be here tonight then? Good. You will be able to tell them that I have gone.”
“Ah,” said Throsset, a little sadly. “Well. So you have made up your mind.”
“When we have had our lunch, you will ride back and I will ride on. Tell Windlow I will repay him for the horse sometime.”
“Windlow would have given you the horse. Where are you going? Why are you going?”
“I am going because I do not want this child to be born here, or at Lake Yost, to serve as a halter strap between me and Himaggery. I am going because Himaggery does not see me as I am, and I cannot be what he thinks I am. I am going because there is much distraction here, of a wondrous kind, and I want two years, or three, to give to the child without distractions.
“As to where. Well. North. Somewhere. I have friends there. I will find Midwives there. And when the time is right, I may see Himaggery again. Windlow now thinks his vision was of a later time. We may yet come together in Pfarb Durim.”
“What am I to tell them?”
 “That I became restless. That I have gone on a journey. Don’t say much more than that. Himaggery will be quite happy with that. Each day he will think of going off to find me. Each day he will put it off for a while. Each night he will dream romantic dreams of me, and each morning he will resolve again—quite contentedly.

 “Don’t tell him I’m expecting a child. If he knew, he would first have to decide how to feel about it, and then what actions such a feeling should create. Better leave him as he is. After all, the Midwives may not let the child live. So don’t take his smile from him, Throsset. Strangely though I seem to show it, I do love him.”

 They drank the wine. When they had done, Throsset threw the jug against a stone, shattering it into pieces. She wrote her name upon a shard and gave it to Mavin, accepting a similar one in return. So were meetings and partings memorialized among their people, without tears.

 After Mavin rode down into the canyon lands, Throsset sat for a long time staring after her. She was not sad, not gay, not grieving or rejoicing. She went boneless and did the quick wriggle which passed for comment in Danderbat Keep; Mavin could not Shift for a time, but she was still Mavin Manyshaped, and Throsset did not doubt she would return.

 “Good chance to you,” she whispered toward the north. “And to your child, Mavin.” Nothing answered but the wind. Putting the shard into her pocket as one of the few things she would always carry, she went to tell them that Mavin Manyshaped had gone.

  

  

  

  




The True Game :

 King’s Blood Four
Necromancer Nine
Wizard’s Eleven

 SHERI S. TEPPER

 1
King’s Blood Four



 “TOTEM TO KING’S BLOOD FOUR.” The moment I said it, I knew it was wrong. I said, “No!”

 Gamesmaster Gervaise tapped the stone floor with his iron-tipped staff, impatiently searching our faces for a lifted eye or for a raised hand. “No?” he echoed me.

 Of the three Gamesmasters of Mertyn’s House, I liked Gervaise the best.

 “When I said ‘no’, I meant the answer wasn’t quite right.” Behind me Karl Pig-face gave a sneaky gasp as he always does when he is about to put me down, but Gamesmaster Gervaise didn’t give him a chance.

 “That’s correct,” he agreed. “Correct that it isn’t quite right and might be very wrong. The move is one we haven’t come across before, however, so take your time. Before you decide upon the move, always remember who you are.” He turned away from us, staff tap-tapping across the tower room to the high window which gaped across the dark bulk of Havad’s House down to River Reave where it wound like a tarnished ribbon among all the other School Housesľeach as full of students as a dog is of fleas, as Brother Chance, the cook, would say. All the sloped land between the Houses was crowded full of dwellings and shops, all humping their way up the hills to the shuttered Festival Halls, then scattering out among the School Farms which extended to the vacant land of the Edge. I searched over the Gamesmaster’s shoulder for that far, thin line of blue which marked the boundaries of the True Game.

 Karl cleared his throat again, and I knew his mockery was only deferred, unless I could find an answer quickly. I wouldn’t find it by staring out at Schooltown. I turned back to the game model which hung in the air before us, swimming in icy haze. Somewhere within the model, among the game pieces which glowed in their own light or disappeared in their own shadowľsomewhere in the model was the Demesne, the focal area, the place of power where a move could be of significance. On our side, the students’ side, Demon loomed on a third level square casting a long, wing-shaped shadow. Two fanged Tragamors boxed the area to either side. Before them stood Gamesmaster Gervaise’s only visible piece, the King, casting ruddy light before him. It was King’s Blood Four, an Imperativeľwhich meant I had to move something. None of the battle pieces were right; it had to be something similar to Totem. Almost anything could be hiding behind the King, and Gamesmasters don’t give hints. Something similar, of like value, something…then I had it.

 “Talisman,” I blurted. “Talisman to King’s Blood Four.”

 “Good.” Gervaise actually smiled. “Now, tell me why!”

 “Because our side can’t see what pieces may be hiding behind the King. Because Talisman is an absorptive piece, that is, it will soak up the King’s play. Totem is reflective. Totem would splash it around, we’d maybe lose some pieces…”

 “Exactly. Now, students, visualize if you please. We have King, most durable of the adamants, whose blood, that is, essence, is red light. Demon, most powerful of the ephemera, whose essence is shadow. Tragamors making barriers at the sides of the Demesne. The player is a student, without power, so he plays Talisman, an absorptive piece of the lesser ephemera. Talisman is lost in play, ‘sacrificed’ as we say. The player gains nothing by this, but neither does he lose much, for with this play the Demesne is changed, and the game moves elsewhere in the purlieu.”

 “But, Master,” Karl’s voice oozed from the corner. “A strong player could have played Totem. A powerful player.”

 I flushed. Of course. Everyone in the room knew that, but students were not strong, not powerful, even though Karl liked to pretend he was. It was just one more of his little pricks and nibbles, like living with a hedgehog. Gamesmaster tilted his head, signifying he had heard, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he peered at the chronometer on the wall, then out the window to check where the mountain shadow fell upon the harbor, finally back to our heavily bundled little group. “So. Enough for today. Go to the fires and your supper. Some of you are half frozen.”

 We were all half frozen. The models could only be controlled if they were kept ice cold, so we spent half our lives shivering in frigid aeries. I was as cold as any of them, but I wanted to let Karl get out of the way, so I went to the high window and leaned out to peer away south. There was a line of warty little islands there separating the placid harbor with its wheeling gulls from the wide, stormy lake and the interesting lands of the True Game beyond. I mumbled something. Gervaise demanded I repeat it.

 “It’s boring here in Schooltown,” I repeated, shamefaced.

 He didn’t answer at once but looked through me in that very discomforting way the Masters sometimes have. Finally he asked me if I had not had Gamesmaster Charnot for Cartography. I said I had.

 “Then you know something of the lands of the True Game. You know of the Dragon’s Fire purlieu to the North? Yes. Well, there are a King and Queen there who decided to rear their children Outside. They wanted to be near their babies, not send them off to a distant Schooltown to be bored by old Gamesmasters. They thought to let the children learn the rules of play by observation. Of the eight sons born to that Queen, seven have been lost in play. The eighth child sleeps this night in Havad’s House nursery, sent to Schooltown at last.

 “It is true that it is somewhat boring in Schooltown, and for no one more so than the Masters! But, it is also safe here, Peter. There is time to grow, and learn. If you desire no more than to be a carter or laborer or some other pawn, you may go Outside now and be one. However, after fifteen years in Mertyn’s House, you know too much to be contented as a pawn, but you won’t know enough for another ten years to be safe as anything else.”

 I remarked in my most adult voice that safety wasn’t everything.

 “That being the case,” he said, “you’ll be glad to help me dismantle the model.”

 I bit my tongue. It would have been unthinkable to refuse, though taking the models apart is far more dangerous than putting them together. Most of us have burn scars from doing one or the other. I sighed, concentrated, picked a minor piece out of the game box at random and named it, “Talisman!” as I moved it into the Demense. It vanished in a flash of white fire. Gervaise moved a piece I couldn’t see, then the King, which released the Demon. I got one Tragamor out, then got stuck. I could not remember the sequence of moves necessary to get the other Tragamor loose.

 One thing about Gervaise. He doesn’t rub it in. He just looked at me again, his expression saying that he knew what I knew. If I couldn’t get a stupid Tragamor out of the model, I wouldn’t survive very long in the True Game.

 Patiently, he showed me the order of moves and then swatted me, not too gently.

 “It’s only a few days until Festival, Peter. Now that you’re fifteen, you’ll find that Festivals do much to dispel boredom for boys. So might a little more study. Go to your supper.”

 I galloped down the clattering stairs, past the nurseries, hearing babies crying and the unending chatter of the baby-tenders; down past the dormitories, smelling wet wool and steam from the showers; into the firewarm commons hall, thinking of what the Gamesmaster had said. It was true. Brother Chance said that only the powerful and the utterly unimportant lived long in the True Game. If you weren’t the one and didn’t want to be the other, it made sense to be a student. But it was still very dull.

 At the junior tables the littlest boys were scaring each other with fairy tales about the lands of the Immutables where there was no True Game. Silly. If there weren’t any True Game, what would people do? At the high table the senior students, those about to graduate into the Game, showed more decorum, eating quietly under the watchful eyes of Gamesmaster Mertyn, King Mertyn, and Gamesmaster Armiger Charnot. Most of those over twenty had already been named: Sentinel, Herald, Dragon, Tragamor, Pursuivant, Elator. The complete list of Gamesmen was said to be thousands of titles long, but we would not study Properties and Powers in depth until we were older.

 At the visitor’s table against the far wall a Sorcerer was leafing through a book as he dawdled over his food, the spiked band of his headdress glittering in the firelight. He was all alone, the only visitor, though I searched carefully for one other. My friend Yarrel was crowded in at the far end of a long table with no space near, so I took an open bench place near the door.

 Across from me was Karl, his red, wet face shining slickly in the steam of the food bowls.

 “Y’most got boggled up there, Peter-priss. Better stick to paper games with the littly boys.”

 “Oh, shut up, sweat-face,” I told him. It didn’t do any good to be nice to Karl, or to be mean. It just didn’t matter. He was always nasty, regardless. “You wouldn’t have known either.”

 “Would so. Grandsire and Dadden both told me that ‘un.”

 His face split into his perpetual mocking grin, his point made. Karl was son of a Doyen, grandson of a Doyen, third generation in the School. I was a Festival Baby, born nine months after Festival, left on the doorsteps of Mertyn’s House to be taken in and educated. I might as well have been hatched by a toad. Well, I had something Karl didn’t. He could have his family name. I had something else. Not that the Masters cared whether a student was first generation or tenth. There were more foundlings in the room than there were family boys. “Sentlings,” those sent in from outside by their parents, had no more status than foundlings, but the family boys did tend to stick together. It took only a little whipping-on from someone like Karl to turn them into a hunting pack. Well, I refused to make a chase for them. Instead, I stared away down the long line of champing jaws and lax bodies. They all looked as I feltľhungry, exhausted from the day’s cold, luxuriating in warmth, and grateful night had come.

 I thought of the promised Festival. I would sew bells onto my trouser hems, stitch ribbons into the shoulder seams of my jacket, make a mask out of leather and gilt, and so clad run through the streets of Schooltown with hundreds of others dressed just as I, jingling and laughing, dancing to drum and trumpet, eating whatever we wanted. During Festival, nothing would be forbidden, nothing required, no dull studies, the Festival Halls would be opened, people would come from Outside, from the School Houses, from everywhere. Bells would ring…and ring…

 The ringing was the clangor of my bowl and spoon upon the stones where I had thrust them in my sleep. The room was empty except for one lean figure between me and the fire: Mandor, Gamesmaster of Havad’s House, teeth gleaming in the fireglow.

 “Well, Peter. Too tired to finish your supper?”

 “I…I thought you weren’t coming.”

 “Oh, I drift here and there. I’ve been watching you sleep for half an hour after bidding some beefy boy to leave you alone. What have you done to attract his enmity?”

 I think I blushed. It wasn’t anything I wanted to talk about.

 “Just…oh, nothing. He’s one who always picks on someone. Usually someone smaller than he is, usually a foundling.”

 “Ah.” He understood. “A Flugleman. You think?”

 I grinned weakly. It would be a marvelous vengeance if Karl were named Flugleman, petty tyrant, minor piece, barely higher than a pawn.

 “Master Mandor, no one has yet named him that.”

 “You needn’t call me Master, Peter.”

 “I know.” Again, I was embarrassed. He should know some things, after all. “It’s just easier than explaining.”

 “You feel you have to explain?”

 “If someone heard me.”

 “No one will hear you. We are alone. Still, if this place is too public, we’ll go to my room.” And he was sweeping out the door toward the tunnel which led to Havad’s House before I could say anything. I followed him, of course, even though I had sworn over and over I would not, not again.

 The next morning I received a summons to see King Mertyn. It didn’t exactly surprise me, but it did shock me a little. I’d known someone was going to see me or overhear us, but each day that went by let me think maybe it wouldn’t happen after all. I hadn’t been doing anything different from what many of the boys do in the dormitories, nothing different from what I’d refused to do with Karl. Oh, true, it’s forbidden, but lots of things are forbidden, and people do them all the time, almost casually.

 So, I didn’t know quite what to expect when I stood before the Gamesmaster in his cold aerie, hands in my sleeves, waiting for him to speak. I was shocked at how gentle he was.

 “It is said you are spending much time with Gamesmaster Mandor of Havad’s House. That you go to his room, spend your sleep time there. Is this true?”

 He was tactful, but still I blushed.

 “Yes, Gamesmaster.”

 “You know this is forbidden.”

 “Gamesmaster, he bade me…”

 “You know he is titled Prince and may bid as he chooses. But, it is still forbidden.”

 I got angry then, because it wasn’t fair. “Yes. He may bid as he chooses. And I am expected to twist and tarry and try to escape him, like a pigeon flying from a hawk. I am expected to bear his displeasure, and he may bid as he chooses…”

 “Ah. And have you indeed twisted arid tarried and tried? Hidden among the books of the library, perhaps? Fled sanctuary from the head of your own House? Taken minor game vows before witnesses? Have you done these things?”

 I hadn’t. Of course I hadn’t. How could I? Prince Mandor was my friend, but more than a friend. He cared about me. He talked to me about everything, things he said he couldn’t tell anyone else. I knew everything about him; that he had not wanted to leave the True Game and teach in a Schooltown; that he hated Havad’s House, that he wanted a House of his own; that he picked me as a friend because there was no one, no one in Havad’s House he cared for. The silence between the Gamesmaster and me was becoming hostile, but I couldn’t break it.

 At last he said, “I must be sure you understand, Peter. You must be aware of what you do, each choice you make which aids or prevents your mastery of the Game. You cannot stand remote from this task. You are in it. Do you know that?”

 I nodded, said, “We all know that, Gamesmaster.”

 “But do you perceive the reality of it? How your identity will emerge as you play, as your style becomes unique, as your method becomes clear. Gradually it will become known to the Mastersľand to youľwhat you are: Prince or Sorcerer, Armiger or Tragamor, Demon or Doyen, which of the endless list you are. You must be one of them, or else go down into Schooltown and apprentice yourself to a shopkeeper as some failed students do.”

 “It is said we are born to it,” I objected, wanting to stop his talk which was making me feel guilty. “Karl says he will be Doyen because father and grandfather were Doyens before him. Born to it.”

 “What Karl may say or do or think is not important to you. What you are or may become should be important.” He seized me by the shoulders and turned me to stare out the tall window. “Look there. In ten years you must go out there, ready or not, willing or not. In ten years you must leave this protected town, this Schooling place. In ten years you will join the True Game.

 “You do not know this, but it was I who found you, years ago, outside Mertyn’s House, a Festival Baby, a soggy lump in your bright blankets, chewing your fist. If you have anyone to stand Father to you, it is I. It may be unimportant, but there is at least this tenuous connection between us which leads me to be concerned about you,” He leaned forward to lay his face against mine, a shocking thing to do, as forbidden as anything I had ever done.

 “Think, Peter. I cannot force you to be wise. Perhaps I will only frighten you, or offend you, but think. Do not put yourself in another’s hands.” Abruptly he left me there in the high room, still angry, confused, wordless.

 “Do not put yourself in another’s hands.” The first rule of the game. Make alliances, yes, they told us, but do not give yourself away to become merely a pawn.

 This is why they forbid us so many things, deny us so much while we are young and defenseless. I leaned on the sill of the high window where golden sunlight lay in a puddle. A line of similar color reflected from a high House across the river, Dorcan’s House, a woman’s house. I wondered if they gamed there as we did; learning, waiting for their Mistresses and peers to name them, being bored. I knew little about women. We would not study the female pieces for some years yet, but the sight of that remote house made me wonder what names they had, what name I would have.

 It was said among the boys that one could sometimes tell what name one would bear by the sound of it in one’s own ears. I tried that, speaking into the silent air. “Armiger. Tragamor. Elator. Sentinel.” Nothing.

 “Flugleman,” I whispered, fearfully, but there was no interior response to that, either. I had not mentioned the name I dreamed of, the one I most desired to have, for I felt that to do so would breed ill luck. Instead, I called, “Who am I?” into the morning silence. The only reply came in a spate of gull-scream from the harbor, like impersonal laughter. I told myself it didn’t matter who I was so long as I had more than a friend in Mandor. A bell tolled briefly from the town, and I knew I had missed breakfast and would be late for class. In the room below, the windows were shut for once to let the fire sizzling upon the hearth warm the room. That meant no models that day, only lectures; dull, warm words instead of icy, exciting movement. Gamesmaster Gervaise was already stalking to and fro, mumble-murmuring toward the cluster of student heads, half of them already nodding in the unaccustomed heat.

 “Yesterday we evolved a King’s game,” he was saying. “Those of you who were paying attention would have noticed the sudden emergence of the Demesne from the purlieu. This sudden emergence is a frequent mark of King’s games. Kings do not signal their intentions. There is no advance ‘leakage’ of purpose. There may be a number of provocations or incursions without any response, and then, suddenly, there will be an area of significant force and intentľa Measurable Demesne. Think how this differs from a battle game between Armigers, for instance, where the Demesne grows very gradually from the first move of a Herald or Sentinel. Just as the Demesne may emerge rapidly in a King’s game, so it may close as rapidly. Mark this rule, boys. The greater the power of the piece, the more rapid the consequence.”

 He rattled his staff to wake the ones dozing.

 “Note this, boys, please. If a powerful player were playing against the King’s side, the piece played might have been one of the reflective durables such as Totem, or even Herald. In that case…”

 He began to drone again. He was talking about measuring, and it bored everyone to death. We’d had measuring since we came into class from the nurseries, and if any of us didn’t know how to measure a Demesne by now, it was hopeless. I looked for Yarrel. He wasn’t there, but I did see the visiting Sorcerer leaning against the back wall, his lips curved in an enigmatic smile.

 “Sorcerer,” I defined to myself, automatically. “Quiet glass, evoking but Unchanged by the evocation, a conduit through which power may be channeled, a vessel into which one may pour acid, wine, or fire and from which one may pour acid, wine, or fire.” I shivered. Sorcerers were very major pieces indeed, holders of the power of others, and I’d never seen or heard of one going about alone. It was very strange to have one leaning against the classroom wall, all by himself, and it gave me an itchy, curious feeling. I decided to sneak down to the kitchen and ask Brother Chance about it. He had been my best source of certain kinds of information ever since I was four and found out where he hid the cookies.

 “Oh, my, yes,” he agreed, sweating in the heat of the cookfire as he gave bits of meat to the spit dog. He poked away at the Masters’ roast with a long fork. The odors were tantalizing. My mouth dropped open like a baby bird’s, and he popped a piece of the roast into it as though I had been another spit dog. “Yes, odd to have a Sorcerer wandering about loose, as one might say. Still, since King Mertyn returned from Outside to become Gamesmaster here, he has built a great reputation for Mertyn’s House. A Sorcerer might be drawn here, seeking to attach himself. Or, there are always those who seek to challenge a great reputation. It probably means no more than the fact that Festival is nigh-by, only days away, and the town is full of visitors. Even Sorcerers go about for amusement, I suppose. What is it to you, after all?”

 “No one ever tells us anything,” I complained. “We never know what’s going on.”

 “And why should you? Arrogant boy! What is it to you what Sorcerers do and don’t do? Ask too many questions and be played for a pawn, I always say. Keep yourself to yourself until you know what you are, that’s my advice to you, Peter. But then, you were always into things you shouldn’t have bothered with. Before you could talk, you could ask questions. Well, ask no more now. You’ll get yourself into real trouble. Here. Take this nice bit of roast and some hot bread to sop up the juices and go hide in the garden while you eat it. It’s forbidden, you know.”

 Of course I knew. Everything was forbidden. Roast was forbidden to boys. As was sneaking down to the kitchens. As was challenging True Game in a Schooltown. Or during Festival. As was this, and that, and the other thing. Then, come Festival, nothing would be forbidden. In Festival, Kings could be Jongleurs, Sentinels could be Fools, men could be women and women men for all that. And Sorcerers could be ... whatever they liked. It was still confusing and unsettling, but the lovely meat juices running down my throat did much to assuage the itchy feeling of curiosity, guilt, and anger.

 Late at night I lay in the moonlight with my hand curled on Mandor’s chest. It threw a leaflike shadow there which breathed as he breathed, slowly elongating as the moon fell. “There is a Sorcerer wandering about,” I murmured. “No one knows why.” Under my hand his body stiffened.

 “With someone? Talking with anyone?”

 I murmured sleepily, no, all alone.

 “Eating with anyone? At table with anyone?”

 I said, no, reading, eating by himself, just wandering about. Mandor’s graceful body relaxed.

 “Probably here for the Festival,” he said. “The town is filling up, with more swarming in every day.”

 “But, I thought Sorcerers were always with someone.”

 He laughed, lips tickling my ear. “In theory, lovely boy, in theory. Actually, Sorcerers are much like me and you and the kitchen churl. They eat and drink and delight in fireworks and travel about to meet friends. He may be meeting old friends here.”

 “Maybe.” My thought trailed off into sleepy drifting.

 There had been something a little feverish about Mandor’s questions, but it did not seem to matter. I could see the moonlight reflected from his silver, serpent’s eyes, alert and questing in the dark. In the morning I remembered that alertness with some conjecture, but lessons drove it out of my head. A day or two later he sought me out to give me a gift.

 “I’ve been looking for you, boy, to give you something.” He laughed at my expression, teasingly. “Go on. Open it. I may give you a gift for your first Festival. It isn’t forbidden! It isn’t even discouraged. Open it.” The box was full of ribbons, ribbons like evening sky licked with sunset, violet and scarlet, as brilliant and out of place in the gray corridor as a lily blooming in a crypt. I mumbled something about already having bought my ribbons.

 “Poof,” he said. “I know what ribbons boys buy. Strips of old gowns, bought off rag pickers. No. Take these and wear them for me. I remember my first Festival, when I turned fifteen. It pleases me to give them to you, my friend…”

 His voice was a caress, his hands gentle on my face, and his eyes spoke only affectionate joy. I leaned my head forward into those hands. Of course I would wear them. What else could I do? That afternoon I went to beg needle and thread from Brother Chance.

 Gamesmaster Mertyn was in the kitchen, leaning against a cupboard, licking batter like a boy. I turned to go, but he beckoned me in and made me explain my business there, insisting upon seeing the ribbons when I had mumbled some explanation.

 “Fabulous,” he said in a tight voice. “I have not seen their like. Well, they do you credit, Peter, and you should wear them in joy. Let me make you a small gift as well. Strip out of your jacket, and I’ll have my servant, Nitch, sew them into the seams for you.” So I was left shivering in the kitchen, clad from the waist up only in my linen. I would rather have sewn them myself, even if King Mertyn’s manservant would make a better job of it, and I said as much to Chance.

 “Well, lad. The high and powerful do not always ask us what we would prefer. Isn’t that so? Follow my rule and be in-conspic-u-ous. That’s best. Least noticed is least bothered, or so I’ve always thought. Best race up to the dormitory and get into your tunic, boy, before you freeze.” Which I did, and met Yarrel there, and we two went onto the parapet to watch the Festival crowds flowing into town. The great shutters had been taken from the Festival Halls; pennants were beginning to flicker in the wind; the wooden bridge rolled like a great drum under the horses’ hooves. We saw one trio go by with much bravura, a tall man in the center in Demon’s helm with two fanged Tragamors at his sides.

 Yarrel said, “See there. Those three come from Bannerwell where your particular friend, Mandor, comes from. I can tell by the horses.” Yarrel was a sending, a farrier’s son who cared more for horses than he ever would for the Game. He cared a good deal for me, too, but was not above teasing me about my particular friend. Well, I thought Yarrel would not stay in the School for ten years more. He would go seek his family and the countryside, all for the sake of horses. I asked him how he knew that Mandor had come from Bannerwell, but he could not remember. He had heard it somewhere, he supposed.

 Hitch brought the jacket that evening, sniffing a little to show his disapproval of boys in general. It felt oddly stiff when I took it, and my inquiring look made Nitch sniff the louder. “There was nothing left of the lining, student. It was all fallen away to lint and shreds, so while I had the seams open, I put in a bit of new wadding.

 “Don’t thank me. My own sense of the honor of Mertyn’s House would have allowed no less.” And he sniffed himself away, having spoken directly to me for the first and last time. I was glad of the new lining come morning, for we put on our Festival garb and masks while it was still cold. Yarrel smoothed the ribbons for me, saying they made a lovely fall of color. We had sewn on our bells and made our masks, and as soon as it was full light we were away, our feet pounding new thunder out of the old bridge.

 Yarrel’s ribbons were all green, so I could pick him from the crowd. All the tower boys wore ribbons and bells which said, “Student here, student here, hold him harmless for he is yet young…” Thus we could thieve and trick during the time of Festival without hindrance, though it were best, said the Masters, to do it in moderation. And we did. We were immoderately moderate. We ate pork pies stolen from stalls and drank beer pilfered from booths until we were silly with it. Long chains of revelers wound through the streets like dragon tails, losing bits and adding bits as they danced to the music blaring at every street corner, drums and horns and lutes and jangles, up the hill and down again. There were Town girls and School girls and Outside girls to tease and follow and try to snuggle in corners, and in the late, late afternoon Yarrel and one of the girls went into a stable to look at the horses and were gone rather longer than necessary for any purpose I could think of. I sprawled on a pile of clean straw, grinning widely at nothing, sipping at my beer, and watching as the sun dropped behind the town and the first rockets spangled the dark.

 The figure which came out of the dark was wholly strange, but the voice was perturbingly familiar. “Peter. Here you are, discovered in the midst of the multitude. Come with me and learn what Festival food should be!”

 For a moment I wanted to say that I would rather wait for Yarrel, rather just lie on the straw and look at the sky, but the habit of obeying that voice was too much for me. I staggered to my feet, feeling shoddy and clumsy beside that glittering figure with its princely helm masked in sequins and gems. We went up the hill to a lanterned terrace set with tables where stepped gardens glimmering with fountains sloped down into green shade. There was wine which turned into dizzy laughter and food to make the pork pies die of shame and many sparkling gamesmen gathering out of the darkness to the table where my friend held court, the tall Demon and the Tragamors, from Bannerwell, as Yarrel had said, all drinking together until the night swirled around us in a maelstrom of light and sound.

 Except that in the midst of it all, something inside me got up and walked away. It was as though Peter left Peter’s body lolling at the table while Peter’s mind went elsewhere to look down upon them all from some high, clean place. It saw the Demon standing at the top of one flight of marble stairs, one Tragamor halfway down another flight, and the other brooding on the lower terrace beside a weeping tree. Torches burning behind the Demon threw a long, wing-shaped shadow onto the walkway below where red light washed like a shallows of blood. Into that space came a lonely figure, masked but unmistakable. King Mertyn. The warm, night air turned chill as deep winter, and the sounds of Festival faded.

 Mertyn looked up to see Mandor rise, to hear him call, “I challenge, King!”

 The King did not raise his voice, yet I heard him as clearly as though he spoke at my ear. “So, Prince Mandor. Your message inviting me to join you did not speak of challenge.”

 The Peter-who-watched stared down, impotent to move or call. Couldn’t the King see those who stood there? Demon and Tragamor, substance and shade, True Game challenged upon him here, and the very air alive with cold. King’s Blood Four, here, now, in this place and no other, a Measurable Demesne. But Mandor surely would not be so discourteous. Not now. It was Festival. Drunken-Peter reached a hand, fumbled at the Prince’s sleeve.

 “No, No, Mandor. It’s not…not courteous…” The hand, my hand, was slapped away by an armored glove, struck so violently that it lay bleeding upon the table before drunken-Peter while the other me watched, watched.

 The King called again. “Is it not forbidden to call challenge during Festival or in a Schooltown, Mandor? Have you not learned it so?

 Answered by crowing laughter. “Many things are forbidden, Mertyn. Many things. Still, we do them.”

 “True. Well, if you would have it so, Princeľthen have it so. I move.”

 And from behind one of the crystal fountains which had hidden him from us came that lonely Sorcerer I had wondered at, striding into the light until he stood just behind the King, full of silent waiting, clear as glass, holding whatever terrible thing he had been given to hold.

 Drunken-Peter felt Mandor stiffen, saw the armored hand clench with an audible clang. Drunken-Peter looked up to see sweat bead the Prince’s forehead, to see a vein beating beside a glaring eye. From the Sorcerer below light began to well upward, a force as impersonal as water building behind a dam. Peter-who-watched knew the force would be unleashed at the next move. Drunken-Peter knew nothing, only sat dizzy and half sick before the puddled wine and remnants of the feast as Prince Mandor stooped above him to say:

 “Peter…I do not wish to be…discourteous…” The voice hummed with tension, cracked with strain. With what enormous effort did he then make it light and caressing? “Go down and tell Gamesmaster Mertyn I did but…jest. Invite him to have wine with us…” Peter-who-watched screamed silently above. Drunken-Peter staggered to his feet, struggled into a jog past the tall Demon, imagining as he went an expression ofľwas it scorn? on that face below the half helm, then down the long flight of stairs toward the garden, lurching, mouth open, eyes fixed upon Gamesmaster Mertyn, onto the red-washed pave, hearing from above the cry of frustrated fury, “Talisman…to King’s Blood Four.”

 Peter-above saw the power strike. Drunken-Peter cried as he fell, “No. No, Mandor. You would not be so false to me…to me…” before the darkness fell.

 I woke in a tower room, a strange room, narrow windows showing me clouds driven across a gray sky. It hurt to move my head. At the bedside Chance sat, dozing, and my movement wakened him. He hrummed and hruphed himself into consciousness.

 “Feel better? Well then, you wouldn’t know whether you do or not, would you? You wouldn’t even know how lucky you are.”

 “I’m not…dead. I should be dead.”

 “Indeed you should. Sacrificed in the play, like a pawn, dead as a pantry mouse under the claws of the cat. You would be, too, except for this.”

 He picked my ragged jacket from the floor, holding it so that I could see what the rents revealed, a tracery of golden thread and silver wire, winking red eyes of tiny gems set into the circuits of stitchery in the lining.

 “He bade Nitch sew this into your jacket. Just in case.”

 “How did he know? I don’t understand…”

 “It would be hard to understand,” said Chance, “except by one long mired in treachery. Ah. But Mertyn is not young, lad. He has seen much and studied more. He saw those ribbons, and he knew. Oh, if they’d been a few colorful tilings such as any friend might give, he’d have understood. A love gift, after all. But those you had? Nothing else like them in the town? What purpose a gift like that?”

 “I thought he gave them to me so that he would know me among all the other maskers…”

 “Then you saw deep, lad, and didn’t know it.”

 “Did he mean to play me, even then?” I cried in my belly, a hard knot of pain there which hurt more than the fire beneath the bandages on my face and arms.

 Chance shrugged, leaned to smooth my pillow. “Do you students know what you will play before the game begins? You set your pieces out in the game box, all shining, the ones you think you’ll play and the ones you hold in reserve. Maybe he brought you along to see him win. But, he wasn’t strong enough to win against the King, and he wasn’t brave enough to stand against the move and bear the play as it came, so he threw you into the game like a bone to a Fustigar.”

 I think I cried then, for he said nothing more. Then I slept. Then I woke again, and it was morning, with Mertyn in the chair beside my bed.

 “I am sorry you were hurt, Peter,” he said. “Perhaps you would rather be dead, but I gambled you would not feel so a year from now. Had I the skill with shields and deflectors I do with other strategy, I would have saved you these wounds.” For a long time I simply looked at him, at the gray hair falling in a tumbled lock across his forehead, at the line of his cheeks and the curve of his lips, so much like my own. There was nothing there unkindly, and yet I was angry with him. He had saved my life, and I hated him. The anger and hatred made no sense, were foolish. I would not repay him with foolishness, therefore I could not repay him.

 He stared at his boots. “When you were put into play, Sorcerer struck. An Imperative. Nothing I could do. The screen in your jacket was not perfect. There was considerable splash, and you caught a little of it. Mandor caught most.”

 I had to ask. “The Prince? Gamesmaster Mandor?”

 “I do not know. His players carried him away. They do not know at Havad’s House. Likely he is lost in play. He had provoked me more than once, Peter, but even then I did not call for that Game.”

 “I know.”

 He sighed, very deeply. “I am sending you away from Mertyn’s House. Shielding you was forbidden. When we do things that are forbidden, there is always a price. For me, the price will be to lose you, for I have been fond of you, Peter.” He leaned forward and kissed me, forbidden, forbidden, forbidden. Then he went away. I did not see him again.

 For me, the price was to be sent away from everything I had ever known. It was hard, though not as hard as they could have made it, for they let Yarrel and Chance go with me. We were to become an Ordo Vagorum, so Chance said. I had put myself in another’s hands, truly and completely. I had learned why that is foolish. Never mind that it is forbidden. It is foolish. They did not forbid me to play the Gameľsomeday.

 I was no nearer to being named. There were wounds on my face which would make scars I would always carry. They said something about sending us to another House, one far away, one requiring a very long journey. I got over being angry at King Mertyn. Each morning when I woke I had tears on my face left over from brightly colored dreams, but I could not really remember what they were.



 2
Journeying

  



 I REMEMBER ONLY ODDS AND ENDS about the time that followed, pictures, fragments as of dreams or stories of things that happened to someone else. I remember sitting in a window at harborside, water clucking against the wall beneath me, the blue-bordered curtain flapping in the wind, flap, flap, striking the bandage on my head.

 The border was woven with a pattern of swans, and I bore the pain of it rather than move away. Chance and Yarrel seem to have ignored me then as they went about the business of readying us for travel. The piles of supplies in the room behind me grew larger, but I had no idea what was in them.

 I remember Chance reading the let-pass which had been issued by Mertyn’s House and countersigned by the Council of Schooltown, a pass begging the indulgence of Gamesmen everywhere in letting us go by without involving us in whatever might be going on. It was only as good as the good nature of those who might read it, but Chance seemed to take some comfort from it, nonetheless. Chance spoke of Schooltown as built remote from the lands of the True Game and warded about with protections in order to “keep our study academic and didactic rather than dangerously experiential.” Yarrel mocked him for sounding pompous, and he replied that he merely quoted Gamesmaster Mertyn. That sticks in my head, oddly.

 I remember Chance buying charts from a map-man, the map-man waxing poetic about the accuracy with which the Demesnes were shown and the delicacy with which the cartouches were drawnľthese being the symbols mapmakers use to show which Gamesmen may dwell in a given place. I remember boarding the Lakely Lass, a fat-bellied little ship which was to take us from the mouth of the River Reave along the north and western shores of the Gathered Waters until we came at last to Vestertown and the highroad leading south. There was a Seer standing at the rail as we came aboard, his gauze-covered face turned toward me so that I could see the glitter of his eyes beneath the painted pattern of moth wings. Then I remember huddling with Chance and Yarrel over a chart spread on the tough table, shadows scurrying across it from the hanging lantern each time the ship rolled, Chance pointing and peering and mumbling…

 “Over there, east, is the Great Dragon Demesne. See the cartouche, dragon head, staffľthat’s for a warlock, a slather of spears showing he’s got Armigers. Well, we’ll miss that by a good bit.”

 “How will we know the highroad is safe?” asked Yarrel in his usual practical tone.

 “We’ll go mousey and shy, my boys, mousey and shy. Quiet, like so many owl shadows under the trees, making, no hijus cries or bringing on us the attentions of the powerful. Well, hope has it there are many alive in the world of the Game who have never seen the edge of it played.”

 I said, “I don’t understand that.” They both stared at me in astonishment.

 “Well, well, with us again are you? We’d about given you up, we had, and resolved to carry your senseless carcass the whole way to its new House without your tenancy. You don’t understand it? Why, boy, it’s ‘most the first lesson you learned.”

 “I can’t remember,” I mumbled. It was true. I couldn’t.

 “Why,” he said, “when you were no more than four or five, we used to play our little two-space games in the kitchen before the fire, you and me. You with your little-bit queen and king on each side, the white and the black, and your wee armigers and priests and the tiny sentinels at each end, standing high on their parapets, and me the same. We set out on the board in such array, like the greatest army of ever was in a small boy’s head. You remember that?”

 I nodded that I did, wondering how it connected.

 “Well, then. We’d play a bit, you and me, move by move, and maybe I’d win, or maybe by some strange cleverness,” he winked and nodded at Yarrel, “some most exceptional cleverness, you’d win. And there on the board would be the lonely pawn, perhaps, or the sentinel on his castle walk, never moved once since the game began. True?” Again, I nodded, beginning to understand.

 “So. That piece was not touched by the edge of the game. It stood there and wasn’t bothered by the armigers jumping here and there or churchmen rushing up and down. It’s the same in the True Game, lad. Of course, in House they don’t talk much about the times that Gamesmen don’t play, but truth to tell much of life is spent just standing about or traveling here and there, like the little pawn at the side of the board.”

 He was right. We didn’t spend any time in House learning a thing about not playing. All our time was spent in learning to play, learning what moves could be made by which Gamesmen, what powers each had, what conditions influenced the move, how to determine where the edge of a Demesne would lie.

 “But even if they’re not involved in the play,” I protested, “surely they feel the power…”

 “’Tis said not,” he said. “No more than in the lands of the Immutables who stand outside the Game altogether.”

 “Nothing is outside the Game,” I protested once more, with rather less certainty.

 “Nothing but the Immutables, Lad, and they most unquestionably are.”

 “I thought them mythical. Like Ghost Pieces.”

 Even saying it, I made the diagonal slash of the hand which warded evil. Chance cocked his head, his cheeks bulging in two little, hard lumps as he considered this, eyes squeezed almost shut with thought under the fluffy feathers of his gray hair.

 “No, not myth. And, it may be that ghost pieces are not mythical either. In the Schooltowns many things are thought to be myths, as they may beľin Schooltowns. Out in the purlieus, though, many things happen which we do not hear of in the towns. Who knows what may be, where we are going.”

 I remarked wonderingly that I did not know where we were going, and they laughed at me. Not as though they were amused, but more as if they would as soon have tied me up and used me for fish bait but allowed laughter as a more or less innocent substitute for that. I knew from their laughter they must have told me before, more than once.

 There was even slight annoyance in Yarrel’s voice as he said, “We’re sent to the School at Evenor, near the High Lakes of Tarnoch.” When he saw no comprehension, he went on, “Where the High King’s sons are schooled, ninny.” I wanted very much to inquire why we went there but was hurt enough by the laughter to give them no room for more of the same. Where had I been those last days? Well, I knew where I had been, and there was no good sense in it.

 Chance patted my shoulder kindly. “That’s a’right, lad. King Mertyn said you’d suffer some from shock and from the painkillers they gave you for the burns. We’ll welcome you back whenever you arrive. Now, try a little sleep to hurry things along.”

 The next thing I remember after that is the sun, broken into glittering shards by the waves, and shouts of men on the fantail where they trolled for lake sturgeon. Two enormous fish were already flopping on the deck surrounded by determined fish hackers. I knew they were after caviar, the black pearls of the Gathered Waters, famous all over the purlieus of the South, so they say. Later that day we came to a little lakeport, and there was much heaving of sacks and cartons, much jocularity and beer. We ate in a guest house, grilled fish with sour herbs, lettuces, sweet butter, and new bread.

 Chance and the kitchen wife became quite friendly; I had wine; the moon broke the night into pieces through the diamond panes of the window of our cabin. And the next morning I was myself. The world had hard edges once more; there were no odd-shaped holes between one moment and the next; I began to think about where we were going and the process of getting there; I saw the lake, amazed at the extent of it. From Schooltown it had seemed small enough, limited to the south by the line of little islands which made a falsely close and comforting shore. Out here, it had no edge but the horizon, a sparkling line which loved to stay always the same distance from us.

 This world edge was furred with cloud, red in the rising sun. Our Captain stared into that haze, his face tilted to one wrinkled side as he considered. “I smell wind,” he announced. “Tyeber Town is but two hours down coast. We’ll go no farther than that today.”

 He was wrong. The wind came up strongly to push us farther and farther into the lake, wallowing and heaving. Then, toward evening, when the wind began to abate, there was a singing twang and a shout from the helmsman. It seemed something essential had broken and our little ship could no longer steer itself. While Chance and Yarrel slept, and I tried to, there was a clamor of feet and tools around and above us as the sailors tried to fix it. I went on to the deck to stare at the scudding clouds and saw there the bundled figure of the Seer. He turned his featureless face to me and asked, through the gauze, if I were Peter, son of Mavin. I said no, I was Peter of Mertyn’s House, without family. He stared at me long enough to make me uncomfortable, so I went back to the narrow bunk and eventual sleep.

 By morning the repair effort had succeeded, and we went wallowing away in a wind more violent than before, only to sight a black sail on the quivering horizon. There were general cries of dismay.

 “Pawners,” Chance cried out with the others. “Would you believe it? Coastal boats don’t get taken by pawners.”

 “We’re not coastal at the moment,” I pointed out. This did not seem to comfort him. As the hours wore on the pawners drew closer across the wind-whipped waters, making our Captain give up his attempt to return to the western shore and turn instead to flee eastward before the black-sailed boat. Thus we sped away, like a fat wife running from a tiger, the slender black sail gaining upon us until the ship was within hailing distance.

 “…oh,” the voice came. “…oy…ai…ame…eeter.” Chance and Yarrel looked at me in astonishment, and the Seer drew close enough to lay hand upon my arm.

 “ ‘Ware, lad,” he said. “I see evil and agony in this. ‘Ware, Captain. Do not believe what these men say.”

 Around us the air grew chill, and we knew the Seer had drawn power making a little Demesne where we stood. I shivered, not entirely from the cold.

 “They say they want only the boy named Peter,” said the Captain. “That if we give him up, they’ll go away and leave us alone. I have little need of your warning, Gamesman. Pawners are not to be believed.”

 I looked at the man with respect. He did not cringe or beg. He simply told us what the circumstances were and left it for us to respond. On impulse I took the spyglass from his hand to set it upon our pursuer. High upon her foredeck a cadaverous man leaned against the rail, another glass fixed upon us so that we looked, he and I, eye to eye. I could see the curve of his lip and the slant of black brow, altogether villainous, as why should he not be, being what he was.

 I whispered to the Captain, “What may we do?”

 “There’s a small fog coming up, lad. We can run on before him, for he closes slowly, waiting for it to get a bit dimmer, meantime calling back and forth with much misunderstanding. If the fates are willing, we may lose ourselves and run into the harbor of the Muties.”

 “I might have known,” breathed Chance.

 “Muties?” I asked.

 “The Immutables, young sir. The one place that pawners might not follow. If they follow and catch us up, we are lost for we are outmanned.”

 Indeed, it was so. The black-sailed ship had twice our crew, young and strong. I nodded at the Captain, telling him by this to do as he thought best. You are thinking that I was quite mad? That would be a reasonable thought. At that moment none of us asked why such a ship should come out of the wind in search of me, an unnamed foundling boy, half-schooled and wholly unsatisfactory in his own House. I did not say, “why me?” nor did Yarrel, nor Chance. It was only when the little wraiths of fog had grown into curtains and we had sneaked away among the velvet folds of mist, only when we heard a yell of fury from the other ship, bodiless and directionless in the half light, only then did I turn to Chance to say for the first time, “Why me? The Captain must have misunderstood. No one would come after me ...”

 To which the Seer, who had stood by us throughout the long flight, murmured, “You, none other, Lad. And the time will come when you will know why too well…”to drift away then, as I understand Seers often do, into a silent musing from which he would not be aroused.

 I did not know why then. Moreover, I could not imagine why. There was an exercise frequently called for by Gamesmasters when student attention flagged in the mid afternoon. They called it simply “imagining,” and the task was to imagine a series of moves at the end of which some extremely unlikely configuration of pieces might occur. I had never been good at it. Yarrel had been better. It was not surprising then, that by the time our pathetic fat ship waddled into the harbor of the Immutables, Yarrel had thought up at least three reasons why.

 “Mandor may have sent them. If he is not dead, he may be remorseful and desirous of making it up to you.”

 I thought this most unlikely. I had seen Mandor’s face when Mertyn moved against him.

 “Mertyn may have sent them,” he went on. “He has decided he made a mistake to send you away and ...”

 Chance hushed him, as did I. In our opinion, mine for what small count it has, Mertyn makes very few mistakes of any kind.

 “Or, someone may have seen the play,” Yarrel continued, “when the power flew at Mandor, and may have thought it came from you…”

 I said, “Nonsense.”

 “Truly, Peter. Some kin of Mandor may have thought so and desires to take you for vengeance.”

 “But I did nothing to him. It was he who tried to kill me.”

 “But, they may not know that. Someone watching from a bad vantage point, they might think it was you.”

 “Or someone from afar,” agreed Chance. “Someone who saw or heard about it but did not know the truth. Perhaps they think you a Wizard Emergent, and the pawners are recruiting for a True Game somewhere.”

 “Where?”

 “Who knows where. Somewhere. Some petty King of a small purlieu may have offered high for a Wizard. No tested Gamesman would go to a small purlieu, so a pawner would be paid to look for a student, or a boy with talent just emerging.”

 “But, it was Mertyn’s Sorcerer, not me. Mertyn’s power, not mine. Power bled into that Sorcerer for days, perhaps, little by little, so that we’d not feel it going, so that he’d be ready when the moment came. It was Mertyn! Not me.”

 Chance agreed, pursing his lips and cocking his head like a bird listening to bugs in the wood. “You know it, lad. I know it, and so does Yarrel, here. Someone else may not.”

 I exploded, “What do I look like? Some Wizard Child?” There was a moment’s terrified silence. One does not shout about Wizards or their children if one cares about surviving, but no lightning struck at me out of the fog.

 “I look like what I am. A student. No sign of talent yet. No sign of a name. No nothing. Oh, I know what they said at the house, what that fat-faced Karl always claimed, that I was Mertyn’s Festival get. Well. So much for that and that. I’m gone from Mertyn’s House with no sign of Kinging about me to rely on. Now, this is nonsense and makes me sick inside.”

 Yarrel had the grace to put his arms around my shoulders and hug me, after which Chance did the same, and we stood thus for a long moment while the ship wallowed and splashed itself toward the jetty. Around us masts of little boats sketched tall brush strokes of stone gray against cloud gray, tangles of rigging creaked and jingled while a circle of wan light hung far above us like a dead lantern. It was mid-day masked as evening with dusk bells tolling somewhere in the fog, remote and high, as though from hills, and such a feeling of sadness as I had not felt before. Long minutes told me it came from the pungent soup of salt and smoke, as of grasses burning on the water meadows, a smell as sad and wonderful as youth in speaking of endings and beginnings.

 Came a hail out of the shadow, and we grated against the stones. The Captain was over the rail in a moment, talking earnestly to those he met there. The plank clattered down to let us off the unquiet deck, our legs buckling and weaving like dough from the long time on the water. Howsoever, we stiffened them fast enough to gather up our gear and follow Chance up through the lanes, twisting and dodging back upon our trail until we came to a tavern. That is, I suppose they would have called it a tavern, though most they served there was tea and things made of greenery.

 There was one there to meet us, their “governor,” so they said, a brown, lean man with a little silver beard tike the chin hairs of a goat. He said his name was Riddle.

 “Riddle. A question with a strange answer, or an answer with strange sense, or so my daughter says. She’ll be along by and by to guide you south overland. We want no part of you, nor of those pawners who came after you.”

 “They actually came into harbor after us?” Chance’s question was more curious than fearful. Well, it wasn’t him the pawners were after.

 “They did so. The Demon with them is already complaining that he is blind and deaf here in our land. So, we say, let him get out of it.” He smiled sarcastically. “And let you get out as well. You Gamesmen have no Game here. Your Demons cannot read any thought but their own; your Seers cannot see further than their eyes will reach. Your Sentinels can make no fire but with steel and spark, as any child can.”

 “Your land truly is outside the Game? Almost I thought Chance was jesting with us when he said it…”

 “No jest. Here, no Game of any kind. Howsoever, we bear no malice, either, and will send you away as you would. South, I think you said.”

 “I thank you for helping us,” I mumbled, only to be stopped by his harsh laughter.

 “No help, lad. No. We want none of the nonsense of the Game, none of its blood and fire here. If you are gone, so will the pawners go. It is for our own peace, not yours.”

 So I learned that people may be kind enough while not caring a rather. He sent his girl child to us after a bit, she with long, coltish legs, scarred from going bare among the brush, and hair which fell to her waist in a golden curtain. Tossa, her name was. Riddle held her by the shoulder, her eyes level with mine, unsmiling, as he spoke to Chance.

 “We have none of the Festival brutishness here, sir. These your boys need be made ‘ware of that. See to it you make it clear to them, or you’ll not walk whole out of our land.”

 Chance said he would make it clear, indeed, and Yarrel was already blushing that he understood. I was such an innocent then that I didn’t know what they were talking about. It made no difference to me to be guided by a girl or a lad or a crone, for that. Tossa threw her head up, like a little horse, and I thought almost to hear her whinny, but instead she told us to come after her quick as we might and made off into the true night which was gathering.

  

 Oh, Tossa. How can I tell you of Tossa? Truly, she was only a girl, of no great mind or skill. In the world of the Game she would have been a pawn, valued perhaps for her youth or her virginity, for some of the powerful value these ephemera because they are ephemera, and perhaps she would have had no value at all to spend her life among the corn. But to meľto me she became more than the world allows in value. Her arms reaching to feel the sun, her long-fingered hands which floated in gestures like the blossoms of trees upon least winds, her hair glinting in the sun or netting shadow at dusk, her laugh when she spoke to me, her touch upon the bandage at my head as she said, “Poor lad, so burned by the silliness abroad in the land”…

 She was only teasing me, so Yarrel said, as girls tease boys, but I had no experience of that. Seven days we had, and seven nights. She became my breath, my sight, my song. I only looked at her, heard her, filled myself with the smell of her, warm, beastly, like an oven of bread. She was only a girl. I cannot make more of her than that. Yet she became the sun and the grass and the wind and my own blood running in me. I do not think she knew. If she knew, she did not care greatly. Seven days. I would not have touched her except to offer my hand in a climb. I would not have said her name but prayerfully…

 Except that on the seventh dusk we came to the end of the lands which the Immutables call their own. We stood upon a tall hogback of stone, twisty trees bristling about us, looking down the long slope to a river which meandered its way through sand banks, red in the tilting sun, wide as a half-day’s march and no deeper than my toes. A tumbled ruin threw long shadows on the far side, some old town or fortification, and Chance got out the charts to see where we were. We crouched over them, aware after a moment that Tossa was not with us. We found her on a pinnacle, staring back the way we had come, frowning.

 “Men on the way,” she said. “Numbers of them.” She put the glass back to her eyes and searched among the trees we had only lately left.

 “Trail following. Riddle didn’t think they’d follow you!” She sounded frightened.

 Chance borrowed the glass. “They’ve stopped for the night? Can’t tell. No sign of fire, but they’ve not come from under the trees yet. Ah. An Armiger, lads. And a Tragamor.”

 Tossa exclaimed, “But they are powerless within the boundaries.” Still, she was frightened.

 Chance nodded. “Yes, but they have blades and spears and fustigars to smell us out. They have more strength than we. And the boundaries are too close. The river marks them, doesn’t it?”

 She nodded. Yarrel was thinking, his face knotted.

 “Let the girl go away to the side,” he suggested, “while we take to the river. They aren’t following her. The river will confuse the fustigars. They have no Seer with them? No Pursuivant?”

 Chance told him he saw none, but Tossa would have none of it. She had been sent to guide us out, and she would guide us out. “We will all go by the river, quickly, before they can get up here to see which way we went.”

 Strangely, as we went down the hogback and into the river, I began to think of the boundaries and what they meant to the people who lived there. They were all pawns here, I thought, with no strength in them except their arms and their wits. In this land the Armiger could not rise into the air like a hawk on the wind; the Tragamor could not move the stones beneath our feet so that we stumbled and fell. In this land, we were almost their equals; no Chill Demesne would grow around us, blooming like a hideous flower with us at its center. Almost, I smiled. Now I recoil when I remember that almost smile, that sudden, unconsidered belief that we and those who followed were on equal footing. We galloped down the slope and into the river as dusk came, almost gaily, Chance muttering that we would run down the river then cut back into the Immutable land. The water splattered up beneath our feet; Tossa reached out to seize my hand in hers and hasten me along. When she fell, I thought she had stumbled. I mocked her clumsiness, teasingly, and only when I had prodded her impatiently with a foot did I see the feathered shaft protruding from her back. Then I screamed, the sound hovering in the air around us like a smell. Chance came and lifted her and there was no more smiling as we raced down that stream for our lives, angling away into a creek which fed it at a curve of the river, praying those who followed would go on down the flow rather than up the little stream, running, running, until at last we came to earth among trees in a swampy place, Tossa beside us, barely breathing.

 I could feel the shaft in me, through the lung, feel the bubbling breath, the slow well of blood into my nostrils, the burning pain of it as though it were hot iron. I sobbed with it, clutching at my own chest until Chance shook me silent.

 “Be still,” he hissed at me. “You are not hurt. Be still or we are dead.”

 The pain was still there, but I knew then that it was not from the arrow but from some other hurt. I hurt because Tossa hurt; it was as though I were she. There was no reason for this. I didn’t even blame it upon “love,” for I had loved Mandor and had never felt his hurts as my own. This spun in my head as I gulped hot tears into my throat and choked upon them, smothering sound. Away to the south we could hear the baying of the fustigars, a dwindling cacophony following the river away, toward the border. The soil we lay on was wet and cold; the smell of rot and fungus was heavy. I heard Yarrel ask, “Is she dead?” and Chance reply that she breathed, but barely.

 “A Healer,” I said. “Chance, I must find a Healer. Where?”

 He muttered something I couldn’t hear, so I shook him, demanding once again. “Where? I’ve got to find someone…”

 “That ruin,” he gargled. “Back where we came into the river. The chart showed a hand there, a hand, an orb, and a trumpet…” A hand was the symbol for Healer. The orb betokened a Priest, and the trumpet a Herald.

 “Let me go!”‘ Yarrel was already dropping his pack. I thrust him back onto the earth beside her.

 “Help her if you can. I cannot. I hurt too much. I must go or I’ll die. They won’t be looking for one person, alone…”

 “Your bandages,” Yarrel said. “One glimpse of you and the pawners will know.”

 “They will not,” I hissed. I ripped the pad of gauze from my head and dropped it into the muddy water, sloshing it about before unwinding it to spiral it around my head, covering my face. “Your cloak,” I demanded of Chance, taking it from him before he could object.

 “Oh, High King of the Game,” he protested, “take it off, Peter. Of all forbidden things, this is most forbidden.”

 “And still, we do them,” I quoted at him furiously. “Quickly, give me soot from the lantern for the face…”

 He fumbled fingers into the chimney of the dark lantern, cursing as he burned them on the hot glass, cursing again as he drew sooty fingers across the muddied gauze to make the eyes, nose, and slitted mouth shape of a Necromancer. “Oh, by the cold but you’re doing a terrible thing.”

 I turned from them, from her where she lay so helpless beside them, telling them to bring her near the river and across it as soon as they saw me return. It would do no good to bring a Healer into the land of the Immutables. Then I ran, not knowing that I ran, not thinking of anything except the hand in the ruins, the Healer there.

 The waters of the river fountained beneath my feet. The hard meadow of the farther shore fled behind me until the ruins loomed close on their rocky hill. I felt a chill, and with the chill came a measure of sanity which said, “You will do her no good if you are caught in some Game, no good if you are hasty.” The truth of that stopped me. Shuddering, I circled the hill to measure the Demesne, keeping the chill upon my right hand, six hundred paces, more or less. A small Demesne, someone at the center of it pulling only so much power as it might take to rise into the air (as Heralds can) to spy out the land around. I crept toward the ruin’s center, searching the skyline from moment to moment. Shattered corridors led into roofless rooms, and at last I found a wall with slitted windows overlooking a courtyard. Of the three gathered there I saw only the Healer at first, her pale robes spread upon the mossy stones, half in shadow, half in light from the fiery pillar which rose and fell in a languorous dance. Beside it stood a Priestess, gesturing in time with the firelight. One glance was enough to tell me what she was, for such beauty and glamor are unreal, passing all natural loveliness. The Herald sat near her, bright tabard gleaming, raising and lowering his finger to make the fire move. They were within sound of my breath, and it seemed to me they must have heard my heart. Close as they were, it would do me no good unless I could get the Healer away from them and to the river’s side.

 Even as I struggled to find a plan, the fire sank from its dancing column into an ordinary blaze, a small campfire. The Priestess sighed, complaining, “So I build a fiery web, Borold, with none to see and admire…”

 He rose to put a cloak around her shoulders, stroking her arms gently. “I admire, Dazzle. Always…”

 The Healer moved in a gesture of exasperation. “You have only made the place cold. Why can’t you be content to leave well enough alone and give up these children’s tricks?”

 The Herald objected. “Give over, Silkhands. She has made a pillar of fire and I have made it dance. Together we have pulled no more power than you might use to heal a sparrow. Why should she not do something for her own amusement?”

 “When has she ever done anything not for her own amusement?” the Healer countered. “We are sent here to sit like badgers upon an earth because Dazzle insisted upon amusement.”

 When the Priestess turned toward her I saw again that matchless face, curled now into spiteful mockery, “You will not be content until you destroy me, Healer-maid. You are disloyal to me now as always, hating and jealous of my following.” The woman preened in the firelight, stretching like a cat in satisfied self-absorption.

 “We will not be here long, only until Himaggery decides that he misses me, which he will, and sends word for me to return to the Bright Demesne. The Wizard will bring us back soon.”

 “I have never been disloyal,” said the Healer in a low voice, full of strain. Though I could not see her face, I thought she was fighting tears. “But I would rather live where I can use my skills to heal. Here I can do nothing, nothing.”

 I thought I would give her something to do as I turned from the slit window to approach them from below. I had gone only a pace or two before turning back in a fit of inspiration to strip off my white shirt and hang it within the window. The breeze moved it slightly there, pale in the firelight.

 Once out of the ruin and on the plain below them, I put my hands to my mouth to make that echoing ghost call with which we boys had frightened each other in the attics of Mertyn’s House.

 As I approached the tumulus the Herald rose above it to stand high upon the air. He called, “Who comes?” but I did not answer. I knew what he saw; black cloak, skull face, a Necromancer. I spread the cloak in a batwinged salute and called in the deepest voice I could make.

 “One comes, Herald, bringing a message from a Wizard to one known as Silkhands, the Healer…”

 There was a little fall of rubble as the Priestess and the Healer climbed onto the piled stone beneath him. I kept eyes unfocused, unseeing of that face, but still I could feel the pull of her eyes. Priests have that quality, and Kings, and Princesľby some called “follow-me,” and by others “beguilement.” Dazzle had more of it than any I had seen, so I did not look her in the face. She called.

 “Come, Necromancer, closer that we may hear this message you bring in comfort…”

 “Nay, Godspeaker. Let her whom I have named come with me to hear the words of Himaggery.” The Healer struggled down the pile toward me. When she was close, I whispered, “You are to come with me, Healer, to do a thing the Wizard desires.” She followed me as I turned away, but the Priestess was not of a mind to let us go.

 “Oh, come up to me, Necromancer, that I may judge whether this is a true message…”

 Her voice was sweet, sweet as honey, a charm and an enchantment. Almost I turned before I thought. The three of them had no power of far-seeing among them, but the disguise would not stand close inspection, as Chance had well known. I would have to try the trick I had planned. I turned again toward her where she stood above me on the stones.

 “My Master, who is your Master also, has warned me that you are not always quick to do his will. Therefore, he has suggested I take the time, if you are troublesome, to show you your dead…”

 I gestured high, letting the sleeve fall away from my pale arm as I pointed at the far slit window behind them. Luck was with me. As they turned, the breeze caught my shirt and moved it as though something living or undead moved among the stones. Once again I gave the ghost call. The Priestess shuddered. I could see it from where I stood and knew then that she was one of those with reason to fear her dead. I led Silkhands away. From behind came a frantic call.

 “The shade you have raised remains, Necromancer. Will you not remove it?”

 “The shade remains only for a time, Godspeaker. Go to your rest. Come morrow it will be gone.” As it would be. I had no intention of letting them discover the trick.

 The Healer followed me, mute, until we drew near the river. I gestured her ahead to the place where Yarrel and Chance waited, a dark blot upon the earth between them. She ran toward them. I tried to say something to her, command her, but my body had gone dead, as though all the energy which had forced me to the ruin and into the masquerade had drained away leaving me empty. I felt horror, breathlessness, an aching void, then fell, hearing as I did so the Healer’s voice crying:

 “She is dead, dead.”



 3
The Wizard Himaggery

  



 I WOKE WITH THE HEALER’S HANDS ON MY CHEST, my heart beating as though within them. Some mysterious message seemed to move between my eyes and hers, shadowed against the dawn sky.

 She said, “Well, this one lives, and he is no Necromancer. Nor, I’ll warrant, was it any Wizard’s message which sent you to me. Why did you bring me to her?” She gestured with her chin to the place Tossa lay, tight wrapped in her own cloak, a package, nothing more.

 “I could not have healed her even had she been alive when I came. She is an Immutable, not open to healing.”

 I struggled away from her hands. “I thought, if we brought her outside their land…”

 “No, no,” she said impatiently, with a gesture of tired exasperation which I was to see often. “No. It is something they carry in them, as we carry our talents in us. Not all of them have it, but this one was armored against any such as I.”

 “You could tell? Even with her dead?”

 “Newly dead. If I had had great strength, and if she had not been what she wasľwell, it might have been done. But, she was what she was. And you are what you are, which is not a Necromancer from Himaggery’s Demesne.”

 Chance stepped forward to offer her a cup of tea, his old head cocked to one side like that of a disheveled bird, eyes curious as a crow’s. He made explanation and apology. I felt no pride at all in the trick I’d managed, but the Healer seemed slightly amused by it, in a weary way. I would have been amused, perhaps, if it had worked. As it was, I felt only empty.

 “What happened to me?” I asked.

 “It was as though you had been the girl herself,” the Healer answered. “Arrow shot, heart wounded. But, there was no mark on you. Were you close kin? No, of course not. Stupid of me. She was an Immutable. What was she to you?”

 I didn’t answer for I didn’t know. The moment passed. What had Tossa been to me? Chance murmured something by way of identification of her, a guide, a mere acquaintance, daughter of the governor of the Immutables (at which Silkhands drew breath). What had she been to me? I was terrified, for I could remember what she had been but felt nothing at all, nothing. The Healer caught my look and laid her hands upon me. Then it was all back, the agony of loss, the terror of death.

 “Will you bear it?” she asked. “Or, shall I heal it?” In that time it seemed an ultimate horror that I could be healed of the pain while Tossa lay unmourned. I said:

 “Let me bear itľif I can.” I was not certain I could. They carried her body back to the edge of the trees, wrapped well against birds and beasts, and buried it under a cairn, leaving a message there to her father for those who would come searching. Chance trembled at the thought of that man’s anger following us; the Immutables were said to be terrible in wrath. We went off to the ruins as I wept and ached and drew breaths like knives into me. She had been a girl, only a girl. She had been. She was not. I could not understand a world in which this could be true and the pain of it so real. I did not know her at all; I was her only mourner. This was more horrible than her death.

 The Healer called out as we approached the ruins. While the others circled it, I went through the tumbled stones to retrieve my shirt. The trickery had been laid bare, but it was a good shirt and I had no intention of leaving it there. The route I had taken on the night before eluded me; I came at the slit windows from a different direction. There was a sharp, premonitory creak, then the earth opened beneath me to dump me unceremoniously into a dusty pit. My head hit the floor with a thump. When I stood up, dazed, it was to find myself in a kind of cellar or lower room which smelled of dust and rats. The walls were lined with slivered remnants of shelves and rotten books. Something small turned under my foot. I picked it up, saw another, then another, stooped to gather them up. They were tinyľno longer than my littlest fingerľgame pieces carved from bone or wood, delicate as lace, unharmed by time. Pieces of a rotten game board lay beneath them, and a tiny book. I gathered it up as well, even as I heard Chance calling from above.

 I wondered afterward why I had moved so quickly to hide them and put them away in my belt pouch. It would have been more natural to call out, to show them as a prize. Later I thought it was because of the way we had lived in the School House. There had never been any privacy, anything of one’s own. There were few secrets, virtually no private belongings. Secret things were wonderful things, and these were truly marvelous, so I gathered them as a squirrel does nuts, hiding them as quickly. They were not paying any attention to me at any rate, for the Healer had attracted it all. She had found all her belongings gone, Borold and Dazzle gone, and was in full lament.

 “My clothes,” she wailed. “My boots. My box of herbs. Everything. Why would they do that?”

 “Probably because they thought they were following you,” said Yarrel, sensibly. “To that Wizard Peter pretended the message came from…”

 “Oh, by the ice and the wind and the seven hells,” she said. “They would be just such fools as to do that.” Then she fell silent and we didn’t find out for some time what that was all about. There was nothing for us to do but travel together, for the Bright Demesne, of the Wizard Himaggery lay south, the way we were going.

 We slept before starting out, I crying myself to sleep, hurting because of Tossa, saying to myself, “This is what love is.” It was not love, not at all, but I did not know that then. When we woke it was with a high riding moon to light our way south.

 During the way south I learned something more of women. Yarrel taught me. He did not see the Healer as anything mysterious or strange. He saw her as a woman and treated her, so far as I could see, as he had treated Tossa, with a certain teasing respect which had much laughter in it. The first village we came to he insisted we buy her a pagne to wear, she having nothing with her but the one dress and light robe, both becoming raggedy from the road. Once the people saw a Healer was come, however, nothing would do but that they stoke the oven in the market place and bring the sick to lie about it. She, all glittering-eyed and distant, walked among them touching this one and that until, when she was finished, most had risen on their feet and the oven was cooled no warmer than my hand from her draw of power from it. They paid her well, and she insisted on repaying us for the pagne, though I argued it was small pay for healing me.

 “I have your company,” she said simply, for once not going on like a coven of crows gabbing all at once. She was tired. I could see it in her face. “It is good to have company on the road, even pawns and boys, if you take no offense at that.”

 We told her we were not offended by truth. Later, when we stopped for the night, she wrapped herself in the bright pagne and combed out her hair. I thought once again of birds, but this time of the clamorous, unpredictable parrots with their sudden laughter and wise eyes. Her hair was the color of silver wood ash, and her eyes were green as leaves in her pale, oval face. Chance was once more gloating over his charts, and she leaned on his shoulder to trace our way south among the hills.

 “Dazzle has gone to the Bright Demesne,” she said. “She and Borold, thinking Himaggery sent for me. Oh, she will be a jealous witch, Dazzle, thinking anyone has sent for me.” She sounded very tired. I thought of Dazzle’s beauty and shivered. How could one such as that be jealous of anyone? Silkhands went on. “She believes she loves him, you see, the Wizard. But Himaggery is proof against her, and it drives her to excess. Ah, well, we will get there soon after her and no doubt bring her away again. She will be very angry.”

 Yarrel asked, “Why do you care? Are you her leman?”

 “Half sister, rather. Our father was the same, but she was born to another mother than Borold’s and mine. I am oldest, by six years.”

 “Why were you sent away?”

 “Because Dazzle stirs trouble as a cook stirs soup. You called her Godspeaker, Priestess, but she is no Priestess. She is a witch, as uncontrollable as storm.”

 “Where is this Bright Demesne?” asked Chance. “I can’t find it here what should be so sizeable.” She helped him search, but there was no sign of it upon the chart. Chance puffed his cheeks in complaint.

 “No trust, lads, that’s what it comes to. Pay gold, or healing, or laughter if you’re a clown, and get nothing but tricks and lies. This chart was said to be complete, and look at itľsome old thing dusted off and sold with pretense.” He folded it sadly, stroking the parchment with a calloused hand. I knew how he felt. It was a godlike feeling to spread the charts and trace one’s way softly along a crease of hill, imagining the way, learning the names and aspects of the land. It was less wonderful if one knew that the charts lied. Then it was only pretend, not true game.

 That night I lay awake after the others slept, mazed by a lucific moon, and set out the tiny Gamesmen I had found. For the first time I noted they were not like those I had played with as a child. Of the white pieces, the tallest was a Queen, but there was no King beside her. Instead there was a white Healer. There were two Seers, two Armigers, two Sentinels, but no Churchmen. Of the black pieces the tallest was a Necromancer. There was a Sorcerer almost as tall, then two Tragamors, two Elators, two Demons. I could not tell what the little men were, crouchy and fuzzed in the moonlight. In the first morning light I looked again. They were crouchy indeed, Shapeshifters all, of the same ilk but differing in detail. Each piece had the same fascination in the hand I had felt when I first held them. Unwillingly, I put them away, each wrapped in a scrap of cloth and buried under my needfuls.

 Traveling south, sun and rain, forest and meadow, Silkhand’s chatter, Yarrel’s silences, Chance’s wry commentary upon the world, no chill, no menace. Silkhands said that Himaggery had taken much of the land around Lake Yost and assembled thousands of Gamesmen there. Chance laughed, but she claimed it was true. How so many could find power to exist, she did not say. We did not ask. It was only a tall tale, we thought. Hum of bees, quiet sough of wind. Then, suddenly, as we climbed a high ridge of stone, a cold gust from above, chill as winter, without warning. We ran for overhanging stone and peered from beneath it like badgers.

 “Dragon,” whispered Yarrel. I saw it then, planing across the valley beyond, great wings outspread, long neck stretched like an arrow, tail behind, straight as a spear. Fire bloomed around its jaws. I was the first to see the other, higher, diving out of the sun. It was something I had never seen before.

 “Cold Drake,” someone said in a hiss. The cold intensified. We huddled close, pulling clothing from the packs to wrap with our blankets around us, to keep our heat in. Neither of the Gamesmen knew we were there or cared. They would soak our heat for their play just as they would that from the sun-hot stones. All we could do was wait in the shelter of the stones, praying they would fly on before it grew too cold for us.

 I wondered as we lay there how many thousands of pawnsľand lesser Gamesmen, tooľhad died thus, lying helpless under stones or trees or in their houses while Gamesmen drew their heat away, slow degree by slow degree, until they fell into that last sleep. We had seen bones here and there as we traveled, littering the roadside, heaped around the ruins where Silkhands had been, all those who had stayed quiet and cold while Gamesmen played. Even so, it was a wondrous thing to watch the Dragon and the Cold Drake fight. The one was all sinuous movement, twisting coil, black on black with frosty breath; the other all arrow darting, climb and dive, amber on gold with the breath of fire. As it grew colder around us, it grew more difficult for the Gamesmen to draw heat as well, and their movement slowed. We kept expecting them to move away, over the sunwarmed plains, but they did not. We knew then that they dueled, that they had set the boundaries of their Game and would not leave them until one or both were dead.

 The end came as suddenly as the beginning. The Cold Drake caught the Dragon full in a looping coil which tightened, tightened. The Dragon screamed. They fell together, linked, faster and faster, wings unmoving, a blur in the clear air. Then they were upon the plain before us, lost in a stirred cloud of frigid dust which erupted into the wind and was gone. The Healer sobbed and moved into the open, stumbling toward those distant bodies, we after her. She paused at one body only a moment, then went on to the other. He breathed feebly, back in his own form, a slender youth looking scarcely older than I, pale of skin with black hair and the long ears of the southern people.

 He tried to focus his agonized gaze upon the Healer, said “Healer…please…” Silkhands reached out as though to touch him then turned away.

 “Too cold,” she said. “Oh, there is nothing to make into a fire. If we could have fire swiftly…” We all looked around, but there was nothing to burn upon the hard-packed earth. The youth gave a bubbling cry and was silent. I turned to find Silkhands weeping.

 “Too cold, always too cold and I can do nothing. No power, no way to get power. Oh, Lords of the seven hells, but I wish you were a Tragamor…” She sobbed upon Chance’s chest like a child. Looking toward the far line of forest I, too, wished I were a Tragamor, though with the cold as it was I doubted even a Tragamor could have ported wood from that forest in time. My eyes caught a glitter there; we all stared at the procession which came. It was not lengthy but puissant, the tall figure on the high red horse most of all. I knew him by the fur-collared robe embroidered with moonstar signs, even before Silkhands sank to her knees murmuring:

 “The Wizard Himaggery.” My eyes did not stay long on the Wizard, for behind him rode one whose face I well remembered, that pawner from the Gathered Waters who had sought me, followed me. Well, I thought, run as we might he had found me. Blood gathered behind my eyes and I launched myself at him, shouting.

 The next thing I knew I was on the ground with two men sitting on me. There had been a sudden burst of heat from someone in the train, a Sorcerer most like. The Elators sitting on me had not needed it, however. They had needed only their own strength and my clumsiness. The Wizard sounded amused.

 “And what occasions this animosity, my good pawner? Is this the one you have been telling me about?”

 There was a mumbled reply before the Wizard spoke again. “Let him up, but keep your eyes on him. This is no time nor place to sort out such matters. We must look upon the bodies of our foolish young.” And with that he rode forward, almost over me where I struggled with the Elators, unwilling to give up. He stopped by the youth’s body and spoke to Silkhands. A Sorcerer rode out of the train and offered her his hand so that she might draw upon his stored power if she would. She shook her head. Too late. The Wizard turned his mount and came toward us again.

 “Oh, stop squirming, boy. You will not be dealt with unfairly,” and rode away toward the forest. There were extra horses, evidently brought in the hope the duelers could ride home. Chance and Silkhands had one, Yarrel and I the other. Behind us the bodies of the duelers rose into the air to float behind us, a Tragamor riding before each with a Sorcerer between. Even irritated as I was, I admired the crisp way it was done, each knowing what to do and doing it. Yarrel did not notice. His face was glorious. There would never be anything in the world as important to Yarrel as horses.

 The Gamesman who rode beside me, one I could not identifyľgold tunic embroidered with cobweb pattern, magpie helm and gray cloakľbegan to talk of the ones who floated behind.

 “Young Yvery and even younger Yniod,” he said, “both having conceived a passion for the Seer, Yillen of Pouws, and having studied the madness of courtly love (much studied by them and some other few fools in Himaggery’s realm) did each claim the other had insulted the lady. She, having been in trance this seven month, could not intervene. So was challenge uttered, and by none could they be dissuaded. Himaggery demands that all may have free choice, and so did this occur.”

 I found my voice somewhere beneath my giblets and got it out. “Which of them did the Seer love?”

 “Neither. She knew neither of them. They had only seen her sleeping.”

 “What is this courtly love you speak of?”

 The Gamesman gestured to Silkhands. “Ask your Healer friend, she knows.”

 Silkhands turned a miserable, shamed face to me. “Oh, yes, the Rancelman is right. I know. It is some factitious wickedness which Dazzle thought up and spread among the impressionable young. She may have read of it in some ancient book or come upon it in amusements for herself, and none will do unless there is combat and ill feeling. That is why we were banished to the ruin. Three times we have lived in the Bright Demesne, and each time Dazzle has started up some such foolishness. It does nothing but cause trouble, dueling, death, stupidity. Each time Himaggery has sent her away…”

 “Her? Not you?”

 “No.” She seemed almost angry that I had asked. “Not I. Not Borold. But we cannot let her live alone…”

 “I would,” snorted Yarrel. Of course, he had not seen Dazzle. “So long as she has you to comfort her, why should she mend her behavior?”

 “So says Himaggery,” she admitted. “But this last thing must have started ages ago. Dazzle could not have begun any new mischief. There has not been time.”

 I mumbled something intended for comfort. We went on through the fringe of forest and out into the clear, blue shining of the lake’s edge. For a moment I did not understand what I saw rising from the earth. Fogs spiraled from steaming springs which fed the waters. The town was scattered among these mists, and I knew why Himaggery had taken the Lake of Yost and how it was that thousands could gather here.

 “There is power here,” I said as I felt the heat.

 “Yes,” Silkhands agreed. “There is plenty of power here, and not much is needed here. There is none out there, and that is where it is always needed. It is never here I need it!” Her voice rose in a pained cry.

 I said, “It hurts you! When you need to heal and have not the power, it hurts you!” The idea was quite new to me.

 “Yes. That is true for all Healers. And for all Seers, and all Demons, too. We who are the children of Gamesmother Didir have this pain.”

 She was speaking of the legendary grandmother of our race. Didir was progenitress of the mental powers, Gamesfather Tamor the progenitor of the material ones. Religion has it that all of us are descended from these two. I was not thinking so much of that, however, as of the idea of pain. When Tossa had been wounded, I had felt her pain, felt her death. When Silkhands had felt pain, I, too, had felt it. What did this pattern mean? Understand, for boys of my ageľand, I suppose, for girls too, though I had no way of knowingľthe most important thing is to know what name, what talent we will have. We search for signs of it, hints, even for auspices. We beg Seers to look ahead for us (they never will, it is forbidden). What did this mean? Was I a Demon emergent, reading the feelings of others? But, no, this was foolishness. Tossa could not have been read in this fashion. It spun in my head endlessly, so I tried not to think about it.

 So, we were given food and water and proper amenities and brushed up to be presented to Himaggery in his audience hall as soon as might be. I heard water under the floor, the warmth of the stones telling their own tale of power. Dazzle was there, and the pawner. When they had been heard, Chance took our let-pass from his breast and gave it to the Wizard who perused it.

 “All right, lad,” the Wizard said. “You’ve heard the pawner say he was hired to find you, hired by a Demon and paid well for his work. You’ve heard Silkhands say you played a forbidden game to get a Healer to a wounded Immutable, something anyone could have told you wouldn’t work. I’ve heard complaining from Dazzle, as usual, but you merit no punishment on that account. Now, let me hear from you. Why does this Demon want you?”

 “I do not know, sir. I have met only one Demon in my life, at the last Festival, and I don’t even remember his name.”

 “Well, easy tested by a Demon of my own.” He gestured to a tall Demon who stood at his left, and that one fixed his eyes upon me. There was a tickling in my head, a fleeting kaleidoscope of colors and smells, quickly gone. The Demon shook his head and said to Himaggery:

 “He speaks only truth. He is only what he seems, a student, a boy, nothing more.”

 “Ah. So. Well then, why did you try to kill this pawner? He was, after all, in my protection.”

 “He killed Tossa,” I grated. “He killed her or had her killed. What had she done to him? Nothing. Nothing! And he killed her.”

 The pawner squirmed. “An accident, Lord. A…misunderstanding. It was not my intent to kill anyone, but one of the men in my train…he was caught up in he chase…”

 The Wizard said, “It seems to be explained. The boy has committed no wrong except for a bit of forbidden disguise. The pawner, however, has killed the governor’s daughter, an Immutable. It is likely he won’t live long to regret that. We’ll cry you to them, pawner. I’ll not have blame laid on me or mine.”

 “But, Lord…”

 “Be still. If you anger me more, I’ll give you to them rather than merely cry you to them. As for you, Silkhands, you’ve done nothing ill except exercise poor choice in certain matters we’ve discussed before. And Dazzle is with us again ...”

 He had stepped close to me as he spoke, putting his hand on my shoulder. I felt the solid weight of it, smelled the mixed leather and herb scent of his clothing, and followed his glance to the window where Dazzle was posing like some exotic bird or silken cat. I saw her, then saw her again and turned sick with horror. One eye socket gaped empty. One side of her nose was gone, eaten away. From her jaw jagged splinters of bone and tooth jabbed through multiple scars, all as though one half of her face had been chewed away by some monster. I choked. Himaggery removed his hand, and the horror was abruptly gone. I reached out to him for support, and the vision returned. He saw the sick terror on my face, stooped toward me to whisper, “You saw?” then drew away, eyes narrowed in thought as I nodded, unable to speak.

 “Say nothing,” he whispered. “Be still.” He caught curious glances around us. “Tell them I am forbidding you to pretend to Necromancy.” Then he left me tottering there. I could not leave the room quickly enough to suit me. Even in my own room, I retched and was sick. When I had settled myself somewhat, I went out onto the little balcony and sat there, hunched against the wall, trying not to think of anything. I saw the pawner in the courtyard below me with some other men. In a few moments they mounted and rode away, turning south along the lake shore. At the moment it meant nothing to me. Later I was to wonder, why south? The Gathered Waters and the pawner’s ship lay north of us. I had not long to brood over anything, for Silkhands came to fetch me to the Wizard.

 We found him in his own rooms, out of dress, Wizardly costume laid aside in favor of a soft shirt and trousers which could have clad anyone. He was examining a fruit tree in the enclosed garden.

 “They will not ordinarily grow this far north,” he told us. “Except that they find eternal summer among these mists. We have fruit when others have none, power when others have none. If we can find our way into the heart of lifeľwithin the Game or, likely, out of itľwe may build a great people from this place.”

 I think I started at this heresy, not sure I wanted to hear it, but he pretended not to notice, grinning at me over his beard, blue eyes glittering with humor and understanding. He went on.

 “And you, Healer. Are you ready to admit that your presence does nothing to help Dazzle, indeed, only makes her worse?”

 “Lord, certainly I make her no better.”

 “Did you know this lad saw her?” Silkhands turned a shocked face to mine, was convinced by the expression she found there.

 “But how? None can. Except you, Lord, and I.”

 “He can,” said Himaggery, “though I cannot think why. Well, life is full of such mysteries, but it were better for you, boy, if you forgot this one. Am I right that you saw through my eyes? I thought so. Well then, it may be emerging talent of some kind, and no point in worrying about it.”

 “How did she…why is she…I…” I couldn’t get the question out.

 “Why is she a hideously maimed person? Why does no one know it? Why? Ah, boy, it’s one of those mysteries I spoke of. But, I don’t think Silkhands will mind my telling you.” He looked to her for permission, and she nodded, eyes fixed upon her twisting hands. He patted her shoulder and told me the story. “There were two children of Fuller the Seer and his loved wife, a Tragamor woman out of the east: Silkhands, here, and her full brother, Borold, born two years apart. When they were still children, their mother died, and Finler took another woman, a Tragamor from Guiles whose name was Tilde. They had a daughter, some six years younger than Silkhands... Dazzle.

 “Silkhands and Borold manifested talent quite young, when they were about fifteen. Silkhands, being a Healer, was much respected in the place they lived as Healers often are, whether they merit it or not, though from everything I have learned I would judge that Silkhands merited it more than most. Borold showed flying early, and then moving, and was named Sentinel. Dazzle was a beauty, even as a tiny thing, and grew more beautiful than any in the place had ever seen. But she was not fond of Silkhands…”

 “It was Tilde’s fault, somewhat,” interjected Silkhands. “She resented my mother even though mother was long dead. She was jealous of her reputation in the town, and of the fact that I, her daughter, was a Healer. We cannot blame Dazzle…”

 “Be that as it may,” the Wizard went on, “Dazzle deeply resented her half sister. And, when at last she manifested a talent of her own, it was along the lines she had first laid down, glamor, beguilement, powerholding, and fireľthe measure of a Priestess or Witch. Because she was a power-holder, Silkhands sought her help in healing, for Dazzle could have carried power with which Silkhands could have healed many…”

 “She wouldn’t,” cried Silkhands. “She would not do it. She would not carry power for anything except her own amusement and delight. If there were sick, she would turn away saying, ‘They are nothing to me. They stink, besides. It is better if they die.’”

 The Wizard nodded. “So. And Borold fell under the spell of the girl and turned away from Silkhands and would not help her in healing, though at one time he had carried her through the air in search of the sick and wounded. He stopped that and flew only for Dazzle’s amusement.”

 “Then came a Game,” said Silkhands in a monotone, as though reciting scripture. “A very great Game, the armies of it massing near the place we lived. And the Tragamors of that Game rained stones upon the opposing armies directed by the Seers and Demons of that Game, but something went awry and the stones fell upon the town and upon our house and upon us.

 “And my father died, at once. And Tilde lay with her legs beneath a stone, screaming. And the Game had pulled all the power so that I had none with which to heal her, so I called to Dazzle, as Borold and I tried to roll the stone away. ‘Dazzle, your mother is sorely hurt. Give me power to heal her or she’ll die.’ But Dazzle said, ‘I’m old enough to need no Mother now. I need my power for myself, to keep me safe...’ and she cowered in the corner weaving a beguilement for herself, about herself, that she was safe…

 “Then another stone came, shattering the roof, and a huge tile of the roof came down like a knife, shearing her face. Borold did not see. I saw and screamed at the horror of it. Her mind was not touched, only her face, and I begged her for power to heal her, but she only said, ‘Don’t try your tricks on me, Silkhands, I’m all right. Let me be. Don’t try to get my juice for that old woman.’ And she went on weaving the glamor around her with all her power so that Borold could not see the wound and she herself could not see it when she sought her mirror, and so has she woven since. Tilde died. I could do nothing but ease the pain a little. It was very cold. Shortly the Game was over and help came, but it was too late. And Dazzle went on beguiling…”

 “Then she doesn’t even know?” I asked, astonished.

 Himaggery made a sour face. “She does not know. She leches after me from time to time and is in perpetual annoyance that I do not return her lusts, but I cannot. Would not, even were she whole, for there is a deeper maiming there than the face.”

 “Can’t she be truly healed, here, where so much power is?”

 Silkhands answered sadly, “The power of healing works through the mind, Peter, as all our powers do. If an old wound is long healed, the mind accepts it and will not help me fight it. I am no Necromancer to raise dead tissue to a mockery of life.”

 “So, boy,” said Himaggery. “I will appoint you judge of this matter. Sometimes we do this in the Bright Demesneľappoint a pawn judge of some issue or other...”

 “But, no,” I exclaimed. “Such a one would not know the rules.”

 “Exactly. You have the heart of the matter there. Well, since you do not know the rules, what would you rule in this case? I believe Silkhands should go away, that staying with Dazzle only makes matters worse. What say you?”

 Since there were no rules, I could only use what sense I had. Though Chance had never thought me overburdened in that respect, I had sometimes resented his opinion so did my best. I thought of the young Dragon and the young Cold Drake, dead because of Dazzle’s machinations. I thought of Mandor as I had last seen him, full of envy, ready to destroy me because of it. I thought of Silkhands and her pain that she could not heal more…and I said:

 “She should go away. If Dazzle is like one I have known, she will not hesitate to destroy you, Silkhands. If you are gone away, then part of the cause of her anger will be gone.”

 “Exactly!” Himaggery beamed at me. “I need her to carry a message for me; she needs to go away. You need company upon the road, so does she, you go the same place. See how neatly it works out.” He turned to her.

 “I want you to go with the lad to the High Demesne at Evenor. He is not half healed yet, and you can rid him of those scars along the way.”

 “Why me?” she muttered, wiping tears.

 “Because you’ll be welcome there; Healers always are. Because if I sent a Seer or Demon they would think I sent a spy. Because you are to go to an old friend of mine who needs your help and care; I hope to bring him back here with you. The High King will not want to let him go, and you must use all your wiles as honestly as you canľwhich you will, because you are honest and cannot think thoughts which would seem treasonable. Are those enough reasons?”

 She cried, and he comforted, and I listened, and the hours went by while they talked of other things. They talked of heterotelics (I wrote it down) and an animal in the wastes of Bleer which makes scazonic attacks (I wrote that down, too) and of great Gamesmen of the pastľDodir of the Seven Hands, the Greatest Tragamor ever known, and Mavin Manyshaped. That name seemed familiar to me, but I could not remember where I had heard it before. And they talked more of that one to whom she was being sent, an old man, a Gamesmaster, but something more or other than that as well. They talked long, and I fell asleep. When I woke, Himaggery was brooding by the fire and Silkhands had gone.

 I was moved to thank him. The occasion demanded something from me, something more than mere words. I took the pouch from my belt and placed it in his hands, saying, “I have nothing worth giving you, Lord, except perhaps these things I found. If they please you, will you keep them with my thanks for your kindness?”

 When he opened the pouch, his face went drear and empty, and he took one of the pieces in his hand as though it were made of fire. He asked me where I had come by them, and when I had answered him, he said, “There, in a place I would not go because of her I had sent there. So, they were not meant for me, and it does no good to think about them.

 “Boy, I would have given the Bright Demesne for these if. I could have found them myself. However, they did not come to my hand and they are not to be given way. I may not tell you what they areľindeed, it may be I do not truly know. I may not take them from you. I can say to you take them, put them under your clothes, keep them safe, keep them secret. I will remember you kindly without the gift.”

 I wanted to ask him…plead with him to tell me something, anything, but his face forbade it. The next morning we left the Bright Demesne, and only then did I realize how strange a place it was. There had been no Gaming while I had been there. I had not seen a single pile of bones. I had no idea what talent the Wizard held. “Strange talents make the Wizard” they say, but his were not merely strange, they were undetectable. Later, of course, I wondered what talent enabled him to see Dazzle as she was. Later, of course, I wondered what talent enabled me to see through his eyes.



 4
The Road to Evenor

  



 JUST BEFORE WE LEFT THE BRIGHT DEMESNE, Dazzle saw fit to throw an unpleasant scene during which she accused Silkhands of every evil she could think ofľof being Himaggery’s leman, of being his treasonous servant, of plotting against her and Borold, of abandoning one whom she had been unable to compete with because her powers were pulish and weak, of being enviousľchildish, evil, acid words. Neither Dazzle nor Borold saw us off, though Himaggery did. Silkhands was drawn and tired, looking years older than herself, and she only bit her lip when Himaggery told her to put it out of her mind, that he would take care of Dazzle. So, we rode off mired and surrounded in Silkhand’s pain. I could feel it. The others could see it well enough. As I could feel her pain, so I could feel Yarrel’s joy.

 We were mounted on tall, red horses from Himaggery’s stable, and Yarrel beamed as though he had sired them himself. As for me, Silkhands bade me leave the bandages off, and as we rode she held my hand and led me to think myself unmarred once more. There was one deep wound which could not be healed, a puckered mark on my brow. Silkhands said my mind held to the spot for a remembrance. Certainly, I did not want to forget what had happened in Schooltown.

 She led me to think of Tossa and speak of her until that hurt began to heal as well. I learned that what I had felt was not love. It was some deeper thing than that, some fascination which reaches toward a particular one, toward a dream and thus toward all who manifest that dream. She made me talk of the earliest memories I had, before Mertyn’s House (though until that moment I had not known of any memories before Mertyn’s House) and I found memory there: scents, feelings, the movement of graceful arms in the sun, light on a fall of yellow hair. So, Tossa had been more than I knew, and less. Even as I grieved at her loss, I grieved that I could not remember who the one had been so long ago, before Mertyn’s House. I could not have been more than two or three. I tried desperately, but there were only pictures without words. Tossa had matched an inexplicable creation, an unnamed past.

 As well as being Healer, Silkhands became Schoolmistress. Believing Yarrel and I had been too long without study, she began to drill us in the Index as we rode, day by day. It was something to do to while the leagues passed, so we learned.

 “Seer,” she would say. “Give me the Index for Seer.”

 Obediently, I would begin. “The dress of a Seer is gray, the mask gray gauze, patterned with moth wings, the head covered with a hood. The move of a Seer is the future or some distant place brought near. The Demesne absolute of a Seer is small, a few paces across, and the power use is erratic. Seers are classified among the lesser durables; they may be solitary or oath bound to some larger Game…” Then she would ask another.

 “The form of the Dragon is winged…breathing fire…and the move is flight through a wide Demesne. Dragons are among the greater ephemera…the dress of a Sentinel is red…of a Demon is silver, half-helmed…of a Tragamor is black, helmed with fangs…of a Sorcerer is white and red, with a spiked crown…” and so and so and so. Some of the names she knew I had never heard of. What was an Orieiromancer, a Keratinor, a Hierophant? What was a Dervish? I didn’t know. Silkhands knew, however, the dress, the form, the move, the Demesne, the Power, the classification.

 “When I was a child,” she said, “there was little enough to do in the village. But there were books, some, an Index among them. I learned it by heart for want of anything else to do. I think many of the names I learned are very rare. Some I have never seen anywhere in life.” Still, she kept me at it.

 “Of a Rancelman is cobwebbed gold, magpie helmed…of an Elator is blue, with herons’ wings…of an Armiger is black and rust, armed with spear and bow…of a King is true gold, with a jeweled crown…”

 “And Shapeshifter,” she said. “What is the Index of a Shapeshifter?”

 I said I did not know, did not care, was too hungry to go one pace further. She let us stop for food but continued teaching even as we ate.

 “The Shapeshifter is garbed in fur when in its own shape. Otherwise, of course, it is clad in the form it takes. The Demesne of a Shifter is very small but very intense, and it goes away quickly. It takes little power to make the change and almost none to maintain it. They are classified among the most durable of all Gamesmen, almost impossible to kill. They are rare, and terrible, and the most famous of all is Mavin Manyshaped.”

 “Why Manyshaped?” asked Yarrel. “Can she be more than one thing at a time?”

 “No. But she can become many different things, unlike most shifters who can take one other shape, or two, three at most. But Mavinľit is said she can become anything, even other Gamesmen. That, of course, is impossible. It couldn’t happen.”

 When we had eaten, we went on again, silent for a time while we digested. Yarrel stopped us several times to examine tracks on the road before us. “A party of horsemen,” he said, “some four or five. Not far ahead of us.” For the first time I thought of the pawner who had ridden away south.

 “How far ahead?” I asked. I did not want the man near me and was suddenly sorry I had not asked Himaggery to hold him or send him back to his ship under guard. “How far?”

 “A day. We will not ride onto their tails, Peter. You think the pawner rides ahead?”

 “I think, somehow, he knew where we were going.”

 “We made no secret of it.”

 “Perhaps we should have done.” I was depressed at my own ignorance and naiveté. Why had I thought the man had given up? All our ruminations were interrupted, however, by a blast of chill from above. Silkhands threw one glance behind her, cried “Afrit,” and rode madly for the timber, we after her in our seemingly permanent state of confusion.

 “Is it looking for us?” I asked. She shook her head. Another blast of chill came from another direction. She frowned.

 “What is going on up there?” She led us toward rising land from which we might see the countryside around. We found a rocky knuckle at last and climbed it to peer away across a wide valley. Our way led there, straight across, to a notch in the hills at the other side. It was not a way we would take. Drawn up upon the meadows were the serried ranks of a monstrous Game, files of Sorcerers and Warlocks standing at either side, glowing with stored power. Wagons full of wood lined the areas of command where pawns struggled beneath the whip to erect heavy sections of great war ovens. Above the command posts Armigers stood in the air, erect, their war capes billowing about them, rising and falling like spiders upon silk as they reported to those below.

 “Lord of the seven hells,” said Chance. “Let’s get away from this place.”

 Silkhands looked helplessly across the valley. Our way was there. Our way was blocked. We could not wait until the Game was over. Games of this dimension sometimes went on for years. We could not go around too closely or we risked being frozen in the fury of battle. Silkhands had no power to pull from those mighty ovens and thus protect us in the midst of war.

 “Borold,” she cried, “why are you not here when I need you?” Her brother could have tapped that distant power. We were forced to a fateful decision which meant that we were to come to the High Demesne. Had we gone across the plain, we would have gone no further. We did not know it, but we were awaited in that far notch of hills.

 Strange, how all plays into the hands of mordacious fate. Mertyn used to say that.

 “We’ll go far around,” said Silkhands, and Chance agreed. It was all we could do. And we would not have done well at it except for Yarrel. It was he who read the maps, who found the trails, who found camp sites sheltered from the wind and rain, who kept the horses from going lame and us from being poisoned by bad food or worse water. He bloomed before my eyes, growing taller and broader each day. I woke one morning to find him standing beneath a tall tree looking out across the land, his face shining like those pictures one sees of the ancient pictures of Gamesmother Didir with the glory around her head.

 “Yarrel,” I said, “why were you ever in Schooltown? What was there for you?”

 He hugged me even as he answered. “Nothing, Peter. Except a few years during which my mother needed not worry about me. We pawns sometimes have short lives. My beloved sister was used in a Game, “lost in play” by some Shapeshifter who needed a pawn and cared not who it was. We are not considered important, you know, among the Gamesmen. If they wish to eat a few hundred of us in battle, they do it. Or use up a few of our women in some nasty game, they do that. By buying my way into the House, they protected me for a time.”

 “Bought your way in?”

 “With horses. Fine horses. Paid for my rearing, my schooling. Who knows. It may have done me good. Certainly, I know more than my family does about Gamesmen. And Games. And what can and cannot happen. To most of us the Game is a true mystery. If I get back to them, I will have a school of my ownľfor pawns. To teach them how to survive.”

 “Then you never expected to develop talent.”

 “No. To get me into the School, mother had to lie, had to say I was Festival got, by a Gamesman. I never believed that. My father is my father, like me as fox is like fox, no more talent than a badger has, to be strong, to dig deep.”

 “You could live among the Immutables, be safe there.”

 “Yes,” he replied somberly. “I have thought about that in recent days.”

 Yarrel my friend, Yarrel the pawn. Yarrel Horselover, my own Yarrel. Yarrel who had helped me and guided me. I saw him as in a mist, struggling beneath the whip to assemble war ovens, to cut the monstrous wagon toads of wood. Yarrel.

 “How you must hate us,” I said. “For all you’ve lived among us since you were tiny…”

 “I suppose I did. Still do, sometimes. But then, I learned you are the same as us. You want to live, too, and eat when you are hungry and make love to girlsľoh, yes, though you may not have done so yetľand sleep warm. The only thing different is that you will grow to have something I have not. And that something will change you into something I am not. And from that time on, I may hate you.” He was thoughtful, staring out across the fog-lined vales, the furred hills, the rocky scarps of the range we traveled toward. When he went on it was with that intrinsic generosity he had always shown.

 “But I do not hate Silkhands. Nor Himaggery. And it may be I will go on liking you, as well.”

 “There were no games at the Bright Demesne.” I don’t know why I said that. It seemed important.

 “No. There were no games, and I have thought much about that. All those Gamesmen. All that power. And no games at all. What did happen, the Dragon, I mean, was regretted. It means something. In Mertyn’s House we never learned…never learned that there was any…choice.”

 Choice. I knew the word. The applications of it seemed small. One glass of wine or none. Bread or gruel. Stealing meat from the kitchens or not. Choice. I had never had any.

 “It is hard to imagine…choice.” I said. He turned to me with a face as remote as those far scarps, eyes seeing other times.

 “Try, Peter,” he said. “I have tried. I think sometimes how many of us there are, so many pawns, so many Immutables, all of us living on this land, and we have no Game. Yet, for most of us the Game rules us. We let it rule us. Imagine what might happen if we did not. That’s all. Just imagine.”

 I was no good at imagining. Yarrel knew that well. For a time I thought he was mocking me. I was nettled, angry a little. We worked our way more deeply into the mountains, struggling always toward a certain peak which marked the pass into Evenor, and the way was hard. We talked little, for we were all weary. Far behind us in the valley were still smokes and confusions of battle. Ahead were only mountains and more mountains. I went on being angry until it seemed boring and foolish, and then I tried to do as Yarrel had asked and imagine. I tried really hard, harder than I had ever tried in Mertyn’s House. It was no good. I could not think of choices and pawns and all that. And then in the night…I found myself standing beside my horse on a low hill overlooking the field of battle. I could see the ovens red with heat, the Armigers filling the air like flies, raining their spears and arrows down onto the Gamesmen below. I could hear the great whump, whump of boulders levered, out of the ground and launched by teams of Tragamors and Sorcerers, hand-linked as they combined their power to raise the mighty rocks with their minds.

 Behind enemy lines I could see the flicker as Elators twinked into being, struck about them with double daggers, then disappeared only to flick into being again behind their own lines. On the heights Demons and Seers called directions to the Tragamors and Armigers while Sorcerers strode among the Gamesmen to give them power. Shifterbeasts ran through the ranks, slashing with fangs or tusks, or dropped from the air on feathered wings to strike with blinding talons. And on each side, at the center of the Game, stood the King and the Princes and the other charismatics to whose beguilement the armies rallied. Among the wounded walked Healers, each with a Sorcerer to hand.

 I could see it as though it were happening before me. And I saw more. At the edges of the battle, beyond the Demesne, stolid files of pawns. They stood with stones in their hands, and flails, and hay forks, sharp as needles. And it came to me in the dream, for it was a dream, what would happen when the war ovens grew cold and the Sorcerers were empty of power, the Armigers grounded, the Tragamors helpless, the Elators unable to flick themselves in and out of otherspace.

 What then? I heard the growl of the pawns and saw the flails raised and felt the battlefield grow cold. And woke. For a time, then, it remained as clear to me as a picture painted upon plaster, the colors bright as gems. Then it began to dwindle away, as dreams do, only bits remembered. How can I tell it now? Because I dreamed it again, and again as time passed. Then, on the wild-track to Evenor I saw it only for a brief time in the chill dawn and lost it thereafter. But for what time I was cold in fear, thinking I felt the mute anger of the pawns and the touch of hay forks on my flesh.



 5
Windlow

  



 I HAVE SEEN no place more beautiful in the world than the high lakes at Tarnoch. There is a wild grandeur about them which caught me hard at first sight of them and held me speechless for long hours as we wound our way down the precipitous drop from the high pass we had crossed at noon. When I say that Silkhands the Chatter-bird was silent also, you will know that it was not only a boy’s romanticism that was stirred. At noon the lakes were sapphires laid upon green velvet, the velvet ripped by alabaster cliffs spread with rainbows. As the afternoon wore on, shadows lengthened to soak the green with shade, and still more as evening came so that the whole shone like a diadem of dark and light under the westering sun, the lakes now scarlet with sunset.

 The High Demesne stood upon one of the white cliffs over a cataract of water which spun its falling veil eternally into the gem-bright pools below. We came onto the approach road at starshine, the gates of the bridge before us crouching like fustigars, great stony buttresses of paws in the dust and tower tops staring at us from lamp-lit eyes. We were expected. Each of us had felt the brain tickle of a Demon’s rummaging, had seen the flare of a Sentinel’s signal fire as we rounded the final curve. I found myself hoping that they Read my hunger and thirst and would be hospitable.

 I need not have worried. There was no formality to our welcome, only a busy hall-wife escorting us to rooms where baths and food came as quickly as we could be ready for them. “The High King will see you tomorrow,” she told us, making off with our boots and cloaks to see what could be done with them, for they were sorely stained with travel. She left us to hot, savory food, generous jugs of wine, and the utter joy of clean, soft beds.

 Such was done, I suppose, to put us at our ease, for in the night we were examined more than once. Why I lay awake when the others slept, I don’t know. Silkhands was in a room of her own, but Chance, Yarrel, and I shared a room, one equipped with several beds and large enough for a Festival Hall. Perhaps it was Chance’s snoringľhe did that, trumpeting at times like a Herald and betimes a long, rattling roar like drummers on a field of battle so that I woke in the night listening, waiting for the fifes to join in. So it was I felt the Demon tickling in my brain again and again, deeper, and deeper yet, so that my arms and legs jerked and twitched, and I fought down the desire to scratch. What they were looking for, I don’t know, except that Silkhands was wakened by it, too, and came to my bed like a wraith, slim and white in her sleep-robe, rubbing her head as though it ached.

 “Oh, they will be at me and at me,” she complained. “I carry everything I know and think on the top of my head like a jar of water, but they will go digging and digging as though I could hide a thought away, somewhere.”

 “Can that be done?” I asked. “Can anyone hide thoughts from a Demon?”

 “Oh, some say they can recite a jingly rhyme or think hard on a game or a saying or on reciting the Index or some such and it will hide deeper intents beneath. I have never tried it, and I’ve never asked a Demon about it. But this digging at me and digging at me means they think it is possible at least. I wish they would let me sleep.”

 “What was it Himaggery said? That the High King might suspect someone was spying on him unless it was a Healer. Maybe they think it anyhow.”

 “Well, so let them think it. Good sense should tell them better, and I wish they’d give over until morning and let me sleep. Here, let me share your bed, and you can rub my bones.”

 So she lay down beside me on her belly to have me rub her ribs and backbone. I had done this for Mandor, and it was no different with Silkhands, save her hips swelled as his had not and she made little purring sounds as he had not, and we ended up asleep side by side like two kittens. Yarrel was full of teasing in the morning until she told him to lace his lips and be still. His teasing set me in mind that perhaps, next time, I would not sleep so soon, Silkhands willing, but no more than that.

 The Seer was at our breakfast, gauzy masked and all, staring at us with glittering eyes from behind his painted wings. We sighed and tried to ignore himľor her; it could have been a her for it said not a word to us but stared and stared and went away. And, after that an Examiner came to ask us about Himaggery, and about our trip, and about the battle on the plain, and about everything we had thought or done forever. And after that, lunch, and after that an audience with the High King who had decided, it seemed, that we were not intent on damage to himself or his Demesne. I did not take to him as I had to Himaggery. The High King was a tall man, stern, with deep lines from nose to chin, bracketing his mouth like ditches. His nose was large and long, his eyes hooded under lids which looked bruised. He was not joyed to see us, and all his questing in our heads had not allayed his suspicions, for the first thing we had to do was tell him once more all that had happened to us since we were weaned.

 “And you have come from the Wizard Himaggery?” he asked again. “Who is still up to his nonsense, is he? Saying that those who are Kings perhaps should not be Kings, that’s one of Himaggery’s sayings. Those of us who were born to be Kings do not agree, of course.” He watched us narrowly, as though to see how we would react to this. Then he went on, “And you come for what reason?” His voice was as harsh as a crow’s, and deep.

 “To visit Himaggery’s old teacher, the Seer Windlow. Because Himaggery wishes me to use my skill on the old man’s behalf, High King, if that would be useful to his aged weakness. Also, I bear messages of regard and kindness and am told to ask if the Seer Windlow would visit Himaggery in the Bright Demesne.” All the while she spoke the King nodded and nodded, and behind him his Seer and Demon and Examiner nodded and nodded, so that I thought we were in one of those Festival booths which sell chances to knock the nodding heads from manikins with leather balls, five chances for a coin.

 Someone Read me, for the King glared in my direction, and all of them stopped moving their heads. I blushed, embarrassed.

 “Ah,” the High King responded. “Windlow is old. Far too old for such a journey. The thought will please him, however. He welcomes visits or messages from his old students. Butľno. He could not leave us. It would be too dangerous for him to attempt it. We would miss him too greatly. But the thought, yes, the thought is kind. You must tell him of that kind thought, even though it is impossible…”

 He turned to me abruptly. “And you, boy. A special student of my old colleague, Mertyn, eh? Caught up in a bit of dangerous play during Festival, you say, and given let-pass by the Town Council? To come to Windlow’s house.” He sighed, a deep, breathy sigh which was meant to sound sorrowful but was too full of satisfaction for that. “Windlow’s House is much diminished since Mertyn knew of it. I wonder if he would have sent you had he known how diminished it is. No students left, these days. My sons all grown, not that I would have bothered Windlow with their education, the sons of my people gone. I doubt there is one student left there now, but you are welcome to go, you and your servants…”

 Beside me, I felt Yarrel stiffen. I laid my hand upon his arm and said firmly, “Not my servants, King. My friends. My guides. We could not have come this way without their skills and great courage.” The King nodded, waved me away. He did not care. The distinction meant nothing to him. Still, I felt Yarrel’s muscles relax beneath my hands, and he smiled at me as we left the hall.

 Windlow’s House was evidently some distance away through the forest, but the High King was not prepared to let us go there at once. We were to spend several days in the company of his people, his Invigilators, his Divulgers (though we were not threatened with actual torture), his Pursuivants. He was still not sure of us, and he would not let us away from his protectors until he was convinced we could do him no damage. I complained of this and was mocked once more for being naive.

 “Why, it’s the way of the Game, lad,” said Chance. “And the way a great Game often begins. First a trickle of little people across a border, a flow of them bearing tales here and there, bringing back word of this or that. Then the spies go in, or close enough to read the Demesne…”

 “The High King has Borderers well out,” said Yarrel. “I noticed them when we rode in. I doubt a Demon from outside could get close enough to read anyone at the High Demesne. You see how it’s placed, too, high on these scarps where no Armiger can overfly it. No, this High King is wise in the ways of the Game and well protected.”

 “And not inhospitable,” said Silkhands, firmly. I was reminded once more that everything I thought and said would be brought to the High King and that it would be better to think of something else. It was not difficult to do, for the High King had done more than set his palace in a place of great natural beauty. He had added to that beauty with gardens and orchards of surpassing loveliness and peopled them with pawns of exotic kinds, dancers and jugglers and animal trainers. At first their entertainments did not seem fantastic or difficult until one understood that it was all done by patience and training, not by Talent. When the dancers leapt, it was their own muscles took them hovering over the grass, not Armiger’s power of flight. When the jugglers kept seven balls whirling between their hands and the heavens, it was training let them do it, not a Tragamor’s Talent of moving. Once one knew that, there was endless fascination in watching them. Seeing I had no Talent yet, they accepted me almost as one of them, and a band of acrobats taught me a few simple tricks in which I took an inordinate pride. I began to notice the grace with which they moved. Talents are not graceful. Or, I should say, often are not. I have seen some Gamesmen who were graceful in their exercise of Talents, but not many. These pawns, however, moved like water or wind on grass, flowing. It made me wonder why Talents should not be used so.

 “Silkhands uses her Talent with grace,” Yarrel said, drily.

 I thought about that, and of course it was true. “Himaggery also,” I said. “Though I am not sure what his Talent is.”

 “Perhaps he is not using Talent at all.”

 Now that was a thought. Like many of Yarrel’s comments, it was troubling and dissatisfying and went in circles. So, I thought about learning to do cartwheels and walking upon my hands. Remember, I was only a boy. Finally, after some nine or ten days of amusement and fattening on the High King’s excellent meals, we were summoned to him once more. He was doing several kinds of business on the morning; receiving a delegation from some merchant group or other, buying some exotics from a bird-dealer, and disposing of our visit. He did them all with dispatch and sent us off to Windlow’s house with some potted herbs and a caged bird as gifts for the old man. The bird was said to be able to talk, though it did nothing on the journey except eat fruit and mess the bottom of its cage, It was very pretty, but I did not like the way it smelled.

 The way to Windlow’s House led through forest which had never been burned or cut within memory. The trees loomed like towers, vast as clouds. The trail was needle-strewn and redolent of resin, sharp and soft in the nostrils. Flowers bloomed in the shade, their secret faces turned down toward the mosses, and the trickle of water was around us. We led a considerable pack train from which I understood that Windlow’s House was supplied from the High Demesne, unlike the Schooltown I had known with its own farms and merchants. We asked if this were so, and the guide replied that except for garden stuff, meat, milk, and wool, and firewood, which was cut by the School’s own servants, all supplies came from the King.

 The place was a day away from the High Demesne, set at the top of a south sloping valley, a single white tower with some lower buildings clustered at its foot. It looked very lonely there. However, when we arrived we found the place well staffed. The kitchens were bustling, the stables clean and swept, the courtyard gleaming with fresh washed stones. The men who had come with us unloaded the train, received a meal, and went back the way they had come. Only we were left, with some three or four Gamesmen from the High Demesne who evidently rotated duty in keeping watch on Windlow’s House. Of Windlow, we had seen nothing yet. Nor did we until the following morning. Then we found him in the garden behind the tower, wrapped in a thick blanket in the warmth of the early sun. I had never seen anyone so old before. He was frail, tottery, his face wrinkled like an apple dried in the barrel. But, when he smiled at us we knew his mind was not dulled, for his glance twinkled at us in full knowledge of who we were.

 “So, released by my old student the High King at last, are you? I wondered how long he would hold my guests this time. Last time I was lucky to get to see them at all. He protects me, you know.” He winked outrageously and drew a serious face. “He says he believes I much need his protection.” And his eyes sought heaven in a clown’s mockery.

 Silkhands laughed and sat down beside him, taking his hand in hers. The rest of us simply sat around soaking up the sunlight, waiting for him to be ready to question us or speak to us, as he chose. It was very peaceful there, and I amended my earlier thought of loneliness. Peace, rather. Content, A vast quiet which was not at all disrupted by the cackle of fowls in the yard or the bustle of the laundress crossing the yard.

 “Now,” said the old man, “tell me everything about everywhere. My Talent was never large, and of late it has reached no further than the kitchen garden. I see a plague of moth there, but not until late summer.” Once again he winked and drew that clown’s face, and this time I knew it for what it was, a cover for more serious things, a nothing to hide thoughts that were deep as oceans.

 He caught my eye and said, very quietly, “You may speak, lad. Your thoughts are not spied upon here and now. In my garden today, no Demon intrudes.”

 So, as Silkhands held him by his wrist and worked her way with his aged arteries (so she later said) we told him everything that we knew and guessed about the world outside. We told him especially of the Bright Demesne and of Himaggery’s invitation. “He needs you, Sir,” we said. “He says to tell you that he needs you, to come to him for now is a time when you should…”

 At this he was quiet before beginning to talk in his gentle voice about the distance, the time it would take, the weariness of the journey, and of the High King. We all knew that none of it meant anything except his talk of the High King, and we all knew the High King did not intend to let him go. “He was once my student, a proud, haughty boy, Prionde,” Windlow said. “He wanted my love, my adoration. What is the Talent of a King, after all, if it cannot inspire adoration? Even then, I think he knew he would be a King. But, what good is a Master who can be summoned and sent like a little tame bunwit? What good a Seer who is blinded to the qualities of those around him? So, I could only give him my teaching. He gave me respect, but no understanding. He would not understand what I so much wanted him to learn, so when the time came that he could, he held me captive to his ignorance, as though to say, ‘See, I have power over this Gamesmaster! What are his teachings worth? I command his obedience, and what I do not understand is not worthy of understanding.’ So, he preens in his possession of me, for others respect me and he believes his possession gives him prestige. He does not know that he possesses nothing. Nothing. This rack of bones is nothing…” He fell asleep with that word, the sudden sleep of the very old. Silkhands stayed beside him, but the others of us wandered about the garden, looking at the thousand varieties of potted herbs, from the tiniest to some the size of small trees. Their combined fragrance in the sunwarmed space made us dizzy. Later there was more of the same kind of conversation, but Windlow seemed more alert than before.

 In the evening Yarrel and I chased fireflies in the meadow. I had never seen them before, and we took immoderate pleasure in behaving like infants. Chance drank a great deal of wine and traded tall tales with the kitchen people. It was a generous and pleasant time.

 By the third day, Silkhands’ work with the old man had made a difference we could all see. He was more alert, more erect, and his questioning of us was quick and incisive. Silkhands said she had made small changes in the flow of blood to his brain, had added a chemical here or there, dissolved bits of cloggy tissue in one place and another, and built small walls other places. “It is only small repair,” she said. “I cannot stop age nor forestall death. It will come, still, inevitably. But the small weaknesses and pains of age, those I can ameliorate, and to do it for him is a pleasure. His mind in mine feels like sunshine and rain.”

 With his incisive questioning came also his own dialogue with himself. We heard for the first time about his own life, about who and what he was.

 “They named me Seer,” he ruminated, remembering a time long past. “They named me Seer for I knew, as Seers do, what would happen in future times. Small things. A fall of rain here. A wager won there. The outcome of a Game. The life or death of a man. As a Talent it is seldom controllable, never dependable, and yet when it happens, it is unmistakable. Well. Every Demesne must have a Seer or two, or six, or a dozen. The more the better coverage, so they say. And so I became a Seer, attached to a King. That’s the best place for a Seer. At least the meals are dependable. Well, Seers have a lot of time on their hands. Seeing doesn’t require time. I began to read. Books. Old books, mostly. There aren’t many new ones except among certain classes of pawns and the Immutables. I read those, too. Everything. Old books half rotten. Old books all mouldy. Old books in pieces. Old books about still older books. You would not believe the trash which accumulates in the cellars of old School Houses or in old towns the Immutables no longer use or in some old ruins. I stopped thinking of myself as a Seer and began to think of myself as a Reader. Well, what one reads, one learns, of course, and it was not too many decades before I realized that all those books were the bits and pieces of a puzzle, shards of a broken pot, clues to a great mystery. It was all there, boys, in the past. Something shaped differently from the way things are shaped today.”

 “Were you the only one,” asked Yarrel. “The only one reading? How did you get about? All those travels?”

 The old man smiled. “Oh, told small lies and begged small favors. Whenever there was a particularly good Seeing, I’d beg a boon of the King, or the Prince, of whomever it happened to be at the time.” He smiled to himself at some ancient, innocent villainy. “Seers wander about a good deal, anyhow. It is said to improve the quality of the vision. And, as to your question, boy, no I was not the only one. Most of the others were Necromancers, however, or Shapeshifters, or Rancelmen. You don’t know Rancelmen? A little like Pursuivants. Their Talent is finding things which are lost.

 “Well, I believed that there was a mystery in the past, far back, in the time of Didir and Tamor perhaps, at the beginning of things. I came to believe there would be a document, a book, a certain book…called the onomasticon, the Dictionary of True Names. I came to believe I would find it, that I needed to find it. Once I could learn the right names for things, you understand, I would be able to decipher the puzzle. You understand?”

 “You mean that if there had been different names for things once and we knew what those names were we could…know how things started?” Yarrel seemed bemused by this idea. “But we wouldn’t even understand those words.”

 Windlow was patient. “We might. They might not be strange words, you see, only words used differently. Or, so I think. And as I read the old books, then older ones and older still, I saw that the meanings of words did change. I stopped being a Seer and became a Historian.” He mocked himself with pursed lips, as though we should not take him too seriously.

 Silkhands, however, took everything seriously. “That is not a name in the Index, sir. I know all the names in the Index, every one, and that one is not among them…”

 “I know,” he hushed her. “Of course, I know. But it could be there. It isn’t a strange word, you see. All of you know immediately what it means.”

 Yarrel said, “Well, yes. Among the pawns there are vegetarians who believe in eating only vegetables. And librarians who believe in keeping books. So, an historian would be…someone who believes in…keeping history?”

 “But it isn’t in the Index,” complained Silkhands. “It has nothing to do with Talents…”

 “It really does,” said the old man. “It takes certain talents to read and study and remember.”

 “Those aren’t Talents,” she said.

 He shrugged. “Not in today’s world, no. But, in History they may have been talents. History. Of the Game. Of the world. Why is a King a King? Why are Sorcerers what they are? Who was the first Immutable, and why?”

 “That’s religion,” I objected. “All of that is religion.”

 “Well, lad, I thought not, you see. I thought that if one asked a question and then found a definite answer to that question it was most certainly not religion. I thought it was History. But then, most Gamesmen believe precisely as you do, so it turned out I was not a Historian, after all. I was a Heretic.”

 I made the diagonal ward to reflect evil. I didn’t believe for a moment he was a Heretic, but it was the automatic thing to do. He didn’t have horns, for one thing, and his teeth didn’t drip with acid. Everyone knew that Heretics were like that. I found him smiling at me in a pitying sort of way which made me squirm.

 “I don’t think you’re a Heretic,” I said. “I don’t.”

 “That’s kind of you,” he said drily. “I do appreciate that. I wish the High King would accept your opinion as fact, but he is a very religious man. Still, perhaps if one sends enough Rancelmen into the world to find what is lost, one may come up with some answers. Now, I find myself suddenly very tired…”

 So, we went away to let him nap in the sunshine among the herb-scent and the birdsong and the laundrywoman’s slap, slap, slap of wet clothes and the far-off call of the herdboys in the meadow.

 “You know, I understand what he means about words meaning different things,” said Yarrel. “In the village when I was a child, when the Gamesmen marched in Game Array we called it ‘trampling death.’ In Mertyn’s House we learned to call it a Battle Demesne of the True Game.”

 “I learned to call it True Game as a child,” said Silkhands. “But when the stones came through the roof of our house, I called it ‘death.’”

 What they said was true. If it had been Yarrel beneath the whip, stoking the war ovens, I would not have called it “True Game.” When Mandor played me at the Festival, I did not think of it as “True Game”. I called it “betrayal” in my head. But still, I was baffled by one thing.

 “How does he know there is such a book as the one he is searching for?” I asked. “To send all those Rancelmen searching? How does he know?”

 “Peter, sometimes I think you do not think,” complained Yarrel. “The old one is a Seer. He told us so. He has Seen the thing he searches for, probably Seen it in his own hands at some time in his future, maybe here in this place which is another reason why he will not come with us to Himaggery.”

 The old man had been so gentle with us, so twinkly in his glances and humorous in his speech, I had not thought of him as a Seer, not even when he had said it was his Talent. Then, too, he had not the gauze mask with moth wings or any of those appurtenances which lend awe to the Seer’s presence. This led me to the thought that it might be easy to pretend to be a Seer. After all, if one pretended to have visions of the far distant future, how would anyone know if they came true or not? This idea was exciting, for it was the first time I could remember myself “imagining.” By evening, I had thought up several other ideas which were interesting and quite original. When I tried them out on Yarrel, it seems he had thought of most of them first, and I was embarrassed. Still, I was at least getting the idea.

 The next day in Windlow’s garden he said, “If I talk heresy to you, you may become tainted and some Demon will pick it from your heads and tell someone, perhaps the High King, who will feel he should do something dramatic about it such as flaying you all, or selling you to pawners for transport to the southern isles or something else equally unpleasant. So, let us talk religion instead.”

 “Sir,” I interrupted him, “did not Mertyn send us to you for Schooling? If we are to be Schooled, surely there is some work we should be doing. If we are not to be Schooled, then we must be careful not to impose upon your hospitality ...”

 He gave me a look which saw through me to the bones of my feet. I felt it distinctly; my soles tingled. “My School House is much diminished, boy! The High King’s sons are long gone into the Game, not that they were allowed to learn much from me. The sons of the followers are gone out into the world as well. There are few young at Evenor. The High Lakes of Tarnoch echo no more with childish laughter and the splash of boyish play. I know this. Am I not a Seer? Long since I told Prionde that his Kingdom would dwindle, that he would crow at last like an old cock upon nothing but a dung heap, ashes and broken crockery. So I told him, but I made the mistake of telling him why. History, I said. Not Seeing. Since that time, the visions have come, but he chose to disbelieve them. I tell you, lad, that men will believe if one says, ‘The Gods say…’ They will believe if one says, ‘I had a Vision…’ They will believe if one says, ‘It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold…’ But, if one says, ‘History teaches’, then they will not believe.

 “Mertyn sent you here for Schooling. So, I’ll school you. Himaggery sent you here for his own reasons. They will be fulfilled. So, be, patient. Talk to me here in my garden while the sun shines. Chase the firebugs of the meadow in the evening. Flirt with the maidens who keep the tower clean and prepare our meals. Be at peace. The other will come soon enough!”

 So, he taught us. “Do you remember the chart of descent from Didir and Tamor?” he asked us. “Can you recite it?” I told him I could not. We had seen it, of course. It hung upon the wall in Mertyn’s own rooms, and I had seen it there on the day he had warned me against Mandor, but we had never learned much about it. We had not studied religion much, in Mertyn’s House.

 “I want you to learn it,” he told us, then quoted it off to us line by line for the first of ten or a dozen times. “In the time of the ancestors was born Didir, and she had the Talent to Read what lay in the minds of all about her, so they named her Demon and she was taken from them. And in that same time was born Tamor, and he had the Talent to rise into the air and fly so that he looked down upon the habitations of men so that they named him Ayrman, which is to say Armiger, and he was taken from them to another place. And from the union of Didir and Tamor was born a son, Hafnor, an Elator. And from the family of Didir after many generations came Sorah, named Seer, daughter of that line. And from the line of Didir and the line of Hafnor came a son, Wafnor, who was the first Tragamor. And of a son of Hafnor and a daughter of Sorah was the first Healer born, a daughter, Dealpas.

 “And of the family of Dealpas and the line of Sorah came a son, Thandbar, the Shapeshifter, and of his line Shapeshifters forever to the current time. And from the line of Wafnor came Buinel, Sentinel, and of that line Sentinels to the current time. And of a mating between Wafnor’s line and Hafnor’s line came Shattnir, Sorceress, and of her line and the line of Sorah came a daughter, Trandilar, a Great Queen, and of her line Kings and Princes to the present time. And, of that line after many generations, came Dorn, a Necromancer, and of his line Necromancers to the present time.

 “And of the pawns who served our forefathers was bred a new people, the Immutables, which was planned and done by Barish and Vulpas, Wizards of the twelfth generation of the Game, and from that line have come Immutables to the current time. But Barish and Vulpas were sought by the Council for they had committed heresy in creating these Immutables. So did the Council claim them pawnish and forfeit and sent to have Barish and Vulpas slain.

 “But the Immutables which they had made fled into the mountains and the caves and bred there a numerous people, so that when they came among the Gamesmen once more in a later time they could no longer be used and were proof against all the Gamesmen could do.”

 Silkhands had been writing down as much of this as she could, and I saw Yarrel mouthing it to himself to commit it to memory.

 That noon we figured it out and put it into a chart on a piece of parchment like the one I remembered on Mertyn’s wall. We showed it to Windlow in the afternoon, and he chuckled at it. “Very good,” he told us, “but learn it the way I told it to you, for that is the way it is written in the books of religion. If you think of it in that way, the Demons will not think you are fulminating heresy.”

  

 That night we were saying that we could not see what all this nonsense was about “heresy”. He had not told us anything so very wonderful or different. Chance heard us and said, “Well, do not dwell upon difference, boy, if you want to stay living. A little heresy may be all right in his garden among the pet birdies and the pot plants with the guards half asleep and leagues between this place and the world. You may think what you like here, but how do you unthink it before we go away again? Hmm? And you would have to unthink it, lad, or you would not last a handful of days.”

 So we stopped talking about it altogether and got on with what Windlow called our schooling. We reviewed the different sorts of games; games of two, that is, “dueling,” and games of intrigue such as that one Mandor had played during Festival, and Battle Games of all sizes from little to great, and hidden games played by Gamesmen for their own purposes with no others knowing of it, and games of amusement, and art games, and the game of desperation. And we reviewed the language of True Game, the labels of risk, King’s Blood, Dragon’s Fire, Armiger’s Flight, Sorcerer’s Power, Healer’s Handľall of them. One says “King’s Blood” to mean that the King is at risk in the play. If the risk is small, one says, “King’s Blood One.” If the risk is great, if the King will be killed or taken, one says, “King’s Blood Ten.” I asked Windlow why we did not simply say, “King’s Risk” or “Dragon’s Risk,” the same for all of them. It would be much simpler.

 “The nature of the artificer is to make things complex, not simple,” he said, his mouth frowning at me while his eyes smiled. “We invent different labels for things which are not different and so we distinguish among them. I have read that in the utter past people did this with groups of animals. One would use a different name for each type of animal. It persists still today. We say, ‘a coven of crows’ or ‘a follow of fustigars.’ It makes us sound learned. We who are Gamesmen wish to seem learned in all aspects of the Game. So, we use the proper titles for the risks we run. It is more dramatic and satisfying to say, ‘Sorcerer’s Power Nine’ than it would be to say, ‘I’m about to smash your Sorcerer…’” We laughed. He asked if we understood. I told him solemnly that I understood well enough. King’s Blood Four meant that the King was not seriously threatened, but that some other Gamespiece might be.

 “Oh, yes,” he shrugged. “There are always throwaway pieces. Talismen. Totems. Fetish pieces of one kind or another. Pawns or minor pieces used as sacrifices because the Game requires a play and the Player is unready or unwilling to play a major piece. And then there are Ghost pieces…”

 “I thought they were only stories,” said Yarrel. “To scare children…”

 “Oh, no. They are real enough.” The old man rearranged the blanket around his shoulders, shifted to a more comfortable slouch in the woven basket hair.”After all, when Necromancers raise up the dead, the dead were once Gamesmen. They would be Ghost Gamesmen, with Ghost talents.” At which point, just as we wanted to ask a hundred questions, he fell asleep. Before he woke to continue our lessons, the tower Sentinel cried warning to the House, and we looked up to see a cloud of dust on the long road down from the forest edge through the valley. I was standing beside Windlow when the cry came, and he woke suddenly, his eyes full of pain and deep awareness.

 “The High King, Prionde, has sent these men,” he said. “He has been made deeply suspicious of us. Someone has come to him bearing tales of guilt and treachery. Guardsmen come to take us all prisoner.” I saw tears in his eyes. “Poor Prionde. Oh, pitiful, that my old student should come to this.”

 Silkhands, who had been sitting beside him, holding his hand as she did for hours each day said, “Dazzle. Dazzle and Borold. They are the ones.” She said it with enormous conviction. It was not Seeing, of course. She had no Talent of that kind, but she knew, nonetheless. We all heard her and believed her, and we were not totally unprepared when the dusty guardsmen rode in to gather us up as though we had been livestock, handling the old man with no more courtesy than a sheep, and shut us within the Tower to await some further happening. Silkhands spoke softly to one of them, asking if a Priestess had come to the High Demesne. Yes, one said. A very beautiful Priestess with her brother, a Herald and a group of pawners had come to the Demesne the day before. This was enough for Silkhands. She sat in a corner and wept away the morning.

 “But all they need to do is send a Demon to Read us,” I protested. “They did it often enough when we were there! They know we have no plots against the High King.”

 Old Windlow spoke softly to us from the cot where we had laid him. “My son, be schooled by me. If your people taught you when you were a child that there are monsters in the wood, you would have believed them. Then, later, if a woodsman had come and said to you, leading you among the trees, ‘See, there is nothing here but shadow and light, leaf and trunk, bird and beast. See, I show you. Look with your own eyes.’ Though you would look and see nothing, still you would believe there were monsters there. You would believe them invisible, or behind you, or hiding beneath the stones, or within the trees somehow. No matter what the woodsman said, you would believe your fear. Men always believe their fear. Only the strong, the brave, the curiousľonly they can overcome their fear to peer and poke and pry at life to find what is truly there…

 “Prionde believes his fear. His Demons tell him we are harmless to him, but he is afraid we have discovered some way to fool the Demons, some way to avoid the Seers, some way to trick the Tragamors. He believes his fear…”

 There were tears in the old man’s eyes, and with both Windlow and Silkhands mourning, Yarrel, Chance, and I did not know what to do except be still and let the day wear out. The guardsmen did feed us and bring us wine and a chamber pot, which we did not need for there were old closets built into the wall of the tower, unused for many years.

 The day diminished. We lit the lanterns and sat in the fireglow of evening as the stars pricked the sky above the lightning bugs in the meadow. We grew very bored and sad. There was a gameboard set into the top of an old table in the room where we all were, and I thought it might make things more bearable to play an old twospace game with Chance as we had done when I was a child. I took the pouch from my belt and set the pieces and the little book out, quite forgetting what Himaggery had said about them. After all, I was among friends. Chance was curious at once, full of questions about where I had found them. After a time, Windlow got up and tottered over to have a look while I went on chattering about the ancient room in the ruins. Something in the quality of the silence elsewhere in the room made me look up, words drying in my mouth. Everyone was looking at Windlow, and he at the table, face shining as though lit from within. Perhaps it was a trick of the lantern light, but I think not. He shone, truly.

 He touched the carved Demon. “Didir,” he said. Then he lifted the Armiger. “Tamor.” He laid a trembling hand upon my shoulder, leaning to touch the Elator. “Hafnor,” he said, “Wafnor,” as he laid his finger upon the Tragamor. He named each of them, “Sorah, Dealpas, Buinel, Shattnir, Trandilar, Dorn.” Last he picked up one of the little Shapeshifters and said, “And Thandbar and his kindred. How wonderful. How ancient and how wonderful.” I mumbled something, as did Silkhands, and the old man saw our confusion. “But don’t you understand? It is History! The eleven!”

 Yarrel said, “We are stupid today, Sir. We do not understand what is special about these eleven.”

 “Not these eleven, boy, or those eleven. The eleven. The eleven Gamesmen who are spoken of in the books of religion. The first eleven…” We looked at one another, half embarrassed, not sharing his excitement. Yes, there had been eleven mentioned in the books of religion. Yes, there were thousands of types of Gamesmen, each mentioned in the Index, each different. What did it matter that these tiny, carved figures were of the first eleven. As we watched him, his wonder turned to caution. He said, “Who knows of these?”

 I replied, “Only those of us here, and Himaggery. I showed them to him, and the book as well…” I put the little volume into Windlow’s hands, half hoping to distract him from this strange passion, for he looked very distraught. It did not have the desired effect. It was only a little glossary, directions for a Game, I thought, written in an archaic lettering, much faded. I had not paid it much attention. Windlow, however, took it as though he took the gift of life from the hands of a god. He peered at it, opened it, caressed the page, raised it to his face to smell of it. He leafed through it, leaning so close to the lantern I thought he would burn himself.

 When he murmured, “The Onomasticon…” the word meant nothing to me. “All those Rancelmen…” he said. “Year after year, hundreds of them sent into the world, to search, search, always looking for it, and it is put into my hands by an ignorant boyľbeg pardon, lad, no reflection upon you personallyľwho does not know what he gives me. Ah. Life is full of these jokes. Full of jest…”

 Then I understood. This was the book, the one he had been searching for. At least, he believed it to be the book. I remembered he was a Seer. If this was the book he had Seen himself having, then it surely was the book.

 He went on talking, almost to himself. “See. The word Festival. In the Onomasticon it carries the meaning ‘opportunity for reproduction.’ We talk of School House, but the book says, ‘Protection of Genetic Potential.’ We say True Game. The book says ‘Population control.’ We say King. The book says…”

 Yarrel leaned forward to put a hand over his lips. “Sir, is it safe to speak so?” Windlow looked up, dazed, lips still moving. Then he became still, as though listening.

 “No. No, lad, not safe to speak so. Not safe to say what I have said, not even to those I have spoken to. I would not go from this place before, for I had Seen myself having the book here, in the old Tower. Also, I have been fond of Prionde as though he were my own sister’s son. Now, however, the book is here and my love is a foolish thing, for Prionde has turned against me. Let us leave. Let us get out.”



 6
Escape

  



 “OUT?”

 I think Chance said it, though it may have been Yarrel. We were all equally astonished, not at the thought, for each of us had probably considered the idea since we had been shut up in the tower. We were astonished at the matter-of-fact way Windlow stated it.

 “Out?” I repeated. “How do you propose that we do that?”

 “Why, I have no idea,” Windlow said. “Though I do know that we are to get out, or at least that I am, for I have Seen myself with the Book in another place than this. I have the Book, and there seems little reason for delay if we can think of a way to go now…”

 None of us could think of a reason for delay either, but this did not help us think of a way to get out. The guards who had been sent by the High King showed no signs of relaxing their alert stance. There was an Invigilator among them who, while not quite as thorough in pursuit as a Pursuivant might be, was nonetheless to be reckoned with. At least one of them was an Armiger, which meant we could be seen from above if we succeeded in leaving the Tower but needed to cross the meadows. We had no Armiger of our own to carry us through the air. I wondered if it might be possible to burrow under the ground and said something of the kind to the others. At once Yarrel fastened upon the idea and began wandering about the tower with an abstracted look of concentration.

 “That old earth closet,” he asked Windlow, “does it go into a pit? Do you know?”

 “Why, no.” The old man searched his memory. “There is a stream up the valley which was diverted, yes, I recall when the builders were at it. They brought it underground so that it would not freeze in winter. It comes into a tank above the cookhouse and laundry. Then the drains and the rest of it run down under the Tower, here, and the closet empties into it.”

 “How?” Yarrel sketched a circular dimension with his arms. “Like a pipe, small? Or a tunnel? How did they build it?”

 “Why, a tunnel, small as tunnels go, I suppose. About as high as your shoulders. The walls and floor were laid in stones, I remember, with beams over the top and earth on that.”

 “And it comes out where?”

 “I don’t know.” He looked almost ashamed, as though he were guilty of some obscure sin. “I didn’t pay attention. Do you think it might join the stream again, further down?”

 “It would make sense to do that,” said Chance. “I’ve seen it done that way many a time. Probably dumps out into a pool somewhere to overflow into the old riverbed. So I’ve seen it done.”

 Yarrel’s eyes were glinting with an adventurous spark. He said, “Well, easy enough to find out. Shall we go together, Peter? You and I? Exploring once more?” He was remembering when we were very small boys searching the crannies of the attics in Mertyn’s House. The, memory brought back smells of dust and sunwarmed wood and the look of bats hung on old rafters like black laundry.

 We cut a blanket into strips and made rope out of that. Chance lowered us one at a time down the old closet. It hadn’t been used in a long time, so it smelled no worse than an old barnyard midden, musty and rank, but not actually foul. Once at the bottom with our little lantern, we kicked away piled rubbish to disclose the turgid flow of water which crept from one side of the shaft to the other.

 “I’ll wager it’s broken or plugged further up,” said Yarrel. “Which is lucky for us. There’s hardly any water at all.” Still, there was enough to make the place slimy with mold and greeny slickness on the walls. In places the old beams had broken or half broken to sag down into the already low ceiling of the place and drop clods of mud and things with legs onto our necks. The way turned and swerved inexplicably, but Yarrel said it was probably that they had dug it in a way to miss large outcroppings of rock. Whatever the builder’s reasons, it made a confusing way, and I soon lost any sense of the direction in which we moved. However, it was only a short time until we saw a glimmer of light ahead and came up to an opening all overgrown with brush through which the trickle wandered out and down a little slope into a mire. I could hear the river but not see it. We were surrounded by trees.

 “Thank the Game Lords, Peter. We are in the trees and behind the stables. We may go from this place undiscovered and mounted, all else willing.” I left him where he was and went plodding back up the little tunnel to be hauled up into the light once more, blinking and filthy. Silkhands wrinkled her nose at me, and old Windlow said, apropos of nothing at all, “I have always wondered how moles keep clean…” He did not seem at all surprised when I told them the way was clear and we needed only wait until dusk to meet Yarrel at the tunnel entrance. We then spent some time, in devising a way to carry Windlow through the tunnel, for Silkhands demanded that he not be forced to huddle and crouch like the rest of us. In the end we slung him into an uncut blanket, and Chance and I carried him between us. Before we went, however, nothing would do but he must scurry around like a tottery old heron and pack up bits of herb and grass about himself, bladders full of this and wraps of that. By that time the warders were bringing our evening meal, so we shut the closet door and pretended Yarrel was within. When they had gone, we ate two bites and packed up the rest before lowering Windlow into Silkhand’s waiting arms. I went down, then Chance, pulling the makeshift rope after him. We abandoned it in the tunnel. The second trip down the little tunnel was easier for me, for I knew where it ended. Yarrel was not at the entrance, but three saddles were, together with other tack. He had even managed to steal some water bottles from somewhere. We had brought such clothing as we thought we would need, and now waited impatiently for Yarrel to come while Windlow lay upon his back making learned comments about the stars. He seemed to know much about them, as he did about everything, from all that Reading, no doubt. I could hear whickering of horses in the meadow, that coughing noise they make when they are quite contented, but interested in something. It was not long until they came, three of them, following Yarrel as though he had been their herd leader.

 “There were only these three loose,” he said. “I do not want to risk being discovered in the courtyard where they have stabled the others. These came after me like lambs, no commotion at all, but it means we will have to ride double. Chance, you and Silkhands take the roan, he’s a sturdy beast. I will take Window upon the gray. That will leave the white for you, Peter. You’re among the lightest of us, and it’s a small beast. I should not wonder if it had not some onager blood. Still, even double is quicker than afoot.”

 We agreed, saddled the animals and led them away through the trees as quietly as owls’ flight. Only when we had come over the ridge separating the Tower from the forest did we mount. As we mounted we heard a braying from the south, as of a brazen trumpet, but it sounded only once and was blown away on the wind. We held still for long moment waiting for it to be repeated. There was only an uneasy silence. At last we rode away in the, belief our departure was yet unnoticed, leaving it to Yarrel to find us our way in the wildernessľthat long way north to Lake Yost and the Bright Demesne.

 We would have ridden faster had we known of the tumult behind us. A cavalcade had arrived from the High Demesne; Dazzle and Borold with it, the pawner I had escaped twice before, and a Demon of some considerable power. The trumpet we had heard summoned warders from the surrounding hills. We were pursued long before we knew of it, and we rode though moonlight and shade down the dark hours, guided by what Yarrel, could learn of the slope we traveled, marking our way by the river’s edge, waiting for enough light to sight some landmark which would set us more firmly upon our way.

 Before we had left the Tower, Chance had puzzled over the charts so that he could tell Yarrel of them now what lay north, what ranges and valleys. All of us knew that this study may have been useless. The charts might be true or false, true as any man’s skill could make them, or false as a man’s need might draw them. One never knew in buying charts what Game the maker played.

 The Demon behind us could not see us or touch us, therefore he could not pick out our thoughts from the countryside. He could only throw his net into the void to skim whatever vagrant pulses were there, to recognize fear, perhaps, or some thought of the pursuer in the mind of the pursued which would tell him that those he sought were in one direction only. Though we did not know it, he did not find us for some time, for we had dropped below the rocky ridge of hills, out of his line of search. Then, at the bottom of the first long slope, we dropped down once more into a maze of little canyons which twined themselves down the long incline like a twisted rope, joining and rejoining among high, flood-washed walls. Once we were into the twisting way we were doubly hidden. He had to leave the search and climb the highest mountain to our west in order to Read us. Once he had done so, however, he found us soon enough, and the pursuers came behind us at twice our speed.

 Morning came. We stopped to eat the little food we had brought, and when Yarrel laid the old man down, his eyes opened in surprised alertness. “I see,” he said. “They are coming behind us. We are pursued.” There was almost panic in his voice.

 Silkhands shook him gently, touched his face. “Have you Seen our arrival at the Bright Demesne? Have you seen us with Himaggery?”

 He nodded, still in surprise and with something of shame. “I have seen myself there, dearest girl. So, I assumed…Oh, wrong to assume. Wicked to do so. Having seen myself in safety, I did not think for you, not any of you. How vain and mean to let you come this way with so little protection.”

 We hushed him, comforted him, but I was fearful. They might pursue him, true, but I thought he needed fear little more than being taken back to his garden and his birds. Me? Well, someone wanted me for something, but I did not think I had offended anyone enough that I was seriously in danger. But Silkhands was another matter. Her fate would be a dire one, denounced by her envious sister, accused of treachery by sister and brother to one who would kill at a word and mourn his error later. Windlow had been right. The High King was a bare, hard man who would believe his fear first. I did not want Silkhands lost to him.

 Windlow pulled himself together and we made plans, hasty plans, plans with perhaps too little chance of success. Still, it was better than doing nothing and falling meekly into their claws. It was decided that we would split up, each horse would take a separate way down the twisting canyons. As we went, we would each concentrate on playing a game of two-space-jumper in our heads. It was an infants’ game, one we all knew, played with two Armigers on an otherwise empty board. If we could keep our concentration clean, uncorrupted by other thought or fear, the Demon following us could not tell us apart. We would all be alike to him, and perhaps the searchers would split up, as well, or failing that, would choose one way and ignore the others.

 Then, when we had gone in this way until noonľand it would not be easy to keep only those thoughts for so long a timeľwe would sit quietly upon the slope of the canyon, wherever we happened to be, chew a certain leaf which Windlow gave us, and “become as one with wind and leaf.” I had no great confidence in being able to do this, but Windlow said the herb would do it if we did not fight it. “Let go,” he said. “Let everything go. And if you are pursued, they will lose you and pass you by.”

 If we did it well, there was a chance the pursuit would pass us by and we could hide behind them, protected from their searching minds by a thousand rocky walls. This was the hasty plan, depending much upon luck and resolution rather than on skill, for we had no practice of this deep meditation while the hunters came after us on swift feet.

 “Ill prepared or no, we must go on,” said Windlow. “If we had waited another day, we could not have escaped at all. We must go on.” So we did. Yarrel and Windlow went down the middle way, the widest and smoothest. Chance and Silkhands took the western branch, narrow and deep. I went down the easternmost way. If the chart told true, all these ways would spill into the Long Valley sooner or later and we would meet there if we met at all. As we left one another, I was not at all confident of it, and Yarrel’s half-pitying glance over his shoulder at me did little to reassure me.

  

 My way led among rocky heaps full of whistling burrowers who marked my passage with alarm sounds. I paid them no attention, being intent upon the Armiger game, jump by jump, trying to keep the whole board in my head and remember which squares had been ticked off. This thought had to be interrupted only a few times to remind the horse that he was expected to keep moving. Once or twice, I checked the place of the sun in the sky. I lost myself in the game, truly, able to keep that and only that in mind far better than I would have thought possible.

 SoľI did something foolish. Only later did I realize what it had been. The canyon I was in was a twisting one. The sun was only a little before noon, in the corner of my right eye. Much later, oh, much, much later I caught it still in the corner of my right eye and said to myself, see, the very sun is standing still. It had not. Nor had I. The way had turned upon itself, the sun had moved past noon, and I was still thinking the Armiger game in my head. It took a moment to realize what had happened. By then, of course, mine had been the only mind which the pursuers could have followed for a very long time.

 I knew it was probably too late to do any good, but losing myself in the herb and the silence could at least do no further harm. If anyone had been Reading during the past hour, only my thoughts would have been there. Perhaps I had decoyed some pursuit away from the others. I tried to convince myself this was a good thing if it had happened. The white horse and I went up the slope to hide among the trees where I sat beneath a fragrant, needled tree and chewed Windlow’s leaves, concentrating the while upon the grasses around me which moved so gently in the sun and air. In a little time it was as though the world dropped away, and I was me no longer. I was grass. I was air, perhaps, as well, but certainly grass, moved by the wind, gloriously green and flexible in the sun. So time passed and I was not. Even as I became the grass upon the hillside, they came down the canyon after me. All the others had vanished at noon, gone into nothingness. I had not. The Demon had tracked me as a fustigar does a bunwit. They came down the canyon below me, would have gone on by me into the great valley without seeing me, precisely as planned. Except for the little, white horse. From wherever I was, whatever I was, the noise of the little horse was no more than a bird call, a beast cry, a little “whicker, whicker, here I am, abandoned and left all alone upon the hillside…” The noise which followed, however, was more than that; shouting, calling of men, whistles blown shrill into echoes. Something deep within me wrenched, and I was myself upon the hillside as men clambered toward me. The little white horse had been lonely, no doubt, had thought himself abused, had called out to the mounts of the men who passed below. At that moment somewhere deep inside me it seemed that I knew a way of escape but had forgotten it. I longed to become as the grass again, then mocked myself for so foolish a desire. No matter how convinced my mind might be, the men would see me for what I really was. All this occurred to me within seconds, and without abating that strange notion that escape was there, within reach, if I could only remember…

 And then they surrounded me. Dazzle was there, Borold fiercely smiling, the lean and villainous pawner, and a Demon. Now I knew the Demon. I had seen him last on Festival night in School Town: Mandor’s friend from Bannerwell. I was not afraid, only confused. What could this assemblage want with me? Despite all Yarrel’s imaginings, I could not be convinced that I was the real object of their search, could not be, would not be.

 Part of the puzzle unraveled at once. The expression of fury on Dazzle’s face told me that I had not been her quarry. She was infuriated that Silkhands was not with me, demanded to know where she was. My thoughts said, gone, down the valley, safe to Himaggery’s. So I thought, and so they believed. Why should they not? I believed it. Some in the train had been sent in search for old Windlow. I put my head into my hands and thanked the Gamelords that Silkhands was well gone. If she had been found with Windlow, the two escaping together, it would have been considered proof enough of that treachery which the High King so feared. What did it really matter if his old teacher ran away to a better place? It did not, save to the High King, and for no good reason. I turned my thoughts from this as they clambered around me and over me, searching the rocks and trees, sure that the others were not there and yet bound to search for them, bound by the same terror which chained the High King. Doubt. Doubt and more doubt. Fear and more fear. I sighed. The little white horse whickered at me, and I cursed him and his lineage for several generations.

 I sat in the landwrack of my dreams and cursed a horse, doing the dreams no good and the horse no harm. So it is with much of life, as old Windlow had said, a jest. We stand at the side of the board and are overrun by the Game of others. When I was younger, I would not have believed that.



 7
Mandor Again

  



 THERE WAS SHRILL, HISSING ARGUMENT, among the Demon, the pawner, and Dazzle. Dazzle, backed by Borold and the High King’s men, demanded aid in seeking Silkhands. The Demon refused. Silkhands was no part of his bother. The pawner, meantime, felt ill used since he had not been paid for finding me. Of the three, the only one with any dignity was the Demon, and him I could almost have admired though, at last, even his patience broke upon the shoals of Dazzle’s temper.

 “If you would dispute, then ride with me to Bannerwell, for it is not my will I do, but the will of another. If you would dispute, then bring your disputation to Bannerwell and submit them there to my Lord and Prince, Mandor.”

 Ah, said my inner self, so he is not dead after all. I waited for love to well up in me, for gladness to occur, for some emotion to flow as it had used to do and felt nothing. Within was only the memory of grass and wind and a longing for peace. Well, I said to myself, you are tired after all. Tired from all that riding and concentration. Later you will feel something. I saw Dazzle, still screaming at the Demon, saw her real face, at which I shuddered, gulped, so deeply sick I had to put my head between my feet to gulp for air. The pawner mocked at me.

 “Well, boy, and what is it with you? You need fear nothing. They mean you no harm.”

 I told him I knew, I knew, but the feeling of sickness and sorrow did not abate even when we had mounted and ridden off along the twisting canyon in its winding way north. Some good spirit was with me, for I did not think of the others at all but only of my own internal miseries. As a result, the others were not further sought. Wherever they were, they escaped the notice of my captors, and when we reached the long, east-west valley Dazzle and Borold turned eastward and left us. I did not notice they were gone as we turned west and rode up into the hills. It was a winding way, a climbing way, but it was definitely a road leading up and over the high scarp which was the southeasterly end of the Hidaman Mountains, those most lofty of peaks, tonsured in ice, beyond which lay Bannerwell. The setting of the High Demesne in the same range had been beautiful, but the way we traveled was simply wild; fearsome, grim and deep the chasms, remote and chill the peaks. I was glad of the road and felt that the white horse would be punished enough by the time we arrived anywhere. So, that first day while I rode I did not think of anything at all. At about sunset we reached a way station where horses were kept. I was chained. I had never been manacled before, and I did not like it. They did nothing more than link my ankles with light bonds and that to a tree, but it made me feel less than human.

 When I complained, the Demon was half kindly about it. “It is only for your own protection,” he said. “You are not with us of your own free will, after all. You might decide to wander away in the night. If you were to end up in these mountains alone, wellľthere are beasts, quadrumanna, chasms. We mean you no harm, and you will be safer with us.”

 They fed me well. There was water from the snow melt which smelt of pine, fragrant as tea. There were camp buns baked in the ashes and slices of meat from the day’s hunt. The Armiger had brought down a small, hoofed animal which I did not know. The beast was called “Mountain zeller,” but the meat was named “thorp.”

 I thought I would not sleep, not for a moment, and woke in the chill dawn thinking that only moments had passed. I had slept the whole night, not feeling the chain, so tired that nothing had moved me during the black hours. So, I thought some about Silkhands and Windlow, wondering if they were well and had gone far on the road to the Bright Demesne. The Demon gave me a puzzled glance, as though what I thought of was not what he expected. Well, what did he expect? I did not even know why I was sought, much less what expectations they might hold. Nothing would be lost in trying to find out. When we were on the way, I kicked the white horse into a clumsy canter and came up to the Demon’s side. It was like riding beside a giant. The horse he had taken from the way station was one of those great, feather-footed monsters Yarrel had known at once as Bannerwell bred. I felt that running so dwarfed was good for the white horse. An exercise in humility. I had not yet forgiven him.

 “I would feel less distressed, sir, if you could tell me why I was sought? Why we are going to Bannerwell? I have done nothing to warrant enmity from anyone…” I let my voice trail off, not quite pleadingly. His jaw was set, and for a moment I thought he would not answer me at all. Then he did, grudgingly.

 “You are not sought in enmity, boy. Were you not close friend to my Prince Mandor? Did you know he was hurt?” He east a curious glance at me out of the corner of his eye, almost covert, as though to see what I thought of that.

 “I was told so.” It seemed wisest not to say much. “I, too, was hurt.” I would not have been human had my voice not hinted asperity. Had it not been for Mertyn, I would have been more than hurt. I would have been damn near killed.

 He jerked angrily, the little muscles along his jaw bunching and jumping as though he were chewing on something tough. “Yes. Well, you are better healed than he. There were no Healers in the Schooltown during Festival. It was long before one could be found and longer yet before we found one who was competent.” The little muscle jumped, jumped. “He is not healed of his hurt. Perhaps you can aid him in that.”

 “I am no Healer!” I said in astonishment. “So far, I’m nothing at all.”

 Jump, jump went his jaw, face turned from me, stony. At last, “Well, your presence may comfort him. As a friend. He has need of his friends.”

 I could not stop the thought. It bloomed angrily in me as fire blooms on grassland. “He who sought my death claims my friendship! A fine friend indeed!” The Demon caught it, had been waiting for it. He could not have missed it, and he looked down at me out of a glaring face, eyes like polished stone set into that face, enmity and anger wished upon me. I felt it like a blow and shuddered beneath it.

 “You were friends once, boy. Remember it. Remember it well, and be not false to what once was. Or regret be thy companion…” He spurred his horse and went on before me. I did not see him again until we camped that night. Then he was as before, calm, but did not speak to me nor I to him. In his absence I had thought of Mandor, of how I had once felt about Mandor. No echo of that feeling remained. It was impossible to remember what once had been. For the first time I began to be afraid.

  

 By the time we had come over the last of the high passes of the Hidamans and down the fast stretch of road to Bannerwell, I was more frightened yet. I had also forgiven the white horse. He had carried me without complaint or balk, growing noticeably thinner in the process. The sight of my own hand and wrist protruding from my sleeve for a handsbreadth told me some of the reason. While mind and emotion may have been disturbed by all the journeys since Schooltown, body had gone on growing. Measuring my trouser legs against my shins, I guessed myself a full hand higher than when we had left Mertyn’s House. My hand shook as I lengthened the leathers to a more appropriate stretch, and my eyes brooded over the close-knotted forest of oaks which fell away from us down the long hills to Bannerwell itself, a fortress upon a cliff/surrounded on three sides by the brown waters of a river.

 “The River Banner,” said the Demon, reading my question before it was asked. “From which Bannerwell takes its name. The ancient well lies within the fortress walls, sweet water for harsh times, so it is said.” He cast me one of his enigmatic looks before rounding up the train with his eyes, counting the men off, arranging us all to his satisfaction. I noted the silence among the retainers, the gravity each seemed to show at our approach. The Demon said, “I was to have returned with you a season ago, boy. I rode from this place due east on a straight road to Schooltown only to find you gone.”

 I knew he could Read my question, but I felt less invaded if I asked it aloud. “Why, sir Demon? It is not for friendship. You know that as well as I. Won’t you tell me why?”

 For a time I thought he would not answer as he had not when I had asked before. This time, however, he parted reluctant lips and said, “Because of your mother, boy.”

 “I have none. I am Festival born.” I felt the deep tickle in my head as I said it and knew that he had plunged deep enough into me to Read my inmost thoughts. His face changed, half angry, half frustrated. “You have. Or had. Her name is Mavin Manyshaped, and she is full sister to Mertyn, King Mertyn in whose House you schooled. I Read it in Mertyn’s mind at the Festival. There is no mistake. He saw you at risk and knew you for close kin in that moment. He called you thalan, sister’s son.”

 Turmoil. We approached Bannerwell, but it was someone else seeing those walls through my eyes; someone else heard the thud of the bridge dropping across the moat, the screeching rattle of chains drawing the screen-gates upward to let us through. I suppose mind saw and heard, but I did not. Inside me was only a whirling pool of black and bright, drawing me down into it, full of some darting gladnesses and more many-toothed furies, voiced and silent, leaving me virtually unaware of the world outside. There was only an impression of lounging gamesmen in the paved courtyard; the gardens glimpsed through gates of knotted iron, light falling through tall windows to lay jeweled patterns on dark, gleaming wood. The smell of herbs. And meat and flowers and horses, mingled.

 Someone said, “What’s wrong with him?” and the Demon answered, “Leave him a while. He has been surprised.”

 Surprised. Well. That is a word for it. Astonished, perhaps. Shocked. Perhaps that word was best, for it was like a tingling half deadness in which nothing connected to anything else. I think I fell asleepľor, perhaps, merely became unconscious. Much later, long after the lamps were lit, I realized that I, Peter, was sitting against a wall in an alcove half behind a thick curtain.

 The shadow of a halberd lay on the floor before me, and I looked at it for a long, long time trying to decide what it was. Then the word came, halberd, and with it the knowledge of myself and where I was. Someone was standing just outside the alcove; beyond was the dining hall of Bannerwell full of tumult and people coming and going, smells of food, servants carrying platters and flagons. Well. I watched them for some time without curiosity until one of them saw me and went running off to tell someone. Then it was the Demon standing over me; reaching down with rough hands to turn my face upward. “I did not know it would take you so. I had hoped you knewľthat you are thalan to Mertyn, as Mandor is to me…”

 Thalan. Full sister’s son. The closest kin except for mother and child were thalani. The Demon was tickling at my mind and finding nothing, as usual. I almost laughed. If I could not tell what I was thinking, how could he?

 He said, “Do you often do this? This going blank and sitting staring at nothing?”

 “Sometimes,” I admitted from a dry throat. It was true. Whenever things happened which were too complex, too much to bear, there was an empty interior space into which I could go, a place of vast quiet. I seldom had any recollection of it afterward. Perhaps it was not the kind of place one could remember, only a sort of featureless emptiness. I resented his question.

 Perhaps the resentment showed, for he made a face.

 “I can remember that feeling from my own youth, lad. There is little enough we can do until our Talent manifests itself. Before that, there is always the fear that there will be no Talent at all.” I nodded, and he went on. “I remember it well. When we are impotent to do anything consequential, it seems better not to exist than to live in such turmoil. If I were not thalan to Mandor, if he were not dear to me as my own soul, I would pity you and let you go. But, I cannot.”

 “What good will it do to keep me here?” I begged. “I have no power. You tell me I am the son of a Shapeshifter, a famous one at that, one whose name I know. You tell me this and I must believe you, but it does you no good. I have no such power, and if I had, what would it profit you?”

 “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps it is no more than a mad idea born out of pain. I have said you will not be harmed, you will not. But Mandor has it in his head you can help him, or get help for him. It may be you can do nothing, and the whole matter will be forgotten, but for now I have done what he begged of me. I have brought you to Bannerwell where hospitality awaits you. Let Mandor himself tell you more…”

 I had to be satisfied with that. Mandor was not in the dining hall. He was not waiting for me in the room I was given, nor was he in the kitchens in the morning when the Demon and I took early meal together. The Demon asked me to call him Huld, and I did so with some reluctance. We went together up the River Banner to a horse breeder’s farm to fetch two animals for the fortress stables, and Mandor was not with us. During all this ride, I longed for Yarrel and was as lonely as I have ever been in my life. Huld was garrulous, a little, trying to make me comfortable, to make me feel relaxed and kindly. I could not. The warmth came no nearer me than the length of his glance, covert and measuring. I did not feel him in my head that day, but I knew I could not prevent his Reading me when he chose. I thanked the Gamelords I was a clumsy boy, a bobble-head, a dreamer with no Talent. If he found my dreams, I would hate it. It would be like being taken for sex, without consent, but he could hurt no one else with what I knew or dreamed, for I knew so little.

 To realize that one knows nothing, that one is helpless, that one’s highest hope is to be ravished alone without injury to others, that is a lonely feeling. Then even that hope was taken from me.

 “I have long admired King Mertyn,” said Huld. “He would be sorry to know his mind betrayed you into a Game against your will…”

 So that was my value! That in my destruction, Mertyn might be wounded! I laughed, a sound like a bray, and Huld turned his face to me, full of surprise and sudden offense. “No, lad. No, I swear. Such a thought had not occurred to me, nor to Mandor…”

 I brayed again, and when we returned to the fortress I went to the room they had given me and curled on the bed, willing myself to silence. If it were possible, I would have willed myself to death. I felt the tickle in my head and paid it no attention. Let him seek my misery and find it. Let him feel it and know I did not believe him. I think I may have cried like a child. At last I slept. And in the morning I saw Mandor again.



 8
Hostage

  



 HE WAS IN A TOWER ROOM, a room not unlike the one Mertyn had occupied in Schooltown, windowed and well lit. Mandor, however, was surrounded with a luxury which Mertyn would not have allowed: carpets of deep plush, couches and heavy draperies to shut out the evening cold. Mandor’s familiar form was posed against the jeweled light of an eastern window. I saw his profile, more familiar to me than my own, the long lashes lying upon his silken cheek, mouth curved into that sensuous bow, his long, elegant hand stroking the silk of his gown.

 Huld spoke from behind me, “Peter is here, Mandor.” No answer. It might have been a form of wax or marble which stood against the light. I waited to feel something and felt nothing.

 Until he turned.

 Then I thought there had been a masquerade, and they had put Dazzle into Mandor’s clothes, for the face which looked at me was one I had seen before, hideous, a gap-faced monstrosity, a noseless, cheekless horror. Vomit boiled into my throat, and I turned away, feeling the Demon’s intrusion into my mind, hearing him say, “He sees you, Mandor.” I heard a sob, as well, and knew it came from the Prince. ‘

 “How?” The word was almost gargled, and my brain formed the unwelcome image of shattered teeth and tongue bending and probing to form articulate speech.

 “How?”

 “He doesn’t know.” There was a silence during which I swallowed and swallowed, staring at the stones of the wall, not thinking. “Truly, Mandor. He does not know. He simply sees you, that’s all.”

 “Talen’. Bahr?”

 “Not any Talent or Power he knows of.”

 “I was some time among the Immutables,” I said, bitterly. “Perhaps I have caught it from them.”

 “It is not unknown,” Huld said to Mandor. “There are some who cannot be beguiled. Or who can be beguiled for a time, but not thereafter. You know it is true.”

 I turned to confront the horror, but he had turned away, and it was only that matchless profile which I saw.

 The lips moved. “Nus helb…”

 “I have told Peter he must help, Mandor. If he can.”

 “I would help you if I could,” I choked. “I would help anyone like you, if I could. But there is nothing I can do. I cannot see you as once I did, feel for you as once I did. I have no Talent, no Power. I have learned from Huld that I am a Shapeshifter’s son, but I do not know how that would help you.”

 “Get her here!” The three words were perfectly clear, not at all garbled.

 I laughed. “Get her here? Mavin? For my sake? I’ve never seen her. I don’t know her. If I did, what then?”

 “Go out, boy,” said Huld, opening the door for me. “Now that Mandor has seen you, and you him, we need to talk, we kindred. I’ll come to you later.”

 I brayed again, that meaningless laugh, that pawn’s laugh at the foolishness and stupidity of the world, and I went out into the gardens of Bannerwell to lie beside a fountain and think of Tossa. I summoned her up out of nothing, her colt’s grace and great sheaf of gold hair, her warm brown arms stretched wide against the sky. I dreamed her into reality, then I went with her into a world unlike our own and built a place thereľbuilt it, furnished it, plowed the soil of it and planted an orchard. I summoned Yarrel to live there, with horses and a bride for him, and Silkhands as well.

 Only to have the world vanish when Huld came into the place and sat down beside me. “I will tell you what is in his mind,” he said, hoarsely. I did not reply, only begged earnestly for him to go away, to leave me alone. He did not, only sighed deeply and began to talk.

 “You have seen him. There were no Healers in Schooltown at Festival time. None. It is unimaginable that it should have been the case, but it happened. We took him away, burned as he was. I sent men in all directions to find a Healer; they found one. He was drunk, incapable. All he did was make matters worse. There was no competent Healer to be found. Days passed. The tissues died. When we found a good Healer at last, it was too late. He was as you see him…

 “He would not believe. We have brought Healers from as far away as Morninghill, beside the Southern Sea, summoned by relays of Elators and carried here by Tragamors. None could help him appear as once he did without his Talent, his beguilement. That is still as powerful as ever. His people see him as they always have, except for a few of us, except for himself…

 “After a time, he began to believe he could have a new body, a new face ...”

 “A new body?”

 “He began to believe that, perhaps, a Healer could take another body, a healthy, unscarred body, and somehow place Mandor’s mind within it.”

 “That’s impossible.”

 “So they told him. Then he twisted that thought a little. He began to believe that his own body could be changed, into another form…”

 “By a Shapeshifter? But, that’s foolish. A Shapeshifter can only change himself, into a fustigar, perhaps, of a nighthorse, or some other animal shape. Shapeshifters cannot take human form other than their own.”

 “Mavin is said to do so.”

 “Said to do so. And, what difference, said or real? Does he mean to have Mavin pretend to be Mandor? Take Mandor’s shape? Move about as Mandor while Mandor stands in his Tower room and pulls the strings?”

 “It was his intention to have me Read him, guide the Shapeshifter in changing, guide one to take not only the form, but also the thought…”

 “To have you what? Read Mandor and the ‘shifter at the same time? To somehow impress one upon the other? That’s evil nonsense. Where did he get such an idea?”

 “Out of desperation,” said Huld. “Out of fury and pain and refusal to die or to live as he is.”

 “And what would happen to Mavin, did she come? Would she be one more Gamesman used up, lost in play? As I would have been lost in play?”

 Huld flushed, only a little. “All of us are lost sooner or later. It has never been tried. Who is to say it would not work.”

 I sneered. “If I were Mavin put to such a test, I would try my best to shift into the form of a waddle-hog.”

 “She would not if she cared for you, or cared for Mertyn. For, if she did, you would die, and Mertyn as well, and all others whom she might hold dear.” He was hard as metal. For the first time I realized that he was quite serious. He might not believe in it, but he intended to do what he could to make it happen. I turned from him, sickened. He went on as though he had not noticed. “Unfortunately, you do not know where Mavin is, or even whether she still lives. Which means we cannot use you to find her. However, it is probable that Mertyn knows, and we do know where he is.”

 I left him there, unable to bear any more of his talk, his quiet exposition of villainy, treachery, and evil. It was Talisman to King’s Blood One if Mertyn did not love me, Talisman to King’s Blood Ten if he did. We were thalani, and I had never known it. Did he love me? Since that was the condition which would lead to the most pain and confusion, undoubtedly he did. Had Yarrel been with me, he would have accused me of cynicism. What I felt was utter despair, which was not lightened when I found a letter from Mandor on my bed. It was not long.

  

 As Mertyn’s love for you led him to protect you, so was I turned into this

 monster. So, let his love for you be used to turn me back again…

 You are not Gamesman, now or ever. You are pawn, mine, to throw into the

 Game as I will. Mavin will come, or you will die…

  

 I laughed until the tears ran down my face. So Mandor had not thought such a treacherous thing, according to Huld. By the seven hells and the hundred devils, he had done. He had thought every wickedness, every pain which could be put upon me, and he was bound by his rakshasa to bind me with each one and every one until I was dead. Well, if I were dead, they could not put anything upon me. I left the room as silently as possible, creeping through the still halls to the twisting stair which led into the Tower. The stair went past Mandor’s rooms and on, up onto the parapet, twenty manheights above the rocks at the river’s edge. It was all I could think of which could be done swiftly, and I prayed that someone would know I had not killed myself out of dishonor. At Mandor’s door I paused. Huld’s voice was raised within, almost shouting, and I could hear it clearly. “And I tell you once more, Mandor, that he knows nothing of help to you, nothing. Do you think I would lie to you if there were any hope? Do you not dishonor yourself in this treacherous use of one who loved you? You dishonor me!”

 Ah, I thought, the Demon may do Mandor’s will, but he gets no joy of it. I went on, up past the little spiraling windows, out through the low door onto the lead roof, covered with slates. I did not see the figure leaning upon the parapet until I had thrown my own leg over and was ready to leap out into waiting oblivion. By then it was too late. I was caught in huge arms and held tightly as eyes glittered at me through winds of paint. A Seer. His shout went up. Armsmen of one kind and another came in answer. I was carried down the stairs to confront Huld where he stood just outside Mandor’s door.

 “That was foolish, lad,” he said sadly.

 “I thought not,” I answered him. “Death is easier than this ugliness you do.”

 The huge Seer behind me thrust past to kneel at Mandor’s feet. I could tell from the way he did it that he saw Mandor as Mandor had been. Strange. One who could see into the future could not see clearly in the present. “My Prince,” he said, “I have Seen this boy…”

 There was an inarticulate shout from Mandor. The Seer reacted as though he had heard it as a question. “Yes, my Prince. I have Seen the boy in a form other than the one he now wears, Seen him crowned, as a Prince…”

 Huld turned a burning face on me, flushed red with a great surfeit of blood. Was he angry? I could not tell. Some emotion burned there which I could not read even as I felt him digging in my head, deeply enough to hurt. I cried out and he withdrew.

 “There is no knowledge of it in him…”

 “There’ill ve,” Mandor said.

 “Yes, my Prince. There will be,” agreed the Seer.

 Mandor turned into his room, slamming the door behind him so that it raised echoes down the stair, sounds beating upon our ears like the buffeting of bat wings. Huld motioned the guards who were holding me, and they followed him down into the depths of Bannerwell, below the pleasant gardens, into the stone of the cliff itself to a place where they chained me in a room of stone. I sat stupidly, staring at the chain.

 Huld said, “You will not be able to harm yourself here. A guardsman outside the door will watch you always. This place is warm and dry and you will be well fed. You will not suffer. The Seer has Seen your future, Seen you in the guise of the Prince. This means his hope is not false, not impossible. Somehow through Mavin or through your inheritance of her Talent, Mandor’s hope will be brought to fruition. You understand?”

 I did not say because I did not understand. It was all foolishness, stupidity.

 “For your own good, I would suggest you focus your attention upon that Talent. For the good of others as well. Mandor is impatient. He will apply every encouragement he can.”

  

 I will not weary myself with telling of the next days. I did not know what passage of time it was. There was only torchlight there, and no time except the changing of the guard and the bringing of food and the emptying of the bucket into which I emptied myself. There were quiet times during which I forgot who I was, where I was, why I was. There were terrible times when Mandor came, his face unveiled, and sat looking at me, simply looking at me for what seemed hours. There were times when he spoke and I could not understand him, and he was maddened by that. There were times when he struck me, enough to cause pain, though not enough to wound me permanently.

 There were times when Huld came, came to argue, remonstrate, dig into my head to see what went on in there. Little enough, the Gameslords knew. There was little enough to find. When I was let alone I made long, dreamy memories of Tossa, summoned her up beside me and made lovers’ tales and poems to her. I did not think of Mertyn or of Mavin. I did not think of Himaggery or Windlow. I did not think, in fact, more than necessary to keep me alive.

 There were times when the torches went out and I was left in darkness. There was one time when I refused to eat, and they brought men to hold me down while a Tragamor forced food down my throat. After that, I ate. There was the time that Mandorľno, I do not need to remember that. He had to tie me, and I do not think he got any pleasure of it. I will not tell of that time, for it was the same over and over for a long while. Instead, I will tell of what happened at the Bright Demesne. I did not learn of it until later, but it fits the tale here, so why should it not be told:

  

 When those who captured me turned west down the great valley, they were seen by Yarrel and Windlow from a post high on a canyon wall. When we had gone, they sought Silkhands and Chance, finding them about eventime. They did not wait on morning, but rode swiftly east toward the Bright Demesne. At first light Yarrel told them they rode hard upon the tracks of two other horses, and they knew at once it was Dazzle and Borold.

 The four of them together would have been no match for Dazzle and Borold in a rage, so they took pains not to ride on the heels of those who went before. They left the road and made their way slowly through the forests, arriving warily among the outlyers of the Bright Demesne a full day after Dazzle and Borold had come there. This was about at the same time that I rode on the laboring little horse over the highest pass of the Hidamans on my way to Bannerwell. Once within Himaggery’s protection, Silkhands feared no more but went to him as swiftly as she could with the tale of Dazzle’s perfidy and my capture upon her lips.

 I was told later that Himaggery’s meeting with old Windlow was joyous, full of tender feeling and gratitude for the old man’s safety, the meeting marred only by the story of my capture and of Dazzle’s infamy. Dazzle had already been sent away once more by Himaggery, sent into the eastern forests on a contrived “errand” and could not now be found without great effort. As it was, they knew only that I had been seen in company with a pawner and a Demon and some others, riding westward to some unknown destination. The horses had been of the common type which are ridden by all the mountain people, so Yarrel was of no help.

 They conferred at great length about finding me, discussing this possibility and that. Had I been taken for ransom? If so, by whom? Had I been taken for some other reason? If so, what? They engaged in recriminations of themselves that Dazzle had not been Read when she returned, but Himaggery had only thought to be rid of her, not where she had been in the interim.

 “My fault,” he said, not once but many times. “I should have realized that she would have been involved in any mischief or wickedness which she could find or create. Why did I not have the sense to examine her, to question Borold. He would not have had the wits to oppose me…”

 Yarrel, impatient at this long delay, simply demanded help in finding me. Himself a pawn, though that was not generally known, he summoned the courage to demand that Himaggery exert the utmost effort in finding, me and aiding me if that were needed. No, I have not put that right. Yarrel did not need to summon courage. He simply was courageous. I miss him greatly in these later days.

 Then was the full power of the Bright Demesne assembled to the service of Himaggery. I have visualized it so many times. It happened in that great room, the audience hall, where we had first sat for our stories. Beneath the floor the hot waters of the springs flowed in channels, making the stones mist with steam, for they had been recently mopped for the occasion. The walls of that room are white, mighty blocks of stone polished to a high gloss set in curving bays, each bay lighted with tall windows, one above the other, each bay separated from its neighbor by a marble pillar on which vines are carved, and little beasts and birds, the whole inlaid with gems and gold and other precious materials so that it glitters in the light. Six or seven manheights above, the dome curves up in a sweep of polished white toward the Eye, a lens set in the center of the dome. It is cut in a way to break the light, making small rainbows move across the floor and walls as the world tilts. At one side are a pair of shimmering doors, and at the other is Himaggery’s seat, a simple stone chair pillowed with bright cushions and set only high enough that he may be seen and heard by all. On this morning he had summoned all the Seers, Demons, and Pursuivants of his Demesne and dependencies, and with them the Rancelmen and others whose Talent it is to seek and find. They came into that great room, a wide circle of them, with another circle inside that, and inside that a third, each Gamesman seated upon a cushion, his hands linked to those on either side, or her hands linked it may be, for many were women. In the center were a group of Elators. Silkhands, who had been keeping to her room until Dazzle was gone, Chance, and Yarrel were there a little behind Himaggery where they would not be in the way. Beside the seat was a bronze gong in a carved frame, and Himaggery took the striker between his hands as he spoke to the assembled Gamesmen.

 “These two, Yarrel and Silkhands, know Peter well. Chance has known him since he was a babe. You may take the pattern from them and then search wide. The boy was seen last some three days ago, in company with a pawner and Demon and some company of other Gamesmen, riding west down the Long Valley. Seek well, for this Demesne is honor bound to find him…”

 He struck the gong. Under the assembly the floors shuddered as workmen below shifted gates to allow the boiling water of the springs to surge beneath the stones. It grew hot, hotter, but only for the moment. In that moment the linked Gamesmen began to seek, each tied to another, each pulling the power of the springs below him, each sending mind into the vast forests of the Hidaman Mountains, west and north, west and south, seeking, seeking. But first…

 To Silkhands it felt as though she had been struck by some gigantic wing, monstrous yet soft. There was none of the normal Demon tickle in her head. Instead there was a feeling that her mind was taken from her and unfolded, laid out like a linen for the ironing, spread, smoothed, almost as though multiple hands stroked it to take out each wrinkle. Then it was folded up again, just as it had been, and put away,

 Yarrel and Chance did not describe it so. To them the search came as water, as though a stream ran into and away from them, bearing with it all manner of thought and memory so that they were stunned and silent when it was done, unable for many moments to think who they were or why they were in that place. This was “taking the pattern” as Himaggery had said, directing his searchers to go on the trail, like fustigars on the scent. They, with the scent of me in their nostrils, went out into the world to find me.

 Later no one remembered who found the first sign. It might have been a Rancelman, one used to seeking the lost, or more likely a Pursuivant who saw through Yarrel’s mind the site of that canyon entrance. In the center of the audience hall sat the Elators. When a place could be sufficiently identified to guide her there, one would flisk out of sight, gone, directed by that linked Talent and her own to that distant place. There she searched, found the tracks which the Pursuivant said must be there, saw the direction they went, looked there for a landmark and returned. The landmark was passed through some Demon to another Elator who went as the first had gone, this time to the farther point.

 At one point a Seer called out as a sudden Vision interrupted the slower jump, jump, jump of Elators.

 “Further North,” he cried, “toward the White Peaks.”

 Thus the search leaped forward until an Elator found the road once more. There were false landmarks as well as true ones. Sometimes the Elators overshot the mark and came out in places far from the road, sometimes the road branched and they guessed wrong. Sometimes the picture was dim and confused as it came from one into the minds of the others. The pace became slower. The room became hotter. There was no lack of power, but the bodies which used it were growing weary. Himaggery struck the gong once more, and the water-gates beneath the floor shuddered closed.

 “Eat,” ordered the Wizard. “Sleep. Walk in the gardens. We will meet once more in this room at dusk.”

 He invited Silkhands and Yarrel to join him with old Windlow in his own rooms for the meal. Silkhands was full of comment and chatter, as always.

 “I do not understand how this is done? What Game is this? I have not heard of this.”

 “No Game, Healer. We are not playing. We are seeking a reality, a truth. We have not done it often, not often enough to become truly practiced at it. We have done it only in secret, not when mischief makers were about. If you had not insisted in being always with Dazzle, you might have taken part before this time.”

 “But what is it? How is it done?”

 “To understand, you must first understand a Heresy…”

 “Oh, you two and your Heresies. I have yet to understand what either of you mean by Heresy. You have said nothing I have not learned or thought a thousand times…”

 “There are eleven Talents,” said Himaggery.

 “Nonsense,” she contradicted him. There are thousands. All in the Index, all of them. Each type of Gamesman has his own Talent.”

 “No, there are only eleven.”

 “But…”

 “You have asked, now be still and let me say. There are only eleven, Silkhands, twelve if you count the Immutables.”

 “The Immutables have no Talent!”

 “Indeed? They have the power to mute our Talents, to be themselves unchanged no matter what we attempt to do. Is that not a Talent?”

 “But, that’s not what we mean when we say Talent…”

 “No. But it is what is true. It is in Windlow’s book.”

 “The Index lists thousands. I have learned their names, their dress, their types, how they move, their Demesnes, all…”

 He turned from her to the mists and the fruit trees which mingled outside his windows. “Healer, your Talent is one of the eleven. You can name the others if you would. They are those which you have recently learned at Windlow’s House.”

 “You mean what Windlow said about the First Eleven, from the religious books? What has that to do with…”

 He laughed. “Silkhands, you are such a child. Do you know that elsewhere in this world there is a group of very powerful Wizards who are known, collectively, as the Council? Did you know that they have taken upon themselves to assure that there are no heretics in our world? None who speak of arrangements not found in the Index? None who talk of the Immutables having Talent? You are so innocent. Here, we can talk of it. Here you are safe, in the Bright Demesne. But you will not thank me for it.

 “It was Windlow who saw it, long years ago, and taught it to me, quietly, so that it should not come to the attention of the Guardians, those of the Council whose interest it is to maintain things always as they are. It was Windlow who saw that the books of religion are actually books of history, that what was said about the descent of our forebears was indeed true.

 “We are told of Didir, a Demon. Imagine, Silkhands, imagine Yarrel, a world in which there were no Talents. It will be easy for you, Yarrel. Imagine a world all pawns. No power but the power of muscle and voice, persuasion and blows, nothing else. Perhaps some power of intelligence, too. Windlow and I argue about that.”

 “There would be intelligence,” said Yarrel. “There is power in intelligence. I know. I can imagine your world.”

 “Very well. Then, imagine that into this world is born one woman who can read the thoughts of others. Didir. Why is it that we call them Demons? Those who read thoughts? Hmmm? We speak of evil godlets as demons, wicked spirits are demons. Why, then, is a Reader a Demon?”

 “Because they would have considered her an evil spirit, an evil force,” said Yarrel. “They could not have helped but feel that way. It would have been terrible for them to have their thoughts wrenched out into the open, laid before others…”

 “Ah, yes. Even so. And the books of religion go on. They say that one was born named Tamor, an Armiger. The oldest books say Ayrman. Why is that do you suppose?”

 “Because he could fly,” said Silkhands. “Armigers can fly.”

 “And what would the world of pawns think of that?”

 “They would wonder at him,” said Yarrel. “And fear him, and perhaps hate him. I wonder that they did not kill him.”

 “Windlow says not,” Himaggery went on. Old Windlow nodded where he sat. “Windlow says that they, the pawns of that world took Tamor and Didir to some other place, away from the world of the pawn.”

 “What other place?” said Silkhands. “What place is there?”

 Himaggery shook his head. “Who knows? But Windlow believes this because he says it makes sense out of much he has read. He says that Didir and Tamor were sent away, and that thereafter they mated with one another, and either they or their offspring mated with some of the pawns who went with them. From their mating came Hafnor, an Elator. The Talent of an Elator is to transport himself, or herself, from place to, place. Generations later, from the family and lineage of Didir came the first Seer, Sorah. And so forth. And when you have listed them all, you have eleven.”

 “But there are more. There are Heralds, and Witches, and Rancelmen, and ...”

 “The Witch has three of the eleven,” said Himaggery, patiently. “Firemaking, beguilement, and the power to store power, as Sorcerers do. A Witch has none of these in the strength that those who hold them singly do, but the witch has all three.”

 “And Heralds?”

 “Heralds have the power of flight, but only in small, and the power of Seeing, also in small, and a slight ability to move things with their minds, as Tragamors do.”

 “And Rancelmen?”

 “Seeing, Reading the thoughts of others, both in small, and a natural curiosity which seems to have little to do with Talent.”

 Yarrel said slowly, “Reading, Seeing, Flying, Transporting, Moving, Storing, Healing, Firemaking, then what would you call it?”

 “Beguilement, the power of Kings and Princes. A power to make others believe in one, follow one. Sometimes the Talent is called ‘follow-me.’ And this leaves two more: Shapeshifting and Necromancy. Those are the eleven. There are no others, except for the one held by the Immutables.”

 “Which the books of religion say was created purposefully by two Wizards, Barish and Vulpas.” Yarrel was very thoughtful. “I can imagine why they did it. They probably saw all the people without Talents being eaten up in the Game, and they felt it was wrong. So, they created a power which would protect the pawns from harm, and they gave it away. But only to some,” he concluded bitterly.

 “Perhaps there was not time to give it to all,” Silkhands said.

 “Perhaps they were prevented from doing so,” said Windlow. “When first I read of that act, I wondered why two Wizards would behave so. Then, at last, I knew. A Wizard would do such a thing when he learned the word Justice. It is a very old word. It is in my book. It means to do what is right, to correct what is wrong, to find the correct way.”

 “Correct?” asked Silkhands. “I do not understand correct.”

 “No, we do not know the word,” Himaggery agreed. “In the Game it is only the rules which matter. The rules are always broken, and there are few penalties for that, but it is still the rules which matter. Few care for what is honorable. None cares for what is right or just. They care only for the rules. Windlow says the rules were created to bring some order out of chaos, but over the centuries the rules became more important than anything else. They became the end rather than the means. Now, I have taught you heresy. There are those in the world who wish the Game to continue as it has been played for generation upon generation. There are those who do not care for the idea of justiceľand well they might not. Thus far we have been fortunate, the Bright Demesne has been fortunate. We have not been challenged in a Great Game. We have made common fortune with some few Immutables and spoken with them from time to time on neutral ground. Much do they suspect us, however. We hold a tenuous peace. It cannot last forever, and it may be that Peter’s abduction is the falling pebble which starts the avalanche.

 “Windlow Sees, and he tells me to have good heart. I trust him with my life and love him with my soul, as though we were thalani. But I am not courageous always,” confessed Himaggery. “I have not that Talent.”

 “Lord,” asked Silkhands, “what Talent do you have?

 “What is the Talent of Wizards?” He laughed at her and rumpled her hair but did not answer. “If I have any, it is to link Gamesmen together to pursue this word, this justice. If I have any at all, it is that.”



 9
Shapeshifter

  



 THE ASSEMBLED TALENTS OF THE BRIGHT DEMESNE went at it again at dusk, and again on the morning following. By noon of the second day they had tracked me to Bannerwell, and one Seer at least told them I was alive within its walls. It took them a day or two to send a Pursuivant to a place nearby, for though Pursuivants have the power of transporting themselves, as Elators do, it is not as potent a Talent. They have the power of Reading, as Demons do, as well, but again it is not as intense. Thus, my friends were not really surprised when the Pursuivant returned to say he could pick up thoughts which he believed were mine, but he could not be sure. He had, however, picked up a clear reference to Mertyn from several sources in and around Bannerwell, and this was enough to make some in the assembly turn their attention toward Mertyn’s House in Schooltown.

 From that moment it was not long until they discovered my parentageľor should it be motherage.

 Strange, I had not thought of that before. I knew that Talents were inherited, that they might be traced both from the female and male parent, but even when I had heard that I was Mavin’s son, I had had no curiosity about my father. It was, even when I thought of it, only a passing thought, and that was much later. As soon as Himaggery was told of it, he sent an Elator to Mertyn, begging him to travel to the Bright Demesne. He broke the rules in doing so. Elators do not, by the rules, carry messages from one Demesne to another. That is left to Heralds or, on occasion, Ambassadors. Though none of us knew it, it was fortunate Himaggery held the rules so in contempt. Mandor’s own Heralds were even then on the road to Schooltown.

 They arrived to find Mertyn gone. He had taken a swift ship from Schooltown to sail across the Gathered Waters and down the Middle River to Lake Yost. He had not left word with any in Mertyn’s House where he had gone. Himaggery’s Elator, who had set Mertyn on the road, offered no help to Mandor’s Heralds, who had no choice but to take lodging in Schooltown and await Mertyn’s return. Eventually they gave up and returned to Bannerwell to face Mandor’s wrath. The day they returned was a day I do not wish to remember.

 Meantime, each day Himaggery would seek out Windlow, who sat in his pleasant rooms over the garden reading my book, to ask him what should be done next. The old man would close his wrinkly eyes and lean back against the side of the window, the sun falling sweetly on his face in quiet warmth, the mists drifting up and away as they always did, and invoke a long silence during which he searched for Seeings. Then at last he would open his eyes and say what he could.

 On one day it was, “Peter is not in immediate danger, Himaggery. However, he is desperate, and very lonely, and without hope.”

 Silkhands was in the room. She said at once, “We must go to him. Now. While the rest of you figure out what it is you will do…” Himaggery began to object, but was interrupted by the old man.

 “No. Don’t forbid her, Himaggery. That may be a very good idea. Healers are generally respected, almost always safe. If she goes with Yarrel and Chanceľa Healer riding with two servants? Can you pretend to be servants?” He asked it of Yarrel, knowing Yarrel’s pride.

 “I can’t pretend,” said Yarrel. “I can be.” And he bowed before Silkhands as though he were her groom. “If Silkhands will learn her part.”

 “Oh, I will do,” she pledged.

 So, the three of them set out for Bannerwell, not over the high passes of the Hidamans, as I had come there, but up the western side of Middle River and then along the foothills west in the valley of the Banner itself. Before they left, Himaggery took Yarrel aside and told him of other Seeings which Windlow had had recently.

 “There is to be a Grand Demesne, lad. A great Game. Silkhands must not know of it, for they will Read her in Bannerwell. They will not bother you or Chance. Pawns are not considered in such matters. But you must know, in order to plan ...”

 While those three left the Bright Demesne, Himaggery plotted and plotted again, and Mertyn sailed toward him, and Mandor raged, and I sat in the rocky cell and dreamed myself elsewhere or hoped I could die. All of us were thinking of me. No one was thinking of Dazzle.

 She, however, returned from her errand to learn that Silkhands had come and gone, which threw Dazzle into a compelling fury. She was full of wrath, full of vengeance against all those she fancied had wronged her, with Borold offering a willing ear to all her fancies. Thus, in a quiet dark hour, Dazzle and Borold rode out on Silkhands’ trail. Perhaps they had murder in mind. Perhaps she feared what Himaggery would do if Silkhands were hurt directly and so plotted some more indirect revenge. No one knows now what she thought then, save only that she meant Silkhands no good.

  

 Time passed. I knew none of this. I knew nothing save my own continuing sorrow and despair.

 Then, one time I was sitting on the cot in the cell where they chained me, the room dim and shadowed from the torch which burned smokily in the corridor outside the grilled door; the guard who stood there half nodding, catching himself, then nodding again; the place silent as the moon, when there was a flicker of movement at the edge of my eye. There was only stone there, nothing could have moved, so I turned my head, surprised, to see an Elator framed for an instant against the rock. He gave me one sharp look and was gone. I thought I had imagined it, had imagined the slim form in its tight wash-leather garb, close-hooded, appearing almost naked in silhouette. But, could I have imagined that furtive, hasty glare? The matter was resolved at once, for the guardsman shouted and ran away down the hall. He had seen it, too.

 They came then, Huld and Mandor, Huld to trample through my mind with heavy feet, scuffing and scraping, trying to find what was not there once more, Mandor to rail and spit and rage, his horrible face made more hideous still in wrath. I choked and was silent and let them do it. What else could I do? Each time it happened, I was amazed anew that the guards did not see Mandor as I did. I knew from their conversation that none in Bannerwell saw him as I did except Huld. To them all he was still the shining Prince, the elegant Lord. I had one guard tell me that he envied me, me, for it was said abroad that the Prince had loved me.

 “He does not know,” Huld told Mandor for perhaps the thousandth time. “There may have been an Elator, but Peter does not know him or whence he came or for what reason.”

 There was an inarticulate shout from Mandor which Huld seemed to understand perfectly. “No, Mandor, I cannot be mistaken. If someone searches for the boy, then he does soľor she does soľwithout the boy’s knowledge. How should he know? How long have you kept him like this? Who would have informed him of anything? Surely you do not think he has become a Seer. Let our preparations for Great Game go forward! I doubt not we will be challenged, and soon, but let the boy alone!”

 There was another slather of spitting words. Mandor’s attempts at speech sounded to me like fighting tree cats, all yowls and hissing. Huld replied again, “It is possible that Mertyn searches for him, possible that Mavin searches for him, possible even that the High King searches for him, if we are to believe that Witch we brought with us from the High Demesne. All that is possible. But it is certain, your Seers tell us, that someone has started a Great Game and Bannerwell is being moved upon. What then? Direct me. I am your thalan and your servant.”

 “Get Divulger,” said Mandor. Once in a great while his words were very clear, and this was one of those times. “Get Divulger.”

 Huld shouted. “He cannot tell you if he does not know, not even under torture.”

 “He can shif,” said Mandor, stalking away down the echoing corridor. “Shif or die..”

 Huld said nothing, swallowed. Bared his teeth as though in a snarl, but it was not at me. At length, he said, “This is not honorable, Peter. I would not command it were I not commanded to do so. He orders you put to torture in the vain hope that pain will force Talent to come forth, if there is any to come forth. Some say that Talents emerge when needed to save us. I do not know if that is true. I beg your pardon…”

 And he left me. Vain wish, I thought, oh Huld who has no honor. Vain wish if you will do as you are bid no matter what you are bid. My mind was afire, thinking up and discarding a hundred schemes. What might I do? What might I say? I did not want to meet torture, knowing as I did what it meant. I had seen much from my rocky cell, more than needful, for the torture dungeons lay below and men had been dragged to and fro before my eyes. I thought of Mertyn, of Himaggery, wondered if they would send help, knew it would come too late. I thought of Chance and Yarrel, wished they could comfort me. I thought of old Windlow, Windlow and his birds and his herbs…and remembered. Windlow’s herbs. I had still in my pocket leaves of that herb he had given us in the canyons, that herb which had let us leave our bodies to become as grass.

 I tugged out the scrap of cloth, heard men coming, fumbled the leaves put and into my mouth, returning a few to my pocket. If I could keep my head and there were a few moments of peace, perhaps I could separate myself from my body enough not to feel pain. Footsteps approached. The Divulger peered in through the grill, a hairy man, arms bare to the shoulder, black hood across his eyes, leather-shirted with high boots.

 “Come out,” he said, and I came, following him like a lamb, like a lamb. We passed the guard. We were alone. He at my side, face set in contempt. He of the hard body, heavy body, muscular arms, hairy neck, slope of shoulder, flat skull, small eyes peering through the half hood, heavy, the feet slap, slap, slap, the feel of the soles as they hit the stone, the curve of a toenail biting into the flesh with a sullen pain, the broken skin on the knuckle of the right hand, memory of the taste of morning grain furring the square, yellow teeth, running my tongue across them to feel the broken one where a victim had lashed out with a stone in his hand, not like this boy, only a baby, wouldn’t last a minute on the rack, would come to pieces like a stewed fowl…and turned to look at the victim to see himself as in a mirror, himself looming hugely in the corridor, to feel the torch crash down across his brow, the metal band crushing out thought, life. Then there was only one of us in the corridor alive, and one of us dead, and both of us the same, the same.

 It was not until I saw my hand holding the snatched up torch that I realized something had happened; not until I turned to see my face reflected in the metal plate over a cell peek-hole that I knew what had happened. It was true. I had a Talent. I had inherited from Mavin Manyshaped who was said to take human form other than her own. Oh, yes. Indeed. As I had done. And not only the form. For there, open to me as though in a book, were all the memories of that morning, the man’s own name, faces of those he knew, bits and pieces of the fortress laid out as though on a map. I tried to remember something further back, his childhood, his parents, but there was nothing there. No. Only a few, loose thoughts, a sufficient baggage to carry about for a few hours, names, places, faces, and one’s own job. I had been thinking of that with anticipation, I the Divulger. I, Peter, was only frightened by it. What now? We two still occupied the corridor, one alive, one dead.

 Well, I would be safe so long as they thought me the Divulger, one Grimpt by name. Thus, they must not find the other one, the original Grimpt. I caught the body beneath the arms and tugged it along the corridor.

 The memories which I had taken over with the body were enough to guide me. The torture dungeon lay this way, and in it were pits, oubliettes, places where bodies might be hidden for a time or lost forever. Before I disposed of him, however, I took inventory of my own form because something was not…ah, my clothing. I had taken the Grimpt form well enough, but not the form of the clothing. My own rags still hung on me, the trousers ripped at the seams by a sudden excess of flesh. I peeled them off and stripped him to put his clothes on me over my shirt. Never mind the stains of blood. There were others, older, dried to crusts of brown. That, seemingly, was part of the costume. I remember the herb which Windlow had given me. There was a little of it left, not much. Perhaps enough to make another shift, I thought, and then it might not be needed after that. Come to, I encouraged myself. There will be time enough to think of such things later. Now it is time to assure safety. So, dead Grimpt went down the oubliette. Live Grimpt went back up the corridor to a place where he might call to the Guardsman outside Peter’s cell door.

 “Hey. You there, what’s yer name, Bossle is it? Well, run on up the kitchen and bring us a mug. I’ll put what’s left of this’un back to bed. G’won now, it’s thirsty work enough.” The man was only a common guardsman in a rust-splotched hauberk with little more Talent than a pawn, a Flugleman perhaps. He opened his mouth to argue, decided against it, leaned his weapon against the wall and went clattering up the stairs. I moved to the open cell, went in, curled the thin mattress beneath the blanket as though someone lay there, put Peter’s shoes beside the cot and his trousers under the blanket, showing a little at the edge, came out of the place and locked it. I met the guardsman at the foot of the stairs, gave him the key, told him a filthy story which I found in Grimpt’s mind ready to be recounted, drank the beer, slapped him heavily upon his back and went up the stairs whistling tunelessly.

 Huld was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Grimpt’s mind said “bow,” so I bowed.

 “Well?” he asked.

 I shrugged. “He didn’t say nothing…except what they all say,” I sniggered. Huld made an expression of distaste which I feigned not to notice. “I put ‘im away. Y’wah it done again today?” The question was automatic, requiring no thought.

 “No.” He shuddered. “No.” He turned and left me, the expression of distaste more pronounced as though he smelled something. I, too, smelled something, and realized that it was the smell of a Divulger’s clothingľold blood, and smoke, and sweat. Grimpt had a place, a place with a door on it, a filthy place. I went there. Once inside with the door locked behind me, I spent some time in thought.

 When they discovered that Peter was gone, they would question the guard. He would know nothing, but he would turn attention to Grimpt. Then they would question Grimpt. My surface thoughts were Grimpt’s, well enough, but they held recent memories which would not stand up to examination. No. I could not remain Grimpt. It would be necessary to become something else, take some other formľsomething unimportant, beneath notice. I left the filthy little cubby and wandered out toward the courtyard, full of the tumult of men hauling the sections of the Great Game ovens onto the paving stones, the screech and clangor of hammers and wheels, the rumbling rush of wagons crossing the bridge bringing wood for the ovens. The bridge was down, the gate up to allow the wagons to move in and out, but each crew was guarded and there were more guards at the bridge. It would not be easy to leave the fortress, so much was clear. A Divulger would have no reason to go into the forest; any attempt to do so would cause suspicion.

 The lounging guardsmen were all alert, scanning the high dike to the east through which the Banner flowed. They had been told to expect challenge or attack and were keyed up by recent admonitions from their leaders. One man was much preoccupied with the pain of a sore foot. From inside an iron gate came a gardener’s thoughts, mixed irritation and anger that the help he had been promised had not come. It was a natural thing, so natural that long moments passed before I realized what was happening. Grimpt was able to Read. I tried to find something more in the minds of the guardsmen or the gardener, but could not. Seemingly, the Talent was a small one, able to pick up only surface thoughts. Quite enough for a torturer, I thought. The thoughts of his victims were probably very much surface thoughts. What else could a Divulger do? The question brought its own answer as a gate swung toward my hand. Yes, of course. The Divulger would be able to Move things, slightly. I tried to lift a paving stone and felt only a dull ache. No, this too was a small Talent. Well, it was one which might be helpful.

 The gardener was a pawn, he had no Talent. He was a little angry, but unsuspicious. So, let the man have the help he had been promised. Let the gardener have his boy. I slipped into a niche of the wall where it extended out over the moat into a privy used by the servants of the courtyard, and the grooms. No one had noticed me. The guardsmen had begun a straggling procession toward the kitchens; the remaining ones were looking away toward the hills. I took one leaf of the herb, only one, and bit down on it as I thought about a boy, a vacant-eyed boy, a boy dressed only in a dirty shirt, a brown-legged boy with greasy, brownish hair and no-colored eyes, an unremarkable boy with a gap in his teeth. I thought of the boy, the boy, how he would feel about helping the gardener, harder work than he liked, but they told him to help or no food, so he’d help, damn them all anyways. The boy put Grimpt’s boots and clothing down the privy, belted Peter’s shirt tightly around his slim waist and stepped out of the privy and into the garden where he stood sullenly at the gardener’s elbow.

 “They told me off to help you,” he said.

 “Oh, they did, did they? Well, it’s about time. Promised me help this morning, they did, and not a sign of it. You take that barrow, there, and go fill it up at the dung heap. Dig down good, now, you understand. I don’t want any fresh. I want old stuff that’s all rotten down. And be quick about it.” As the boy turned away, the man asked, “And what’s your name?”

 “What’s it matter?” the boy muttered.

 “What’s it matter? Well, it don’t matter. But I got to call you something, don’t I? Can’t go around yelling ‘boy’ or I’d have half the young ones in the place buggering around. I need something to lay a tongue to…”

 “Name’s Swallow,” the boy said. “Y’can call me Swall; they mostly do.”



 10
Swallow

  



 SWALLOW HAD A DIRTY FACE and could spit through the gap in his teeth. There had been a boy once at Mertyn’s House who could do that; Peter had envied him. Swallow had lice in his hair, or at least he scratched as though he did, and an evil, empty-headed leer. When the gardener received a noon meal, Swallow received one as well, a large bowl of meat and grain and root vegetables, the same again at night with the addition of a mug of bitter beer and a lump of cheese the size of his fist. The gardener had a hut beside the fortress wall, near the kitchen gardens. The cooks had a place near the kitchen. Others had cubbies and corners here and there, closets and niches hidden in the thick walls behind tapestries. Swallow found a place in the hay loft above the stables, a good enough place, both warm and dry. He was to every intent and eye invisible. No one in the place noticed him, and no one in the place except the gardener could have said who he was or how long he had been there. Swallow was one of them, the pawns, the unconsidered. When, in the middle of the afternoon, there was a great tumult in the castle with men running to and fro and a confused trumpeting of voices as a search for Grimpt was conducted, no one thought of Swallow. No one spoke to him, or asked him anything. Swallow watched them running about, his mouth hanging open and his face vacant, but they did not see him. All night long while Swallow slept burrowed deep in the warm hay, the castle hummed with men coming and going, wagons rumbling toward and away from the sound of axes in the forest. He may have wakened briefly at the noise, but went to sleep at once again. Swallow had worked hard all day. What was this confusion to him?

 Thus he could be completely surprised the next morning when he listened to the whispers of the guardsmen as they ate their first meal in the early sunlight of the yard.

 “The Prisoner is gone, they say. Gone right out of his clothes. Nothing left of him at all.”

 “And Grimpt gone, too? Filthy sot. I’ll believe that when bunwits lay eggs.”

 ‘No. It’s true. He’s gone right enough. They’ve searched every corner for him. It’s said now he went down the privy and over the moat.”

 “Down the privy. Ay. That’s the place for old Grimpt, right enough.”

 “They found his boots in the moat. Fished them out.”

 “What’s it all about? Do they say Grimpt took the prisoner with him?”

 “No. There’s talk of a Great Game coming. The prisoner was taken out by Powers, by a Wizard, they say. Or burned up in his clothes by a Firedrake.”

 “The clothes ‘ud burn, too.”

 “They say not.”

 “Ah, well. They’ll say anything.”

 The gardener had been listening also, came to himself and shut his mouth with an audible snap, caught Swallow by an arm and spun him around. “Enough of this loll-bagging about. Great Game or no, there’s lawn to level, and we’d best at it.”

 Swallow spent the better part of the day rolling a heavy cylinder of stone over clipped grass, muttering the whole time to anyone within ear shot. The gardener wasn’t listening, but Swallow let no opportunity for complaint pass by. Huld came through the garden at noon, his face drawn and tired. He did not notice the boy. Swallow saw Huld but kept his eyes resolutely upon the stone roller. It was not his business to draw the attention of Demons. Mandor, too, came into the garden, but by that time Swallow was having his lunch in the courtyard, almost out of sight around the corner of the iron gate. Mandor saw nothing. His eyes were fixed and glazed, and there was dried foam upon the corners of his mouth. Swallow looked up from his bowl to see adoration upon the faces around him. His own face became adoring at once, and he did not start eating again until those around him did so.

 Late in the afternoon two Armigers rode in, bringing with them two pawns and a Healer. Swallow watched them ride in, as did everyone else in the place, his mouth open, his fingers busy scratching himself. The Healer was escorted into the castle, and the pawns were told to stand by the wall until they were summoned. It seemed to Swallow that they looked almost familiar, and he turned away to continue his work as Peter said to him softly, “Swallow, that is my friend Yarrel and my friend Chance.” Hearing the voice from within frightened Swallow, and it was a long moment before Peter could fight his way to the surface again.

 “There is more to this business than I thought,” I said to myself. I had created a reality, a half-person who grew more real with each passing hour, more real than myself. And yet, to be safe, it had to be so. Swallow had to be more real than Peter, without any thoughts which would attract attention. I sank below the surface of me, thinking of myself as a fish. .

 Fish, fish. I could set a hook into this fish, a hook which would pull it up to the surface when it was needed but would let it swim down into the darkness otherwise. A hook. The faces of my friends, the names of Mertyn and Himaggery and Windlow. These would be my looks. When these pulled, I would rise to peek above the water only to sink again quickly out of sight. I imagined the hook, barbed, silver, tough as steel. I set it deep into Peter and let him go.

 Along toward evening a very beautiful woman and a Herald rode into Bannerwell escorted by guardsmen. Swallow saw them, though they did not see Swallow. The beautiful woman demanded an audience with Prince Mandor, and she spoke of Silkhands. The hook set and Peter rose. I said to Swallow, “When night falls, get up into those vines along the side of the hall and find a window.” Then I went away again. Swallow listened. He heard me, but showed no signs of having done so. He went on his gap-toothed way, spitting and scratching and slobbering over his food as though the evening bowl had been the last he would ever receive, then off to his hay loft to fail into empty sleep.

 When the moon had risen, and the place was quiet except for the pacing of the guardsmen upon the battlements, Swallow woke, and sneaked through black shadow into the vines on the castle wall, century old vines with trunks thick as his body. He was hidden within them as he climbed, empty-headed, high above the paved courtyard into a night land of roofs and across silvered slates to a high window which looked down into the great hall. He picked out pieces of bent lead to make a gap in that window larger, pulling out fragments of glass, softly, softly, a thief in the night. Then he could see and hear what went on below.

 Silkhands was there, and Peter rose to that hook, fished up out of liquid darkness to watch and listen.

 “I have come, Prince Mandor, because the Wizard Himaggery has traced a young friend of his here, Peter, former student of King Mertyn at Mertyn’s House. You knew him there.” It was not precisely a question.

 I heard Mandor’s gargle and wondered how Silkhands understood it. Then I found that if I listened, without looking at him, letting the sound enter my ears without judging it, I, too could almost understand it. Almost it was the voice of someone I had once cared for…But Silkhands went on, “The Wizard, Himaggery, believes that the boy may not have come to Bannerwell of his own will. He sends me to ascertain whether he is well.”

 “Oh, he is well. Quite well. He is not here just now, gone off for a day or two on a hunting expedition. He’ll undoubtedly be back within a few days. You are welcome to wait for him, Healer. You need not worry about Peter. He’s well taken care of.”

 If Silkhands had spoken with the Elator who saw me in the dungeons, she knew Mandor lied. If she had spoken with that Elator then she would not have come to Bannerwell with this transparent story, for she would know that Mandor’s Demons would Read her. No. She knew I was in Bannerwell, but she did not know under what conditions. She did not know exactly where I was, or she would not have dared come to ask for me in such innocence.

 Another voice floated up to the high window from which I watched, silvery sweet and deadly. “Oh, Sister, why do you tell such lies? You know that you were not sent for any such reason. The Wizard cares nothing for the boy, nothing. If he has sent you, it is for some treacherous purpose of his own.”

 It was Dazzle. I peered down to see her standing against a tapestry, posed there like a statue. Her pose was almost exactly the one which Mandor had assumed when I first saw him in his rooms, profile limned against a background, pale, graceful hands displayed to advantage. Mandor was regarding her with fixed attention.

 Silkhands had become as still as some small wild thing, surprised too much by a predator to move. When she spoke, her voice was tight with strain. “The Wizard cares much for Peter, Dazzle. As he has cared for you, and for Borold, and for all who have come to the Bright Demesne. The Prince needs only have his Gamesmen Read my thought to know I do not lie…”

 “Or to know you have found some way to hide a lie, Sister. I am of the opinion that the Wizard is clever enough to have found such a way. He is very clever, and ambitious…” She cast a lingering look at Mandor, turning away from him so that the look came over her shoulder. It was all pose, pose, pose, each posture more perfect than the last. Only I could see the horror of her skull’s head, her ravaged features confronting that other skull’s head across the room. Mandor did not see. Dazzle did not see. Oh, Gamelords, I thought, they are using beguilement on one another, and neither sees what is there. She went on in that voice of poisonous sweetness, “Borold will bear me out. He, too, is of the same opinion.” As, of course, he was. Borold had no opinion Dazzle had not given him.

 “Well,” Mandor said, his voice cold and hard, “Time will undoubtedly make all plain. Until then, you will be my guest, Healer. And you, Priestess. Both. If there is some Game at large in the countryside, we would not want to risk your lovely lives by letting you leave these protecting walls untimely.”

 From the height I saw Silkhands shiver. Dazzle only preened, posed, ran long fingers through her hair. “As you will, Prince Mandor. I appreciate such hospitality, as would anyone who had come for any honest reason…”

 Mandor gestured to servants who led them both away, each in a different direction. I watched the way Silkhands went. I might need to find her later. Then Mandor was joined by Huld, and the two of them spoke together while I still listened.

 “Have the guardsmen found the Divulger? Any sign of him?”

 “Only the boots in the moat, Lord. There is no discernible reason he should have made off with the boy.”

 “Oh, don’t be a fool, Huld. He didn’t make off with the boy. He killed the boy. That’s why he fled, in fear of his life.”

 “We’ve found no body.”

 “When the moat is drained, the body may appear. Or, he may have hidden it deep, Huld, in the Caves of Bannerwell. If you wanted to hide a body, or yourself, what better place than the tombs and catacombs of Bannerwell. Things lost there may never be found again…”

 I sneaked away across the slates, summoning Swallow back and telling him to do this and that and then another thing. Which he did. He went to the kitchens and sat about within hearing of the cooks and stewards until one entered the place saying that the Healer in the corner rooms on the third floor had had no evening meal and needed food. There was tsking from the cooks, kind words about Healers in general, and vying between two sufferers as to which of them should take the meal to her when it was ready. Enough.

 The two pawns who had come with her were still in the courtyard, crouched along the wall. Swallow slouched toward them, spoke to the guard nearby.

 “They c’n sleep in the stable hay along of me if they’d mind to…” The guard ignored him. He had not been told to watch these two inconsiderable creatures. Swallow kicked at Chance’s boots. “Softer there than here, and you c’n bring your things.”

 The two rose and followed him to the loft to lay themselves wearily down, with many grunts and sighs. Swallow sat in the dark away from them, letting the sight of their faces fish Peter up out of the dark waters to whisper, “Yarrel. Yarrel, listen to me. It’s Peter.”

 He sat up, staring wildly about. “Peter? Where are you?’

 “Shhh. I am here in the shadow.”

 “Come out here, into the moonlight. We expected to find you in the dungeons.” I did not move, and he said warily, “Is this some trickery?”

 I was very tired. I did not want to use any more of Windlow’s herb, there was so little left. At that moment I could not remember the “how” of changing back, and I was too tired to try. Instead I said, “No trick, Yarrel. Listen, you and I stood on the parapet of Mertyn’s House and saw a Demon and two Tragamors riding to Festival. You said the horses came from Bannerwell, remember? You said it to me. No one would know of that but us.”

 “A Demon might have Read it,” he said coldly.

 “Oh, a Demon might, but wouldn’t. Think of something to ask me, then…”

 “I ask you one thing only. Come into the light!”

 Sighing, I moved forward. He seized me roughly by the shoulder and shook me. “You. You are not Peter.”

 It was Chance who said, “Yarrel. Look at his eyes, his face. This is Peter right enough.” Evidently even in my weariness, I had let my own form come forward a little, my own face. Still, Chance had been very quick. I wondered at that moment whether he had not known all along who my mother was, whether he had not perhaps expected something of the kind. The thought was driven away by Yarrel’s chilly, hostile voice.

 “Shifter. You’re a Shifter.”

 I slumped down, head on knees. He who had been my friend for so long was now so unfriendly. “I am the son of Mavin Manyshaped,” I confessed. “She is full sister to Mertyn. I was told this by Huld, thalan to Mandor, as Mertyn is to me. He Read it in Mertyn’s mind at Festival time.” There were tears running down my legs, tears from tiredness. “Oh, Yarrel, I would rather have been a pawn in a quiet place, but that isn’t what I am…”

 Chance reached forward to stroke my arm, and I intercepted a stern look he directed at Yarrel. “Well, lad, if there has to be a Talent, why not a biggun, that’s what I say. If you’re going to make a noise, might as well make it with a trumpet as with a pot-lid, right?”

 Yarrel had moved away from us, spoke now from some distance in that same cold voice. “Pot-lid or trumpet, Chance, but a Shifter, still. Shifty in one, shifty in all, or so I have always learned. Not Peter any more, at least. I am certain of that.”

 “That’s not the way it is,” I screamed at him in an agonized whisper. “You don’t understand anything!” I knew this was a mistake as soon as I had said it, for his voice was even more hostile when he answered.

 “Perhaps you will enlighten us. Perhaps you will tell us ‘how it is’, and what you intend to do…”

 “I don’t know,” I hissed. “If I knew what to do, I’d have done it by now. I know I have to get Silkhands and you two out of this place, somehow. Mandor is mad and if he can use her in any way to do evil against those he imagines are his enemies, he will do so. And Dazzle is here to make sure he imagines enemies. He could easily give Silkhands to the Divulgers, as he did me…”

 But it was not Yarrel who calmed me and comforted me and told me all that I have recounted about Himaggery’s Demesne and the surety of a Great Game building around Bannerwell. No, it was Chance, comfortable Chance, dependable Chance. Only when I spoke of Mandor’s wild plan to link some various Talents together to get himself a new body did Yarrel speak, saying roughly, “More minds than one on that idea. Himaggery works along that line as well, to link the Talents of the Bright Demesne. In Himaggery’s hands it might not go ill for my people, but in Mandor’s…”

 “Himaggery marches against Mandor for your sake, Peter,” said Chance. “What will you do?”

 “I hoped you would help me. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t really understand how this Shifting works. I’ve only done it twice. The first time it just happened, not even intended. I thought you and Yarrel…”

 Yarrel interrupted, firmly, coldly. “The Talent is yours. I will not take responsibility for it. It is yours by birth, yours by rearing. We are no longer schoolfellows to plot together. You have gone beyond that…”

 “But, Yarrel…” I stopped. I didn’t know what to say to him. This chance was unexpected, sudden. I remembered his saying to me on the way to the High Demesne that I might gain a Talent which would make us un-friends, but surely he would not pre-judge me in this fashion. Except that…it had been a Shapeshifter who had done great harm to his family. Except that. Oh, Yarrel.

 Chance said, “We’re as good as rat’s meat if Mandor knows who we are, lad. From what you say, Silkhands should be out and away from here as soon as may be. If this Talent of yours can help us, time it did so, I’d say. Great Game is coming. It would be better not to be caught in the middle of it.”

 “A Great Game,” I said miserably. I turned away from them to lie curled on my side, hurt at Yarrel’s coldness. After a time, I slept. I dreamed of a Grand Demesne, a Great Game gathering around Bannerwell. The ovens in the courtyard were red hot, their mouths gaping like monstrous mouths came to eat the people of Bannerwell. Stokers labored beside them, black against the flame. Once more I saw the flicker of Shifters in and out of the press of battle, Elators in and out of the lines of Armigers upon the battlements, saw fire raining from the sky, a sky full of Dragons and Firedrakes and enormous forms I had not seen before. And there, far at the edge of vision, gathered at the forest edges, were the pawns with their hayforks and scythes, stones in their hands. I woke sweating, gasping for air. The dark hours were upon the place. I rose wearily and went from the stables through the garden down to the little orchard which grew behind low walls over the abrupt fall to the River.

 I needed someone with more knowledge than I had. If I found someone, however, what would I do? Kill him for whatever thoughts were on the surface of his brain? Likely they would be only about his dinner or his mistress or his gout, and I’d be no better off. I needed to know what I could do and had no idea how to begin. So, there in the darkness among the trees I tried to use my Talent.

 After a time, it was no longer difficult. I found I could become anything I could invent or visualize, any number of empty-headed creatures like Swallow, male or female, though there were things about the female form which were uncertain at best. I could turn myself back into Grimpt, or into something else which didn’t look or smell like Grimpt but had Grimpt’s small Talents. The kitchen cat meauwed at me from the orchard grass, and I laid my hands on it to try to take that shape, only to burst out of the attempt with heart pounding in a wild panic. The cat’s brain was so small. As soon as I began to be in it, it began to close in from all sides, pressing me smaller and smaller to crush me. Was it only that it was small? Let others find out. I would not try a creature that size again.

 By the time I heard the cock gargling at the false dawn from atop the dung heap, I knew why it was that Shifters were said not to take human form. Had it not been for the panic, Windlow’s herb, and my own inheritance, I would not have been able to do so when I changed to Grimpt. Only ignorance had let me make up the person of Swallow. In the dark hours I had learned that I could change only if the pattern were there, only if I could lay hands upon it and somehow “read” it. So much for easy dreams of shifting into an Elator and flicking outside the walls, or shifting into an Armiger to carry Silkhands to safety through the air from her window. I could not become a Dragon because I had no pattern for it, nor a Prince, nor a Tragamor. Not unless I could lay hands upon a real one. Which it would be death for Peter to do and highly dangerous for Swallow to attempt. Grimpt? I could, perhaps, go back to that. There were undoubtedly other clothes in the filthy hidey-hole the man had lived in.

 But there were other creatures larger than a cat on whom Swallow might lay hands. Horses. The great hunting fustigars from the kennels. There were possibilities there. Well enough. I went back to the loft and spoke to Chance, telling him that I needed to sleep. I said it in a firm voice without begging for help. My pride would not let me do that. If Yarrel would not help me, I would help myself.

 Still, the last thought I had was a memory of Yarrel saying that I might get a Talent which would make him hate me. I knew I had already done so, and there was no comfort from that thought. I let Peter sink away from it into swallowing darkness, let Swallow come up again into the quiet of sleep. A few hours until day. It would come soon enough.



 11
The Caves of Bannerwell

  



 WE AWOKE to the smell of smoke and food, the clamor of guards and grooms, the pawnish people of the fortress about the business of breakfast, the cackle of fowls, the growling of hungry fustigars. When we had received our slabs of bread and mugs of tea, we sat on the sunwarmed stones while I told Chance and Yarrel what I could do. More important, what I could not. I saw Chance’s look of disappointment, but Yarrel’s face was as stony as it had been the night before, almost as though he were forbidding himself to have any part in my difficulties. Well, if he would not, he would not. I did not beg him for pity or assistance. If he would be my friend again, he would when he would. I could only wait upon him, and this I owed him for the many times he had waited upon me. So and so and so. It wasn’t comforting, but it was all I could do.

 “Well then,” said Chance. “We’ll busy ourselves around the stables. Likely no one will bother us if we are seen grooming horses and mucking out. That will give you time to think more…”

 “We haven’t time,” I said. “And I have already thought as much as I can. They gave me to the Divulger because they saw an Elator flick into my dungeon, give me a looking over, then disappear. Would that have been Himaggery’s man?”

 Chance said, “Himaggery knew where you were. He had a Pursuivant close enough to Read you. He wouldn’t have risked your life soľno. It would have to be someone else.”

 “Then who? Mandor knew where I was. It was none of his doing, obviously. Mertyn?”

 “Unlikely,” said Yarrel in a distant voice. “Himaggery had already sent word to Mertyn. He would not have risked your life either, as you well know.”

 “Then again, who?”

 “The High King,” said Chance. I stared at him in astonishment. I had never thought of the High King.

 “But why? What am I to the High King?”

 “You are a person who was with Windlow, that’s who. You are a person who was with Silkhands. The Elator may have been looking for her, for Windlow, not for you at all. But the High King would look, wouldn’t he? He’s a suspecter, that one.”

 “Having found, what would he do?”

 Chance mused. “Get himself into the midst of us one way or. another, I’d say. He was set on keeping old Windlow captive, most set. Like a fustigar pup with his teeth in a lure, not going to let go even though there’s nothing in it but fur. Likely he’s wanting Windlow back again and come here looking for him.”

 “Windlow will be here,” said Yarrel. “When Himaggery comes, Windlow will be with him.”

 I was dizzy with the thought of it. “So, Himaggery comes from the east, with Mertyn, in such might as they can muster. And the High King comes from the south, also in might. Are there no contingents moving upon us from other directions as well…?”

 Yarrel said coldly, “From what direction might Mavin come, knowing her son is held captive by Mandor?”

 I refused to rise to this bait. Being Mavin’s son was no fault of mine. I would not be twitted about it. Remembering the dream of the pawns with hayforks, I tried to sympathize with his feelings.

 “The end of it all will be only blood and fury,” I said, as softly and kindly as I could. “First the Gamesmen will kill one another, and then perhaps the pawns will come to kill those of us who are left, if any are left, and there will be more Mandors and more Dazzles to turn death’s faces upon the world.” I saw their incomprehension. They had not seen Dazzle and Mandor as I had. I tried again. “The Great Game will be a monstrous Death. In which we may all perish. This is not the way to do things. There must be something better.”

 “Justice,” said Yarrel. “Himaggery says we might try that.”

 “I do not know the word.” Indeed, I had never heard it.

 “Few do,” he answered. “It means simply that the rules do not matter, the Game does not matter so much as that thing which stands above both rules and Game.” He went on, becoming passionate as he described what Himaggery had said and what he, himself, had been thinking and dreaming in all his journey from the Bright Demesneľperhaps in his journey since birth. I understood one tenth of it. That tenth, however, was enough to give me an important thought. How important, even I did not know.

 “Yarrel, if you believe in this, then why do we not try to do itľtry to stop the Game.”

 “Surely,” he sneered. “Ask Mandor to let you and Silkhands go. Ask him to let you both go to Himaggery without Mandor’s plotting against Himaggery. Ask the High King to leave Windlow alone. Ask Dazzle to stop building conspiracies against Silkhands. Ask the world to change. Ask that my people be given Justice. All that.” His voice was bitter.

 “There are those who could not need to ask,” I pleaded. “The Immutables, Yarrel. They wouldn’t need to ask. If they came, then there could be no Game.”

 There was a long silence. “Why would they come?” he asked at last.

 “Perhaps because of this ‘Justice’ you speak of. Perhaps because their leader’s daughter was killed by Mandor and Huld and the pawner. The killers are here. Perhaps because we beg it of them. I don’t know why they would come, but I know they will not unless someone asks them, begs them…”

 “And how may we beg them, we who are prisoners here?” ‘

 That piece I had already worked out. “I have an idea,” I said, and told them about it. Chance objected to certain things about it, and Yarrel offered a suggestion or two. By the time we were done with our bread and tea, which we had made last longer than any of those around us, we had a plan and my heart was a little lighter. Yarrel had looked at me once without enmity, almost as he used to do. They went off to the stables and I went to offer myself to my taskmaster, the gardener, who was furious that I had not been with him since before dawn. Swallow gaped a witless grin at him and let the words of fury slide away. Within moments he was at the barrow handles once more, on his way to the dung heap.

 When he went to get the second barrow-load of the day, Chance signaled from the stable door and Peter rose. I let the barrow rest near the privy, as though I might be inside, and slipped away to the kennels. One of the fustigars lay against the fence, drowsing in the sun, and I laid hands upon her body for long moments before she roused to challenge me. It was enough. I skulked away behind the kennels and went over the fence in the shape of a fustigar, opened the kennel gates in that guise (easy enough even with paws, when the mind inside the beast knew how to do it) and then went among the great, drowsy beasts like a hunter among bunwits. I was mad. My mouth frothed, my growls were deafening as I snapped at flanks, howled, bit, drove them into panic and from panic into wild flight out the open gate. From the stables came the high, screaming whinny of horses similarly driven into fear and flight, and I knew that Chance and Yarrel were at their work getting the horses to the same frenzied pitch as the hunting animals. The fustigars burst across the courtyard in a howling mob, me among them still snapping at hind legs; the horses came out of the stables in a maddened herd, both groups headed straight for the bridge. The lounging Tragamors who guarded it dived out of the way as the animals plunged past them pursued by Yarrel and Chance, pitchforks in their hands, shouting, “Get the horses, don’t let the horses get away, grab those horses…”

 By the time some surly guardsmen were sent in pursuit, Chance and Yarrel were hidden within the forest whistling up their own saddled and laden beasts who had gone unnoticed among the stampeding animals. No one had realized that the two pawns pursuing the horses were not grooms from Mandor’s own people. It was true what Yarrel had said. No one paid much attention to pawns.

 One fustigar had not gone out with the others. That one slipped behind the kennels from which Swallow emerged, grinning and scratching, so amused by the spectacle that he stayed overlong in the courtyard and had to be summoned back to the gardener.

 Armigers went aloft to seek the animals. A Tracker strolled out of the barracks to join others on the bridge. By early afternoon the horses and fustigars were back where they belonged except for two. No one missed the two, or the two pawns who had gone after them. During all this, Peter stayed well down just in case anyone should take it into his head to discover the source of the animals’ panic. Distracted as they were by the threat of challenge and Great Game, no one did. There was no hurry, now. The Gathered Waters lay two days’ journey east along a good road from Bannerwell. There were little ships crossing it almost daily. Or, one could travel around it to the place of the Immutables on the far side. It would be days before Chance and Yarrel would get there, days more before they could returnľor not.

  

 That afternoon Swallow stole some clothing from a washline, the clothing of a steward. He tucked it away where it could be found later and promptly forgot about it. That afternoon the fortress gossiped about an Elator who had appeared in the audience hall and after that in the dungeons. There was much talk of this, and a great deal of movement among the Borderers and other guardsmen. Throughout it all, Swallow fetched manure. When he had eaten his evening meal, he slept, much in need of sleep, and then repeated the previous day’s activities. That evening he went to the roof, but saw nothing of importance going on. The third day the same, and on that evening Swallow ceased to be.

 On that evening Swallow heard Mandor say to Silkhands that she would be sent to the Divulgers upon the morrow. “To learn who it is who sends these spies among us.” Dazzle, leaning against a pillar, heard this threat with enormous and obvious satisfaction. Huld attempted to argue, half-heartedly, as though he knew it would do no good. Silkhands was pale and shaking. As a Healer she knew that they need only leave her in a chill room without sufficient food and she would be unable to Heal herself.

 “Why do you do this?” she whispered. “Your thalan knows I make no plot against you! The High King’s Demons knew it as well. Yet there is this idiocy among you! What is this madness?”

 “If it is madness,” Mandor lisped, “then it is what I choose. I choose that you be sent to the Divulgers, Healer.” His voice was full of contempt and anger, and it was then I knew why he hated Silkhands and why he had hated me. He did not believe that she had secrets or conspiracies against him anymore than he had believed it of me. He simply hated her because she was a Healer who could not Heal him, hated me because I had once loved him and could not love him now. The talk of conspiracies was only talk, only surface, only something to say so that Huld would have an excuse to forgive him without despising him utterly.

 The reasons no longer mattered, however. Peter had come up to the surface. Swallow had ceased to be. The half-made plan I had made for the rescue of Silkhands would have to go forward at once, ready or not. I had observed the stewards as they went about the place bearing food or linens or running errands for Gamesmen of rank. Each wore a coat of dull gray piped in violet and black, Mandor’s colors. Swallow had stolen such a coat together with a pair of trousers and soft shoes. I changed into these garments in the orchard as I changed myself to match them, becoming an anonymous steward with an ordinary face. Then I had to watch until the kitchen was almost empty before going into it to pick up a tray with bottle and wine-cup. Only one of the pawnish wenches saw me, and I prayed the face I wore was ordinary enough that one would not notice me particularly. I walked away, staying to the side of the corridors, standing against the wall with my head decently down when Gamesmen went past, bearing the tray as evidence that I belonged where I was, doing what I was doing. When I came to the door of Silkhands’ room, it was barred and guarded by a yawning Halberdier. He looked me over casually, without really seeing me, and turned to unbar the door. He did not get up after I hit him with the bottle. It didn’t even break. I dragged him behind an arras to take his clothes. He would have a vast headache when awoken, but I was as glad not to have killed him as I was not sorry to have killed Grimpt. He was a simple man with a very small Talent for firemaking and a tiny bit of follow-me. This made him popular among his fellows, but was no reason to wish him ill.

 When I went in to Silkhands and told her to come with me, she was hideously frightened. I wanted to tell her not to be afraid, but it was necessary that she feel fear if anyone saw us and felt curious about her. Only if she were truly afraid would the thing work at all, so I put Peter well down into the depths of the Halberdier and let that man escort her into the corridor. We went down a back flight of stairs, along corridors and down yet another flight which brought us into a short hallway off the dining hall. There was still much coining and going though it was very late. Catching Silkhands by the shoulder, I told her roughly to stand quiet. She did so, whimpering. I cursed inside as a group of Gamesmen went past, laughing and quarreling after some late play at cards. Three of them stopped to talk, and I thought they would never go. Then, when they went through the door and away, as I was mentally rehearsing the way to a side door and down through the gardens to the wall, there was an alarm from above. I knew at once they had found the Halberdier.

 There was no time left to attempt the escape through the gardens and orchard to the rope over the wall. They would be guarding the walls at the first sound of the alarm. I pulled Silkhands to me and hissed, “If you wish to live, be silent. If you truly wish to live, think of being grass as once you did upon a canyon side with Chance beside you…”

 She searched my face, then said, “Peter.” I do not know how she could have known so quickly who it was, except that my hands were on her and she could see into the body I wore. Perhaps it had some distinctive feel to it that she recognized. She was quick and compliant, however, for she stopped gaping at once and let her face go blank. I knew she was doing everything she could to be invisible if Huld sought her.

 The surface mind of the Halberdier knew the castle well, but I could find no sure hiding place in those memories. Then I remembered the words of Huld and Mandor when they spoke of Grimpt. The Caves of Bannerwell. Where? The Halberdier did not know, but Grimpt knew. I sought the pattern of that memory once more, pulled it back into being. Oh, yes, Grimpt had known well. There was the way, the rusty door, the key, the cobweb hung tunnels…

 I did not wait to explore the memory or understand it. Instead, I turned back the way we had come and tugged Silkhands into a stumbling run. Here was a panel which opened to a secret pressure. Here was a door hidden behind a tapestry. Here were cobwebby stairs hidden within walls which led downward to that same torture dungeon toward which Grimpt had led Peter those long days before.

 We did not stay to examine the instruments there. The place was empty though a torch burned smokily on the wall. The way in Grimpt’s memory lay through a half-hidden door, its metal surface splotched with corruption, the hinges red with rust, the key in the lock. It opened protestingly, the hinges screaming, and we stepped within to lock the door behind us. I had known the way would be dark so had taken up the torch to light our way down into the belly of the earth. There was no sound. Our footsteps were pillowed in dust and our panting breaths lost themselves in the vaulted height above. Silkhands followed, her face still carefully blank until I shook her and said, “There is stone between us and the world, Silkhands. We cannot be Read here.”

 Then she sighed and almost fainted upon my arm, and I knew it was from holding her breath for endless moments.

 “How did you find this place?” she whispered. “Where does it go?”

 “I don’t know,” I confessed.

 “You’re a Shifter,” she said, almost accusingly. I was reminded of Yarrel’s tone. “You did turn out to be a Shifter, like your mother.”

 “You knew about my mother?”

 “Himaggery found out. Before we came after you. He said it would make no difference if I knew, for Mandor already knew of it. How did you find this place?”

 “I took the shape of one who knew. The memory came with the form.”

 “Ah,” she said. “It’s like Healing, then.”

 “Is it? I suppose it must be. Like Healing. Like Reading. It feels to me as though several of those things are going on, all at once.”

 “Where do we go now?”

 I laughed, then wanted to cry. “Silkhands, I don’t know. I don’t know what this place is, or why Huld thought of it as a hiding place or why Grimpt knew of it. I only knew we needed to get away, and this was available. It seemed better than being given to the Divulgers.”

 “Well,” she offered, “if you don’t know, then we must find out.”

 So we explored. We did not fear losing our way for we could always follow our own footprints in the dust to go back the way we had come. That dust, undisturbed for ages, indicated that we were in no frequently traveled place. It was almost a maze, winding corridors with niches and side aisles and rooms. After a very long time, during which we went down and then up and then down again, we came to an opening into a great open space filled with tombs, a veritable city of tombs. They stretched away from the torchlight in an endless series to a high, far line of lights, dim, fiery, as though of windows into a firelighted place.

 “Could we have come under the walls?” Silkhands asked me. “If this is the place Bannerwell gives its dead, then there must be another entrance, one better suited to processions.”

 She was right. Funeral pomp and display would require a ceremonial entrance of some kind, something with ornamental gates and wide corridors. “If we could find it,” I whispered, “it would probably be well guarded. And I don’t feel that we are outside the walls…”

 “How had you planned to get us out?” She laughed when I told her. “Down a rope? Well, it might have worked. I was fearful enough to risk my life down a rope. Why did you not shift into an Armiger and carry us away?”

 I told her that I did not because I could not, and she became very curious, full of questions, while we both stood in the land of tombs and the torch burned low. I wanted to hug her and slap her at once. There was no time for this, for this chatter, no time and I couldn’t decide what was best to do. As was often the case, while I dithered and Silkhands talked, events moved upon us. There was a booming noise from the far, high firelit spaces, an enormous gonging sound, then a creaking of hinges. One of the firelit spaces began to enlarge, torches starring the space behind it.

 “There is your ceremonial gate,” I said. “They’ve come to search for us.”

 “And we’ve left prints in the dust a blind man could follow!”

 “No,” I said. “We’ll leave nothing behind us. Turn and see.” Grimpt’s small Talent for moving was enough. The dust rose in little fountains and settled once more, even as a carpet. We turned and ran, little dust puffs following us like the footfalls of a ghost. I thought of Ghost Pieces and of the surrounding dead and shuddered, glad I had seen no Necromancer in Bannerwell. “Try to remember which turns we make,” I panted. “When they have gone, if they go, we’ll try to find our way back.” She saved her breath for running, but I knew she heard me. We twisted, backtracked down a parallel way, then down a branching hall, into a small tomb chamber, then into an alcove behind a carved cenotaph. “The torch must go out,” I said. “Else they’ll find us by the light.”

 “Gamelords,” she sighed. “I hate the dark.”

 “It’s all right. I can light it again.” I blessed the Halberdier and was glad once more that I had not killed him. He knew enough to light the torch, thus I could do it when I had to. We crouched in the blanketing dark. They would not be able to Read us through the stone, or track us by eye, but they might use fustigars. Indeed, we heard baying rise and fade, rise and fade again. “They cannot smell our way in this dust,” I said. “Our tracks are gone. They cannot find us ...”

 I had spoken too soon. The sound of the animals grew nearer, and we waited, poised to run. As I rose to my feet, I caught the string of my pouch on a stone and it snapped. Some half-dozen of the tiny Gamesmen fell to the floor. I felt for them with my hands, cursing the darkness, gathering them up one by one. I had heard one of them fall to my left, groped for it, found it at last and gripped it tightly just as a beam of light went by the entrance to the tomb chamber out of which our alcove opened. It grew warm in my grasp, wanner, hot. Almost I dropped it, then opened my hand to find it shining in the dark, the tiny Necromancer glowing like a small star on my palm.

 I closed my hand to hide the light. It spoke to me. It said, “I am Dorn, Raiser of the Dead, Master of all my kind…”A pattern was there, complex as a tapestry, knotted and interwoven, vast and ramified as root and branch of a mighty tree. It did not wait for me to Read it or take it. It flowed into me and would have done even if I had tried to stop it or dam it away. Silkhands gasped, for the Gamespiece shone between my fingers so that the flesh seemed transparent. Far away was the yammer of voices and animals. I only half heard it as I dropped the piece back into the pouch. It was no longer glowing.

 The searchers were returning. They paused at the entrance to the tomb room and began to come inside. I heard Huld calling to them from a distance. “Search every room. Mark every corridor to show you have searched…” They could not fail to see us if they came inside as those obedient forms began to do, long shadows reaching ahead of them in the torchlight. Something within me sighed, deeply.

 Between us and the searchers were seven tombs, cubes of marble set with golden crowns. Here lay some past rulers of Bannerwell, some Princes or Kings of time long gone. I sighed once more, the Dorn pattern within me beginning to Read time, back and back again, taking measure from the stone in which the dead Kings lay, back into their lives, taking up their dust, their bones, the rotted threads in which they were clad, making all whole again as though living, to rise up, up from the sepulchre into the air, a shade, a spirit, a ghastly King peering down upon these intruders out of shadowy eyes, speaking with a voice in which the centuries cried like lost children in a barren place, “Who comes, who comes, who comes…”

 Beside me Silkhands hid her face and screamed silently into her hands. Before me the searchers drew up, eyes wide, each mouth stretched into a rictus of fear. The fustigars cowered, and the spirit confronted them, “Who comes, who comes, who comes,” as yet another rose beside him, and then one more, and yet again and again.

 The searchers fled and the spirit heads began to turn toward the place we hid. Within me came the sigh, and Dorn let them rest once more. Now I knew why Dazzle had so feared the threat of her dead. These had been no dead of mine, and yet I feared, for out of these had come a hungering and a thirst which my life would not have slaked. One who raised these dead raised terror. And yet, even as I knew this, I knew that Dorn could hold them so they did no harm, or loose them, as Dorn would.

 I comforted Silkhands, blindly, babbling. “Himaggery told me to keep the Gamespieces safe. To keep them to myself. Well did he say so. I wish I had buried them back once more in the earth.”

 “We are alive,” she whispered, practical and fearful at once. “I would rather be alive, even sweating like this. Having seen death, I would rather be alive.”

 “I can raise them up again, if we need to…”

 “Not now,” she begged. “I am so tired. I have been afraid for so long. Not now.”

 We lit the torch and followed the footprints of those who had fled, but the hope of escape was vain. The great room of tombs was lit with a thousand torches and there were watchers at every corner of it. I could Read Mandor in the room, glowing with anger. I could read Dazzle there, as well, writhing thoughts, like a nest of serpents twining upon one another in incestuous frenzy. A telltale tickle at the edge of my mind pushed me back behind a towering midfeather which held up the groined ceiling. I hugged Silkhands to me. “We can’t stay here. Huld is searching for us. We need stone between us and him…”

 My words were interrupted by a fury of sound, drums throbbing, a wild clatter of wheels, and a thunder upon the bridge. Trumpets called. Silkhands said, “So, someone has come to give Mandor a Great Game. Those are the last of the wood wagons being driven across the bridge with fuel for the ovens…”

 We heard Mandor scream instructions at the guards. The doors clanged shut and there was a scurry of purposeful movement. We withdrew into the shadows of the corridor.

 “I have not slept in days,” said Silkhands. “If we may not get out, let us hide away and rest. I cannot Heal myself of this weariness much longer, and I am hungry...”

 I was hungry, too, and we had nothing with us to eat or drink. As for sleep, however, that we could do. We went from squared and vaulted rooms into dim bat-hung halls where dawn light filtered down from grilled shafts twenty manheights above us, and from there into darker corridors lined with vaults bearing each the sign and legend of him who slept there. At last we found a high, dry shelf three-quarters hidden behind hanging stone pillars down which water dripped endlessly in a mournful cadence. There we would be hidden by stone in all directions, hidden by shadow, hidden by sleep. We shared the last of Windlow’s herb and fixed our minds upon peace. Lost in the darkness of the place of tombs, we slept.



 12
Mavin

  



 I WOKE TO A CLICKING SOUND, a small, almost intimate sound in the vastness of that stone pillared cave. It reminded me of the death beetle we had often heard in the long nights in School House, busy in the rafters, the click, click, click timing the life of the Tower as might the ticking of a clock. I was still half asleep when I peered over the edge of the ledge we lay upon. The cavern drifted in pale light, mist strewn, and at the center of it a woman was sitting in a tall, wooden chair, knitting. She had not been there before. I had not heard her arrive. For the moment I thought it was a dream and pinched myself hard enough to bring an involuntary exclamation, half throttled. Silkhands heard it, wakened to it, sat up suddenly, saying, “What is it? Oh, what is it?” Then she, too, heard the sound and peered at the distant figure, her expression of blank astonishment mirroring my own.

 Before I could answer her, if I had had any answer to give, the woman looked up toward us and called, “You may as well come down. It will make conversation easier.” Then she returned to her work, the needles in her hands flashing with a hard, metallic light. I stared away in the direction we had entered this vault. Nothing. All was silence, peace, no trumpets, no drums, no torches. Finally, I heaved myself down from the ledge and helped Silkhands as we climbed down to the uneven floor of the cave. The clicking was now interspersed with a creaking sound, the sound of the chair in which the woman sat, rocking to and fro. Once, long, long ago I had seen some such chair. I could not remember when. The yarn she used frothed between her hands as though alive, pouring from the needles in a flood which spread its loose loops over her knees and cascaded to the stone. The speed of her knitting increased to a whirling rattle, the creaking of the chair faster and faster, like a bellows breathing, until she was finished all at once. She flung the completed work onto the stone before her where it lay like a pile of woolen snow.

 “What have you made?” asked Silkhands, doubtfully. I knew she was unable to think of anything else to say. I could think of nothing at all. The woman fixed us with great, inhuman eyes, yellow and bright as those of a bird.

 “I have knitted a Morfus,” she said in a deep voice. “Soon it will get up and go about its work, but just now it is resting from the pain of being created.” The piled fabric before her shivered as she spoke, and I thought it moaned. “Would you care for some cabbage?” the woman asked.

 Silkhands said, “I would be very grateful for anything to eat, madam. I am very hungry.” When she spoke, my mouth filled with saliva, even though I hated cabbage raw or cooked and always had. The woman found a cabbage somewhere beside herself in the chair and offered it. Silkhands tore off a handful of leaves.

 The woman said, “It is better than nothing. Although I do not like it as it is.” She stared intently at the vegetable in her hand, turning it this way and that. It fuzzed before my eyes, fuzzed, misted, became a roasted fowl. The pile of fabric moaned once more, sat up, extended long, knitted tentacles and pushed itself erect. Vaguely manshaped, it swayed where it stood, featureless and without much substance. I could see through it in spots. An impatient snort from the woman brought my attention back to her. She had given the fowl to Silkhands.

 “Try this instead. Tell me if it tastes right.”

 Silkhands tore a leg from the fowl and took a bit of it, wiping her face on her arm, nodding. “It tastes…only a little like cabbage.”

 “Ah. Well, then, it’s an improvement. Still, you could do much better, being a Healer, if that lazy youth would help you.”

 “I don’t understand,” said Silkhands, remembering at last to offer me some of the fowl. “What do you mean, I could do better?”

 “Have you ever Healed a chicken?” the woman asked.

 “Never.”

 “Ah. Well then, perhaps you could not do as well as I have done. If you had ever Healed a chicken, you would know how the flesh is made. And if that boy were to Read you as you thought about that, then he could change the cabbage far better than I have done.”

 “Pardon, madam,” I said. “But I have not that Talent.”

 “Nonsense. You have all the Talents there are, from Dorn to Didir, or from Didir to Dorn, as the case may be. You have the Gamesmen of Barish, I know it. Even if I had not felt the spirit of Dorn moving in the corridors of the earth like a waking thunder I would still have known. Was it not Seen? Was it not foretold? Why else am I here and are you where you are?”

 “The Garnesmen of Barish?” By this time I was certain that I still slept, dreaming in the high stone wall on the little ledge. “I don’t know what you…”

 “These,” she flicked a knitting needle at me, catching the loop of my pouch and rattling the Gamesmen within it. “These. You have already taken Dorn into being. Soon you must take others, or if not soon then late. By the seven hells, you’re not afraid of them are you, boy?”

 “Afraid? Of them? Them…who?”

 “Witless,” she commented acidly, looking me over from head to foot as though she could not believe what she saw. “Witless and spitless, no more juice than a parsnip. By the seven hells, boy, you raised up the ancient Kings of Bannerwell. How did you think you did that? Did you perhaps whittle them up out of a bit of wood and your little knife? Or whistle them up like a wind? Or brew them, perhaps, like tea? How did you do it, gormless son of an unnamed creation? Hmmm? Answer me!”

 I was beginning to be very angry. As I grew wider awake and even slightly less hungry (the fowl was filling, though it did taste like cabbage), I became angrier by the moment. I was distracted, however, for at that moment the Morfus decided to do whatever it was a Morfus did. Moaning shrilly, it staggered off toward one side of the great cavern and began to climb the stone. It lurched and flapped like laundry upon a slack line, wavering and lashing itself upward.

 “At this rate, it’ll never get there,” she commented as she took up the needles and the wool once more to pour out another long confusion of knitting upon her lap.

 “You haven’t answered me,” she said. ‘How did you think you raised them up, boy? By what means?”

 “I raised them up by using the pattern I found in one of the Gamespieces,” I said, stiffly. “By accident.”

 “No more by accident than trees grow by accident. Trees grow because it is their nature to do so. The Gamespieces of Barish were designed to have a nature of their ownľto lie long hidden until a time when they would fall into the hands of one who could use them.”

 There was a long pause and then she said in a slightly altered tone, “No. That is not quite correct. They would fall into the hands of one who would use them well. That is tricky. Perhaps a bit of fear and confusion would not be amiss under those circumstances.” The knitting poured from her lap onto the floor and lay there, quivering. Then the knitted creature heaved itself upward to stagger toward its companion which still struggled upward against the far rock wall.

 Silkhands had been observing the woman narrowly, and now she seated herself at the knitter’s feet and laid hand upon her knee. The woman started, then composed herself and smiled. “Ah, so you’d find out what goes on, would you, Healer? Well, stay out of my head and the rest of me be thy play-pen. There’s probably some work or other needs doing in there.”

 “What are the Gamesmen of Barish?” I asked. “Please stop confusing me. I think you’re doing it purposely, and it doesn’t help me. Just tell me. What are the Gamesmen of Barish?”

 She rose, incredibly tall and thin, like a lath, I thought, then changed that thought. Like a sword, lean and keen-edged and pointed. She laughed as though she Read that thought; “Long ago,” she chanted, “in a time forgotten by all save those who read books, were two Wizards named Barish and Vulpas. You’ve heard of them? Ah, of course. You’ve heard of them from the self-styled Historian.” She laughed, almost kindly.

 “These two had a Talent which was rare. They called it Wisdom. Or, so it is said by some. They caused the Immutables, you know. They learned the true nature of the Talents. They codified many things which had been governed until then, in approximately equal parts, by convention and superstition. Those who lived by convention and superstition could not bear that matters of this kind be brought into the light, and so they sought out Barish and Vulpas with every intention of killing them.

 “Later the Guardians announced that Barish and Vulpas were dead. There was much quiet rejoicing. However, there are books which one may read today (if one knows where to find them) which were written by Barish and Vulpas many years after the Guardians announced their deaths. Could it be the Guardians lied? Who is to say. It was long ago, after all…”

 “The Gamesmen,” I said firmly.

 “Barish claimed,” she went on, “that the pattern of a Talentľnay, of a whole personalityľcould be encoded into a physical object and then Read from that object as it could be Read in a man, by one with the ability to do so.”

 “That would be utter magic,” said Silkhands.

 “Some may say so,” the knitter said. “While others would say otherwise. Nonetheless, the books say that Barish made his claim manifest in the creation of a set of Gamesmen. There are eleven different pieces in the set, embodying, so it is written, the Talents of the forebears.”

 “Why?” I breathed, ideas surging into my head all at once. “Why would he have done this thing? It’s true, Silkhands. I know it’s true. It was exactly like Reading a person. I felt Dorn, felt him sigh. It was he who raised the spectres up, not me. How terrible and wonderful. But why would he do it?” I babbled this nonsense while the knitter fixed me with her yellow eyes and the Morfuses clambered ever higher against the stones.

 “If Barish was able to code the Talents in this way, then he must also have been able to perceive them for himself. In which case, he would have perceived the Talent of Sorah, Seer. Perhaps through Sorah he saw something in the future. Who can say? It was very long ago.”

 “You are saying that the Wizard did this thing long ago so that someoneľPeterľcould use these Talents now?” Silkhands seemed to be asking a question, but it was directed more at me than at the knitter, sounded more like a demand than a query. “So that Peter can use them,” she repeated. What did she want me to do? Gamelords! She seemed to want something, Yarrel wanted something else, Mertyn another thing, Mandor something else again. While I…what in the name of the seven devils did I want? Nothing. I wanted to do nothing. Nothing at all. Doing things was frightening. Every time I had done anything at all decisive, I had been terrified,

 I said it to Silkhands, praying she would understand. “When I heard Dorn sigh within me, I was afraid…”

 The knitter interrupted. “But you knew Dorn could control the Ghosts. You knew you could do it.”

 “I knew someone could. Someone. But it didn’t feel like me.”

 “Aha,” she chortled, rocking so hard that the wood of the chair began to creak in ominous protest. “You felt you were someone else, did you? And when Grimpt cracked Grimpt’s skull and put him down the oubliette? Hmmm? Who did that?”

 “No one knows about that,” I said, horrified. “No one at all.”

 “No one except those who do know about it. Watchers. Morfuses. Seers. Bitty things with eyes that peer from crannies and cracks.”

 Silkhands said, “Who is Grimpt?”

 “Ann, shh, shh, we’ve upset him enough. Poor boy. All this Talent throbbing away at his fingertips and he doesn’t know where to put his hands.”

 What was I to say? She was right. I had the Talent in my mind or in the pouch at my belt to fling Mandor and all his house into the nethermost north, into the deepest gorge of the Hidamans. All I needed was a source of power great enough ... and even with ordinary power, the heat in the stone beneath me, I could summon up legions of the dead and was afraid to do so. “You’ve a poor tool in me,” I said. “A poor tool indeed. Dorn terrified me. Sorah would probably petrify me. Why couldn’t I have been a pawn, like Yarrel. I’d have been a good pawn, moved about by others…”

 “Better a poor tool than an evil one,” she said. Then she reached out to touch me for the first time, and it was as though I had been lightning struck. “You’ve been too long in the nursery, boy. Too long with lads and dreamers and cooks. Come out, come out wherever you are! The cock crows morning, and the Great Game is toward! Play it or be swept from the board.”

 From high above came a keening howl, a ghost noise, like wind down a chimney. We looked up to see the Morfuses’ black shapes against a glow of sky. They had found a way out and called to us of their discovery.

 “There it is,” said the knitter. “The way out. You can go that way if you like. Sit on a pile of stone up there on Malplace Mountain and watch the Game. Or, you can go out through the funeral doors to the tombs, out with a host behind you.” She was across the floor and up the wall like a spider, arms, legs, head all a blur as she moved toward those two figures high on the wall. “It’s your choice, boy. Mothers should not force their young. It’s bad for personal development ...”

 “Who,” I rasped, choking. “Who…who are you…”

 “Mavin Manyshaped, boy. Here to cheer you with two of your cousins.”

 The Morfus shapes before the light flickered and changed before us. Now there were only two slim youths grinning down at us out of glittering eyes, flame-red hair, falling across their faces. Then they were out of the hole and gone, her behind them, so quickly gone there was no time to say anything. Mavin-Mother. And two Shapeshifter cousins, children, that meant, of Mavin’s sister or sisters. And a way out. High and pure through that sunny hole came the sound of a trumpet calling “To Air, To Air” for the Armigers. A drum answered from a hillside, “Thawum, Thawum,” signal to the Tragamors, “move, move.”

 “Oh, hells,” I giggled hysterically. “Who is doing battle with whom? Is it Himaggery? Or the High King? Or merely some trickery of a Shapechanger who says she bore me…”

 Silkhands cried, “Oh, Peter, if you’re going to go all sensitive and nervous, this isn’t a good time for it at all.”

 I screamed at her, screamed at her like a market stall woman or a mule driver, thrust her before me up the rocky slope until she was pushed half out of the opening, half laughing, half crying at me. “Be damned, Healer,” I shouted at her. “It isn’t you has to do the things you expect me to do. Go out there and watch the Game, you silly thing, you chatter-bird. Go, go out; out of here and leave me alone…”

 Then I tumbled back down the rock wall into the bottom of the cavern to lie face down on the stones, weeping miserably and feeling that never, never in my fifteen years of life had I been understood by anyone at all. After which I went and raised up the dead.



 13
The Great Game

  



 I MUST LEAVE MYSELF AGAIN to tell you what I later learned had happened to others. I must go back to Himaggery’s realm, back to the fourteenth day of my captivity. An Elator arrived from Schooltown to tell of Mertyn’s arrival only hours before he himself arrived. I have visualized that arrival many times. King Mertyn, in a dusty cloak, his travel hat stained with rain, beard floured with the dirt of the road, riding into the courtyard of the High Demesne among the mists and the blossoms. They offered him time to bathe before he came to Himaggery, and he refused it. He came into the audience hall to find Himaggery awaiting him, not seated upon his chair, elevated, but standing alone without servitors by the door. The two had not met before. And the King used his Talent. He used Beguilement upon Himaggery, a fatal charm, a deadly charisma. Standing in that room of power, where no chill might rob him of the full use of that Talent which was his, he used it as he had not used it in his life theretofore. So he has told me, his thalan, since that time. He wagered his life upon being able to charm Himaggery into doing what the King wished.

 And Himaggery laughed. He laughed, clasped Mertyn by the hand, and led him to a table where he offered him a wash basin full of hot water, a towel, and foods steaming from the kitchens.

 “You need not beguile me, King. I will help you without all that charm. I will help you because I believe it is right to do so, though I am less sure of that than of some few other things. Our cause, however, seems to be the cause of Justice.”

 Mertyn was better educated than many of his fellows. He had, after all, been a student of Windlow, as had Himaggery. Unlike Prionde, the High King, he had listened to Windlow, had even understood some of what he was taught. Thus, when he heard Himaggery use the word “justice” he recognized the word, and with that recognition came a sense of peace.

 “My friend,” he said solemnly, “forgive me. I thought to protect my thalan, Peter, through his early years. Who knows? Perhaps I hoped to protect him throughout his life, though we know that in the Game such things are impossible. I have broken many rules. I am paying for that now, perhaps, in being consumed with fear for the boy. I never called him by any name of kinship. I tried to warn him away from that kindermar, Mandor. At the end, I only tried to save him, and I might as well have thrust him into Mandor’s hands. Have you any news of him?” Despite all dignity, I am told, his eyes were wet.

 “Shh, shh, I understand,” said Himaggery. “I had no sisters, thus have had no thalan, but there are young ones I have loved and cared for and fretted over in the dark hours. Yes. I have word brought by an Elator from Bannerwell who has it from a Pursuivant I have stationed there. The boy is imprisoned. He has been harshly treated, but he is not seriously hurt. Which is not to say he may not be hurt at some future time, though the Seers of this Demesne think not. Windlow thinks not, Mertyn.”

 “Windlow? Here? Oh, how did he come here? How did he manage to escape from Prionde? How wonderful. I wish to see him, Wizard, soon. What a wonderful thing…”

 And see him he did. Do not think that they were all careless of me, but they were not willing to take impetuous action which might endanger me further. They knew where I was, that I was watched hour on hour, and that I was in great despair, but they knew I wouldn’t die of it. Each of them had been equally despairing at one time or another, and each of them had survived it. So, while they plotted and planned to come to Bannerwell for my sake, they plotted and planned for other reasons as well.

 “Whether Peter were held by Mandor or not, it would still be necessary to wage Great Game against him, Mertyn.” So said Windlow. “We have learned from his mind and from Peter’s that the Prince is thinking of linkages…”

 Mertyn looked thoughtful and curious at once, nodding for the Wizard to say on.

 “Mandor believes he can get himself a new body through some use of linkages. So my spies Read. He has in mind a linkage of Demon and Shapechanger. He has not thought it through. He has not studied or read, for which we may be grateful. Instinct guides him, and it guides him too far. If he had thought more, he would have included a Healer in the group as the Talent most likely to manipulate the tissues of a brain to accommodate him. We are grateful that he has not thought, King. He has as yet had no success. Even a small success may show him how limited his imagination has been.”

 “I seem to remember that you mentioned linkages to me long and long ago,” Mertyn said to Windlow. “It was something you believed was possible…”

 “It is something I know is possible,” the old man replied. “Himaggery has done it. You should have seen it, Mertyn. It was quite wonderful. Demon linked to Pursuivant linked to Elatorľwith a few Rancelmen mixed in for flavor. They found Peter in Bannerwell in two days. If we had not allowed ourselves to be misled by a few false landmarks, we would have found him in one day. Truly remarkable. And it is only one of an infinite number of things we can do…”

 “Only one of many things which are possible,” corrected Himaggery. “We have done only a few. The possibilities are wide, as Windlow says, and terrifying. Half the things I dream up frighten me out of my wits. But I trust me more than I trust this Mandor, though that, too, is terrifying.”

 “Believe me,” said Mertyn, “you are wise to do so. I have known of Prince Mandor since he was a child. If there was a simple way to do a thing which would not hurt or kill, he would eschew it in favor of some complex scheme which would maim and mutilate. If there was an honorable thing to do, he would do the opposite. He so conducted himself in the Games of his youth that he had a dozen sworn enemies of great power by the time he was twenty-seven. They were ready to descend upon Bannerwell, to obliterate it forever, with all its long history and the tombs of its lineage. Then Mandor’s thalan, Huld, a Demon of good reputation, a Gamesman of honor, prevailed upon the young Prince to go into the Schooltown as a Gamesmaster for a time. It was thought that this sequestering of the young man in a place where he was honor bound not to use his Talent would allow matters time to cool, insults to be forgotten, enemies to become merely un-friends rather than rabid warriors. So it might have done.

 “But Mandor could not occupy the post of Gamesmaster with honor, or even patience, though it was needful to save his life. He behaved toward Peter as he had always behaved, as he will always behave. There is something warped in him…” Mertyn sighed.

 “There is nothing more warped in him than in many,” said Himaggery heatedly. “Any Gamesman who eats up a dozen pawns during an evening’s Game has no more honor than Mandor…”

 Mertyn nodded. “You say it. I might say it. Windlow, you, I know, would say it. Does the world say it? No. Pawns are pawns for the eating. That is what the world says.”

 “I am in my own world,” said Himaggery. “You, Mertyn, may follow the outer world, but I will make my own. And the knowledge of what can be done with linkages must not come into Mandor’s hands. So. It is necessary that Great Game be called. He must be distracted from this obsession. If necessary, he must be destroyed.”

 “And how will you mount Game against him? He is in his home place. Undoubtedly his battle ovens are erected, his fuel wagons running to and fro from dawn to dawn. You will be far from your home, far from this source of power. He will have an advantage.”

 “I will have the advantage,” whispered Himaggery. “And I will use only a hundredth of it. If I were to use it all, the world could not stand against me.”

 “ ‘Ware, Himaggery,” said Windlow, sternly. “‘Ware the demands of pride.”

 “Oh, I am safe enough, old one. For now, at least.” He laughed, a little bitterly. “Though you may need to watch me in the future.”

 Then it was that Himaggery, Windlow, and the King began their work. From all the surrounding area Gamesmen were summoned by Elators to attend upon the Bright Demesne. The Tragamors and Sorcerers who came were many, more than King Mertyn had ever seen in one place.

 “Why Tragamors?” he asked. “I can understand Sorcerers, but most Games of this kind depend more heavily upon Armigers than upon Tragamors…”

 “We will save Armigers when we need them,”

 Himaggery replied in a grim voice. “But we do not need them here. They go toward Bannerwell even now, in small groups, within the forest. As do other Tragamors than those you see here and other Sorcerers, as well. Every one I have been able to recruit during the last decade.”

 “I did not know your Demesne counted so many Gamesmen among its followers.”

 “It were better that none knew, and well that as few were aware as possible. For that reason, we have had no panoply, no Gamely exercises. What we have learned to do, we have learned in private, and only those safe from the needs of pride have learned with us. It would take only one braggart in a Festival town to have given our secret to the world.”

 “What is it you have learned?”

 “You will see soon enough. It is easier to see than to explain. We have not yet had enough practice at any part of it. I have been at some pains to keep triflers and troublemakers far from this Demesne. Some, like Dazzle and Borold, two I tolerated out of affection for Silkhands, were sent away on errands of one kind or another if they insisted upon attaching themselves to me. Others I have sent on long journeys. Still, I have always had the fear we would be betrayed.”

 “And where is Dazzle now?” asked Windlow.

 “Gone; Gone after Silkhands, still seeking to do harm to her who would only have wished her well. I should have stopped her, should have…well. I was thinking of other things.”

 And he went on thinking of other things, though not for long, for on that afternoon, the eighteenth of my captivity, an Elator arrived from Bannerwell to tell them that Silkhands had been taken prisoner after being denounced by Dazzle and Borold. And on the day after that, still another messenger arrived to say that Chance and Yarrel had fled from Bannerwell, but that Silkhands was still held there.

 It was on that day that Himaggery’s legions began the march to Bannerwell, though it was like no march Mertyn had seen before. There was a monstrous wagon piled with many huge, curved shields of metal, polished to a mirror gleam. And there were all those Tragamors in the train. And the way was always starting and stopping, with a curved shield taken off the wagon each place the march stopped, each with a Sorcerer to attend it and at least two Tragamors, though in places there were three or even four. In each spot was a wait while the shield was “tested” while Mertyn fretted and old Windlow lay in his wagon, soft pillowed in quilts, watching the sky. This testing seemed to take eternities, and Mertyn grumbled and sweated, furious that Himaggery would not tell him what was being done.

 “I cannot,” said Himaggery. “You might well think about it if I told you, and Mandor may have Demons Reading the road.”

 “Aren’t you thinking about it?”

 Himaggery laughed. “Does the stonemason think of cutting stone as he does so? His hands know what to do. He thinks of his dinner or of going fishing. That’s what I think of. Going fishing.”

 It was true that all those in the train seemed well practiced at what they did. Their road lay straight across the Middle River, with the first stop made across the lake from the Bright Demesne. Then, each successive stop was in a straight line from the previous one. Where there were hills, a mirror was placed atop each. The nineteenth day of my captivity passed (for I still counted the captivity as I later numbered it for all the time I was in Bannerwell), and the twentieth, and the twenty-first.

 During all this time the legions of Himaggery drew closer to Bannerwell, but slowly, a crawling pace which wearied and fretted all within the train. On each morning and evening came a messenger from Bannerwell to say that the ovens were built, that the wood wagons thundered in across the bridge, that the fortress was furnished against siege, that Armigers, Sorcerers, Elators, and Tragamors were assembled with more still coming in. And still Himaggery did not hurry, did not increase his pace. They went on, the shield wagon growing less and less heavily laden, the vast number of Sorcerers and Tragamors dwindling day by day.

 And on the evening of the twenty-second day of my captivity, word arrived at Himaggery’s tent that Silkhands was to be given to the Divulgers but that she had thwarted Mandor by disappearing.

 “I should think,” Windlow told them thoughtfully, “that Peter is involved in this. Though my Talent grows dim with age and faulty with time, I seem to See something of that boy in this whole affair. He is all mixed up somehow with Divulgers and manure piles, but the feel of him is still unmistakably Peter, moving about in Bannerwell or beneath it. I am sure of it.”

 Himaggery laughed silently until tears came to his eyes. “You would advise us not to worry?”

 “Oh, worry by all means,” said Windlow. “By all means. Yes. It sharpens the wits. A good worry does wonders for the defensive capabilities of the brain. However, I should not advise you to do without sleep.”

 Mertyn said, “Somehow, that doesn’t help, old teacher. I think it will affect my ability to sleep…”

 To which Windlow replied, “I think I have an herb here somewhere which will…” And so they slept that night, not overlong, but well.

 On the morning came yet another messenger to tell them the most astonishing news. The trumpets and drums of Bannerwell beat summons to air, to move, because upon the surrounding hills had come a mighty host to call Great Game upon Bannerwell, no other than the followers of the High Demesne and the High King himself. It was those same drums and trumpets which I heard as I drove Silkhands out of the caves in a fury. The High King had come to Bannerwell. And why? Why, he had come to take Windlow back with him, for he believed the old man was held captive in the Bannerwell dungeons.

 What followed was something Silkhands saw from her place on Malplace Mountain, watching the Game as Mavin had suggested, crying to herself, and talking, as she watched.

 You must see Bannerwell as she saw it. Below Malplace Mountain the river curves down from the north, swoops into a graceful loop before swinging north once more, then turning eastward through Havajor Dike and across the fertile plains to the Gathered Waters. In that loop of river stands a low, curved cliff upon which the walls of the fortress are built to follow the same line, so that cliff and wall are one. On the west the Tower rises from the wall in one unbroken height, on the south the green of the orchard close feathers the walltop with the roofs and spires behind it. From her place on Malplace Mountain, Silkhands could look down into the courtyard to see it packed full of Gamesmen with more upon the walls and the roofs. On the north, hidden by the bulk of the castle, was the shield wall and bridge, and outside that the moat which extended from the Banner on one side to the Banner on the other side, across the whole neck of the looped river. The bridge was up, the gate was down. Any further messages would be carried by Heralds; there was no further need for a bridge.

 Then, see upon the hills to the north of Bannerwell a great host of Gamesmen and horses and machines centered upon a cluster of tents with a high, red tent in the midst of them. Here was the High King among his people. Between the moat and the hills was another host under the banner of some tributary Prince to the High King, and still more allies were assembled between these multitudes and the stony dike. This great host had come upon Bannerwell from the north, an unexpected direction, and waited now as Game was called upon Prince Mandor. The trumpets were still shivering when Silkhands came onto the ledge.

 It is part of the Talent of a Herald to Move the air about him in such a way that all within the Demesne may hear each word which is spoken. So Silkhands, even at that distance, could hear plainly when the Herald of the High King rode to the edge of the moat and cried:

 “All within reach of my voice pay heed, all within reach of my voice give ear, for I speak for the High King, he of the High Demesne, most puissant, most terrible, who comes now in might to call Great Game against Mandor, styled Prince of Bannerwell, who has in most unprincely fashion given sanctuary to traitorous and miscreant pawns, abductors of the old, holders for base ransom the valued friend of Prionde, High King.

 “I speak of Windlow the Seer, formerly of Windlow’s House, Schoolhouse to the High Demesne.

 “So says the High King: That Windlow shall be sent forth with honor and in good array, that those who abducted him shall be put forth, dishonored and bound, and that Mandor, styled Prince, shall pay the cost of all the array here massed against him and his Demesne, else shall Great Game proceed…”

 “Gamelords,” whispered Silkhands. “It’s Borold with Mandor.” She could see Mandor on the battlement, three figures beside him. Huld, Borold, and Dazzle. Now the trumpets of Mandor sounded and Borold rose higher than the tower to look down upon the High King’s host as he cried the response of Bannerwell.

 “All within sound of my voice pay heed, all within reach of my voice give ear, for I speak for Prince Mandor of Bannerwell. My Prince is not unwilling to meet Great Game with those who have challenged him or those whom he has taken pains to offend. But he begs of the High King an indulgence, that they may speak together with their attendant Demons in order that the High King be sure of the grounds of his offense e’er Game is called…”

 Then was a long silence during which the Herald of the High Demesne spoke with the High King, as did others of his train, until at last the drums on the hills beat thrice, “thawum, thawum, thawum,” and were answered from the castle, “bom, bom, bom.” The bridge rattled down, raising a cloud of dust as it struck the far edge of the moat. The gates went up with a creaking clatter of chains, and Mandor rode forth, Huld at his side, Dazzle just behind them. Before them floating in air, went Borold, stately, just at the level of the heads of the horses.

 “Oh, Borold,” lamented Silkhands. “How silly. How silly you are.”

 From her place Silkhands could hear nothing of what went on between Mandor and the High King. She saw it all. She saw Huld salute the Demon of the High King, saw Dazzle summoned forward to bow and pose and talk and gesture. Even from that great distance the whole was unmistakable. She could even have put the words into their mouths, the suspicious whine of the High King, the assertion by Mandor that Windlow was not in Bannerwell, the testimony of Dazzle that the old man was in the Bright Demesne, that some of the culprits who had taken him were possibly even now on their way to challenge Bannerwell while another of them was probably hiding in the caves beneath the fortress. Smile, smile, pose, pose. The Demons frowned, spoke, spoke again.

 At last the High King nodded his head, snarled something from one side of his mouth, and rode forward, some of his company behind him, though the greater part still covered the hills to the north. Silkhands saw Signalers flicking from place to place, saw the host to the east begin to scurry and shift to meet a new threat from that direction, finally saw the High King and his close attendants ride within Bannerwell’s walls, and the great gate close behind him.

 “Allies,” Silkhands whispered to herself. “From challengers to allies, within the hour. Oh, Himaggery, I hope you know what it is you are doing.”

 Had she looked upward at that moment she would have seen an Elator poised above her on a stony prominence, watching the scene as she herself had done and with no less understanding. This was Himaggery’s spy, gone to him in that instant to warn him of the unexpected alliance. But Silkhands fretted upon the mountain, thinking perhaps to come warn me, or trudge off through the forest looking for someone else to tell, or hope to intercept Himaggery, or perhaps just curl up in a ball where she was and pray that the world would not notice her until it had stopped its foolishness. As it was, she did none of these things. She simply sat where she was and waited to see what would happen…

 I, of course, knew none of this. I had gone from fury to martyred sulkiness, from rage to wounded sensitivity in the space of an hour or so. I had decided that Mavin was my mother and that I hated her, and then that she could not be my mother to have spoken to me as she had, and then that it didn’t matter. I had cursed Mertyn, briefly; before remembering it was Mandor who had injured me, after which I cursed him. The echoing caverns accepted all this without making any response. Rage or sobs were all one to the cave. It amplified each equally and sent it back to me from a dozen directions in solemn mockery until I was tired of the whole thing. Even while all this emotion was going on, some cold part of my brain began to plan what I would do next and why and whether this or that option might be a good thing to consider. So, when I was done making insufferable noises for my own benefit, what needed to be done next was already there in my brain, ready to be accomplished.

 Windlow had spoken of Ghost Pieces and Ghost Talents. It was apparent that the caves contained ghosts enough to make a great host, among them most of the Talents which would have been available in a sizeable Demesne. If Dorn could command such Talents, then I could do it as well. However, Ghosts alone might not be enough. The other Talents were there in the pouch at my belt, waiting to be taken. I could have taken Sorcerer, but did not. The mere holding of power would not suit my need. Seer? For what? What would happen would happen within hours, perhaps moments. There would be no need to See more than I might see with my eyes. Demon? Grimpt’s small Talent in that direction seemed enough for the present circumstances. I had no useful thoughts about an Armiger’s flight or a Sentinel’s fire. No. Moved by some adolescent sense of the fitness of things, some desire to win at least some Game of my own, I chose to meet Mandor upon his own ground. I took into my left hand and clutched fast the tiny carved figure of Trandilar, First of the line of Queens and Kings and all lesser nobility.

 It came upon me like the warmth of the sun, like the wooing of the wind, gentle, insistent, inexorable. She spoke to me in a voice of rolling stars, heavenly, a huge beneficence to hold smaller souls in thrall. She took me as a lover, as a child, as a beloved spouse, exhalted me. Adoration swept over me, then was incorporated within me so that it was I who was loved, the world one which loved me, followed me, adored me. All, all would follow me if I but used this beguilement upon them. Within was the sound of a chuckle, a satisfied breath, not the weary sigh of Dorn but a total satiety of love, love, love.

 “Trandilar,” I said, speaking her name in homage and obeisance.

 “Peter…” came the spirit voice in reply. Oh, surely Barish had done more than merely force a pattern onto some inanimate matter when he had made these Gamesmen. For the moment I could not move or think as myself. For that moment I was some halfway being, not myself, not Trandilar. And then it passed, as Dorn had passed, leaving behind all the knowledge and Talent of that so ancient being. I had no fear, now, of Mandor’s minions. Compared to this…this, his was a puny Talent, fit only for Fluglemen and Pigherders.

 From that moment I was no longer a boy. Why should one raise up the dead and remain innocent, but raise up love and fear death? I leave that to you to figure out. I only learned in that moment that it was true. So, I went back down the dusty corridors, following the prints which Silkhands and I had left toward the end of our journey, then relying upon memory and some instinct to guide me to that same cavern in which the dead kings had so recently been raised. Once there I did that thing which Dorn had taught me how to do, heard that spectral voice once more call into time,

 “Who comes, who comes, who comes…”

 And answered it. “One who calls you forth, oh King, you and your forebears and your kin and your children, your followers and your minions, your Armigers, Sorcerers, Demons and Tragamors, your Sentinels and Elators, come forth, come forth at my command; rise up and do my will.”

 The King spoke to me, like a little chill wind in my ear, softly crying, “Call thy Game, oh spirit. Call thy Game and we will follow thee…”



 14
Challenge and Game

  



 THE OUTFLUNG RAMPARTS OF MALPLACE MOUNTAIN STRETCH far from the summit to east and north, opening in one place to permit the River Banner to loop around Bannerwell, thrusting out both east and west of that fortress to push the river north and, on the east, making a long ridge of stone through which the river washed its way in time long past. It cuts now through that ridge like a silver knife, and the place is named the Cutting of Havajor Dike, or often just “The Cut.” From the eastern side of this dike one may see the bannerets on the spires of Bannerwell, but the whole of it and its surroundings cannot be seen until the dike itself is mounted. So it was that Himaggery saw it first from the top of the dike, saw the assembled hosts inside and out of it, the moat and river around it. What he saw was not unexpected. His Elators had kept him advised of all, of the High King’s arrival, of the Game Call, the negotiations, the unexpected alliance. Thus when he had ridden to the top of the dike and dismounted, he did not waste a moment in open-mouthed staring. He knew well enough what it would look like.

 Some of those with him were not so sanguine. Indeed, the host before them was mightier than any could recall in memory. The tents of the High King’s array spread north and west like a, mushroom plot fruiting after rain. Between the dike and the Banner the level plain was filled with smaller contingents grouped around their ovens, and the sound of axes still rang from the forested slopes of Malplace Mountain above the ferry barges moored upon the river. Mertyn stared. Even Windlow sat up in his wagon and looked at the horde, bemused.

 “If I had not Seen it already,” he is reported to have said, “I would have been amazed.”

 Himaggery was busy with the last of the huge curved mirrors, setting it in place upon the dike, bracing it well with strong metal stanchions and setting men ready to hold it or prop it up if it were overthrown. “It must withstand Tragamor push,” he told them. “Brace yourselves and be ready…”

 “ ‘Ware, Himaggery,” said a Demon, close at hand. “Herald comes…”

 And it was Borold once again, Borold showing off for Dazzle who stood resplendent upon the tower top of Bannerwell, Borold in his pride, glowing with it. He cast a look over his shoulder as he floated up the dike toward Himaggery, one long look to see her standing there. Windlow thought that in that look was such love and uncritical adoration as a god might instill into a new creation. “Except, how boring at last,” he thought. “To have one always, always adoring one. But, perhaps gods do not get bored…” (You may wonder how I knew what he thought, what he said, what happened. Never mind. Eventually, I knew everything that had happened to everyone. Eventually I knew too much.)

 It was Borold who trumpeted the Challenge to Game, Borold who spoke not only for Mandor but for Prionde, as well. Turning his head slightly so that his words could be heard behind him on the fortress walls, he cried, “All within sound of my voice pay heed: I speak for Mandor of Bannerwell, most adored, most jealously guarded, and for the High King, Prionde, of the High Demesne, most puissant, most terrible. I speak for these two in alliance here assembled to call Great Game and make unanswerable Challenge upon Himaggery, styled Wizard, who has in treacherous fashion betrayed the hospitality shown his followers by the High King by stealing away one dependent, the Seer Windlow, and who has betrayed the good will of Mandor by sending into his Demesne a spy, the Healer Silkhands. For these reasons and others, more numerous than the leaves upon the trees, all reasons of ill faith and betrayal, treachery and all ungameliness, do my Lords cry Challenge upon this Himaggery and wait his move. We cry True Game!”

 Borold awaited answer, at first imperiously, then impatiently, finally doubtfully. Himaggery had paid him no attention, but had gone on fiddling with the great mirror. It was some time before Himaggery looked up and gave a signal to an Elator near him. By this time Borold was casting little glances over his shoulder as though to get some signal from the castle. The Elator vanished. Himaggery signaled once more and a Herald rose lazily from the ground, walked to confront Borold. He did not rise in air. He merely stood there and made the far mountains ring with his words.

 “Hear the words of Himaggery, Wizard of the Bright Demesne. The Wizard does not cry True Game. The Wizard cries Death, Pain, Horror, Mutilation, Wounds, Blood, Agony, Destruction. The Wizard calls all these and more. HE IS NOT PLAYING!”

 And with that there came a great light and a smell of fire moving like a little sun, hurtling out of the east, spreading somewhat as it came, driving toward the great mirror where it stopped, coalesced and was taken up by a Sorcerer who stood there, ready. The Sorcerer turned and released the little sun once more. The quiet troop of Tragamors who had been crouched on the stone stiffened, twisted in unison, bent their heads toward Bannerwell, and sent the bolt of force against the walls of the fortress. Even as it burst there with a shattering impact and a sound of thunder, another little sun shot into the waiting mirror, was caught, was sent after the first, and yet again and again.

 Mertyn whispered in awe. “Gamelords, what is it? How have you done this…”

 To which Himaggery replied, “We have only done what could have been done at any time during the last thousand years. We have used Tragamors, working in teams, to Move the power from place to place. The mirrors are only to catch it, focus it, make it easier for the Sorcerers to pull it in without losing it…”

 “Ahh,” said Mertyn, almost sadly, watching the walls where the lightning bolts struck and struck again. Those walls trembled, melted, powdered, fell to dust. All before them fell to dust. The Gamesmen before them blazed like tiny stars and were gone. The tents blossomed, died. “Where does it come from, this power?”

 “From various places,” Himaggery answered him, somewhat evasively.

 “It is better not to know,” whispered Windlow. “Better not to think of it. Better merely... to make an end to Bannerwell’s pride and Prionde’s vainglory, then go. Go on to something better.”

 But the end was not to be so quick in coming. A struggle broke out near the great mirror. It tipped, moved, and one of the hurtling suns sped past to splash against the far mountain in a cloud of flowing dust. Elators had materialized near the mirror and were trying to overturn it. Among the struggling Gamesmen the forms of fustigars slashed with white fangs, slashed, ran, turned to slash againľShapeshifters, come up the dike in the guise of beasts.

 “ ‘Ware, Himaggery,” cried the watching Demon, and thrust him aside as an arrow flashed from above. They looked up into the faces of Armigers who had come upon them from the wooded sides of the mountain. The Demon signaled. A hurtling ball of fire flew in from the east, was sloppily intercepted by two Sorcerers without benefit of the focusing mirror, was released again, and tossed upward by the Tragamor. The Armigers fell screaming from the sky like clots of ambient ash. Once more the mirror stood upright and the balls of fire struck at the walls of the fortress.

 And those walls fell. Himaggery held up his hand, a drum sounded. Far back to the east the sound echoed, relayed back, and back, beyond hearing. The hurtling fires came no more. He waited, poised, watching intently to see what would happen to that great horde before him.

 Through the rent in the castle wall the assembled Gamesmen poured out like Water, those who could fly darting across the Banner, others leaping into the flood to be carried away to the north, struggling to come to the flat banks there and flee away across the plains. There was a struggle going on in the courtyard which could be seen from the dike: Gamesmen of Bannerwell fighting against those of the High Demesne, red plumes against purple, the red plumes overcoming the purple to release the chains and let the bridge fall. Then the red clad followers of the High King fled the fortress, out across the bridge and the grassy plain, toward the red tents which stood upon the northern heights, running toward them as though safety might be found under that fragile covering.

 Himaggery gestured once more. Once more the bolts came into the mirror and were cast forward, this time onto those red tents which burned and were gone. The fleeing Gamesmen turned, milled about, some fleeing to the west, others making for the fringes of the forest, still others turning back to throw themselves into the waters of the Banner. It was not long before Himaggery’s men could look down the Cut and see the bodies of those who had drowned in the attempt to swim the Banner, panoplied in sodden glory, dead.

 “Prionde?” whispered Windlow. “Was he in that rout?”

 “Who could tell, old friend,” said Himaggery. “Should we withhold our fire to save one King?”

 “No,” said Windlow, weeping. “No. We agreed. It shall be as quick and sure as can be done. No long, drawn out Game to make the weaker hope and hope and refuse to surrender. No. Do it quickly, Himaggery.”

 He answered through clenched teeth. “I’m trying.” Once more the bombardment stopped and Himaggery watched to see what was happening below. There was no movement in the fortress. There were no watchers on the battlements.

 “How long?” Himaggery asked.

 Windlow answered him, “Soon. When I Saw it in my vision, the sun was just at that place in the sky. They will come forth soon. Wait. Destroy no more…” So they waited. Mertyn asked what they waited for, and Himaggery answered, “For the fulfillment of a vision, King. Windlow has Seen this place, this time. Your thalan is up to something there. See. See that gateway within the wall of the Fortress!”

 It was the gateway to the place of tombs, the ceremonial gateway to the Caves of Bannerwell. It opened within the walls of the fortress. It could be seen clearly through the shattered walls from the dike as the guardians of those tombs fled outward, fleeing in horror from something which pursued them. And behind those fleeing Guardsmen came a horde, an array, a Ghost Demesne pouring out of their graves and sepulchres, the catacombs giving up their dead, an army of dust, of dreams, of undying memory; battalions of bones, regiments of rags and rust, spear points red with corruption and time, swords eaten by age, bodies through which the wind moved, inspirited by shadow, tottering, clattering, moaning, sighing as the wind sighs, and calling as with one voice an ultimate horror,

 “We come, we come, we come…to take revenge upon the living, we who no longer live…”

 They passed through the gateway, across the courtyard like moving shade, and through the great oaken doors of the castle, as though those doors were curtains of gauze. The Guardsmen who had stayed to guard the caves fled through the shattered walls of the fortress and into Himaggery’s hands. An enemy held no terror for those who had seen the dead march. I came behind them. They could not be led, only sent, so I had sent them into the castle and stood waiting for them in the castle yard. They would return again, but they would not return alone. I had commanded it. I felt the eyes of Himaggery’s men on my back. Though I did not turn, I knew well they were there. I had seen them when the gates flew open, had seen the great rent in the fortress wall, knew that others Moved even as I Moved, that all came to a point at this hour, I waited, calm now. Time was done for any foolish blathering. There were no questions now. Only answers, at last.

 Then it happened. The doors to the castle burst wide, and the followers of Mandor fled forth, white and trembling, falling, crawling, vomiting on the stones, clutching their way across those slimed stones like crippled creatures, crabwise slithering away, away from what came behind. I saw Dazzle, and Huld, and a hundred faces I had seen in Mandor’s halls, the High King, and followers of his. They came forth in a flood and saw me, and seeing me they knelt down or fell down before me and cried to me for help. “King,” “Prince,” they cried, bending their knees to me, leaning upon their hands and beating their foreheads upon the stone.

 And I told them to be still and wait. Be still, I said, for Mandor comes. As at last he did. No less white than they, no less horrified, and yet with some dignity yet and a pathetic attempt at beguilement. Even now, even now he tried to use Talent upon me and still he wound it about himself. I motioned him to kneel.

 I said, “I have shown you your dead, Mandor. I have brought you your dead. The ancient ones you have dishonored. The newly dead you have robbed of life. Some among them have Game to call against you, so they tell me…”

 If it were possible for him to grow more pale, he did so. I looked from him to Dazzle. “And there are other dead, Dazzle. Your mother, I think, and others perhaps. Would you have them brought here to join those we have brought from the Caves of Bannerwell?”

 She did not answer me. I had not thought she would. She was too busy clutching the power to herself, weaving, weaving as Mandor was. Well, let them weave. The Ghost army crowded out of the castle door, moving toward these pitiful mortals, moving to trample them, take them up, inhabit them, clothe themselves in life again…Dorn within me cautioned me. Before they grew stronger, it was time to send them back…back…

 And then, of a sudden, if was as though someone lifted a great heaviness from me. Before me the Ghosts began to waver. They cried softly, once, twice, and were gone. A sound swept through my head like wind in pines and the smell of rain. Dazzle looked up at me, horrid that face. Mandor saw her, screamed, and screamed again as his people looked upon him and scrawled away from him, away and away, clutching at one another like survivors of some great flood, and casting glances backwards at him in horror. Then it was that Mandor and Dazzle flew at one another, clawing, striking with their hands, locked in a battle of ultimate despair.

 Behind me someone spoke my name. “Peter. Enough. We have come to Bannerwell as you have asked.”

 I turned. It was that lean man, Riddle, the Immutable, the leader of the Immutables, Tossa’s father.

 “I have been told what you tried to do,” he said. “For Tossa. I thank you.”

 “It was useless,” I wept. “Useless, as this has been. But I tried to ...”

 “I know,” he touched my arm. Then I saw others behind him, Chance, Yarrel.

 “You got there,” I said stupidly. “You got back.”

 Yarrel’s eyes were on Mandor and Dazzle, not upon me. His expression was one I dreaded, full of horror and contempt. I knew what he was thinking and did not want him to say it, but he did.

 “See there,” he whispered. “This is what Talents do. This is all that they do, and I have had enough of it…”

 “Shhh,” said Riddle. “We have agreed; part of the blame is ours. We have allowed it to go on. And we are agreed that it must end…”

 “While you are here, they cannot use their Talents,” he spit the word at me. “But when you are gone, Riddle, they will use them once more. And again. And again.”

 He turned away and went through the shattered wall, his shoulders heaving. Once he turned to look back and saw my face, saw something there, perhaps, which moved him for a moment. His hand moved as though he would have gestured to me in friendship, but his face hardened in that moment and he turned away. I knew what I could do. I could follow him. Soon we would be away from Riddle’s force or power or Talent and my own would be usable once more. Then I could evoke Trandilar, and Yarrel would love me as once he had doneľmore, more. He would adore me. As Mandor’s people had done. Oh, for the moment I wanted that. Yes. For that moment I wanted that. And then I did not want that at all, never, not Yarrel. I miss him. I have not seen him, but I know he is well. Some days I need him greatly, greatly, more than I can say. Perhaps, someday…well. All time is full of somedays.

 After a long time full of many confusions, we came away from Bannerwell. Dazzle and Mandor stayed behind, together with Huld and a few othersľand the Immutables. Neither of them can hide what they are any longer. They are what they are.

 I imagine them there, inhabiting the corridors and stairways of Bannerwell, drifting like shadows down long, silent staircases, vanishing behind hangings, seen at a distance upon a crenellated battlement, dark shadows, moving blots, heard in the long nights as the wind is heard, a ceaseless moan, never encountering one another except to see a shade vanish from a lighted room, to hear a cry down a chimney stack from some long unused place within that mountain of stone which is Bannerwell.

 I imagine them awake in the dark hours, veiled by night, hidden in gloom, plodding endless aisles of opulent dust in the Caves of Bannerwell to look upon the tombs, to dream of such a silence, such a healing as that, for on the tombs the marble dead sleep whole and unblemished, softly gleaming in torchlight, forever safe except to one such as Iľsuch as I.

 I think of Huld, hopeless and without honor, committed to his endless servitude, his mordacious kinship with horror, and I imagine that he follows them there, down those endless halls, watering the sterile dust with his tears. Will we meet again, Mandor and I? I do not think he will live long. I would not if I were he. ButľI am not he. And IľI returned with Himaggery to the Bright Demesne. We found Silkhands upon the mountain and brought her with us. She was changed by it all. She does not talk as much now as she used to. But then, neither do I.

 Windlow is here with us. Riddle comes to meet with Himaggery now and again. Our part of the world is only a small part of the world. Elsewhere there are Guardians and Councils and Wizardly doings and much persecution of Heresy. There are plans afoot. When a little time has passed, I may have heart to take part in them. Just now I do not take part in much. Himaggery says he is sure there is a way Talents such as mine can be fitted into a world which Yarrel would approve, a way in which a Peter and a Yarrel may continue to be friends. Just now, however, that world seems far away and long into the future.

 So, I think on that and ‘imagine’ what such a world might be like. What might my place in it be? I am such an animal as they have not known before, a Shifter-King-Necromancer who may, if he chooses, become Sorcerer, Seer, Sentinelľand every other thing as well. I must leave here to decide about that, I think. I must find Mavin. I think she knows something which all these solemn men have not yet thought of. The fruit trees bloom in the mists of the Bright Demesne. Soon will be Festival time. I shall no longer sew ribbons upon my tunic to run the streets as a boy. King’s Blood One. King’s Blood Ten. King’s Blood, and the world waits.



 BOOK 2
NECROMANCER NINE



 1
Necromancer Nine

  



 I had decided to change myself into a Dragon and go looking for my mother despite all argument to the contrary.

 Himaggery the Wizard and old Windlow the Seer were determined otherwise. They had been after me for almost a year, ever since the great battle at Bannerwell. Having seen what I did there, they had decided that my “Talent” could not be wasted, and between them they had thought of at least a dozen things they wanted done with it. I, on the other hand, simply wanted to forget the whole thing. I wanted to forget I had become the owner—can I say “owner” ?—of the Gamesmen of Barish, forget I had ever called upon the terrible Talents of those Gamesmen. I’d only done it to save my life, or so I told myself, and I wanted to forget about it.

 Himaggery and Windlow wouldn’t let me.

 We were in one of the shining rooms at the Bright Demesne, a room full of the fragrance of blossoms and ubiquitous wisps of mist. Old Windlow was looking at me pathetically, eyes three-quarters buried in delicate wrinkles and mouth turned down in that expression of sweet reproach. Gamelords! One would think he was my mother. No. My own mother would not have been guilty of that expression, not that wildly eccentric person. Himaggery was as bad, stalking the floor as he often did, hands rooting his hair up into devil’s horns, spiky with irritation.

 “I don’t understand you, boy,” he said in that plaintive thunder of his. “We’re at the edge of a new age. Change rushes upon us. Great things are about to happen; Justice is to be had at last. We invite you to help, to participate, to plan with us. You won’t. You go hide in the orchards. You mope and slope about like some halfwitted pawn of a groom, and then when I twit you a bit for behaving like a perennial adolescent, you merely say you will change into a Dragon and go off to find Mavin Manyshaped. Why? We need you. Why won’t you help us?”

 I readied my answers for the tenth time. I behave as an adolescent, I would say, because I am one—barely sixteen and puzzled over things which would puzzle men twice my age. I mope because I am apprehensive. I hide in orchards because I am tired of argument. I got ready to say these things.

 “And why,” he thundered at me unexpectedly, “go as a Dragon?”

 The question caught me totally by surprise. “I thought it would be rather fun,” I said, weakly.

 “Fun!” He shrugged this away as the trifle it was.

 “Well, all right,” I answered with some heat. “Then it would be quick. And likely no one would bother me.”

 “Wrong on both counts,” he said. “You go flying off across the purlieus and demesnes as a Dragon, and every stripling Firedrake or baby Armiger able to get three man-heights off the ground will be challenging you to Games of Two. You’ll spend more time dueling than looking for Mavin Manyshaped, and from what your thalan, Mertyn, tells me, she will take a good bit of finding.” He made a gesture of frustrated annoyance, oddly compassionate.

 “You have others,” I muttered. “You have thousands of followers here. Armigers ready to fly through the air on your missions. Elators ready to flick themselves across the lands if you raise an eyebrow at them. Demons ready to Read the thoughts of any who come within leagues of the Bright Demesne. You don’t need me. Can’t you let one young person find out something about himself before you eat him up in your plots?”

 Windlow said, “If you were just any young person, we’d let you alone, my boy. You aren’t just any young person. You know that. Himaggery knows it. I know it. Isn’t that right?”

 “I don’t care,” I said, trying not to sound merely contentious.

 “You should care. You have a Talent such as any in the world might envy. Talents, I should say. Why, there’s almost nothing you can’t do, or cause, or bring into being.”

 “I can’t,” I shouted at them. “Himaggery, Windlow, I can’t. It isn’t me who does all those things.”

 I pulled the pouch from my belt and emptied it upon the table between us, the tiny carved Gamesmen rolling out onto the oiled wood in clattering profusion. I set two of them upon their bases, the taller ones, a black Necromancer and a white Queen, Dorn and Trandilar. They sat there, like stone or wood, giving no hint of the powers and wonders which would come from them if I gripped them in my hand. “I tried to give them to you once, Himaggery. Remember? You wouldn’t take them. You said, ‘No, Peter, they came to you. They belong to you, Peter.’ Well, they’re mine, Himaggery, but they aren’t mine. I wish you’d understand.”

 “Explain it to me,” he said, blank faced.

 I tried. “When I first took the figure of Dorn into my hand, there in the caves under Bannerwell, Dorn came into my mind. He was… is an old man, Himaggery. Very wise. Very powerful. His mind has sharp edges; he has seen strange things, and his mind echoes with them—resonates to them. He can do strange, very marvelous things. It is he who does them. I am only a kind of a…”

 “Host,” suggested Windlow. “Housing? Vehicle?”

 I laughed without humor. They knew so much but understood so little. “Perhaps. Later, I took Queen Trandilar, Mistress of Beguilement. First of all the Rulers. Younger than Dorn, but still, far older than I am. She had lived… fully. She had understanding I did not of… erotic things. She does wonderful things, too, but it is she who does them.” I pointed to the other Gamesmen on the table. “There are nine other types there. Dealpas, eidolon of Healers. Sorah, mightiest of Seers. Shattnir, most powerful of Sorcerers. I suppose I could take them all into myself, become a kind of... inn, hotel for them. If that is all I am to be. Ever.”

 Windlow was looking out the window, his face sad. He began to chant, a child’s rhyme, one used for jump rope. “Night-dark, dust-old, bony Dorn, grave-cold; Flesh-queen, love-star, lust-pale, Trandilar; Shifted, fetched, sent-far, trickiest is Thandbar.” He turned to Himaggery and shook his head slowly, side to side. “Let the boy alone,” he said.

 Himaggery met the stare, held it, finally flushed and looked away. “Very well, old man. I have said everything I can say. If Peter will not, he will not. Better he do as he will, if that will content him.”

 Windlow tottered over to me and patted my shoulder. He had to reach up to do it. I had been growing rather a lot. “It may be you will make these Talents your own someday, boy. It may be you cannot wield a Talent well unless it is your own. In time, you may make Dorn’s Talent yours, and Trandilar’s as well.”

 I did not think that likely, but did not say so.

 Himaggery said, “When you go, keep your ears open. Perhaps you can learn something about the disappearances which will help us.”

 “What disappearances?” I asked guardedly.

 “The ones we have been discussing for a season,” he said. “The disappearances which have been happening for decades now. A vanishment of Wizards. Disappearances of Kings. They go, as into nothing. No one knows how, or where, or why. Among those who go, too many were our allies.”

 “You’re trying to make me curious,” I accused. “Trying to make me stay.”

 He flushed angrily. “Of course I want you to stay, boy. I’ve begged you. Of course I wish you were curious enough to offer your help. But if you won’t, you won’t. If Windlow says not to badger you, I won’t. Go find your mother. Though why you should want to do so is beyond me…” and his voice faded away under Windlow’s quelling glare.

 I gathered the Gamesmen, the taller ones no longer than my littlest finger, delicate as lace, incorruptible as stone. I could have told him why I wanted to find Mavin, but I chose not to. I had seen her only once since infancy, only once, under conditions of terror and high drama. She had said nothing personal to me, and yet there was something in her manner, in her strangeness, which was attractive to me. As though, perhaps, she had answers to questions. But it was all equivocal, flimsy. There were no hard reasons which Himaggery would accept.

 “Let it be only that I have a need,” I whispered. “A need which is Peter’s, not Dorn’s, not Trandilar’s. I have a Talent which is mine, also, inherited from her. I am the son of Mavin Manyshaped, and I want to see her. Leave it at that.”

 “So be it, boy. So I will leave it.”

 He was as good as his word. He said not another word to me about staying. He took time from his meetings and plottings to pick horses for me from his own stables and to see I was well outfitted for the trip north to Schooltown. If I was to find Mavin, the search would begin with Mertyn, her brother, my thalan. Once Himaggery had taken care of these details, he ignored me. Perversely, this annoyed me. It was obvious that no one was going to blow trumpets for me when I left, and this hurt my feelings. As I had done since I was four or five years old, I went down to the kitchens to complain to Brother Chance.

 “Well, boy, you didn’t expect a testimony dinner, did you? Those are both wise-old heads, and they wouldn’t call attention to you wandering off. Too dangerous for you, and they know it.’’

 This shamed me. They had been thinking of me after all. I changed the subject. “I thought of going as a Dragon.”

 “Fool thing to do,” Chance commented. “Can’t think of anything more onerous than that. What you want is all that fire and speed and the feel of wind on your wings. All that power and swooping about. Well, that might last half a day, if you was lucky.” He grimaced at me to show what he thought of the notion, as though his words had not conveyed quite enough. I flinched. I had learned to deal with Himaggery and Windlow, even to some extent with Mertyn, who had taught me and arranged for my care and protection by setting Chance to look after me, but I had never succeeded in dealing with Chance himself. Every time I began to take myself seriously, he let me know how small a vegetable I was in his particular stew. Whenever he spoke to me it brought back the feel of the kitchen and his horny hands pressing cookies into mine. Well. No one liked the Dragon idea but me.

 “Well, fetch-it, Chance. I am a Shifter.”

 “Well, fetch-it, yourself, boy. Shift into something sensible. If you’re going to go find your mama, we got to go all the way to Schooltown to ask Mertyn where to look, don’t we? Change yourself into a baggage horse. That’ll be useful.” He went on with our packing, interrupting himself to suggest, “You got the Talent of that there Dorn. Why not use him. Go as a Necromancer.”

 “Why Dorn?” I asked and shivered. “Why not Trandilar?” Of the two, she was the more comfortable, though that says little for comfort.

 “Because if you go traveling around as a Prince or King or any one of the Rulers, you’ll catch followers like a net catches fish, and you’ll be up to your gullet in Games before we get to the River. You got three Talents, boy. You can Shift, but you don’t want to Shift into something in-con-spic-u-ous. You can Rule, but that’s dangerous, being a Prince or a King. Or you can, well, Necromancers travel all over all the time and nobody bothers them. They don’t need to use the Talent. Just have it is enough.”


 In the end he had his way. I wore the black, broad-brimmed hat, the full cloak, the gauze mask smeared with the death’s head. It was no more uncomfortable than any other guise, but it put a weight upon my heart. Windlow may have guessed that, for he came tottering down from his tower in the chill mowing to tell us good-bye. “You are not pretty, my boy, but you will travel with fewer complications this way.”

 “I know, Old One. Thank you for coming down to wave me away.”

 “Oh, I came for more than that, lad. A message for your thalan, Mertyn. Tell him we will need his help soon, and he will have word from the Bright Demesne.” There was still that awful, pathetic look in his eyes.

 “What do you mean, Windlow? Why will you need his help?”

 “There, boy. There isn’t time to explain. You would have known more or less if you’d been paying attention to what’s been going on. Now is no time to become interested. Journey well.” He turned and went away without my farewell kiss, which made me grumpy. All at once, having gained my own way, I was not sure I wanted it.

 We stopped for a moment before turning onto the high road. Away to the south a Traders’ train made a plume of dust in the early sky, a line of wagons approaching the Bright Demesne.

 “Traders.” Chance snorted. “As though Himaggery didn’t have enough problems.”

 It was true that Traders seemed to take up more time than their merchandise was worth, and true that Himaggery seemed to spend a great deal of time talking with them. I wasn’t thinking of that, however, but of the choice of routes which confronted us. We could go up the eastern side of the Middle River, through the forests east of the Gathered Waters and the lands of the Immutables. Chance and I had come that way before, though not intentionally. This time I chose the western side of the River, through farmlands and meadowlands wet with spring floods and over a hundred hump-backed, clattering bridges. There was little traffic in any direction; woodwagons moving from forest to village, water oxen shuffling from mire to meadow, a gooseherd keeping his hissing flock in order with a long, blossomy wand. Along the ditches webwillows whispered a note of sharp gold against the dark woodlands, their downy kittens ready to burst into bloom. Rain breathed across windrows of dried leaves, greening now with upthrust grasses and the greeny-bronze of curled fern. There was no hurry in our going. I was sure Himaggery had sent an Elator to let Mertyn know I was on the way.

 That first day we saw only a few pawns plowing in the fields, making the diagonal ward-of-evil sign when they saw me but willing enough to sell Chance fresh eggs and greens for all that. The second day we caught up to a party of merchants and trailed just behind them into Vestertown where they and we spent the night at the same inn. They no more than the pawns were joyed to see me, but they were traveled men and made no larger matter of my presence among them. Had they known it, they had less to fear from me than from Chance. I would take nothing from them but their courtesy, but Chance would get them gambling if he could. They were poorer next day for their night’s recreation, and Chance was humming a victory song as we went along the lake in the morning light.

 The Gathered Waters were calm and glittering, a smiling face which gave no indication of the storms which often troubled it. Chance reminded me of our last traveling by water, fleeing before the wind and from a ship full of pawners sent by Mandor of Bannerwell to capture me.

 “I don’t want to think about that,” I told him. “And of that time.”

 “I thought you was rather fond of that girl,” he said. “That Immutable girl.”

 “Tossa. Yes. I was fond of her, Chance, but she died. I was fond of Mandor, too, once, and he is as good as dead, locked up in Bannerwell for all he is Prince of the place. It seems the people I am fond of do not profit by it much.”

 “Ahh, that’s nonsense, lad. You’re fond of Silkhands, and she’s Gamesmistress down in Xammer now, far better off than when you met her. Windlow, too. You helped him away from the High King, Prionde, and I’d say that’s better off. It was the luck of the Game did Tossa, and I’m sorry for it. She was a pretty thing.”

 “She was. But that was most of a year ago, Chance. I grieved over her, but that’s done now. Time to go on to something else.”

 “Well, you speak the truth there. It’s always time for something new.”

 So we rode along, engaged at times in such desultory conversation, other times silent. This was country I had not seen before. When I had come from Bannerwell to the Bright Demesne after the battle, it had been across the purlieus rather than by the long road. In any case, I had not been paying attention then.

 We came to the River Banner very late on the third day of travel, found no inn there but did find a ferrymaster willing to have us sleep in the shed where the ferries were kept. We hauled across at first light, spent that night camped above a tiny hamlet no bigger than my fist, and rode into Schooltown the following noon.

 Somehow I had expected it to be changed, but it was exactly the same: little houses humped up the hills, shops and Festival halls hulking along the streets, cobbles and walls and crooked roofs, chimneys twisting up to breathe smoke into the hazy sky, and the School Houses on the ridge above. Havad’s House, where Mandor had been Gamesmaster. Dorcan’s House across the way. Bilme’s House, where it was said Wizards were taught. Mertyn’s House where my thalan was chief Gamesmaster, where I had grown up in the nurseries to be bullied by Karl Pig-face and to love Mandor and to depart. A sick, sweet feeling went through me, half nausea, half delight, together with the crazy idea that I would ask Mertyn to let me stay at the House, be a student again. Most students did not leave until they were twenty-five. I could have almost a decade here, in the peace of Schooltown. I came to myself to find Chance clutching my horse’s bridle and staring at me in concern.

 “What is it, boy? You look as though you’d been ghost bit.”

 “Nothing.” I laughed, a bit unsteadily. “A crazy idea, Brother Chance.”

 “You haven’t called me that since we left here.”

 “No. But we’re back, now, aren’t we? Don’t worry, Chance. I’m all right.” We turned the horses over to a stable pawn and went in through the small side door beside the kitchens. It was second nature to do so, habit, habit to remove my hat, to go off along the corridor behind Chance, habit to hear a familiar voice rise tauntingly behind me.

 “Why, if it isn’t old Fat Chance and Prissy Pete, come back to go to School with us again.”

 I stopped dead in savage delight. So, Karl Pig-face was still here. Of course he was still here, along with all his fellow tormentors. He had not seen my face. Slowly I put the broad black hat upon my head, turned to face them where they hovered in the side corridor, lips wet and slack with anticipation of another bullying. I was only a shadow to them where I stood. I shook Chance’s restraining hand from my shoulder, moved toward the lantern which hung always just at that turning.

 “Yes, Karl,” I whispered in Dorn’s voice. “It is Peter come to School again, but not with you.” Stepping into the light on the last word, letting them see the death’s-head mask, hearing the indrawn breath, the retching gulp which was all Karl could get out. Then they were gone, yelping away like whipped pups, away to the corridors and attics. I laughed silently, overcome.

 “That wasn’t nice,” said Chance sanctimoniously.

 “Aaah, Chance.” I poked him in his purse, where the merchants’ coins still clinked fulsomely. “We have our little failings, don’t we? It was you who told me to travel as a Necromancer, Chance. I cannot help it if it scares small boys witless.” My feelings of sick sweet nostalgia had turned to ones of delighted vengeance. Karl might think twice before bullying a smaller boy again. I planned how, before I left, I might drive the point home.

 In order to reach Mertyn’s tower room we had to climb past the schoolrooms, the rooms of the other Masters. Gamesmaster Gervaise met us on the landing outside his own classroom, and he knew me at once, seeming totally unawed by the mask.

 “Peter, my boy. Mertyn said you’d be coming to visit. He’s down in the garden, talking to a tradesman just now. Come in and have wine with me while you wait for him. Come in, Chance. I have some of your favorite here to drown the dust of the road. I remember we had trouble keeping it when you were here, Chance. No less trouble now, but it’s I who drink it.” He led us through the cold classroom where the Gamemodel swam in its haze of blue to his own sitting room, warm with firelight and sun. “Brrrr.” He shivered as he shut the door. “The older I get, the harder it becomes to bear the cold of the game model. But you remember. All you boys have chapped hands and faces from it.”

 I shivered in sympathy and remembrance, accepting the wine he poured. “You always had us work with the model when it was snowing out, Master Gervaise. And in the heat of summer, we never did.”

 “Well, that seems perverse, doesn’t it? It wasn’t for that reason, of course. In the summer it’s simply too difficult to keep the models cold. We lock them away down in the ice cellar. It will soon be too warm this year. Not like last season where winter went on almost to midsummer.” He poured wine for himself, sat before the fire. “Now, tell me what you’ve been doing since Bannerwell. Mertyn told me all about that.” He shook his head regretfully. “Pity about Mandor. Never trusted him, though. Too pretty.”

 I swirled my glass, watching the wine swirl into a spiral and climb the edges. “I haven’t been doing much.”

 “No Games?” He seemed surprised.

 “No, sir. There is very little Gaming in the Bright Demesne.”

 “Well, that comes with consorting with Wizards. I told Mertyn you should get out, travel a bit, try your Talent. But it seems you’re doing that.” He nodded and sipped. “Strange are the Talents of Wizards. That’s an old saying, you know. I have never known one well, myself. Is Himaggery easy to work with?”

 “Yes, sir. I think he is. Very open. Very honest.”

 “Ah.” He laid a finger along his nose and winked. “Open and honest covers a world of strategy, no doubt. Well. Who would have thought a year ago you would manifest such a Talent as Necromancy. Rare. Very rare. We have not had a student here in the last twenty years who manifested Necromancy.”

 “There are Talents I would have preferred,” I said. Chance was looking modestly at his feet, saying nothing. This fact more than anything else made me cautious. I had been going to say that Necromancy was not my own or only Talent, but decided to leave the subject alone.

 “I don’t think I even have a Gamespiece of a Necromancer,” he said, brow furrowed. “Let me see whether I do.” He was up, through the door into the classroom. I followed him as seemed courteous. He was rooting about in the cold chest which housed the Gamespieces, itself covered with frost and humming as its internal mechanism labored to retain the cold. “Armigers,” he said. “Plenty of Armigers. Seers, Shifters, Rancelmen, Pursuivants, quite an array here. Minor pieces; Totem, Talisman, Fetish. Here’s an Afrit, forgotten I had that. Here’s a whole set of air serpents, Dragon, Firedrake, Colddrake, all in one box. Well. No Necromancer. I didn’t think I had one.”

 I picked up a handful of the little Gamespieces, dropped them quickly as their chill bit my fingers. They were the same size as the ones I carried so secretly, perhaps less detailed. Under the frost, I couldn’t be sure. “Gamesmaster Gervaise,” I asked, “where do you get them? I never thought to ask when I was a student, but where do they come from?”

 “The Gamespieces? Oh, there’s a Demesne of magicians, I think, off to the west somewhere, where they are fashioned. Traders bring them. Most of them are give-aways, lagniappe when we buy supplies. I got that set of air serpents when I bought some tools for the stables. Give-aways, as I said.”

 “But how can they give them away? To just anyone? How could they be kept cold?”

 Gervaise shook his head at me. “No, no, my boy. They don’t give Gamespieces to anyone but Gamesmasters. Who else would want them? They do it to solicit custom. They give other things to other people. Some merchants I know receive nice gifts of spices, things from the northern jungles. All to solicit custom.” He patted the cold chest and led the way back to Chance. The level of wine in the bottle was considerably lower, and I smiled. He gave me that blank, “Who, me?” stare, but I smiled nonetheless.

 “I hear Mertyn’s tread on the stairs,” I said. “I take leave of you, Gamesmaster Gervaise. We will talk again before I leave.” And we bowed ourselves out, onto the stair. I said to Chance, “You were very silent.”

 “Gervaise is very talkative among his colleagues, among the tradesmen in the town, among farmers...” Chance said. “You may be sure anything you said to him will be repeated thrice tomorrow.”

 “Ah,” I said. “Well, we gave him little enough to talk of.”

 “That’s so,” he agreed owlishly. “As is often best. You go up to Mertyn, lad. I’m for the kitchens to see what can be scratched up for our lunch.”

 So it was I knocked on Mertyn’s door and was admitted to his rooms by Mertyn himself. I did not know quite what to say. It was the first time I had seen him in this place since I had learned we were thalan. I have heard that in distant places there are some people who care greatly about their fathers. It is true here among some of the pawns. My friend Yarrel, for example. Well, among Gamesmen, that emotion is between thalan, between male children and mother’s full brother; between female children and mother’s full sister. Here is it such a bond that women who have no siblings may choose from among their intimate friends those who will stand in such stead. But our relationship, Mertyn’s and mine, had never been acknowledged within this house.

 He solved it all for me. “Thalan,” he said, embracing me and taking the cloak from my shoulders. “Here, give me your hood, your mask. Pfah! What an ugly get-up. Still, very wise to wear it. Chance’s choice, no doubt? He was always a wary one. I did better than I knew when I set him to watch over you.”

 I was suddenly happy, contented, able to smile full in his face without worrying what he would say or think when I told him why I came. “Why did you pick Chance?” I asked.

 “Oh, he was a rascal of a sailor, left here by a boat which plied up and down the lakes and rivers to the Southern Seas. I liked him. No nonsense about him and much about survival. So, I said, you stay here in this House as cook or groom or what you will, but your job is to watch over this little one and see he grows well.”

 “He did that,” I said.

 “He did that. Fed you cookies until your eyes bulged. Stood you up against the bullies and let you fight it out. Speaking of which, I recall you often had a bit of trouble with Karl? Had a habit of finding whatever would hurt the most, didn’t he?”

 “Oh,” I said and laughed bitterly, “he did, indeed. Probably still does.”

 “Does, yes. Early Talent showing there. Something to do with digging out secrets, finding hidden things. Unpleasant boy. Will be no less unpleasant in the True Game I should think. Well, Chance stood you up to him.”

 “I’m grateful to you for Chance,” I said. “I ... I understand why you did not call me thalan before.”

 “I didn’t want to endanger you, Peter. If it had been known you were my full sister’s son, some oaf would have tried to use you against me. Some oaf did it anyhow, though unwittingly.” He sat silent for a moment. “Well, lad, what brings you back to Mertyn’s House? I had word you were coming, but no word of the reason.”

 “I want to find Mavin.”

 “Ah. Are you quite sure that is what you want to do?”

 “Quite sure.”

 “I’ll help you then, if I can. You understand that I do not know where she is?”

 I nodded, though until that moment I had hoped he would tell me where to find her. Still.

 He went on, “If I knew where she was, any Demon who wanted to find her could simply Read her whereabouts in my head and pass the word along to whatever Gamesman might be wanting to challenge her. No. She’s too secret an animal for that. She gives me sets of directions from time to time. That’s all. If I need to find her, I have to try to decipher them.”

 “But you’ll tell me what they are?”

 “Oh, I’ve written down a copy for you. She gave them to me outside Bannerwell, where we were camped on Havajor Dike. You remember the place? Well, she came to my tent that night, after the battle, and gave them to me. Then she pointed away north—which is important to remember, Peter, north—and then she vanished.”

 “Vanished?”

 “Went. Away. Slipped out of the tent and was gone. Took the shape of an owl and flew away, for all I know. Vanished.”

 “Doesn’t she ever stay? You must have grown up together as children?”

 “Oh, well, by the time I was of an age to understand anything, she was almost grown, already Talented. Still, I remember her as she was then. She was very lovely in her own person, very strange, liking children, liking me, others my age. She did tricks and changes for us, things to make us laugh.

 “And she brought me to you?”

 “Yes. When you were only a toddler. She said she had carried you unchanging, and nursed you, unchanging, all those long months never changing, so that you would have something real to know and love. But the time had come for you to be schooled, and she preferred for some reason not to do that among Shifters. I never knew exactly why, except that she felt you would learn more and be safer here. So, she brought you here to me, in Mertyn’s House, and I lied to everyone. I said you were Festival-get I’d found wrapped in a blanket on the doorstep. Then I tried never to think about you when there were Demons about.”

 “And I never knew. No one ever knew.”

 “No. I was a good liar. But not a good Gamesman. I couldn’t keep you away from Mandor.”

 “He beguiled me,” I mused. “Why me? There were smarter boys, better-looking boys.”

 “He was clever. Perhaps he noticed something, some little indication of our relationship. Well. It doesn’t matter now. You’re past all that. Mandor is shut up in Bannerwell, and you want to find Mavin Manyshaped. It will be difficult. You’ll have to go alone.”

 I had not considered that. I had assumed Chance would go with me wherever I went.

 “No, you can’t take Chance. Mavin may make it somewhat easier for you to find her, but she will not trust anyone else. Here,” he said and handed me a fold of parchment. “I’ve written out the directions.”

  

  Periplus of a city which fears the unborn.

  Hear of a stupration incorporeal.

  In that place a garment defiled

  and an eyeless Seer.

  Ask him the name of the place from which he came and the way from it.

  Go not that way.

  Befriend the shadows and beware of friends.

  Walk on fire but do not swim in water.

  Seek Out sent-far’s monument, but do not look upon it.

  In looking away, find me.

  

 “It makes no sense,” I cried, outraged. “No sense at all!”

 “Go to Havajor Dike,” he said soothingly. “Then north from there. She would not have made the directions too difficult for either of us, Peter. She does not want to be lost forever, only very difficult to find. You’ll be able to ravel it out, line by line. There is only one caution I must give you.”

 He waited until he saw that he had my full attention, then made his warning, several times. “Do not go near Pfarb Durim. If you go to the north or northwest, do not go near that place, nor near the place they call Poffle which is, in truth, known as Hell’s Maw.” He patted me on the shoulder, and when I asked curious questions, as he must have known I would, said, “It is an evil place. It has been evil for centuries. We thought it might change when old Blourbast was gone, but it remains evil today. Mavin would not send you near it—simply avoid it!” And that was all he would say about that.

 We went down into the kitchens, sat there in the warmth of that familiar place, eating grole sausage and cheese with bread warm from the baking. It was a comforting time, a sweet time, and it lasted only a little while. For Gervaise came bustling in, his iron-tipped staff making a clatter upon the stones.

 “An Elator has come, Mertyn,” he cried. “He demands to see you at once. He comes from the Bright Demesne...”

 So we went up as quickly as possible to find an Elator there, one I knew well, Himaggery’s trusted messenger.

 “Gamesmaster,” he said, “the Wizard Himaggery and the old Seer, Windlow, have vanished.”

 “Vanished?” It was an echo of my own voice saying that word, but this time we were not talking of Shifters. Mertyn asked again, “What do you mean, vanished?”

 “They went to Windlow’s rooms after the evening meal, sir, asking that wine be sent to them there. When the steward arrived, the room was disturbed but empty. We searched the Demesne, but they are both gone.

 “Why have you come first to me?”

 “Gamesmaster, I was told by the Wizard some time since that if anything untoward should happen, I was to come to you.”

 “Windlow told me,” I cried. “Just before I left. That’s what he meant when he said they would need your help soon. That word would reach you.”

 “I warned them,” Mertyn grated. “I warned them they might be next if they went on with it.”

 “Next?” The word faltered in my throat.

 “Next to disappear. Next to vanish. Next to be gone, as too many of our colleagues and allies now are gone.”

 “I might have stopped it,” I cried. “Himaggery told me he needed me, but I wouldn’t listen.”

 He shook me, took me by my shoulders and shook me as though I had been seven or eight years old. “This is no time for dramatics, my boy, or flights of guilt. Be still. Let me think.”

 So I was still, but it was a guilty stillness. If I had been there? If I had been willing to take up the Gamesmen of Barish and use them, use the Talents? Would Himaggery and Windlow still be there? I wanted to cry, but Mertyn’s grip on my shoulder did not loosen, so I stood silent and blamed myself for whatever it was that had happened.

  

 The Skip-rope Chant

 The Gamesmen of Barish, their Talents.

  

  Mind’s mistress, moon’s wheel, Grandmother Didir, First Demon.

  cobweb Didir, shadow-steel. Talent, Telepathy.

  

  Mighty wing, lord of sky, Grandfather Tamor, First Armiger,

  lofty Tamor. hover high. Talent, Levitation.

  

  Night-dark. dust-old, Dorn, First Necromancer,

  bony Dorn, grave-cold. Talent, Raising of Ghosts.

  

  Flesh-queen, love-star, Trandilar, First Ruler,

  lust-pale, Trandilar. Talent, Beguilement.

  

  Pain’s maid, broken leaf, Dealpas, First Healer,

  Dealpas, heart’s grief. Talent, Healing.

  

  Cheer’s face, trust’s clasp, Wafnor, First Tragamor,

  far and strong is Wafnors grasp. Talent, Telekinesis.

  

  Far-eyed Sorah, worshipper, Sorah. First Seer,

  many gods who never were. Talent, Clairvoyance.

  

  Here and gone, flashing fast, Hafnor, First Elator,

  Hafnor is Trusted last. Talent, Teleportation.

  

  Chilly Shattnir, power’s store, Shattnir, First Sorcerer,

  calling Game forevermore. Talent, Power storage.

  

  Fire and smoke, horn and bell, Buinel, First Sentinel,

  messages of Buinel. Talent, Fire starting.

  

  Shifted, fetched, sent-far, Thandbar, First Shifter,

  trickiest is Thandbar. Talent, Shapeshafting.

  

  When all time is past,

  eleven first, eleven last

  

 The eleven represent the pantheon of elders, the “respected ones” of the religion of Gameworld.

  

 NOTE: There are short verses for every Gamesman in some issues of the Index of Gamesmen, over four thousand different titles. In some areas, skip-rope competitions are held during which young men and women attempt the recitation of the entire Index. The last person to complete this task successfully was Minery Mindcaster, in her eighteenth year, at the competition in Hilbervale.



 2
A City Which Fears the Unborn

  



 AT THE END OF THE SHORT TIME which followed, it was Mertyn who left me, not I who left him. I had never seen him in this kind of flurry, this Kingly bustle with all the House at his command and no nonsense about not using Talents in a Schooltown. He simply ordered and it was done, a horse, packing, certain books from the library, foodstuffs, two Armigers and a young Demon to accompany him. I did nothing but get in his way, each time trying to tell him that I would go back with him to the Bright Demesne to do what I should have done in the first place. He would have none of it.

 “For the love of Divine Didir, Peter, sit down and be still. If there were anything you could do, I would have you do it in a moment. There is nothing. Believe me, nothing. Just now the most important thing you can do is what you were intending to do anyhow, find Mavin and tell her what has happened here. Give me a moment with these people and I’ll talk to you about it.”

 So I sat and waited, with ill grace and badly concealed hurt. It was quite bad enough to remember that I had come away when I was needed; it was worse now to be denied return when I was eager to help. At last Mertyn had all his minions scattered to his satisfaction, and he came back to me, sitting beside me to take my hand.

 “Thalan, put your feelings aside. No—I know how you feel. You could not have failed to love old Windlow. All who know him do. As for Himaggery, it is hard not to like him, admire him, even when he is most infuriating. So, you want to help. You can. Hear me, and pay utmost attention.

 “For some time there have been disappearances. Gamesmen of high rank. Wizards. Almost always from among those we would call ‘progressive.’ Many have been Windlow’s students over the years. It can’t be mere happenstance, coincidence. We suspect the cause but have no proof.

 “Are those who have vanished dead? If they are, then some among the powerful Necromancers should be able to raise them, query them, find out what has happened. So, Necromancer after Necromancer has called into the dust of time, but none of the vanished rise. Instead, for some few of the searchers, it has been Necromancer Nine, highest risk, and they have vanished as well. Gone. Not dead. Or, if dead, dead in a way no others have ever died.” He shivered as though cold. “If not dead, then where? Demon after Demon has sought them, and for some of them it has been Demon’s Eyes Nine; they have disappeared as well. Are they imprisoned? Pursuivant after Pursuivant has searched, Rancelmen have delved. We find nothing. Those who vanish are simply gone.

 “Yet still we pursue our goal, our studies. Himaggery. His allies. Windlow’s old students. Though our allies vanish, our numbers continue to grow—slowly, too slowly. I warned Himaggery to draw no attention to himself. Bannerwell was a mistake, though we had to do it. As Windlow would say, it was morally correct but tactically wrong. So it has happened. Old Windlow evidently had some foreknowledge of it; he told you I would be needed. Well, I will go and try to hold things together while you seek out Mavin because we need her. We need her clever mind, her hidden ways, her sense of strategy. You can help most by finding her, which you would have done in any case.”

 I could not be so discourteous as to argue against that. He meant what he said. It was no mere sop for my comfort. I swallowed my pride and assented, sorrowing that I had refused help earlier and that it was now too late. He pulled me close, whispering.

 “Thalan, mark me. You have the eidolon of Dorn. I know you dislike using it, but if you have chance to do so, query among the dead for Himaggery and Windlow. If you—by any chance—use others of those Talents—no, don’t say anything, boy—seek for Himaggery and Windlow. Even half answers are better than no answers at all.”

 He kissed me and went. I was left in his place alone, among the tumble of packing, things half out of boxes, paper scattered upon his table, maps curling out of their cases, a disorder which spoke more harshly than words of his state of mind. I spent an hour setting it right, then went to make my own preparations and to take farewell of Chance.

 It was not easy. He did not accept that I would have to go alone. He could accept only that Mertyn had so ordered, and he was as bound by that order as I. At the end he told me he would go back to the Bright Demesne to await my return. He said that two or three times, to await my return, as though by saying it he could assure it would be so. It comforted me more than it did him, I’m sure. Perhaps he intended it so. I was very uncertain of what was to happen next, so preoccupied I paid no attention at all to Karl Pig-face and by my contemptuous silence (for so he and his followers interpreted it) did his unpleasant reputation grave and permanent harm. At the time, I didn’t think of him at all.

 I rode out of Schooltown at first light. It was a three-day trip to Bannerwell from the town. I made it in two, riding late and rising early, paying no attention to the scenery and eating in the saddle.

 Havajor Dike lay just east of the fortress of Bannerwell. I came upon it at evening, late, with only an afterglow in the sky where the high clouds still shed a little reflected light. A star shone above the clouds, only one, trembling like a tear in the sadness of dusk with its blue-brown scent of dark, bat-twittered and hesitant. I saw one lonely figure upon the Dike, black against the glow, and rode up to ask what housing might be available for the night. As I came closer, I saw that it was Riddle, Tossa’s father, that lean Immutable who had come to Bannerwell with Chance and Yarrel at the very end of the battle, making battle unnecessary.

 It struck me when he turned to face me that he showed no fear at all. No stranger had confronted me since I had left the Bright Demesne without showing some shrinking from me. Perhaps a curious, awed stare followed, more times than not, by the “ward-of-evil,” by an over-the-shoulder stare as he hurried away. Riddle had no fear, but it was a few moments before I realized that he did not know who I was and that it did not matter. He was an Immutable. They did not fear the Talents of Gamesmen, not even of Necromancers.

 “Do I know you?” he asked, leaning on the wall, gaze burrowing at my gauze-wrapped face. “Have we met?”

 “It’s Peter, Riddle,” I said, pulling the hood from my head and running dirty fingers through my dirtier hair. “I should have spoken.”

 “Peter.” He gave me his oddly kind smile, reached out to touch my face as though I had been his child or close friend. “To see you dressed so. I had forgotten you had this Talent. I thought it was something to do with ... changing shape.”

 I started to say something about the Gamesmen of Barish, caught myself and said nothing. No one knew of the Gamesmen but Windlow and Himaggery, Silkhands, Chance—one or two others who would say nothing about them. Instead of explaining, I shrugged the question away. “Small reason for you to remember. I did not stay long here at Havajor Dike once Bannerwell was overthrown. Have you played jailor here alone since then?” I knew the Immutables had intended to stay at Bannerwell long enough to assure there would be no more of Mandor’s particular kind of threat, but I had not expected Riddle himself to stay among them. He was said to be their leader, though I had never heard him claim any such title.

 “No,” he replied. “They sent for me after Mandor died.”

 “Dead? Mandor?” I could not imagine it, even though I had foretold it myself. I had known he could not long withstand the pain of a disfigurement visible to everyone, of loss of power, of the absence of adoration, not he who had lived for power and adoration and had adored himself not least among them. And yet ... it was strange to think of him dead. “How did he die?”

 “From the tower.” Riddle indicated the finger of stone which gestured rudely from the western edge of the keep. “He stood there often. We saw him in the dusk, or at dawn, a black blot against the sky. Then one morning he was not there, and his body was found among the stones at the river’s side. They sent for me then, and I arrived in time to learn that Huld had gone as well.”

 “Dead?”

 “I fear not.” He looked angry, biting off the words as though they tasted bad. “Himaggery had left Demons here, around the edges of the place, to Read if any tried to escape. They did not Read Huld. I theorize that he drugged himself into unconsciousness after hiding in a wood wagon or some such. Certainly he went past us all without betraying his presence.”

 I said nothing. I did not like the idea of Huld loose in the world. I shivered, and Riddle reached out to me again.

 “So, my boy. What brings you to the Dike? Was it to meet with Mandor again?”

 I shivered once more. “Never. I have an errand away north of here, and the Dike is a convenient place to begin the northern journey.”

 “Ah. Well, you will not begin that road tonight, will you? There is time for hot food, and for a bath? Some talk, perhaps. I have not had news of the south for some time.”

 So I went with him to his camp, a sturdy stone house near the mill, once almost in ruins but reroofed and made solid by the Immutables and those pawns released from Bannerwell. We were waited on by quiet people with faces I thought I recognized from the time of my captivity. At my unspoken question, Riddle explained.

 “These were Mandor’s people, yes. Once his powers were nullified by our being here, he could not beguile them any longer. None would stay. They saw him, feared him, gradually learned what he had done to them and so began to hate him, I think. He could not bear it.”

 “What had he done to them?” I asked cynically. “More than any Gamesman does?”

 “More,” he said. “Though perhaps it was not he who conceived it…No. I will say no more about it.”

 I wanted to hear no more about it, though later I was to wish I had insisted. I told him of the disappearance of Windlow and of Himaggery. He withdrew into startled silence, but then told me of other vanishments he knew of. He speculated, almost in a whisper. I drank wine and tried not to fall asleep. Others of the Immutables came in and greeted me kindly enough. They murmured among themselves while I yawned. Then we were alone and Riddle was leaning across the table to put his face close to mine.

 “I have no right to ask it, Peter, but I beg a service of you. One you may be loath to give.”

 “I will do what I can,” I murmured, half asleep.

 “We need to speak with Mandor’s spirit.”

 The sickness rose in me so that I choked on it, retching, tears pouring from my eyes as I tried not to vomit upon the table. In a moment he was putting cool water on my face, giving me a cup to drink. “How can you ask it,” I gargled at him. “And why? What would you know that his ghost can tell you?”

 “We have found certain ... things in Bannerwell. After Huld had gone, our people found them and summoned me. They are ... things which some of these pawns have reason to remember with great pain. We have studied them as best we may. We need to know what they are, how used, but more important, from whence they came. Mandor would have known. We believe they belonged to him.”

 “Certain things.” He showed them to me. They were stored in a back room of the stone house, strange things, crystal linkages, wires, boards on which wires and crystals together made patterns full of winking lights which told me nothing. They reminded me of something ... something. Suddenly I had it. “Riddle. Long ago—ah, not long ago. About a year. Mertyn sought to protect me from being eaten up in a Game. His servant, Nitch, sewed a thing into my tunic, a thing of wires and beads, a thing like these things. If you would know of them, ask Mertyn.”

 “We have done. It was Nitch who knew the doing of it, not Mertyn. Nitch has gone, gone in the night without a word.”

 “Vanished? Like the others?”

 “No. Simply gone. Have you heard of ‘magicians’?”

 Where had I heard of… yes. “Gamesmaster Gervirnse. He said the little blue Gamesmen were made by magicians, west somewhere. I had not heard of magicians before, save as we all have. At Festivals, doing tricks with birds and making flowers appear out of nothing.”

 “I do not think a Festival magician made these.” He shut the door upon them and led me back to the table before the fire. I knew he would ask me again. I wanted to refuse. How could I refuse? Oh, Gamelords, in what guise might the spirit of Mandor rise to greet the eidolon of Dorn?

 “By Towering Tamor, Riddle, you ask a hard thing.”

 “I know. But it is said your Talent is great. I would not ask it, save you come so fortuitously to our need. I thought of it when I saw your mask, at first, and I would not ask not if I thought it endangered you.”

 How could I tell him that it did endanger me? It sickened me, yes. Brought nightmares and horrors, but endangerment? Well, I would lose no blood nor flesh over it. Perhaps that was the only endangerment which counted. Riddle’s daughter, Tossa, had lost her life in aiding me. I could not refuse him.

 “In the morning,” I begged. “Not at night.”

 “Certainly, in the morning,” he agreed. I might just as well have done it in the dark for all the sleep I had.

 We went to the pit in the gray dawn. They had not laid Mandor with his ancestors and predecessors in the catacombs beneath the fortress, and I was thankful of that. There the ghosts were as thick as fleas on a lazy dog, and I had no wish to raise a host on this day. No, Mandor lay beneath the sod in a kind of declivity a little to the north of the walls, a place fragrant and grassy, silent except for the sigh of wind in the dark firs which bounded it. Riddle let me go into the place alone, staying well away from me in order that his own, strange “Talent” not impede mine... or Dorn’s. As I left him, he said, “We need to know whence these things came. What their purpose is. By whom made. Can you ask these things?”

 I tried to explain. “Riddle, I have not heretofore questioned phantoms to know what knowledge they may have. Those discarnate ones I raised on this land before were ancient, long past human knowledge, only creatures of dust and hunger, fetches to my need.”

 “It is said that Necromancers are full of subtlety.”

 “I will be as subtle as I can.” Though it would be Dorn being subtle, rather than Peter. I took the little Gamesman into my hand, fingers finding it at once in the pouch as though it had struggled through the crowd to come into my grasp. He came into me like heat, burning my skin at first, then scalding deeper and deeper, nothing wraithy or indistinct about it, rather a man come home into a familiar place. I was not surprised when he greeted me, “Peter.”

 “Dorn,” I whispered. Before, I had been fearful. This time I was less so, and perhaps this accounted for my courtesy to him, as though he were my guest. I explained what we were to do, and he became my tutor.

 “Here and here,” he said. “Thus and thus.” My hand reached out, but it was Dorn who pointed the finger at the grass, Dorn who called the dust and bones within to rise. Mandor had not been long dead. The ground cracked and horror came forth, little by little, the worms dropping from it as it rose. I heard Riddle on the hill behind me choking back a gasp, whether awe or fear I could not tell.

 “Thus and thus,” Dorn went on. “So and so.”

 The bones became clad in flesh, the flesh in robes of state. The head became more than a skull, then was crowned once more, until at last what had been so horrible at the end of Mandor’s life became the beauty I had known in Schooltown, bright and lovely as the sun, graceful as grass, and looking at me from death’s eyes. From this uncanny fetch came a cry of such eerie gladness that my heart chilled. “Whole,” it cried in a spectral voice. “Oh, I am risen whole again.”

 I could have wept. This wholeness was not an intended gift, and yet ... it was one I would have made him during life if I had known how. “So and so,” said with Dorn within me. “You could not have made him so or kept him so in life for any length of time.”

 Riddle called from the hillside, reminding me of our purpose there. So I asked it, or Dorn did, of those strange crystalline contrivances which Riddle was so concerned about. The phantom seemed not to understand.

 “These are not things which Mandor knew. These are things of Huld. Playthings for Huld. Magicians made them. Huld understood them, not Mandor. Oh, Mandor, whole, whole again …”

 I heard Riddle cursing, then he called to me, “I’m sorry, Peter. Let the pathetic thing go back to its grave.”

 But I was not ready to do that. I had remembered Mertyn’s words concerning those who had vanished.

 “Mandor, do you speak with others where you are? Do the dead talk together?”

 The fetch stared at me with dead eyes, eyes in which a brief, horrible flame flickered, a firefly awareness, a last kindling.

 “In Hell’s Maw,” it screamed at me. “They speak, the dead who linger speak, before they fall to dust, in the pits. When all is dust, we go, we go.”

 “Have you spoken to Himaggery?” I asked. “To Windlow the Seer?” I remembered the names of others Riddle had told me of and asked for them, but the apparition sighed no, no, none of these.

 Then it drew itself up and that brief flame lit the empty eyes once more. “Words come where Mandor is ... troubling all ... seeking those you seek ... not there ... not in the place ... Peter ... let me be whole, whole, whole.”

 I sobbed to Dorn. “Let him be whole, Dorn, as he goes to rest.” And so it was the phantom sank into the earth in the guise he had once worn, the kingly crown disappearing at last, in appearance as whole as he had been in Schooltown before his own treachery maimed him.

 And I was left alone, Dorn gone, Mandor gone, only Riddle standing high upon the rim as the wind sighed through the black firs and the grasses waved endless farewell on Mandor’s grave. Inside me a small dam seemed to break, a place of swampy fear drained away, and I could turn to Riddle with my face almost calm to go with him back to the millhouse. He was no more given to talk than I, and we had a silent breakfast, both of us thinking thoughts of old anguish and, I believe, new understanding.

 When we had eaten he said, “Peter, I will go with you a way north. I have an errand in that general direction, and it is better never to travel alone. That is, if I am welcome and my own attributes will not inhibit your ... business.”

 I laughed a little. “Riddle, my business is a simple one. I am going in search of my mother who has ... left word of her whereabouts in a place known as ‘a city which fears the unborn.’ All I know of the place is that it is north of here.”

 “But, my boy, I know the place,” he exclaimed. “Or, I should say, I’ve heard of it. It is the city of Betand, between the upper reaches of the Banner and ... what is the name of that river?... well, another river to the west. I will go with you almost that far. My business will take me east at the wilderness pass.”

 “Why is it called a city which fears the unborn?”

 “It seems to me I heard the story, but I’ve forgotten the details of it. Something to do with a haunting, some mischance by a wandering Necromancer. Your Talent is not generally loved, Peter, though I can see that it may be useful.”

 He was being kind, and I helped him by changing the subject. I was glad enough of his company, gladder still when he proved to be a better cook than Chance and almost as good a companion as my friend Yarrel had been when we were friends. On the road we talked of a thousand things, most of them things I had wondered at for years.

 One of the things that became apparent was that the Immutables cared little for Gamesmen. Riddle’s toleration of me and of a few others such as Himaggery was not typical. I asked him why they let Gamesmen exercise Talents at all, feeling as they did.

 “We are not numerous enough to do otherwise,” he said. “There are fewer Immutables than there are Gamesmen, many fewer. We do not bear many children, our numbers remain small and our own skills remain unchanging through time. Immutable, as you would say. Each of us can suppress the Talent of any Gamesman for some distance around us. I can be safe from Demons Reading my thoughts or Armigers Flying from above, but I am not safe from an arrow shot from a distance or a flung spear, as you well know.”

 I nodded. Tossa had died from an arrow wound.

 “So. Those of us with the ability find it safer to band together in towns and enclaves with our own farms and crafters. Thus we can protect ourselves and our families from any danger save force of simple arms, and this we can oppose with arms of our own. We could be overrun, I suppose, if any group of Gamesmen chose to do so, but Gamesmen depend too much upon their Talents. Without the Talent of Beguilement, few if any of their Rulers would be able to lead men into battle. And, of course, the pawns will not fight us. They turn to us for help from time to time.”

 “I would think all pawns would flock to you for protection.”

 “We could not protect them. We are too few.”

 “What do they want, you want, Riddle? The Immutables?”

 “We want what any people want, Peter. We want to feel secure, to live. We want to be free to admire the work of our own hands. Even Gamesmen do the same. Why else their ‘schools’ and their ‘festivals’? The Gamesmen depend upon the pawns for labor, for the production of grain, fruit, meat. If we were numerous enough to protect the pawns, and if they came to us, then ... then the Gamesmen would fight, even without their help.”

 “They could till the soil themselves,” I offered, somewhat doubtfully.

 “Would they?” asked Riddle. Both he and I knew the answer to that. Some few would. Some few probably did, out of preference. As for the others in their hundreds of thousands, they would rather die in battle than engage in “pawnish” behavior.

 So we rode together, I in the circle of his protection, he in the circle of fear which came with the Necromancer’s garb. No one bothered us. There was little traffic upon the road in any case, and those we encountered left a long distance between themselves and us.

 “The things you found in Bannerwell,” I asked. “Why are you so curious about them?”

 “I am curious about anything subtle and secret, Peter. It is difficult to keep secrets among Gamesmen. A powerful Demon can learn almost anything one knows, can dig out thoughts one does not know one has. How then are secrets kept? You would not deny that they are kept?”

 “One has one’s own Demons to guard against thought theft by outsiders. One stays in one’s own purlieus, in one’s own Demesne.”

 “Ah, but walls of that kind can be breached, or sapped. No. Sometimes secrets are kept, even by those who go about the world in the guise of ordinary Gamesmen. There were secrets kept in Bannerwell. Someone there knew things that others do not. Huld, it seems. How did he manage that…

 “Do you know,” he went on, suddenly confidential, “as a child I envied the Gamesmen. Yes. I was much enamored of Sarah. A Seer. How wonderful to see the invisible, the inscrutable, the future ... how wonderful to know everything!”

 “I don’t think that’s quite how it works,” I said, remembering old Windlow and his frustration at partial visions of uncertain futures.

 “Perhaps not. Still. There are many things I want to know. For example, does the name ‘Barish’ mean anything to you?” His tone was casual, but he watched me from the corner of his eye.

 I took a deep breath, hiding it, wondering what to say. “Barish? Why, it’s a name from religion. A Wizard, wasn’t he? Did something very secret and subtle—I forget what.” I waited, scarcely able to breathe. “Is it a name I should know?”

 “Secret and subtle.” He mused. “No. Everyone knows that much, and seemingly no one knows more than that.” He smiled. “I am merely interested in secret and subtle things, and I ask those who may know. I have heard, recently, of this Barish.”

 I turned my hand over to let his words run out. “I do not know, Riddle. You riddle me as you must riddle others. Do you always ask such questions?”

 “I talk to hear my voice, boy. I tie words on a journey as a woman ties ribbons on her hat.”

 “Do they?” I asked, interested. “I have only seen ribbons on students’ Tunics, come Festival.”

 “Oh, well, Peter. You have not seen much.” And with that, he lapsed into along, comfortable silence. It had rained betimes and we found lung-mushrooms all along the sides of fallen trees. Riddle cut away a nice bunch of them, glistening ivory in the dusk, and rolled them in meal to fry up for our supper. He told me about living off the countryside, more even than Yarrel had done. Riddle spoke of roots and shoots, berries and nuts, how to cook the curled fronds of certain ferns with a bit of smoked meat, how to bake earth-fruits in their skins by wrapping them first in the leaves of the rain-hat bush, then in mud, then burying the whole in the coals at evening to have warm and tender for the morrow’s breakfast.

 Our road cut across country between loops of the River until the land began to rise more steeply. Then the River ran straight or in long jogs between outcroppings, plunging over these in an hysteria of white water and furious spray. Our horses climbed, and we strode beside them for part of each morning and each afternoon so they would not tire or become lame. Stone lanterns along the way began to appear, at first only broken, old ones, half crumbled to gravel, but later newer ones, and then ones lit with votive lights.

 “What are these?” I asked. “Burning good candles here in the daylight?”

 “Wards against the Gifters,” said Riddle. “The people here­abouts are most wary of Gifters and what Gifts they may make to the unsuspecting.”

 “Why have I never heard of them until now?”

 “Because students hear of very little.” He did not make it a rebuke, but I was offended nonetheless.

 “We were taught morning to evening. They did nothing but teach us of things.”

 “They did nothing but teach you of certain things,” Riddle replied sternly. “And they told you nothing of other things. They told you nothing of the Gifters, though the world north of the Great Bowl goes in constant fear of them. You are told nothing of the nations and places of this world, but only of the small part you inhabit.”

 “Riddle.” I was caught up in a curious excitement. “Why do you say ‘this world’? Do you believe it is true what the fablers say, that there are more worlds than this?”

 “There are stories of others. Not that the stories are necessarily true. But that’s part of what I mean. In the Schools you are all taught so little about what really is and what may truly be.”

 “Why would they do that? Why would my own thalan, for example, fail to teach me things I would need to know?”

 “Because they do not believe you do need to know,” he replied in exasperation. “They think the least told, the least troubled. If you do not hear of the Northern Lands, you will not venture there. If you do not hear of Gifters, you will not fall prey to one. It is all arrant nonsense, of course. Pawner caravans pick up a hundred ignorant youths and carry them away north for every one who adventures there on his own. Gifters make between-meal bites of the naive, while the well-taught escape with their lives. I have even heard old Gamesmen speak with tears in their throats of the ‘innocence’ of youth. ‘Innocence’, indeed. They should say arrant ignorance and be done with it.” He fumed for another league and I did not interrupt him, for I often learned much by letting him burble. Thus it was I did not ask him more about Gifters when I should have done.

 “There is a pawnish settlement in the south,” he said at last, “in which they do not teach their children anything of sex. It is kept a great mystery. The belief of this sect is that this ignorance will keep their children from harm. As a result, they value virginity highly and it is virtually unknown among them.”

 I did not believe this, but allowed it to stand unchallenged as we rode on. I didn’t ask about Gifters, or the northlands, or anything else. Ah well. Yestersight is perfect, so they say.

 We had been several days on the road when we came to a rolling range of hills and began to track upward by repeated switch-backs, higher and higher, the way becoming more rocky and precipitous as we went. I was reminded a bit of the road from Windlow’s House to Bannerwell, except that this one did not seem to run through wilderness. There were villages all along the way, cut into the sides of the mountains with meadows the size of handkerchiefs spread upon the ledges, and a constant procession of lanterns, little ones and big ones, never seeming to run out of candles. At last we came to a high pass at which the road split, one fork leading downward to the north, the other winding to the east among the crags.

 “Well,” he said to me. “We are near Betand. We come to the parting of ways, Peter. I am thankful for your company thus far. If you will slit your eyes you will see the roofs of the city away to the northwest, and I wish you well in your journey.”

 I was sorry to part from him. Truth to tell, I had never been really alone before the brief trip from Schooltown to Bannerwell, and I did not like it much. It was not fear I felt, but something else. A kind of lostness, of being singular of my kind. As though there were none near to greet me as fellow. Of course, the Necromancer’s hood had much to do with that. Nonetheless, I had been grateful for his company and said so. We sat a time there on the pass, saying nothing much except to let one another know we would be less comfortable on the journey after we parted. At last, as I was about to run out of polite phrases and begin to choke, he patted me upon one shoulder.

 “I go east from here, to Kiquo, and to the high bridge only recently restored though it was eighty years ago in the great cataclysm that it fell. I go to seek mysteries, my boy. You go to seek mysteries of your own. Well, then, good journey and good chance to you.” And he went away, not looking back, leaving me to press down the further slope toward the city I could see beneath me in the westering sun of late afternoon.

 Smoke lay above it like a pall through which the towers reached, like the snouts of beasts seeking upward for air. My eyes watered, just looking at it. If there were not wind before evening, it would be thick as soup in that bowl which held the city of Betand, the City Which Fears the Unborn.



 3
Perlplus

  



 IT TOOK SEVERAL HOURS TO REACH THE CITY, and a wind had come softly from the north to greet me as I rode by the outskirts of the place, inns and caravansaries, stables and eating houses, taverns and stews. I decided to have a meal before entering the city. There was a place there called the Devil’s Uncle, and it seemed as good as any other from the point of cleanliness and better than most from its smell. The stable boy took my beast without making any signs at all, which I took either as a sign of sophistication or of total ignorance. Either many Necromancers came here or none did. It did not matter much which.

 Once within, I saw a few curious faces, one or two down-turned mouths, but no ward-of-evil signs. I ordered wine and roast fowl and a dish of those same stewed ferns Riddle had fed me on the outward journey, evidently a local delicacy. They were not laggard with the food, nor was I in eating it. No one there paid me much attention until I was almost finished and had only half a glass left in the jug. Then a wide-mouthed Trader sat opposite me and showed me his palms. I raised mine courteously, and let him talk.

 “Laggy Nap, fellow-traveler,” he greeted me. “Trader by Talent, philosopher by inclination. What brings one so young and horridsome to the city of Betand?”

 I did not know whether to be offended, which I was, or pretend to be amused. I chose the latter as having the lesser consequence.

 “Merely one who would travel through Betand on his way to somewhere else,” I said. At which he laughed, repeating my remark to some others who also laughed. I supposed there was something entertaining in the intent to travel through Betand, so ordered wine for those around and asked, all innocence, if the city were accounted so amusing by all who went there.

 “Oh, sir.” said the Trader, “it is my amusement to ask new wanderers whether they intend to go through Betand, and then to offer them a meal at my expense at the Travelers’ Joy, which is on the other side of the city. You can tell me then whether you were amused, and I will be entertained by your account.” He fixed a glittering eye upon me, seeming to look further than I would have wished. He was a man with down-slanting brows and deep furrows between his eyes, wide-mouthed, as I have said, with a long, angry-looking nose against which his eyes snuggled a bit too closely. His eyes belied his mouth, the one being all motion and laughter while the others were cold and full of accounts.

 “You do not wish to tell me why I will be... amused?” I asked him. He merely chuckled, elbowed some of those around him, and together they engaged in laughter of a mocking sort. Almost my hand sought Dorn in the pouch at my belt, but I decided against it. No point in stirring up trouble. I took my leave of them and went on toward the walls, a gaping gate full of torchlight before me.

 I began to identify myself, to give some sort of name such as “Urburd of Dornes” or “Dornish of Calber.” Chance and I had made up a whole list of them to be used as needed. The guardsman gave me no time. He laid a hand upon my arm and said intently, “Sir, you are nobody here. If you would not be charged with a grave offense, remember that. You are nobody.”

 He passed me on to another guardsman who gazed me in the eye with equal intensity, seeming unafraid of the death’s-head. “Who are you now, sir?”

 “I am ... nobody?” I said, wondering what fools’ game they played and whether I was the fool for playing it with them.

 “Surely, surely,” said the second guardsman. “Go through this gate, sir. Leave your horse in the stables there. The matron will meet you.”

 He had no sooner spoken, directing me to a little postern gate in the rough wall, when there came a howling out of the night as though a chase pack of fustigars was lost in a lonely place and crying for their kind and kindred. He blanched, made the sign of evil-ward, thrust his hands over his ears. I, too, sought to block my ears, for the cry went up in a keening scream, up and up into an excruciating silence. “Quickly.” He pushed me. “Go!”

 I went. The woman who met me on the other side was plump and motherly, hands thrust beneath her apron, chivvying me along as though I had been her pet goose.

 “Well sir,” she said. “What kind of woman would you prefer? There are several in the waiting house tonight. Three I would call a bit matronly for you, for you walk like a lad no matter the horrid face on you. Necromancer or no, boy you are, or I’ll eat my muffin pan. Well, not them, then. I’ve one virgin girl scared out of her wits. You’d do me a favor, you would, to take that one. Nice enough she is, but as unschooled as any nit and vocal along of it.”

 I had no idea what she was speaking of. “I would be glad to do you any service, madam.”

 “Good enough, then,” she said, stopping at the first door and opening it only long enough to call within. “Sylbie, come out here, lass. Nobody is here.”

 A small time passed before the girl came out, a pale girl with soft brown hair and eyes swollen with crying. She gave me one glance and shrieked as though ghost bit.

 “Oh, stuff and foolishness,” said the Matron. “Sylbie, it is only a guise. Come now, you’ve seen Gamesmen all your life. Must you scritch at the lad, and him only a boy (as I can tell by his walk) to make him sorry he said he’d favor you? You could go back and wait for one of those drovers to quit drinking in the Devil’s Uncle would you rather?”

 “N-n-no, Madam Wilderly,” she stuttered. “It’s only that it was very unexpected.”

 At that the howling began again, and we all leaned against the stone as it rushed on us out of the empty streets, shrieking and moaning, then dwindling away down the throbbing alleys once more. It was a horrid sound.

 “The unborn,” said the Matron in explanation. “We are haunted, sir, as you must have heard.”

 “I had heard,” I said weakly. I had, too, but the reality made the stories dim. I would have gone mad if I had had to listen to that howling for more than a short time. These thoughts were halted by the matron’s instructions.

 “Just in there, sir, Sylbie. You’ll find a nice room to the left at the top of the stairs. Wine all warm by the fire and a bit of supper to help you get acquainted. The Midwife will be around in the morning, just to check has the law been complied with.” And with that she was off down the street in the direction we had come.

 The girl led me up the stairs, I still wondering what went on. The girl seemed to know, and I assumed she would tell me. Besides, once within a room I could take off the death’s-head mask and wash my face, thus showing her a face which would not frighten her. I did so, and when I took the towel away, she handed me a cup of wine. She was no longer crying, but she looked frightened still.

 “Well,” I said. “Suppose you tell me what all this Game is, Sylbie. I will not harm you, so you need not make dove’s eyes at me.”

 “Don’t you know?” she asked. “About Betand? I thought everyone for a thousand leagues around must know about Betand.”

 “I did not. Even the man I was traveling with, who had heard of Betand, was not sure of the cause of its fame. You are referred to in our part of the world as ‘The City Which Fears The Unborn’. Not very explanatory.”

 “Oh, but very descriptive, sir. It is the unborn you heard howling in the streets. It has driven some mad and others into despair. My own mother tried to drown herself from the constant horror of it. We cannot sleep by night because of the howling, and we cannot sleep by day or we will all starve. I, myself, think it might be better to starve. My father said he would rather starve than have me raped, but my mother said nonsense, the girl must be raped because it is the law.”

 I dropped the cup and heard it echo hollowly from under the bed where it rocked to and fro making clanking sounds. “Raped! By whom?”

 “By you, sir. Or, rather, by nobody.”

 I sat upon the side of the bed and reached for the cup with my foot. “Sylbie, pour more wine. Then sit here beside me and tell me what you have just said. I am quite young, and I do not understand anything you have said.”

 “Oh, sir,” she said, falling to her knees to fetch the cup, “truly you are very stupid. I have already told you. But I will tell you again.”

 “It was two years ago last Festival that the Necromancer came to Betand. He was an old man, and he amused the crowd at the Festival by raising small spirits (some said it was forbidden for him to do so during Festival, and was the cause of all our woe) which danced and sang like little windy shadows. Well, one night he was drinking at the Dirty Girdle, a tavern which, my mother says, has a well deserved reputation, and he got into an argument with the tavern keeper, a man as foul of mouth as his kitchen floor, so says my mother. Doryon, the Necromancer, would not take besting in any battle of words, so my father says, and so decided to place a haunting upon the tavern. He was very drunk, sir, very drunk.

 “So he rose to his feet and made some gestures, speaking some certain words, at which, so my father says, the whole company within the place trembled, for he had summoned up a monstrous spirit which fulminated and gorbled in the middle of the air, spinning. Then, so my father says, did the old Necromancer clutch at his chest and fall like an axed tree down, straight, stiff as a dried fish and dead as one, too.

 “But the haunting he had raised up went on boiling and fetching, sir, growing darker and mere roily until at last it began to howl, and it howled its way out of the tavern and into the streets of Betand where it has howled and howled until this night.”

 “But,” I said, “why was not some other Necromancer brought to settle the revenant? What one can raise, surely another can put down. Or so I have always been taught.”

 “Sir, it was thought so. But Doryon was very drunk, and the Necromancers who came after said he had raised no dead spirit from the past but had, instead, raised up some spirit yet unborn, twisted in time and brought untimely to Betand. None of them knew how to twist it out of being and into the future again.”

 “So. And so. And so what is the what of that?” I was baffled, mystified. “What has that to do with being raped because it is the law?”

 She shook her head at me as though I should have seen the whole matter clearly by this time. “If it is the spirit of one unborn, then it is in the interest of the city that it become born as soon as possible. Which means that every woman of Betand able to bear must bear at every opportunity.”

 “But rape,” I protested feebly. “Why?”

 “Because all sexual congress except between married persons is defined as rape in the laws of Betand. Marriages cannot be entered into lightly for mere convenience. There are matters of property, of family, of alliance. It takes years, sometimes, to work out the agreements and settlements and the contracts.”

 “So they expect me to rape you, to break the laws of the city?”

 “Oh, truly you are very stupid, sir. Nobody will break the laws. Did they not say you were nobody? How can nobody break a law? It is manifestly impossible, so says my mother. We of Betand do not change our laws readily, so says my father, but we interpret them to our needs.”

 “I see. At least, I think I see.” I was not sure, but it had begun to make a weird kind of sense.

 “I hope so,” she said, wearily taking off her jacket. “You look far less dirty than the drover.” Removing her blouse, “That is, if one may choose among nobodies.”

 My throat was dry. I could think of nothing to say to her, nothing at all. While I poured wine and drank it, she removed all of her clothing except a filmy thing which began halfway down her front and ended above her knees. It did little to hide the rest of her. Knowing my history, you will believe it when I say she was the first female person I had seen so unclothed. Silkhands the Healer, even when she traveled across the country with us, had never been so unclad. Now that she was bare, Sylbie seemed not to know what to do next. I offered her wine, and we gulped at it together, each as uncomfortable as the other.

 “Have you had lots of women?” she whispered in a voice which seemed hopeful of an affirmative answer.

 Imanaged to say, “Ummm,” in a vaguely encouraging tone.

 “I didn’t want to be fumbled at,” she said through tears.

 “Urnmm,” sympathetically.

 “I think it might help if I knew your name.

 “P-Peter.”

 “Well, Peter, it’s a comfort that you know about ... everything. My mother says that will make it much easier,” she said, then she threw herself sobbing onto the pillows.

 I—was—am a fearfully stupid person. Until that instant I had not considered the Gamesmen of Barish which were in the pouch at my belt. Among them was the eidolon of Trandilar, great Queen, Goddess of beguilement and passion. I had taken that eidolon once before, outside the shattered walls of Bannerwell. I had not thought of it since, had rejected use of it, had tried to pretend it had never happened. Now, faced with the sodden misery before me, I could not in conscience ignore Trandilar longer. Peter, rude boy, would indeed “fumble at her.” Only Trandilar offered any hope for something less than agony for us both. My hand found the Gamespiece without trying, as though it rushed into my hand. I knew then what to do and how to do it as the lizard knows the sun.

 “Come,” I said to the girl, laughing. “Let us have some of this good supper the matron has left us. Tell me about your family. Eyes like yours are too lovely to spoil with tears.” (Was this Peter speaking? Surely. If not Peter, then who? Nobody?)

 Tears were wiped away. Wine was drunk and food eaten; fire allowed to warm skin to a roseate gleaming. Bodies allowed to huddle together for comfort when the howling came, to seek the softness of the mattresses and quilts, to burrow, explore, touch, wonder at, murmur at. Alone, I would have made all stiff, complex, and hateful, but with Trandilar all merely occurred. I seem to recall some howls from within the room, but I cannot be sure. It was of no matter.

 When I awoke, I found her staring at me, the tears running down her cheeks once again.

 “Why are you crying? What’s the matter?”

 “They will arrange a marriage for me,” she sobbed, “with someone awful, and it will never be like this again.”

 Oh, Trandilar. Is nothing ever as it should be?

 Later that morning the Midwife came to the door of our room, as the matron had said she would. The dress of a midwife is red, with a white cowl and owl’s feathers in a crest. She stared at me, then laid hands upon Sylbie with an expression of fierce concentration before shaking her head and turning away without a word. At which Sylbie turned unwontedly cheerful, as suddenly as she had become teary before.

 “You must stay another night,” she crowed. “Nothing happened.”

 I replied, somewhat stiffly, that I felt a good deal had happened, at which she was properly giggly. I had not known before that girls were giggly. Boys are, young boys, that is, in the dormitories of the schools. Perhaps girls are allowed to retain some childhood habits and joys which boys are not. Or perhaps it is only that male Gamesmen are so driven by Talent—but no. The whole matter was too complex to think out. At any rate, the matron came again to give us leave to go into the market while she arranged for the room to be cleaned and food brought in. So the day went by and another night during which I had no real need of Trandilar, and another morning with Sylbie weeping, for this time the Midwife nodded, the owl feathers bobbing upon her head. A child would be forthcoming, it seemed, and the purpose of my being a nobody had been fulfilled. We sat in the window above the street as she shed tears all down the front of my tunic.

 “There is no reason to believe you will not have great pleasure with your husband,” I said. Privately, I thought it unlikely unless he had been taught by Trandilar, until I remembered that Trandilar herself had been taught by someone. “Don’t cry, Sylbie. This is foolishness!”

 “You don’t understand,” she cried. “They will marry me off to someone I don’t even know. Someone old, or bald, or fat as a stuffed goose. Young men don’t get wives with settlements as good as I have, or so my mother says. They have not the wherewithal. Only old men have enough of the world’s wealth to afford a wealthy wife. Oh, Peter, I shall die, die, die.”

 She was such a pretty thing, soft as a kitten, warm as a muffin. I was moved to do something for her, saying to myself as I did so that the occasion for doing helpful things should not pass me by again while I mumbled and mowed and made faces at the moon. So much I had done when Himaggery asked my help. I would not be so laggard in the future.

 “Shh, shh,” I said. “Be still. If I fix it so that you may marry whom you will, will you leave off crying? Sylbie, tell me you will stop crying, and I will work a magic for you.”

 There were kisses, and promises, after which I went off to see the master of that place, a great fat pombi of a merchant Duke with more Armigers around him than any Gamesman needs if he is honest. It was not easy to get to see him. I needed all the Necromancer’s guise to do it. He greeted me coldly, and I resolved therefore to make the matter harder on him than I had intended.

 “I am told that Necromancers have tried heretofore to rid Betand of its spectre,” I intoned. “Without success. I come to do what others have not done, if the price be to my liking.”

 He shifted in the high seat, staring over my shoulder in the way they do. He would not meet the eyes behind the death mask, as though he were afraid I would take out his life and transmit it to another realm before time.

 “What price would you ask?” His voice was all oil and musk, slippery as thrilp skins.

 “One request. Not gold nor treasure. Merely that one of the people of Betand shall be governed according to my will. For that person’s lifetime.” I made my voice sinister. He would assume I wanted torture and death as my portion, being of that kind which would sooner kill anyone than give a woman joy. I know his kind—or Trandilar knew them. Yes. Perhaps that was the way of it.

 “One of my people?” He oozed for a moment, thoughtfully. “Will you say which one?”

 “Not one close to you, Great Duke. I would not be so bold. Merely an insignificant one who has attracted ... my attention.”

 He glanced at his counselors, seeing here a nod, there a covert glance. “What makes you believe you can do what others have not?”

 I shrugged, let a little anger play in my voice. “If I do not, you will not give me my price. If I do, you will pay me. Or I will return worse thrice over. Is this reason enough?”

 At which he gave grudging agreement. I insisted it be put upon parchment, signed before witnesses with the Gamesmen oath. I trusted him as far as I could kick him up a chimney.

 Sylbie and I spent the day together. When evening came I went into the center of the city and called up Dorn, explaining the problem of Betand. There was deep, mocking laughter in my head, a sound as though I had my head in a bell which someone struck softly. When he had done laughing,I became his student once again. “Inside out.” He showed me. “What we would have done, inverted, so, tug, pull, twist so that it becomes this shape instead of that. Oh, this would be good sport if we were drunk. See, over there, under and through, down and over, and under once more—there is your unborn, Peter. It will be born in nine months in any case. Are you sure you want to let it rest? Ah. Well then, down and over and through once more, dismissing it thus: Away, away into time unspent. A way, away into life unused. Be still. At peace. In quiet. And done.” Indeed, when I let Dorn go and walked forth into the streets there was only stillness, peace, and quiet.

 So I went to the Duke and waited with him while his counselors wandered about listening to the stillness. Even then he would have cheated me if he could, saying that none knew whether my Talent would hold. I told him we would let my Talent summon up something else as a demonstration, and he agreed to payment.

 “There is in this city the daughter of a merchant, one Sylbie, well dowered. Last night nobody begot upon her a child which she will bear, come proper season. It is my will that she be allowed to marry as she will, or not as she chooses, no matter what the cost.”

 He bloated like a frog. I thought he would burst, he was so red and purple, and murmurs behind me told me that the Duke had thought of Sylbie for himself. Well and good. If she willed it, good. If she willed it not, then devil take him. I took her the parchment he had signed and told her the names of the witnesses and took oath to lay upon kindred of mine the obligation to see that the Duke’s oath was fulfilled. Then there were more kisses, and more promises to remember, and I left her.

 Well, it was time to make the “periplus of a city,” so I walked all the way around it on the ring-road inside the walls. The “stupration incorporeal” had been attended to, a mere word play on rape by nobody. Now I was in search of a “garment defiled.” In the entire journey, I found only one place that fit, the Dirty Girdle, that same tavern Sylbie had told me of. So, it being almost time for supper, I went in. The name was far worse than the place. It was a drinking place near the vegetable markets and took its name from the farmers’ habit of wiping earthy hands upon the ends of their knotted girdles. The food was good, not expensive, and the people in an ebullient mood, toasting the end of the haunting, for which the Duke had been careful to take credit. When I asked whether “an eyeless Seer” frequented the place, they told me Old Vibelo would be in at dusk. So I drank and listened to the talk and waited for whomever Old Vibelo might be.

 There was some talk of disappearances. A Wizard from a town away east had vanished, as well as a respected Armiger from among his people. This talk reminded me of Himaggery and Windlow, so my earlier feelings of accomplishment and self- satisfaction were much dwindled by the time the blind Seer tapped his way through the door. I greeted him kindly and offered him a meal in exchange for his company. This seemed to surprise him, but he was nothing loath to take advantage of the offer. After a few mugs I could not have stopped the flow of talk had I willed to. So, I asked him the name of the place from which he came, and how he had first come to Betand.

 “Ah, that is a story.” He raised his head and his toothless gums showed between curly lips. “For a man with time to listen, that is a story indeed.”

 I told him I had time. Since I had no idea what the next phrases of Mavin’s enigmatic directions meant, it would be wisest to listen to anything he might offer, hoping that sense would come out of it. “Say away,” I said. “I’ll keep your glass filled.”

 He began talking at once, stopping only long enough to gulp more beer or put more food into his mouth.

 “I was reared in Levila,” he said, “beside the shores of the Glistening Sea where Games are mostly in fun and Seers see nothing but peace. That is east of here some considerable way, Gamesman, some considerable way indeed. We have not so many of the Schools there, you understand, and many of us grow up in our own homes with family, it being a peaceful place.

 “Well, peaceful is well enough, but dull, if you take my meaning. For a young fellow with molten iron in his veins and a heart set for adventure, peaceful is duller than bearable. So, when I was some twenty years in growth, with Talent as good as it was likely to get (not to say it was too great a one, ever, but good enough for some purposes) I made pact with an Explorer to go into the northlands to the headwaters of the River Flish and all the lands beyond. Have you seen an Explorer, Gamesman? Dressed all in bright leathers with a spy glass on the shoulder and a hat made of fur? Fine. Oh, my, yes but I thought that was fine. The moth wings on a Seer’s mask are well enough, but for adventure I would have had an Explorer’s skins every time.”

 He spilled a little beer on the table and traced it with a finger into a long, wavering line. “This would be the River Flish coming from the north into the Glistening Sea. The mountains start up there a ways. There are wild tribes there, pawns who were never tamed since day the first, giant Gifters full of malice, shadow men, oh, you think of something wonderful and you’ll find it there, Gamesman, be sure you will.

 “So we went along and we went along, not greatly discommoded by the travel for we were young fellows all. The land got steep and then steeper yet, so that there were places we were heaving the horses up the rocks with tackle and spending a day to go a league. But at last we came to the headwaters of the river, a great swamp full of reeds and birds and scaly things that came out of the reeds at night to leave horridsome tracks. And there were biting things there, flying things, big as a finger. Twasn’t long before I had been bitten near the eye, and the eye swelled shut so that I could not see on that side. Well, I was not overconcerned. A bite is a bite, and they heal, you know. Save this one did not.”

 “So, the way north was blocked by the swamp, so we turned away toward the west, following the sides of the hills, with me getting blinder in the eye as time went on and feverish from it, too. We had no Healer with us, more’s the shame, and many a night as I lay there heaving and sweating I longed for one. Was then we were attacked by the shadow men. I never saw one, only heard their piping and fluting in the trees and felt the darts whirring by my head. Some of us they got, and some of us had and those they got were dead and those they missed went on, me among them. Well, soon after we came upon a camp full of big men who took us in and gave us food, and seeing how shabby we were and in what bad health, gave us a chart to lead us out of trouble. While they were at it, they gave me stuff to put on the eye which they said would fix it. Came morning they went on away north to wherever they were going, and we took the chart to begin working our way back into civilized lands.

 “We were fools, Gamesman, fools. Young and inexperienced and without the sense to save our necks. The chart was false and the salve for my eye was false, and when we had done with both I was blind and we were lost in the Dorbor Range somewhere, so lost we thought we’d never come out again. They’d been Gifters, you see.”

 “Gifters?” I murmured.

 “Aye. Gifters. Devils in the guise of humankind, generous with gifts which lead only to destruction. Well, we didn’t want to die, not even me, blind as a cave newt. So we worked our way south as best we could. There was stuff to eat enough. We killed mountain zeller and ate berries, and the cliffs were full of springs and streams, so it wasn’t that we hungered. Then we came upon a sizable river running away south. We built ourselves a raft and let the few horses go—poor beasts, they might be living there yet if the pombis didn’t get them—and floated away south.

 “Then it was hell, Gamesman, sheer hell for days on end. There were rocks in the river, and falls, and taking the raft apart and hauling it around obstacles and putting it together again. Once or twice my companions spotted smoke off in the woods, but we didn’t dare see who was there for fear it might be Gifters again. We just went on and went on until we came to a long, placid stretch of river, and then we curled up on the raft and slept. I think we may have slept for some days, because when we came to ourselves we were coming to the town of Zebit, some ways south of here.”

 “South of here,” I said, puzzled. “Bannerwell is south of here.”

 “No, no, Gamesman. Bannerwell is south and a little east. If you go down the west side of the mountains, you’ll come to Zebit, and it is south of here, right enough. The river makes a long curve, so we had floated by Betand in the darkness. The river I speak of flows just west of the city, here, over a low swell of hills.

 “Well, they had all had enough exploring to last them a time, and I wanted only to have a Healer do something with my eyes. Those in Zebit said there was nothing they could do, but they recommended a Healer here in Betand who was said to be very powerful. So I bought a small pawnish boy to be my guide, and we crossed the river there at Zebit and found the trail into the mountains and then north to Betand. It was all nonsense about the Healer. She could do no more than the others. So, here I’ve stayed since, evoking small visions in return for a place to sleep or a bite to eat. The end of my great adventure, the only one I am ever to have.”

 I shook my head, musing, as he nodded, lost in memory and the flow of his own voice. “So,” I said at last, “you came here from the south.” That didn’t help me at all.

 “Oh, you might say so, Gamesman. But I came from the east, you know, and from the north as well. Twas my whole adventure brought me to Betand, and it was in all directions from here.”

 “Save west,” I said, suddenly enlightened.”

 “True,” he murmured, saddened. “I slept in the west, but I did not see it. Oh, I’ve seen it in visions, the sounds of metal, the green lights, the great defenders.”

 Would I had paid him more attention, but I did not. My question had been answered, and I was on fire to be away. So I pressed coins into his hands and left him without hearing what he was going on about. He had come to Betand from every direction except the west, therefore west was the direction I should go. I wondered briefly what guise Mavin had taken to hear the old man’s tale. She may have sat in the same place, buying beer as I had done and listening to him tell the well-rehearsed story. Well. Enough of that and time to be off. I did not even really listen to his tale of the perfidious Gifters. I left the city through the northern gate and would have ridden on at speed save for a voice hailing me from among tents and wains at the side of the road.

 “O, traveler. And were you amused by the city of Betand?” It was that same wide-mouthed trader I had met in the tavern to the south of the city. I remembered he had said he would meet me, but I had paid little attention. Cursing silently, I reined in and waited for him to come up to me.

 “Was it interesting, Necromancer?”

 “The city was not a bad city, Trader.”

 “Nap, friend. Laggy Nap. Oh, yes, Betand is interesting,” he said and again came that lewd laughter I remembered. “Interesting to get for no cost what one must pay for in other places, hmmm?” When I did not reply, he went on, “Well, have you a story to tell?”

 “None, Trader Nap. I have accomplished my business in Betand and now ride west of here. Thank you for your interest.”

 “Oh, more than interest, friend! Much more. Concern. Yes, true concern. We make it a practice, my fellows and I, to befriend any Gamesman traveling alone. It is a wicked world, young sir, an unconscionable world. It takes no account of youth or business. No, only with numbers does protection come. If you ride west, then you ride as we do. Come, let me introduce you to my people.”

 I should have ridden away, simply ignored the fellow and gone, but the habit of courtesy was still too fresh in me. Fretting at the delay, I dismounted and walked with him to the line of wains at the roadside.

 “Izia,” he called. “Come out and greet a Gamesman who travels alone.”

 She came from behind one of the wagons, came like a vision, a Priestess, a Princess, a Goddess. I am sure my mouth dropped open. We had statues in the public square in Schooltown which embodied the ideal of female grace and form. If one of them had come to life and walked, thus was Izia’s walk. Her hair was black without any light in it at all. Her eyes were smudged with deep shadow. Her lips curved downward and upward in the center in that most sensuous of lines, that half smile which is a silent evocation of passion. A few days before I would not have noticed. Now I did. So much had I learned in Betand. She walked with grace, but with a slight ... what was it? A kind of hesitation, a tentative placement of her feet, as though she had some reluctance. So she came beside the wide-mouthed man and said in a soft, neutral voice, “Welcome, traveler. Would you desire food or drink?”

 “Not for me,” I said hastily. I felt I had done nothing but eat and drink for several days. “Truly, and thank you. I must ride on.”

 “We will not hear of it.” The Trader had a firm arm about my shoulders, fingers dug into my upper arm in what might have been a friendly grip but felt like the talons of a bird of prey. “Never. You will ride with us, and we with you, for our mutual protection. If you need to go now, then so will we.” And with that he called instructions to some of the people in the shade of the wagons and provoked a swift turmoil of harnessing and packing. I tried vainly to remonstrate with him, to no avail. Each argument was met with firm, smiling denial, while all the time his eyes looked into my soul without smiling at all. I had never before met one who would, on no acquaintance, call me friend so often in so insistent a voice. Well, what could I do? They were moving out onto the road, going in the way I intended to go. It was with no good grace I accompanied them, but accompany them I did. All the while the woman, Izia, moved among the horses, as I watched her broodingly, clucking to them, speaking softly to them, fingers going to the harness as she murmured into their cocked ears, submitted to the nuzzling of their muzzles. When Nap came near, the animals shied away, but they responded to her as though she had been one of them. She was dressed in a swinging, wide skirt, a tightly-laced bodice over a wide-sleeved shirt, and high gray boots of some strange metallic weave. From time to time she would bend to stroke the boots, or more—to stroke her legs through the boots, first one and then the other, almost without seeming to know she did it. I wondered, once more, at the hesitancy in her step, then decided it must be a thing common to her people, for several of those in the train walked in the same way. Probably, I thought, it was a habit peculiar to whatever land they had come from.

 I cast my mind back to the time when Silkhands the Healer had spent hours and days teaching me all the Gamesmen in the Index. It had been boring at the time, but now I searched the memories to find what type of creature this Laggy Nap might be. “Trader” had been in the Index. I recalled the Talents of a Trader, to hold power, some, and to have beguilement. The dress of a Trader was leather boots, trousers of striped brown and red, wide-sleeved shirt, and over all loose cap and tunic embroidered with symbols of whatever stuff was traded. Laggy Nap’s tunic was covered with embroidered pictures of everything from pans and lids to horses’ heads; tinner to horse dealer, he seemed a man of many trades. None of the others wore the guise of Gamesmen. They were dressed much as the woman was, full short trousers over the gray boots, wide shirts and laced vests. I wondered where they came from but forbore to ask. I did not want to talk to the Trader more than necessary. I did not know why, could not have explained why, but the feeling was strong. It was as though I felt he could hear more in my words than I meant, see more in my face than I cared to show. I smiled, therefore, and nodded as he spoke to me, saying little in return. So are fools sometimes protected by instinct when they are too stupid to do it by wit. So we rode out, me silent as could be, spending most of my time watching the woman. At first it was because I thought her so beautiful, but after a time I saw that she was not so lovely as first glance had told me. Her nose was too long. Her mouth too wide. One eye was a little higher than the other, and she seemed always to have her head cocked as though waiting for the reply to some forgotten question. Still, I could not stop watching her, and I rode so that wherever she was in the train, I would see her as I rode. She drew my eyes as a treasure draws a miser.

 She saw that I watched her and turned her head away, not as if displeased, but as though saddened. I had done nothing to make her sad. There was another reason for that, and I resolved to learn it. Whenever we stopped, she was quick among some of the silent men to bring drink or prepare food, and I tried to talk with her about one thing or another. It was as though she had never learned to speak more than three words at a time. Yes. No. May I bring? Take some ... Her distress at being addressed was so patent that I stopped at last, pretending what I should have pretended from the first—disinterest. It was good I did. Nap was scowling at me when he did not think I saw him.

 There were some eight wains in the train, most of them open wagons loaded high with crates and covered with waterproofs. One or two were fitted up as living places in which the persons of the train might sleep and prepare their food. One was a chilly, small wagon which breathed vapor like a dragon and contained, so Laggy Nap said, perishable foodstuffs accounted great delicacies in the west. The wagons creaked along behind their teams, some of horses and some of water oxen, and the persons driving were silent. Izia was silent. I was silent while Laggy Nap talked and talked and talked of everything and anything and the world.

 So went a day, a night, another day, and in the evening of the second day, as I went to relieve myself in a copse at the side of the road, I realized that I was being guarded. One of the persons in the train walked by the copse, and I recalled that every time I had ridden a little ahead or lagged a little behind, someone had been beside me within moments. Yes, I told myself, you knew it before. It is this which has made you uncomfortable all along. These people are not simply offering you company on the way, they are keeping you, guarding you, and would not let you go away if you tried to escape. I was as certain of it as if I had been told it by Laggy Nap himself.

 I lingered in the copse, within sight of the man who watched me, giving no sign I was disturbed, going over and over in my head the words Mavin had left for my guide. “Befriend the shadows and beware of friends.” She had warned me, and I had not been alert to the warning. Well. So and so. Time enough to be wary now.

 I adjusted my clothing and wandered back to the wagons, pausing now and then to look at a tree or a bush. Were there shadows? If so, where? I saw none, could find none, and was greeted by Laggy Nap at the fire as though I had been away for a year and we were lovers. My throat was dry as autumn grass, and I was afraid. Well, I would learn nothing to help me by silence. It was time to play their Game and hope I had time to yet win something to my benefit.

 So that evening I drank with him, talked with him, told him long tales of Betand, including three thousand things which had not happened there with at least a hundred maidens who did not exist. All the while his wide mouth smiled while his eyes looked coldly into my heart. All the while I kept my eyes away from Izia, praying I had not already harmed her by my interest. Finally, I pretended drunkenness, asked him about this and that. “Have you heard of magicians?” I hiccupped to show that the question was not of importance. “In Betand they talk of ... hic ... magicians.”

 His hand twitched. I saw the jaw tighten over his smile and Izia, where she crouched by the fire, started touching her legs as though wounded, looking up as though she had heard an ugly voice call her name. I put my nose in the cup and made gulping sounds. Something wrong. Well, I would take time to consider it later.

 “Magicians,” he said cheerfully. “No. I don’t think I’ve heard of magicians.”

 “Nor I before,” I babbled, all bibulous naivete. “But there in Betand they talk much of magicians. Why is that, do you think?”

 “Oh, well, it’s a parochial place, after all. Most of the people there are ignorant, superstitious. They must talk of something, and it is amusing to talk of wonders, freaks, Gifters ... yes, Gifters. They talk much of Gifters, but has any one of them ever seen a Gifter?” His eyes watched me over the top of his cup. I met them with a stare in which no glimmer of intelligence showed.

 “No, you know, you’re right!” I slapped my knee, laughed. “No Gifters either, you think? Wonderful. Everyone lighting candles to something which doesn’t exist … marvelous.” I laughed myself into a long stretching movement which let me see Izia. Yes. She still stroked her legs, still frowned into the fire as though in pain. Well. Cold certainty seeped into me. The man meant me no good, no good at all.

 I knew I was right when he came to my blanket to offer me a wineskin, saying, “Some of the vintage we carry to the cities away west. Not that stuff we’ve been drinking. No. Something very special. Thought you’d enjoy it.” Smile, smile, smile. I smiled stuporously in return, took the wineskin and laid it beside me.

 “Generous of you, Trader. Generous. I’ll have a sip of it in a bit. Oh, yes, soon as this last bit settles.” I laughed a little, let my eyes close as though I were too drowsy to stay awake, watching him from beneath my lids. The smiling mouth of him snarled, then took up its perpetual cheer.

 “Sleep well,” he wished me. “Drink deep, and sleep well.”

 “Ah, yes, yes, I will. I will, indeed.” If I drank his gift, I would probably not wake, I told myself. How in the name of Towering Tamor was I to get out of this? A little time went by. Darkness settled. I heard someone going by the place I lay and reached out to catch an ankle. It was Izia, and she crouched beside me saying, “What would you, fool?”

 “Izia, I may be a fool indeed to ask you, but—am I in danger?”

 “Oh, poor fool, you are. And I may not aid you unless I die in more agony than you have ever felt.” She took my hand and laid it upon her boot, high upon her leg, and held it there. Long moments went by. Then I heard Laggy Nap call from the wain, call her name, once again, and beneath my hand the boot began to burn like fire. I drew my hand away with a harsh exclamation.

 “I come,” she called in a clear voice, then knelt to hiss into my ear. “You see, fool. We obey. We obey, obey, obey. Or we burn.”



 4
Befriend the Shadows

  



 WHEN THE CAMP CAME AWAKE in the morning, I pretended a headache and staggering incompetence. During the long waking hours I had decided that Laggy Nap was unsure of my powers, my Talents, and would therefore probably (though not certainly) decide not to attack me directly. No, he would attempt something else, something sly and sneaking like the drugged wine I was sure he had already offered me or, if he wanted me dead, some sneaking murder. So, I decided to appear no threat to him while I found a little time to design some strategy to protect my life. I knew Izia would say nothing. In this I was correct. For the first time I was able to interpret the discipline around me correctly. It was all fear and pain, simply that. Laggy Nap had some mental link or some other control of the boots they wore. The wearer of those boots did Nap’s will or burned. I was led to a remembrance of the devices which Nitch had sewn into my tunic the year before. Were not these torture boots something of the same kind? And were both not similar to the things Mandor had said were Huld’s?

 Well, the provenance of the things did not matter at the moment. My life did. Therefore I staggered and sweated and even managed to vomit in the bushes. Truth to tell, I felt sick enough, though it was not winesickness but strain and fear. Oh, yes, I was fearful. In the night hours I had reached for Dorn. He had come into my mind slowly, reluctantly, murmuring “Necromancer Nine, Peter, Necromancer Nine.” I could get nothing else out of him, and I had not needed that warning that I was at grave risk. I had already figured that out for myself.

 It was not long until Nap confronted me with a false smile and prying questions. Had I drunk the special wine he had given me last night? I answered with vague noddings, sick grins, avowals that one more drop of anything would have killed me indeed. He got no satisfaction, and I knew it would not be more than a few hours before he would try something again. Let him think me an idiot. I did not think much better of myself.

 I needed some other Talent, and this made me fretful, weighing and discarding notion after notion. I could shift into some other form if I left my horse and all belongings behind me. I was reluctant to do that. There was a great distance still to travel, I thought. Instinct told me that Trandilar would not move Nap. He was of a kind impervious to the beguilement of others. He was also of a kind who would not be fearful of the dead. Therefore some other Talent. Not Elator, as that would lose me horse and gear, and Elators could only move themselves between known locations. I knew no location forward on the journey, so any move would lose me leagues already traveled. Armiger? Again, horse and gear lost if I flew away. The Talents of Fire? Or Healing? What good were these to me? A Demon’s Talent for Reading? Perhaps, if that would let me know what was in Nap’s mind. Musing thus, I rode along beside the icy little wagon, seeing the mist rise from it like the mists far behind me in the Bright Demesne. Nothing presented itself as a good strategy. All seemed forced, difficult, possibly dangerous.

 Then I saw the cliffs ahead of us, looming against the lowering sky, for it had been chill and rainy during the early hours and was only now clearing. Cliffs, crumbly at the rim, trailing away in long talus slopes at their bases. An idea began to form, slowly, only bones of thought still to become fleshed and finished. The sun came from behind the clouds, hot and impatient. I reached into the pouch at my belt and found the little image of Shattnir, First Sorcerer, great lady of Power. She did not speak to me as the others had done. Instead, she flowed into my veins and across my skin, bound me around with her net, tied me into her being, and began to take the heat from the sun and place it somewhere within. I could feel it building within me, a tightness, as though my skin were stretched and swollen. I knew my eyes were bulging and my lips turning outward, puffed, but my reflection in the polished harness plate between the horse’s ears showed no change in my appearance. “Not too much,” I begged silently. “Enough, Shattnir, but not too much.” She did not listen but went on taking the power from the bright sky, more and more and more, until at last I gave up waiting to explode and let her find room for it all. When I quit holding my breath, the swollen feeling abated slightly, and evidently there was room for it all for we rode so until the mountains rose across the sun to make a long, violet-gray shade for our stopping place.

 The fires were lit, the silent pawns began their evening chores and routines. Izia moved among the horses, examining their hooves, stroking their glossy hides, murmuring to them. I excused myself to go away from the camp, unsurprised when one of the booted men followed me. I did not go into the copse, however, but up the rocky slope against the cliff, stumbling a little on the scree, seeing loose bits of it slide and rattle beneath my feet with hopeful satisfaction. There was a hollow there, a place where a piece of the cliff had broken away from the main mass leaving a narrow space behind it, no larger than a closet. I eased myself within, watching my follower peering after me. Well enough.

 I reached into the pouch and took the image of Wafnor into my hand, first and greatest Tragamor. I became a room into which a man with a cheerful face entered, laughing, grasping the hands of those there with a fond greeting. Almost I could hear him, “Dorn, Trandilar, Shattnir, how well you all look. Oh, it is good to see my friends again.” And then he was at my side saying, “And what have we to do?”

 Perhaps I told him, perhaps he simply knew. I cannot really describe what it is like. Sometimes it is like telling another person something, sometimes it is like talking to oneself, sometimes simply like knowing. Within me I felt his arms reach up, up along the cliff face, higher and higher to the rimrock fifty manheights or more above, to grasp the stones there and move them, one, two, a dozen, slowly down and down until they began to roll and fall, to tumble clacking against others, knocking, more and more, down, an avalanche of stone, toward my hidden closet behind the stone, a rumbling roar as I shrieked to the man who watched me, “Look out! Rock fall!” One glimpse of his face, a white oval around the round hole of a dark scream.

 Then I could feel nothing and hear nothing except the grating roar of the stones. Still Wafnor reached out to them, stacking this one and that one as they fell, arranging them over me, over and around like a cave while outside the shuddering cave the stones still fell for long moments into a shattered silence.

 There were cracks among the stones around me, little crevices to let in the air and the sound. Through these I could hear the whinnying of beasts, snorts, cries of men, Izia’s scream as she tugged animals away from the tumbling stones. Wafnor reached out once more, across the camp to the place my horse was tethered with my pack and saddle still upon him, urged him away into the trees, out of sight of the camp, calmed the horse there to wait for me. Then Wafnor did nothing, I did nothing, and we merely waited and listened to the sounds.

 “Where is he?” Laggy Nap, raging.

 A voice in answer, shaky, almost hysterical. “I don’t know. He was against the rock, up in there, and it came down on top of him. He screamed at me to look out. You heard him scream. It came down right on top of him ... buried ... covered over.”

 “Devils take it,” Nap screamed. “What started the fall?”

 “Just started. Nothing. Didn’t see anything. No people, nothing moving. No thunder, nothing like that. Just started ...”

 “Shadow men? Did you see shadow men?”

 “Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. He screamed, and the rocks were coming down.”

 Nap once more, this time strident, calling in his servitors. “Get up here, you lot. We’ll have to dig him out!” He sounded frantic. Dig me out? And why? This was unexpected, but Wafnor did not seem disturbed. He reached high once again, sent a few small stones cascading at Nap’s feet, followed by a medium-sized boulder or two. High above I could feel Wafnor’s hands upon the megalith, swaying it.

 “Get back, get back. The whole wall looks to come down. Oh, why did he come up here against the wall. Izia! Did he say anything to you?”

 Her voice. “You know he did not, sir. He has said nothing to me out of your hearing. And now he is dead.”

 “I was told to bring him,” Nap snarled. “Bring him to the west, to Tallman and the mumble-mouths. How can I go empty-handed?”

 “Why would they do anything to you? It is not your fault the cliff fell. It is ill luck, but not your doing.”

 “I have had ill luck since the Shifter sold you to me, fool. Ill luck all the years of our travel. I would you were dead beneath that rock instead of the one I was told to bring.” I heard the sound of a blow, a scream, then long silence.

 A man’s voice at last. “Surely even they understand things that happen which are not foreseen.”

 “Which are nor foreseen! Yes! But which should have been foreseen. I will demand they give a Seer to serve me. Perhaps more than one. When we arrive, I will demand ...”

 “Do we continue on this road, sir?”

 “No. This road goes nowhere. We came this way only to follow that troublesome Necromancer, that death’s-head, that son of a loathsome toad. Oh, I came this way only to trap him, and now he is trapped too deep for me to reach! We go back to River Haws, and north almost to Hell’s Maw, then west by Cagihiggy Water. We can take no time for food. We go now!”

 I heard a voice saying something weary and hopeless about Hell’s Maw, and the sound of another blow. Then were the rattle of harness, the creaking of wheels, the voices of men and one woman dying away to the east, gone. Then long gone. I waited, not moving. Nap was tricky. He might think to leave someone to watch. Night came. I slept. Morning came, and Wafnor moved the stones aside. I was born into the world like a revenant to a Necromancer’s call, squinting in the sun. When I whistled, my horse came from the trees where Wafnor had held him throughout the night. We needed water, he and I, and only when that was taken care of did we ride on to the west. I should have been cheered, but was not. My escape, my safety were shadowed by Izia’s continuing captivity, and she was in my mind during the morning hours, so much so that at last I decided it would do her no good, nor me, this brooding. So, I set my mind firmly upon Mavin’s words, “Befriend the shadows.” Come evening, I would try to do her bidding.

 The way led upward. From a lonely height I could look back along the trail to see a small trail of dust on the eastern horizon.

 Was that Laggy Nap? Izia? Was there something I should have done which I had not? Within me was a kind of consultation, and voices came to tell me there was nothing I could have done, not then, that there were more urgent things for me to do. Still, I felt the queasiness of one who leaves a needful task undone. Though I tried not to think of her, she was much in my mind.

 And still in my mind in the evening. I watched from beside my fire, waiting for evidence of shadow men. I saw nothing, heard nothing except an occasional interruption of insect sounds as though something might have walked among them. Morning came, gray and dripping, and I rode on west to another evening and another fire. I reached out to Trandilar, begged her for a blandishment, a beguilement to charm birds, small beasts, whatever might be within sight or smell of me. She let it flow through me and breathe into the air, a perfume, a subtle fragrance of desire. Watching quiet greeted it, a silent attention. I could not say how I knew they were there, but I knew it. I slept at last, weary with waiting for them to come to me.

  

 In the morning I journeyed beside a stream which became a small river. I had come high onto a tilted upland that slanted down toward the west, and the river I followed was fed from all sides by swiftly flowing rivulets making conversational noises over the polished stones of their beds. By day’s end I began to smell something strange, a vast wetness, like that of the Gathered Waters, but different in some way I could not describe. Suddenly, the air before me was full of rainbows, the river plunged away through a notch in the land, and I could see the waters below, a mighty sea stretching beyond sight into the west. The evening wind was in my face, thrusting the waters onto the beach below in long combers of white. A twisting path wound down the face of the cliffs, and at the bottom the beaches reached away north and south in a smooth curve into which the elevated land behind me dropped and vanished. Some little distance to the north was an inlet bordered with trees, a grassy bank, a pool of still water over which white flowers nodded their heads and devil’s needles dipped glassy wings. The horse stumbled with tiredness; I licked lips wet with salt and almost fell when I dismounted. There was no sound but water talk, yet I knew something was watching me, had been watching me for days. I was too weary to eat so only pulled the saddle from the horse and rolled myself into a blanket to sleep dreamlessly.

 It was dark when I woke, dark lit by a half moon. Some sound had wakened me, some cry. I stared across the moonlit waters to see a boat, a long, low boat like those carried on larger ships. It seemed empty, but I had heard a cry. The boat showed only as an outline against a kind of glow, a subtle luminescence, nebulous and equivocal. It drifted toward me, grated on the pebbles of the beach and rocked there, each wave threatening to carry it out once more. In my sleep-befuddled mind it seemed fortuitous, a boat to carry me west. I stumbled out of my blanket, still half asleep, intending to pull the boat further onto the shore.

 Then, as I stumbled toward the boat, an anguished keening came out of the dark, and I was stopped, unable to move further. There were little arms about my legs, thrusting me back, tugging at me, moving me away from the boat. Between me and the impalpable glow, I could see their figures outlined. Two or three of them carried something among them, a balk of timber perhaps—something bulky. They went close to the boat, heaved their burden high and ran wildly away. The bulky burden fell within the boat.

 And the boat tilted upward, rose into the air, became the end of an enormous pillar to which it was attached, a monstrous, flexible arm upon which it was only a leaf-shaped tip, one among many mighty tentacles thrashing upward in a maelstrom of sinew to tangle themselves around the “boat” and carry it beneath the surface. The little fingers pushed me back, back, and from the waters those tentacles came once more, questing across the pebbles with palpable anger to find the prey they had been denied. Against the watery glow I thought I saw a nimbus outlining an eye, rounder than the moon and as cold, peering enormously at the small shadowy figures which capered on the pebbled shore and hooted as they danced.

 They were quadrumanna, the four-handed ones, shadow people, silky-furred, with ears like delicate wings upon their heads and sharp little teeth which glinted in the half light of the stars. All through the hooting and warbling they never ceased to tug at me, back away from the water’s edge, back to the place I had slept. As we went they acted out the rage of the water creature, letting their long, supple arms twist like the tentacles, dropping them onto the pebbles in an excess of artful rage. “Hoc, hoc, boor, ocr, ocr.” Others gathered from the streamside until I was surrounded by a jigging multitude. All sleep had been driven away. I fed sticks into a hastily kindled fire, watching the celebration.

 One of them brought me a fruit, which I ate, and this moved others to bring me bits of this and that, some of which smelled and tasted good, others which I could not bring myself to put in my mouth. They learned quickly. If I rejected a thing, they brought no more of it. After a time the excitement dwindled, and they gathered in crouching rows to watch me. I reached to the nearest, patted him (or her, or it) saying, “Friend.” They liked that. Several mimicked my word in my own voice, and others took it up, “Friend, rend, end, end, end.” At this, a silvery one from among them was moved to stand and come to my side, to strike his chest with an open hand. “Proom,” he said. “Proom. Proom.”

 I tapped his chest, said “Proom,” then struck my own. “Peter.”

 “Peter, eater, ter, ter,” they murmured, enchanted.

 The grizzled one waved at the waters, at the tremulous surface, mimed a swimming stroke, raised his hands in the writhing mime of tentacles. “D’bor.”

 I pointed to the waves and repeated the word. He nodded. It seemed to be going well from his point of view.

 “D’bor, nononononono,” he said proudly, miming swimming once more. “nonononono.”

 I laughed. “Nonononono.” I agreed, at which we both nodded, satisfied. Mavin’s words came to me. “Walk on fire, but do not swim in water.” Surely. Water was a nonononono.

 Well then, walk on fire I would, if I could find any. I fed sticks to the fire, building the blaze high, then stood to point both hands toward it in a hierarchic gesture before walking around it, one hand over my eyes, peering into the darkness north, west, south, and east, then pointing to the fire once more. They conferred among themselves, a quiet gabble. The grey one pointed to the fire, “Thruf,” he said. Then he turned toward the north. “Thruf,” he said again, indicating something big, bigger, huge.

 I mimicked his mime, used his word. “Thruf,” made walking motions. The soft gabbling continued among them, and several got up to come after me, following, walky-walky in the soft grass, going nowhere. They giggled. Evidently several would go with me, when I went. Time enough to go when the sun came up, or so I thought. They thought otherwise. The ones who had appointed themselves, or had been appointed, for all I knew, took up my belongings and went to get my horse, standing nose to nose with the beast as each made whiffling noises of intimate interrogation and reply. Nothing would do but that I mount the animal and go along quietly as they led him. Well enough. If I put my mind to it, I could almost sleep in the saddle. So we went, along the pebbled shoreline of the waters—though well back from the edge—toward the north. The sky grew dim, milky with dawn, and my guides showed consternation amounting almost to agitation. There was an abrupt halt to forward movement, a casting about from place to place, then a long “hoor-oor-oor” from a forested slope. The others followed it and brought me to a cave let, dark as a nostril in the side of the mountain. They laid my belongings down, made quick forays into the wood for dry branches and twigs, piled these beside the wall of the hill, then vanished within the darkness to a trailing “hoor-oor-oor-oor.” I decided this meant hello, goodbye, and here-I-am. I called softly after them. The answer was silence.

 So. I was abandoned for the daylight hours. Their huge eyes and winglike ears should have told me they were creatures of the dark. I had the day before me and was not sleepy, so I went fishing. It took half the day to make a proper fish spear and half the afternoon to spear fish enough for the troop. I had a nap and built the fire up before they appeared at dusk. I was not long in doubt whether they liked fish, for there was much smacking of narrow lips, rubbing of round bellies, and hooting of a melodious kind. When they had eaten every scrap of skin and sniffed the bones several times, they urged me into the saddle once more to ride throughout the night. Again, they led while I slept, waking only a little now and again to see a changed horizon, a mountain moved from before me to behind me. I told off the days of my journey, counted them, named them over. Tomorrow, I told myself, would be rabbit day. I had little food left in the saddle bags and we had left the stream behind us.

 So it went, rabbit day succeeded by dove day, succeeded by fish day II, succeeded by the day we ate greens and nuts. The little people were mightily disappointed at this, but I had had no luck at all in the hunt. We had come to a stretch of moorland crossed by tiny rivulets. There was greenery aplenty, but nothing seemed to be feeding on it but us. That night, half way through the dark hours’ travel, I saw the glow of fire upon the horizon, half hidden behind a bulk of hill. Before morning it stood plain before us, fountains of fire, and behind them more fountains yet to the limits of vision. “Thruf,” gabbled my escort in great satisfaction. “Thrufarufarufaruf” I presumed that this meant more fires than one.

 As there were. Soon we walked among them, the glowing hills around us closer and more difficult to avoid. Flames erupted from hidden vents in the stone, liquid fire ran into crevasses to glow and breathe like embers, nearer and nearer. Soon we came to a place where there was no avoidance possible. Directly before the horse’s nose a wide strip of glowing lava lay, shining scarlet in the light wind, crusted and scabbed with cinder. The horse shuddered and refused to go further. “Chirrup,” said one of the shadow people importantly, pulling at my leg. “Chirrup.” They pulled my things from the home’s back, handing me some of them to carry, carrying others themselves. Then, without hesitation, the chirruping four-handed one set his furry feet onto the glowing stone. Others followed, one re­maining behind to hold the horse. “Walk on fire,” I told myself, sweating, waiting for the pain to burn upward through the soles of my boots. Nothing. Around me the crackle of flames, but my feet were cool. “Chirrup,” my guide called. “Thrufarufarufarufamf”

 We walked as on a road of glass. The appearance of fire was only reflection from the geysers and fountains to either side. Rivers of fire ran beside us. Heaped mountains of half molten stuff built into fantastic shapes. From these came heat as from a furnace, but upon the road we walked it was cool. We seemed to be crossing a narrow neck of the fiery land between two towering heights crowned with spouting smoke which boiled upward toward the bloody cloud, hideous and heavy with ash and rain. Before me the little ones began to run, gamboling from side to side of the way. “Chirrup, chirrup, Peter, eater, ter, ter.”

 An answering call came from ahead. We ventured between the last flaming fountains to emerge upon a hillside, green and cool, with a steady wind blowing the heat away and a glint of water showing among the trees. The little ones leapt on, me laboring after them, wishing I had taken time to pack properly and roll my blankets so they would not fall around my feet. As it was, I arrived in a shambling rush, half tripped up by trailing bedstuffs, red-faced from the heat and the hurry, to fall on my face before the one who awaited us. She did me the discourtesy of laughing rudely.

 “Rise, Sir Gamesman,” she said, sneering at the tumbled stuff around me. She turned away to hold a multi-syllabled conversation with the quadrumanna which seemed to much delight them, for they giggled endlessly and rolled upon the ground clutching at themselves.

 “I have asked them,” she said, “if you are one of the mythical tumble-bats who roll themselves endlessly through the world not knowing their heads from their tails. They are inclined to believe this, though they say you are a good provider and are, possibly the one whose travel was arranged for by Mavin Manyshaped. Are you indeed he?”

 “She is my mother,” I said wearily.

 “Ah. Well then, you are he. Mavin has not so many sons that we would mistake one of them for another. Your name would be Peter?”

 “Yes. And yours?”

 “You may call me Thynbel, or Sambeline. Or anything else you would rather.”

 I grasped at the last name. Sambeline. “Did my mother arrange for you to meet me?”

 “Indeed, no. She arranged for me to meet the people of Proom to pay them for their trouble in guiding you here. Though they say they are already well paid since they have your horse.”

 “My horse? What will they do with my horse?”

 “It may be they will sell him, but I think they will eat him.” I could think of no reply to this. It was not a horse I had loved or cared for, but still, it was a good horse. A well-trained horse. A horse which had served me well. “If you pay them, would they consent not to eat the horse?”

 “It may be. Or I may pay them and they may eat the horse regardless. But I will try for you.”

 So she did, engaging in a lengthy and intricate argument, full of words which echoed themselves endlessly. At last the little people giggled a final round, held out their hands for their pay, and had put into those hands a wealth of silvery bells and metal flutes, bright as the sun. They clasped my legs, slapped my sides, called me “Peter, eater, ter, ter” one last time and went capering back down the trail of false fire into the distant dawn.

 Sambeline waved at them, turned to me, saying, “They say they will turn the horse loose in the meadows until you return. Peter. They may do that. They may forget. They may do it and then forget and eat it later. They forget a lot, those little ones. They forget where they put their bells and flutes. They lose them by the dozens. So they are always eager for more and are willing to be paid. If they did not lose things, they would not work for us at all. Now they will have music for a time and sing many long songs of their trip to the firelands with the son of Mavin Manyshaped.”

 I finished packing my things into more compact bundles and strapped them together into a pack I could carry. She made no offer to help, merely sneered at these efforts. I said, “I must needs go further, but you say you are not my guide?”

 “No. I will go with you a short way. You are in the land of Schlaizy Noithn, the land of the Shifters. None can guide you here. This is Schlaizy Noithn and no roads run the same here. Not for long. Where do you want to go?’’

 I sat upon the pack. The dawn had uncovered a green land, forested, flowing with rivers and spotted with pools and lakes. It lay beneath the height on which we stood, stretching north and west in a lovely bowl which cupped at the edge of vision to other heights. “I seek the monument of Thandbar,” I said. “Can you tell me where to find it?”

 “You think unshifterish,” she commented, “when you ask where in Schlaizy Noithn you would find the monument of Thandbar.”

 I thought on this. It made a certain kind of sense. Thandbar had been the first and greatest of Shifters. Surely his memorial would not be a stable, unchanging thing. It would change, move, shift. “If you had to find it,” I asked her, “where would you look?”

 “Up and down, here and there, among, between, around, in and out of,” she said.

 “Upon,” I offered. “Within, beneath, through and over.”

 “Exactly.” she replied. “That is more shifterish. There may be hope for Mavin’s outland son.”



 5
Schlaizy Noithn

  



 DURING THE TIME THAT FOLLOWED I learned of shifterish behavior, and thoughts, and habits. How could this be summed up so that you will understand, you of the world in which mountains do not walk and roadways do not run; you of the world in which you wake in the same place you have slept, find your way by landmarks, travel by maps and charts? Having made one journey in the little lake ship, I had seen, though learned nothing of the art of, guidance by the stars. In Schlaizy Noithn, that is what I did, for nothing but the stars remained unchanging through the nights and days of travel. I despair of explaining “shifterish” to you except to say that it is difficult for one reared in a Schooltown. And yet, from what I learned later, that rearing had been a mercy my Mother had given me which many young Shifters would have been glad to receive. Well, there is no better way to tell it than to tell it, as Chance would have said. So I will tell.

 I entered the country of Schlaizy Noithn with Sambeline walking beside me. I said something or other, and she replied, making a remark about Mavin being much respected there, and after a short silence I turned to say something to her but found a huge, shambling pombi walking beside me, its monstrous head swinging to and fro with each step, long tongue lolloped between fangs of curved ivory. I was too frightened to do anything. My first thought was that this beast had killed Sambeline and left her bleeding body somewhere behind us, but when the beast looked up at me abstractedly before leaving the path to climb a hollow tree, to which it clung with one great, clawed foot while dipping into the hollow with the other to suck the honey-dripping paw with every evidence of pleasure, I began to guess that pombi and Sambeline were one. When the pombi blurred, shifted, and flew away through the trees on wide wings of softest white, calling a two pitched oo-ooo as it went, when the honey tree shock itself and moved away through the forest on roots suddenly as flexible as fingers, leaving me alone, then I began to know what shifterish meant. I began to understand why it was that Sambeline had sneered at my belongings. Does a pombi need a blanket? A cookpot? A firestarter? I put down the pack and stared at it, unwilling to leave it and yet sure it marked me as nothing else could—stranger, outsider, outlander. Was this dangerous or otherwise? I could not tell.

 Among the Gamesmen of Barish there were sixteen tiny figures representing Shifters. In an ordinary set of Gamesmen, such as are given to children for their little two-space games, these would be the pawns. In my set, Shifters; and one of them, or perhaps all of them held the persona of Thandbar, old sent-far himself, shiftiest of all. Presumably none of this would have been strange to him, and yet I never thought of taking a Shifter figure into my hand, never considered it. Later I wondered why I had not done. It was simple enough: pride. Shifting was my own talent, the one to which I had been born. I wanted no instruction in it from another. I wanted it to be mine. So, out of ignorance and pride, all unprepared for what I would meet or see or be required to do, I went on into the country of Schlaizy Noithn quite alone. So. I sat upon a hill beside a grotesque pile of stones, twisted and warped as though shaped thus when molten, making an uneasy meal of fish. These were unusual fish in that they had not howled and climbed up the fish spear to engulf my hands with a maw of ravening fury before melting into a swarm of butterflies and scattering into impalpability against the sky. Because these fish were quiet, these fish, reason said, were real fish, edible fish. Reason said that. Stomach was uncertain.

 Beside me the warped stones grated into speech, moving slowly as lips might if they were as wide and tall as a man.

 “Whoooo suuuups in Schlaaaaaizeee Noiiiiithnnnn?”

 I said, “Peter, the son of Mavin Manyshaped,” while trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my breast. The stone said nothing more. However, a long spit of earth began to grow from beside me, upward and outward like a curving branch of the living hill, out to turn again and look at me, opening from its tip a curious eye of milky blue, lashed with grasses, which blinked, blinked, blinked at me, staring. It stared while the fish cooked, while I ate them, while I scrubbed my knife and put it away, while I put out the fire, then turned to stare after me still as I walked away. When I looked back at the crest of the next hill, the eye had grown a bit taller to keep me in view.

 Sometimes the road moved. Sometimes it moved in the direction I was going, sometimes sideways, sometimes backwards. Sometimes it jumped, like a cranky horse hopping when it is first saddled. When the road went against my direction, I got off as soon as possible, always apologizing for doing so—or for having been on it in the first place. It was hard to walk unless there was a road, for the land was full of impassable tangles. Sometimes the roads spoke to me, sometimes they cursed me. Once a road held fast to my feet while it carried me back a full day’s journey. Will you understand my stupidity when I tell you that I walked the day’s journey again on my own two feet, carrying my pack?

 They—whoever they were—grew impatient.

 I stopped when it grew dark, took my firelighter out of the pack and laid kindling beneath it, ready for the spark. The kindling reached up and flipped it out of my hands to be caught by a bird sitting on a stone. The bird flew away, carrying the firelighter in her claws, and I seemed to hear small, cawing laughter from the air. I cursed, cursed the place, the inhabitants, myself. Nothing seemed to hear me or care, save that the tops of the trees moved in a wind I had not felt till then and clouds began to boil in the sunset, so many puffy gray dumplings in a red soup of sky. Within moments it began to rain. My kindling grew legs and walked into the brush. I rolled myself into my blankets and nibbled on a handful of nuts collected during the day’s travel. A stag came out of the forest, trumpeted challenge to another which appeared from behind me; the two charged one another over my body. I rolled, frantic, scraped across stones which left me bleeding, sat up to see the two stags running into the trees, my blankets caught upon their antlers.

 I sat beneath a tree, water dripping down my neck, without blankets, without fire, the rain continuing in an endless, mocking stream. Whenever I moved, it found me. There was no shelter near except a hollow high in the tree into which wings flickered from time to time, outlined against flashes of lightning. I was cold. My clothes were little use except to hold some warmth against my body. I felt a little tug at one ankle. The next lightning flash showed a small, razor edged vine cutting the seams of my trousers while a tendril sifted a kind of powder on my boots. Two lightning flashes later and the boots were sprouting fungus from every surface, huge, soggy sponges covering my feet. Wings flickered into the hollow five man-heights above me, an opening as wide as my armspan into the great tree.

 A kind of dull fury began to pound in me, a discomfort so great that my body rebelled against it. There was no thought connected to it at all. Something deeper and more ancient than thought did as it wished, and Peter did nothing to oppose it. My claws struck deep into the corky bark of the tree. My long, curved fangs gleamed in the lightning. Above me was a consternation of birds, and my pombi-self smiled in anticipation. I came through the opening into the hollow in a rush, a crunch of jaws, a flap of great paws catching this and that flutterer, to make a leisurely meal of warm flesh as I spat feathers out of the opening and watched the storm move away across the fax hills. When it was quiet, I curled into the dry hollow, pausing only to rip out a strip of rotted wood which made a small discomfort against my hide. I slept. It was warm within the tree, and the fury passed as the storm passed.

 I woke remembering this dimly, in my own body shape, naked as an egg. Below me the remains of my pack lay on the ground. A few straps and buckles. A knife. Beside me in the hole was the pouch in which the Gamesmen of Barish were stored. Evidently even in fury I had not let them go. I went down the tree as I had come up it, pombi-style, the pouch between my teeth. Once on the ground, however, I became Peter once more, furred-Peter, with a pocket in the fur to hold the Gamesmen. It was no great matter. I wondered then, as I have since, why it took so long to think of it or decide to do it. The knife would have fitted into the pocket as well, but I left it where it lay. The pombi claws would cut as well.

 As the sun rose higher and warmer, my fur grew shorter ex­eept upon the legs and feet where it was needed as protection against the stones and briars. When it grew cool with evening, fur became long again. The body did it. Peter did not need to think of it. The body thought of longer legs on occasion, as well, and of arms which were variably long to pick whatever fruits were ripe. That day I ate better than in many days past. No fruit tore itself screaming from my hands. No fish or bird turned into a monster over my fire. Some things I let alone, and the body knew which. After a time, the eyes knew, also, and then the brain.

 There were trees one did not approach, hills one stayed away from, roads one did not step upon. There were others which were hospitable, or merely “real.” There were artifacts in Schlaizy Noithn. Monuments. Cenotaphs. Monstrous menhirs which looked as though they had been erected in the dawn of time. Some had been put there by people. Gamesmen, perhaps. Or pawns. Some were Shifters, beings like myself (or so I thought) in the act of creation. I learned to trust the body’s feeling about these places. If they were “real” then I might explore or take shelter there. If they were not, it were far better to stay a comfortable distance away. I did not yet know of other kinds of things, neither real nor Shifter, kinds of things my body would not warn me of. What betrayed me to one of these was simply loneliness.

 Days had gone by. I had lost count of them. I had quartered the valley in search of the monument of Thandbar. I had searched and had begun to despair, for who was to say the monument had not moved always before me, or behind me? I had not seen a human form since Sambeline had flown away. I had wondered from time to time whether they used the human form only on some ceremonial occasions for some purpose of high ritual in the pursuance of their religion, whatever that might be. In any case, they did not show human form to me. I saw animals which were not animals, things apparently of stone and earth which were not, trees and plants which never sprouted from seed or tuber, but I did not see mankind. Even furred-Peter was far closer to his reality than many others there.

 So, when I came upon the Castle, lit from a hundred windows, with a soft breath of music stirring from it into the airs of the night, I was needful more than I could say of that refreshment which comes from one’s own kind. I was growing unsure of who I was, what I was. Was I only furred-Peter, running wild in the wilderness, an animal among others, gradually forgetting why I had come and to what end? I needed to be more than that.

 So it called me where it stood upon its hill, brooding there over the silvered meadows, its great ornamental pillars contorted into bulbous asymmetries, casting lakes of shadow onto the grasses before me, making swamps of darkness within its courts. Its doors were open, welcoming. There was no warning. It was grotesque, misshapen, abnormal, but not fearsome. I was too lonely to be fearful. I shifted into a more civilized form, relishing the feel of clothing again, the weight of a cloak upon my shoulders. I had learned that clothing was no problem. One simply made it of the same stuff one used to make one’s skin. I walked under the arch, hands empty to show I was no enemy. Here was no portcullis to grind gratingly into stone pockets, no bridge to fall thunderingly upon the pavement. No, only an open way. the floor a mosaic design which swirled and warped, leading away in unexpected directions, returning from unexpected shifts and erratic lines. Looking at it made my head swim, but I told myself it was hunger for talk, for people, for a fire, for food that was cooked, for the trappings of humanity. The name of the place was carved over the great door. “Castle Lament.” Well, A name without cheer, but not for that reason damnable. I had been in other places with sad names.

 The door swung wider before me, and I went through. Then it shut behind me.

 How can I describe that sound? The door was not huge, no larger than in many great halls. It shut softly but with the sound of a door twenty times its size, a monstrous slam as of a mighty hammer, slightly clamoring, briefly echoing, fading into a silence which still reverberated with that sound, and all down the monstrous bulk of that place came the sound of other doors shutting with an equal finality, an inevitable shutting which I could not have imagined until that moment. I was shut in. I turned to beat my hands against the door, then stopped, afraid of what might come in answer to that knocking, for the sound of closing had been like jaws snapping shut, like hands clapping around fluttering wings, to hold, and hold, and hold until hope went, and life. It was the sound teeth might make, fastening in a throat.

 I was terribly afraid, so afraid that I did nothing for a long moment, scarcely breathed, crouched where I was, peering into the place, seeing it as in a nightmare. At last I moved.

 There were stairs which climbed from the audience hall over bottomless pits of black, arching against pillars to coil, snakelike, about them and climb upward to high pavements littered with a thousand half carved heads of stone which smiled at me and begged me in the voices of children for food, for the light of the sun, for escape. They rolled after me as I walked among them, pleading. I slipped through a door and shut it against their clamor, against the insistent knocking of the stone heads against the door.

 There were roofless rooms with walls which seemed to go forever upward into darkness and at the top of that darkness the sound of something poised enormously and rocking, rocking, rocking. There were prodigious arches, windows leading into enclosed gardens in which stone beasts looked at me from wild eyes as though they wanted desperately to move. There were great halls in which fires burned and tables were set with steaming foods. I did not eat. I did not drink. But Shattnir within me drew the heat of those fires and stored it.

 When I could go no further, it was beside one of the incredible hearths that I sat, hunkered upon a carpet woven with patterns of serpents and quadrumanna in intricate chase and capture. Shattnir drew power, and drew, and drew. Half sleeping, I let her draw, let her make me one great vessel of power. Far off through the halls of that place I could hear sounds once more, as of doors softly opening and closing, and I was afraid of what might be coming. My hand went into the pocket at my side. “Come, Grandmother,” I whispered. “Divine Didir, come ...”

 What came in answer to that clutching invitation was old, so old that my mouth turned dry and my skin felt crumbled and dusty. Ages settled on me, a thousand years or more. It was only a skin, a shriveled shell. There was nothing there, nothing—and then the skin began to fill, drawing from me, from Shattnir, from the world around us, began to swell, to grow, to push me from within until I thought there would be no place left for me to stand, and I cried in panic. “Stay, stay. Leave me room!” Then there came a cessation, a withdrawing, and a voice which whispered out of ancient years, “I see, I see, I see.”

 I sensed Dorn within, and Dorn’s awe; Trandilar, bowing down; Wafnor, head up, smiling; Shattnir offering her hand to that One I had raised from the ages. Grandmother Didir, Demon, First of all Gamesmen of the dim past, She who could Read the mind of this place, this monstrous place, if She would. If I had known the awe those others would feel, I would not have had the effrontery to raise Her up. I am glad, now, that I did not know. My other inhabitants had not been ignorant of my fear, now She was not ignorant of it. I heard all their voices, hers rising above them like a whisper of steel, infinitely fine, infinitely strong.

 “Well, child. You have found a dangerous place.”

 “Sorcerer’s Power Nine,” whispered Shattnir. “Necromancer Nine,” said Dorn.

 “Nonsense,” she said. “Dangerous, not deadly. We old ones do not easily admit to ‘deadly,’ do we, child?”

 I did not move, for she was reaching out from me, using the power Shattnir had gathered, reaching out through the very fabric of that labyrinthine construction to find its center, its mind. I felt the search go on and on, felt the blank incomprehension of the mighty walls, the stony ignorance of the pillars and stairs while she still searched, outward and outward from me to the very edges of the place. Nothing.

 Down the corridor, a door opened.

 “Below,” she whispered, sending that seeking thought out and down, through mosaic floors and damp vaults, down to bottomless dungeons and endless catacombs which stretched beyond the walls away into lost silences. Nothing.

 The door shut. It seemed to me that I could hear Didir grit her teeth, a tiny grinding itch in my brain. “Up,” and the mind went once more, more slowly, painstakingly, sifting each volume of air, each rising stair, climbing as the structure climbed into the lowering sky, wrapping each rising tower as a vine might wrap it, penetrating it with tiny thoughts like rootlet feet, to the summit of it all, the wide and vacant roofs. Nothing.

 Just outside the room in which we were, not twenty paces down that great corridor, we heard a door open, heard the waiting pause, then heard it shut once more with that great, muffled sound as of an explosion heard at a distance. Oh. Lords of all Creation, we stirred in fear. Those within me gave shouted warning, but I needed none of them. I flowed up the wall, calling upon the power Shattnir had stored, flowed like climbing water, until I lay upon that wall no thicker than a fingernail, stretched fine and thin and transparent as glass, seeing through my skin, feeling through my skin, knowing and hearing with every fiber as the door into the room opened and something came through. The door shut once more. But within the room something hissed, something ancient and malevolent. I could feel it, sense it, knew that it was there, but it was not there to any known sense of seeing. Protogenic and invisible, it filled the room, pressed against the walls, pressed against me in a fury of ownership of that space, that structure. Then slowly, infinitely slowly, without relinquishing any of the threatening quality, a door at the far side of the room opened and that which had inhabited the room flowed away. Behind it the door shut with that absolute finality I had heard over and over again.

 “It knew someone was here,’’ whispered Didir within. “But it did not know where you were.” I slid down the wall to lie in a puddle at its base, a puddle in which the little pouch which held the Gamesmen of Barish seemed the only solid thing.

 “Pull yourself together, boy,” said Didir sternly. “Give me a shape I can think in!” She slapped at me, a quiver of electric pain which cared nothing for the shape I was in. I struggled into the form of furred-Peter, placed the Gamesmen in my pocket and waited. Far off and receding came the clamor of the great doors. I eavesdropped then upon a conversation among ghosts. Dorn and Didir, Wafnor and Shattnir, with Trandilar as an interested observer, all talking at once, or trying to, as I tried to stay out of my own head enough to give them room. It went on for a long time, too long, for down the echoing corridors the sounds of the doors returned.

 “Enough,” I snapped, patience worn thin. “None of you is listening to the others. Be still. Let me have the use of my head!” There was a surprised silence and a sense almost of withdrawal, perhaps amused withdrawal. I didn’t care. Let them laugh at me as they would. It was my body I needed to protect.

 I set out my findings as Gamesmaster Gervaise had once taught me, high in the cold aeries of Schooltown, setting out the known, the extrapolated, the merely guessed. “Didir finds no mind in this place. If there were a mind, Didir would find it, therefore, there is no mind here. Nonetheless, we are in a place which shows evidence of intelligence, of design, a place which probably did not occur by accident or out of confusion. Therefore, if there is no mind now, at one time there was. If it is not here, it is gone—or elsewhere.” I waited to be contradicted, but those within kept silent.

 I went on obstinately, “Despite all this, there is something in the place, something primordial and evil, which allows outsiders to come in but will not let them out again. It is a trap, a mindless trap, inhabited by what?”

 “A devil?” The voice was Wafnor’s, doubtful.

 “What are devils?” asked Didir. Silence.

 “What is left when the mind dies?” This was Dorn, thoughtful. “If the body were to go on living, after the mind were dead.” I thought. Beneath Bannerwell, in the dungeons there, after the great battle, we had found several Gamesmen with living bodies whom Silkhands the Healer had cried over, saying they should be allowed to die for their minds were already dead, root-Read, burned out, leaving only what she called living meat. They had breathed, swallowed, stared with sightless eyes at nothing. Himaggery had let her have her way, and she had sent them into kind sleep. Didir read my memory of this.

 “What mind does the lizard have upon the rock?” she asked. “What mind the crocodilian in the mire? Mind enough to eat, to breathe, to fight, to hold its own territory against others of its kind—of any kind. So much, no more. No reason, no imagination.”

 “How long,” breathed Dorn. “How long could it survive?”

 “Forever,” whispered Didir. “Why not? What enemies could stand against it?”

 “So, I questioned them, ‘‘the creator of this place is ... dead? Perhaps long dead? But something of ... it ... survives, some ancient, very primitive part?”

 Outside the room the hissing began, the door began to open. I flowed across the wall once more, quickly, for it entered the room in one hideous rush of fury. I sensed something which sought the intruder, something ready to rend and tear. This time it stayed within the room for a long, restless time, turning again and again to examine the room, the surfaces of it, the smell and taste of it. Terrified time passed until at last it flowed away again, out the other door, away down the corridors of the place.

 “How do we stop it?” They did not answer me. “Come,” I demanded. “Help me think! Was the place built? Or is it rather like that hillside I sat upon which spoke to me? Are we within the body of a Shifter?”

 “It doesn’t matter.” said Wafnor. “Call upon my ancestor, Hafnor, the Elator, who is among the Gamesmen. Call upon him and we will be transported from this place …”

 I gritted my teeth at the temptation. “Had I desired that, I would have called him rather than Grandmother Didir. Think of the stone heads. The beasts in the gardens. Shall we leave them here forever to cry out their pain?” This was presumptuous of me, but I had resolved that no cry for help would find me wanting in the future. The fate of Himaggery and Windlow—and, perhaps, Izia—burned too deep within me, the guilt too fresh to allow another yet fresher. I felt them move within me, uneasily, and it made me feel dizzy and weak, depleted of power.

 “Ah, well,” said Wafnor from within. “If we cannot find the mind, then we must attack the body.”

 I felt him reaching out with his arms of force, out and out to a far, slender tower upon the boundary of the building, felt him push at it using all the power Shattnir had built up for him. The tower swayed, rocked, began to fall. From somewhere in that vast bulk came a screaming hiss, a horrid cacophony of furious sound, a drum roll of doors opening and closing down the long corridors toward that tower. Like a whip, Wafnor’s power came back to us, reached once more, this time in the opposite direction. He found a curtain wall over a precipice and began to hollow the earth from beneath it, swiftly, letting the stone and soil tumble downward as the bottom layers weakened. I felt the wall begin to go, slowly, leaning outward in one vast sheet which cracked and shattered onto the stones far below. Within the castle the sound of fury redoubled, a rushing of wind went through the place from end to end, seeking us, searching for us. The hissing grew to a roar, a frenzied tumult.

 “The thing is hurt,” said Didir. “See the doors...”

 Indeed, the doors stood open into the corridor, open here and there up and down that corridor, moving as though in a wind, uncertain whether to open further or close tight. Wafnor reached out once more, this time to a point of the wall midway between his two former assaults, once more undermining the wall to let it shatter onto the mosaic paving in a thunder of broken stone. The door before us began to bang, again and again, a cannonade of sound. Between one bang and the next came a long, rumbling roar, and the stone heads burst through the open door to ricochet from wall to wall, side to side, screaming, eyes open, stone lips pouring forth guttural agonies. The clamor increased, and they rolled away, still shrieking, as Wafnor began to work on the fourth side of the castle. The walls of the room began to buckle.

 “It is striking at itself,” whispered Didir. I pulled myself across the room, onto the opposite wall, watching and listening with every fiber. The wall opposite me breathed inward, bulging, broke into fragments upon the floor and through it into the endless halls below. Then Wafnor came back to me, and we did not move, did not need to move, for around us Castle Lament pursued its angry self-destruction, biting at itself, striking at itself in suicidal frenzy. Walls crumbled, ceilings fell, great beams cracked in two to thrust shattered ends at the sky like broken bones. Then, suddenly, beam and stone and plaster began to fade, to blur, to stink with the stink of corruption. Gouts of putrescence fell upon us, rottenness boiled around us. I rolled into myself, made a shell, floated upon that corruption like a nut, waited, heard the scream of that which died with Castle Lament fade into silence, gone, gone.

 When the silence was broken by the songs of birds. I unrolled myself into furred-Peter once more. I stood upon a blasted hill, upon a soil of ash and cinder, gray and hard, upon which nothing grew. Here and there one stone stood upon another, wrenched and shattered, like skeletal remains. Elsewhere nothing, nothing except the stone heads, the stone beasts, silent now, with dead eyes. I kicked at one of them and it fell into powder to reveal the skull within. It, too, stared at me with vacant sockets, and I wept.

 “Shhh,” said Didir within. “It does not suffer.” At the foot of the hill, two trees shivered and became two persons, youths, fair-haired and solemn. A pombi walked from the forest, stood upon its hind legs and became Sambeline. A bird roosted upon one of the stone heads, crossed its legs and leaned head upon hand to look at me with the eyes of a middle-aged man. Slowly they assembled, some of the Shifters of Schlaizy Noithn, to stare at me and at the ruins, curiously—and curiously unmoved. At length I looked up and demanded of them, “How long was this place here?”

 The bird man cocked his head, mused, said, “Some thousand years, I have heard.”

 “What was it? It was a Shifter, wasn’t it?”

 “I have heard it was one called Thadigor. He was mad. Quite mad.”

 “He was not mad.” I forced them to meet my eyes. “He was dead.”

 “That could not be,” said Sambeline. “If he had been dead, Castle Lament would have gone.”

 “No,” I swore at them all. “The Shifter was dead. His mind had died long ago. Only some vestige of the body remained, some primitive, compulsive nerve center which kept things ticking over, the fires lit, the walls mended, doors opening and closing, holding and hating. Only that.” I waited, but they said nothing. “How many of you has it taken … captured … killed?”

 “Few ... of us,” said the bird man.

 “Ah. So you warned your own? But you let others learn for themselves. Or die for themselves. How many went in?”

 “Thousands,” said Sambeline moodily.

 “And how many came out?”

 “None,” said the bird man.

 “Wrong,” I said. “They have all come out. All. And now, I demand of you an answer which I have earned from you. Where is the monument of Thandbar?”

 They looked at one another, shifty looks, gazes which glanced away from eyes and over shoulders to focus on distant things.

 “I can do to others what I did to Castle Lament,” I threatened, softly. “No matter what shape you take, I will find you.”

 It was Sambeline who spoke, placatingly. “Schlaizy Noithn is the monument to Thandbar,” she said. “All of it. The whole valley.”

 Almost I laughed. Oh, Mavin, I thought. Mother, are you of this shifty kindred, this collection of lick-spittle do-nothings? And, if so, do I want to find you at all? My eyes went to the heights. “Look not upon it,” she had written. Well, if I look not upon Schlaizy Noithn, I would look upon the heights. Somewhere up there.

 I did not speak to those who still stood in the wreckage. I turned from them all and went away toward the heights. Behind me I heard voices raised briefly in argument. When I looked down from the trail they had gone. The valley was as I had seen it first, green, wooded, garlanded with rivers and jeweled with lakes. At the edge of the valley nearest me was a scar of gray. “Become grass, and cover it,” I whispered to them. “To hide your shame.”

 Within me, Didir stirred. “Never mind,” I said. Let them look upon the scarred earth for a while. Perhaps it would make them think of something they should have done. Or would have done, had they learned any of the words old Windlow taught me.

 In that moment I would not have given a worm-eaten fruit for all the Shifters in Schlaizy Noithn.



 6
Mavin’s Seat

  



 AT THE TOP OF THE SLOPE a trail led around the valley. I turned toward the west since this was the direction opposite the one from which I had come into Schlaizy Noithn. The way led higher and higher, ending at last at a pinnacle which speared out westward over the lands beyond. I leaned against a tree, staring at the far horizons from ice-topped mountains in the south to a far, mist-shrouded land in the north where the jungly swamps were to be found. I leaned, thinking of nothing much, until a movement caught my eye. There upon the pinnacle was Mavin, crouched above a fire over which several plump birds were roasting. My mouth filled so in anticipation of the taste of them that I could not speak as I approached.

 She looked up at me and snarled, “What kept you? I expected you long since.”

 It was too much. I felt the hot fury build in me and blow up my backbone like a hard wind. “How could you allow an abomination like that to exist?” I screamed at her. “Centuries of it. Festering like a sore! And you did nothing. Nothing! I came close to being killed. Like the thousands who were killed! Who were they? Little people? Pawns? People of no consequence? Eaten up in play? How could you let your own flesh fall into that trap? How could you…” I sputtered out, made mute by rage.

 She did not seem to have listened. She plopped one of the birds upon a wooden trencher, dumped a spoonful of something else at its side, added a hunk of bread and set it all on a stone beside me. “You’ll be hungry,” she said. “Exorcism is hard work.”

 I screamed at her again. She bit neatly into a leg of fowl, using one finger to tuck in a bit of crispy skin. The smell ravished me. She said, “Your dinner will get cold.”

 I raged, howled, strode back and forth in a perfect frenzy of extemporaneous eloquence. She went on eating. At last the exertion of the day, the long rage, and sheer weariness caught up with me. I choked, gagging on my own words. At this, she put a wooden mug into my hand. I thought it was water, drank half of it in a gulp, then choked myself into silence. It was pure spirit of wine, wineghost, and it burned away my fury, sweeping through me like a broom through a midden.

 “Ahhg,” I said. “Ahhg.”

 “Exactly.” She placed the trencher in my hands. “If you have done with your peroration, my son, I will answer your charges. How old do you think I am? No. Never mind. Surely you do not think me a thousand years old? No. I thought not. Well, then, I can disclaim any responsibility for that place you speak of for at least nine hundred years. Since I became aware of it as a curse upon the valley of Schlaizy Noithn, I have tried three times to correct the matter. I tried first to get some of those stiff-necked Immutables to come into the valley. I was sure the Shifter was mad, and I told the Immutables so, but they would not come. None of their affair, they said, whether it ate a thousand Gamesmen or a thousand thousand. Later, I tried to get a noted Healer to come with me into the valley. He refused me, saying he felt the chance of success was small. My third attempt succeeded. Castle Lament is gone, and you are here, eating roast fowl and none the worse for it.” I stared at her, unbelieving. She had meant me to fall into that.

 “I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked. “It was mad?”

 “It was dead,” I mumbled. “Dead, and I could’ve been killed.”

 “Nonsense. You are my son. You are a Shifter. Shifters of Mavin’s line do not ‘get killed.’ We are too shifty, too clever, too sly ... Besides, you have help.”

 The wineghost had seeped into my fingers and toes, warming and tickling them into a feeling almost of comfort. The food slid down my throat. I could not summon the energy for anger. “You got me drunk,” I accused.

 “I know how to deal with hysteria,” she said stiffly. “You did take your time in coming to visit me. Did the invitation confuse you?”

 “No ... no. I wanted to come. But others wanted me to stay. Time went by.”

 “The journey? Was it easy?”

 “The worst was the Trader. I did think I might be killed there. He tried.”

 “Nap? A smallish man with a wide mouth? Mouth all full of smiles and easy words? Eyes full of flint and old ice? That one?”

 I nodded yes. “Stupid. I was stupid to fall in with him. But he was persistent.”

 “He is that.” Her voice grated.

 “It took me a while to figure out he wanted to kill me. Or something else. I’m not really sure.”

 “What did he try?”

 “Drugged wine. Or poisoned. No, I think drugged, because he was wild when I convinced him I was dead.” I went on to tell her in fits and starts what had occurred during the journey, leaving out nothing except what had set me off in haste to her in the first place. Well, I was full of wineghost. When I told her of my long trials in Schlaizy Noithn, she shook her head.

 “We call it the monument of Thandbar, true. Howsomever, it is as much a nursery as anything else. Many of those there are new come to their Talents, or very young, or limited. Sambeline has only three shapes, her own, a pombi, and an owl. Many there are were-owls or were-pombis. Some there are experimentalists, madmen or women who cannot adapt to the Talent at all, who shift and become locked into strangeness. Roads which move. Speaking hillocks. Some experiment themselves into shapes they cannot get out of. I think Castle Lament was one such. I have long thought it would be worthwhile to have a few Immutables available to unlock them, but I have been unable to convince the Immutables of that.”

 “They have no fondness for Gamesmen.” I yawned. “Though Riddle has been very kind to me.”

 “Well, perhaps we can call upon that kindness come someday. Tell me of my kindred? Is Mertyn well? Does he plot still with Himaggery and old Windlow?”

 I cursed myself. She didn’t know. I had sat by her fire eating and drinking for an hour, and she did not know. I blurted it all out, the disappearances, Himaggery gone, Windlow gone, Mertyn in the Bright Demesne. She looked at me frozen-faced with suspicious wetness at the corner of one eye.

 “Himaggery vanished! Oh, Gameslords, but I feared it would happen. He is a sweet man, full of juice as ripe fruit.” She paused, and then said, “He is your father. I remember him kindly always, though he does not so remember me. He would have had me stay with him and live with him like some pawnish wife of a farmer; me, Mavin Manyshaped, for whom the world is not too large! So I left him against his will and he likes me no longer.”

 “Does he know? Did he ... I mean, that he is my father?”

 “Oh, knowing I am your mother and what your age is, he should have figured it out. Yes. I should think so. Not that it matters. Which is what I told him, but he was full of pawnish ideas. Enough. Whether he likes me well or not at all, still I would not have him vanished into the shadows like so many of our friends. Mertyn did well to send you to me. Now. What’s to do about this.”

 “Mertyn wanted me to find them, search for them. He told me to ask for them wherever I went, as Necromancer .”

 “Tush. Those who are vanished in this way are not dead. We had figured that out a decade ago. Nor do they live, for the Pursuivants cannot find them. No, it is into the Land of Dingold they have gone, the place of shadows, and it is there we must Shift to find them. Nap, now, he knows something, you may be sure.”

 This abrupt change of subject caught me by surprise, and seeing this, she pointed down from the height we sat upon to the place below, slowly emerging into the light as the shadow of the precipice grew shorter. I peered down at strangeness, stranger even than Schlaizy Noithn, for it looked like nothing I had seen before that time, a weirdness lying below us at the foot of the cliff. If a giant child had built a mud-spider out of shreds and threads, rat fur and murk, then set it upon a stone dish with its legs arrayed full circle around it and its eyes glittering in all directions, this might have been likened to what I saw. Then, if the child had built bulky mud towers between the spider’s legs, each tower with doors at the bottom in the shape of faces, each face a maw opening into the darkľwhy then, that might have been likened to what I saw. Then, if the child had surrounded it all with a saw-edged wall and set the whole thing in quivering motion—well, that was the place. Smoke rose from it. Clangor sounded from it, soft with distance. The faces upon the tower doors grimaced, eyes first open then shut. The spider turned its eyes this way and that, the whole a clot, a bulk of dark in the light of morning.

 “What is it?” I whispered, unbelieving.

 “The Blot,” she said. “To which Gifters come. Nap among them.”

 “Gifters!”

 “Traders. They call themselves Traders. They are Gifters nonetheless. They bring certain things here, they take certain things from here. The things they take from here they sell, sometimes. Often they give.”

 “Is this—the place of magicians?”

 “What do you know of magicians?” she demanded.

 “Only what is said in the marketplace. What Gamesmaster Gervaise said. What Laggy Nap said. That there may be, perhaps, a place of magicians to the west. Gervaise says the little cold Gamespieces come from there. Nap says no such thing, but we both know he is a liar.”

 “Some call the place below there a place of magicians. But there are no Gamesmen there. No Immutables. Only a few very strange beings which stay there and other strange creatures which come and go. And soon now, Nap again. He comes regularly, and last time he came here, he left here with your cousins in his train.”

 “My cousins?” I remembered two grinning faces under flame-red hair, peering down at me from a height before the battle at Bannerwell. “My cousins? With Nap?”

 “Your cousins. Swolwys and Dolwys. Twins. Scamps. But better Shifters than any you met in Schlaizy Noithn. They have not your advantages, no Gamesmen of Barish to call upon (as I presume you did in Castle Lament, as I intended) but good boys for all that. I sent them to join Nap’s train the last time he came to the Blot, and I let them go and return by that road to the north. If we had no other evidence, the fact that Nap travels that road would tell us what he is. Past Poffle. Too close. But they should return soon.”

 She was staring away to the north where a pair of ruts wound around the edge of the plateau and disappeared. Following her gaze I could see a plume of dust there. Someone was upon that road, certainly, and it came in only the one direction, toward the place below.

 “There they are. Still some hours away, coming no faster than the pace of their water oxen. So, if I were you, my son, I’d sleep a while. Drink the rest of your wineghost and take your full stomach into my cavern yonder. I will call you when they come.” She gestured toward a half hidden entrance I had not noticed before. I was too weary to argue, so let her push me in that direction.

 When I came to the cave entrance, I looked back expecting to see her still watching from the prominence, but it was bare. High above me circled a huge bird with wings as long as I am tall. It cried my name and dipped toward me, then caught a current of air to carry it north. It was very beautiful in the sun, white and gleaming, trailing plumes graceful as smoke. I went into the cave with a feeling of exquisite sadness, as though ridden by a memory I could not identify. Had I seen her so before? Or was it something in her voice as she cried to me? Perhaps it was only the spirit in my blood, the aftermath of anger. I was asleep as soon as I lay down.

 She woke me in the late afternoon, shaking me and offering some warm brew from a simmering pot by the fire. “They have stopped,” she said. “It is as though Nap is not eager to come to the Blot. They have come almost to the wall, however, and you can see them easily from the pinnacle.”

 So I went onto the pinnacle once more to watch the compact circle of wagons near the cinereous walls. The animals were unhitched and led away to a patch of tall meadow grass near the bottom of the long slope. Mavin watched the animals with curious intensity. Until that moment I had given no thought as to what guise my cousins had taken in Nap’s train. Now her focused gaze told me where they were and in what shape. A pair of oxen grazed away from the others, toward a stony place heavy with obscuring shadows, grazed around, behind them, and was gone. A rustle among small trees marked their passage.

 “They will be here momentarily,” she said with satisfaction. “Perhaps we may learn something.” There was the sound of plodding on the trail, silence, and then they appeared around the high stone, precisely as I remembered them. Broad-faced, red-haired, with grins of the same width on lips of the same shape. One of them had an interesting scar over one eye. Otherwise they were identical. The scarred one pointed to his identifying mark.

 “Swolwys,” he said. “I keep the scar to make it easier for others to address me by name. It is easier than Shifting into something unique.”

 “Our similarity is uniqueness enough,” said the other. “Why should we not be known for that fact as well as any other? I am Dolwys. Those mental midgets in the wagon train did not even notice that they had two identical water oxen. We did it to see if they were alert. They are not, or at least, not very. They even believed you dead, Cousin Peter.”

 I swallowed. They looked very young to be so insouciant, younger even than I. “I take it you were not convinced.”

 Swolwys considered this. “Ah, had we not known who and what you are, it is possible we would have been taken in. It was very well done. Except that we could not figure out why you did not simply Shift and slide away.”

 “There was a woman in the train,” I said.

 “Ah,” said Dolwys. “Izia.”

 “Lovely Izia,” commented his twin. “Not a type attractive to me, but still, fair. Very fair.”

 Mavin’s head had come up like a questing fustigar’s. “A woman? What is she to you?”

 “She is nothing to me.” I laughed, somewhat bitterly. “Why this concern? She is a pawn, a servant. She is in durance, held unwillingly, captive by some device I have not seen or heard of before. Boots. Metal boots, high on the leg, which grow hot at Nap’s will. Had I simply vanished, Nap might have thought the woman involved in my disappearance, for I had been stupid enough to let him see me watching her. As you say, she is very fair.”

 “But she is nothing to you?”

 I began to bridle at this repeated question. “Not quite nothing, no! She is a captive. As were those in Castle Lament. I have told you my feelings about such matters.”

 “Ah. Well. Perhaps we can do something about it.”

 At that moment, I was glad there was no Demon among them. I had not been able to say she was nothing to me with an honest heart. She was a good deal to me, and the fact that she was now almost within reach of my voice made me tremble. Izia. I could not leave her to Nap’s malevolence. I would have to find a way to free her. I did not understand the compulsion, for it was not merely pity, but I welcomed it as I now supposed I had welcomed Sylbie and Castle Lament. They were all problems, problems to be solved, wrongs to be righted. I thought again of Windlow’s curious word: Justice. It was odd how many satisfying things could be done under that rubric. So, I ruminated while my cousins and mother leaned upon the stone to watch the wagons below.

 “There,” whispered Mavin. “Nap has decided to wait until morning to enter the Blot.” It was true. The camp had settled; Nap was seated beside his fire as others moved about the endless duties of the train. I saw Izia at once, moving among the animals, searching for the missing pair, her skirted figure plain among the trousered ones of the men, all walking with that strange hesitation which I now, too well, understood.

 “Is there some way we can free them?” I asked the twins. “From Nap, or from the boots?”

 “If it becomes important, we must find a way,” said Swolwys. “However, those boots are locked on in a way we do not understand. I have heard Nap say that an Elator in those boots could not move out of them. A Tragamor could not move them from himself. A Shifter could not change out of them. They transcend Talent, so says Nap. Nap controls them, but he must return to the Blot every season to have that power renewed. It is growing weaker even now, and I think it is only that which brings him back to the Blot. Without his power, control of his servants wanes. The last day or two we have seen indications of rebellion among the pawns, particularly the newest ones. We went far to the south, you know, looking for you, I suppose, cousin. We stopped near the Bright Demesne. You were not there, but Nap bought pawns from a pawner, young, strong ones who look at him with mutiny in their eyes.”

 “Izia? Is she likely to mutiny?”

 “No. Nap has had her since she was a child. He taunts her with that fact. He tells her that she was sold to him by a Shifter because she was worthless, that only Nap’s kindness and forbearance have kept her alive these years. He has had her in the boots since she was seven or eight years old, for ten years, at least. Those years have bent her. She does not mutiny. She scarcely lives.”

 “Why does he hold her so? Why?”

 The twins gave me a curious look, and Mavin speared me with one of her imperious stares, but Swolwys replied readily enough. “She comes of a line of horsebreeders and farmers from the South. Skill with animals is bred into that line as Talent is with us. She can do anything with horses, with almost any animal, and she is worth a thousand times her price to Nap. Also, she is fair.”

 I did not want to hear about that. The thought of her in Nap’s sleazy embrace was more than I could bear. “What now?” I asked.

 “Now you will take Swolwys’ place,” said Mavin. “You will go down to Nap’s camp. We need to know what happens inside those walls on the morrow.” She gave me another look, daring me to disagree, but I had no thought of that. No, I would have begged to go. I needed to see that Izia still lived ... as I remembered her.



 7
The Blot

  



 I WAS ACCEPTED AMONG THE WATER OXEN as a water ox, that is, after I had laid hands upon the real beast enough to know how one was made. I had already learned it was easier to become something entirely imaginary than to become something which had a recognized form and movement of its own. Thus, for the first few hours of wateroxship, it was necessary to admonish myself to keep my head down, my tail in motion against the flies, my floppy feet out from under one another. Being a fustigar had been easier for me, once, but then I had seen fustigars every day of my life. Water oxen were more rural animals, certainly smellier ones. Dolwys whispered to me that I could stop monitoring my own behavior when the smell no longer seemed foreign. It did not take as long as I had expected.

 I learned in the transformation to pick up bulk, a thing I had not known before. At first inert, as one maintained a form the excess bulk became incorporated gradually into the flesh of the creature. When one shifted back, there was a certain bulk left over. Some Shifters, as the hillock had in Schlaizy Noithn, simply gained and gained until that network of fibers which made Shifters what they were was stretched so far it could not assume its original form. It was all in this network, so Mavin said. She had already harvested the flesh left over when Dolwys and Swolwys had Shifted back into human form. It was too scattered to make chops, she said, but it would make good soup. I confess a certain queasiness about this. I did not like the thought of eating what had once been a part of my cousins. They laughed at me when I said this, making me feel very young and foolish. Nonetheless, I did not like the idea and was glad it was not put to the test. Instead of soup, I learned to eat grass.

 I learned that Shifters had a jargon of their own, almost a language. Changing back into an original form was called “pulling the net,” evidently from that network of fibers which transferred more or less intact from creature to creature, from form to form. One could “be” a bird with only about half the network. One could “be” a water ox with about two-thirds of it. What was left over simply lay about inside, doing nothing, available to “become” other things, clothing or whatever. It was all very interesting.

 At any rate, by morning I was an unremarkable water ox, driven from my graze to a wagon and hitched there, able to see Izia whenever I swung my head in her direction. Laggy Nap had at last decided to go the final few paces of his journey, into the shadowy courts of the Blot. The gates were open when we approached. They looked as though they had been open for a generation or more, hinges rusted and hanging, metal doors bent and sagging, grass pushing up between the stones. Inside the gates the shadows of the huge, spidery arches fell upon us, and a Tower-face mumbled at us from across the pavement. Dolwys whiffled as though startled, and I remembered that I was a water ox which would have been startled at such a sight and whiffled with him, hearing Izia’s voice, “Shaaa, shaaa, shaa, still now, nothing to bother about, my strong ones. Shaaa, shaaa.” The sound of her voice made me shiver involuntarily; perhaps any water ox would have shivered at it.

 We saw the first inhabitant of the place as it came mincing across the pavement, and for a moment I thought I had not managed the Shift of my eyes properly. Something was monstrously wrong with the shape which confronted us, and it stood before us for some time before my mind believed what my eyes saw. This was no Shifter. It was a true-person, or perhaps two persons. From the waist up it was two, two heads, two sets of shoulders, four arms, two chests tapering into one waist, one set of hips and legs. It chortled, “Dupey one,” out of one mouth as the other mouth said in a deeper voice, “Dupey two.” I looked up to see Izia trembling upon her seat and Laggy Nap striding forward with every expression of confidence.

 “Oyah, Dupies. Will you stable the beasts in the yard, or would you rather we stake them outside the walls?” His voice was ingratiating, a tone I had not heard him use except when he had sought to seduce me into his train outside Betand.

 The tenor head answered, ‘Oh, here, here, Laggy Nap, here. Where Dupies can watch them, feed them, brush their pretty hides. You let Dupies have them. We’ll love them all to bits nice things, great, wonderful beasties.”

 Beside me Dolwys trembled. I, too, at the lustful endearments which sounded to me much like hunger. The deeper voice said, ‘Oh, see how it shivers, pretty beasty is cold, all cold from the shadow. Bring it in the sun, Dupey, where it is warm.”

 “Fine,” said Nap heartily. “You take them along into the sun and bring them food and water, Dupies. They’ll love you for that.”

 “Ooooh, love us all to bits, the big things will.”

 “Love us, yes they will.” The two led us off, the one led us off, caroling their—its pleasure. Beside me Dolwys trembled again and again. I wondered what he was thinking. We were too much in evidence to talk. It would have to wait. We were taken to a sunny spot near a trough of water, and a cart of hay was pushed near to us. We swished our tails and swung our muzzles under the pattering hands and constant voices of the Dupies, trying to see through them or around them to what Nap and the others were doing.

 “Where is Fatman? Dupies, where is Fatman?” Nap was persistent in the question, as he needed to be to draw the monster’s attention away from us.

 “Fatman? Oh, Fatman is here. Maybe in a little while, Laggy Nap. He was here a while ago. Patience, patience. He will be here.”

 “Tallman? Is Tallman here as well?”

 “Oh, yes. Tallman is always here. Always sometimes. He goes and comes, Laggy Nap. Patience, patience.” The two heads turned to one another, kissed passionately, hugged one another fiercely and went back to their patting and brushing of the horses. They had not groomed us yet. I found myself begging that they would not. This was not to be, however, and I was thoroughly fondled as was Dolwys at my side, with such hungry tenderness that we were both shaking by the time the Dupies had made off and left us. At last we could watch the people of the train, but they might have been made of stone, slumped as they were on the shadowy pavement of the place near one of the great, mouthy doors. None moved except Nap, striding among them, slapping his hands along his thighs, clicking his heels upon the stone, toe, toe, toe, an erratic rhythm. From some hidey hole we could hear the Dupey voices calling, “Patience, patience, Laggy Nap.”

 The first evidence of other inhabitants came in a shrill, premonitory shrieking, like a tortured hinge crying stress into the quiet of the place. It came from within one of the towers, behind the mumble lips of the doors. The shriek became a rumble, the rumble a clatter and one of the mouths began to open, reluctantly wider and wider until the eyes disappeared in wrinkles and the teeth gaped wide above a metal tongue extending outward, toward us. Down this ramp rolled a figure as strange in its way as the Dupies were in theirs, round, so fat that the shoulders bulged upward and the cheeks outward to make a single convex line which blended into a spherical form, a balloon, a ball, an egg of a man. He rode in a kind of cup, like an eggcup on wheels, and it was this vehicle which made the extraordinary shrieking noise.

 “Oil, Dupies,” it cried. “Oil for the Fatwagon. Oh, she screams, doesn’t she? Makes a terrible racket. Laggy Nap. Walla, wallo, holla hello, listen to me come screaming at you. Oil! Oil! Dupies!”

 “Patience, patience, Fatman,” came the answering call, evidently the standard reply to all happenings in this place. The Fatman rolled his eggcup backward and forward, sending all the animals into frenzies at the high-pitched sound, until the Dupies ran from whatever place they had been hiding. They bore a can of oil, and a kind of tag game ensued during which the sounds gradually diminished into almost quiet. It was only then that Laggy Nap came forward once more.

 “I greet you, Fatman.”

 “Oh, I greet you as well, Laggy Nap. Have you a fine cargo for us this time? Something to please them? Something to make the great, tall things happy? I do hope so. They become difficult, Laggy Nap. Sensitive. Given to fits and hurling things at us for no reason. Oh, my, my, my, yes. They need distractions, Laggy Nap, indeed yes.

 “I have most of what I was sent for, yes.”

 “Most? Do you say ‘most,’ Laggy Nap? Ah, to have only most may not be enough. It is far better to have more, not most. Well, he will be in a temper, you may be sure. Tallman will be in a temper, Laggy Nap. All the Tallmen. All. He’ll tell you so, even if I don’t.” And the Fatwagon rolled away among the towering arches and the mumbling door-faces, exclaiming to itself as it went, careening here and there, light glistening again and again in the gloom from the bald pate of Fatman where he wheeled his way into the shadows.

 I heard Izia say to Laggy Nap, “Why will you not let us go outside? We are no good to you here. Let us take the animals outside the walls. We will wait for you there.” Her voice was hopeless, even as she begged.

 “I want you here!” he hissed, fingers jumping along the seam of his trousers, tap tap, full of an energy and rhythm of their own. “Here.”

 “We sicken,” she murmured. “All of us, animals, all. In here. In the gloom of this place, we cannot help it. We sicken.”

 “So, sicken. I care not whether you sicken. Sicken silently. I swear, I will find that Shifter who sold you to me and sell you back to him or have vengeance upon him for cheating me as he did.”

 “You were not cheated, Laggy Nap! I have driven your animals across this world a dozen times in the ten years you have had me. Who treats your team beasts when they are injured or ill? Who gets them across fords they will not cross and up trails they will not climb? Who but me, Laggy Nap? You were not cheated.”

 “I say I was because you do not give me peace. Now be silent or burn a little.” His fingers tapped a different rhythm, and she caught her breath in sudden pain.

 I moved, and Dolwys immediately put one of his great, floppy feet upon mine, half tripping me in the process. I heard him sigh, “wait,” or some such word, blown through his water ox throat. I subsided, frustrated, unable to do more than ache at her hurt. In any case, Nap did no more than twinge at her, perhaps because his powers were much dwindled and perhaps because the careening Fatwagon came barreling out of the dusk into our midst, its occupant caroling madly.

 “Tallman’s coming, Laggy Nap. I sent the call, just as I knew you’d want me to, and he’s coming swiftly. Watch the big mouth, now, Laggy Nap, he’s on his way. Come Dupies, come and watch. Tallman’s coming.”

 The Dupies emerged from twilight places, chattering at one another like sparrows, patting at one another with their swift little hands, eyebrows cocked and mouths moving, all the time stroking at one another, pausing only to hug and kiss with that same greedy passion they had displayed toward the animals. They paused before one of the mumbling Tower mouths, waited in hushed expectancy. Reluctantly, Laggy Nap took up a position beside them and the Fatwagon rolled to one side. There was a long hush, then the sound of far off machinery in motion, a rumbling which vibrated the ground beneath us and sent all the Tower mouths into fits of grimaces.

 The mouth before us turned downward, an introspective frown, followed by an expression of alertness, wonder, and then it opened to vomit out its own metal tongue, an endless tongue which extruded itself into a platform a little raised above the surface on which we stood. Onto this platform rolled a little car, somewhat like those I have seen used in some pawnish mines to transport ore, except this one was flat. From its prow there stuck up a tall beam, narrow and high. The beam broke itself into angles and stepped down from the car, its top section bending to look down upon us all.

 “Tallman,” cried the Dupies.

 “Tallman,” Fatman warbled in the same tone.

 “Tallman,” said Laggy Nap, his fingers jerking along the seams of his trousers. As for the rest of us, we animals, we pawns and animals, we said nothing but stared and stared. The voice, when it came, was a woodwind sound, a reed sound, deep and narrow-edged.

 “Well, Laggy Nap. You have returned. Have you fulfilled the orders I gave you?”

 Fumble, fumble, fingers tap tap along trouser seams, feet shuffle back and forth, pale as paper, Laggy Nap. “I have most of what I was sent for, Tallman. The youth, Peter—the Necromancer, he was killed on the journey...”

 Along, long pause during which that narrow, hooded head bent above Laggy Nap as some great serpent head might bend above its prey. “Killed? How killed? By you?”

 “No, Tallman! Never! It was a rockslide on the southern route, in the canyons there. He would go that way, and mindful of your orders, we went with him until we could be sure to take him without injuring him. He went to the canyon wall to relieve himself, Tallman, and the wall broke over him. More rock than the train could move in a season, Tallman. His body, under all that rock…” Nap’s voice faded into uncertainty, and the head above him never moved but brooded still in that unrelenting scrutiny.

 “How long ago?”

 “How long? Ah, let me think. We have been thirty-five days on the northern route, Izia, wasn’t it thirty-five days? Then there was a space of three days getting back to Betand. Less than forty days, Tallman. Thirty-eight, I would say.”

 “Not so long, then, that you could not take a Necromancer there and raise him. Raise this Peter. Find out from his spirit what it was he knew. Not too long for that?”

 “Oh, I could do that. Yes.” He gave a little hop, as though eager to be on his way. “I need only to have my power renewed, Tallman. And to unload the cargo.”

 There was a silence, a silence which drew out into a swamp of stillness in which no one moved. Laggy Nap himself did not seem to breathe. He might have forgotten how to breathe, so still he was, and when Tallman spoke at last the air came out of Nap as out of a balloon. “No, Laggy Nap. No power renewal this time. We will give you power when you return.”

 “But, but…” Teeth chattering, face like melting ice. “How will I keep the pawns in order? How keep the beasts in order, the work done? How keep Izia doing her work…?”

 The impossibly tall figure straightened itself. “You will leave the pawns here. They need some pawns. To make blues. For a ceremony. You will leave the woman here. I need a woman for ... something. You will take one wagon and go. And you will wear the boots to be sure you return.”

 Fatman burbled, chortled, “Boots, Tallman. Whose boots for Laggy Nap? Does Tallman have extra boots he wishes to be used for Laggy Nap?”

 And the Dupies, “Patience, patience, Laggy Nap. We will find boots for him.”

 Tallman growled something, beckoned to Izia where she crouched ashen-faced against a pillar. She sidled toward him fearfully, and he bent above her. “Take off the boots.”

 “They will not come off,” she whispered, hysterical, panting.

 “Fool! They would not come until now. They will come off now. Take them off.”

 So, she drew them from her legs almost before my eyes, and I could see what had happened to her legs from the years she had worn them, old scars and lines of festering red, a scaly peeling surface where there should have been maiden smoothness. She saw her own legs and crawled away, retching and gasping. Dolwys put his foot upon mine once more, and again I heard that same, sighed word. “Wait.”

 It was the Dupies who put the boots upon Laggy Nap, one of them holding him while the other drew them on. When it was done, Tallman tapped at his sides and Laggy Nap screamed.

 “So,” said the Tallman, “you will be able to feel my impatience even to the ends of the world, Laggy Nap. Now, unload your cargo and get you gone to do what I have ordered. Go to Betand. Find a Necromancer there. Promise him what you must to go with you to the place Peter was killed. Raise Peter and find out what he knew.”

 “What he knew about what, Tallman? Do not be angry. Tell me what is needed so that I may not fail you again. Please, Tallman, tell your good servant what to do.”

 The polelike form turned impatiently. “What did the youth know of ‘magicians’? What did he know about ‘Council’? What was he plotting with the wizards? Find out, Laggy Nap. Return here as soon as may be or burn, Laggy Nap. I will not be patient.”

 I watched him retreat through the sagging gates, slumping, watched him take the small wain which the Dupies had already hitched for him and mount to the seat, there to hold the reins laxly in his hands as though he had never seen them before. He turned to call rebelliously, “Tallman. Give me Izia, at least. She is good with the beasts and will make sure I reach Betand in time.”

 “Go, Laggy Nap. I have another use in mind for Izia.”

 The little wagon rolled out through the gates and away down the long line of hills toward the north. Still Dolwys’ foot was upon my own, his jaw next to mine chewing endlessly at nothing. It was hard, hard with Izia lying there not five paces from me, weeping upon her hands, the Dupies capering about her as they made sorcerous motions with their plump little hands.

 “Oh, pretty, pretty, all for Dupies, this one. Oh, we will love it to death, pretty legs, pretty legs.”

 I shuddered, somehow aware of what it was the Tallman planned, so hideous a thing, and yet it came into my mind as though Didir had plucked it from the Tallman’s head. I would stop it, stop it, but the need was not yet, for Tallman called the Dupies away to unload the wagons which Nap had left behind. They called into play a kind of metal creature with arms and a clattering track for feet which helped them, and Fatman carried some things to and fro. There was ore of a kind so special that they picked up even tiny fragments of it dropped from the sacks; bottles and jars of stuff I did not recognize; long bundles of herbs with an odor which reminded me of Windlow’s herb garden in that land far to the south. Soon they had unloaded all the wagons except the little cold-cart which Nap had told me contained perishable fruits. All the sacks and bundles were heaped on that strange flat car which Tallman had arrived upon.

 Now came a strange hiatus.

 Tallman went to the cold-cart, walked around it, lifted its covering, touched it here and there. Behind him the monsters wheeled and capered, silent as shadows. The hood hid whatever passed for Tallman’s face, but the angle of his head spoke of concentration. At last he spoke.

 “You are a good hitch, you Fatman, you Dupies. I chose well to choose you from the monster pits as my hitch. You did well to warn me that the Trader had not brought everything, Fatman. I had time to find out what to do ... what questions to ask.”

 The tenor Dupey said, “Tallman? Will they be angry? They will be angry, won’t they?”

 The lofty head nodded, once, twice.

 “But Dupey still gets the legs, don’t we, Tallman? Dupey gets the pretty legs to have. Oh, we’ll put them in the coldwagon, Tallman. They’ll last a long time in the coldwagon.”

 The lofty head turned toward Izia, spoke softly. “I said you would be rewarded, Dupey. So you shall.” Then, voice raised, “Do you know your fate, woman? Dupey does not care whether you know or not, but I enjoy it more when the fate is known and the one shaped like them can suffer in knowing what will happen.” The pole-like form shifted from side to side, as though blown by an unfelt wind. “Dupey has two heads, as you have observed. Two sets of arms, two upper bodies. However, he has only one set of hips and legs. He needs another set, obviously. He prefers a female set, for reasons of his own, eh. Dupey?” The monster capered, patted his cheeks, kissed himself, busied himself about his lower body with both sets of hands. Peter, water ox, could not watch. Dolwys’s foot pressed upon me.

 “Give me,” cried Dupey in two voices. “Give me.”

 “He has various ways of removing the top half,” mused the Tallman. “Dupey is original, innovative. I have been much amused by watching Dupey.”

 “Dupey was saved,” the monster cried. “Saved from the horrid midwifes. Saved to serve Tallman and them. Weren’t we, Tallman? Oh, give me.”

 “Patience, patience, Dupies. First you must unload the cold-wagon. Otherwise you will have nowhere to keep the pretty legs.” Some other sound came from Tallman, some sound of humor. Compared to that sound, laughter is the song of angels. Such a sound devils might make.

 But with that sound the cover was thrown back from the chill wagon, and long bundles were brought from it and laid in a single, close layer upon the car. Something about the size and shape of those bundles picked at a mind horrified by Tallman, petrified by monsters, picked at a mind without result. But then Dupey turned too quickly from his work, and the covering of one of the bundles caught upon his belt. He turned to cover the contents of the bundle again, quickly, but the water ox which was Peter had seen, seen, seen. It was Windlow, old Windlow lying there, ash gray with cold, unmoving. It all happened too fast, too fast for Peter or Dolwys to react, for Tallman was once more on the car, the pawns were summoned to sit upon its edges, and it was moving away through the tower mouth which had rumbled open. Fatman was watching Dupey. Dupey was approaching Izia. Peter fought to be in two places at once, but it was too late. The tower door mumbled shut.

 Water oxen have horns, usually blunted. They have huge, slow feet. They are ponderous, quiet, seldom moved to anger. Therefore, what Dolwys and I became might not have been called water oxen but something else, not totally unlike. Our horns were needle sharp, our feet hard and hooved, our anger real. Dupey never reached the place where Izia lay. Fatman was spilled from his wagon long before he reached the tower door he wheeled for. Beneath the trampling hooves they became mere broken clots of shadow upon the hard pavement within the darkness of the spidery arches. When we had done my heart was pounding as though we had fought a great battle, and it was almost with surprise that I turned to see Izia still upon the ground, mouth open in bleak astonishment.

 It was furred-Peter and long-legged Dolwys who brought her up the steep slopes to the pinnacle where Mavin waited. Perhaps she had been watching us from her bird form, for it needed little explanation to tell her what had happened. Izia fell away from our supporting arms to curl upon the stone, turned into herself as a snail turns, tight against the world. The seared, horrid skin of her legs lay bare, an obscene statement of her life with Laggy Nap. Dolwys and I sat panting until I could speak.

 “Windlow’s body, Mavin. Brought by Nap, in the wagon. The Tallman took it. Through those doors. We didn’t have time to ... I’ll have to go back.”

 “But we need a Healer for her,” said Dolwys. “We must do something for the girl!”

 “We have a Healer,” said Mavin, fixing me with her raptor’s eyes. “That is, we have one if Peter chooses to use it.”

 I was so breathless, so senseless, that it took me a time to realize what she meant. Dealpas. First among Healers. Among tile Gamesman of Barish in my pocket.

 “Of course,” I stuttered. “At once, I’ll ...”

 “Shhh,” she said. “Take a moment to get your breath. She will not perish in the next moment what she has survived for the past years.” She went to the woman and knelt beside her urging Izia to her feet, into the cave and onto the bed there, pressing a hot brew into her hands, all despite Izia’s incomprehension and blank-eyed apathy. The sight of her legs had done what all the years of Laggy Nap had not, driven her into a kind of madness.

 “What if Dealpas cannot heal her?” I murmured, to no one in particular. It was Swolwys who answered me as he brought me some of that same brew which Mavin was spooning into Izia.

 “Well, and what if the Healer cannot? Or you cannot? Then she must live or die with what is, as we all must. It will not lie upon your shoulders, Peter. If blame be found, let it be found on Nap’s hands.”

 “You could go further back than that,” I said bitterly. “To the Shifter who sold Izia when she was only a child. She could not have been more than seven or eight then. Taken from Game knows where; sold for Game knows what reason.”

 “Do not say ‘Shifter’ in that tone,” Swolwys demanded. “It could have been a Seer, or a Tragamor, or a pawn, for all that. Each plays his Game, and Games eat men. They eat children, also, but it is the Game does it, not the Gamesman.”

 “Some Gamesmen do,” I said, thinking of Mandor, and Nap, and the fat Duke of Betand. Swolwys was right, though. I did tend to think ill of Shifters, both because of Schlaizy Noithn and because of ... Yarrel. What brought Yarrel to mind? I had not seen him since he walked away from me outside Bannerwell, giving up our friendship, turning his back on me. His face swam into my mind, dark hair, level brows, large-nosed and generous-lipped. I pressed my hands to my face and shook myself. Now was not the time to indulge in this bitter­sweet nostalgia. I went into the cave.

 “Let me try Dealpas,” I said to Mavin. “Though it may not work. Silkhands the Healer told me that tissue, once dead, cannot be healed.”

 Mavin had uncovered Izia’s legs and was studying them as I spoke. The boots had come high upon her thighs, almost to the crotch, and there was a line around her thighs there, healthy pink glow of flesh above, gray scabrous hide below, like a dis­eased lizard. “I do not think the tissue is dead,” she said. “I think the boots did not really burn at all, but acted directly upon the nerves. This flesh is abnormal, but it lives.”

 “Well, let us hope Dealpas will know.” I reached into the pocket to find the little Gamesman. I had to search among them. Dealpas did not come into my hand readily. My fingers chased her among the other pieces, catching her finally against my flesh. She came reluctantly, slowly, with infinite regret. “I thought I had left all this,” I felt her say. “Pain. Suffering. I thought I was done with it.”

 “There is never an end,” said Didir.

 “Never,” echoed Dorn. And from the others within I heard agreement, according to their natures. There was Wafnor’s sturdy cheer, Shattnir’s cold challenge, Trandilar’s passion. And among them Dealpas stood as one weeping.

 I was firm. “Come, there is work here.”

 “There is always work.” But she came, regretfully, until I laid my hands on Izia’s flesh, and then she was as a rushing stream. I could not follow what it was she did. It was like Shifting in a way, for filaments seemed to flow from my own hands into the flesh of Izia. It was like Moving, in a way, for once there the filaments stretched and tasted and smelled at things, chased down long white bundles of fiber, paddled through blood, marched unerringly along great columns of bone. It was easy to find the wrongness, less easy to set it right. Expeditions went out into far-flung territories of gut and fluid, into intimate halls of gland, bubbling hotly in wrinkled caverns, to return with this and that thing, to pump and build and stretch, to open cell walls and herd things, as a herdsman his flock, which twinkled and spun like stars, to clamp upon sparkling nerves so that no hint of pain could move past the place it originated. I watched, sniffed, tasted, and was one with Dealpas. I learned. I would have to have been witless not to have learned, but withal that learning I could tell there was a universe she knew and I never would.

 Until, after a long time, she separated herself from me and became what she had been, a withdrawing presence, a mind which demanded to be let alone, to rest, to sleep, never to be wakened.

 The others let her go. I let her go. Before me on the pallet, Izia’s flesh appeared not greatly different from what it had been before, but my hands told me healing was begun. Enough. She slept. I knew she would sleep long. Her face had relaxed into quiet, and she lay with mouth a little open, faintly snoring, a little bubble at the corner of her mouth. I knew with unshakable certainty where I had seen that face before and why it was I had been so drawn to her.

 “She is so like Yarrel,” I whispered. “So like that she can be no one other than his sister, his lost sister, the one he thought dead, gone in the Game, lost to a Shifter. He hated me for that. But she is not dead. No.”

 “Are you certain?” Mavin asked. Her words were nonsense. I had just said I was certain.

 I stroked the hot forehead, pushed the dark hair back from her face. Yarrel had worn his so, brushed back from his face.

 “She must go back to him,” I said. “To her family. As soon as possible.”

 “So long ago. Will she remember her family at all?”

 “No matter. What she cannot remember, she will relearn. But she must go back, at once.”

 “You can take her,” said Mavin. “When she wakes.”

 “No. Swolwys may take her, or Dolwys, or both. In fact, they must, for she must be kept utterly safe, beyond all possibility of harm. I cannot take her myself. I must go after Windlow.”

 For if anything was certain, it was sure that I could not fail Windlow and Himaggery again. I had failed them once in the Bright Demesne, once in the Blot. But not again.



 8
The Magicians

  



 I WAS SURPRISED when Mavin said she would go with me. I had always thought of her, when I thought of her, as elsewhere, not with me. When I had met her on the pinnacle, it had been with no thought that she would accompany me anywhere. If I had had any expectations of that meeting, it would have been to spend some time with her, in her own place, and learn what I could from her to make my Shifterish soul more comfortable. So, when she said very calmly that the twins would escort Izia to her childhood home and she would come with me, I was speechless for a time. Remnants of courtly training suggested I should protect her by refusing her company. Good sense told me how silly that was. Of the two of us, she was probably better able to take care of herself. Certainly she had had far more experience than I. At the end, I said nothing, not even thanks.

 “I would have gone eventually anyhow,” she said, over Izia’s sleeping form. “The time has come to find out what happens beyond the Blot. Many of us have known for a long time that strangeness and disturbance comes from there. If you saw Windlow’s body, then it is certain Himaggery is there as well. Do you think they are alive?” She did not wait for my nod, we had been over this before. “Himaggery, yes, and probably Throsset of Dornes, that great Sorcerer, and Mind-Healer Talley, one of the few Healers ever to have great skill in healing sick minds, and who knows—a thousand more who have disappeared. Pawns as well, I suppose. I have seen them go by the dozens into that place like dazed sheep. Into the mumble mouths, riding the little cars. Many of us know, have known, but we have not been organized ... No. We have simply been too fearful to go into that place.”

 “You? Fearful?” I doubted this.

 “Do not mistake my arrogance for courage, my son. It is true that I am renowned for what I can do. But I am afraid of the unknown, as are most men, Gamesmen or pawns alike. My sisters and I were told as children that monsters dwelt in the West, that night creatures would come from there to take us if we were naughty, that all darkdreams came from the West. When I grew older, I learned that there was truth in that. Of course I fear it. We should both fear it, but there is at least one place worse than this!”

 “And we will go?”

 “Of course.

 Swolwys and Dolwys were not so sure. They gave her arguments which extended into the night, all the while that Izia slept. I went now and then to see that she was covered and to look at her legs. The grayness was fading. There were patches of smooth skin behind her knees and along the ankles. I gave thanks to Dealpas in my heart, but did not summon her. I remembered the skipping chant which the children of Schooltown used to sing beneath the windows of Mertyn’s House, as they sang in every village of the world. “Pain’s maid, broken leaf, Dealpas, heart’s grief.” There was a verse for each of the eleven, so familiar to all children that we did not even think of it as anything religious or special. I thought of others. “Mind’s mistress, moon’s wheel, cobweb Didir, shadow-steel.” That one was right enough, a web of adamant woven from moonlight and shadow. “Only-free and sent-far, trickiest is Thandbar.” I hoped that one was right, too, for we two of Thandbar’s kindred. From what Mavin had said about the Blot, we would need to be tricky. I was frightened, too, but I did not hesitate except to stroke Izia’s hair and touch her cheek. I knew then that I loved her, but I was not sure whether I loved her because she was Yarrel’s sister or because she was herself. It did not matter. I might never see her again after the morrow.

 When she woke, I sat at her side and held her hands in mine, though she cowered and tried to jerk them away. I made her look at her legs, at the places which were healing, made her listen as I told her that she was healing, healing, that all of the years with Laggy Nap were past, gone, done with, forever dissolved in time. She shivered and sobbed, at last letting her hands lie in mine. Only then I asked, “Do you remember a time before Laggy Nap? Do you remember when you were a child?”

 “I remember horses,” she said.

 I laughed to myself. Oh, assuredly this was Yarrel’s sister.

 “Do you remember a boy, your own age? A brother?” I wanted her to name him. Oh, I held my breath wanting her to name him.

 “I remember Dorbie,” she said. “Dorbie was my fusty.”

 “No, Izia. Not a fustigar. A boy. A brother. What was his name?”

 Her eyes became unfocused, concentrating. “It was ... was Yarry,” she said at last. “Yarry was my brother. Twin. Twins we were.” Years welled to spill down her cheeks. “I lost him. I lost everything.”

 “No.” I squeezed her hands, kept myself from hugging her, for I knew it would only frighten her and remind her of Laggy Nap. “No, Izia. They aren’t lost. Tomorrow you will travel with my cousins to find Yarry, and your parents.” Later I cursed myself for mentioning her parents. I had not heard of Yarrel’s family in a year. One or both might be dead. Well, it was too late to change the words. “Your family are still there, Izia, and they have never ceased thinking of you.

 “Oh, fool, fool,” she said, singsong. “They sold me to the Shifter. They did not care for me.” The sobbing commenced again.

 “Shhh. Izia, that was Laggy Nap’s lies, all lies. You were not sold to the Shifter. He took you, by guile, by trickery. Try to remember how he took you! It was the Shifter who did it, Izia, no one else.”

 She subsided onto the pallet, and I gave way to Mavin who brought yet another cup of hot broth from the fire, her cure for all ills, to be spooned down the girl’s throat a few drops at a time. She shook her head, made a bitter face as though she tasted gall when she saw Izia crying. Later she said much to me about Gamesmen who prey upon children. She needed have said none of it. I already had my opinions, and she could not have made them worse.

 By noon Izia was enough recovered to finger the healing places on her legs with trembling hands, to seem to understand when we told her she was to return to Yarrel, even to be eager to depart. Mavin took some time, more than I thought necessary, to tell her that Dolwys and Swolwys were “good Shifters” who would see that she was kept safe. She also spent some time with my cousins, instructing them how they should behave toward her to avoid hurting her further. Swolwys went into the plains to fetch horses. When he returned, Izia became herself once more, walking about the animals, picking up a foot to examine a hoof, all the actions I had seen her perform in Nap’s camp. So, they went away, and Mavin and I were left alone.

 “I had thought,” she began with a brooding stare into the darkness of the Blot, “that we would take the shape of those two creatures you dispatched down there. I can manage the duplicate creature if you can manage the shape of the Fatman.”

 I considered it. When we had destroyed Fatman, we had not much damaged the Fatwagon, and I thought I could figure out how to run it. I could not imagine taking the shape of the Dupies, however, and I asked Mavin how she would manage that.

 “I will keep myself low, in the belly, I should think, with bony plates around my brain. The heads of the creature will have to be managed like puppets. With practice, I should be able to make both of them speak at once, though that may not be necessary.” Still she brooded, finally swearing a horrible oath and stepping from her perch. “I don’t like it. It is like taking a shape of shame. The Guild of Midwives has much to answer for.’’

 “Not their fault,” I said. “The Dupies said they had been ‘saved from the horrible Midwives.’ I did not understand what they meant at the time.”

 She shook her head. “It has to do with the oaths the Midwives take, Peter. With their religion, if you will. I find myself more in sympathy with it, the older I grow.” She saw my puzzled look and went on. “Do you think you have a—a soul?”

 Windlow, Silkhands, Yarrel and I had discussed this at Windlow’s tower in the southlands, in a recent time which seemed very long ago. It was old Windlow who had pointed out that each of us was conscious of being two persons, one which did and one which observed the doing. He had told us it was this which made mankind different from the animals we knew. So, I considered Mavin’s question and said, “I have more, perhaps. than a fustigar. Or so Windlow thought.”

 “The Midwives believe in the soul. However, they do not believe that it is inborn in mankind. They believe it comes partly with the learning of language (which mankind alone of the animals seems to have) and partly from our fellowmen, a gift of human society to each child. Do you think that sensible?”

 “I’m not sure I follow,” I said. “You mean, if I had been born among fustigars, and reared by fustigars, learning no language, I would be more fustigar than human?”

 “Something like that. But more. The Midwives believe that only those who perceive their own humanity and perceive that others have the same become ensouled. Some who look like men can never believe that others are like themselves. They do not believe that others are real. One such was Mandor.”

 I nodded. I believed her. Mandor had seen the whole world as his fingernail, to be cut at will and the parings thrown away.

 “Huld, too,” she went on. “Though he talks a mockery of manners. The soulless ones can be well-mannered, as a beast may be well-mannered. Or so say the midwives who have studied the matter.”

 “What has this to do with Dupey?”

 “Ah.” She came to herself with a start. “The Midwives take an oath, very solemn and binding, that they will look into the future of each child born, and if they do not see that one gaining a soul, then they do not let it live. It is the Talent of the Midwives to see the future in that way, more narrowly than do Seers, and more reliably. It is called the Mercy-gift, the gift the Midwife gives the child, to look into the future and find there that it will have gained a soul.”

 “How explain Mandor, then, or Huld?”

 “The great Houses want no Midwife at their childbeds. No. They care nothing for ‘souls.’ They care only for manners, and this they can train into any if they be but strict enough. However, I do not think the Dupey was the offshoot of any great House. More likely he was scavenged from the Midwives, or born in some House where Midwives did not go.” This last was said with a hesitating fall, as thought she knew where that might have been. The talk was depressing me, but it had raised a question I had to ask. “And did the Midwives deliver me, Mother?”

 She smiled such a smile, a dawning on her face. “Oh, they did, Peter. And you have had all the gifts we could give you, Mertyn and I. No fear. You are no Mandor. Nor any Dupey. If men all were better, perhaps even a Dupey could be given a soul, but it would take holy men and women to do it. No simple mother could do it. The horror would be too great, and the pain of the child too monstrous to bear. How did he live? And why? While it is true that monstrous things are sometimes born, it takes something more monstrous, evil, and prideful yet to keep them alive.”

 “And the Fatman?” I asked. “Legless, he was, with no lower body at all. Had he been born that way, he would have died unless someone intervened. Why? How and why? Well, perhaps Windlow can tell us, for he is very wise.”

 “If we can find him. If we can free him. If he yet lives. Well, we will not do it standing here. It is time to go.”

 We stayed only long enough to set a boulder before Mavin’s cave. There were things inside which she treasured. We went empty-handed, clad only in our fur until we reached the puddled shadows of the Blot. There clouds of flies rose from the remnants of Dupey and Fatman. There we took those shapes and moved about in them, trying them. They were hateful. They were wrong. There was no logic or kindness in those shapes, and I began to understand what Mavin had tried to say about souls. One could not exist in those shapes without becoming compressed, warped, envenomed. There was pain intrinsic to the shape, and I began to think what it would be like to live with that pain forever. I began to modify the shape to shut the pain away, and I heard Mavin panting.

 “I cannot inhabit it,” she said. “I must carry it upon me like a rigging.”

 “Perhaps we should try something else,” I offered.

 “No,” she said. “My mistake was in trying to take the identity of the creature. We must only appear to be these creatures. We must not be these things or we will become monstrously changed.”

 So, we were warned, and I was glad for the time spent in moving and trying that body. It took time, but at last we were able to make an appearance not unlike what had been before while still maintaining our own identities untouched. I was as weary as though I had run twelve leagues.

 “Rest,” said Mavin. “Here is food. We will carry some with us, for Gamelords know what will be found within.”

 Even in those few moments rest, we found that we shifted away from those shapes. Mavin barked a short laugh.

 “Mavin Manyshaped,” she mocked herself. “I do not deserve the name.”

 I thought of the shapes I had taken easily, almost without trying. “It is not lack of Talent,” I told her, sure that I was right, feeling it through some internal shrinking as though my spirit shrank from what I was. “The shapes are evil, Mavin. Moreover, they were meant to be evil.”

 She did not contradict me, and we went toward the mumble mouth in those evil shapes, building within ourselves certain barriers against becoming what we appeared to be. I do not know how Mavin managed. For myself, I built a kind of shell between me and the image of Fatman, and within that shell dwelt Peter and the Gamesmen of Barish, within and yet no part of that thing. Mavin had evidently observed the Blot for some time, for she knew how to open the mouths by striking them sharply with a stick, crying in the Dupey’s voice, “Open, open, old silly thing. Open and let Dupies come in.”

 There were shriekings and clatterings from within, and then the mouth opened to extrude its long metal tongue. Grooved tracks divided it lengthwise, tracks into which the flatcar had fit. The Fatwagon did not fit these, but I managed to straddle them with my own wheels as I followed the Dupey shape up the ramp and into the place beyond. I had expected a tunnel, a place not unlike the catacombs beneath Bannerwell. This place was not what I had expected.

 The walls were metal, long sheets of it, dim and slightly glossy, polished at one time but now faintly fogged with time. At intervals the metal was interrupted by panels of glass, many of them broken, the shards lying upon the floor of the way. Behind some of the intact glasses were greenish lights, feeble, sickly lights. It was enough to find one’s way by, not truly enough to see by, so we strained to see, pushed at the dimness with our minds, grew fractious and annoyed in the effort. Above us the metal panels extended to a high, curved ceiling, and in this were screened holes emitting sighs and drips, moody winds and dampness smelling of rot. Something in the place tried to help us by lighting the way ahead, darkening the way behind. Each effort was accompanied by frustrated clicks and whinings, often with no result except to plunge us into darkness. Then there would be running noises, hummings, squeals as of slaughtered belts or gears, and light would come again, only to go off again when it was most inconvenient.

 “Gamelords,” said Mavin in fury. “Why can’t the place ignore us and let us be.” At the sound of her voice the clickings and hummings redoubled in inefficient clatter. She stopped. forehead furrowed. “It hears me.”

 “Tell it to turn the lights on and leave them on.” I grated between my teeth. At my words the spotty lights went on down the whole length of the corridor and all the noises stopped. We looked at one another, expecting some other thing to happen, but silence succeeded silence, dripping water fell behind us, small breezes beat damply into our faces. We went on. The lights stayed on and there were no more of the noises. “Someone heard us,” I said.

 “Something heard us,” she corrected. “This is a place of magicians. A place of mechanisms. Like the machine which unloaded the cargo, things created to fulfill special functions.”

 “They do not do it well,” I commented, half angrily. The wheels of the Fatwagon had begun to squeal. Mavin reached over with the can of oil she had taken from Dupey’s body and the squeak faded to a high shriek at the very limits of perception. It set my teeth on edge. Our journey was not helped by the fact that we had come to side corridors, branching ways, each helpfully lit into dim distances.

 “The tracks.” Mavin said, noting my confusion. I saw then that the grooves in the floor did not go into the side corridors. I flushed. I should have seen that, as she had. We went on, as quietly as we could, the endless corridor fading behind us into phosphorescent distance, an equal tunnel always ahead, no change, no variation except in the pattern of broken glass or the shape of the puddles under the dripping vents. We had brought food with us. Twice we stopped to fetch it forth and nibble as we went on. My internal clock said that half a day had gone, or more. The corridor did not seem to curve, and we had walked far enough to come under the mountains which had been visible from the pinnacle.

 “Snowfast Range,” Mavin said. “We call them the Forbidden Mountains, full of glaciers and crevasses. We have a long history of explorers going into the Snowfasts and not returning.”

 Then we stopped, confused. The tracks divided into three before us, one going on down the endless corridor, another swerving right down a long declivity, one going left up a long slope into the dark. I could not kneel, so Mavin did, peering at the tracks to see which ones evidenced wear, which were dimmed with corrosion. She gestured us off to the left. When we entered that way, the lights came on, fewer of them than in the way we had left, but still enough that we could avoid stumbling over the fragments of ceiling which littered the middle of the way.

 Now side corridors led off with increasing frequency. We begŕn to hear sounds, murmurs, buzzing as of machinery or distant voices in conversation. Mavin began a little song, silly and repetitive, the kind of thing the Dupies would have sung for themselves, discordantly twin-voiced. She had mastered the shape at last and was able to make both heads move and speak. From deep within me the voice of Didir came in a faint sigh, “Persons, nearing, beware.” I passed the warning on to Mavin, who needed it not. Neither of us were surprised when we were confronted, though both of us took pains to simulate paroxysms of hysteria as we knew our shapes would have done.

 Black they were, pale faces showing like moons against the dark, bodies and limbs hidden beneath the straight black dresses they wore, hair and ears hidden beneath square black caps which rode upon their heads like balanced boxes, held there by tight cloths which came down over the ears, under the throat, down the back of the neck. Around each wrist was a metal band, and upon each hand a fingerless glove. Against all that black the fingers squirmed like worms in gravesoil, and the faces peered at us without expression. We backed away, gibbering in our pretended fright, and one of them spoke.

 “Well, Shear, monsters escaped from the pits? How come here? And why?”

 “I have no idea, Dean Manacle. None. But they are not going from the pits, you will note, but toward them.”

 Mavin chose this moment to say, “Oh, Dupies need to talk to Tallman, good Tallman will help Dupies. Dupies got into the mumble mouths, we did, came to find Tallman.”

 “Oh, do not be in a temper, great sirs,” I managed to gulp. “The calling machine did not function, and we have word.”

 “Dupies say ‘Patience, patience’,” Mavin went on, wickedly. “Fatman says we must find Tallman, oh, good Tallman, to tell Dupies what to do.”

 “Creatures from some portal,” said the one called Shear. “That is why they go toward the pits. Creatures from some portal who have come into the base in search of their hitch.”

 “An inescapable hypothesis, Shear. Also, an interesting occurrence. One worthy of note. Perhaps a small monograph? However, practicality dictates that they not be allowed to remain here. Will you call for removers?”

 “Certainly, Dean Manacle. As you wish.”

 It was as though they heard nothing we said, as though we had chirped like birds or howled like fustigars to make some general noise without content. Mavin realized it as soon as I did, and we both subsided into meaningless babble. They took no notice of this, either. The one called Shear fiddled with a wrist band, poking at tiny knobs upon it with a fierce display of concentration which even I could recognize as mannered. Who were these strange ones? Mavin made a face at me from Dupey’s left head and went on with the nonsense sound she was making. The two before us continued to converse as though we were not there.

 We had not long to play this game. A shrill shrieking set Fatman’s ears on edge. I damped the sound, a sound which seemed to accompany every machine which moved in this place. A little cart came gravely around a corner, ridden by two replicas of Tallman, or perhaps by one replica and Tallman himself. It did not matter, for the one called Manacle made it clear there was no difference, no distinction.

 “Tallmen! There are two monsters here, probably from a portal. See they are removed and that the Tallman responsible is sent to the pits.”

 The Tallmen did not reply. I began to understand that the black-dressed ones, who must be those magicians we had heard so much of, did not hear words unless spoken by one of their own kind. The treelike figures merely unfolded themselves from the cart and reached toward us with their hands. A bolt of force, small and controlled, but nonetheless painful, struck us both. We cried out, both Dupey heads in unison and Fatman in shock and surprise, a long harmonic of anguish. We moved in the direction indicated.

 “Tallman,” I cried, “Fatman has news, news, listen Tallman to what Fatman has to say.”

 One of them spoke, not quite the voice I had heard before. “Hold your noise, monsters. We are not your hitch. He will be found, you may be sure, and disciplined beside you in the pits. Were you not told never to enter the labyrinth! You were told. All the hitches are told. Now you have made them angry.” Another, totally gratuitous, bolt struck us from behind though we were moving as rapidly as possible. I conceived a hatred for the Tallmen in that moment. Vengeance would have to come later, however, for now it was enough that we were being escorted into the maze. I comforted myself with this while Shifting my burned flesh about. The bolts had been painful enough, but they had not done any real damage. The Tallmen did not speak between themselves. All was quiet except for the shrieking wheels of the cart, the drip of water from the ceiling, the moody sighing of the ducts. Soon the ceilings began to rise; we came to larger spaces; we encountered other carts and other black-clad magicians striding along the corridors without seeming to notice what went on around them. Then, almost without warning, we were at the pits. They opened before us, broad and deep as quarries, sheer walls dropping into a swarm of ceaseless movement as of a hive of insects overturned. A cage of metal stood at the pit wall, tall metal beams which reached from the pit floor to the ceiling far above, and within this square of beams a smaller cage was suspended. We were forced inside; the door was shut behind us; the endless machine shriek began as were lowered into the swarm where a thousand creatures like ourselves flurried in ceaseless agitation. The door opened to let us out, and we moved hesitantly into nightmare. Beside me I heard Mavin’s voice from Dupey’s throat. “Gamelords! What madness is this?”

 They crawled about us, oozed, flopped, hopped or stumbled, by every means of locomotion and by none. Some had one leg and some had none, or three, or six. Some were one-headed, some had two, or none, or four. There were blobs which lay while features chased themselves across their surfaces; some attached to mechanisms which made the Fatwagon seem a model of simplicity. There were howlers, moaners, silent ones whose thoughts beat at me in a tide of agony. The place stank of refuse, and excrement, and blood. Some things, dead and half eaten, lay against the walls of the place. Instinctively Mavin and I moved to the wall and put our backs against it. I looked up to see the hooded heads of the Tallmen peering down at us. I had never seen a Tallman’s face, and I wondered in that instant if they had faces. Some of the creatures around us did not. Something crawled across my feet and lay there, rippling at me. Deep within, I heard Didir recoil. “Wrongness, Peter. Wrongness. Beware, beware.”

 The walls of the pit were pierced with black arches, screens behind which we could discern faint shadows, black on black. A bell rang somewhere, and the creatures began to edge toward these arches. There were troughs beneath them which began to flow with half liquid soup. The creatures fed. I watched, feeling the place with my skin. It was like being in a waking dream, a dream from which one knows one should be able to waken. The cage rattled upward, then down once more. Inside it was a Tallman and great bundles of solid food, stinking sides of meat, sacks of beaten grain. The Tallman came from the cage before it tipped to spill the food upon the floor. When the cage rattled upward again, the monsters broke from the arches, howling, to descend upon the scattered food. The Tallman kept away from them, turning, turning until glittering eyes from beneath the concealing hood met mine.

 “Fatman,” he breathed. “I will kill you.” He moved toward me. I let him come close, close enough that he could not be seen from above. Then Wafnor reached out and held him, bound him about with arms of steel, held him fast while I looked under that hood at his eyes. Tallmen had faces, of a sort. At least, this one did. The face burned hatred at me and at Dupey behind me. “Who are you?” it asked at last. “You are not Fatman.”

 “No,” I admitted. “I am not Fatman. I am one who will hear you talk, Tallman. Tell me of this place, of these magicians, of these pits.” He was not willing to do so, but it did not matter. Didir Read him; Wafnor shook words out of him; Trandilar entranced him. The bell rang again. The creatures assembled before the arches once again, and I looked with a Shifter’s eyes through that dark glass to the shadows beyond. Pale, moon faces were there under their square hats; younglings were there, dressed in black but with soft caps covering their heads, eyes wide and fingers busy as they wrote on little pads of paper, wrote and peered, wrote and peered.

 “What are they doing?” I demanded.

 “Monster watching,” Tallman gasped. “It is what they do. It is why they say they are here.”

 I thought this a lie, and yet Didir said Tallman believed it to be true. Since they were watching us, we behaved as monsters should, howled, bubbled, rocked and capered, all the while holding Tallman fast so that he could not move. Those watching would have only seen him stand, head down, face obscured. After a time the bell rang once more, the monsters left the arches to resume their endless movement in the pit.

 We questioned. At last, we knew all the Tallman knew and let him go. He backed away from us to the center of the pit, staring about him with wild, glittering eyes, maddened by shadows. They were not shadows who came after him, however, but things of the pit which seemed to bear Tallmen some malice. He had a weapon of some kind, and he did some damage to them before he was buried beneath their bodies. Mavin and I did not watch. We were intent upon those other Tallmen who hovered at the edge of the pit, far above.

 “He did not harm his hitch,” said one. “I would have killed mine had they disobeyed me. Why did he not kill his hitch?”

 “Mad,” said the other. “He was mad. Sometimes we go mad, you know. They say so.”

 “I would have killed them,” replied the first. “Mad or not.” They moved away from the pit and were gone. I caught a Dupey eye upon me with Mavin’s keen intelligence behind it.

 “We have spent time enough here,” she hissed.

 There was the matter of the Fatwagon, which should be left in a place it would not attract attention. There was the matter of the arches behind which the watchers lurked. She knew this as well as I, and we sought a solution to the dilemma. We found it at the base of the metal cage, a slight declivity in the pit wall, a space large enough to hide us as we Shifted. When next the moveable cage fell and rose, we rose with it, hidden beneath it like a false bottom to the thing. Once the space around the pit was empty, two Tallmen came into being and moved away to the fringing corridors. When we had found a secluded place, we stopped to set some plan of action. Tallman had believed what he had told us. He had not known the name “Himaggery” or “Windlow.” He knew only that a certain cargo was ordered for them, that it would go behind the inner doors to them, to be used in certain ceremonies which were to happen soon. He knew only that the monsters were created by them, in order that the monsters could be watched by them.

 They made things, things which were sent out into the world to be sold or given away by the Gifters. They needed pawns to serve them, so pawns were brought in through the mumble mouths. Tallmen were created by them to maintain the corridors, to maintain the portals, to repair things which broke. “But we cannot,” he had said pitiably. “No one knows how to fix them.” They did not talk to Tallmen, except to give instructions. This Tallman had not been through the inner doors; he did not know what happened there. We asked what friends he had? None. What acquaintances? None. Surely he slept somewhere, in some company? No. At most, they could gather in pairs. Why sleep in company? Why eat in company? One slept wherever one was.

 We had asked him how he had learned to speak? Surely he remembered a childhood?

 At that his eyes had rolled back in his head and he had trembled like a drumhead. Mavin had said sadly, “Let it go, Peter. I do not know whether it was born of human kind, but it has been changed beyond recognition. This is only an empty vessel, drained of all but limited speech and directed action and fear of pain. Let it go.”

 That was when we had let him go.

 Now we leaned against a wall and considered. Somewhere in this tangled, underground labyrinth were the inner doors the Tallman had spoken of. Somewhere in this web of a place we would find some answers, but we would not find them standing against a wall. We would have to follow some of them. “I will not do this,” Mavin said with asperity, “mock that unfortunate creature by saying them. They are magicians, and so I will say.

 “Say away,” I commented. “Particularly if it will help some.”

 Easier conceived of than accomplished. There were none of the magicians about. Perhaps it was not a time they moved about. Perhaps the earlier occurrence had been a random happening with little chance of repetition. We wandered, baffled and frustrated. Bells rang. Machines wheezed and gulped. Tallmen moved quietly past. Silence came.

 “Perhaps it is night outside,” said Mavin. “These beings must once have lived beneath the sun. Perhaps they keep its time still.”

 “If that is so, they maybe sleeping rather than watching what goes on around them. And if that is so, then we might risk other bodies than these.” We hesitated, wondering whether it was wise to take the risk.

 At last she said, “If it finds us anything, it is worth it. I will go left, you right, as fast and as far as possible. Meet here when they begin to move about again.”

 So we agreed, and I set out as furred-Peter once more, on legs as swift as I could Shift them. I had no luck, none, and returned to the place heavy with anger and disappointment. Mavin was there already, curled against the wall half asleep, and I knew at once she had been luckier than I.

 “I found them,” she said. “Found the inner doors. Sleep now, and when we have rested, we will find a way through them.” We were well hidden. I gave up anger in favor of sleep and dreamed long, too well, of Izia.



 9
The Inner Doors

  



 THE PLACE OF THE MAGICIANS was full of niches and corners, almost as though they provided space for invisible beings, Tallmen and servants whom they did not see. We found such a niche, a place from which we could see the doors Mavin had found without being seen ourselves. The doors were quite ordinary, a wide pair of time-blotched panels without handles or knobs, and beside them a little booth of glass, though I suspected it was of a material more durable than that. We had not long to wait before one of the magicians came into the booth, an old one, jowls jiggling and pouches beneath his eyes, a nose which, had I seen it in a tavern in Betand, I would have considered evidence of much wine toping. He hawked and mumbled to himself for a time, his voice carried out to us through some contrivance or other which made it echo and boom.

 “Huskpaw here,” he mumbled. “On duty, Huskpaw. Huskpaw is on duty. Doors unlocked. Oh, turn to turn, boredom, weariness, and ennui, clutches and concatenations of all tedium.” Then he must have heard a sound because he stiffened, sat himself down before the glass and took a pose of watchfulness. We heard the voice of Manacle. “Doctor Manacle, here, Proctor Huskpaw. Desirous of egress ...”

 “What business have you among the monsters?” rapped Huskpaw, so rapidly I knew it was rote, even as he reached for whatever thing it was controlled the doors.

 He received a giggle in response, the voice of Shear. “Doctor Manacle goes forth to select monsters for consecration, Proctor Huskpaw. It is time. The ceremonies will not wait.”

 “Lecturer Shear,” Manacle’s voice, cold as a battlefield after Great Game. “I can make my own explanations, if you please! Huskpaw, give your handle a twist there, my good fellow. Your Dean goes forth among monsters to select a few for consecration. Write me down as upon the business of the college.”

 “Certainly, Dean Manacle. At once, sir. Written as upon the business of the college. Surely. Proctor Huskpaw at your convenience, sir...” opening the doors through which Manacle and Shear emerged, Shear still in a high good humor, obviously unsuppressed. Mavin twitched at me, and we followed them, hearing Huskpaw’s voice behind us as we went, “Oh, certainly, Dean, certainly, Doctor, Dean Manacle, Dean Mumblehead, Dean monster-lover. Blast and confusion upon him and his lick­ass Shear, old stuff-sox. May he rot.” We followed the two on a circuitous route before they stopped at last beside one of the monster pits, whether the one we had been in or some other, I could not tell. They leaned at ease upon a railing, looked at the farther wall without letting their eyes move downward, and discussed the grotesques which seethed below.

 “Nothing here worth consecration, eh, Shear? Not for us, at any rate. Perhaps for Quench? Now, I have the idea that Quench would select some of these for consecration, don’t you?” Titter, giggle, elbow into the ribs of the shorter magician. “But nothing for us. Pity. That’s what comes of being discriminating. Bother and overwork, all to maintain one’s standards.”

 They wandered off along the corridors, Mavin and I still close behind them in our Tallmen guises. They might have seen us if they had turned, but they did not. They were oblivious to our presence as though they were the only living creatures in all that vast place. They came to a second pit, or perhaps the same one from another side. Mavin shifted uneasily at my side. The two magicians leaned upon the railing once more and stared at the ceiling fifty manheights above them.

 “Now, there are some likely ones here, aren’t there, Shear? That three-legged one, yonder, with the tentacles? Most interesting. I must remember to bring that to the attention of my son, Tutor Flogshoulder, to be included in his research. Ah, yes, that one would make interesting watching. One could get a decent footnote out of that. Somehow, however, I do not feel it would be ... quite ... right for consecration, do you, Shear?”

 Shear, tittering, responding with a shaken head, a flurry of expostulation. “Not at all, my dear Dean. At least, not for one of your taste and standards. No. Certainly not. For Quench, perhaps. Or for Hurlbar. Not for you. Certainly not.”

 They were off again. Again we followed. Three times more the scene was repeated. I watched them carefully. They never looked into the pits they talked over. They never saw anything except the featureless walls of the place. It was some kind of Game, perhaps a ritual. I could sense Mavin’s impatience, but the play was nearing its close. They had come to a different kind of pit, shallower, cleaner, in a place where the dismal hooting of the ventilators was somewhat muted, the drip from the ceilings somehow stopped. This time the two looked down, and this time they were silent as they looked. Mavin and I faded into an alcove.

 “Oh, here are some who will do!” Manacle, greedy as a child seeing sweets. “Not well, but better than the others we have examined.”

 “Yes.” Shear in agreement. “Not perfect, but then, who can expect perfection in these difficult times? Still, better than any of the others we have seen ...”

 Manacle whistled sharply, and a Tallman materialized at his side out of some corner or cross corridor. There were murmured instructions. The Tallman entered the cage, dropped below my sight. The creak of the rising cage riveted our attention as it squealed its way upward. In it the Tallman stood, surrounded by four little girls. “No, no, no,” Manacle cried, full of shrill anger. “Not that one, idiot. That one, over there in the corner. Take this one back and get me that one.” The cage dropped again to return with some exchange made which I could not detect. The little girls were clad in white kilts, not entirely clean, above which their slender chests were as breastless as any baby’s. Shear and Manacle gazed at them with greedy satisfaction. “Oh, these will do very well, won’t they, Shear? Bring them along, Tallman. We will consecrate these monsters at the doors.” With that they were off, nodding and bubbling in mutual satisfaction and congratulation.

 “Monsters?” I whispered to Mavin.

 “Females,” she said harshly. “Have you seen any female here, anywhere? The magicians, their servants, the Tallmen, all are male. These children are the first females I have seen.”

 “But why ‘monsters’? They look perfectly normal to me.”

 “I think not,” she said. “Come, this is our chance to get through the doors.”

 She carried out her plan so swiftly I had barely time to make the shifts with her. First she showed herself to the two children who were last in line behind the shambling Tallman, cutting them away from the others and sending them wandering down a side corridor. Then, we became those children, “conserving bulk” as she hastily directed, following the Tallman as he strode along mindlessly, his shadowed face betraying nothing of interior thought or confusion or misapprehension. I felt heavy, squeezed into the smaller form, but we managed it well.

 At the doors, Huskpaw was instructed to assemble a group of magicians. There was a good deal of coming and going, lengthy chanting and waving of papers. The ceremony seemed to be called “conferring honorary degrees.” The two real children did not respond except to move where they were pushed; Mavin and I did likewise. The eyes of the real girls showed only a kind of vacancy, like that of the Tallmen, only more so. I knew then that they were not normal children but were something else, perhaps monsters, perhaps something I could not name. Eventually the magicians dropped a robe over each of us, black as their own, and the ceremony appeared to be over. We were ushered through the doors and into a wide reception chamber where the group was joined by others to be served with wine and sweet cakes by a pair of costumed pawns as silent and vacant as the little girls. The girls, we among them, stood in a loose huddle at one side of the room, largely ignored except for occasional lascivious glances from Manacle. I was to be grateful for this seeming invisibility. I had expected to see only strangers in this place, and the entrance of someone I knew brought a sudden terror. He came through an arched door, dressed much as I had seen him last at Bannerwell, half helmed as a Demon, clad in silver. Huld. Thalan to Mandor. My tormentor in Bannerwell; him I had conquered and imprisoned in turn. Now, here. In this place. I could not stop an involuntary shudder. He had no reason to suspect I might be here, but I shuddered nonetheless. If he had any cause to suspect, his questing Mind would Read me among this multitude and find me in moments. Only the clutter of thoughts in the room hid me now. Within me Didir stirred, whispered, “I will shield you, Peter. Go deep, deep, as you have done before.” I could not take her advice. I had to warn Mavin.

 The two little girls were holding hands, clinging together as two kittens might in a strange place. I copied the action, caught Mavin’s hand in mine to spell letters into her palm. She stiffened, began to swing her eyes toward him even as I moved before her to screen her from his gaze. Then she saw the Demon helm, and that was enough. Her face went blank, and I knew she was focusing upon some nonsense rhyme, some jibble tune to keep her thoughts busy on the surface, invisible beneath. Didir spoke from within once more, “Go deep, Peter. I will shield you. Watch, listen, but do not be.”

 I had done it before, in Bannerwell, had become a witless nothing which wandered about with no more surface thought than a kitchen cat. So I did it now. I became the child whose body I mimicked, became a girl without a mind, a passive body, sank deep into that soft vacancy and listened. Words flowed through my head like water, meaningless as ripples. It did not matter what they meant. When the proper time came, I would remember, or Didir would tell me.

 “Huld, my dear fellow.” Thus Manacle engaging in rough shoulder pats which caused Huld to tighten his lips and smile angrily. Manacle, not noticing. “Dear fellow. So nice of you to join us. This is an occasion, you know. Signal Day is only two days hence, and it is time to rededicate ourselves to our historic mission. We bring in a few new monsters to serve as breeders, properly consecrated, of course. My position requires me to be first, to set an example. Not the most enjoyable of our duties, but”ľ manly chuckleľ”not the least. Will you join us?”

 “May I hope, Dean Manacle, that in the flurry of preparations you have not forgotten why I am here?” Huld, stiff, angry, but with something behind the angerľa kind of gleefulness? Something out of place, something conniving. Didir heard it.

 “Certainly not, dear fellow. Of course not. I have transmitted your warnings to several of my colleagues. They are concerned, most concerned. They consider your request quite appropriate, under the circumstances. The Committee will meet tonight, and we will bring the matter before them at that time.”

 “And you’ve received the cargo? All of it? That Seer, Windlow, and Himaggery, so-called Wizard? Most important, the young Necromancer, Peter?”

 Manacle shifted uncomfortably. “Well now, there’s a bit of bother about that. We have two of them, brought in only a few days ago. Yes. But one seems to have been killed en route, so to speak, at least so I am told. The Tallman believed so. He sent the Gifter back to find one of those gamespeople who are supposed to be able to raise the dead. Nothing to that supposition, of course. Impossible to raise the dead. Not like your own talent, my dear Huld, which we have studied and find some scientific basis for. At any rate, the young one isn’t in the cargo.”

 Huld glared, heat coming off his skin to make Manacle move back from his blazing. “I do not believe he was killed.”

 “My dear man, the Tallman was quite explicit. The Gifter said a rockfall had completely buried him. No chance of his having survived. Shear, come over here and tell our friend what the Tallman said about that boy who was killed.”

 “I don’t care what your Tallman said.” Huld in fury. “Haven’t you understood anything I’ve said to you? Let me say it again. The Council plots against you, against the magicians. I came to warn you, out of friendship, in return for past favors. The Council works through certain Gamesmen in the outer world. They have done so for decades. Now, they move beyond that. They create Gamesmen. Gamesmen with new Talents, powerful Talents. Peter is one. He is no ordinary Gamesman, no ordinary Talent! I, too, once thought him dead, or as good as! I was wrong. You are wrong now.”

 Shear interrupted, his mouth full of wine and crumbs which exploded into a little shower upon his black dress. “We do not like being called ‘magicians,’ Huld. The ignorant Gamesmen may do so, but we expect more courtesy from you. We respect your warnings, but if this Peter is dead, surely.”

 “You fools, don’t you understand? He isn’t dead. I don’t care what your Gifter said or pretended. Peter is not dead.”

 Manacle now, chilly as winter. “I do not appreciate being called a fool. As a direct descendent, unto the thirtieth generation, of the original Searchers, as fifth in a direct line to win the title of Dean, I am not one to be lightly called fool. We bear with you, Huld, though you are a mere Gamesman, because you have been useful. We do not bear with insult, however.”

 I heard Huld’s teeth grind together. To be called a “mere Gamesman” would have been enough. To hear the scorn in Manacle’s voice was more than enough.

 “You bear with me, Dean Manacle, because I am the only one who can warn you of what the Council plots against you, what the Council intends. Without me, you are at the mercy of that strange people, not a tender mercy, Manacle. Now, where are they? Where are the Wizard and the Seer?”

 Manacle drew himself up with a trembling hauteur, pompously waving the hovering servitor away. “They are in the laboratories, Huld. I will take you there tonight, after the meeting. You may see for yourself. I will tell you then what the Committee has decided about your request, your request to have access to our defenders. I do not think they will be sympathetic, Huld. They believe that the Council and the Committee are effective counterweights to one another. They believe it is so we keep the world in balance.”

 “Until the Council grows tired of balance.” It was said very quietly, but with enormous menace. With that utterance the room became perfectly still. One of the little girls whimpered, the sound falling into quiet as a pebble into a pool, the ripples spreading ever wider to rebound from the walls, an astonishment of sound. Manacle stared at Huld with eyes grown suddenly wary. “Why would they wish to destroy the historic balance?” he quavered.

 “Why would they not? They grow proud, powerful. They long for new things. Why else would they have created this ‘Peter,’ this new Talent? For what other purpose than to change the balance?”

 One of the magicians who had stood silent during this exchange, one taller than most, with a face the color of ash, said, “Do you know this to be true?”

 “Professor Quench, I know it almost surely. The likelihood disturbs me greatly. And it should disturb you.”

 “We must know,” said Quench in a voice of lava, flowing, hardening, roughening the room with its splash and flow. “We must know, Manacle. We must know, Shear. Likely isn’t good enough. We must know.”

 Manacle dithered, shifted his feet, picked at an invisible spot of lint. “The Committee of the Faculty,” he offered, “the subject is to be brought before the Committee when it meets tonight.”

 Quench stared him long in the face, then nodded. “See that it is,” he said, walking out of the room, voice splattering behind him. “See that it is. I will be there.”

 Manacle now very much on his dignity, feeling diminished by ashy Quench and burning Huld, flutters at Shear. “Take the consecrated monsters away, Shear. This has quite disordered my day. If we are to have questions raised like this, out of order, before the Committee has had a chance to consider, well. I have much to prepare.” He bustled away in the direction Quench had gone. Shear herded the girls away, and my last glimpse of Huld was of his fiery eyes watching Manacle to the end of sight. We went, Mavin and I, quiet as bunwits, down the carpeted hallway and into the place designated. There were pallets there for sleeping, and spigots for a kind of gruel, and a pool for bathing. There was nothing of interest save the tall, barred door which led into Manacle’s quarters. Once Shear had gone, it would be no trick to shape a finger into a key, to go out and lock the door behind us.

 So we did. “What will he think when he finds two of us gone?” I whispered to Mavin.

 “He will think the two remaining ate the two who are missing,” she snarled at me. “Don’t be a fool, boy. Leave the door open as though Shear forgot to lock it. Then he may wonder where his breeders are, but he will not suspect a spy in his own place.”

 Shamefaced, I went back to unlock the door. Inside the room the two little girls had settled upon one of the pallets and were engaged in a game of a curious kind. I turned my face away, flushing. Evidently they were not totally mindless. They had been trained to do at least one thing. “What now?” I asked Mavin.

 “Now I need to think,” she rasped. I could not understand her anger until she spoke again. “What is he up to, that fustigar­ vomit? What does he mean saying you were created by the Council? I know better than he how you were created, and it was in the usual way. No Council had part in it save the counsel between man and woman. He seeks to trick these magicians in some way for some reason. What is the reason?

 “Who are these people, these magicians who do not like to be called magicians? They say they are ‘faculty’ of a ‘college.’ Well, I know what a college is. It is only another word for school. Windlow had a college. So did Mertyn. What are faculty except schoolmasters. Hm? Except these seem strangely preoccupied with signs and rituals, speaking often of Signtists and Searchers. Is this some kind of religion? Manacle claims himself descended from original Searchers. Well enough. Searchers after what? They hold Gamesmen in contempt. There are no women among them. They seem to admit only four kinds of beings: themselves, monsters, Gamesmen, and pawns.”

 “Tallmen,” I offered.

 “Only a lesser kind of monster, or perhaps I should say a superior kind of monster. What is this Council that Huld uses to frighten them with, as a nursemaid uses night-bogie to frighten naughty children?”

 “Himaggery spoke of a Council. I thought he said it was a group of very powerful GamesmenľI think he said Gamesmen. They search out heresy ...”

 “Some such group has been rumored, yes. But is it that group which Huld speaks of? And meantime we know nothing about Himaggery and Windlow except that they are ‘in the laboratories.’ Where are the ‘laboratories’? What are they? We are rattling around in here like seeds in a dry gourd, making a slithering noise with no sense. Come, son, set a plan for us.”

 To hear Mavin say this in such noise and frustration amused me. There was no time to be amused, no time to treasure that moment, but I stored it away to gloat over later. Of such moments are adulthood made. I almost said “manhood,” but thought better of that. “We must not be misled by the puzzle,” I told her. “Whatever the Council is, whatever this place may be, whatever the history of the place or its reasons for existenceľnone of these are more important than Himaggery and Windlow. Manacle will meet Huld after tonight’s meeting. So we will go to the meeting and hear what is said. After that we will follow Manacle to his meeting with Huld, and Didir must protect me as best she can. If we are inconspicuous, we will likely pass unnoticed.”

 When I said the word, inconspicuous, it made me think of Chance, and for a moment I was overcome with a terrible homesickness for him, for Schooltown, for the known and familiar and sure. I gasped, but Mavin had not noticed.

 “I will be inconspicuous,” she growled. “And I will be patient, but this place itches me.”

 It itched me, too, as I tried to find the place of the meeting. No mind I sought through knew of the meeting or where it might be held. “An exclusive group,” murmured Mavin, when I told her this. “Do you suppose the room is never cleaned?”

 This took me a moment to puzzle out. Then I understood that the room would undoubtedly be cleaned by someone, a pawn. I began to search among pawnish minds, Didir dipping here and there as we moved above the place. On the sixth or seventh try, we found a mind which had once known of the place. We went to it. All of this had taken so much time that we were there only a moment before the magicians began to arrive, only time to find a dark corner in a kind of balcony over the main room where two additional chair-like shapes would go unnoticed. The place was under a duct which brought in heat, and Mavin settled into it with a tired sigh.

 “One more shift and I would have started to eat myself,” she confessed. “I cannot store as you do, my son.”

 I realized with some guilt that Shattnir had gone on storing power for me at every opportunity. It had begun to feel as natural as breathing. I let power bleed between us. “Take from me,” I whispered to her. “I feel we will not move from this place for some time.”

 One wall of the place below was made up of hundreds of tiny windows, blank and black, except that on one or two a light crawled wormlike and green. One end of the long table had a slanted surface with buttons and knobs on it. There had been many surfaces like that in this place, controls for the contrivances of the magicians. Both the windows and the control surface looked dusty, unused. A side wall held rows of portraits, face after face, mushroom pale above black garb, gold plates identifying each in letters too small for me to read. The last portrait in the bottom row was of Manacle, however, which told us enough. The tops of the higher frames were black with dust. The carpet of the place was worn through in spots. At each chair was set an empty bottle and a drinking glass, a pad of yellowed paper and a writing implement. At one place the writing implement had been shifted in position, and I could see a pale pattern of it where it had once lain upon the paper. Whoever might once have cleaned the place had not done so recently, perhaps not for years. Dust lay upon everything in a thick, gray film.

 Quench came in to sit at the place where the writing implement had been moved. He moved it back onto its shadow, carefully, centering it upon its image before settling into the chair, arms folded across his wide torso. The lines of his boxlike hat seemed to continue downward through his head, obdurately square.

 Others entered. There were whispers, mumbling conversations. I risked a questing thought to get pictures of long, half ruined corridors, tumbled portals far to the north and south, ramified networks of dusty catacombs, buried in decay. One of those who entered had white tabs at his throat. Others bowed toward him, murmured “Rector.” Time passed. Some fifty were assembled before Manacle entered. Well, now we would learn what we would learn.

 “Evening, gentlemen. Evening. Glad to see everyone is here so promptly. Well, we have a considerable agenda this evening. Let’s call the meeting to order and get started. Will the Rector give the invocation.”

 The tab-fronted one rose, stared upward and intoned, “Oh, Lord, we your children have pursued your purposes for thirty generations upon this planet. For a thousand years we have been faithful to your commandments. We have watched the monsters in this place, have kept ourselves separated from them, have kept your sacred ordinances to research and record everything that the monsters do. Now, as we approach the holy season of Contact With Home, be with us as we consider grave matters which are brought before us. Let us be mindful of your ordinances as we consecrate monsters to our use in order that your will may be continued unto future generations. Keep us safe from the vile seducements of Gamesmen and the connivances of the Council. We ask this as faithful sons. Amen.”

 During this pronouncement, the others in the room had peered restlessly about themselves as though someone else were expected to enter, but no one did. There was a brief silence when the man finished speaking. Manacle sat in his chair with head forward, as though he were asleep. Quench cleared his throat with a hacking noise, and Dean Manacle jerked upright.

 “Hmmm,” he mumbled. “We will move to the minutes of the last meeting.” He rose and pushed one of the buttons on the table before him, saying as he did so, “I am Manacle of Monsters, son of Scythe of Sinners, Dean of the Executive Committee of the Faculty of the College of Searchers. Will Central Control please read the minutes of the last meeting.” He tilted his head to one side and seemed to be counting. Around the room the others stared at their fingers or murmured to one another, bored. When a slow count of fifty had passed, Manacle went on, “Since Central Control does not think it necessary to read the minutes of the last meeting, may I have a motion to approve them as unread.”

 “So move,” said Quench. He did not move, however, which was confusing. Again, I knew it must be ritual.

 “Seconded,” said an anonymous voice from the end of the long table.

 “It has been moved by Professor Quench, seconded by Professor Musclejaw, that we approve the minutes of the last meeting as unread. All those in favor.”

 A chorus of grunts and snarls greeted this. “Opposed? Hearing none the motion is passed.” There was a pause while Dean Manacle collected himself and shuffled through the papers before him. “We shall move to subcommittee reports ... the subcommittee on portal repair.”

 “Nonsense,” said Quench.

 “I beg your pardon.” Manacle looked up, bristling. “The agenda calls for…”

 “Nonsense. The agenda calls for nonsense. Stupidity. Obtuseness. Obfuscation. Let’s talk about the Council. Let’s talk about this Gamesman, Huld, who wants access to the defenders!”

 Grunts of surprise, voices raised in anger. “The defenders? We don’t allow access to the defenders! What did he say?”

 “We will have the report on portal repair,” Manacle shouted. “And the report on the problems at the monster labs, and on the food stocks brought in by Gifters. These are important matters, Quench. Vital matters.”

 “How vital?” boomed Quench. “If the Council is planning to destroy us all, how vital is it that the monster labs shall or shall not meet quota? If we are all killed, how important that the northern portal cannot be repaired, as we know it cannot, as the southern portal could not in its time. If there are none left to have appetite, how vital is it that the Gifters bring in their full cargoes of grain and meat? Vital? Manacle, you’re a fool and your father before you was a fool.”

 I had not seen until then the little hammer which Manacle picked up from before him. He whapped it upon the table, raising a cloud of dust at which several members began to sneeze and wipe their eyes. If this was meant to restore order, it failed its purpose. A trembling oldster was shouting at Quench who was bellowing in reply. Elsewhere in the room confusion multiplied as small groups and individuals rose in gesticulating argument. Manacle thrashed with his little hammer, voices rose, until at last Quench shouted down all who would have opposed him.

 “Sit down, you blasted idiots. Now you all listen to me for a while. If you choose to do nothing after I’ve spoken, well, it will be no less than you’ve done about anything for fifty years. I will speak. I’m a full professor, entitled to my position, and I will be heard, though I am a doddering Emeritus.

 “Most of you in this room recall the meeting a generation ago when Dean Scythe admitted to this Committee that the techs could not repair the portal machines, or the air machines, or most of the others, so far as that goes. You recall that we had before us at that time a suggestion, made by me, that we set some of our brighter young men to studying the old machines and the old books in order to learn about them. You recall that my suggestion was met with typical revulsion and obstinate lack of understanding. No, you all said, we wouldn’t deny our sons their chance at earning their degrees by asking them to be mere techs.” Quench spat the word at them bitterly. “Oh, no. Every one of us had been assistant, associate, tutor, lecturer, assistant professorľall of it. Each of you wanted the same for his boys.

 “So, old Scythe suggested we pick some Gamesmen and bring them in to learn about the machines, that we give some Gamesmen the old books, that we turn our future over to the Gamesmen because we were too proud to be techs. So we brought some of ‘em in. There was that fellow Nitch, came and went for a decade. Where is he now? Gone to use what he learned for his own profit, I have no doubt. And there were others. Fixed a few things, but not for long. Now there’s this fellow Huld, threatening us with the Council. Telling us the Council is going to destroy usľthe Council we’ve cooperated with for hundreds of years by taking up dangerous Gamesmen and putting them away when the Council told us to. Now here’s Huld telling us the Council is creating Gamesmen with dangerous new talents. Here’s Huld saying he will protect us if we only give him access to the defenders. And idiot Manacle has half told him we’d do it. And, while all that’s going on, Manacle wants us to sit here talking about repairing the north portal which has been in ruins for five generations. Outrageous piffle!” He subsided into seething silence, picked up the writing implement before him and broke it in two. There was a horrified gasp from others in the room.

 “You broke the pencil.” Manacle trembled. “They’ve been here since my great-grandfather’s time, and you broke one.”

 “Piffle,” repeated Quench. The angry silence was not broken until an old voice quavered in treble confusion.

 “Excuse me, but what are you suggesting, Professor Quench? Are you saying we should not listen to Huld? Or should listen to Huld? Do we now distrust our colleagues of the Council?”

 “I’m suggesting,” said Quench, “that we do now what we should have done generations ago. Get some of the young assistants and associates out of the watching labs. Let them put their ‘search’ aside for the moment. There’s nothing new in it anyway. Hasn’t been anything new in it for ten generations. We can create monsters until we’re sick of it and watch them till we’re bored to death, and there’ll be nothing new in it. Why, a year’s watch doesn’t produce a footnote. No, let’s create a degree in machinery, for College’s sake. Create a degree in repair. Let the young men ‘search’ in the old books. Stop depending upon these Gamesmen.”

 “Heresy,” thundered the Rector. “Professor Quench, you speak heresy of the most pernicious sort. Our forefathers made a sacred covenant with Home to search and record information about monsters. To think of creating a degree in some other discipline…”

 “Oh, monster offal,” snarled Quench. “You pray that we be kept safe from the vile seducements of the Gamesmen, and then you fall right into their vile seducements yourself.”

 “Holy Scripture.”

 “Holy Scripture be shat upon. You read it your way, Rector, and I’ll read it mine. When we’re all dead, what will be the sense of Holy Scripture? You know what I think of your sacred covenants? They don’t make sense!”

 “Sir, you question the very basis of our history, the foundations of our faith.”

 “I question your data, Rector.” There was a shocked intake of breath. This was evidently a serious charge, though I could not tell why. “I question whether our forefathers ever agreed to do what you say they did. In any case, it’s susceptible of proof. Ask Home.”

 The shocked silence extended, built, was broken at last by Manacle. “Ask Home? What do you mean, sir?”

 “I mean, ask Home. Two days now, isn’t it? Aren’t we getting the blues assembled for the ceremony? Getting ready for the rigamarole? Going to send the Signal? Right? Signal says we’re all spandy-dandy, doing well, following the sacred covenants, right? This time let’s tell them we’ve got some religious questions and would appreciate clarification of the scriptures.” He glared at the open mouths around the table. “I dare you. And, while we’re at it, it might be a good idea to find out if the defenders still work. Lord knows the portals don’t.”

 “The defenders are self-repairing,” said Manacle. “If the Council were to strike at us for any reason, it would be at their peril. I would release the defenders in a moment, Quench, and they would work as they did a thousand years ago. Depend upon it.”

 “I don’t depend upon it,” he replied. “I depend upon rust and decay, spoilation and corrosion, that’s what I depend upon. And on my memory. I remember that we need food and fuel from outside. There are Gamesmen out there who would limit our access to those, and the Council has helped us with that by identifying the rogues and removing them, sending them in to us to be made into blues. In return, we supply drugs to make them live long. Balance, Manacle. Balance. Mutual advantage. Why would they change all that? I think this Gamesman of yours may be full of vile seducements, all right, and the evil intentions may not come from the Council.”

 The Rector, sneering, said, “Does our respected Professor Emeritus postulate a fifth force? Some mythological concept?”

 “Maybe,” replied Quench, with a sneer of his own. “Have you heard of Wizards, Rector? Not your field, hmmm’? Haven’t heard of Immutables, either, I suppose? Not your field. No, I thought not. Well, an aged Emeritus can prowl around outside a little, as I have done. No, no, don’t look horrifiedľI said I can prowl around out there without compromising my academic dignity, even if it isn’t my field. There may he a fifth force, Rector. And I’d like to move we find out.”

 “You’re out of order.” Manacle hammered, raising another cloud of dust with every blow. “The Agenda says...”

 “Get your head out of your backside, Manacle! I move we get some of the young men working on the old books, if they have wits enough.”

 “Is there a second? Motion dies for lack of a second,” gabbled Manacle, his voice a shriek which cut through the babble around him. “I will appoint a subcommittee to study the matter which the Gamesman Huld has warned us of. Is there further business to be brought before this committeeľhearing none this meeting is adjourned.” He collapsed momentarily into his chair, lips moving in and out like a fish’s.

 “Piffle,” shouted Quench. “There’s no hope for you.”

 Mavin and I did not move. There seemed little hope for us either. We had understood hardly a word of what had been said, and below us in the meeting room, Manacle rose and fled through the door as though to escape Quench’s words.



 10
The Labs

  



 “DON’T LET MANACLE OUT OF OUR SIGHT,” Mavin whispered as we slithered out of our chair shapes and into the guise of ubiquitous, invisible Tallmen. Her warning came late, for we had already lost sight of him, and it was only the sound of his voice echoing back from a twisting corridor which led us in the right direction. He had been joined by Shear, who was receiving a Manacle harangue with obsequious little cries of outrage and acclaim.

 “You know why he does it!” asserted Manacle, beating Shear upon the shoulder to emphasize his point. “That Quench! He does it because he never begot a son on his breeders, not one. Only monsters. Dozens of them. Why, the pits are full of his get, but not one boy to carry on the academic tradition. Why should he care whether our boys get their professorships? Not him! ‘Get the boys out of the monster labs. Create a degree in machinery,’” he mimicked viciously. “Emeritus or not, he ought to be stripped of his membership on the Committee. He ought to be driven off the Faculty.”

 “He has some followers,” Shear said nervously. “Some who believe he may be right.”

 “Right? The man’s a fool. Wants us to turn out the only person who’s capable of helping us. Wants us to send Huld away empty-handed. Scared to death Huld will learn something that will endanger us. Poof. I could give Huld the keys to the defenders this minute, and it wouldn’t hurt us as much as making an enemy of him. Well, I have no intention of sending Huld away in a fury. Quench can blather all he likes, but I think we need the man, and I’ll tell him how highly we regard him when we meet him.”

 “You’re meeting Huld?” Shear stared guiltily about, afraid he might be seen. His eyes slid across Mavin and me, but we did not exist in his vision. “Do you think that’s wise?”

 “I wouldn’t do it otherwise,” snarled Manacle. “I’ve had enough, Shear, now don’t you start on me. Just trot along here to the labs where I’m meeting Huld and we’ll have a talk. My son, Flogshoulder, is supervisor of the transformation labs this term. We’ll have privacy, and you can watch them make the blues. That always amuses you.”

 “Yes. But should Huld see that? I mean, it’s private ... part of the ritual.”

 “Oh, poof. I know it’s part of the ritual, but what does Huld care about that? He knows, in any case. What’s he going to do? Steal the bodies?”

 I stole a glance at Mavin to find her watching me, puzzlement meeting puzzlement. “What are blues?” I whispered. She crossed her eyes at me in answer.

 It was not far to the anteroom where Huld waited, a glossy, much used area beside a high transparent wall. We stared at the place beyond that wall, a lofty area of tall glittering machines, lights which spun and danced, wormcrawls of green light upon a hundred black screens. Green-clad figures moved in this exotic milieu with strange devices in their hands or clamped upon their heads, or both. Manacle greeted Huld, took him by the arm, and tapped upon the glass wall to attract the attention of one of those inside. That one bowed and came to slide a portion of the wall aside.

 “Dean Manacle,” he said.

 “Now, now, no formality, my boy. You’ve met our good friend, Huld? Huld, my son, Tutor Flogshoulder. He is supervisor of the term here in the transformation labs. You wanted to see the cargo for yourself? Well, Flogshoulder will be glad to take us through and explain the process. If it’s convenient, my dear boy.”

 The dear boy, who suffered from an unfortunate superfluity of teeth, gaped, then covered this gaucherie with a self-conscious giggle. “Oh, it’s quite convenient, Father. Most interesting for guests, too. Just come through here. Don’t mind the techs, they haven’t the wits of a bunwit and don’t understand anything but machines.”

 He led the way into the polished room, Mavin and I following. I believed they would stop us, see us, forbid us entry. They did not. Across the room a pair of Tallmen pushed brooms along the aisles, as invisible as we.

 At the first sight of Huld, I had gone deep into myself and now was letting Didir guide me by small promptings from with­in as the words of those in the room flowed through and away. The sight of the two bodies upon the chill dark slab at the center of the place almost broke my composure. Mavin’s was destroyed. I saw her stumble and turn pale before catching herself, to continue the endless recitation of some nonsense rhyme. The bodies were Windlow and Himaggery, cold and gray as when I had seen Windlow at the Blot. I let Didir tune my eyes to their keenest and watched, to see the slow, slow rise of chests over the shallowest of breaths. They were alive, alive but laid out like meat on that dark slab.

 Huld approached the slab and hung over the bodies like some predatory bird, his nose stabbing at them beakwise, peering and peering until he was satisfied and returned to Manacle’s side.

 “So, you have two of them,” he said. “If you had the boy, I would have cheered you, Manacle. As it is, you have only delayed the time of ruin, not forestalled it.”

 “Oh, come, come, my dear fellow. The situation is not that grave.”

 “Grave enough. If you are not to perish with all your colleagues, measures must be taken. Still, having these two is better than nothing. What do you do with them now?”

 “We’re getting ready for the ceremony, dear fellow. We’ll use these to make blues and bodies for the occasion, two bunwits with one arrow, so they say. That will remove the threat of these two, permanently, just as it has removed the threat of thousands in the past, and it will give us trade goods for the Gifters. Would you like to see the process?”

 I do not know why Mavin and I did not act then. Surely we did not understand what was to occur, or we did not realize it would happen at once. Perhaps we had concentrated so on being unseen and unnoticed that we had not allowed for the need for sudden intervention. In any ease, we did nothing. Flogshoulder gestured imperiously at one of the green-clad “techs.” That man leaned forward to move a long, silver lever. At that the dark slab rotated, dropped, and moved beneath a contorted mass of metal and glass with wires and tubes protruding from it which had been making a low humming sound. The hum ascended into a scream; lights flickered; there was a smell of burning and a cloud of acrid smoke. One of the techs coughed, shouted, pumped a piece of equipment to produce a puff of bad smelling mist. The fire went out; the scream dropped into a hum once more; the slab twisted and returned to its former position.

 Himaggery and Windlow were still there, still there, but I knew before Manacle reached forward to tap old Windlow’s arm what sound I would hearľthe sound of ice, faintly ringing, bell-like, metallic, dead. Beside each frozen skull rested a Gamespiece, tiny, blue. I looked upon them with my Shifter’s eyes, eyes which can be those of a hawk to see the beetle upon the grass from a league’s height. These “blues” were no crude carvings, no anonymous, featureless gamespieces. These were Himaggery and Windlow in small, each in his appropriate guise, and even the moth wing mask of the Seer could not hide the glitter of Windlow’s eyes. If this thing did not weep, I was blind. I started to move forward, but Mavin caught my arm to hold me. If Huld had been alert and Reading at that moment, we would have been discovered. Huld, however, was listening with avid attention to Manacle. If Huld thought the information important, then I did also.

 “The contrivance,” said Manacle in a pompous, didactic tone which reminded me a little of Gamesmaster Gervaise, “was used by our forefathers when we came to this place. Evidently the length of the journey, or the time it took, did not allow persons to travel while awake and alive in the ordinary way. No, the fleshy part was preserved, as you see, for storage. They can be kept forever, these bodies, or so the techs say. However, when resurrected, these bodies would have no memory, no intelligenceľall of that is wiped clean by the process, so we are told. So a record was made. A record containing all thought and memory, and this record was embodied in the form you see. Blues. That is what we call them. We make a few hundred each year to use in the Calling Home ceremony. Then we give them to the Gifters to use in trade.”

 “I have seen them,” said Huld. “Kept in cold chests. Why are they kept cold?”

 “WellľI am not certain. Perhaps one of the techs would know. The techs make the gameboards, after all, don’t they Flogshoulder?”

 “I will ask a tech. Father. It is not something which interests me. Hardly in our field, you know.” He went away to return in a moment with an old, pleat-faced man with tired eyes. “Tech, why are the blues kept in cold chests? And are the gameboards made here? You have a word for it, I think. Micro-micro something?”

 “Microcircuitry, Supervisor. The gameboards are made with microcircuitry. To make the Gamespieces move. They are kept cold because they are supposed to last longer that way. The manuals say they break down very rapidly if they get warm.”

 “There are manuals?” Huld, greedy-voiced. Too greedy-voiced, for Manacle gave him a sharp look before taking him by the arm to guide him away. “So. Interesting, isn’t it, Huld? And now you need worry about those two no more. Their bodies will be stored in the caves, used in the ceremony, then put into the caves once more and forever. Their blues will go into some Trader’s wagon to be given to some Gamesmaster as a giftie. I sometimes wonder if they feel anything, those bodies. They seem very dead.”

 Huld, pretending a disinterest I knew he did not feel, “How are the bodies and the blues joined together again?”

 “Oh, my dear fellow. Who knows? I wouldn’t know. We haven’t done that in a thousand years. There may be a book about it somewhere, but I doubt the machinery to do it even works. Why would one care?” They went out the way they had come, still chatting, leaving Mavin and me behind, hidden among the sighing machines. When they had put a little distance between them and us, I hissed at her.

 “One of us must go after them. One must stay here to see where they put Windlow and Himaggery. Which?”

 She thrust me away. “You must go after Huld. I have no Didir to protect my mind, and I cannot keep up this rhyming and jiggy song forever. You go. I will stay. I will meet you in that place they held the meeting, soon as may be. Go!” And I went. I went in a fever of impatience and anger, anger at myself, at Huld, at the silly, fatuous Manacle and his idiot son. If we were to save Himaggery and Windlow now, we would have to restore them to wholeness, put their two halves together, body and spirit, and who knew how to do that? The books? What books and where? I was reaching the end of my ability to slink and sly about, the limit of my self-control. It was Didir and Dorn who saved me, who soothed me into sleep like a fretful child and held me there, barely ticking, while they followed Huld, Manacle, Shear and toothy Flogshoulder deeper into the labyrinth while Huld sought information. “These books, Manacle. The ones which tell about rejoining the bodies. Have you seen them? Read them? What did they say about ... the blues?”

 “I don’t recall seeing anything about them in books. But then, I recall what my father said about them. A pattern, he said. The pattern of a personality. Yes. That was well put. The pattern of a personality. In ancient times, of course, the pattern was reunited with the body when both had reached their destination. It is this process we reenact during the ceremony. We don’t really do it, of course. Some of the younger men act the part of bodies, and we use the blues symbolically. It’s only a ritual, but very impressive for all that. But then I’ve told you all this before.”

 “Why don’t you actually do it?” Huld asked. Didir could detect an avidity in this question though the tone of voice was deliberately casual. “That would be even more impressive.”

 “Why, ah … I’m not sure,” began Manacle, only to be interrupted by his unfortunate son.

 “Because no one knows how, the techs say. The manuals aren’t there, not where they belong. Of course, all techs are fools, as we all know, but that’s what they say.”

 “Do they think the books were lost?” Huld, pursuing. “Or destroyed, perhaps? Or taken away?”

 Flogshoulder put on a thoughtful face, marred by the obvious vacancy within his skull. “I should know. Truly I should. I’ve heard them talking about it often enough. They say Quench asked for the same books, and they’ve been looking for them.”

 “Quench.” Manacle turned red, blustering. “Quench!”

 “Yes, Father. Quench thinks it was Nitch took the books, that’s it. You remember Nitch? The books have been gone since he went.”

 “Went?” asked Huld softly, so softly. “Went?”

 “Away. He went away. At least, I think he went away. Didn’t he go away, Father?”

 Manacle nodded angrily, muttering and counting under his breath as he walked along. “Quench, thirteen fourteen. Damn Quench. Fifteen. Mind his own business, keep to his place. Sixteen. He and Nitch two of a kind, ungrateful wretches. Seventeen. Ah, this is it. The seventeenth door from the corner, on the right. You wanted to see the defenders, Huld. Well, here we are. I’ll just find the key here, somewhere, among all these little ones I think. Gracious, haven’t looked in here almost since my investiture. Yes. This one.”

 The door swung wide. They went through it, leaving it open behind them. I faded into the wall surface, unseen, unheeded. The room was empty save for one of those control surfaces which abounded in the place, this one with a large red lever and five covered keyholes, all bearing legends in archaic letters of a kind I had seen only once beforeľin that old book which Windlow had so coveted, the one I had found with the Gamesmen of Barish.

 “They are self-repairing,” said Manacle in a self-important tone. “Requiring no maintenance, no techs, for which we may rejoice. Should we need to activate them, I have only to turn these keys in those holes, five of them. At one time each key was kept by a separate member of the faculty, but upon my investiture, I brought them all together in the interest of efficiency. There are times when ritual must give way to convenience, don’t you agree? So, I have only to insert them thus, and thus, and thus, here, and here, turning each one, so. Now, if any of us were to move the lever, the defenders would be activated at once. We will not do that, of course. There is no need. However, I will leave the keys here and turned, just in case. No point in wasting time later, if your warnings, dear Huld, were to prove accurate and immediate.”

 “Whatľah, what form do the defenders take?” This in Huld’s sweetest voice. Peter, who had been Huld’s captive in the dungeons of Bannerwell, did not trust that voice.

 “I do not recall ever having heard what form the defenders take. What is that phrase in the ritual, Flogshoulder? You have learned it more recently than Iľgracious, I have not thought of that in fifty years. Something about ‘Defense of the home, to hold inviolateľ’”

 “No, Father. It goes, ‘Should they gain power to the extent that the base is threatened, in order that Home be held inviolate the defenders shall be activated that the Signtists and Searchers be held in glorious memory.”

 “That’s not how I learned it,” objected Shear. “I learned it when I was only a boy, before I could read. It went, ‘Should their power and extent again threaten the base, the defenders will assure that Home is inviolate through the selfless action of signtists and searchers held forever in glorious memory.”

 “Glorious memory,” said Manacle happily. “I think of that whenever we have the ceremony. The base. That’s where the shiptower is, dear Huld, and therefore the ceremony is held there. It’s very impressive, quite my favorite occasion. Let me tell you about it.

 “We begin by placing a number of the bodies in the shiptower, along with some of the young fellows who play the part. We put some blues there, as well, for verisimilitude. The unloading machines are all polished and garlanded with flowers.

 “Then I, as Dean, have the honor to take the part of Capan. I emerge from the shiptower and recite the inspiring words of dedication. All the Faculty is there, of course, down to the least boychild. I recite the words, then I start the unloading machines and they bring out the bodies and the blues. We put the young men into the rejoining machine, together with some blues to make it look real, and they emerge at once, all glowing and eager. Then I give them the Capan gown. This is symbolic, you understand, of our continuation in the academic tradition from the time of Capan to the present. We still wear the Capan gown in his honor. It is moving, my dear Huld, very moving. Then the machines take the rest of the bodies and the blues, the real ones, away to the caverns while Capan (I still have that part, of course) brings a monster out of the ship and puts her in the pit. This is symbolic too. It symbolizes our mission to search the monsters and record everything about them. Everyone cheers.

 “Then, I go back in the shiptower and do the ‘Calling Home’ or ‘Signal Home’ as it’s sometimes called. I go alone into the shiptower and instruct the instrument to contact Home with our message, then I come out and tell everybody what message has been called Home and what Home said. Everyone gets very choked up at that, and the choir sings, and the techs serve special cake, and we all drink wine. A very happy time, Huld. A very happy time.” He wiped his eyes on the corner of his robe, looking all at once grave and grandfatherly, eyes full of an old and childlike joy. I wanted to kick him, but he went on in happy ignorance of my intent. “We give each other gifts, too, in honor of the occasion. I still have some gifts my father gave me, years ago.”

 “You bring a monster out of the ship?” said Huld. “Does this mean that in that long ago time your forefathers brought the monsters to this place?”

 “Oh, yes. Certainly. Our forefathers came. With the monsters. To keep Home inviolate, to watch and record.”

 “Gamesmen were here, then, when your forefathers came?”

 “Oh, I suppose so, Huld. Yes. They must have been, how else would they be here now? Your people. And the pawns, of course.”

 “And the monsters in your pits are the descendents of those your forefathers brought?”

 “Oh, no, sir,” babbled Flogshoulder, eager with his tiny bits of information. “They do not reproduce at all well, sir. No, many of the monsters in the pits are made in the monster labs. I will be supervisor there, next term. Also, we pay the Gifters to bring some from outside. And some ... well, some…”

 “You may say it, my boy,” said Manacle, still kindly with his nostalgic glow. “Some are born to our own consecrated monsters, to be reared in special pits and adapted properly for our use. Waste not, want not.” He made a high pitched little obscenity of laughter.

 “Interesting.” said Huld. “Very interesting. Well. If you will just show me whatever books there are which describe the defenders, our business may be concluded for a time.”

 “Oh, my dear Huld. I thought you understood. There are no manuals for the defenders! Either there never were any, and that may well be the case, or Nitch took them when he went. In any case, it doesn’t matter. They are self-repairing, my dear fellow. You needn’t concern yourself about them. If we need them, we have only to press that lever down. Everything else has been done.”

 I could feel Huld’s baffled fury from across the room, feel his heat. “Dean Manacle. What will happen when the lever is thrust down? Do you know?”

 “Well, of course. We will be defended. Haven’t I said so again and again. Really, Huld, sometimes you are very trying.”

 Didir and Dorn pushed me deep into the corner, perhaps to avoid touching Huld as he stormed away, followed by the others who were full of twittered commiseration. “Gamesmen!” said Shear. “They have no manners.”

 “After all our courtesies to him. Well. He was simply furious to see that we didn’t need his warnings as much as he had thought we would. Dreadful blow to his ego. Full of pride, that one is. Still. He’ll get over it.” Manacle, comfortably full of his own view of his world.

 In a moment they were gone. Didir let me come to the surface of myself, drove me to the surface of myself like a volcano exploding within me. I saw shattering lights, felt electric burning and shock, heard her voice, loud, “They are wrong, Peter. Wrong. That is not the way it was. I was there. I was there, I know how it was.” Bits of her memory fled across my mind.

 A babble erupted inside me, Dorn and Trandilar, Wafnor’s hearty cheer dimmed in a wild crosstalk which felt like panic, like fury, like fear. Finally Dorn’s voice, dark and heavy as velvet, “Turn the keys back, Peter. Turn the keys back and take them away,” only to hear Didir once more, “No! It must be done in a certain order, a certain order or it goes.”

 I trembled with vertigo, sick, thrust this way and that by those inside me, without balance or direction. I screamed silently, “Stop! Stop!” and the interior babble ceased. Then Didir’s voice, thrumming like a tight bowstring, held from panic by her ancient will, “Did you see the order in which the keys were turned, Peter? Did you observe?” At which I laughed. She herself had kept me submerged during all that time. I had only heard what came to my ears. I felt that tight bowstring thrum, thrum, begin to ravel. “Then leave them alone. Can you lock the door into the corridor?” she shrieked at me.

 I could do that, and did, before she broke in a shower of fiery sparks which shook every fiber of me, went down every nerve, dropped me to the floor to lie twitching like some maddened or dying thing while I knew what it was that Didir knew. If the lever in that quiet room behind me were pushed down, something huge and horrible would happenľsomething final and irretrievable. And Didir believed it would happen to all the place we were in, to the corridors, the mountains, caverns, to all the black-clad magicians and their servants, to their monsters, their machines, and perhapsľperhaps to the world as well.



 11
Calling Home

  



 I CONVULSED, there on the floor thrashing like a fresh caught fish. If anyone had come by, they would have found me there in my own shape, naked as an egg and helpless as any fledgling. The presence within which had been Didir became a scattered shower of sparkling half-thoughts, fleeting memories; pictures of herself going to this place or that; pictures of someone else I did not know, tall and dark, gold-decked; premonitions of disaster which unmanned me to leave me gasping without ever making connected sense. Then there was a time, long or short, I never knew, of darkness. When I came to myself again it was to feel the hard, cold floor beneath my wet cheek where I had lain in my own drool.

 After a little time, I was more or less myself again. I recognized what had happenedľpanic. Through all the confusion, I found myself wondering how one of the Gamesmen of Barish could feel panic. But then, I told myself, they were more than mere constructs. They had reality, though they had to use my head to express itľa head which was still splitting with an excruciating pain, pain enough to have panicked me and shut down all the places which the Gamesmen had occupied. Didir was gone, but so were Dorn and Trandilar, Shattnir and Wafnor. My head felt empty, vacant and echoing. The pain diminished almost at once, and I lay against the door of that dreadful room, frightened and quite alone. I wondered almost hysterically whether they would come back to me again, so felt for Shattnir because she was the one who was hardest, least vulnerable. Nothing. Her figure lay in my fingers like a doll, wooden, slightly chill. Well, there was no time to experiment or wonder. I had no knowledge of the time which had passed. I had to find Mavin, quickly, and tell her what I knew.

 Furred-Peter grew a pair of wide, fragile ears upon his head, like those of the shadow people, and fled through the halls listening for any movement. There was no Didir to warn me, and I was vulnerable in those metal corridors. I fled, promptly losing myself in the maze, unable to fish for thoughts to help me locate myself, following this one and that one at a distance until at last I came to a familiar place from which the committee room could be found. I got there, got inľand found it empty. Mavin was not there. Whether she had been there. I could not tell.

 I was alone there for a long time, time enough to get hungry, to find my way to a place food was stored for Tallmen, Tallmen who came and went, saying nothing to me in the guise of a Tallman as I also came and went. The food was tasteless stuff, but it sustained me. I slept a time. I strode back and forth through the committee room, looking at the portraits of Deans from ancient times to the present. Perhaps it was my imagination, but they seemed to grow more and more foolish-looking at either end of the time. Some in the middle looked hard and competentľrather like Himaggery. I thought about that for a while, without reaching any conclusions. Then I had a fit of apprehension about Mavin. Had she been caught? Perhaps killed? Was she lying somewhere wounded, waiting for me to rescue her? I cursed the panic which had driven Didir out of my head and tried to get her back. Nothing. The little figure lay in my hand like a stick. Not a quiver. No, perhaps a quiver, but remote. I tried Shattnir once more. Only a far, faint tingling. Well, whether it was something in the Gamesmen or something in myself, I could not tell. My head felt as though it had been struck by lightning. Perhaps there were fibers there which could be temporarily severed, synapses which could be shocked into quiescence. I waited. I walked about. I chewed my fingernails off, grew others and chewed them off as well. I was about ready to give up and go on searching alone when she arrived, breathless and weary, desperately glad of the food I had hidden in the balcony of that dusty room.

 “Lords, Peter, but that was a journey,” she said, falling into long silence while she chewed the tasteless food, eyes closed, body swaying with fatigue. “The techs in that place fiddled about for hours, talking among themselves, mostly about old Quench. It seems that ancient firebrand has been preaching revolution and rebellion to the techs, along with his other strange activities. The techs are mere pawns, Peter, brought in here, put in boots, forced to maintain the place. Some of them are clever. They have learned a lot though they are not given the chance to learn enough.” She swayed, chewed, sighed. “At last they put Himaggery and Windlow upon a kind of cart and wheeled it into a corridor where the cart was attached to a train of similar carts, all loaded with bodies and blues and crates of one thing or another. I hid myself on one of the carts, and a group of pawns rode it as well. Most of them are older men. I believe there have been no young techs trained for some time.” She stopped to sip some of the bottled water I had found. “Lords, what a journey. We went north and west, I think, though it is hard to say because of the ways the corridors curve and join. Whatever the direction, we went far and long to the place they keep the bodies, distant and high, lying under some great glacier, I thinkľsome source of endless cold. They are stacked there, Peter, thousands of them, piled like wood for the war-ovens. Endless aisles of them. I saw Throsset of Dornes. He was on top of a pile, like a carving. I saw Minery Mindcaster. I knew her when I was a child and she a marvelous, twinned Talent. They drove the carts into a side room and left them, then they all got on the one little machine which had hauled the rest and went away. There was no place on it for me to hide, and they all knew one another.” She put her hand on mine, still shaking with cold. “So, I followed them on foot, and became lost, and took endless time to return.” I let the food and drink restore her before I told her what I had learned. When I had done, she questioned me.

 “What is Huld up to? You knew him. What do you guess?”

 “I guess he is up to gaining power,” I said. I knew this to be true, though I was not sure what power Huld sought in this strange haunt of magicians who seemingly were not magicians at all but merely bad custodians of ancient skills and knowledge.

 “Huld is not content to be merely Demon, merely Gamesman. He has no wish, I think, to be willingly followed. It is power he wants, power over the unwilling. He wants to be worshipped, yes, but out of fear and trembling, not out of beguilement. He had that, through Mandor, and it was something, but not enough for him. Still, that is why he hates me. Because I conquered Mandor and held Huld against his will, even for that little time.”

 “And he came to this placeľhow?”

 “I think he learned, somehow, how I had been protected in Schooltown, how Mertyn and Nitch had protected me. He could have Read that from me, easy enough, when I was captive there. I think Huld sought Nitch, sought him and found him, perhaps killed him for what he knew. This is only supposition, but I know Huld, and the idea hangs together.” Surprisingly, the idea did hang together, though I had not known until that instant that I had figured it out. “So Huld came here, seeking power, and found Manacle.”

 “And Nitch had taken certain books?”

 “Perhaps. And perhaps Huld had not thought to Read Nitch concerning books, so perhaps the books are gone forever.”

 “Or perhaps they were lost half a thousand years ago.”

 “Perhaps.”

 “So there may be nothing we can find to tell us about these defenders, nothing we can find to tell us how to restore Himaggery and Windlow and a thousand, thousand more.”

 “About the defenders, I know only what I caught from Didir’s mind before she fled me in panicľor before I drove her out in a panic of my own. She knew of the defenders. Originally there were five keys, kept by five persons, one of whom was someone near to Didir. The reason for this was to prevent the defenders being accidentally released. Now Manacle has unlocked all the bonds. Any one who gets into that room needs only press a lever down, and whatever it is the defenders do will occur. The idea of this drove Didir into panic, the others as well, and it burst my head with them. Now I cannot raise them.”

 “You locked the door?”

 “I locked the door. Manacle has a key. I have no helpful thoughts about that. Let us think of Himaggery and Windlow instead. So far we have failed horribly at everything we tried to do.”

 She replied with some asperity. “Who would have thought that rescuing them would have entailed putting them back together? It is difficult to go into a place such as this to set someone free if that person is able to walk and think and assist in the process. I have done that, in one Game or another. It is more difficult if the prisoner is unconscious or wounded, and I have played that Game too, in my time. But to have a prisoner who must be reassembled prior to rescue denies logic and sets all sense awry. I did, however, try to make our process somewhat simpler. I have half of them with me.” And she reached into some interior pocket to bring forth the two blues, Himaggery the Wizard, Windlow the Seer, tiny and impeccable, cold and hard. They were only patterns, as Manacle had said. Patterns of personality. Mavin waved at me to keep them, saying. “I have been thinking all the way back how we might put them together again. It may be that the machine used to separate them is the same machine used to reassemble them. In which case, we need only bring the bodies to that laboratory place.”

 I remembered something Manacle had said. “We need not do that. The bodies are to be brought to a machine, Mavin. Not to the laboratory, but to the ‘base’ where the ceremony is held. There will be a machine there, too. They will pretend to use it to restore those who play the part of voyagers. The ship thing is there. Manacle called it a shiptower. At any rate, the bodies will be brought there, and there we should be waiting for them.”

 When she asked me where that might be, I shook my head. I could not use Didir to fish for answers. We knew that Manacle would go there, however, and he was easy enough to findľwe knew where his quarters were. “Manacle,” commented Mavin, as we went toward his rooms. “The techs hate Manacle. I think some kind of mutiny brews there, my son, an old mutiny.”

 I thought of Laggy Nap and his power over the boots. “Perhaps the contrivance which controls the boots has fallen into disrepair. Perhaps, if techs are expected to repair things and techs are also controlled by the boots, they have found a way to disrepair it.”

 “As I said,” she murmured, “mutiny. Something brews.” Though I had not seen Huld since he had stormed away from us outside the room of the defenders, I felt his presence still like a weight upon my lungs. Without Didir to protect me, I had to be more sly and secretive than heretofore. Thus, it took a sneaking time to come to Manacle’s place and hear his rumbling whine through the open door. Shear came out, then went in again, several times. Flogshoulder, too, went in and out, bearing garments of some ceremonial type. They emerged together to go to a dining place, from which we later stole food which was of better quality than that given to Tallmen.

 “How long until this ceremony?” I muttered. “How long must we lurk in this way?”

 “We are so far underground time is without meaning,” she said. “Nonetheless, if Manacle said ‘two days’ when we came into this place, then it cannot be long now. We have blundered about in here for the better part of two days at least. Time grows short, and I am glad of it. I could not bear much more of this.”

 I felt it, too, the being without sunlight, without passage of day and night. I wondered if this was how ghosts felt in the grave, separated not only from life but from time as well. This led to other thoughts of gloom and destruction, from which Mavin had to rouse me when Manacle came from his quarters for the final time.

 We had no doubt he came out prepared for ceremony. There were stripes of gold upon his sleeves and his high square cap was splattered with gold as well. Shear and Flogshoulder came behind, also decorated, and we went in procession down and down corridors toward a distant gate. It was truly down, as though toward a valley, and it was into a valley we came to see the first light of dawn rouging the heights before us, brightening the cliffs with morning while the forests lay still in night below. Here was a green meadow crisscrossed with metal tracks, heaped with mounds of wrack and jetsam (or so they appeared), with a blackened tower standing at its center, silvered at its tip. A tiny opening gaped high in the side of the tower, like a missing tooth, and a tall spidery ladder stood beneath it. Upon the valley floor small groups of techs removed covers from machines which had been covered against the depredations of time and weather. Near the tower was a machine similar in every respect to that one which had so changed Himaggery and Windlow.

 “The blues,” whispered Mavin. “See, they are carrying the blues into the tower.”

 She was right. Some of the techs were carrying boxes of the blues to the tower where a lower section had been opened into some large cargo space. There were no Tallmen on the field. We would have to take the form of techs, and I looked at them closely with my Shifter’s eyes before fading back into the shadows to take their shape. Even as we emerged onto the field, the wagons of bodies came out of the tunnels to clatter their way toward the tower. We went purposefully after it, looking neither right nor left, intent upon our pawnish, techish duties.

 When we arrived at the tower, we began helping with the loading. Mavin went up into that cargo space, then I. We lifted body after body into it, stacking them, within moments ceasing to think of them as bodies at all. They were only things. When the tech outside put Windlow’s feet into my hands for a moment I forgot what I was doing. Mavin brought me to myself.

 “Here, pass him to me. I have found a place to hide them.”

 So then I did double duty while she dragged Windlow away somewhere, then Himaggery, when he emerged from the general pile.

 When the tech outside thrust up the last body to me where I stood inside the tower, he said, “Those who follow Quench, in the southeast portal, as soon as the ceremony starts ...” then turned away from me as though he had not spoken, waiting for no answer. I had sense enough to step back out of the light. When I turned, Mavin was there, nodding.

 “I heard him,” she said. “I told you, Peter. Mutiny. It will happen during the ceremony, when all the magicians are here. Mark me, it will happen. Now come see where I have put it.”

 The tower seemed small from outside, but from within it was a warren of twisting halls and tiny cubbies, many no bigger than closets, with mattressed shelves which were obviously beds. So it was a ship. A ship. How could it be? I turned to Mavin with the question on my lips.

 “Not a water-going ship, Peter. Think! Put together the pieces. You spent long enough with Himaggery to have learned to do that.”

 She showed me where she had put them, in one of the little cubbies, half hidden behind a huge pipe which seemed to run the entire height of the place, from tip to base. At that moment I wanted only to lie down beside the cold bodies and sleep, but she dragged me around the pipe and into it, where stairs wound up and up to some dizzying termination.

 “We need to find a place to watch from,” she said, dragging me along behind her. So we went, up and up, coming at last to that open place we had seen from the tunnel mouth. The spidery stairs were just outside. Far below on the grass the magicians were assembling.

 Now, how can I make you see what we saw, Mavin and I? I must, for in what we saw was much of old Windlow’s conjecture and Himaggery’s purpose, much of my confusion and Mavin’s effort. It was in that ceremony we learned what we were, and why, and I, all unwitting of what was to come, was only sleepy, lonely, and a little afraid of what might happen at any time. So let me step outside of that and tell you what you would have seen, had you been there.

 On a grassy hill were rows of the young magicians, ordered inexplicably by one who stood before them, each holding a book before him. Here and there upon the grass groups of the magicians stood about, chatting with one another. The sun came down, lighting all with a kind of innocent glory. The young magicians began to sing. I had never heard music like that before. It soared and pierced, made me want to laugh and cry. Some of the voices were as high, almost, as women’s voices, others a rumbling bass, muttering like drums. I had thought these magicians wholly without honor or sense. Now I had to revise my opinion. Whatever they lacked, they did not lack art. Perhaps it was this art that had kept them alive. I looked down from my high perch to see Manacle at the foot of the ladder, the tears flowing down his face, a face lit from within with a kind of exaltation.

 After the singing came a blare of trumpets. This came from a machine somewhere. The sound was inglorious compared to what had gone before. Manacle came up the ladder, slowly, puffing a little as he climbed. Below him the groups of magicians drew away to seat themselves. I counted them while he climbed, perhaps a thousand. Not many to rattle in a place of such size. Of that thousand, there were only fifty or sixty young ones, and one or two were very young indeed, being carried by their fathers who pointed out each step of the ceremony. Mavin and I took the shapes of the place around us, were invisible when Manacle stepped from the high ladder into the tower. Once there he closed the door behind him, then waited for some signal from without. It came in a second blare of trumpets, and a hideous, monstrous machine-like roaring which built into an unbearable level of sound before fading away. I heard Manacle murmur, “The sound of the ship landing. Now. The ship has landed.” He thrust the door before him open and went out onto the ladder.

 See it now, this tiny man upon this high place, all in gold-decked black, his fellows gathered below and staring upward, pale faces like saucers there, silence, and respect from every eye. Hear him cry out in a voice changed and made dramatic, “Behold the planet. I, Capan Barish, have brought Signtists and Searchers from afar upon a sacred mission. Come forth! Come forth!”

 Then see the machines reach into the shiptower and remove the bodies of the young magicians who were playing the part, all covered with paint to appear gray and hard. See the machines take blues from the ship, clatter and clamor across the grass to the great, garlanded resurrection contrivance, decked with flowers and fluttering with ribbons of silver and gold, all dancing in the light wind of morning. See the young magicians laid upon the slab with the blues, from which they leap up, shouting, wiping the paint from their faces as Manacle comes down from his high place, slow step by slow step, all in dignity and purpose to greet each one of them and drop a black gown over each clean-wiped head. Then see them move away across the meadow while the machine goes on unloading, real bodies this time, and Manacle begins his slow climb up the spidery ladder once more. As he climbed, the singing began again, and I found myself wishing he would not climb so fast if the singing might go on while he climbed forever. Silly. Yes, but it was what I thought and what you would have thought had you heard it.

 Then was an unexpected interruption. Manacle came through the entry and back into the ship to make inexplicable clicks and bangs, opening and shutting something. In a short time he was back, leading by the hand one of the consecrated monsters. No. Leading by the hand a young woman. She was naked to the waist, her high breasts tilted and goosefleshed in the chill, her empty face staring outward at nothing. Manacle led her out upon the ladder, crying, “Behold, the monster! Toward which all your Search shall be that Home be kept inviolate!” Then he took her down the stairs to a pit they had prepared for her somewhere below. I did not see that, could not. When he had led her out, I had remembered. They were Didir’s memories, burned into me outside that room of the defenders, as real to me as my own. I remembered the landing, the huge sound of the engines, fires guttering blackly at the base of the ship, green hills in early light. I had been half naked, just wakened by Captain, as he had promised, before any of the others. He supported me with one arm, gesturing out at the world, “Behold, little monster. A world for you, and for me, and for our children and our children’s children.” And I, Didir, had said, “The researchers will not let us have this world,” and he had replied, “Some day.”

 It had been the sight of the girl’s body and the gold-striped uniform which had stormed the old memory, the sound of a male voice, lustful, adoring, confident. It was only a memory, but it collapsed me, and I came to myself with Mavin shaking me, saying, “Peter! What ails you? Come to, boy. Manacle is coming back up the ladder.” So, I drew myself together and we hid ourselves once more, fortuitously, as it happened. Before Manacle arrived, someone else came up the hidden stair. Quench.

 Quench, scuttering into the place and hiding himself all in one swift motion as though he had practiced it twenty times before. I heard Manacle arriving, heard the singing begin again, slow, ceremonial, mighty and premonitory. Some great climactic thing was to happen now. The music made that clear.

 But all that happened was that Manacle shut the door behind him and sat down, disconsolately, upon the metal floor. He took a writing implement from a pocket, with a piece of paper, and sat there, alternately chewing the one and jotting upon the other.

 The singing built into a climax, slowed, and dwindled to silence. Still he sat. After a time the singing began again, and it went as before. At this, he stood up and sighed, murmuring to himself. “Well, well. That will do as well as any message. I used it five years ago, but it will do as well as any.” And reached to open the door.

 “Do as well as what, Manacle?” It was Quench, leaning against a shiny panel, boring into Manacle with eyes which could have burned holes in stone. “Why have you not Called Home, Manacle? That is what you are supposed to have done. Call Home. I wish to hear what Home has to say!”

 “Oh, Quench. Quench, you monster. What are you doing here? Why have you come? You are disrupting the ceremony. Get out of my way. I have to tell them.”

 “Tell them what? That you did not Call Home? That there was no message from Home? That there has not been any message from Home forľfor how long, Manacle? How long, you little, insignificant dribble. How long?” He shook Manacle, waving him like a flag. “Tell me, or I’ll break your bones.”

 “Don’t be a fool, Quench. You know it’s only a ceremony. We all know it’s only a ceremony. The message from Home is only a ritual. We all know.”

 “We don’t all know. We all may suspect, but we don’t all know. How long has it been. Manacle. I want to know. Now!”

 “My ... my great-grandfather’s time. Not since then. Not since then to Call Home. And no message received from Home long before that. The machines stopped working, Quench. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. They just stopped working.”

 “So it’s all a mockery and a deceit. All of it. The monster watching, and the Facultyľall of it.”

 “No, no, Quench. You know that isn’t true. It’s worth something, worth preserving. You mustn’t, mustn’t ...”

 “I mustn’t, mustn’t I? Manacle, for the sake of those poor fools down there, I won’t drag you out on the platform and expose you for what you are, an empty sack of nothing. I’ll leave you to go to them, Manacle, with your lies and your ceremonial message. You! I remember a time when being Capan meant something. As for me, I’m off to the Council.”

 “Whatľwhereľwhat are you going to do?”

 “I’m leaving, Manacle. I’m leaving with all the techs who want to leave with me, and that means almost all of them. We disabled the power machine for the boots this morning. You can’t hold them, and they won’t be held. We’re going. Some of the younger men may go with us, and if notľwell, be that as it may. I’m sorry for you all, Manacle, but there’s nothing I can do to save you, and I won’t perish with you.”

 And he was gone, clattering down the spiralling stairs. Mavin and I could hear him, down and down until the sound faded, and I knew he had come to the cargo space at the bottom and gone out through it. Manacle was crying before us, great tears oozing down his face. The singing outside had reached its climax once more. He gulped, made a little heartbroken sound, then wiped his face upon his sleeve, leaving long red welts upon it from the harsh gold trim. Unconscious of this he stepped to the door, straightened himself, and opened it. As Mavin and I slipped away to follow Quench, we heard his voice crying to the world, “Message, message from Home.”



 12
Huld Again

  



 WE ARRIVED AT THE CARGO SPACE near the bottom of the towerľthe “ship”ľ only moments before Manacle himself came down. He wore a forced, fixed smile as he met Flogshoulder and Shear near the ladder. I heard Shear say, “Where are the techs? They should be here to unload the bodies and take them back toľ” and Flogshoulder interrupting, as always, with some inconsequentiality. Manacle did not hear either of them.

 He laid hands upon Flogshoulder and said, “Quiet, my boy. Be still. Now listen to me, for all your life is worth. Remember the room where we were yesterday? The room which controls the defenders? Good. That’s a good boy. Now, I want you to go there. I left it unlocked for you. I want you to press the lever down. Just do that, my boy. Then come back and tell me.” He patted Flogshoulder, almost absentmindedly, as he turned to Shear with that same fixed smile.

 “Shear. There’s a minor emergency. Nothing we can’t take care of, but I think the Committee should be advised. Can you go among the celebrants and suggest that we move the celebration indoors? Hmm? And tell the Committee members we will meet them in the Committee room. Have you seen Huld? No. Well, that was more than I could hope for, perhaps

 Shear and Manacle began a slow circling movement among those gathered in the grassy space. I remembered Manacle saying that the techs would serve cakes and wine. There were no techs, and the magicians were looking about themselves with pursed lips and expressions of annoyance. A mutter began, grew in volume as the celebrants moved away, away toward the doors. We waited for the last dawdlers to leave before emerging from the ship with the bodies of Windlow and Himaggery carried before us. We staggered across the grass to the machine. When we came close, I was horrified to see that the ribbons and garlands covered areas of corrosion. Wires and tubes appeared fused together into a blackened mass. We stared at each other for a moment. “What can we do but try?” asked Mavin. “We must.”

 We laid Himaggery upon the slab, placed the tiny blue in the recess beside his head, and Mavin went to the long, silver lever which protruded at the side. Her eyes were shut, her lips moving. I don’t know whom she invoked, what godling or devil. Perhaps it was only herself she counseled. Her hands were steady when she thrust the lever up, in the opposite direction we had seen it moved in the laboratories, and I knew she had been thinking of that, puzzling it out. Could it be that simple? I could not dare to hope it was.

 The machine screamed. I bit my lips until the blood came. The slab moved, turned, swung beneath the blackened mass which towered above it. I smelled smoke, burning oil. There was no device here to put out fire. I only held my breath and waited, waited while the scream rose to an agonized howl before diminishing to silence. The slab had not returned. Mavin jiggled the lever, once, twice. Slowly the slab dropped from beneath the machine, down, twisting, out and back toward us once again. The blue was gone. Himaggery looked like Himaggery once more. I could see his chest move, tiny, tiny movements, the shallowest of breaths. We pulled him from the slab and put Windlow in his place.

 I knelt above Himaggery while Mavin went to the lever again. I heard the ascending howl, smelled burning once more. This time there was smoke, harsh and biting. I coughed. Himaggery coughed. His head moved, his hand. I found myself patting him, stroking him, mumbling nonsense into his ear. Then Mavin’s cry from behind me brought me to my feet.

 The machine was on fire. Below the contorted mass, the slab moved out slowly, too slowly. Already I could see that the blue was still there. Nothing had happened. Then, when it came further into view, I knew that something had happened. Windlow’s body had been ... changed. Was it the heat of the machine? Some ancient device which had broken at last, irretrievably? It didn’t matter. What lay upon the slab could not support life again, and I knew this with every cell which Dealpas had inhabited. “Dead,” I whispered, unable to believe it. “Dead.”

 “Dead?” The voice behind me was Himaggery’s. I turned to see him trying to sit up, failing, and trying once again. His eyes were unfocused, blind. Mavin was beside him in that instant, ready with one of the black dresses which Manacle had used in his ceremony, ready to wrap him and coerce him back into life once more. I reached over the slab and took Windlow’s blue into my hands, hands sticky with tears. I tried not to look at the slab again, but could not stop the thought that this, this is what old Windlow had foreseen and begged for my help against.

 Perhaps Mavin read my mind, or my face. She snapped at me. “There is no time for guilt, Peter. We must get out of this place. What Didir feared will happen very soon.”

 “The door is locked,” I said stupidly. “Flogshoulder will find the door locked. He will have to return to get the key. We have a little time.”

 “We have no time. Didir warned of some general catastrophe. Gamelords know how far we would have to go to escape it, but the farthest, the soonest would be best.” She leaned across Himaggery once more, urging him to his feet. I do not know how he did it, but the man lurched upright, mouth open in anguish as he did so. She went on even as she urged him toward the tunnels. “The cars that brought the bodies to this place are still there, still on the track. I watched them when they ran them. They will take us away.”

 I followed her, placing Windlow’s blue tenderly in my pocket as I went. The carts were there, just as she had said. Himaggery and I climbed into the foremost one as Mavin fumbled with the controls. It shuddered, made a grating noise, then began to run forward into the mountains.

 “Where?” I asked her, seeing the daylight vanish behind us. “Where will you take us?”

 “Where the tracks go,” she replied. “The carts came from those cold caverns, they should return there. We need distance between us and this place, and any other way would take too long.”

 So we ran off into a half darkness. There were no magicians. There were no techs. We saw one or two Tallmen from time to time, but they stood by the walls as still and silent as trees, but unalive. It was then I began to know that they had not truly been living thingsľor not entirely living things. I thought of Tallmen, and I thought of music, and I wondered how those who made the one could make the other. I have not yet made an answer to that.

 Somewhere early in the journey, Himaggery began to regain his wits. He wanted to know what had happened, and in order to tell him that I had to tell him everything, Laggy Nap, my journey, Mavin, Izia, the Tallmen, Manacle, Quench ... and Didir. We passed one of those dining places once, and Mavin stopped while we raided it. After that, Himaggery seemed to be better, though still rather disoriented and weak. When he asked about Windlow, I could not answer him. I could only look back the way we had come and let the tears run down my face. So it was Mavin who told him, and then there was a silence which seemed without end. Finally he broke it. “So what is happening now?”

 “Now we are trying to get away,” I answered. “Flogshoulder will go to the room. He will find it locked. He will return to Manacle, and one way or another, with Committee approval or without it, Manacle will give him the key. Or Manacle will go himself. Whatever occurs, it will not take long. Manacle will believe that Quench is more of a threat than he ever believed the Council was. The defenders are to be used against a threat. So, he will use the defenders.”

 “What will happen?” whispered Himaggery from a dry throat.

 “I don’t know for sure. I believe that the defenders were never designed to defend the magicians. They were designed to defend Home, wherever that may be. Another world, somewhere.”

 “So you’ve figured that out,” said Mavin, drily.

 “Yes. The defenders were designed to defend Home against the monsters.”

 “Monsters?” asked Himaggery. “What monsters? Who?”

 “Oh, Himaggery.” I laughed and cried all at once. “You. Me. Mavin. All the children of Didir. She was the monster, the girl monster, the one the ship brought. Only she. And all those others to watch her and write down everything she did. All of it, the defenders, everything. Just to keep one little woman monster from threatening Home.”

 “I thought so,” said Mavin. “I thought that was the way of it.’’

 “Well, if you thought so, I wish to heaven you had told me!” I said.

 “So what will the defenders do?” Himaggery went on, tenacious as always.

 “Destroy the place,” said Mavin with finality. “Destroy Manacle and stupid Flogshoulder and sycophantic Shear, all the Tallmen and the pits, all the monstersľthe real onesľand machines. Everything. Or so I believe.”

 “So do I,” I said. “And we had best be far away when that happens.”

 “How far away?”

 I couldn’t tell him. Didir had thought only of danger, danger to everything. She had not limited it to a certain circle, a Demesne which could be measured for chill. “Far,” I said. “As far as possible.”

 “At least to the end of these tracks,” said Mavin, practical as always. So we rode along the tracks, deeper and deeper under the mountains as Himaggery grew stronger and I felt more the pain of Windlow’s death. Once I thought of asking Mavin whether there was some way out of the place she was taking us, but decided she would not appreciate the question. If there was a way out, there would be a way out. If not, not. My asking would not change it.

 The way to the caverns was a long way. When we arrived there, I wished we had not come. The bodies around us lay in piles as high as my shoulders, five or six bodies high, men and women together, stacked in endless rows. In one area to the side of the entry, Mavin and Himaggery found body after body of those they had known. Here were those Mavin had mentioned to me, but many others as well.

 “And all of their mindsľtheir memories, all, gone? Out there? In the aeries of Gamesmasters, to be used as teaching aids for children?” Himaggery sounded unbelieving, but we assured him it was true.

 “Then what threatened us and worked against us was not the Council at all? It was these old men in this moldy place? Abducting us one by one and storing us away like fish?” Again we assured him this was true.

 “Then we have only to tell the world what has gone on here, and it will stop. The Traders can be watched.”

 “That may be true,” I said. “But there may be more to it than that. It was these old men who abducted and kept you, true. But Quench said it was the Council told them who to take and keep. And it is to the Council that Quench has gone, gone with every tech in the place.”

 “And,” said Mavin, “I would wager with every book they could lay hands on.”

 We had not yet gone into the largest part of the cavern, a place from which a chill wind came to assure us of egress somewhere. It was then, as we were readying ourselves to find it, that the first rumble came, shivering the rock about us and dropping dust and ice onto our heads from far above. The shaking went on. Rock grated and twisted beneath us.

 “We have taken too long,” shouted Mavin. “Through the large cavern, quickly.”

 But we were not allowed to go. We had no sooner stepped within the large cavern than he came from behind a pile of bodies, Demon helmed, all in silver, a strange device cradled in his arms, its ominous tip pointed toward me. “Peter, the Necromancer,” he said. “I told them you were not dead! I would not let you be dead! Not you, Peter. Not until I could do it myself! I call Game, and Move. Necromancer Nine!”

 Himaggery leapt to one side, behind a pile of bodies. Well, he was older than I. He had more experience with this kind of thing. On the other side, Mavin Shifted into something quick and fierce, and the corner of my eye saw her fade into an aisle. Well, she, too was a more experienced Shifter than I. I did not move. The tip of the thing which pointed at me said do not move, and I understood its language. “What have you there, Huld?” I asked him, almost conversationally. I was not unafraid. I was simply too surprised to act frightened.

 “A thing Nitch made for me, Peter. Was that not kind of him? It was when you all thought me bottled up in Bannerwell. Do not trust Immutables to do your bottling for you, Peter. They do not do it well. They have no skill in foxing or outfoxing; any Gamesman could outwit them, as I did. I had another place to go, a better place. I found Nitch as he traveled between Schooltown and that place of the magicians. Nitch. It was Nitch who was responsible for what happened to Mandor, Peter. Remember that. What happened to him was just.”

 “What happened to him?” I had put one hand into my pocket, feeling desperately forľfor what? Shattnir could do me no good in this cold place. Those around me were not dead to be raised by Dorn. And neither would come to me in any case.

 “Why, he died,” he said, pretending surprise. “After he had made me the things I wanted, told me the things I wanted to know, given me the books he had. He made this shield, like the one you had in Schooltown. This weapon, like no other you have ever seen. Oh, Peter, with this weapon there will be no Gaming against Huld. No. All the Gaming will be as I choose.” He stroked the thing exultantly. “After I dispose of your family.”

 He drew out the word to make it an obscenity. Until that moment, I had not thought of them as my family, but they were. Himaggery. Mavin. My own kind. My fingers still groped in my pocket. Habit, not hope.

 And closed around a Gamesman, closed to feel a warm, wonderful certainty rise through me, soft and gentle, kind as summer, the voice whispering as familiar, almost, as my own. “Peter. Why are you standing here? Valor is all well and good, but shouldn’t you be elsewhere if you can manage it?”

 It was Windlow. I almost laughed aloud before remembering the threat. Yes, I know that is foolish. It was only an instant thing, as quickly suppressed. I let Windlow go and burrowed deep to close around a figure I had not tried until then. Old as Didir, powerful as she, her mate and coeval, Tamor. Grandfather Tamor. Towering Tamor.

 There was no hesitation. The block, whatever it might have been, had been healed. Perhaps Windlow had healed it. Tamor came into me like a hawk stooping, and I was looking down on Huld as he peered at the place I had been. There was no sensation of flying as I had often thought there would be. No, I was simply lying high upon the air, above Huld, seeing Mavin and Himaggery moving stealthily toward him around barriers of chill bodies.

 “Huld!” I cried.

 He pointed the device up, released a bolt of force which blistered past me and melted stone and hanging ice from the arched ceiling far above. Liquid rock fell past me, hardening as it came, and Huld ran from the lethal rain even as I swooped away to another part of the cavern. More stone and ice rained down. This was no result of Huld’s weapon. This was more of the same quaking we had felt before. Mavin waved to attract my attention, pointed to the far end of the great cavern. I nodded to show her that I understood. I should have watched Huld, not Mavin, for another bolt from the weapon came toward me, touched me agonizingly, and splashed against the ice. “All right,” said Tamor from within. “Keep your eyes open, boy. Shall we rescue your friend?” Himaggery did look lonely and lost, sprawled out below me between two piles of bodies. We swooped down, not at all birdlike, to grab him and lift him high in a long shallow glide which took us toward the cavern end. I heard Huld screaming in fury. He had known of some of my Talents. He had not known of them all. Well, how could he have done? I had not known of them myself.

 “You will not get away,” he was screaming at me. “I’ve closed that way out. I knew you’d come here, come where the bodies of your allies lay. I knew you’d try to get them. It’s the kind of Gamish stupidity they taught you, boy.”

 “Even if you escape, it won’t stop me. I’ll come after you again, and yet again. I have allies, too. And plans. And the world will not hold us both as Masters, so you will serve my Game.”

 “Tchuck.” Tamor made a tsking sound in my head. “That kind of hysterical threat is unbecoming. undignified. I do not like being called Grandfather to that.” We were away on another long. swooping glide that broke twice to escape bolts from Huld’s weapon. A great slab of stone turned red behind us and slid toward the floor, half flowing. Without thinking, I reached for Shattnir and felt her run into me like wine, reaching out toward the melted stone to draw its heat and power into every fiber. We stayed there, hidden behind the bodies, until I heard Huld coming, then rose once more, lying flat, skimming like an arrow behind the stacked bodies toward the chill wind. Himaggery gasped. I was holding him under one Shifted arm, huge and hairy as a pombi’s leg. Well, he should have been used to Shifter ways. In order to get me upon my mother he should have known her rather well.

 The shaking of the cavern was constant. I heard Huld shout something, away behind me, then another shout which sounded like fear. He had either been under a falling chunk of rock or had been narrowly missed. I didn’t care which. The opening of the cavern was before me. Mavin was already there. The entrance was covered by a narrow grill which sizzled with the same force Huld’s weapon had used. Mavin spread her hands wide in con­sternation. She could not Shift to go through the narrow openings without frying herself. Within me, Shattnir laughed. The laughter of Shattnir had nothing of humor in it. It was not an experience, then or thereafter, which I greatly enjoyed. All the heat of the great melted slab went into the bolt which broke the grill, melted it in its turn, and spread its broken shards over half the mountain side. Mavin fled through the opening, out and down, knowing I would follow. Around us the earth clamored, no longer quivering but heaving to and fro in long, hideous waves. I flew through the opening into nubilous air, high into gray cloud to see the white wings of a huge bird slide through the gloom beneath me. Then we saw it, Himaggery and I. Away to the southeast, where the shiptower might have been, a ball of flame, swelling, swelling into a little sun, a cloud rising from it lit from below, bloody and skull-shaped in the murk, fires within it, lightnings playing upon its top. The wind took us then, tumbling us over and over in the high air on the face of a hot wind which Shattnir merely sucked into me and stored away. The earth roared, heaved, and fell in mighty undulations. I saw a mountain tremble, throw back its head and laugh into roaring fragments as we spun through the air again, rolling on the wind. Wild fire licked and crackled and eventually died. After a time we came down, onto a green hill which sat quietly beneath us, steady as a chair. Wind from the north whipped the bloody clouds to tatters and away. The sun broke through, midway down the western sky. It was not a day, yet, since we had hidden in the shiptower to see the Ceremony of Calling Home.

 Beside me, Himaggery picked up a straw and closed trembling lips upon it. “Well, lad. What do you think we should do now?”

 I picked up a straw of my own. “I don’t know what you want to do, Himaggery,” I said.

 “But I’m going to change myself into a Dragon and go looking for my mother.”



 13
Bright Demesne

  



 WE FOUND MAVIN ON HER PINNACLE, just where I had thought she would be, and she was properly admiring of the most splendid Dragon she or anyone in the world had ever seen. It was exactly as Chance had said, a fool idea. The fire and speed and wind in the wings were all very well, but there was still Windlow in my pocket and the bodies of ten thousand great Gamesmen (as well as a few pawns) lying in the cavern under the snows. Oh, we had gone back, Himaggery and I, just to be sure. The cavern was quite intact except for a little fallen ice and melted stone. Huld was not there, dead nor alive, which meant he was still at large in the world, hunting me. I was growing tired of that.

 So, once I had done my gomerousing around as a Dragon, I settled with Himaggery and Mavin on the pinnacle, to await the arrival of my cousins. We sat about Mavin’s fire, me watching Himaggery be excruciatingly polite to her while she twitted him at every opportunity. I finally took her aside and told her to let him alone. If she truly did not want to be the man’s pawnish mate, I told her, then she should not keep saying so so vehemently, which would just make him believe the opposite. I don’t know how I figured that out, except that Trandilar probably had something to do with it. At any rate, it bought us some peace and we got along better.

 Swolwys and Dolwys arrived in good time. They had delivered Izia, improved in both health and spirits by the time they arrived. More important, when they had come to Izia’s home, Yarrel had been there and she had remembered him. The cousins did not say much about that meeting. I hoped for their sakes that Yarrel had not treated them as coldly as he had treated me when last we met. His rejection of me still hurt, and I hoped that Izia’s return might make him feel more kindly, though I knew that if he learned all she had gone through in the intervening years, he might hate all Gamesmen even more. And this line of thought brought me to thoughts of Windlow. I figured that matter out in the privacy of the cave, unwilling to talk about it with anyone. I simply chipped at the corner of the tiny Didir figure with my thumbnail until the white covering flaked away to show the blue beneath. The Gamesmen of Barish were blues, simply (simply!) blues, made in the long past for some reason I could not know, though I was beginning to make some rather astonishing guesses. The Gamesmen themselves did not tell me, though whether they could not or would not, I did not know. At the moment I was content to let things be. Except for one thing.

 At one time or another, casually, over a period of several days, I handed one or another of the Gamesmen to my cousins, to Mavin, even to Himaggery. They handled them as I had done, with bare hands, but they gave no indication that they felt anything or experienced anything at all. So. “Blues” could not be Read by anyone who handled them. It was a particular Talent which I had, seemingly I alone of all the world. So again. No one had seen me take the Windlow blue. No one knew I had it. I doubt that either Mavin or Himaggery ever thought about it, and I did nothing at all to remind them. We traveled to the Bright Demesne together, three horses and two horsemen. We younger ones were the horses, two for riding, one for baggage. I thought of Chance when I did it. He would have approved mightily of how inconspicuous I was. I could not help but overhear the long conversations between my mother and Himaggery (I could not think of him as “Father”). As the hours of our travel wore on. they spoke more and more often of certain Gamesmen they had known. I heard again the name of Throsset of Dornes. I heard again the name of Minery Mindcaster. Himaggery spoke of the High Wizard Chamferton, and Bartelmy of the Ban. They were cataloging all those they had seen in the cavern or suspected might be there. And they were making plans to bring all the blues of all the world to the Bright Demesne. “There will be a way,” Himaggery insisted. “A way to do it without the machines. Or to build a new machine to do it. So many, so great. We cannot leave them there, stacked like stove wood.”

 And then they would talk more, list more names, and end by saying the same thing again. Peter in the horse’s head nodded wisely. We were no sooner out of one mess than we would get into another.

 And, of course, they talked about the Council. The mysterious Council. The wonderful Council. The probably threatening Council. They could not decide whether it was totally inimical, perhaps beneficial, or, possibly, nonexistent. Peter inside the horse’s head nodded again. Such questions could not be left unanswered, not by one like Himaggery. Peter inside the horse’s head had other thoughts, about Quench, Huld, books, about what several hundred or thousand pawns who had been “techs” might do when loosed into a world which did not know they existed.

 And we came at last to the Bright Demesne. Word having been sent ahead, we were expected. There was a certain amount of orderly rejoicing, and Mertyn seemed to have some trouble letting me out of his sight for several days. Chance, on the other hand, behaved as though I had only been gone on a day-long mushroom hunt and was no different on my return than on my going. Only the quantity and quality of the food which kept appearing before me told me that he had worried about me. I helped him by pretending I did not notice.

 There was mourning, too, for Windlow. I wept with the rest and kept my mouth shut.

 And then Izia arrivedľwith Yarrel.

 They rode into the kitchen court about noon. I was in the kitchen garden with Chance, pulling carrots. There is no Talented way to do this easier than simply stooping over and yanking them out by their tops. So I was muddy and sweating and unsuspecting when the clatter of hooves came from the cobbled yard. I looked up, wiping my eyes with my shirttail, and saw Izia looking at me, very pale and very beautiful. She reached one hand to the person beside her, and then I saw Yarrel. He was looking at me, too, but with an expression in which resentment and eagerness seemed equally combined. He slid from the horse’s back, helped Izia down, and they came together toward me. All I could think of was that I wanted to hide, not to have him angry or hateful to me again. Perhaps he saw this emotion on my face, for he stopped and smiled, almost shyly. “Peter.” Was there something of a plea in that voice? I gritted my teeth and stepped forward, the shirttail still between my hands, wiping away the mud so that I could offer him a clean hand. He did not wait for that, but took both muddy fists in his own and drew me within the circle of his arms.

 It was only a moment, a moment before he stepped back, his face calm again as he raised his hand to Chance and let me guide them into the kitchens. We sat there in the fireglow as we had sat year on year, within hands’ clasp of one another, eating Chance’s baking and telling one another of all that had happened in our worlds. It would be good to write that all was as it once had been, the old friendship, the old closeness. But that would be a sentimental story, not true. It was not as it had been; it was only better than it was before he came. And Izia sat there, sometimes smiling a little, a tiny smile, tight and tentative, but a smile, nonetheless. Once she even laughed, a short little hoot of laughter, like a surprised owl. I knew then that I had loved her for herself, and because she resembled him, and because I had rescued her. I knew in that same way that she would never know it, that it would only be a burden to her. She could accept Yarrel’s touch, and only his, a gentling, animal-handler’s touch, with nothing in it of lust or human ardor. She would grow more secure, less frightened, as the years went by. Butľno, she would never accept what might remind her of Laggy Nap. Nap. I had not thought of him or wondered where he had come to. I wondered now, idly, whether it would be worth the trouble to avenge myself and her. So I rejoiced that Yarrel had come, and grieved that Yarrel had come bringing Izia, and then simply stopped feeling and was while they were there.

 And after they had gone, I went to Himaggery, where he sat in his high, mist-filled room and asked him whether he would still accept my help, my Talents and my help, in whatever it was he intended to do. Mertyn was there with him. It was being said that Mertyn would stay, would not return to the Schooltown, so I thought the matter might well be discussed with them both. “Ah, you see,” said Himaggery to my thalan. “It is precisely as Windlow said.” Then, turning to me, “Windlow told me you would come into this very room and say that very thing, Peter. He did not know when it would be. Ah. Ahľbut his vision was wrong in one thing. He thought he would be here, too. Tshah. I shall miss him.”

 “As I will, also.” I said. Oh, Windlow, I thought, why did you not simply tell me before I left the Bright Demesne! If you saw the threat, knew the danger, why didn’t you tell me.

 But there was no answer to that. He rested softly in my mind and did not answer though he was present, as he had foreseen. So I asked the question of Himaggery again, and this time he told me, yes, he would accept my help with great pleasure. It was precisely as I thought, of course. We were to locate the Council. We were to bring the blues to the Bright Demesne. We were to find a way to reunite the body and spirit of ten thousand Gamesmen. We were to pursue Justice, for Windlow had desired that. We were, in short, to do enough things to take a lifetime or two, most of them complicated, some of them dangerous, all of them exciting.

 And, I had an agenda of my own. Huld, for example, who had called Necromancer Nine on me, Huld who did not know that he had been right. He had called Necromancer Nine on the young Necromancer, Peter; it was his intention that Peter die, and that Peter had died indeed. I did not quite know who the Peter who survived would be, but he would not be Dorn, or Didir, or Trandilar.

 So I smiled on Himaggery and offered him my hand. Time alone and the Seers knew what would come next. Highest risk, Necromancer Nine. I was not afraid.



 BOOK 3
WIZARD’S ELEVEN



 A FEW HELPFUL NOTES

 The Gamesmen of Barish

  

  1. Dorn, Necromancer Talent: Deadraising

  2. Trandilar, Ruler Talent: Beguilement

  3. Shattnir, Sorcerer Talent: Power Holding

  4. Wafnor, Tragamor Talent: Moving

  5. Didir, Demon Talent: Mind Reading

  6. Dealpas, Healer Talent: Healing

  7. Tamor, Armiger Talent: Flying

  8. Hafnor, Elator Talent: Traveling

  9. Buinel, Sentinel Talent: Firestarting

  10. Sorah, Seer Talent: Seeing the Future

  11. Thandbar, Shifter Talent: Shapechanging

  

 In addition, the Immutables were reckoned to have Talent Twelve, and Peter was found to have Talent Thirteen. The Talent of Wizards is never specified. “Strange are the Talents of Wizards.”

  

 Notes on the Fauna of the World of the True Game

  

 The animals, birds, and water creatures originally native to the world of the True Game lack a backbone and have evolved from a vaguely starfishshaped creature. The basic skeleton is in the form of a jointed pentacle, or star, often elongated, with the limbs and head at the points of the star. Despite this very different evolutionary pattern, the bioengineers among the magicians succeeded in meshing the genetic material of the new world and that from which they came. Among the creatures now native to the world of the True Game are:

  

 BUNWITS: Any of a variety of herbivorous animals with long hind legs and flat, surprised-looking faces under erect, triangular ears. Like all animals native to the world, bunwits are tailless. They eat young grasses and the leaves of webwillows.

  

 FLITCHHAWKS: Swift, high-flying birds which prey mostly upon bunwits of the smaller varieties. Noted for their keen eyes.

  

 FUSTIGARS: Pack-hunting predators, some varieties of which have been extensively inbred and domesticated.

  

 GNARLIBARS: A huge animal which lives in the high wastes below the Dorbor Range. It feeds upon anything it can catch, including old or ailing krylobos. The gnarlibar has a ground-shaking roar which has earned it the name of “avalanche animal.” Gnarlibars always pack in fours, two females and two males; females always bear twins, one male and one female. A set of Gnarlibars is called a “leat” or crossroads, because of their invariable habit of attacking from four directions at once. It is thought that the gnarlibar is the descendant of a prehistoric race of animals so prodigious in size as to be considered mythical.

  

 GROLE: A long, blind, legless animal with multiple rows of teeth which lives by burrowing into soil, stone, or other inorganic materials, utilizing the light metals in its metabolism. The teeth are of adamant and can be used as grinding tools. The so-called “sausage groles” are not related to rockeater groles but are smaller creatures of similar configuration which eat only organic materials, notably the meat of the ground nut.

  

 KRYLOBOS: A giant, flightless bird with well-developed wing fingers, capable of very high running speeds. The krylobos dance contests are among the most exciting of spectacles for adventurous zoologists, as the birds are extremely agile and powerful.

  

 POMBIS: Carnivores distinguished by clawed feet and the ability to climb tall trees or nest in virtually inaccessible locations. Pombis are irritable and have a reputation for unprovoked belligerence.

  

 THRISPAT: A small omnivore which bears its young alive, lives in trees or upon precipitous mountain slopes, and mimics the calls of other animals and the human voice. Small thrispats are favorite pets in the jungle cities where breeders vie in extending the vocabularies of their animals. A good thrispat can speak up to a hundred words and phrases with some indication of understanding their meaning. Thrispats are particularly fond of ripe thrilps, whence the name.

  

 WARNETS: A stinging, flying insect of minuscule size and legendary bad temper, which lives in hordes. Called “saber-tail” by some. It is said that krylobos will take warnet nests and drop them into the nests of gnarlibars during territorial disputes.

  

 Native Peoples

  

 At least two peoples are known to occupy the lands around the area of the True Game.

 SHADOWPEOPLE: Small, carnivorous (omnivorous when necessary) nocturnal people delighting in music and song. They are extremely fond of festivals, dance contests, song contests and the like and have been seen to assemble by hundreds within sound of the annual contests at the Minchery in Learner. While Shadowpeople eat bunwits of any size, it is notable that they do not attack krylobos and are not attacked by pombis, gnarlibars, or warnets.

  

 EESTIES: A people said by some to be aloof and withdrawn, by others to be friendly and helpful. Seen most often as solitary individuals. Native language unknown. Habits unknown. In appearance, star-shaped, moving as Armigers do or rolling upon the extremities.



 1
Wizard’s Eleven

  



 MAVIN MANYSHAPED, my mother, had told me that when a Shapeshifter is not Shiftingľthat is, when he is not involved in a Gameľit is considered polite for the Shifter to wear real clothing and act, insofar as is possible, like any normal Demon or Necromancer or Tragamor. I like to humor Mavin when I can. The proper dress of a Shifter includes a beast-head helm and a fur cloak, so I had had a pombi-head helm made up, all lolloping red tongue and glittering eyes, with huge jowls and earsľfake, of course. A real pombi head would have weighed like lead. My fur mantle was real enough, however, and welcome for warmth on the chill day which found me midway between the Bright Demesne and the town of Xammer. I was mounted on a tall black horse I had picked for myself from Himaggery’s stables, and Chance sulked along behind on something less ostentatious. We were on our way to visit Silkhands the Healer, not at her invitation and not because of any idea of mine.

 Chance was sulking because he had recently learned of a large exotic beast said to live in the far Northern Lands, and he wanted me to Shift into one so that he might ride me through the town of Thisp near the Bright Demesne. It seemed there was a widow there ...

 I had said no, no, too undignified, and wasn’t Chance the one who had always urged me to be inconspicuous? To which he had made a bad-tempered reply to do with ungrateful brats.

 “If she had seen you mounted on a gnarlibar, Chance, she would never have let you in her house again. She would have felt you too proud, too puissant for a plumpish widow.”

 “ ‘Twould not be too warlike for that one, Peter. She’s widow of an Armiger and daughter of another. Great high ones, too, from the telling of it.”

 “But she has no Talent, Chance.”

 “Well. That’s as may be. Boys don’t know everything.” And he went back to his sulks.

 Whoops, Peter, I said to myself. Chance is in love and you have been uncooperative. Thinking upon the bouncy widow, I could imagine what Talents she might have which Chance would value. I sighed. My own history, brief though it was, was mainly of love unrequited. I resolved to make it up to him. Somehow. Later. Certainly not before I found out what a gnarlibar might look like. This rumination was interrupted by more muttering from Chance to the effect that he couldn’t see why we were going to Xammer anyhow, there being nothing whatever in Xammer of any interest.

 “Silkhands is there, Chance.” I didn’t mention the blues which were the ostensible reason for my trip.

 “Well, except for her there’s nothing.”

 Right enough. Except for her there was probably little, but between the blues and old Windlow the Seer, I had reason for going.

 The Bright Demesne had been like a nest of warnets since Mavin, Himaggery, and I had returned from the place of the magicians in the north. Those two and Mertyn had great deeds aflight, and all the coming and going in pursuit of them was dizzying. They had been horrified to learn of the bodies of great Gamesmen stacked in their thousands in the icy caverns of the north and had resolved to reunite those bodies with the personalities which had once occupied them, personalities now scattered among the lands and Demesnes in the form of blues, tiny Games-pieces used in the School Houses in the instruction of students. Mavin had appointed herself in charge of locating all the blues and bringing them to the Bright Demesne, though how she planned to reunite them with the bodies was unknown unless she was depending upon the last of the magicians, Quench, to make it possible. In any case, uncertainty was not standing in the way of action. Pursuivants were dashing about, Elators were flicking in and out like whipcracks; the place was fairly screaming with arrivals and departures.

 Coincident with all this was a quiet search for my enemy, Huld. We were all eager to find him, accounting him a great danger loose in the world and ourselves unable to rest in safety until he was in some deep dungeon or safely dead.

 And, of course, there was still much conjecture and looking into the matter of that mysterious Council which was rumored to be managing or mismanaging our affairs from some far, hidden place of power. Anyone not otherwise occupied was trying to solve that enigma. Meantime, I traveled about, collected blues, spent little time at the Bright Demesne. Standing about under the eyes of an eccentric mother, a father who kept looking at me like a gander who has hatched a flitchhawk chick, and of my thalan, Mertyn, who persisted in treating me like a schoolboy, made me short-tempered and openly rebellious in a few short days. I said as much to the three of them, but I don’t think they heard me. They considered me a treasure beyond price until it came time to listen to me, and then I might as well have been a froglet going oh-ab, oh-ab, oh-ab in the ditches. I would like to have been involved at the center of things, butľwell. It would have done no good to talk to Mavin about it. She was a tricksy one, my mother, and though I would have trusted her implicitly with my life, I could not trust her at all with my sanity. Matchless in times of trouble, as a day-to-day companion she had remarkable quirks. Himaggery and Mertyn were preoccupied. Chance was courting the widow in Thisp. There were no other young people at the Bright Demesneľall locked up in School Houses. What was there to do?

 Given the state of my pockets, I had decided to go swimming. During my travels in Schlaizy Noithn, I had learned to do without clothing most of the time, growing pockets in my hide for the things I really wanted to carry about. When one can grow fangs and claws at will, it is remarkable how few things one really needs. Well, pockets in one’s skin sound all very well, but they accumulate flurb just as ordinary pockets do, and accumulated flurb itches. A good cure for this is to empty the pockets, turn them inside out and go swimming in one of the hot pools with the mists winding back and forth overhead and the wind breathing fragrance from the orchards. All very calm and pastoral and sweetly melancholy.

 Well, enough of that was enough of that in short order. I sat on the grassy bank with the contents of my pockets spread out, sorting through them as one does, deciding what to do with a strange coin or an odd-shaped stone. While I was at it, I dumped out the little leather pouch which held the Gamesmen of Barish.

 There had been thirty-two of the little figures when I had found them. Only eleven had been “real.” The others were merely copies and carvings made by some excellent craftsman in a long ago time in order to fill out a set of Gamespieces. The ones which were only carvings were in my room. The eleven real ones were becoming as familiar to me as the lines in my own hand.

 There was Dorn, the Necromancer, death’s-head mask in one hand, dark visaged and lean. I could almost hear his voice, insinuating, dry, full of cold humor, an actorish voice. There was voluptuous Trandilar, Great Ruler, silver-blonde and sensual, lips endlessly pursed in erotic suggestion. There was Didir, face half hidden beneath the Demon’s helm, one hand extended in concentration, the feel of her like a knife blade worn thin as paper, able to cut to inmost thoughts and Read the minds of others.

 There was stocky Wafnor the Tragamor, clear-eyed and smiling, his very shape expressing the strength with which he could Move thingsľmountains, if necessary. He had done that once for me. There was Shattnir, androgynous, cold, menacing, challenging, the most competitive of them all, the spikes of her Sorcerer’s crown alive with power. Beside her lay the robed form of Dealpas the Healer, tragic face hidden, consumed with suffering, her they called “Broken leaf.” And, last of those I knew well, Tamor the Armiger, Towering Tamor, poised upon the balls of his feet as though about to take flight, Grandfather Tamor, strong and dependable, quick in judgment, instant in action. I knew these seven, knew the feel of their minds in mine, the sound of their voices, the touch of their bodies as each of them remembered their own bodies. I could, if I concentrated, almost summon the patterns of them into my head without touching the images.

 There were four others I had not held. Sorah, the Seer, face shadowed behind the moth-wing mask, future-knower, visionary. There was fussy Buinel, the Sentinel, Fire-maker, much concerned with protocol and propriety, full of worry, holding his flaming shield aloft. There was Hafnor, the Elator, wings on his heels, quicksilver, able to flick from one place to another in an instant. And, lastly, there was Thandbar the Shifter whose talent was the same as my own, tricksy Thandbar in his beast-head helm and mantle of pelts. They lay there, the eleven, upon the grass.

 And one more.

 One not disguised by paint as the Gamesmen were. One icy blue. Windlow. I had not taken him often into my hand, and there was reason for that, but I took him then beside the warm pools and held him in my palm out of loneliness and boredom and the desire to be with a friend. He came into my head like good wine and we had a long time of peacefulness during which I sat with my legs in the water and thought of nothing at all.

 Then it was as though someone said “Ah” in a surprised tone of voice. My mind went dreamy and distant, with images running through it, dissolving one into another. My body sat up straight and began to breathe very fast; then it was over, and I heard Windlow saying inside my head, “Ah, Peter, I have had a Vision! Did you see it? Could you catch it?”

 And I was saying, to myself, as it were, “A vision, Windlow? Just now? I couldn’t see anything. Just colors.”

 “It is difficult to know,” he said. “Your head does not feel as mine did. It doesn’t work in the same way at all. How strange to remember that one once thought quite differently! It is like living in a new House and remembering the old one. Fascinating, the difference. I could wander about in here for yearsľah. The vision. I saw you and Silkhands. And a place, far to the north, calledľ’Wind’s eye.’ Important. Where is Silkhands?”

 “You and Himaggery sent her to Xammer.” This was true. It had happened well over a year before, after the great battle at Bannerwell. Though Silkhands had long known that her sister and brother, Dazzle and Borold, were kin unworthy of her sorrow, when the end came at Bannerwell which sent Dazzle into long imprisonment and Borold to his deathľfor he had died there at the walls, posturing for Dazzle’s approval to the very endľit had been more than Silkhands could bear. She had cried to Himaggery and to old Windlow (this was long before Windlow had been captured by the traders and taken away) and they had sent her off to Xammer to be Gamesmistress at Vorbold’s House. She had gone to seek peace and, I had told her at the time, perpetual boredom. I had given her a brotherly kiss and told her she would be sorry she had left me. Well. Who knows. Perhaps she had been.

 “Ah. Then she is still in Xammer. Nothing has changed with Silkhands since Iľpassed into this state of being.”

 It was a nice phrase. I knew he had started to say, “Since I died,” and had decided against it. After all, one cannot consider oneself truly dead while one can still think and speak and have visions, even if one must use someone else’s head to do it with. “She is still there, Windlow, so far as I know. You’re sure Silkhands was in your vision?”

 “I think you should go to her, boy. I think that would be a very good idea. North. Somewhere. Not somewhere you have been before, I think. A giant? Perhaps. A bridge. Ah, I’ve lost it. Well, you must go. And you must take me along ... and the Gamesmen of Barish.”

 I asked him a question then, one I had wanted to ask for a very long time. “Windlow, why are they called that? You called them that, Himaggery called them that. But neither of you had seen them before I found them.”

 There was a long and uncomfortable silence inside me. Almost I would have said that Windlow would have preferred that I not ask that question. Silly. Nonetheless, when he answered me, he was not open and forthcoming. “I must have read of them, lad. In some old book or other. That must be it.”

 I did not press him. I felt his discomfort, and laid the blue back into the pouch with the others, let him go back to his sleep, if it was sleep. Sometimes in the dark hours I was terrified at the thought of the blues in my pocket, waiting, waiting, living only through me when I took them into my hand, going back to that indefinable nothingness between times. It did not bear thinking of.

 Now, since I had never told anyone about having Windlow’s blue, I could not now go to them and say that Windlow directed me to visit Silkhands. A fiction was necessary. I made it as true as possible. I reminded them of the School House at Xammer, of the blues which were undoubtedly there, of the fact that Silkhands was there and that I longed to see her. At which point they gave one another meaningful glances and adopted a kindly but jocular tone of voice. Besides, said I, Himaggery always had messages to send to the Immutables, so I would take the messages. I could even go on to a few of the Schooltowns farther north, combining all needs in a single journey. What good sense! How clever of me! I would leave in the morning and might I take my own pick from the stable, please, Himaggery, because I have grown another handswidth.

 To all of which they said yes, yes, for the sake of peace, yes, take Chance with you and stay in touch in case we find Quench.

 Which explains why Chance and I were on the frosted road to Xammer on a fall morning full of blown leaves and the smoke of cold. We had been several hours upon the road, not long enough to be tired, almost long enough to lose stiffness and ride easy. The ease was disturbed by Chance’s whisper.

 “‘Ware, Peter. Look at those riders ahead.”

 I had seen them, more or less subconsciously. Now I looked more closely to see what had attracted Chance’s attention. There was an Armiger, the rust red of his helm and the black of his cloak seeming somehow dusty, even at that distance. The man rode slouched in an awkward way, crabwise upon his mount. Beside him I saw a slouch hat over a high, wide collar, a wide-skirted coat, the whole cut with pockets and pockets. A Pursuivant. Those who worked with Himaggery had given up that archaic dress in favor of something more comfortable. Beside the Pursuivant rode a Witch in tawdry finery, and next to her an Invigilator, lean in form-fitting leathers painted with cat stripes. What was it about them? Of course. The crabwise slouch of the Armiger permitted him to stare back at us as he rode.

 “Watching us?” I asked Chance. “How long?”

 “Since we came up to ‘em, lad. And they wasn’t far ahead. Could have started out from the hill outside the gate, just enough advance of us to make it look accidental like.”

 “Why?”

 “Why?” He snorted under his breath. “Why is sky blue and grass green. Why is Himaggery full of plots. Why is Mertyn bothered about a Shifter boy with more Talent than sense. ‘Tisn’t me they’re bothered over.”

 “Me?” I considered that. Ever since I had left Schooltown I had been pursued by one group or another, on behalf of Huld the Demon, on behalf of Prionde the High King, on behalf of the magicians. Well, the magicians were probably all dead but one, so far as I knew, but both Huld and Prionde were alive in the world. Unless I had attracted another opponent I knew nothing of.

 If someone had put the group together to win a Game against meľthe me I appeared to beľthen they had selected well enough. Both the Pursuivant and the Invigilator had Reading, though not at any great distance. Both the Armiger and the Invigilator could Fly. Both the Invigilator and the Witch could store some power. In addition, the Pursuivant would be able to flick from place to placeľnot far and not as quickly as an Elator would have done, but unpredictablyľand he would have limited Seeing. Add to this the Witch’s ability as a Firestarter (her Talent of Beguilement didn’t worry me) and they were a formidable Game Set.

 I wondered how much they knew about me. If Huld had sent them, they knew too much. If Prionde had sent them, they might not know enough to cause me trouble. And if someone else? Well, that was an interesting thought.

 “' ‘Their aim, what Game?’ “ I quoted softly for Chance’s ears alone.

 “No Game this close to Himaggery, boy. Later on, it’ll be either kill or take, wouldn’t it? Why Game else?”

 “I wonder what I should do,” I mused, mostly to myself, but Chance snorted.

 “You went to School, boy, not me. Fifteen years of it you had, more or less, and much good it did you if you didn’t learn anything. What’s the rule in a case like this?”

 “The rule is take out the Pursuivant,” I replied. “But no point chopping away at them if they’re only innocent travelers. I’d like to be sure.”

 “Wait to hear them call Game and you’ll wait too long.” He shut his mouth firmly and glared at me. He did that when he was worried.

 “There’s other ways,” I said. Under cover of the heavy fur mantle, I reached into the pouch which held the Gamesmen. I needed Didir. She came into my fingers and I felt the sharp dryness of her pour up my arm and into me. Lately she had dropped the formality of “speaking” in my head in favor of just Reading what she found there. I let her Read what I saw. A moment went by.

 Then, “I will Read the Witch,” she whispered in my brain. “Small mind, large ego, no Talent for Reading to betray us. Just ride along while I reach her...”

 So I rode along, pointing out this bit of scenery and that interesting bird for all the world like a curious merchant with nothing more on his mind than his next meal and the day’s profits. Covertly I examined the Witch in the group ahead. Shifters have an advantage, after all. They, and I, can sharpen vision to read the pimples on a chilled buttock a league away. I had no trouble seeing the Witch, therefore, and I did not like what I saw. She was sallow, with bulging eyes surrounded by heavy painted lines of black. Her mouth was small and succulent as a poison fruit, and her hair radiated from her head in a vast frizzy mass through which she moved her fingers from time to time, the finger-long nails painted black as her eyes. The clinging silks she wore revealed a waistless pudginess. Overall was a Beguilement which denied the eyes and told the watcher that she was desirable, wonderful, marvelous.

 “Pretty Witch,” I said to Chance.

 “Beautiful,” he sighed.

 Oh, my. She was using it upon both of us, not knowing my immunity to it. Or, perhaps knowing my immunity but testing it? The possible ramifications were endless.

 “She’s a Witch, Chance,” I said sternly. “A perfect horror. Black fingernails as long as your arm, frog eyes, hair like a briar patch and a figure like a pillow.”

 His mouth dropped open a little, but he was well schooled to the ways of Gamesmen. “I’ll keep it in mind, Peter,” he said with considerable dignity. “Be sure I’ll keep it in mind.”

 “But if you act like you know,” I added sweetly, “she’ll know I told you. Better pretend you think she’s gorgeous.”

 He gave me a hurt look. “I’m not a fool, boy. Had that figured out for myself.” And he went back to staring at her with his mouth open. If I had not known about the widow back in Thisp, I would have sworn he was smitten.

 It wasn’t long before Didir spoke to me again. “They seek to take you, Peter, as agents for some other. The Witch does not know for whom. The Invigilator has something dangerous in his pocket, however, something to make you helpless. Be careful.” And she was gone once more. The Gamesmen did not stay in my head. I wondered, not for the first time, if this was courtesy or discomfort. Did they refuse to invade me out of kindness or because my brain was unpleasant for them? As conjecture, it served to keep me humble.

 “The rule is to take the Pursuivant out, Chance, but we will break the rule, I think. Since we are warned, let them move first. I’ll see what the Demesne feels like. I think the Witch intends to move soon. Can you carry on a flirtation at this distance?”


 “Game is announced, is it?” He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then, “Well, if she makes a beckon at me, I can manage to stir my bones in motion.” And nodded, satisfied with himself. Old rogue. He was right. Game was announced.

 In a formal Game, Great Game, the announcement had to be done in accordance with the rules of Great Game, by Heralds calling the reasons and causes, the consequences and outcomes. In Great Game everyone knew who was Gaming, for what reasons, and what quarter might be given. Then there were Games of Two which were almost as formal. Game would be called by one and responded to by another before their friends and compatriots. Then there was secret Game, covert Game, but even there (if one played according to the rules) Game had to be announced. The announcement, however, could be part of the Game. If the opponent were a Demon, the announcement might be merely thought of. If the opponent were a Rancelman, then the announcement might be hidden. If the opponent were a Seer, then deciding upon the Game was considered announcement enough. A true Seer, it was reasoned, would See it in his future. The variations were endless. In this case the Armiger had called attention to himself and the Witch had thought of the Game. Announcement enough. The only question in my mind was whether the group ahead knew that I could do what Didir had just done. Oh well, trala. Game is announced. On with it.

 We continued our journey, the group ahead moving only slightly slower than we so that we gained upon them as the leagues went by. The Witch was closer and closer yet, and Chance looked in her direction ever more frequently. We were not within Reading distance by the Pursuivant and Invigilator yet, and I wanted the first encounter over before they tried to Read me and failed. Chance and I stopped and made as if to go into the bushes on personal business, watching them from cover. When the distance had widened a little, we came after them, all innocence. If they really intended to use the Witch, she would make her Move soon.

 And she did.

 We watched them pull up, saw the broadly acted consternation as the Witch searched through her clothing, miming something lost. My, oh, my, what had she lost upon the road? Something important. Oh, yes; wide gestures of loss and concern; equally wide gestures to the others to go on, go on, she would ride back and then catch up to them. “Watch her,” I said to Chance. “She’ll head back toward us pretending to search the road for something lost.”

 “What did you say she looks like?” panted Chance.

 “Black nails, black painted eyes, body like a bolster and hair like wires. ‘Ware, Chance. She’ll eat you.”

 “Up to you to prevent it, boy.”

 When she was a hundred paces from us, she turned to us, smiling, blazing. Lord, she was beautiful. My mouth almost dropped open, but then I felt around for the pattern that let me see clear even while my fingers fumbled for Wafnor in the pouch. Far ahead on the road the Armiger’s horse was now riderless. I trusted not, tra-la. The Witch pouted, prettily.

 “Oh, Sir Shifter, I beg your assistance. I know that Shifters can make their eyes keen like those of the flitchhawk to see a coin dropped in a canyon from a league away. Can you find for me the bracelet I dropped along the way here, perhaps at the edge of the trees?”

 Then she turned to Chance, casting that smile on him like the light of a torch. Almost I saw him melt, but then I caught the tucks in his face where he had his cheeks between his teeth, biting down. “Pawn,” she said, “would you help your master find my bracelet by walking along the trees. What he can see, you can retrieve, and have my thanks as he will...”

 Chance’s eyes were out a finger’s width, and he gave every appearance of being about to fall off his horse. Meantime, I smiled, bowed, and oozed desire in her direction while I called up Didir to sit in her head and tell me what she planned. I knew the Armiger was above us, somewhere, ready to fall upon us when we came within the trees. I gave a gulping prayer that I had enough power to do what I intended, then turned my eyes to the grassy verge of the road as the Witch came nearer. Under my fingers Wafnor came alive and reached up into the branches. I worked my way almost to the forest.

 “Oh, lovely one,” I called. “Here. Could it have caught on a branch? See the sparkling there where the sun catches it, not so bright as your beauty, but able to adorn it...”

 Witches are, for the most part, stupid. They tend to come into their Talent early, and this early accession to beguilement gives them too easy success in their formative years. At least so Gamesmaster Gervaise was wont to say. This particular Witch could have served as an object lesson. She came into the trees after me, still glittering and beguiling for everything she was worth. I was reminded of Dazzle, and, yes, of Mandor, and when I turned toward her she must have seen it in my face, for she flew at me with a scream of rage and those black nails aimed for my eyes.

 There was no time for thought. I grabbed her wrist, ducked, twisted, and felt her fly over my head to land with a whoosh of expelled breath on the leaf-littered ground behind me. Then Didir did something quick and clever inside her head and the Witch lay there unconscious. Physical combat is not something we ever learned in a School House, but Himaggery believed in it. He had pawnish instructors giving classes every afternoon in the Bright Demesne. I hadn’t seen the sense of it until now.

 Chance looked at her where she lay. “Ugly,” he said.

 “I told you,” I muttered.

 “What now?” Chance always asks me what now when I have no idea what now. I shook my head, put my finger to my lips, concentrating on what Wafnor was doing. Fingers of force fluttered the bright leaves above us. The noise would be the Armiger. I could feel Wafnor searching, then there was a harsh “oof” as though someone had been roughly squeezed. I felt a shaking in my head, then Wafnor speaking in a cheerful grumble. “Stuck. Got him between two branches, and he’s stuck!” One of the tree tops began to whip to and fro as Wafnor continued growling cheerily. “Won’t come loose. Stupid Armiger...”

 “Whoa,” I said, weary of the whole thing. “Chance, hold the horses while I climb the tree.”

 I found the Armiger hanging by one badly bruised foot in the cleft of a tallish tree. Wafnor assisting me, we thrust one limb aside to let the Gamesman fall, none too gently, into the forest litter. He lay there beside the Witch, the two of them scruffy minor Gamesmen, not young, not well fed. The idea of killing them did not appeal to me. They were not players of quality. I said as much to Chance.

 “They haven’t the look of Huld about them somehow. He has more sense than to send such minor Talents.”

 “Maybe, lad. And maybe they were hired as supernumeraries by those up ahead. Hired fingers to touch you with, see if you sizzle.”

 Chance’s remark had merit. I explored with Didir a possibility which would allow us to let them live, something she might plant in their heads which would take them away. After a short time the Witch and Armiger picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and limped away to the south leading the Witch’s horse. “They will believe they are going to meet others of their company,” whispered Didir. “The notion will leave them in a day or two, but by that time they will be far distant from this place.”

 “Now,” I said, “we can ride in a wide circle south which will take us around those two ahead. We’ll leave them behind us...”

 “Oh, lad, lad,” sighed Chance. “Go around ‘em and they’re behind you. Lose a Pursuivant and he’ll find you. What are you playing at?”

 I sighed, pulled up my boots, looked at the sky, sucked a tooth. He was right. One doesn’t “lose” a Pursuivant easily, and the trick of sending the other two away south wouldn’t fool anyone long. Besides, if Chance’s notions were correct, the two ahead of us were the real threat and came from a real opponent. The more I thought of it, the more I wondered if Huld was behind it. It didn’t feel like Huld, but undoubtedly Huld would have to be dealt with sooner or later. I struck Chance a sharp blow on one shoulder. “Right you are, Brother Chance. Well then, it’s back to the road, ride on, and let them wonder.”

 Which we did. The Pursuivant and the Invigilator had moved on a little, leading the Armiger’s horse. I went through a dumb show of waving as though taking leave of someone hidden in the trees. They wouldn’t believe it, but it might confuse the issue still further.

 We were a moving Demesne, the Game was not joined. Between the two men ahead of us on the road were five Talents and not inconsiderable ones. This reminded me of my own depleted state, and I fingered Shattnir, feeling the warmth of the sun beginning to build in me. I might need all I could get. The two ahead might be as shoddy as the two just defeated, but they might be the real foe, the true opponent, the True Game. If so, then what? What did I want to happen?

 “Young sirs,” Gamesmaster Gervaise had often said. “When you confront True Game in the outmost world, remember what you have been taught. Remember the rules. Forget them at your peril.” Well, so, there was time during this slow jog along the road to remember the rules.

 Game had been announced in two ways. By the Witch thinking of it and by the Armiger riding awkwardly. The Witch would have thought what she thought whether ordered to do so or not, but the Armiger would have ridden in that fashion only to attract attention. Therefore, the announcement was directed to one who would see the announcement with his eyes, not Read it. So presumably they had announced Game to a Shifterľwhich was, after all, what I seemed to be.

 Now the Armiger was gone. Presumably, therefore, they knew that their opponent, the Shifter, had played. They knew I was in the Game. I knew they were in the Game because of what Didir had Read in the Witch’s head, but they did not know that I knew what was in the Witch’s head, therefore ...

 “I never had any head for covert Games,” I complained to Chance. “Whenever I get to the third or fourth level of what I know and they know, I lose track.”

 “Look, lad. They know you’re a Shifter. They’re expecting that. They may have been told you’re something else as well, but nobody knows exactly what, so they can’t expect everything. Just be original and surprising. My granddad, the actor, used to say that. Original and surprising.”

 “Follow the rules.” I sighed again. The rule was to take out the Pursuivant first, because he had the power to change place in an instant, and one might find him behind one with a knife before one could take a deep breath. Two of the Gamesmen of Barish and I had a little conference, waiting for a turn in the road. It might have been quicker to use Hafnor the Elator, but I had never ‘ported from one place to another. The thought made me queasy, like being seasick. Besides, I didn’t know the area ahead, and those with that Talent could only flick to places they could visualize. Which was another reason they were moving ahead of us. They had seen the road we traveled, but we hadn’t seen the road they were on. No. I would use Tamor and Didir. I was used to them. And Shattnir, of course, to provide power, which she’d been doing for the last hour or so. It was moving toward evening before the road set as I wished it to.

 We were moving between close set copses, dark trunks still half masked in drying leaves. One could not see far into them, a few paces perhaps. Just ahead of us the road swung around a huge rocky outcropping to make a loop to the left. Shortly before the riders ahead of us reached this place, Chance and I began a conversation which turned into a loud argumentľChance’s voice much louder than mine. Old rogue. He was an actor as much as his granddad had ever been. As soon as the two ahead had ridden out of sight, I grasped the figure of Tamor and flew up from my saddle, darting away through the trees like an owl among the close trunks while Chance’s voice rose behind me in impassioned debate. From time to time a softer voice would reply, Chance again, but those ahead would have no reason to think it was not me, Peter the Shifter, riding along behind them.

 I had to intercept them before they had any opportunity to become suspicious. The trees were close, too close for easy flight, but I came to the edge of the road silently only a few paces behind them. I drew my knife and threw it, launching myself at the same moment, Shifting in midair. The Pursuivant went down, skewered, even as my pombi claws swept the Invigilator from his saddle. Then I sat on him. Beneath me he screamed, struggled, tried to fly. I let him struggle while I drooled menacingly into his face. He screamed a little more, then fainted. At least Didir said he really fainted, sure I was going to eat him. Shattnir drained him of any power he had left, and then we tied him up after going through his pockets. I found the thing almost at once. It was another of those constructions of glittering beads and wires like the one Nitch had sewn into my tunic in Schooltown, like the things Riddle had shown me outside Bannerwell. It was rather like the thing Huld had used against me in the cavern of the bodies, away north. It was shaped like a hood or cap, with a strap to go beneath the chin.

 “What does it do?” asked Chance.

 Didir sought in the Invigilator’s unconscious mind even as I started to say I did not know. The man stirred in discomfort. She was not being gentle with him. I repeated to Chance what she told me.

 “It guarantees docility,” I said. “If they had put it on my head and fastened the strap, I would have obeyed anything they told me to do.” I stood there for a time, thinking, then asked Didir to search further. Did the man know who sent him? Once I was “docile,” where would they have taken me?

 Whispering, she told me, “There are some ruins near the river which bounds the land of the Immutables. Old ruins. North of here. He would have taken you there.”

 Ah. I knew the place. I had found the Gamesmen of Barish there. Dazzle and Borold and Silkhands had stayed there. Well, I would go there. It would be original and surprising.

 “Put the cap on him,” I told Chance. “I’m going to get into the Pursuivant’s clothing.” So much for my fine fur cloak and my pombi head, lost in the mad flight through the trees. I stripped the Pursuivant and put his clothes on, sorrowing for him as I did so. I had not intended to kill him. The knife had turned in flight. When I had done, I carried him into the woods and laid him in a shallow scrape and covered him over with leaves before we rode away.

 In a little timee three men rode on: an Invigilator, very silent, the strange cap hidden beneath his leather garb; a Pursuivant, whose clothes fit none too well; and a pawnish servant who rode along behind leading two extra horses.

 “Do we go on to Xammer, then?” the servant asked, humming to himself.

 The Pursuivant, I, merely nodded. We were indeed going on to Xammer, to meet Silkhands, and then we were going farther on to those ruins I had visited once before. Behind us in the forest the real Pursuivant’s body was food for ants, and before us was food for thought. I hoped it would not give me indigestion.



 2
Xammer

  



 WE RODE INTO XAMMER, each taking a part in our little play. Chance was playing the grieving servant for all he was worth. The Invigilator, wearing the mysterious contrivance, played himself, though with only such verve as we ordered him to display. I, Peter, played the part of the Pursuivant, trying to convey with every attitude the heartfelt regret I felt at having killed the young Gamesman, Peter, during some unspecified and unfortunate occurrence upon the road. If we were being observed, this bit of acting should have gone further to confuse the observers. We took a room at an inn on the edge of town. I changed aspect and clothing in our rooms and sneaked out the back way, having been able to think of no good excuse for a Pursuivant to visit Silkhands the Healer. Chance was happily immured with a supply of wine and a perfectly biddable audience to listen to his reminiscences. He could have been happier only if the sportive widow from Thisp had been present, so I felt no need to hurry.

 It was as well. The town of Xammer may be unique among Schooltowns. There was much to observe.

 There are no Festival Halls in Xammer. Vorbold’s House is one which specializes in teaching the daughters of the powerful, daughters of Queens and Sorcerers who have risen to first rank, of eminent female Armigers and Tragamors. They are taught how to play their own Games at Vorbold’s House, the game of survival and reproduction. No Festivals for them, to be impregnated by nameless pawns or bear young at random. No. These maidens are the prizes of alliance and are as protected within the walls of Vorbold’s House as they might be within a fortress guarded by dragons.

 So much I knew, for it had been discussed at the time that Silkhands was sent to the place. I had not considered the implications of it, however, and it was these which made the town unique. It was full of shops, shops dealing in luxuries which were purveyed to the School House and to those who visited there. It was full of inns, not scruffy roadside inns but hostelries built with magnificence as the objective. It was full of travelers, powerful travelers entering the town under death bond that no Talent would be used within the walls. It was full, therefore, of courtesies and veiled malevolence as Gamesmen pursued their strategies through earthbound Heralds forbidden to Fly and a pawnish class of merchants who called themselves negotiators and arbitrators. I had never heard so much talk, not even in Himaggery’s council hall.

 I had known enough to bring proper dress, a little ostentatious and overdone, and was received with some courtesy for that if for no other reason when I presented myself at Vorbold’s House. It had a high graceful gate leading into a sunny courtyard where a cat and kittens made endless play through the flower pots. I expected to be invited into the School but was instead shown to a small audience room off the courtyard and told to wait. The time was made less onerous by the arrival of a pretty waiting girl who brought wine and cakes and lingered to flirt with me. This was enjoyable for both of us, so much so that I almost regretted the sound of Silkhands’ step on the tessellated pavement. That is, regretted until I saw her.

 She wasľyes, still Silkhands, but something more. At first I thought she had somehow Shifted herself to become so lovely, but then I saw it was only a matter of a little more flesh smoothing her face and gracing her neck and arms, a little more sleep in a softer bed than the campgrounds we had shared, less worry and stress and sorrow, a little more silk against the skin to replace the rough rub of traveling clothes. She did not even notice the retreating servant girlľnor did Iľbut came straight into my arms as though I had been some long lost love. “Peter,” she said, “I am so happy to see someone from Home. How is Himaggery? Did they finish the new swimming pool in the orchard? Is your thalan still at the Bright Demesne? How is your mother? I heard about Windlowľahľ” and she was suddenly crying on my neck. I could feel the warm trickling wetness of her tears.

 I felt as though two years had disappeared and we were traveling from the ruins where I had found her to the Bright Demesne once more. The best I could manage was a mumbled, “You haven’t changed at all, Silkhands,” while my body and my mind jigged with the notion that she had changed entirely, utterly. Of course, it was not she so much, but I figured that out later.

 She asked if I were alone, and I told her that Chance and another fellow were at the inn, giving no details beyond that at first. She asked if I wanted to stay in the Guest House of Vorbold’s, and we talked of that. I murmured something about the place being secure, and she looked at me slantwise, a look I remembered from the past.

 “I see you have something to tell me, Peter. Well, the Guest House of Vorbold’s is as secure a place as exists in all the purlieus and demesnes. We have guards against trifling as you would be astonished at. So. Will you go to the inn for your baggage, or shall I send for it?”

 I thought it best to sneak in and out and to tell Chance myself. It was as well I did so, for the Invigilator had fallen into some kind of a trance, and Chance could not make him move or speak. We took the wicked little cap off of his head and put him to bed, bent up as he was in a sitting position. I told Chance to tie him and gag him loosely if Chance left the room, just in case the fellow came around, but otherwise to do as he pleased for the day or two I would spend at Vorbold’s. “Tell anyone who asks that your Pursuivant companion suffers from a flux,” I suggested, “and if this fellow hasn’t moved in a day or two, I’ll ask Silkhands to take a look at him.” I could have called forth Dealpas, of course. She was preeminent among Healers, but she was so tragic and sorrowful that it was a pity to wake her. The fellow was breathing well enough, and his heart beat steadily. I thought a day or two would not change him greatly if he were kept warm and quiet.

 And then I went back to Vorbold’s House to find a guest’s room made ready for me (not in the House itself) and a servant standing ready to unpack or clean or press or whatever I chose. I was glad to have brought clothes with me and thanked Mavin for so directing me. I had thought of traveling without any. The man advised that dinner would be served in the Hall at the evening bell, and he took himself off. I luxuriated in my bath, listened to the music from the courtyard, and tried to shake off the very uncomfortable feelings Silkhands had stirred up in me. After the bath I leaned in the window to watch the musicians. Vorbold’s House collected artists, musicians, and poets from all the lands and demesnes. A representative group of them were gathered in the courtyard below me, all demonstrating their skills. The poets wore their traditional ribbon cloaks, looking something like boys let out of School for Festival, though more ornate and grand. There is some controversy about musicians and artists. Some hold that they are Talented, while others hold that it is merely a skill. In any case, they are not under bond in the town as the more ordinary Talents are. They may use whatever it is they have in a Schooltown or anywhere else, and it is not considered proper to Game against them.

 Below me a musician played short phrases of melody over and over while a poet set words to them, and across the yard another poet declaimed a long verse, phrase by phrase, while another musician set notes to that. It seemed there was to be a song contest in the evening on a subject assigned by Gamesmistress Vorbold herself the evening before. In Mertyn’s House, where I was reared, we would have disdained such trifles, and I formed the intention of twitting Silkhands about it. That was before I saw the great Hall.

 It lay in the area to which guests are admitted, one ceremonial entrance for the guests, one even finer opposite which led into the School. I found my assigned seat and sat back to watch the spectacle which had aspects of Festival and of a bazaar. The guests were almost all male. Many were there on their own behalf, but others were there as agents. The products which they bargained for sat at other tables, on low daises of ivory hued stone, young women clad in silks and flowing velvets, each table of them with a Gamesmistress at its head. Silkhands sat at a table near my own. I could look across the glossy heads between and wink at her. Somehow the intensity of the atmosphere around meľthough it was all covert, glances and sighs and whispersľmade a wink seem improper. I satisfied myself with an unsatisfactory smirk and bow. I was, by the way, clad most sumptuously and wearing a face not entirely my own. I had cautioned Silkhands against knowing me too well or obviously in this public place. She bowed in return, I thought more coldly than was necessary.

 The evening’s entertainment began with welcoming words from the Lady Vorbold, Queen Vorbold. She wore the crown of a Ruler, but her dress was much modified. As I looked about the room I noted that all the women of the House were clad in light delicate gowns under robes of heavier richer stuff; that all the young women who were of an age to have manifested Talents wore appropriate helms or crowns or symbols, but all reduced in size and bulk to the status of mere ornaments. The heavy silver bat-winged half helm of a Demon might be expressed as a mere bat-winged circlet, airy as a spray of leaves. I saw a Sorcerer’s spiked crown, tiny as a doll’s headdress, and a Seer’s moth-wing mask reduced to a pair of feathery spectacles drawing attention to the wearer’s lovely eyes. It was as though they sought to make the Talents less important than the women who wore them. Well. In this House that was probably the case. Why did I suddenly think of the consecrated monsters which Mavin and I had seen in the caverns of the magicians? Was it some similar blankness of eyes? I did not quite identify the thought.

 The song duels began, one against one, the musicians playing and singing in turn while the poets sat at their feet. At the conclusion of each song, the diners tapped their silver goblets upon the table to signify praise, and the judgesľa table of elderly Gamesmistressesľconferred among themselves. I heard one of the phrases I had listened to from my room, woven now into a complete fabric of song. The singer was young and handsome, and his voice was pure and sweet. I thought of the singers among the magicians, lost now under the fallen mountains, and grew sad. The song was one which evoked sadness in any case. He finished in a fading fall of strings and was rewarded by a loud clamor of goblets upon wood. He took the prize. It was fitting. His was the most melancholy music of the evening. All the ladies loved it.

 After this entertainment came an intermission during which the young women circulated among the tables to talk idly to the guests. One elegant girl wove her way to the table where I sat, body like a willow waving, garments swaying, face showing that smiling emptiness I had noted before. We greeted her, and she sat to take a glass of wine with us. She was obviously interested only in the tall chill Sorcerer who sat with us. He asked her politely what she was studying.

 “Oh, ta-ta.” She pouted. “It is all about Durables and the Ephemera, and I cannot get it in my head. It stays about one instant and then goes who knows where.”

 The Sorcerer smiled but said nothing. Thinking to fill the silence, I said, “My own Gamesmaster gave us a rule which made it easier to remember. If a Talent is continuous, as for example it is with a Ruler or a Sorcerer, then the Gamesman is one of the Greater Durables or Adamants.” She smiled. I went on, “Those in whom the Talent is discontinuous but still largely self-originated are among the Lesser Durables. Seers, for example, or Sentinels.”

 She cocked her head prettily and looked up into the face of the Sorcerer. Still he said nothing. She made a little kiss with her mouth. “The Ephemera, then? What is their rule?”

 “Those Gamesmen who take their Game and power from others, sporadically, are of the Greater Ephemera,” I said. “Demons, for example, who Read the minds of others but only from time to time, not continuously. And finally there are the lesser Ephemera, those who take their only value from being used by other Gamesmen. A Talisman, for example. Or a Totem.”

 “I see. You make it sound so interesting.” She gazed up at the Sorcerer again after a quick ironic glance at me, and in that glance was all I had not understood until then. It was not that she failed to remember, not that she lacked interest in the subject. She knew, perhaps better than I, but had been taught not to show that she knew. I caught a sardonic smirk on the face of the Sorcerer and turned away angered. There was not that much difference between these, I thought, and the consecrated monsters of the magicians. I wondered how Silkhands could lend herself to thisľthis whatever it was. There might be time to ask her later, but now the intermission had ended and we were to be granted another song by the evening’s champion.

 He stood among us, smiling, relaxed, not touching his instrument until all present had fallen silent. When he touched the strings at last it was to evoke a keening wind, a weeping wind which focused my attention upon him and opened my eyes wide. He faced me as he sang, coming closer.

  

 “Who comes to travel Waeneye

  knows what makes the wild-wind cry.

  Whence the only-free goes forth,

  shadow-giant of the north,

  cannot live and may not die,

  sorrowing the wild-wind cry.”

  

 The wind music came again, cold, a lament of air. He was very close to me, singing so softly that it seemed he sang for me alone.

  

 “Wastes lie drear and stone stands tall,

  signs are lost and trails are thinned,

  abyss opens, mountains fall,

  Gamesman, Gamesman, find the wind...”

  

 Then he moved away, walking among the tables, humming, the music reminding me of night and bells and a far, soft crying in caves. He was standing next to Silkhands as he sang:

  

 “Who walks the Wastes of Bleer must know

  what causes this ill-wind to blow.

  Shadowmen play silver bells,

  krylobos move in the fells,

  gnarlibars come leat and low,

  listening to ill-wind blow.”

  

 He looked up to catch my eye again, sang:

  

  ”Mountains mock and mystify,

  hiding Wizard’s ten within.

  One more walks the world to cry,

  `Healer, Healer, heal the wind.’”

  

 The music ran away as a wind will, leaving only a dying rustle behind it. There was a confused moment, then a barely polite tapping of goblets upon the table. They had not liked it. At once he struck up a lilting dance song with a chorus everyone knew. Within moments virtually everyone in the room had forgotten the wind song, if they had ever heard it, except Silkhands and me and a young woman who sat at Silkhands’ table and now regarded me with an expression of total comprehension. She had large dark eyes under level brows, a pale face with a slightly remote expression, and a tight controlled look around her mouth, like one cultivating silence.

 I, too, had found the song disquieting, though I could not have said why. All the evening’s entertainment had done nothing but leave me irritated and cross. When Silkhands came to my room in the Guest House later, this irritation remained and I made her a free gift of it, not realizing what I was doing. I was speaking about the girl who had come to our table, about what I presumed to call her “dishonesty.” Silkhands disagreed with me.

 “Ah, Peter, truly you expect too much. Who was it came to your table? Lunette of Pouws? I thought so. Her brother wishes to establish an alliance with the Black Basilisks at Breem. So he seeks to interest Burmor of Breem in Lunette. She is his full sister, and she is no fool. She seems like to manifest a Talent which will fit her well enough among the Basilisks; however, Burmor wants no competitor in Beguilement at the Basilisk Demesne. Thus she plays witless before those he sends to look her over. What would you have her do? Stand upon her dignity and Talent, as yet unproven, and so cause her full brother annoyance and grief? If she goes to Burmor, she will be of value there as symbol of the alliance. She will be protected, and there will be time for her Talent to emerge.”

 This argument did not sit well with me, and I said so with much reference to the “consecrated monsters” I had seen in the place of the magicians. “They, too, were taught to be passive, or were so changed in the hideous laboratories that they could be nothing else. They, too, existed for nothing except to breed sons...”

 “You may recall,” she said, “that Windlow once told us of the rules of the Game? How those rules had been made originally to protect; how those rules came to be more important than what they protected; how those rules came to be the Game itself! Well, those rules were made by men, Peter. Lunette chooses to make her own safety and her own justice within the Game. It is her choice.”

 She was so annoyed with me that I thought it wise to change the subject. “Who was that minstrel who won the prize? Did I mistake him, or did he sing to you and me alone of all that crowd?”

 “Ah, one of my students, Jinian, thought the same. He has sung this wind song before. It seems to follow me wherever I go, into the orchards, the gardens. His name is Rupert of Theel, and he is well known among the musicians. Yesterday in my bath I heard ‘Wild-wind weeps and illwind moans. Has the wind an eye? A hand? Has the wind sinews or bones? Healer, Healer, understand.’ It so infuriated me I leaned naked from the window and told him to cease singing `Healer’ or `wind’ in my hearing.”

 “Well, last night he sang `Healer,’ but he also sang ‘Gamesman,’” I commented. “He sang to me as well as you if he sang to either.” We wondered at it a bit. What was there in it, after all? A song. There was this much in it: it linked the two of us together as did Windlow’s prophecy. Musing on this I reached out to take her into my arms. She sighed upon my shoulder and we sat there for a long time in the candle shine and starlight, lost in our own thoughts. When she drew away at last, I began to tell her what had brought me to Xammer.

 Thus Silkhands learned about the blues, and about Windlow’s blue, the only person besides myself who knew of it, the first person beside myself to know the sorrow of it.

 “I take the blue into my hand,” I whispered. “Windlow comes into my mind, a gentle visitor, gentle but insistent. Silkhands, he struggles there. I feel his struggle. He inhabits my mind as a man might inhabit a strange houseľno, a strange workshop where nothing is in its accustomed place. I feel him search for words he cannot find, seek explanations for things which are not thereľconnections and implications which might have been obvious to Windlow in the flesh but which he cannot find in me. He struggles, and it is like watching him drown, unable to save him.”

 “Not your fault,” she soothed me. “Not your doing.”

 “No,” I agreed. And yet it was my doing. “If I do not take him up, then he lies imprisoned in the blue, a living intelligence imprisoned as intelligence is imprisoned in these students of yours who must hide it to protect themselves. Oh, Silkhands, worst of all is when he wants me to read to him.”

 “Read? As a Demon Reads?”

 “No, no. Books. A book. He wants me to read the little book, the one he called the Onomasticon, over and over. As though there were something in it he needs to know and cannot find. Oh, he is gentle, kind, but I can feel the sorrow like a whip.”

 At that she came into my arms again to comfort me, and we lay there upon the wide windowseat staring at the stars until we fell asleep. When I woke, stiff and sore, it was morning and she had gone. I went out to the necessary house behind the Guest House. (A silly place to have it. We had toilets near our rooms at the Bright Demesne.) The singer was there, Rupert, and I thought to find out about the wind song, perhaps find why it disturbed me so.

 “I am interested in the song you sang,” I said politely. “The one about the wind?”

 “Better you than I, Gamesman,” he said, making a face. “Would I could forget the thing.”

 I evinced surprise, and he laughed a short bark without amusement. “I heard it first at the Minchery in Learner. They make shift there to train artists up from childhood, and there is a summer songfest at which many of us assemble to lend encouragement and judge the contests. There are always new songs, some written by students, some brought in from the Northern Lands. Many are of a caliginous nature, dark and mysterious, for the students love such. Well, this wind song was one of them. I heard it, and since have been unable to get it out of my head. I find me singing it when I eat, when I bathe, when I ...” he gestured at the necessary house behind him.

 “The places mentioned in the song? Waeneye? The Wastes of Bleer? Where are those?”

 “Oh.” He seemed puzzled. “I do not know that they exist, Gamesman. I took them for more mysteries. They may exist, certainly, but I know nothing of them.” He smiled and bowed. I smiled and bowed. We took leave of one another. I believed he had told me all he knew. Considering how the song ran in my own head, I could believe it had haunted him.

 When I saw Silkhands, later in the morning, I asked, “Have you a cartographer at the School?”

 “Gamesmistress Armiger Joumerie,” she said. “A good Gamesmistress. A difficult person.”

 “Difficult or not, I would like to see her.”

 And I did see her that afternoon in my room at the Guest House, for no male may enter the School House. As the girls there were much valued for their ephemera they were much protected against its premature bestowal.

 I asked the Gamesmistress whether she knew of a place called Bleer, or one called Waeneye. Also did she know of Learner, or of any place where creatures called krylobos or gnarlibars might live. I had heard, I said, that gnarlibars lived in the north, but that might have been only talk.

 “Bleer, Bleer,” she mumbled to herself, stroking her upper lip with its considerable moustache as an aid to concentration. She was a big woman, larger than many men, and her face had a hard, no-nonsense look about it. “Yes. That jostles a memory.”

 “Possibly a mountainous place,” I offered. The song had mentioned mountains and stone, an abyss, fells.

 “No help, Gamesman,” she said tartly. “If one excepts the purlieus around the Gathered Waters and Lake Yost, virtually all the lands and demesnes are mountainous. You are not untraveled! Surely this has struck you. How much flatland have you seen?”

 I had to admit having seen little. The valley of the Banner was fairly flat, as were the valley bottoms leading into Long Valley in the southwest. Other than that I could think only of that vast, tilted upland which lay above the River Haws and south of the firehills and Schlaizy Noithn. I would not speak of that to the Gamesmistress, but the thought had reminded me of something. “Shadowpeople!” I said. “Where are shadowpeople said to dwell?”

 “Find me a place they are said not to dwell,” she replied. “They live in the far north and west, in the southern mountains below the High Demesne, in the lands around the Great Dragon purlieu far east of here. No, that is no help to you, Gamesman. Give me a bit of time and I will find it for you. The name Bleer echoes in my mind. I have seen it on a chart before.” It echoed in my mind, too, but I could not remember where I had heard of it. Had I asked the right question, I would have had quicker answers.

 As it was, Gamesmistress Joumerie returned to me that evening to say she had found the place.

 “The Wastes of Bleer,” she informed me, licking her lips at the taste of the place, “lie to the north. A highland, the canyons of the Graywater to the west, the vast valley of the River Reave to the east where lies Learner or Learners, called variously. If you intend to go there, I could recommend the road to Betand and the eastern route from there over Graywater. There is a high bridge there at Kiquo, the only one for many leagues. Or, River Reave is navigable as far as Reavebridge, or even Learner in season. There are trails into the high country from there.”

 “What Games, Gamesmistress?” I asked her. “Is there any troubling there? What Demesnes are active?”

 She snorted. “Wary are you? You are young to be so wary. My latest charts show little enough. The Dragon’s Fire purlieu lies north on River Reave, but there is no Game there currently or presently expected. Who knows what hidden Games may be toward? Or games of intrigue or desperation?” She fixed me with an eye yellow as a flitchhawk’s. “If you are that wary, lad, best enter my School House here and learn to dissemble as these girls do.”

 I flushed at that. She went stalking away to the door, making the floor shake. In the doorway she stopped to speak more kindly, seeing she had hit me fair. “There is a cartographer in Xammer, in Artists’ Street, by name one Yggery. He is honest, so far as that goes, by which I mean he will not put anything in a map he knows to be false nor leave out anything he knows to be true. This means his maps are rather more blank than most. Still, if you have treasure enough, buy a map from him before you go north. And if you take Silkhands with you (for I can see the tip of my nose in a mirror in a good light), care for her. She has had more of Gaming than many of us, and has burned herself in caring for others.”

 I had not honestly thought of taking Silkhands with me until that moment. I had not thought she would want to leave Vorbold’s House. Testing this notion, I asked her and was surprised to hear her say she would have made a trip north in any event.

 “I go north to escort Jinian, my student,” she said. “I need a time away from Vorbold’s House. There are some here who turn their eyes from the students to the Gamesmistresses, and I am ... weary of that.”

 “Have you been molested?” I was angry and therefore blunt. I should have known better, for she laughed at me.

 “In Vorbold’s House? Don’t be silly. Of course not. I have been sent proposals at intervals, and I have had to listen to a few representatives for the sake of ... diplomacy. The offers have not been ... unflattering.” She fell silent, thinking of something she did not share with me, then.

 “Save to those like us who do not value flattery. I know I do not, and I presume you have not changed.”

 The expression on her face as she uttered this last was one I knew she used in the classroom, alert, polite, both encouraging and cautionary. I could hear her speaking thus to her students, “Now, young ladies. We do not value flattery...” I giggled at the thought.

 She stared at me for a moment as though I had lost my wits, then giggled with me. We ended up rolling onto the carpet to end in front of the fire, heads pillowed on various parts of our anatomies as we talked it over.

 “I did sound properly Schoolhousy, didn’t l?” she asked. “Well, being Gamesmistress does that to you. Perhaps I am too young for it. I am only twenty-one after all. Many of the students are older than I.” She did not consider this remark at all important, but to me it came as a revelation. Only twenty-one. I was seventeen, almost eighteen, and she was only four years older? I had thought of her as ... as ... well, older-sisterly at least. I was suddenly aware of her thigh beneath my head and of a quickening pulse in my ears. I sat up too hastily, dumping her.

 “Come now,” I said overheartily, trying to hide the fact that my hands were trembling. “We must make plans. I am going from here to the ruins where I first met you because the men who attacked me on the road would have taken me there.”

 “Dindindaroo,” she said, blinking in the firelight like an owl. “That’s the name of the place, or once was. Dindindaroo, the cry of the fustigar. It is said the place was once a main habitation of Immutables.”

 “Truly? Why was it abandoned?”

 “A flood, I think. And a great wind which laid waste to the land about there. At any rate, it was abandoned some three generations ago, perhaps eighty or a hundred years. We used to find old carvings and books when we were there. Himaggery spoke of sending a party of Rancelmen to explore, but he never did.”

 “So the Immutables once occupied this place, Dindindaroo. Well, some villainy is centered upon it now, and I must go there in the guise of the Pursuivant to see what I can find. After that, however, if no sign of Quench has been found, why should I not go with you to the northlands? Windlow’s vision sees us there together, and the song directs us there. Let us go.”

 She agreed hesitantly. “I must take Jinian to the court of the Dragon King at the Dragon’s Fire purlieu. He and another Ruler, Queen someoneľI’ve forgotten her nameľset up a Rulership there, a kind of King-Demesne. Having no sisters, he chose to build his strategy around sons rather than upon thalani, but all his sons save one were eaten in Game over the years. He has only one left, at school in Schooltown, Havad’s House, I believe. He is desirous of children to replace those lost.”

 I remembered out of dim mists having heard that name. “Ah. So the Queen died. Or was lost in Game?”

 “Died. Of too much childbearing to too little purpose, some say. Now he desires a strong young Gameswoman to bear him sons.”

 “Who will also die of too many babies?”

 She smiled a secret smile at me. “No. Our students learn better than that. We may teach them covert game, Peter, but we teach them to survive at it and their children as well. Jinian will not over-bear.”

 I did not pursue the matter, though I thought with a pang of the girl who had given me that long, level, understanding look at the dinner. She had not looked like one who would go uncomplaining into such a life. Well. Who could say.

 Silkhands went on: “It will be a few days before we are ready to leave. You have your own trip to make. How shall we combine our journeys later?” She looked at me, hopeful and luminous in the firelight. I would have promised to combine a journey with her to the stars, and she seemed to know that, making a pretty mouth at me in mockery. I gestured hopeless and resigned acquiescence, and we spent the remainder of the evening talking of other things. I think both of us thought then that we would become lovers. No. I think she thought it and I hoped it. We did nothing about it except stargazing. There seemed to be time, and no reason occurred to either of us to think time would run out. I can still remember the shape of her in firelight, half of her lit with a soft melon-colored light, the other half in darkness.

 So the morning after that found me back in the inn with Chance. The Invigilator had come around to some extent. He would sit up when told, and walk, and eat, and relieve himself. He would do nothing at all unless told to do so, and the strange cap had been on him only one full day. When Didir looked into his head she found an emptiness. “As though untenanted,” she said. I was sorry then that we had put the thing on him. “Perhaps if it had not been on him so long,” whispered Didir, “the effect would have been less.”

 We thought this likely. My assailants could not have wanted to make me witless. What good would I have been to them in that condition? I could not even have served as bait. No, the Invigilator had simply been caught in his own trap, but I mourned nonetheless that his body lived while his mind was gone.

 Before leaving Xammer, we went to Artists’ Street to buy the chart Gamesmistress Joumerie had suggested, and also to the Gamehall to hire a Tragamor. Silkhands had arranged for the few blues held at Vorbold’s House to be packed and delivered to the inn. The Tragamor, escorted by an Armiger, took them off to the Bright Demesne along with a message from me.

 “I am going north,” I wrote, “to stop at the ruins of Dindindaroo. Thence to the land of the Immutables to leave the messages entrusted to me by Himaggery, and thence on the Great North Road in company with Silkhands, traveling to the Dragon’s Fire purlieu. Word may be sent to me in the care of the Gamehalls on the way. Let me know if you find Huld, or Quench. I have found something odd I think Quench would know about.” By which I meant the cap, of course, a thing made by magicians or techs, if I ever saw one. I sealed the letter, then unsealed it and added a postscript. “All affection to Mavin Manyshaped and to my thalan, Mertyn.”

 I thought privately that it was a good deal easier to feel affection for them both when I was a good distance from them.



 3
Dindindaroo

  



 WE RODE OUT OF XAMMER with me in the guise of the Pursuivant once more. He had been a man with lines in his face all crisscrossed from scowling, hard round cheeks and eyebrows which slanted upward over his nose to give him a falsely mournful expression. It was not a face which pleased me nor on which a smile fit easily, and after a time Chance told me to quit twitching it about and settle on something more comfortable for travel. “You can always gloom it a bit when we come to the ruins, lad,” he said. “No sense making me the benefit of it while we’re on the way.” The Invigilator had no comment. We were still having to tell him when to drink and when to go into the bushes to pee, but Didir said there were glimmers of personality deep within which were beginning to emerge again. Evidently the evil little cap had done the same thing a devilish Demon might have done, wiped out all the normal trails in a brain to leave it without any tracks at all. My conscience still bothered me about that. There are worse things than being dead, and this might be one of them.

 Once my face smoothed out into my own once more, it was a more comfortable trip. The ruinsľDindindarooľwere not far from Xammer, a short day’s ride, no more. There was a lot of traffic on the road, too, for the comings and goings to and from Xammer were constant. Not only by emissaries of alliance hunters, either, but by merchants who found Xammer a profitable stop and a convenient place to buy luxuries for shipment farther north. One day I would go north on the road, I resolved, and see the jungle cities. Meantime, we amused ourselves, Chance and I, identifying Gamesmen in the trains. I saw a pair of Dragons, the fluttering cloaks painted with patterns of wings and flames and the feather crests snapping in the breeze. They nodded to us as they trotted past, hurrying away somewhere north, perhaps to the Dragon’s Fire purlieu which was known for its population of air serpents. There were a good many exotic Gamesmen. I saw a Phantasm, gray and blue, faceplate faceted like a jewel, and a bright yellow Warbler who caroled a greeting at us as he passed, the subsonics and supersonics shivering our horses and making all the fustigars in the forests howl. There was a troop of brownclad Woodsmen, a common Talent among the Hidaman Mountains where they are much valued to fell timber and fight fires because of their ability to foretell where fires will happen and move earth and start backfires of their own. Though I had heard of a Woodsman taking his troop halfway down the range in pursuit of a fire he had Seen which was accidentally caused by his troop only after they arrived. Even old Windlow had said that Seeing was not dependable, and I considered it a good part flummery. Perhaps it was this opinion which made me reluctant to call up Sorah as I felt it would not make her think well of me.

 We saw a Thaumaturge and a Firedancer and a Salamander and then about evening came to the fork in the road where the winding trail led away to Dindindaroo, overgrown with weeds and not appearing to have been traveled at all for many seasons. I did not want to come upon the place in the dusk, even with Didir in my pocket telling me she could not Read any minds at all in the place. So we camped, Chance, the idiot Invigilator, and I, with me doing the cooking. Chance amused himself by having the Invigilator make the fire and gather firewood. I think he was making a pet of the creature. Come morning we were up and on the trail at early light, me with my face carefully shifted into a good likeness of the Pursuivant. I felt my Shifting slip away even before we saw the ruins swarming with men. Chance said, “Immutables,” and I knew at once he was right. Well, Riddle might be among them, and he knew Chance, and it probably didn’t matter that I could not hide my own face. Let me go as myself and tell part of the truth.

 The men working on the ruins had it marked out with pegs and string and were busy digging and hauling loads away in large barrows. We stopped a distance away from the turmoil, waiting to be decently noticed, and a man came down the pile toward us, wiping his forehead and looking oddly familiar to me. When I told him who I was, he started a little and gave me an extremely curious glance which I put down to his not having expected a Gamesman to visit. I took pains to be polite, coming down from the horse and making no extravagant noises.

 “Would Riddle be here?” I asked. “I have a message for him from the Bright Demesne.”

 The man went back up the tumulus, peering at me over his shoulder in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of the way the Armiger had ridden ahead of us on the road. Still, that feeling left me when Riddle himself came from some hideaway and stopped to peer at me nearsightedly as though he couldn’t believe what he saw.

 “Peter? You? In Pursuivant’s dress? Butľwhat does this mean?...”

 I saved him his puzzlement, not wanting him to start thinking about my Talents or lack of them. He had turned quite pale in his confusion. “We had a bit of trouble on the road,” I said. “A Pursuivant was among our attackers. He is dead now, poor fellow, and I put on his clothes to confuse those who had hired him. Whoever it was, they should have been here. So said this Invigilator.” I pointed the man out, explaining his lack of interest in what was going on. “He’s not very useful at the moment. He had a kind of cap thing in his pocket, a thing like those you showed me at Bannerwell. Well, we put it on him, and it’s had this awkward effect...”

 Riddle was nodding and nodding at each thing I said, looking very uncomfortable and grim, which I thought still might have been caused by my appearing thus suddenly in the guise of another Talent. At any rate, he collected himself and asked what brought me. I repeated what I had said before, that I had expected to find whoever plotted against me in this place. “Haven’t there been any Gamesmen about, Riddle? Have you seen anyone lurking?” To which he mumbled and said something or other about having been too busy to have noticed.

 It was obvious he was preoccupied, so I gave him the messages Himaggery had sent (something to do with the search for Quench, in which some Immutables were assisting Himaggery) and told him I would stay in the vicinity for a day or two in case Himaggery sent a message for me. And, finally, he managed to shake off his discomfort, from whatever cause, and become hospitable.

 I asked him what they were doing, and he offered us tea while explaining. “We are growing more and more crowded in the purlieu, Peter. Our councilmen decided we should expand our territory, and this ruin marks the southern edge of the lands our people once occupied. They called it Dindindaroo, after the sound of the fustigars who den in the canyons and forests. At any rate, my own grandfather was the leader here in his time. It is our intention to build here once again.”

 “Wouldn’t it be easier to build to one side of this ruin? Why all this digging and delving?”

 He hemmed and hawed for a time before saying, “Oh, there may be artifacts here which are of interest to our archivists and historians. We thought it a good idea to take a little time to salvage what might be left from a former time.” Then he changed the subject. His explanations sounded weak to me. They did not seem to be salvaging. They were searching for something particular. At any rate, Chance drew me away to speak privately.

 “There seems to be no Gamesman here now, lad, no one to do you harm. So it seems. But there is nothing to keep someone from coming in the night, and even if no Talent may be used with all these Immutables about, still there are knives and arrows that can do a good bit of damage. I’d like it better to be inconspicuous.”

 I humored him. We took our leave of Riddle and rode away to the east. Once under the cover of the trees, however, Chance insisted we turn in a large circle which ended us west of the ruins. We found a cavelet well hidden behind tumbled stone, and when we had found the place, Chance asked that Didir look around us to see if anyone lurked. She reported only beast minds and bird thoughts, and I privately thought Chance must be among them to be so concerned. He disabused me of that notion.

 “I had a suspicion,” he said when we had settled down. “We came to that place expecting to find one there who Games against you, Peter. No one was there but that Riddle and his Immutables. So what if that Riddle had not been a so-called friend of yours? What would we think then? We’d think, well, here is the one who set that Game on us. So what I want to know is, how do we know he didn’t?”

 “Riddle? Ridiculous.”

 “Well, how so ridiculous? I dare say those Immutables have reasons and purposes of their own. Can’t you imagine some reason he might want you all quiet and obedient to his will, for him to use some way?”

 I could not. I tried. Riddle knew me as a Necromancer. What need or use could he have for me which I would not have fulfilled for him gladly at the asking? I thought of all possible combinations and alliances and strange linkages which could have come aboutľHuld, Prionde, the Council, Quench, the techs, Riddle, even the minor Gamesmen such as Laggy Nap and his like. Nothing. I said so. Chance was not satisfied.

 “Well, just because we can’t think of what it might be doesn’t mean it isn’t. Would you give me that, lad?” I said yes, I could give him that. He went on, “So ‘ware what you say. Don’t go telling everything you know about where we’re going and what we’re about. Say we’re going along with Silkhands to that Dragon’s Fire purlieu because you and she areľwell, give him that idea.”

 In the lands of the Game it did make sense not to trust too much. The only thing that bothered me was thinking of Riddle as a Gamer. Somehow, because he had no Talent, I expected him to be simple. When I said this to Chance, however, he corrected me with a hoot of laughter.

 “Out on the sea, lad, where I spent many a season, we’d know a man by what he proved to be, not by what his mouth claimed for him. A man could be a devil or a good friend, and sometimes one and another time the other. Some Gamesmen are honest enough, I don’t doubt, though they have the power to be all else without any to say them no, and some Gamesmen are evil as devils. So I doubt not the Immutables have their good and their bad, their complex and their simple. Well for you to suspect so, anyhow.”

 And with that, he left me to lie there, aroused by the puzzle but too weary to stay long awake. We went back to Dindindaroo the next morning to see if a message had come from Himaggery and to take leave of Riddle, for if he was what he pretended to be, a simple and honest man, then he would think more kindly of me for the courtesy. And if he was not what he pretendedľwell. We found him down in a hole, pale and frustrated of face, and he showed such discomfort at my arrival that I thought perhaps Chance was right. I dissembled. For all Riddle could have told, we were still his dearest friends.

 “What are you doing down there, Riddle,” I demanded. “Burrowing like a grole? Have you lost something? Or found it?” Even as I said it, I realized that the hole he was in was probably the same hole I had fallen into some several seasons ago when I had found the Gamesmen of Barish and the book Windlow called the Onomasticon. I gave him my hand to help him out, and he blinked at me as he brushed dust from his coat.

 “I thought for a time we might have found some valuables left here by my grandfather,” he babbled. “All the inhabitants of the place fled, leaving everything. There was great loss of life, a flood, a great wind...”

 “What exactly are you looking for?” I asked him, all polite interest and bland lack of concern. “Would it help to raise up the dead here and ask them?” Aha, I thought. If you do not want me to know what you are doing here, then you will not accept this offer.

 And also aha, said a quiet voice in my head. If Riddle had wanted you to raise up the dead in this place without knowing what you were doing, might he not have arranged for you to be put into that strange cap the Invigilator carried? Hmmm? Chance gave me a look, and I turned away as Riddle shook his head and fussed and said no, no, the only one who had known was his grandfather and his grandfather was said to have died elsewhere, and besides, he doubted a Gamesman could raise Immutable dead. I nodded my acceptance of this while privately thinking that I could do it if I chose. Whatever it was that made them immune to Talents, I wagered it went away when they died.

 I shook my head for the benefit of those standing about. “It is probably just as well, Riddle. The longer they are dead, the less they remember of life. They hunger for life more the older they are, but they remember less. How long ago was the destruction?”

 He thought some eighty years. His father had been a young man at the time.

 “Well, you have waited a good time to seek what was lost,” I said, all kindness and concern. “A good long time.”

 He mumbled something. I think the sense of it was that if he had known earlier what was lost, he would have come earlier to look for it. And this told me much. Riddle had lately learned something new. So. I was not of a mind to hang about making the man sweat. There would be better ways to find out. Besides, I was without Talent in this company and had only one man to stand beside me. It could be less dangerous to be elsewhere. I gave Riddle my hand and bade him farewell, putting the Invigilator in his care.

 “He will dig for you, if you put the shovel in his hand,” I said. “And if any Gamesmen come here who seem to know him, I would be grateful if you would send word to the Bright Demesne.” I did not want Riddle to think I suspected him of anything. In truth, I still did not know that I did suspect him of anything. All I could believe was that Chance was wiser than I, and that I would be wiserľfar wiserľto be more careful. If only I had remembered that later.

 We rode away without talking, both of us preoccupied with our own thoughts. After a time I turned to Chance and said, “I don’t necessarily believe it.”

 “Well, don’t then,” he said. “But it’d be smart to act as though you do.”

 “You know what he was looking for back there.” I made it a statement, not a question.

 “For those things you found, I guess. I notice you didn’t offer them to him.”

 “The thing I noticed was that he said his grandfather left them there. How came his grandfather by them? And why did Riddle not know of them until recently? For I will bet my lost fur cloak that he did not.”

 Chance shrugged, mumbled to himself. Finally, “Would anyone else among those Immutables know? Or is it only Riddle who knows? What about his family?”

 “He had only a daughter,” I said. Then there was a long pregnant silence of such a quality that I looked back to find Chance’s eyes upon me, brooding and hot. “Oh, no,” I said. “I will not.”

 “She’s buried nearby,” he remarked. “Almost in sight of the ruins.”

 “I couldn’t do that,” I said flatly. It was true. I could not even think of raising the ghost of Tossa. It would have made me feel like a Ghoul, and I said as much.

 “I didn’t say you should take her with us,” Chance said in mild reproof. “I didn’t say you should drag her around.”

 I swallowed bile at the thought. Ghouls did raise certain kinds of recent dead and drag them into a kind of fearful servitude of horror, a thing which no self-respecting Necromancer would think to do. There were others who raised ghostsľThaumaturges, for example, or Revenants, or Bonedancers. If what old Windlow and Himaggery had told me was true, full half of all Gamesmen would have some Talent at Deadraising. Full half of all Gamesmen would share any one Talent. If so, it was not a Talent generally used in the way Ghouls and Bonedancers used it, and I felt unclean at the thought.

 “No,” I said. “She died, Chance, without ever knowing she was dying. Often the dead do not know they are dead until we raise them up.” In that instant I thought of Windlow with a kind of stomach-wrenching panic, then sternly put that thought down. “The ancient dead are only dust; they have forgotten life and possess only a kind of hunger which the act of raising gives them. I do not feel thus about the ancient dead. But the newly deadľah, Chance, that is a different thing. With Tossa, she would know herself dead, and it would hurt her.”

 The memory of Mandor’s ghost was recently with me. I was prepared to be as stubborn as necessary, but Chance only said, “Well, then we’ll have to think up some other way to find out. How about someone dead for eighty years or so?”

 “I don’t know,” I said.

 “Do you think you could raise an Immutable?”

 “You’re thinking of Riddle’s grandfather? Riddle said he didn’t die in the ruins.”

 “Riddle said a lot of things. Don’t know whether I believe him or not is all.”

 So we rode along while I thought about that. Riddle was digging in Dindindaroo. He had recently found out that something lay in the ruins which he needed? Wanted? Someone else wanted? Well, which he cared enough about to go to some trouble over, put it that way. Where had he found out, and when? Perhaps on that northern journey he and I had started to make together, when he had turned off toward the east just above Betand? Or in his own land? Perhaps someone had told him? Who? Or he had found old papers?

 After a time Chance interrupted this line of thought to say, “You know, these Immutables are just like the rest of us. They drink a little and they talk. Get a little jolly, they do, and they talk. Pawns travel through their land on business. You and me, we could travel there.”

 Which was an answer, of course. We would need to disguise ourselves. Riddle knew me as a Necromancer only, or so I believed. Chance and I had been seen together once before in the Land of the Immutables, but only briefly. So suppose we went into that land as two pawns, traveling on business. What business? I put this to Chance.

 “Well, as you left me to my own devices in that town of Xammer, boy, and without a hello, goodbye, how was your dinner. I got into a little game or two.”

 “Chance!”

 “Now, now. Mustn’t react hasty-like. A quiet game with honest folk is always good fun. Anyhow, I took my winnings in various small bits and pieces. A little gold, some gems, fripperies and foolishness. Thought I might turn a profit, up north.”

 “So that’s what’s in your saddlebags. I thought you were heavy loaded for having no pack beast.”

 He nodded to himself happily. I never knew what pleased Chance mostľwinning a game of cards or dice, finding a woman who was a good cook, or locating a wine cellar put together by a master vintner. Whatever else the world offered, he would choose one or more of those three.

 He instructed me: “Enough in the bags to make us legitimate, lad. If you can change your face some and get out of those dusty black clothes. Wouldn’t hurt to change horses, too. As may be possible not far from here.”

 Which was possible with Chance in charge of the trade. He went away leading my lovely tall black horse and came back with a high-stepping mare of an unusual yellow color with nubby shoes such as they use along the River Dourt, or so Yarrel had once told me. It was not an inconspicuous animal. However, he had obtained a pack beast in the trade and had done something to his own face while away from me, stuffed his cheeks to make them fatter and darkened his hair. He looked a different man, and it was easy to disguise myself as a younger version of the same. When we were done with this switching about we turned west to cross the Boundary River into the Immutables’ own Land. We had decided to be the Smitheries, father and son, and Chance told me to ride one stride behind and mind my manners toward my elder, which so amused him in the saying he almost choked.

 So that night I sat in a tavern and learned a lesson in gossip. Chance talked of the sea, and of horses, and of trading in general, and of the goods he had picked up in Xammer, and of the young women in that city and elsewhere, and of how the world had changed not for the better, and of a strange wine he had tasted once in Morninghill beside the Southern Sea, and of an old friend of his in Vestertown, and of a man he had known once who used to live in Dindindaroo.

 “Oh, that makes you a liar indeed,” said an oldster, sucking at a glass of rich dark beer which Chance had put into his hand. “If you knew such a one, he was old as a rock. Dindindaroo has been wreck and ruin this hundred year.”

 “Not a hundred,” interrupted another. “No, Dindindaroo was wreck and ruin in the time of my mother’s father when my mother was a girl, and that was no hundred year.”

 “Oh, you’re old as a rock yourself,” asserted the first. “For all you’re chasing the girlies like a gander after goslings, which you will never catch until the world freezes and Barish comes back. If it were not a hundred, it were near that.”

 “Ah, now,” said Chance. “The man I knew was old indeed. Old and gray as a tree in winter. But he said he was there when ruin came down on the place, he said, like the ice, the wind, and the seven devils. Caught a bunch of the people, the ruin did. Or so he said.”

 “Oh, it did. Aye, it did. Caught a bunch of ‘em.”

 “Caught old Riddle’s grandfather, I heard,” said Chance. “That’s what the fellow told me.”

 “Oh, so I’ve heard. Free and safe he was, out of the place, then nothing would do but he go back for something he’d left there, and then the ruin came. That’s the story. Buried in it, they said. Buried in it when the flood came down, and no sign of him and his contrack after that. Oh, a man’ll do strange things, won’t he, when ruin comes.”

 “He will, indeed he will,” agreed Chance, nodding at me over his beer. At which I nodded, too, and agreed that a man will indeed do strange things.

 “What was it he went back for, do you suppose?” asked Chance, as though it didn’t matter at all.

 “Who knows, who knows,” murmured the second oldster, who was growing very tipsy with the unaccustomed quantities of free beer.

 “His contrack,” the loquacious oldster said. “That’s what I heard. Was his contrack from the long ago time of Barish. That’s what they kept at Dindindaroo. Charts and books and contracks to keep ‘em safe until Barish comes back for ‘em. That’s what.” And he hiccuped softly into his glass before looking hopefully to Chance once more who bought another round and changed the subject. They got into an argument then as to whether Salamanders are really fireproof. After that was a good deal of calling on the seven hells and the hundred devils, after which we went to bed to lie there in the swimming darkness talking.

 “So he died there in the ruins, Chance. I have no bad feeling about calling him up. I didn’t know him, and he’s dead this eighty years, but Dorn himself couldn’t call anyone up with all those Immutables about. All of them would have to leave.”

 “As they may do,” suggested Chance, “if they heard that the thing they’re looking for had come to light elsewhere.”

 “Elsewhere?”

 “Somewhere far off. Leave it to me, Peter. We’ll spend one more night here.”

 The which we did. And there was more buying of beer and more talk, and this time Chance made the circle of acquaintances larger so that there were more listeners to what was said. Middle of the evening came, together with jollity and general good feeling, and into a pause in the noise, Chance dropped his spear.

 “You know, it was odd your mentioning Dindindaroo last night,” he said to the oldster at his side.

 “Odd? Was it? Did I? Oh, yes. So I did. What was odd?”

 “Oh, only that I met a man in Morninghill, not a season gone, and he told me he’d dug up treasures around Dindindaroo.”

 At this there was general exclamation and interest. Chance turned to me for verification, and I said, “Oh, he said so, Father, yes. Dug up treasures, he said, and was selling them moreover.”

 Chance nodded, said nothing more, waited. The questions came. What had the man found? The Smitheries, father or son, did not know. Something small and valuable, they thought. Something wonderful and rare, for the man was a famous dealer in such. Old things, certainly. Then, when interest was at its height, Chance led the conversation away from the subject onto something else. I saw two dark-cloaked men leave the place immediately thereafter, and when I went to the window for a bit of air I could hear the pound of hooves going away south.

 We slept there that night, and on the morning went out of the Land of the Immutables, riding publicly east toward the Great North Road. Once out of sight, we turned into the forests and began the circle which would bring us into the cover of the trees nearest the ruins of Dindindaroo.

 We spied upon the place, I with my Shifter’s eyes, keen as any flitchhawk’s, and Chance with a seaman’s glass he carried with him. Sure enough, there were two dark-cloaked men talking with Riddle, the three of them standing upon a mound of crumbled stone and soil, Riddle gesturing as though he were in a considerable turmoil. Troubled he was. His face was white with frustration. After a time they settled down, and by noon they had reached some decision, for many of them went away north into their own land while others, Riddle among them, rode south. So. He was going to look around in Morninghill, and a long weary journey that would be.

 We waited until early evening, until the westering sun threw long golden spears across the tumbled stone, and then we came to the ruins and walked about on them. The industrious diggers had changed them about somewhat. Still, the crumbling walls were there where Dazzle and Borold had sheltered to watch the fire dance, and so was the high slit window where I had hung my shirt to counterfeit a ghost. I stood, looking at it, feeling that deep brown emotion made of dusk and smoke and sorrow which is so piercing as to be sweet beyond enduring. Then I shook myself and took Dorn into my hand.

 “Well, Peter,” he said to me in my mind. “Here lie many dead. Would you have us raise them all?” He knew what I had thought of, but he was ever courteous, treating himself as a guest. Besides, in clarifying for him, I made clear to myself as well. “A name,” he said. “Did you neglect to learn the man’s name?”

 I uttered an oath, disgusted with myself. If we were to draw out one from among so many, a name would be needed for we did not know precisely where he lay. “What was his name?” I growled to Chance. And he answered me, soft as pudding, well Riddle of course, same as his grandson. So we went with that.

 I began to sense the dead about us, the feeling of them, the luxuriant quiet of them. They were at peace in the long slow heat of summer and the long slow cold of winter, the ageless waft of the wind and the high cry of the hawk upon the air. In them the leaves moved and the wavelets of the river danced. In them sorrow had no place; time for sorrow had gone with the turn of the seasons and the fall of the leaves. “Pity,” said Dorn, “to disturb this peace.”

 Still, he called the name of Riddle into the quiet of the place, drawing out and up, and at last we saw a little whirlwind of dust turning itself slowly upon the tumulus before us, spinning and humming a quiet sound into the twilight. Through this whirling dust the sun fell, turning it golden, so that we confronted a shining pillar and spoke as with a Phoenix, for so those Gamesmen whirl into flame and are consumed before rising once again.

 We asked, and asked again. This revenant was not so old as those we had raised in the caves beneath Bannerwell, so we had created no monster of dust which hungered for life. Neither was it so short a time after death as the raising of Mandor, so there should have been no remembered agonies. Despite this, it seemed disinclined to speak with us, resisted being raised. I was about to give up when I heard Didir within, unsummoned, feelingľwas it excited? Surely not. Impetuous. “Let me.” She reached into that whirling cloud and seemed to fumble there as though Reading it, making some tenuous connections of sparkling dust.

 Then the humming cloud took the shape of a man, a wavery shape, still resistant, not unlike Riddle in appearance, looking at something I could not see.

 “I see Dorn,” the phantom said. “Barish promised us immunity, Gamesman. He promised, but I am raised from the dead by Dorn. Ah, but then, I broke my pledge, my oath to Barish. All unwitting, all unwise. Forgive and let go...”

 Chance and I looked at one another, a hasty, confused glance. This was not what we had expected. I stuttered, reaching for a question to clarify. “Riddle, tell me of your pledge to Barish.”

 “Barish ... Barish. He gave us immunity from your power, Gamesman, for us and our children forever, immutable throughout time, so he said. And in return we must keep his body safe, keep the bodies of his Gamesmen safe where they lie, north, north in the wastes, north in the highlands where the krylobos watch. We must keep the Wizard safe, and the Wizard’s eleven. But he went away and did not return. I brought the Gamesmen here, Barish’s book here, thinking to find him somewhere, find him and return them, but the waters came, the waters came and I died...” The figure writhed, became the humming cloud once more. From it the voice came in prayer and supplication, “The contract broken, all unwitting ... and Barish’s promise broken as well for I am raised by Dorn to suffer my guilt. Ah. Forgive. Let me lie in peace...”

 It was not my voice that said it, and not Dorn’s. I thought it was Didir, though I could not be sure. “You are forgiven, Riddle, faithful one. Go to your rest.”

 The cloud collapsed all at once and was gone. The sun lowered itself below the undulant line of hills. Dark came upon the tumulus and in the forest a fustigar howled, to be joined by another across the river. A star winked at me, and I realized that I saw it through brimming tears. Something had happened. I was not sure what it was, or why, and the Gamesmen in my pocket did not know either. It was as though they and I had listened in upon some conversation from another time, a thing familiar and strange at onceľfamiliar because inevitable and strange because I could not connect it to anything I knew. Chance was watching me with a good deal of concern, and I shook my head at him, unable to speak.

 “Well,” he said when I could hear him. “What went on there?”

 I tried to tell him. All I could get out was that the answers to all our puzzles seemed to lie in the Wastes of Bleer.

 “Riddle’s grandfather brought some things here from the Wastes of Bleer,” I said.

 “I think it would help us if we stopped talking around and around,” he said thoughtfully. “Let’s not say `things.’ What was brought here was those little Gamesmenyou found and the little book you gave Windlow.”

 “I have it with me,” I said. “There may have been other things as well.”

 “No matter. What was lost was the Gamesmen and the book. Now did this Riddle fellow steal them?”

 “No!” I was shocked. “No. He was supposed to have them. Supposed to keep them safeľthem and the ... bodies.”

 The light that engulfed me then seemed to be around me in the world, but it was only inside my head. The bodies. Didir’s body. Lying in the northlands, waiting for her. Her. Her I had in my pocket, not merely a blue, not merely a Gamespiece, but a person awaiting ... what? Resurrection? Awakening? Tamor, there in the northlands, Tamor who had saved my life more than once. And tragic Dealpas. And Trandilar. Oh, Gamelords, Trandilar! Voluptuous as boiling cloud and as full of pent energies, erotic, beguiling Trandilar. And Dorn. Dorn who was almost my elder brother in my head, lying there in the northlands, awaiting his renewal.

 And all the while that part of me thought yes, oh, yes they must be found and raised up, awakened, another part of my mind saidľno. No. They are mine, mine. My power comes from them. My Talents. I will not give them up. And the first part of me recoiled as though a serpent had struck at me inside myself so that I gasped, and gagged on the bile that rose in my throat. I struggled while Chance shook me and demanded to know what was wrong, what was wrong. Oh, Gamelords, what was wrong was me!

 And then, somehow, I managed to thrust the conflict away, to stop thinking of it. I knew, knew it was there, but I would not think of it. Not then.

 “Riddle’s grandfather had a covenant with Barish,” I choked. “But Barish disappeared, didn’t come back. So Riddle’s grandfather brought some things hereľmaybe hoping to find Barish. Maybe for safekeeping. Only wreck and ruin came on Dindindaroo.”

 Chance objected. “The covenant couldn’t have been with Riddle’s grandpa only.” I shook my head. Obviously not. The contract must have been with the Immutables, father and son and grandson, generation after generation. Chance went on, “Those bodies have been there how long?”

 I was careful not to think when I answered. “A thousand years. More or less. And do not ask me how Barish survived or came and went during that time for I don’t know, Chance. It does not bear thinking of.”

 “So now what’s our Riddle searching for? What’s he up to?”

 “Duty,” I replied. “The covenant. The contract. The pledge his forefathers made to Barish. Oh, Chance, I don’t know. I can’t think of Riddle as anything but honorable. It’s too confusing.”

 “Well, lad, don’t get into an uproar over it,” he said, giving me a long measuring look. “Whatever we don’t know, we do know more than we did.”

 “Not enough more,” I mourned, thinking of the hundred questions I should have asked the ghost. I could not call him up again. Would not. He had been given absolution by someone, and I would not undo it. I felt tears slide down my face.

 “Maybe not enough more,” Chance agreed, “but some more.” He built a fire then and gave us hot soup, then some wine, and then an interminable story about hunting some sea monster during which I fell asleep. When I woke in the morning, I was able not to think about the disturbing thing, and the day was sharp-edged enough to live in.



 4
The Great North Road

  



 I TOLD CHANCE ABOUT THE SINGER in Xammer who had sung about wind to me and Silkhands. A mere song seemed a foolish reason to go exploring the northlands, and I hoped Chance, who was never loath to declaim upon foolishness in general, would say so. This would give me reason not to go, but I did not ask myself, then, why I wanted such a reason. Instead I made excuses. Himaggery and Mavin would need me, I said to myself, waiting for Chance to say something to give substance to my rationalization.

 But he said, “What was it made you think the singer sang to you?”

 “Only that he sang of the far north,” I said without thinking, “and in the Bright Desmesne a Seer told me my future lay there ... with Silkhands.” I did not say the Seer was Windlow.

 “Well then, that’s twice,” said Chance. “And Riddle’s grandpa is three times. Remember what I always said about that. Once is the thing itself, twice is a curiosity, but three times is Game.”

 I did remember. It had always been one of Chance’s favorite sayings, particularly when I had committed some childish prank more than twice. “Whose Game? Who would be pulling me north?”

 “Well, lad, there’s pulling and there’s pushing. The ghost was lamenting the loss of those things you carry. And maybe those things you carry are lamenting the loss of their bodies. I would if it was me. Maybe it’s them want to get back where they came from.”

 So Chance was no help, no help at all. The knife of conscience twisted, and the serpent of guilt writhed under the knife. Was it possible? Could they be pushing me without my knowing? I tried to say no. “They have to use my brain to think with, Chance. They are onlyľwhat did old Manacle call itľpatterns of personality. They are whatever they were when they were made. Didir comes into my head always the same Didir. She uses my mind, my memories to think with, but she does not carry those memories back into the blue. They stay in my mind, not hers. What I forget, she cannot remember. They couldn’t pull or push without my knowing!” I said this very confidently, but I was not sure. “And I’m not sure that Silkhands and I ought to go north for such a reason. It’s probably very dangerous.”

 He looked at me in astonishment. “And what do I hear? Peter talking about dangerous? Well, and the daylight may turn pale purple and all the lakes be full of fish stew. I thought never to hear such stuff after Bannerwell. If we are not here to seek out mysteries and answer deep questions, why are we?”

 “Why, Chance.” I laughed uncomfortably. “You’re a philosopher.”

 “No.” He rubbed his nose and looked embarrassed. “Actually I was quoting Mertyn.”

 I might have known. Oh, Gamelords, I could not turn my back on this thing without feeling cut in half. I could at least pretend to go wholeheartedly, even if I were torn. Why not follow the scent laid down for me as a fustigar follows a bunwit, “Head high and howling,” as Gamesmaster Gervaise was wont to say. These agonized thoughts were interrupted.

 “Where did you and Silkhands arrange to meet?”

 “She will be leaving Xammer soon, tomorrow or the next day. I thought it better not to travel together so close to the Bright Demesne. If someone is watching and plotting, let them work at it a little. I told her we would meet her below the Devil’s Fork of the River Reave, at the town there. Here, let us see.”

 I burrowed out the chart we had been at such pains to buy, spreading it upon the ground with stones at the corner to keep it flat. It was well made, on fine leather, the lettering as tiny and distinct as care and skill could make it. I found where we were, between the ruins and the Great North Road, then traced that road north with my finger to the place it split below the fork in River Reave. The town was there. Reavebridge.

 “Well,” I said, “we can go in disguise, on the road or off it; or in our own guise, on the road or off it. You are the wary one. I leave it to you.”

 “Then let us continue as Smitheries, father and son,” he said. I agreed to that, and we packed up our things to ride away northeast where stretched the Great North Road.

 The river which the Immutables call the Boundary came out of the northeast, and we followed it through the pleasant forests and farmlands north of Xammer. Ahead of us we could see the frowning brows of Two Headed Mountain, two days’ ride away, which cupped the Phoenix Demesne at its foot. Farther north were the bald stone tops of Three Knob, hazed with smoke from the foundries there. These were both landmarks I remembered from my years at Schooltown, though I had never yet seen either of them much closer than we saw them on our way. Behind Three Knob, between it and the rising range of eastern mountains, was said to be what Himaggery called a Thandbarian Demesne made up of Empaths, Mirrormen, Revenants ... I couldn’t remember the other four Thandbarian Talents by Himaggery’s scheme of Indexing. His scheme depended upon listing all the Talents which shared porting as a Talent, first, then all those left which shared Moving, then Reading, and so on. I wasn’t sure it was any easier to remember than the old Indexes which listed each Talent as a separate thing, unique of its kind. One didn’t seem to make any more sense than the other. There were still thousands of different Gamesmen. If the Talents were evenly distributed, said Himaggery, then half of all Gamesmen would have any one of the Talents. Still, Himaggery was attached to his scheme, and according to him there were seven Thandbarian Talents and over a thousand Elatorian ones. And no Necromantic ones at all except for Necromancers themselves. Which was idiotic, because there were Necromantic ones, Ghouls and Bonedancers and even Rancelmen.

 Oh well, and foof. Still, since I’d been thinking about them, I asked Chance if he’d ever seen a Mirrorman (I never had), and he gave me a look as though he’d bitten into something rotten. “Yes, lad, but don’t ask about it. I was a time being able to sleep at night again, after, and I don’t relish the memory.” Well. That was interesting.

 It was less than a day’s ride to the Great North Road where it crossed the Boundary River over a long sturdy bridge which had a look of Xammer about it, the railings being turned and knobbed like the balcony railings I had seen in the town. Its building had undoubtedly been commissioned by the town leaders in order to make travelľand tradeľeasier. Past the bridge was a campground, a place with a well and toilets and a place providing food and drink and firewood. The night was warm, so we bought food ready cooked and sat in a quiet corner of the place to eat it. Since we had chosen to sit fireless, our eyes were not flame dazzled and we could see who came in. Who came in was a Bonedancer, black and white, helmed with the skull of some ancient animal long extinct. He had either left his train of skeletons outside the place or currently had none, for which I was grateful. Bonedancers have enough Talents, including Necromancy, to raise dry bones and make them danceľor to do other things if moved to malice. Mostly they prey upon pawns in remote villages, telling fortunes and threatening horrors. I wondered how they could do it, wondered if they were ever reluctant to do it, wondered if perhaps there were many Bonedancers who simply did not exercise their Talents at all just as some Ghouls refused. Still, having the Bonedancer there did not upset me much. At first.

 Then, however, came three more together: an Exorcist, a Medium, and a Timereacher. Chance drew in breath in a long, aching sigh as the three joined the Bonedancer, all at one fire, all talking together. “Game toward,” he murmured. I was inclined to agree with him. Why else so many dealers with the dead in this one place?

 “What is it Timereachers do?” I asked. “See the past?”

 “It’s said so,” he whispered to me. “Mediums as well. A combination of Seeing and Deadraising? So I’ve heard.”

 “Exorcists too,” I said. “Seeing, Healing, Deadraising. Able to settle ghosts, I recall, and perhaps to See where a ghost may trouble before it actually begins haunting. Still, to have all three, plus a Bonedancer? Someone means to raise something great, and he wishes to be sure he can put it to rest again. Who do you think?” The four were taking no notice of anyone around them, but there was something almost familiar about one of the figures. What was it made my skin crawl?

 “Do you wish we were away from here?” I whispered.

 “Enough to get away from here,” he murmured in reply. It needed no discussion. He stood and walked away to the toilets, merely another one in a constant stream of toing and froing. After a moment, I went the same way. We met at the picket line, loosed our horses, and led them quietly into the night. Inasmuch as we had prepared no food for ourselves, nothing had been unpacked. When we had led them far enough for quiet’s sake, we mounted and rode northward again, seeing the yellow glows of the little fires dwindle behind us in the dark. I was thinking, suspecting, wondering about the Gamesmen we had seen, the way they had moved and walked, the order of their arrival. Four. A Bonedancer, an Exorcist, a Medium, and a Timereacher. Three with Seeing; two with Healing; one to hold Power; one to raise Fire; and all four to Raise the Dead. I groped for Dorn in my pocket and read him this list.

 “If such a four can find a battlefield,” he whispered in my mind, “or the site of a great catastrophe in which many died, not so long that bones have fallen to dust yet long enough that flesh has left the bones, why then, were I Gaming, I would guess those four will raise a multitude and will seek, thereby, to do some evil work...” I waited for him to go on. After a long time, he said, “A Healer may Heal. Know also a Healer may Unheal. Do not let the Medium or Exorcist lay hands upon you...”

 I had already learned that in School House, the unwisdom of letting those with the power of the flesh (another name for Healing) lay hands upon one. An Exorcist could lay hands on one and leave a bloody handprint where he had broken every little blood line in one’s flesh. It was said, among boys, that Mediums could raise the dead and set them on your trail, and that they would follow forever. I asked Chance if he believed that.

 “Well, there are haunts set, lad. You told me you put down one such in Betand. And there are Ghostpieces.”

 “I have yet to hear one straight word about Ghostpieces,” I said with considerable asperity. “Windlow mentioned them once, and others have talked of them. I have never learned what it is they can and cannot do. Perhaps in your wide travels, Chance, you’ve learned the answers to all this.” I was being sarcastic.

 He became very dignified at once. “Lad, don’t get all exercised at me. So there’s Deadraisers on the Great North Road, and so you think they have something to do with you. Well, I’m not ringing any great bell to tell them where you’re hid. I don’t know a midgin more about Ghostpieces than the next one; what we’ve heard is all. We’ve heard of things raised up which could not be put down again. We’ve heard of things that turned on those that raise ‘em. Himaggery would say to put your reason to work on it, and I can’t say better than that.”

 When Chance got offended like that, there was no use trying to get anything out of him, so I rode along feeling ashamed of myself. Reason said that anything raised had to take power from somewhere. Reason said that, and so did experience, for when Dorn had raised up the dead under Bannerwell, I could feel the power flowing from himľme. But then once they were raised up, they went on their ownľat least those in Bannerwell had. It had been like pushing a wagon from the top of a hill, a hard push to get it started, then it rolled of itself. So at least under some conditions things raised up would move on their own. Well, reason had not led me far. I would have to think more on it.

 Meantime, we had come so far on the road that the Phoenix Demesne stood due east of us. It was time to rest, for us and for the animals. Here and there in the flat farmland, crisscrossed by a thousand little canals which flowed down from the east fork of the River Reave, were small hillocks covered with trees, woodlots left to provide fuel for the farms. In one of these copses we took cover for what remained of the night, tethering the animals so they could not wander out to be seen from the road. I went to sleep in discomfort and foreboding. Gamelords know what I dreamed, but I was so wound up in my blankets that Chance had to help me out of them in the morning, and the sweat had soaked them through.

 We breakfasted over a small fire, built smokeless and quickly extinguished when the first travelers appeared on the road. We lay behind a shield of dried fern, peering through. There was an hour or so of usual travel, farm wagons, a herd of water oxen, a girl leading three farm zeller by the rings in their noses, their udders swinging full before milking. Then came a burst of travelers from the south, all riding speedily without looking around them, then another three or four, then a space, then a bunch riding with eyes ahead as though intent upon covering the leagues. There was another little space, then two men riding hard and whipping their animals. After them, the bones.

 They came in a horde, a hundred, perhaps more, complete skeletons, so loosely joined that the arms and legs might go off dancing on their own, jerking and rattling, only to come back to the other bones and accumulate once more into more or less complete sets, the grinning skulls bouncing and lunging at the tops of the backbones as though on springs. Behind this clattering aggregation rode the Bonedancer on a shabby black horse, and behind the Bonedancer the Exorcist, the Timereacher, and the MediumľNo! It wasn’t a Medium. In the firelight the night before I had seen only the dark gray cloak pulled forward, hiding the face. Today the cloak glittered with gold spiderweb embroidery and the hood was thrown back to reveal the magpie helm beneath. A Rancelmanľsame Talents as a Timereacher, but with Reading added. I sharpened my Shifter’s eyes to see more clearly, then muttered an oath as I saw more clearly than I liked.

 “It’s Karl Pig-face,” I said. “A Rancelman!”

 “No!” Chance fiddled with his glass, easing it through the dried fern so as not to betray us where we lay. “So it is! But what’s wrong with his face? That isn’t the Karl you knew!”

 I looked again, more carefully. It was Karl Pig-face, right enough, but the face was ... empty. Pale. Dry, rather than sheened with sweat as I had always seen it. At that instant, his head began to turn toward me, and as his head turned every skull in that endless train of bones began to turn also. Without thinking, I reached for Didir, felt her flow into me, and made my own mind dive down like some depth-dwelling fish to let her shield me. Through my eyes, I felt her watch the skeleton heads swing restlessly to and fro, like pendant fruit, the wormholes of the empty eyes seeking me. Then Karl’s head faced forward once more, and they went on, on to the north. I did not move or speak until they were vanished in dust, beyond even a Shifter’s ability to see them.

 “That one sought you, Peter,” whispered Didir. “Sought you out of hate, malice, and because he is forced to do it. He wears a cap, like the other one you are remembering. He felt you, Peter.”

 “But he did not tell them…” I replied wonderingly.

 “They are fools,” she said. “Whoever wears the cap will do only what he is told. They told him to find you, not to tell them he had found you. So he found you, lost you, and went on seeking. Their stupidity has saved you, this time.”

 “Who?” I breathed.

 She did not answer. I had not thought she would. Karl had not known who sent him, and for her to attempt to Read any of the others would have been to signal our presence.

 “So we are behind them now,” said Chance.

 “Behind them,” I said. “But who knows how many have been set on my trail. It began the minute we left the Bright Demesne. I am not such a fool as to think these boneraisers are the end of it. Someone has gone to considerable trouble.”

 “Ah,” said Chance.

 “Huld!” I said. I was certain of it. It had all the marks of Huld, all his energy, his relentless malice, his fascination with the mechanisms of the techs. Who else could have learned from Mandor that Karl Pig-face was my enemy? Who else would have known of my association with Silkhands ... Silkhands! “Silkhands is in great danger,” I said. “Huld would not let the chance pass to use her against me. He will take her when she leaves Xammer, depend upon it, and she is all unwary of this.”

 “Well, lad, I wouldn’t let him do that if I were you.”

 Curse the man. No sympathy. No hooraw and horror, no running about squawking. Merely “don’t let him do that.” Tush. Xammer was more than a hard day’s ride south, and she might be leaving at any time. Or have left already.

 “There’s that Hafnor,” said Chance, fixing me with his beady little eyes. “In case you’ve forgot.”

 Damn him. Of course I hadn’t forgotten. The idea made me sick to my stomach was all. Stopping existing in one place. Flicking away to another place. Starting to exist there. All in an instant. It was worse than the bones. I felt my inner parts lurch and sway, a kind of vertiginous gulping of the guts.

 “No other way I can see,” said Chance, still staring at me.

 With no sense of volition about it at all, I reached into the pouch to find Hafnor, knowing him in the instant by the unfamiliarity of him. I clenched my hand around him and took a deep, aching breath, only to have my mind filled with a gust of mocking laughter. “Well, and where are we here?” I felt someone using my eyes, my nose, my tongue to taste the air, my other hand to feel the ground beneath me. I saw the shape of every tree, the volume of the leaves against the sun, felt the texture of the dried grasses. “That’s here,” said the laughing voice. “Where do we want to go?” I tried to explain about Silkhands, about Xammer, but felt only a mad, laughing incomprehension and impatience. “Where, where, where? What walls? What smell of the air? What floors? What doors leading in and out? What windows? Draperies? Furniture? What landmarks seen through those windows? Where, where?”

 All I could think of was the room in the Guest House, and I tried to remember it in a way that would suit Hafnor. Sudden memories surged up, ones I had not known of, the color and sound of the fire, the feel of the woolen carpet on my hands, the smell of the polish used on the furniture. The memories assailed from every side, and I dropped the tiny figure of Hafnor in panic, to stand heaving like an overridden horse. When I had panted my way back to a kind of sanity, I said to Chance, “If I go, and if I am gone when night comes, then go to ... to Three Knob. Get rid of that yellow horse and his strange shoes. Tell anyone who seems interested that the young man who was with you has gone away ... to Vestertown, or Morninghill. But you go to Three Knob and wait there, however long it takes me. We’ll meet you there, Silkhands and I.”

 He did not argue or make any great fuss about it, merely watched me, nodding the while, as I took Hafnor into my hand again. I summoned up the memories of that guest room and saw them take visible shape before me, as though framed in a round window. From the corner of my eye, I saw another window which looked out onto a flame-lit cavern, and another which showed the attics of Mertyn’s House in Schooltown, and another which showed the long, half-lit corridors of the magicians’ lair beneath the mountains. I spun, seeing these windows open about me, as though I stood at the center of a sponge or a great cheese, all around me holes reaching away to every place I had ever been or known of. “Where?” whispered Hafnor, and I turned to the hole which showed the guest room in Xammer, stepped through it, and stumbled upon the rug before the cold fireplace to fall sprawling.

 When I had stopped shaking and had time to get up and brush myself off, for I was still covered with half dried grasses from that hill beside the road, far to the north, I sneaked down to the courtyard and appeared there to the first person I could find from Vorbold’s House. It was Gamesmistress Joumerie, who looked me over curiously and answered me words I did not like.

 “Silkhands? Why, no, Gamesman. She rode out this morning with young Jinian and several servants and two Armigers for safety’s sake, riding to King Kelver’s purlieu, away north. They will not move over fast, not so far you may not catch them up, ride you swiftly.”

 I left her with scant courtesies to find a hidden corner and take Hafnor into my hand once more. “What do I do now?” I begged. “I must find her, but I don’t know the road well enough to…”

 “Hoptoad, lad,” came the laughing voice with more than a hint of malice at my discomfiture. “Hoptoad. Do you look far ahead, keen as your eyes will go, and I will do the rest.” That is what we did. I looked as far down the road as I could see, sharpening my vision to the utmost, spying the place ahead, the trees, the canals, whatever might be about, bit on bit, and then we flicked, and I was in that spot. Then I did it again, and flick, and again, and flick, each time scanning the road between to be sure we did not miss her. Until we saw the confusion and heard the screaming and flicked to find ourselves among a crowd, all shouting and running about near the unconscious body of one Armiger and the bleeding, perhaps dead, body of another.

 I shook one of the bystanders and demanded that he tell me quickly what had happened. He pointed a trembling finger at the forest edge. “Ghoul,” he whispered. “Came with a horde of dead out of the trees. The Armigers tried to fight them, but you can’t fight that. The Ghoul took the women. Dragged them away into the trees.”

 Though obviously frightened, he had kept his wits about him. I ran for the forest, knowing that Hafnor could not help me there. It would take Grandfather Tamor, swift flyer, to lift me up where I could see. So it was. He caught me up like a feather, moved me like a swooping hawk to peer this way and that, seeking the movement of leaves or the rustle of undergrowth below, quartering again and yet again, hearing only silence, working slowly westward, a little faster than a man might run.

 It was the cold first, then Silkhands’ voice which led me to them. The Ghoul could not stop her chatter any more than I had ever been able to do, and her voice went on resolutely, almost as though she knew someone would be searching for her. I came into a tree top to watch them. The Ghoul dragged them along, one on either side of him, his host of dead following in a shamble of rotting flesh. Ghouls do not move clean bones; they have the Talent of Moving, of Power, of Raising the Dead. How much power did this one have? Plenty, it seemed, and was drawing more, for the place was icy as winter. I hung above them judging the distance.

 Then as he passed below I stooped upon him, screaming as I flew, “Ghoul’s Ghast Nine, I call Game and Move!” as I snatched the two girls from him and launched myself upward toward another tree...

 Only to know in one hideous moment that I had played the fool, the utter, absolute and unGamed fool. I had called a risk play, an Imperative, unwise and unready as I was, and the Ghoul would not ignore it. I hung there in the tree, the girls reaching out to cling to the branches as the strength left my arms. There was no power in the place to draw and I was weak ... weak. I was in the Ghoul’s Demesne, and he had drawn it all. Such power as I had I had expended prodigiously in the flick, flick, flick of Elator’s hunt in finding them, in the reckless flight and swoop and call. Now there was no more strength in me than enough to move myself away a few yards, myself only, and no way to get more. I gasped, unable even to think what might be done.

 I saw him reach for his power. He had more than I would have guessed, for two of the rotting liches staggered to the tree where we clung and began to climb, clotted eyes fixed upon us. They climbed awkwardly, leaving parts of themselves stuck to various small twigs and branches, but they came higher by the moment. Beneath them, others assembled, waiting, lipless mouths gaped in silent grins of amusement at the fruit about to fall into their hands and jaws. I heard Silkhands whimper, saw the girl, Jinian, glaring down at the Ghoul while rumbling curses in her throat. I wanted to close my own eyes, half dead as I was with cold and terror. I could fly myself away to another place, me, alone, with no burden. Or move Silkhands away without me. No more than that, and the place cold, cold.

 Below me the Ghoul laughed and screamed into the quiet forest, “Armiger’s Flight Ten, fool flyer. Armiger’s Flight Ten.” He was calling my death and the death of those two with me, and I knew it as did they.

 I wondered if I would have the strength to move Silkhands away. My hand clenched in my pocket, clenched, and then gripped again as I felt that other unfamiliar shape in my fingers. Buinel. Sentinel. Firemaker. He came into my mind like a bird onto an unfamiliar nest, fussing and turning. I felt the thousand questions he was about to ask, anticipated the lengthy speech he was about to make. Oh, something within me recognized him, knew him for that Buinel whom Windlow had called Buinel the flutterer.

 The branch under my foot swayed. I looked down into the face of one of the liches as it fastened a partly fleshed hand upon my boot. I kicked wildly, and the thing fell away as Jinian shouted shrilly at my side.

 “Buinel,” I cried silently. “Fire. Or we die, you die, we all die. Forever.”

 “Who?” he fussed. “Who speaks? What authority? What place is this? Who is that Ghoul? What Game?”

 “Buinel,” I shouted at the top of my voice, startling a flight of birds out of the trees around us, “if you do not set fire to the Ghoul and to all the liches in this tree, we are dead and you with us.”

 Something happened. I think it was Tamor, the pattern of Tamor, though it may have been Hafnor. Some pattern in my head issued a command, said something harsh and peremptory to the pattern which was Buinel, and the tree behind the Ghoul burst into flame, all at once, like a torch. The Ghoul turned, startled, but not too startled to begin storing the power of flame. Shattnir was in my hand in the instant drawing from the same source. “More,” I demanded. “By the ice and the wind and the seven devils, Buinel, more fire. Burn these liches at my feet.” For another of the corpses had reached to lay hands upon me. The cerements on the creature began to smoke, the very bones began to glow and it dropped away silently as other trees went up in explosive conflagration. Meantime, Shattnir and the Ghoul fought it out for the available heat. There was more than was comfortable.

 The Ghoul sent up a clamor, “Allies, allies!” into the roar of the flames. I thought I heard a Herald’s trumpet away somewhere and turned to catch a sudden dazzle of light reflected off something, but I could not see it and could not wait. I had enough power by then to lift the women and flutter away, through the columned forest like a crippled bat, bumping and sliding across branches in a search for water. Behind me I could hear the Ghoul screaming, and I muttered “Ghoul’s Ghast Ten,” to myself. “Move and Game.” I had never planned to die as Armiger’s Flight Ten in a strange wood, eaten by liches. But it had been close.

 We found a little islet in a pond, and there Silkhands Healed our burns. I drew more power and Searched as the fire burned in all directions, wider and hotter. It would stop at the river on the south, and there were only flat fields to the east, but it would burn long to the north and west unless some sensible Tragamors brought in clouds and wrung them out. I could do nothing about it alone, chose not to in any case, for I wanted to see who ran before those flames. Twice I caught that dazzle of light, but I could find no one. Whoever it might have been had flown away. At last I gave up and returned to the women.

 They had made a couch of grasses behind some fallen trees. All three of us lay there in the late afternoon sun to let it quiet us. Later I was to think it strange that I did not inquire what Talent the girl, Jinian, had. Silkhands had not mentioned the matter in my hearing. If she had had any headdress, it had been lost in the attack. In any case, I did not ask and she did not offer. She did ask to borrow my knife in order to set a snare, but I told her I would furnish a meal before I left them to go away and arrange our farther travel. I did it by Shifting into pombi shape and murdering some foolish farm poultry who had wandered into the woods to brood. While the fowl popped over the flames, we spoke of alternatives. I could have gone back to Xammer to procure horses, supplies, a replacement carriage, even guards and servants. We chose not to do so. Instead, when we had eaten, I Shifted myself into a middling ordinary human shape and went off to find some settlement where goods and beasts would be available.

 After that was only a weary time of looking and bargaining and going elsewhere for this thing and that thing which no one, ever, would have thought of having when and where it might be wanted or convenient to any other thing which might have been wanted. The evening spent itself into night and the night into morning. It was noon the following day before I led Silkhands and Jinian out of the trees to see what I had accomplished.

 “By the pain of Dealpas,” said Silkhands reverently, “I have never seen such a tumbletrundle in my life.”

 I nodded, pleased. The wagon did look as though it might fall apart at any moment, but it would not. I had fixed certain parts of it myself. The animals hitched to it were probably mostly water oxen, though the parentage of either could have been questioned. They were large, ugly, and looked too tough to tempt hunters, too rough to tempt thieves. The clothing in the wagon was of a kind with the rest, ugly and boring.

 “No one would want it,” said Jinian.

 I cast her a quick look, thinking it a pity she was so plain-looking, for she had a perceptive mind. “Exactly,” I said. “Now we must make sure that no one would want any of us, either.”

 I believed that we succeeded. Time would prove, the occasion would tell, but we had certainly changed the conditions of our travel more than a little. No one would be interested in the old man or either of the two mabs at his side. All three had dirty faces and gap-toothed smiles. The girls’ teeth were blackened out with tar; from an armslength away they appeared to be missing. When evening came of this day after I had left Chance, we were on the Great North Road once more, only a little north of the Boundary bridge. Looking back at it, I sighed. We had spent much time and effort coming a very small way, and there were still twenty leagues between us and Three Knob.

 I had only one real satisfaction. The episode with the Ghoul had decided me firmly and finally that Huld was responsible. The earlier episode with the Witch might have been Riddle’s doing, but it was Huld who set Bonedancer and Ghoul upon my trail. He had made a fool’s call once, in the ice caverns. He had called Necromancer Nine on me, but he could not Play to fulfill it. Now, he was determined to fulfill it, to fulfill it in a way I could not mistake, using Ghoul and Bonedancer, Rancelman and Exorcistľall of them with Necromantic Talents. I had used the dead against Mandor and Huld; now he would use them against me to the death. He had underestimated me before and again this latest time, though not by much. He still did not know what I was or could do.

 It was rare to find Gamesmen who did many things well. Sometimes there are children born who, when they reach puberty, seem to have bits and pieces of many Talents. Often they turn into ineffectual idiots who sit in the sun playing with themselves, endlessly moving one stone atop another or floating a handswidth above the earth or porting tiny distances around a circle to the accompaniment of loud laughter. Having more than four or five different abilities seemed to carry destruction with it. Minery Mindcaster was sometimes called a twinned Talent. The way we had all learned to think about Talents made it easier to accept her as being a combination Pursuivant and Afrit than simply as having seven separate Talents. I, who had all eleven chose I to use them, would not be thought of as a possibility by Huld. Not yet. He had known me first as Necromancer, and he was stuck with that notion for some time. Perhaps he knew me as Shifter, but I thought not. He had seen me fly in the ice caverns, but did he think it was my own ability or that some Tragamor lurked out of sight and Moved me? When I blasted out the barrier Huld had set across the exit to that place, did he know I had done it, or did he think some Sorcerer was involved? If he thought I had done it, then he was judging me as an Afrit, for these were the Afrit Talents.

 However, he was not a fool. He might be misled for a time. His Bonedancer and his Rancelman had not found me on the road. His Ghoul was dead. Nonetheless, Huld was an implacable enemy who grew stronger and more clever with time. Could I lay all my powers down in the northlands and confront him with nothing ... ? Nothing but myself? Inside me I whimpered and cowered until at last I was sickened at myself. I had been more courageous at Bannerwell than I was being now, and I reflected that a little taste of power could take a reasonably sensible person and make some kind of groveling, cringing thing of him.



 5
Three Knob

  



 I HAVE SAID that the land to the east of the Gathered Waters is flat. It was no less flat and unenlivening the second time I traveled it in the space of a few days. The pace of the water oxen may have been as much as a league an hour, when they hurried, which they were inclined to do only toward evening when it grew cool and they sensed water ahead. I had coached both Jinian and Silkhands in the use of jiggly rhymes or songs should any Demon or other Talent with Reading skills come by, and I had set myself a persona, Old Globber, in expectation of some such event. As a matter of fact, one Demon did ride by toward dusk of the second day. So far as I could tell, he cast not even a passing look toward us. We were, indeed, very unattractive.

 Boredom began to oppress us early. In midafternoon of the second day, Silkhands and Jinian began to share confidences concerning their emotions and feelings toward those of my sex, and I found myself alternately titillated and embarrassed by their frankness, finally being made so uncomfortable that I sought some way to change the subject. Some idea had been fluttering at the back of my head for several days, and I thought the little book in which Windlow had set such store might net it for me.

 “Jinian,” I said, thrusting my request into a brief niche in their conversation, “I have something I’ve been studying, a little book. Would you read it to me?” She said she would, though I could tell that she was surprised at the request. I dug out the Onomasticon and gave it to her. My hope was that hearing it in another voice might let the words fall into some pit of comprehension. Thus Jinian, and when she tired, perhaps Silkhands.

 “Shall I start at the beginning?” She was doubtful, having dipped into it and found little sense there.

 “Pick a page,” I said. “At the beginning, or anywhere. There is supposed to be some deep meaning or content in these pages, so an old friend of Silkhands and mine thought. However, I’ve been unable to find the key to it. Perhaps you’ll find it for me.”

 She began. “ `When the Wizard returns for the ninth or tenth time, there will be much work to do.’ “ She stared at the page, then turned to me. “Which Wizard is that?”

 “Barish, I suppose,” I said. “You’ve heard it. So have I. People saying, `When Barish returns.’ I heard one codger in a market say he would drop his prices at the twelfth coming of Barish.”

 She nodded thoughtfully and went on. “ `The greater power these Gamesmen have, the more they are corrupted ... yet there are still some born in every generation with a sense of justice and the right ... so few when compared to the others. I would that they become many!’ And I say so-be-it to that,” said Jinian. “I would there were more like you, Peter, and Silkhands, and fewer like that Ghoul.”

 I think I may have flushed, conscious as I was of my own struggles to perceive and do the right. Gamelords! It is not hard to risk your life when you have nothing to live for, but it is a hard thing when life is sweet. I tried to catch Silkhands’ eyes, hoping for a lover’s glance from her, but her eyes were closed and she breathed as though asleep. Jinian went on reading, unaware.

 “ `In the meantime, Festivals will provide opportunity for reproduction by young people ... School Houses will protect them ... I fear that those at the Base have lost all touch with reality. They are breeding monsters in those caverns and they do not come into the light...

 “ `I have met some of the native inhabitants of this place. How foolish to think there were none. They leave us untroubled in this small space but will not do so forever...

 “ `I have set this great plan ... a thousand years in the carrying out ... centuries of the great contract between us and the people we have set to guard us.’”

 “Read that last part again,” I said to her.

 “ ` ... a thousand years in the carrying out. It will depend upon a hundred favorable chances, the grace and assistance of fate and those who dwelt in the place before we came, and the perpetuation through the centuries of the great contract between us and the people we have set to guard us.’”

 “Nothing ponderous about that,” I said in an attempt to be witty. “Lords, but the man took himself seriously.”

 “What man? Who wrote this? I thought at first it was printed, like some books, but someone wrote it by hand in tiny printing in old style letters. In places it’s all smudged, as though the person was tired or confused.” She thrust it at me, pointing with one strong finger, and I saw what she meant. Over the years the ink had faded and the paper discolored to make the whole monochromatic and dim. Her question triggered that evasive thought which flickered at the edge of my mind. It was too late; we were too weary. I could hardly see the road verge, much less the pages in the failing light.

 “I believe Barish wrote it,” I said. “A kind of diary of his thoughts? Though why such a diary should now be considered so important is beyond me. Windlow the Seer searched for this book for decades and read it constantly once he had found it, searching in it forľwhat? Right now I believe the Immutables are searching for this book. Perhaps others search for it as well. Oh, it’s an important book, I’m sure. If I could only find out why. I thought hearing it in your voice might help, but the solution won’t come...”

 And then, while Silkhands dozed, I told Jinian all that I knew or guessed about this book and about the Gamesmen of Barish while she asked sensible, penetrating questions in a manner which reminded me much of Himaggery on his better days. In the dusk her face had a pale, translucent quality, a kind of romantic haziness, and I remembered I had thought her plain before. Though what was it Chance always said? Any hull looks sound in the dark? Well, her hull was sound enough, dark or light.

 “Windlow said something about words changing their meaning over time,” I told her. “He said that if we knew the words, then we would know what things once meantľor words to that effect. He mentioned, for example, that in this book the word `Festival’ meant `opportunity for reproduction,’ and he said that was important. I don’t know why.”

 She was a sober little person, very serious and intent. When she considered things, two narrow lines appeared between her eyes and her mouth turned down as though she chewed on the idea. It made me want to laugh to see her so earnest with the dirt on her face and her teeth blacked out. It was as though she had forgotten how she looked. Silkhands had not. Every time she wakened, she made some petulant remark about it.

 “It is true that powerful Gamesmen are careless of the lives of others,” Jinian offered. “We all know that, of course. It’s part of the Game. So if we did not have School Houses, then young people without Talent yet, or those who don’t know how to use their Talents, would be eaten in the Game in great numbers. And if they were shut up always in School Houses, then they would not have babies. We were taught at Vorbold’s House that it is easiest for women to bear children when they are youngľthe women, I mean, not the babies. So, when women are young, they are in School Houses, and if they must have babies then, we must have Festivals. Otherwise there would be few babies and everything would stop.” She sighed. “If Barish wrote this, he is saying that School Houses and Festivals are necessary, and further he is saying that he, personally, has invented both. Butľthat was so long ago. It is a very old book.”

 “Very,” I murmured. “Very old. What was that bit about the native inhabitants?”

 She did not answer for some time. I thought she had gone to sleep. I thought of going to sleep myself. The water oxen were now plodding along in starlight, and we had to give serious consideration to stopping for the night so they could browse and we could eat and sleep, preparatory to our mad gallop into tomorrow behind the faithful team. When Jinian spoke at last it was conversation extended into dream.

 “Did you ever hear the story of faithful-dog?” she asked. I nodded that I had. It was a nursery tale. “Did you ever see a dog?”

 “It’s just another word for fustigar,” I said sleepily.

 “No it isn’t,” she said. “In the story of faithful-dog, the dog wags his tail, his tail, you know? Remember? Fustigars can’t wag their tails. They don’t have tails.”

 “Well, maybe at one time they did,” I objected. I had never thought of that, though indeed the old story did have a wagging tail in it. That was the point of the story for children, for it was the wag of our bottoms as we acted it out which made it fun.

 “Pombis don’t have tails,” she continued. “Cats do. Mice do. Owls and hawks do, but flitchhawks don’t. Horses do. But zellers don’t.”

 “We don’t,” I said.

 “I know. That’s what’s confusing, because I think we belong with cats and horses and faithful-dog. But we don’t have tails and they all do. Anyhow, it’s as though there are two kinds of animals and birds and creatures, one kind from here and one kind from somewhere else. Only I don’t know if we’re the kind from here or the kind from somewhere else. Do you?”

 In the place of the magicians, I had learned an answer to this. “We’re from somewhere else.” She accepted this, as she did almost everything I said, very soberly. “The shadowpeople are from here, however. And they have no tails.”

 “Have you seen them?” She was as excited as a child seeing the Festival Queen for the first time. I told her I had seen them, and what they were like, and she laughed when I told her of their songs, their flutes, their dances, their huge eyes and wide, winged ears, their appetite for rabbits (which have tails) and bunwits (which don’t). I told her of their language, the sound of them crying “Peter, eater, ter ter ter,” in the caverns of the firehills. The water oxen had found a convenient wallow at the side of the road where a canal spilled into a little slough, and they refused to plod another step. I shook Silkhands awake, and we burned charcoal in the clay stove I had bought to heat our food. Somewhere to the north of us a shuddering growl came out of the earth, and we felt the vibrations under us. “Groles,” said Silkhands. “Have you ever seen them, Peter?”

 I told her I had not, though I had heard the roar often as a child when I had lived in Mertyn’s House.

 “Sausage groles?” asked Jinian eagerly, and both Silkhands and I laughed.

 “No. Rockeaters. From Three Knob. For sausage groles, one must go on up to Learner, where the Nutters live. Only rockeaters make that noise, and there will be no fustigars or pombis within sound of it, for it drives them away.”

 “Do they have tails?” This from Jinian, so sleepily that I knew she would not hear the answer. And she did not, making a little sighing noise which told me she was asleep. I covered her with a blanket and let her lie where she was. The ground was at least as soft as the wagon bed, and probably cleaner. I didn’t know whether groles had tails or not. I thought not. I went to sleep making an inventory of all those birds and beasts with tails, thinking how odd it was that I had learned this from Jinian when none of my Gamesmasters seemed to have known or thought anything about it.

 On the morning, we composed ourselves to ugliness once more and got back into the wagon. If the water oxen could be kept to a steady pace, we would arrive at the Three Knob turn off by midday. I hoped Chance had arrived there safely, and I wondered what guise we might travel in as we went farther north which would not betray us to the Boneraisers. I had no doubt they still searched for me, and I had not yet thought of any convenient way to go through the minions which had been sent against me to reach Huld, who had sent them. It would do no lasting good to Game against mercenaries. Huld could wear me to a nubbin sending bought men against me. So, thinking this and thinking that, we rolled along. Almost I missed seeing the skeleton train ahead, but Jinian thrust a sharp elbow into my ribs and began to sing. Silkhands picked up the song, and they two began nodding their heads in time to their hushed la, la, la as I dived deep and grasped Didir to cover me.

 “Larby Lanooly went to sea,” they sang. “Hoo di Hi and wamble di dee. Did not matter he would or no, did not matter the winds did blow, put him into the boat to row, Oho for Larby Lanooly.” There were at least thirty verses to the song, and Silkhands knew them all. While I drove, letting Didir manage Peter while Globber held the reins, the skeleton train came toward us, back down the road from the north. Old Clobber was terrified, as he should have been. He clucked and cried and drove the wagon off the road, almost into a canal. He sat there and shivered in his socks while the bones danced past him, the two women next to him clinging together and singing under their breath, “Larby Lanooly went to farm, Hoo di Hi and wamble di darm. Did not matter he knew not how, put him behind an ox and plow, he’ll do well or not enow, Oho for Larby Lanooly.”

 If Karl Pig-face had been wearing the strange cap before, he was not wearing it now. His face was red again, shiny with sweat, and he tugged angrily at a cord which bound him to the Bonedancer on one side of him. As they passed, Didir heard one of them say, “If you will not do as you are told, we can put the cap back on you, Rancelman.”

 “I’ve told you,” blustered Karl. “When you had that stupid cap on me, I thought I felt him down the road here. But I couldn’t tell you. You need no cap, nor no cord to bind me. Pay me, as you’d pay anyone, and I’ll seek Peter Priss to the end of the lands and purlieus for you. No love between him and me, and I’m glad to do it.”

 “Earn our trust, Rancelman. Earn it if you can, and no more sneaking away in the night. Now, stop tugging at the binding and lead us to the place it was you say you felt him last.” And they went on by us, not looking at us at all. It was many a long moment before Globber got himself together to drive the oxen back onto the road. Meantime we had taken Larby Lanooly from farm to shop to mine to devil-take-it.

 “If they have anyone in that group who can track,” I said at last when the Boneraisers were gone and we were plodding northward once more, “we may see them again. I doubt not that Chance left readable tracks when he came north from the copse.”

 “Three days’ traffic on the road?” asked Jinian. “Would that not cover?”

 I clenched my teeth, trying to remember. So far as I could recall, only the yellow horse had had distinctive shoes, nubby ones such as they use along the River Dourt, but the yellow horse should have been sold or traded or simply set loose long since. “Perhaps,” I said. “Though I would feel better about it if there had been rain and a bit of wind.”

 “Well, that may happen soon enough,” said Silkhands. “Watch the sky west of us where the black clouds gather and pour. I doubt not we’ll have more rain than is comfortable before nightfall.”

 “Before nightfall, we’ll be at Three Knob,” I promised them. We kept that schedule with time to spare, for the sun stood short of noon when we came to the turnoff to the right which led away toward three bald stone hills grouped above the foundry smokes. Stone pillars marked the turn, and we drove between lines of long, low brooder houses where they hatched the groles. There were few of the creatures about during the day, most of them being down below ground, gnawing their way through the stone with their adamant teeth, chewing the rock into gravel and packing it into their endless gut. At night they would digest it, roaring the while, and on the morn the dung gatherers would wash the night’s gravel for powder of iron and nuggets of occamy and silver, less only the light metals which the groles had nourished themselves upon. As we drove, we began to see large groles feeding on piles of broken stone and bone and charcoal. These were the toothlings, just growing their teeth of adamant, soon to be promoted to work in the mines. Handlers stood beside each, stroking the creatures with long iron-tipped staffs, crooning grole songs to them. I shuddered. Imagine a great gut, as wide as a man is tall, as long as five men laid end to end, with a dozen rows of teeth and no eyes, and that is a grole. Still, how would we have metal for our axles and weapons did we not have groles?

 “Stop,” said Jinian. “I want to pet one.”

 I pulled up the wagon, amazed, and she hobbled over to one of the beasts, staying in character the whole way, to feel its huge side. Nothing would do but that I come as well, and Silkhands, to feel the stony hide of the beast and wonder at its size. The handlers seemed well accustomed to such marveling from travelers, almost uninterested in us.

 Then we got back into the wagon and Jinian surprised me further. “You are Shifter, are you not?” Well, of course I had told her I was. “I thought it wise for you to lay hands on the creature. That is how it works, does it not? You must lay hands on it? So I have heard?”

 So she thought it wise, did she? She must have seen something of my irritation, for she flushed, then shrugged. “If I have misunderstood, forgive me.” She had not misunderstood. That was how it worked, or at least one way it worked. But Shifting into something like that! The bulk, alone, would take hours to build. One could do it by starting small, eating rock and converting it to bulk, then more and more. I thought the process out, step by step, lost in it, and then blushed, embarrassed, to catch her eyes on me. She knew very well what I had been thinking.

 “No need for forgiveness,” I said. “It is an interesting thought.” As it was. I did not ever intend to do anything about it, but it was interesting.

 The mines and many small foundries were scattered along the gulches and upon the ridges around the three mountains, but Three Knob itself lay cupped among them like a child’s toys spilled upon a dish. I chose not to ride into the town as we were. Instead we would engage in further deception. We found a twist in the road behind a long, crumbling wall, unharnessed the water oxen and drove them away down the slope of the meadow toward a distant line of trees which marked a stream. Then I took the hammer I had brought for the purpose and beat the wagon into several pieces, separating these from the wheels. When stacked along the wall, it looked like what it was. Wood fit for the fire. Perhaps a wheel or two worth salvage by some desperate wagoner. Our rags were buried beneath the wagon, and we cleaned the dirt from our faces and the tar from our teeth before walking into Three Knob as a middle-aged buyer of something or other and his two daughters. I hoped I would not have to look far for Chance.

 As it was, I did not have to look far enough. The yellow horse I had told him to get rid of was cavorting in a paddock near an Inn, nubby shoes and all. Chance was toping wine, red of nose and bibulous, full of good cheer and unresponsive to my annoyance.

 “Why, my boy, the Bonedancers are all long gone on ahead. He’s a good horse. No need to trade him off just yet.”

 “They’re behind us again, Chance. Behind us. They passed us on the road. Karl Pig-face, with his nasty little mind hunting me, and he did feel me back there when you and I lay up in the copse and watched him. Further, he knows you!”

 I wasn’t getting through to him at all until Silkhands reached out to take his hand with an intent expression. She was doing something intricate and intimate to his insides. I saw the flush leave his face and gradual awareness seep in to him. “Ah. Ah, well, lad. I’m sorry about that. Truly, I had not thought they would return. And they may not have one among them who can track.”

 “Rancelmen do,” said Jinian. “They have a skill for it. We must think quickly what to do, for they could be on the start of our trail and back here by evening.”

 Silkhands nodded agreement to this sadly. Her face was quite drawn, and I felt a quick pity. The way had been hard on her. I could not help her, however, and Chance interrupted the thought.

 “It was my doing, so fair it be my undoing. I’ll take the animal with much hoorah and ride off on the back roads. Once far enough along, I’ll get rid of the animal and continue so far as Reavebridge. You all lay by here until you’re restedľSilkhands needs a night’s sleep in a bedľthen come on north to meet me. Have you barter enough for new mounts, lad?”

 I told him truthfully that I did not. The last coin I had had been spent on the wagon and water oxen. So he dug down and gave me a pouch which seemed well filled. Part of his gain from Xammer, no doubt, and he did not deny it. He was generously quick to offer it, and I knew he felt guilty. At the moment, I was in no mood to forgive him, though no great harm had been done if he would ride swiftly away. We had all been talking quietly, so we separated ourselves from him as would any travelers who had made casual talk upon the road and busied ourselves finding lodging. Meantime Chance gathered his string of animals together, and got himself gone with much loud joshing and suchlike, to draw attention.

 As for the rest of us, we found two rooms adjoining, upstairs above the stable yard, and set about having a bath in deep tin tubs before the fire. Afterwards, wrapped in great, rough towels, we sat in the window to sip warmed wine and watch for the Bonedancer, hoping he would not come. It was after dark that he came, he and his colleagues, but come he did. They did not leave. The bones lay in a drift against the stable wall. The residents of Three Knob cowered in their homes. The Boneraisers, including Karl Pig-face, sat in the common room below, eating and drinking with much cheer. We, Jinian, Silkhands and I, stayed in the rooms above, quiet and inconspicuous.

 As for me, I was hung between two pillars. On the one side, I was as angry as I have ever been, angry at Karl Pig-face for sitting below in the common room, undoubtedly eating and drinking his fill without any need to hide or sly about. On the other hand, I remembered clinging to that tree while the Ghoul pranced beneath me, as close to death as I have ever come. I felt no desire for audacity, but I hungered for vengeance against Huld and all his minions. Across the room from me Jinian sat, staring at me, the fire dancing in her eyes. Silkhands slept. I do not know where I got the idea that Jinian knew what I was thinking. There was no Demon tickle in my head, and it wasn’t that kind of mind reading anyhow. I simply thought that she knew. I was certain of it when she said, “They don’t know me at all. If they ride out tonight, I could lend them a lantern to light them through the dark ... tunnels.”

 I was not at all sure I liked her knowing what I thought, but it would work better if she did help. “Tonight would certainly be best,” I agreed.

 “They must be encouraged to leave soon, then,” she said. “Perhaps they would be so encouraged if they heard that the horse they are following is soon to be sold or traded? If they heard this from someone?”

 “Someone being you?”

 She smiled. “Oh, I don’t fear the Bonedancer. I am not pretty enough to attract that kind of attention, either. I can try.”

 “They may Read you.”

 “I think not. I will do it simply. But not until you are ready.”

 I thought about that. “Midnight, then. Or earlier, if it looks like they are going off to sleep.” Privately I thought it fairly risky, but better than doing nothing. I slipped out the back way, walked at the side of the road Chance had taken, able to see the prints of the nubby shoes even in the light of the lantern I had brought with me. The road wound and climbed back into the gullies above the town, dodging behind this bank and that hillock. I had not gone far before I found what I was looking for, a narrow defile where the roadway cut through a bank. I put out the lantern and got to work.

 As I did so, I visualized what was undoubtedly going on back at the Inn. Silkhands would stay quietly asleep. As a former Gamesmistress of Vorbold’s Houseľto say nothing of her being a Healerľshe might be known to someone in the place. Jinian, on the other hand, would be only an anonymous girl, of Gamesman class by her dress. She would go into the common room to the place the Innkeeper sat in the corner adding up his accounts and keeping an eye on the man who poured the beer and wine. She would wait for a lull in the conversation, then say, “Innkeeper? The man who left this afternoon, the one who owned the pretty yellow horse with the nubby shoes? Do you know if he is coming back? He said he intended to sell or trade the horse at once, and I thought I might offer for it.”

 The Innkeeper would say something about the horse, or about Chance. They would talk of his having ridden north on the back road. Jinian would evince disappointment. “Well, the man will have traded the horse by the time I could catch up to him tomorrow. Ah, well. I will not worry on it further.” And then she would take herself off upstairs.

 Behind her in the common room, the Bonedancer would snarl at Karl Pig-face. Then, if all went as I thought it might, they would decide to ride out after the man and the horse with the nubby shoes to catch him before the trail was lost. If they hurried, they would say, they might catch him as he slept somewhere, and find they had captured Peter without further effort. I went over this scenario in my head several times, finding it both likely and satisfying. Some time went by. I began to doubt and fidget, never ceasing to chew away at the work I was doing. The moon rode at my back, curved as a blade. In the dim light I saw the shadows at the turn of the road, then heard the clatter, clatter of the bones as they rounded the corner. They had a lantern, for the Bonedancer led them in a puddle of yellow light, Karl trudging sullenly beside him with the others. Then Karl’s head came up.

 “I Read him,” he whispered excitedly. “Petey Priss. I Read him. Not far off. Near us. Oh, what a fool to go sleeping by the road! He’s close ahead of us.”

 “Well then, walk quiet, little Rancelman,” a whispered reply from the Bonedancer. “At the end of this tunnel here we’ll spread out and seek him. Then you’ll be paid as promised and a good job done.” I saw the gleam of moonlight in their eyes, then lost the light as they entered the tunnel, Gamesmen first, bones after.

 Only then did I shut my mighty grole mouth and let the grole innards grind. In the two hours which had passed, I had managed to add enough bulk to grow a man and a half high and nine men long. I had made a believable tunnel. One without an end, unfortunately for those who entered.

 I lay there in the darkness, a great, black bowel in the night, trying to decide whether I felt sadness over Karl Pig-face. I decided that he was more digestible to me dead than alive and hunting me. When I had finished the light metal in the bones (delicious to a groleľthey taste with their stomachs, I learned) I pulled the net and gave up bulk, having first heaved myself out of the defile and onto a broader patch of ground. What was left was only a long, vaguely cylindrical pile of rock and some powdered ores. So much for one more of Huld’s reaches in my direction. I was not fool enough to think it was the last or the strongest. Next time would not be this easy.

 Next time, I thought, he may send a Game I cannot win.



 6
The Grole Hills

  



 SINCE JINIAN HAD ALREADY SPOKEN to the Innkeeper about buying horses, it was she who went to the beastmarket the following morning to get mounts for us once again. Silkhands assured me it was wisest in any event, for Jinian had been reared at the southern end of River Jourt, where horses are a religion and a way of life. The whole town was talking of the Bonedancer, visits from such Gamesmen being unusual in Three Knob, and it took her some time to accomplish her business. Meantime, Silkhands and I finished our breakfast, and I taxed her with being a mope and poor companion. Truly, she had been growing quieter and sadder with each step of our journey.

 “Oh, Peter,” she sighed. “This traveling about is worse than I remembered. I have grown used to luxury at Vorbold’s House. The beds are soft, the rooms warm. There are good cooks in the kitchens there, and excellent wines in the cellars. It is a quiet, interesting life, and one need not fear being taken by Ghouls or pursued by monsters. I have grown soft and unwilling to bruise myself upon stones.”

 “Well,” I said heartily, “you’ll get used to being rough upon the road again. It will not take long.”

 There was no enthusiasm in her answering smile. She did not dispute me, but it was plain to see she had no heart for it. The look of her gave me a quick, half despairing sense of loss, and I kissed her. She returned the kiss, but it was more sisterly than our kisses had been in Xammer. I could hardly tax her with not being loverlike when she had never signified she intended to be, so I satisfied myself by swatting her behind. Not, I suppose, the best way to convey the depth of my feelings. Later I thought of that.

 When Jinian returned with the horses, she went over them point by point with me, full of enthusiasm, with sparkling eyes and a quickened voice. She pointed out their rough coats, good, she said, for the season, and their common shoes. “They are sturdy, not fast,” she said, “as we may travel back roads. What do you think of our going to Reavebridge by way of the Boneview River? I looked at the map last night while you were ... busy, and if we go overhill from Three Knob to the northeast, we will come into the river valley. Once there we can go west to parallel the Great Road some little way before we must cross it to come to Reavebridge.”

 Her face was smudged. I had a witless desire to wipe the smudge away. She seemed so eager that I thought, well, why not. It would be easier going on the North Road, but we might be bothered less if we went by back ways.

 The women had lost everything they carried in their encounter with the Ghoul, so we had next to replace some garments and cloaks, though Silkhands said there was no selection at all in a place like Three Knob. Well, by judicious use of Chance’s winnings, we refitted ourselves for travel. When Silkhands saw the horses, she gave a rueful rub to her backside, and I knew she was regretting the light carriage they had lost on the road. I put my arm around her. “Don’t be despondent,” I said. “There will be luxury enough when we come to Reavebridge. Chance will have won another fortune, and we will all live on his luck for a few days.”

 She laughed. “When Chance wins, it isn’t luck. No, I am not that concerned at having to lie on the ground for a few nights, Peter. It is this wild, dreamy feeling I have. I woke last night and went to the window for air, only to dream that I saw a misty giant moving across the stars as though he strode at the edge of the world. And the wind song haunts me. And I cannot settle at anything.”

 Over her head I could see Jinian, watching us and listening intently. I smiled at them both, trying to be light and unconcerned. “Well, that is the way with prophecies. I was told in the Bright Demesne we would go north, and the wind song sings of the north, and in Dindindaroo a ghost spoke to me of the north. Wild and dreamy, indeed, and reason enough for sleepwalking.”

 “Three times,” said Jinian, surprising me with this echo of Chance. “Three times is Gaming. Who Games against you?”

 I shook my head. “The minstrel learned the song in Learner. Perhaps there we’ll find the root of it.” Jinian frowned at this, as though she might weep, and I could not think why she should be so unhappy at the thought of Learner. Later I asked Silkhands, and she replied.

 “King Kelver is to meet us in Reavebridge. He will take Jinian north from there, so she will not be able to go to Learner with us. She is undoubtedly disappointed at being left out of the mystery and its solutionľif there is one.” She sounded very offhand about it, as though it did not matter what Jinian thought. I thought it did matter. If Jinian were disappointed, so was I.

 We traveled back through the Grole Hills, leagues of twisty road over which little black tunnel mouths pursed rocky lips, with gravel everywhere. It was the waste product left by the groles after men washed out the heavy metals which the groles don’t use. Hooves on the gravel made an endless, sliding crunch, a monotonous grinding sound. There were a few dirty trees in the valley bottoms, so many gray dusters along the scanty water courses. Occasionally a bird would dip from one tree to another with a tremulous, piping call. The air was still, with no smell to it. Men called to one another across the valleys, long echoing sounds fading into silence, and we rode along half asleep with the endless crunch and jog.

 Then, all at once, a shadow moved across us from the south, a chilly shade which removed most of the sound and color from the world. The crunch of gravel was still there, but far away as though heard through multiple layers of gauze. The call of the birds became dreamlike. We rode in a world of distance, of disattachment. Something moved past us, around us, toward the north, and we heard a shred of music and a voice speaking inside us saying, “Kinsman, help.” As soon as we heard the words a whip of air struck, and the quiet was gone. Dust swirled up around us, and we coughed, for the air was suddenly cold and smelled of storm.

 Jinian gasped, “That was a wild, ill wind,” leaning over the neck of her horse and trying to get the dust from her throat.

 All three of us had tears running down our faces, all of us were crying as though utterly bereft. The voice we had heard had had no emotion in it at all, and yet we had heard it expressing a horrible loneliness and despair. It took us an hour or more to stop the tears, and I cried longer than the women did, almost as though the voice had spoken to me in a way it had not spoken to them. I was not sure I liked that idea or Jinian’s compassionate glances toward me. That young woman seemed to understand too much about me already.

 It was not long after that the dusk came down, soft and purple. Bird piping gave way to the oh-ab, oh-ab of little froggy things in the ditches. I heard a flitchhawk cry from the top of the sky, a sound dizzy with the splendor of high gold where the sun still burned. He made slow, shining circles until the darkness rose about him, and then it was night and we could go no farther. We talked then of the music, the voice, the wind.

 “We must be sensible,” murmured Jinian. “Things do not occur without purpose, without order, without Gamesense.”

 “If it is a thing which has occurred,” said Silkhands, “and not some mindless ghost.”

 “A mindless ghost who calls us kinsman?” Jinian doubted.

 “Kinsman to us all,” I said, “or to only one? And which one?”

 “And asking our help,” brooded Jinian. “How can we help?”

 “We can do nothing except wait,” I said. I did not even bother to seek the advice of Didir or the othersľnot even Windlow. I simply knew that whatever it was, it would return, and no amount of cogitating or struggling would make anything clearer. I knew.


 So we ate the food which had been packed for us in Three Knob, and let our talk wander, and grew more and more depressed.

 “All day I have thought of Dazzle,” Silkhands said. “When the Ghoul came with his train, the death’s heads reminded me of her. Reminded me she may still be alive, there beneath Bannerwell in the ancient corridors. But she is likely dead, young as she was. There are so few old ones of us, Peter. Windlow was old, but he is gone. Himaggery and Mertyn are not old. There are so few old. I was thinking I would like to be able to grow old...”

 I tried to make her laugh. “We’ll grow old together, sweetling. When you are so old you totter upon your cane, I shall chase you across the hearth until you trip and roll upon the rug.” It was evidently not the right thing to say, for she began to weep, the same strong, endless flow of tears we had experienced earlier.

 “Will any of us come to that time? Life in Vorbold’s House is sweet! Need I lose it in some Ghoul’s clutches, be arrow shot by some Armiger at Game? I think of all I knew when I was a child, and so few are left, so very few...”

 After that, I could only hold her until she went to sleep, then roll myself in my blankets and do the same, conscious all the while of Jinian’s silence in her own blankets across the fire. I knew she had heard each word. And in the morning she told us that she had.

 “I did not mean to intrude,” she said, flushing a little. “But I have keen hearing, and a keen understanding of what is going on. We are all feeling terribly sad, lonely, and lost. We began to feel so when the whateverľitľwas happened yesterday. We must not make the mistake of thinking those emotions are our own.”

 She sounded very like Himaggery in that instant. I was amazed.

 Silkhands shook herself like a river beast coming out of the water, a single hard shudder to shed a weight of wet. “You’re right, Jinian. Always good for the instructress to be taught by her student. Well. It is wise and perceptive of you, no doubt, and good of you to tell us so firmly. I am beginning to melt from my own misery.”

 “You and Peter and I,” said Jinian, pouring herself more cider and taking another crisp, oaty cake from the basket, “feel the same, but I know my only reason for sadness is that the two of you have planned to share something in which I was to have no part, that you would go on to an adventure without me. Well, so I have decided I will not let you go on without me. I have heard your story, read your book, felt your wind, heard your music. I know as much of all this as you do. So I will not be left behind.”


 “But King Kelver will be in Reavebridge,” objected Silkhands.

 “So,” said Jinian. “Let him be in Reavebridge.” And we could get nothing further from her, even though Silkhands tried to argue with her several times that morning.

 All day we waited for something to happen, another silence, another voice. Nothing. We rode in warm sunlight, bought our noon meal from a farmwifeľfresh greens, eggs, and sunwarm fruit just off the treesľand came down to the banks of the Boneview River at sunfall. We were grubby and dusty, and the amber water sliding in endless skeins across the pebbles could not be resisted. We were in it in a moment, nothing on but our smalls, pouring the water over us and scrubbing away at the accumulated dust, when it happened again.

 First the silence. River sounds fading. Bird song softening to nothing. Then the fragment of melody, tenuous, fading, at the very edge of hearing. Kinsman, help.

 Just there the river ran east and west in a long arc before joining the northerly flow. We were near the bank, looking down the glittering aisle of sunset beneath the graying honey glow of the sky. Against that sky moved the shape of a man, moving as a cloud moves when blown by a steady wind, changing as a cloud changes. Time did not pass for us. We watched him against the amber, the rose, the purple gray, the vast swimming form filling the sky until stars shone through its lofty head, arms and legs moving in one tortuous stride after another, slow, slow, inexorably walking the obdurate earth toward the north. Fragments of mist shredded the creature’s outline only to be regathered and reformed, again and yet again, held as by some unimaginable will, some remote, dreaming consciousness expressed as form and motion. The idea of this came to all of us at once so that we turned in the direction it moved, toward the north, to stare beyond the lands of the River Reave to the mighty scarps of the Waenbane.

 “A god,” whispered Silkhands.

 I thought not. Or not exactly. Something, surely, beyond my comprehension, and yet at the same time something so familiar I felt I should recognize it, should know what it wasľwho it was. There was something tragic about it, pathetic for all its monstrous size. We were silent, in awe for the long time that darkness took to cover it. Then:

 “Are we going there?” demanded Jinian. “Where it is going? North?”

 “Peter and I,” began Silkhands wearily.

 “All of us,” said Jinian. “I won’t be left out, Silkhands. I won’t.”

 “King Kelver…”

 “Devils take King Kelver. I’ll spend my whole life weaving an alliance for King Kelver, warming his bed, bearing his children, but not until I’ve done something for myself. I won’t be left behind.”

 She brushed aside Silkhands’ expostulations as though they had been cobweb concerns of no matter. I stifled laughter to see her, so sturdy and independent, so determined not to be left out. Oh, I understood well enough that feeling of being shut up in others’ lives. “Let be, Silkhands,” I said. “King Kelver will no doubt wait.”

 “He is to meet us in Reavebridge,” Silkhands retorted, obviously annoyed. “He will not be pleased. Nor will your brother be pleased, Jinian. I have heard of the black rages of Armiger Mendost.”

 “Leave Mendost to me,” Jinian said. “He knows how far he may push me and how far he may not. He has no other sisters, but I have other brothers who are fond of me and not overfond of Mendost. They know his black rages, too, and have reason to undo him if he proves unreasonable.”

 I thought, Aha, she is not so manipulable as I had assumed. And this led me to other thoughts and wonders about Jinian so that for a moment I forgot the giant, forgot the mysteries of our journey, only remembering it all when we had dressed ourselves and gathered at our fire. Then it was only to search the starry sky and wonder whether the misty form still walked north beneath its cover or whether it had come to rest in some far, high placeľand in what form. Across the fire, Jinian sat crosslegged with the little book tipped to catch the light of the flames. She was so deep in it that I had to speak to her twice before she heard me.

 “What are you finding there, student? You look like a newly named Thaumaturge, trying to figure your life pattern from perusing the Index.”

 She thought seriously upon this before answering me. “It is not unlike that, Peter. I am taking what you have told me, and what is in this book, and what I have seen and heard, and making an imagining from them.”

 “A hypothesis,” I said. “That is what Windlow called it. A hypothesis; an imagining which might be true.”

 “Yes.” She chuckled, a little bubble of amusement. “Though I had thought of it rather more like a stew. A bit of this and a bit of that, all simmering away in my head, boiling gently so that first one thing comes to the top then another, with the steam roiling and drifting and the smells catching at my nose.” She wrinkled that nose at me, making me think of a pet bunwit. “A tasty stew, Peter. Oh, I am eager to go north and see what is there!”

 “The song spoke of danger, Jinian. You have been at risk of life once on my account already.”

 “Well, but it was exciting in a sort of nasty way,” she said. “And very surprising. I think I’m more ready for it now, knowing that wonderful things are toward. And, if danger comes, well, it is no little danger to bear children, either. And no one much concerns themselves about that.”

 Silkhands had retreated into an aggrieved silence which I did not interrupt. When we had lain down to sleep, I did ask, “Will those of Vorbold’s House hold you accountable that Jinian chooses to make King Kelver wait upon her pleasure?”

 She sighed, turned, and I saw the firelight gleaming in her wide eyes. “Not they, no, Peter. King Kelver himself may spend annoyance on me, but who am I to tell Jinian she must do this or that. The negotiations were complete; she agreed; now she says yes-but-wait-a-while. Who knows who will hold any of us accountable. Do not let it worry you.” And she closed her eyes.

 When we dropped off to sleep, we were three blanket bundles around the fire. When I woke in the morning, I sat there stupidly, unable to count fewer than four, startled into full wakefulness by a harsh cry from the riverside. There were two monstrous birds drinking from the ripples, spraddle-legged, long necks dipping. Birds. Yes. Two man heights tall from their horny huge feet to the towering topknot of plumes which crowned them, screaming greeting to the morning like some grotesque barnyard fowl, and the fourth blanket bundle across the fire had to be whoeverľor whateverľbrought them. I began a surreptitious untangling of arms and legs only to be greeted by a cheerful, “Ah, awake are you?” and a small round man tumbled out of the fourth roll of blankets to stand above me, yawning and stretching, as though he had been my dearest friend for years. I saw Jinian’s eyes snap open to complete awareness, though Silkhands made only a drowsy umming sound and slept on.

 He was good humored, that one, bearded a little, almost bald, dressed in a bizarre combination of clothing which led me in one moment to believe he had been valet to an Armiger, or that he was a merchant, or perhaps a madman escaped from keepers and let loose upon the countryside. His boots were one purple, one blue, his cloak striped red and yellow (part of an Afrit’s dress) and he wore a complicated hat with a fantastic horn coming out the top, all in black and rust, Armiger colors. Aside from these anomalous accoutrements, he wore a bright green shirt and a pair of soft zellerskin trousers, an aberrant combination, but perhaps not insane.

 “Allow me to make myself known to you,” he said, stooping over me where I lay in the tangle, taking my hand in his to pump it energetically. “Vitior Queynt. Vitior Vulpas Queynt. I came upon the fading gleam of your fire late in the night and thought to myself, Aha, I thought, Queynt, but here is company for tomorrow’s road and the day after that, perhaps. Besides, who can deny that journeys move with a speed which is directly proportional to the number traveling? Hmmm? Four move at least one third faster than three, isn’t that so? And a hundred would move like the wind? Ah, hmmm. Ha-ha. Or so it seems, for with every additional traveler is more to distract one from the tedium of jog, jog, jogging along. Isn’t that so? Ah, to be alone upon the road is a sadsome, lonesome thing, is it not? Well, I’ll get breakfast started.”

 Still talking about something else, he turned away to pick up a pot and take it to the river for water, to return, to build up the fire and put the pot to boil, never stopping in all that time his talk to himself or the birds or the river running. I struggled out of my blankets at last and set myself to rights, deciding I did not need to shave myself after a quick stroke at my jaw. I joined our odd visitor at the fire.

 “Those ... birds?” I asked. “Are they ... I mean, what kind are they?”

 “Ah, the krylobos? Surely, surely, great incredible creatures, aren’t they? One would not think they could be broken to harness, and, indeed, they have their tricks and ways about them, pretending they have broken a leg, or a wingľnot that they use their wings for much save fruit picking and weaving nestsľand lying there thrashing about or limping as though about to die, and then comes the predator with his hungry eyes full of dinner, and then old krylobos pops upright with plumes flying and swack, swack, two kicks and a dead pombi or whatever. I’ve seen them do gnarlibars that way, be the beast not too mature or fearsome bulky. Ah, well, the one on the left is Yittleby and the one on the right is Yattleby. I’ll introduce you later so they know they cannot pull any tricks on any friend of old Queynt’s. How do you like your egg?”

 He had an egg, only one, between his square little hands, but that egg looked enough to feed us four and several fustigars beside.

 “Theyľthey laid that?” I asked, awed.

 “Oh, not they, young sir, no indeed, not they. Why, Yattleby would be ashamed at the allegation, for he is a great lord of his roost and his nest and would not bear for an instant such an imputation. No, it is Yittleby who lays the eggs, and Queynt who eats them, from time to time, except when Yittleby goes all broodish and demands time to hatch a family, which is every other year or so and during that time old Queynt must simply do without his wagon, hmmm? Nothing else for it but do without. How do you like your egg?”

 I suggested to him that I would be happy to eat egg in any form he cared to offer it, and then I went off into the bushes to think a bit. I sensed no danger in the man, no hostility, but Gamelords, what a surprise! I thought of calling on Didir, but rejected the idea. Was he Gamesman or not? Might he detectľand resentľsuch inquiry into his state of mind? Better leave it for now, I decided, and wandered back to the fire, stopping on the way to look at the wagon he had mentioned, peaceably parked beneath the trees and as odd a collection of derangement as the man himself. It had a peaked roof and wheels as tall as my shoulder, windows with boxes of herbs growing beneath them, and a cage hung at the back with something in it I had never seen before which addressed me gravely with “has it got some thrilp? some thrilp?” before turning head over tailless behind to hang by one foot. No tail, I thought. The krylobos had none, either. Nor, of course, did Queynt, which told me nothing at all.

 Jinian was waking Silkhands, murmuring explanations in her ear as I rejoined them. The krylobos were picking nuts from the trees with their wing fingers, cracking them in the huge, metallic-looking beaks which seemed to have some kind of compound leverage at their hinge. Pop, a nut would go into the beak, then crunch, as the bird bit down, then crrrunch as it bit down again and the nutmeat fell into the beak or the waiting fingers. “Kerawh,” said one of them conversationally to the other. “Kerawh, whit, herch, kerch.”

 “How do you tell them apart?” I asked Queynt, unable to see any difference between Yittleby and Yattleby at all.

 “Ah, my boy, one of the great mysteries of life. How does one tell a male krylobos from a female krylobos? No one knows. Oh, but they manage to do it, the krylobos do. Never make a mistake. A female will tell another female across a wide valley and challenge just like that, but she’ll let a male come into her very courtyard, as it were, without a threatening sound. And what’s to see in difference between them? Nothing. That’s the honest truth. Not a thing. Isn’t it so?”

 “But you know them apart. You said Yittleby was on the left?”

 “Ah, my boy, when they drink or eat or talk with one another, Yittleby is always ‘pon the left, indeed yes. When they are hitched to the wagon, Yittleby is always ‘pon the left. Yes, indeed. And when I find an egg, it is always ‘pon the left, my boy, certainly, which is how I know it is Yittleby. But if they were not properly arranged, why then, my boy, I could not tell Yittleby from Yattleby or either from the other. And if there were more than two, why, my boy, I would be totally lost among them. Indeed I would.”

 Thereafter, I watched them, and it did seem that the same one of them was always to the left, the other to the right, though I could not be sure. Nor could I be sure that the two incredible creatures did not know exactly what I was thinking and were not laughing at me the entire time without opening their beaks.

 We had the egg scrambled. Somehow we managed to eat it all, and it was very good, with a mild, nutty flavor. I began to gather our gear, wondering what would happen next, but Queynt soon clarified that. He summoned Silkhands to ride beside him on the wagon seat, holding up the harness so that Yittleby and Yattleby could thrust their long necks through it and pull the traces taut. They were hitched separately, one to each side of the wagon, the harness running across their prodigious chests. I thought it would be a strange, whipsawing way to travel, but when they strode off it was a matched stride, varying not a finger width between them as they went down the road chatting with one another in an endless whit, kerawh, whit, while Queynt lounged on the wagon seat talking to Silkhands who, for the first time since I had known her, could not get a word in edgeways. Smooth as ice they moved along, Jinian and I following, coming up beside when the road widened, falling well back when it was narrow and dusty. So we went, west along the Boneview River toward the Great North Road. When we saw it ahead of us, I suggested to Silkhands that we turn north, avoiding the Great Road and its possible dangers, but she and Queynt forestalled me.

 “Why, my boy, this young lady is too weary to go ahorseback another step, not a step will I allow, no, not at all. She may go inside the wagon and the other young lady as well, if you think it necessary which I do not, for as I understand it, no one knows her at all, and as for you, you can Shift a bit not to seem so familiar to any who may be hunting you, and with Yittleby and Yattleby to carry us along, we will go leagues and leagues on the Great North Road in less time than you can imagine.”

 If Silkhands were minded to trust this strange one enough to confide in him, which angered me a good deal, then what could I say against it? I would not leave her and turn aside with Jinian, though the thought did go through my head all in an instant. No, if I Shifted a little, we could ride on the Great Road in some safety, I concluded. The wagon and the birds were so outrageously unfamiliar that no one looked at the riders along of it. None who passed failed to turn and stare at the great birds, and to each Queynt called out with a greeting or a jest, all full of words and empty of much sense. The hours went by. Queynt gave us fruit and bread from the wagon, come noon, and we rode on, the birds striding tirelessly, the tall wheels turning, and it was not yet evening when we began to see scattered nut plants and the spires of Reavebridge shining across the silver of River Reave which had been drawing ever closer to the road with the leagues we had traveled.

 “We’ll make for the Tragamor’s Tooth,” Queynt told us when we came up beside him. “A fine hostelry with excellent food and a stable which I am happy to say both Yittleby and Yattleby have found to their liking. We have never before been so far south as during this season. We must seem very strange to all these people, who, I must say, seem not far traveled by the looks of them. Why, I’ll wager not one in a hundred has been north to the Windgate nor upon the heights of the Waeneye or upon the Waenbane Mountains. ‘Windbone,’ you know. That’s the ‘Windbone’ Mountains, so called because the wind has carved great skeletons of stone up there, ribs and fingers reaching into the sky as though the very mountain had lain down and lost its flesh upon those heights. Ah, one must go there by way of the Wind’s Eye, Waeneye as they say in these parts, if one is to see krylobos which put these two to shame for smallness. There are krylobos there, mark me, which would make you shiver in your boots to see, half again as tall as these, and able to kick gnarlibars to death I have no doubt.”

 “Wind’s Eye,” said Jinian. “That’s the prophesy you heard in the Bright Demesne. Wind’s Eye.”

 She had remembered it before I had, but her words brought back the sound of Windlow’s voice in my head. “You and Silkhands. A place, far to the north, called Wind’s Eye.” I dug out the memory of the other things he had said. “A giant? Perhaps. And a bridge. You must take me along ... and the Gamesmen of Barish. “ A giant. Perhaps a giant of mist, of cloud, of sadness, a giant seen at dusk who begged for help of his kinsmen. I raised my eyes to the towering scarps which loomed to the west of Reavebridge. Sharpening my Shifter’s eyes, I could see the curved spires and organic shapes which Queynt had spoken of, as though some great, unfamiliar beast had laid himself upon those heights to leave his bones.

 And behind those bones the outline of a giant, misty and vast, striding, striding to the north. I heard Jinian catch her breath, heard the man, Queynt, fall silent only for an instant before his voice went on in its ceaseless flow. When I turned, it was to find his eyes upon me, insistent and eager, measuring me as though for a suit of clothesľor a coffinľwhile he told us about the town of Reavebridge and all that lived therein in greater detail and to a greater length than anyone of us could possibly have cared to know.



 7
Reaverbridge

  



 BEFORE WE ARRIVED AT THE TRAGMOR’S TOOTH, Silkhands busied herself in Queynt’s wagon, making herself beautiful. I noted that she did not suggest Jinian do likewise. I put it down to vanity. Silkhands was a little vain, only a little, and not in any sense which was improper or false. She simply liked to appear at her best, and who could argue with that. Jinian, on the other hand, seemed determined to make the King as little sorry for the delay as possible. Knowing that he awaited her at the Tragamor’s Tooth, she had drawn her hair, which was plentiful and brown as ripe nuts, back into a single thick braid and had neglected to wipe the road dust from her face. Also, she was dressed for travel and looked as though she had slept in her clothes, which she had. She looked very good to me, very staunch and dependable, but she would have won no prize for style, that one.

 So we arrived at the Inn with Silkhands looking a vision, Queynt appearing no less fanciful than he had done at dawn, and Jinian and me, the followers, dirty and sweaty and caring not who cared. Someone must have been watching for Jinian’s arrival, for the King, a lean, elegant man, with a curly red beard and eyes that gleamed with intelligence and humor, appeared as we were having our things taken to the rooms we had hired. He came to the place Silkhands stood and called her by Jinian’s name, offering his hand and smiling. When she disabused him of the mistaken identity and introduced him to Jinian, his face changed no one whit though his eyes did. I saw a flicker of disappointment there, and Jinian saw it as well. She made her courtesies in a well-schooled manner, however, and her voice was all anyone could have wished, soft and pleasant, without the whine of weariness or rancor at the mistaken recognition.

 “I greet you, King Kelver,” she said. “Many kind things have been said on your behalf, and though I do not merit your courtesies, I thank you for them.”

 He bowed, perhaps a little surprised at her calm and poise. She was not at all girlish, as I have remarked heretofore. I myself sometimes found it surprising.

 “I greet you, Jinian. If you have received any courtesies on my behalf, then be assured they were given freely and in pursuance of continued friendship between your people and my own.” It was delicately put, and I found myself liking the man. He was telling her that he had not presumed to buy her, that he had only tendered an offer of friendship and the final decision was still hers. Jinian smiled at him, and I saw his eyes lighten. She has a wonderful smile.

 Queynt bustled in. “Ah, well then, ladies, young sir, so all friends are met, are they? Good, good. One does not like to stand upon ceremony at the end of a long ride when dust and the day conspire to rob one of whatever youth and spirits one may have hoarded long ago in the dawnwhen the skin cries for the waters of the bath and the throat yearns for the marvelous unguents of the vintner’s art. Ah, sir, forgive these weary travelers for the moment, and I who have come with them this lengthy way, until we are refreshed and cleansed sufficient to be a credit to the honorable company which you so kindly bestow upon us...” And Queynt bowed us away from the King, who stood with mouth open to watch this aberration lead us to the stairs and whip us upward with the lash of his tongue. “Go now, Peter, to the room at the head of the stairs where a bath will soon be brought, and you, ladies, to the second room where a bath even now awaits, and these lack-a-daisy pawns swift as flitchhawks rise, rise with your burdens that my young friends be not inconvenienced at the lack of any essential garment or lotion or soothing medication which might be contained therein. Ah, when all is sweet again, and pure as the waters of the Waenbain which plunge in eternal silver from the heights, then let us return to this good King Kelver to partake with him of those viands his generosity and foresight cannot but have prepared.”

 This last faded into silence, and I risked a glance over the banister at that same King to find him with mouth still open but with a laughing look around the eyes. Well then, he was not offended.

 I had scarce got into the room before hearing a quiet tap-tap at the door behind me which, when I opened it a crack, disclosed Chance in the get-up of a cook looking for all the world like a major servitor of some proud Demesne. He slipped into the room before I could greet him, stopped my mouth with his fingers, and hissed, “Who is this fellow with you? This clown? Where did you get him?”

 I explained that I had not got him, that rather Queynt had got me; that, thus far, the man had done us no harm.

 “Harm’s known when harm’s done,” he said portentously, throwing himself into a chair and fanning himself with a towel. Indeed, he looked very hot and harried, and I guessed that the cook’s garb was not a disguise. He affirmed this. “Seeing I caused such a hooraw there in Three Knob, I decided to be a little less obvious in future. So, come the outskirts of Reavebridge, I put the mounts in a stable and came into town like any pawn looking for work and well recommended.”

 “Well recommended?” I didn’t mean to twit him, but it did come out that way.

 “Well recommended,” he announced in a firm voice. “I had foresight enough to have Himaggery and Mertyn write me letters of reference and leave the as-what blank so I could fill it in myself. You’ll be pleased to know they recommend me highly as a chef, and chief chef I am in this place since their last one got himself riotous during a recent family observance and hasn’t got himself on his feet yet. May not, from what I hear. Terrible stuff, this Reavebridge wine, when drunk with grole sausage, which is mostly how they drink it.” He went on fanning himself, pausing only to open the window behind him and lean out to take a deep breath. “I was beginning to give up on you.”

 “We came the back way,” I said.

 “Thought you must’ve come by way of the moon.”

 “Along the Boneview River, Chance. It was there that Queynt joined us. He’s strange, all right, but it seemed less harmful to come along with him rather than make a fuss.”

 “Silkhands looks tired,” said Chance. “Who’s the girl?”

 “Jinian? A student of Silkhands’. Promised to King Kelver by her brother, Armiger Mendost. However, she’s not eager to be given to the King. Wants to come along with Silkhands and me to find the answers to the mystery.”

 “Oh, ah,” said Chance, patting himself all over before finding the crumpled paper he was looking for. “Speaking of mystery, here’s a message came by Elator from Himaggery. Says the blues are coming in from all over and they’ve found Quench...”

 “It’s directed to me,” I said mildly, seeing it was opened.

 “Well,” he said and shrugged, “you took a time getting here. Himaggery might have wanted an answer.”

 I unfolded the message, already ragged where Chance had ripped it, to read Himaggery’s message. They thought they had found Quenchľwith the Immutables. “Gamelords,” I snarled to myself. “That’s why the fellow looked so familiar. It was Quench, Quench all the time.”

 “Who’s that?”

 “The fellow who came to meet us at the ruin, the one who went to get Riddle, the long-faced fellow. I’d never seen Quench without that square black hat the magicians wore and the long black robe and mittens. That’s who that was: Quench.”

 “Well, that tells you what that hooraw was on the road. Must have been Quench trying to get you there without your knowing.”

 I didn’t answer him. I was too angry with myself. I went back to the message. Riddle and Quench were being brought to the Bright Demesne together with some others of those who had escaped from the holocaust of the magicians. Riddle had decided he needed help of some kind, and so on and so on. Peter was to feel free to go on to the north if he liked. They sent their affectionate regards.

 “Why,” I grated at Chance, “why did Riddle do that to me? I would have helped him if he’d asked me. Why! I can’t believe he’s an evil man.”

 “Well, if you won’t believe him evil, then think up a reason why he’s not.”

 That was Chance. Think of a reason. Before I had a chance to think of anything, we heard someone outside the door and Chance eased himself out with vague words about breakfast as Queynt oozed himself in.

 “Well, young sir, so quick to place orders among kitchen staff? Hardly an instant, and breakfast ordered already? Ah, but what it is to be young! Isn’t that so? Enormous energy, enormous strength, eat like a fustigar and sleep like a bunwit when one is young. One might ask why not wait to order breakfast until supper has been consumed. One might ask that, but Vitior Vulpas Queynt will not. No! Queynt has learned that each man has his oddities, oh, my yes. Ha-ha. Oddities, which if not questioned can be safely overlooked, but if mentioned must be dealt with, considered, judged! Isn’t that so? Now, your tub, young sir, and me off to mine in the instant. Below us, supper soon awaits our pleasure.”

 He beamed at me and was gone, giving way to three struggling servitors, one bearing a tub on his back like some kind of half metallic turtle, the other two laden with tall ewers of water, one hot, one cold. All was set down and poured into and arranged to my satisfaction (to my annoyance, rather) before they trooped out to be succeeded by others bearing towels. I had never been so overserved in my life. Whether King Kelver was responsible or Vitior Queynt, I desired most heartily that all of them would leave me alone for a time.

 But when I was scarce out of the tubľwhich the same servitors had come to haul away with much gesticulation and pour with loud shouting down some drain or otherľthe door was again tap-tapped and Jinian opened it a crack to whisper whether I were dressed or not. I told her I was not, but she came in anyhow. I was decent enough in the towelľmore decent than we had been together several times on the road.

 “My, you are in a temper,” she said, seating herself on the bed and arranging her flounces. “Silkhands made me dress up. She said otherwise would be an affront to the King.”

 “I am not in a temper,” I growled. “I am perfectly all right.”

 She widened her eyes, played with her hair with one finger, fluttered and pouted. “Oh, ta-ta, Gamesman, but if you go on in this way, I will think I have offended you.” She laughed, a high, affected little titter, then spoiled the effect by sneezing with laughter. I could not help it, but laughed with her.

 “No,” she went on. “You are in a temper. Do you know why?”

 “Not really,” I growled, “except that Queynt is too sudden an addition to our journey, and Silkhands seems too ready to trust him. She has told him too much, I think. He knew I was a Shifter, though I am not dressed so. He knew we were being hunted. How else did he know but Silkhands told him? She knows better!”

 “Put not yourself in another’s hands,” agreed Jinian. “But she may not have done. You know, Peter, I don’t think Silkhands wants to go on with you to Waeneye.”

 I felt my face turn red. “Nonsense. Of course she does. She’s a little tired just now, but Silkhands would not let me go on alone to solve this thing.”

 “I think you’re wrong,” she said, her voice breaking a little at sight of my face. “She would rather not go.”

 “I have known Silkhands for years,” I said, stiffly, and even more angrily. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to attempt to tell me what my friends would or would rather not do as it concerns me. If Silkhands did not want to go to Waeneye, she would tell me. She has not told me. Has she told you?”

 “No. Not in so many words.”

 “Not in any words,” I asserted, slamming my hand down on the sill and hurting the thumb. This made me angrier still. “You are very young, Jinian. I’m afraid you do not understand the situation at all.” The last person I had heard use these honeyed tones was Laggy Nap, trying to poison me.

 She did not answer. When I turned at last, it was to see a tear hanging on the fringe of her eyelashes, but she still regarded me steadily, even though her voice shook a little. “No. Perhaps I don’t.” And she turned to leave the room. In the door, she turned. “However, Peter, it was not that I came to talk to you about. I came to say it is easy to stop listening to Queynt. He talks so very much, to so little purpose. One stops hearing him. However, it would be wise for us to listen to him carefully at all times.” And she shut the door behind her, leaving me with my mouth open.

 Oh, the ice and the wind and the seven devils, I said to myself. Now why did you do that?

 You did that, I answered me, because Jinian is right. Silkhands does not want to go to Waeneye. Moreover, she does not want to journey like this at all. Moreover, her eyes when she looks at King Kelver are calm and considering, like the eyes of a cook choosing fresh vegetables for a banquet on which his reputation will rest. And the time when you and Silkhands might have been lovers is gone, Peter, and that is why you are angry.

 That, at least, had the virtue of being true, whether I liked it or not, and I did not. Still, Windlow had seen me in the northlands with Silkhands. So what would she do now?

 I could not make my face happy when I went down to the supper which King Kelver had arranged. I bowed to Jinian and apologized for my bad temper. Her lips smiled in response, but there was something distant and dignified in her eyes. So. We went in to dinner.

 We had sausage grole, of course. Anyone within fifty leagues of Learner will eat sausage grole. I do not remember what else we ate. I do remember Chance being much in evidence, in and out of the room, directing this or that servitor; platters in, soup bowls out, flagons in, dessert bowls out. There were candles on the table. I saw Silkhands’ face, dazzled in the light, rosy, laughing eyes turned toward the King. I saw Jinian’s as well, hearty, simple, regarding me from time to time under level brows. Then we were drinking wineghost from tiny, purple vessels which were only glass though they could have been carved from jewels the way they broke the light, and the King was speaking.

 “We are all well met, new friends all, and I have a wish that this friendship be not cut short without good reason. Therefore, as you go toward Learner on this journey you have set yourself” (and I wondered what Silkhands had told him), “we of the Dragon’s Fire Purlieu beg your consent to accompany you.” He smiled directly at me. “You will not forbid me, young sir?”

 I nodded my courteous permission, gnashing my teeth privately. If there had been any better kept secret, the whole world seemed to know of it now, and it would be difficult to do anything secretly with such a mob gathered about us. Not to be outdone in courtesies, Queynt was talking.

 “Ah, how generous an offer, King Kelver. How generous an offer and how kind an intent! Why, I have not seen such courtesy since the time of Barish, when courtesy was an art and sign of true refinement. Things change throughout the centuries, isn’t that so? But courtesy remains the same, today as in any century past.”

 I would not have heard him except for Jinian’s warning. As it was, only Jinian and I did hear him. He had not seen such courtesy since the time of Barish, eh? And where had he been in all that time? Was he a dreamer? Madman? Mocker? Or a Gamesman with a deeper Game than we knew? His eager little eyes were upon me, and I let my face seem as slack and wine-flushed as the rest.

 The next morn I hired Chance away from the Tragamor’s Tooth with much noise and many objections on the part of the innkeeper. We left the town, having seen none of it, to move in slow procession onto the road to Learner, along the deep, silent flow of River Reave. It took the King out of his way, but not greatly. He could go on north of Learner and then cut across country to the Dragon’s Fire Purlieu, did he choose. Queynt set the pace for us, slower than I would have liked, with Silkhands riding beside him once more and King Kelver on a prancing mount alongside. Two of his Dragons followed behind, mounted, saving their Gaming and displaying for some better time. Far to the rear to avoid the dust came Jinian and I, with Chance and the baggage beast bringing up the tail.

 “The King seems willing to follow you to Waeneye,” I said to Jinian.

 “The King isn’t following me,” she replied in a steady voice. “Though he is an admirable Gamesman. I had been ready for anger or threats, but he made neither. He is too wise for that. If our agreement is keptľor rather, if his agreement with my brother, to which I assented, is keptľhe wants no memory of anger to stain the bed between us.”

 Hearing her talk in this way put me in a temper again, though I was uncertain why. If it was Silkhands he was courting, why did Jinian’s speaking of him thus upset me? It should rather have pleased me as though to say Kelver would not long be seeking Silkhands’ company. Looking back on it, it seems that it should have pleased me, but the truth is it did not. I was flustered with myself, eager to fight with someone and ashamed for feeling so. So, we jogged and jogged until the silence grew tight and I sought to break it somehow.

 “Have you made your stew yet?” She looked at me with incomprehension, forgetting what she had said on the road from Three Knob. “The stew you said you were making up, your hypothesis?”

 “Oh,” she said. “That. Why, yes, Peter.”

 We went on a way farther.

 “Are you going to tell us what it is?” I asked, keeping my voice as pleasant as possible. She was very trying, I thought.

 “If you like, though it is only to tell you what you already know.”

 “I? I know too little,” I said, sure of it.

 “Perhaps. But you know what you are going to find on the top of the Waenbane Mountains. You are going to find Barish’s place, his Keep, his hideaway. You will go to find the bodies matching the blues you carry.”

 “Yes, I suppose so,” I gloomed. That much seemed unavoidably clear.

 “So much we learned from a whirly ghost,” said Chance. “Of that much we may be certain.”

 “Is there more?” I asked.

 “Some more,” she said. “I believe I know what plan it was that Barish had, what he intended should be the result of all this mystery and expense of time. We shall see if I am right.”

 “You think we’ll find Barish then?”

 She shook her head. “Everything indicates he was awakened last in the time of Riddle’s grandfather. He left the northlands then, and he did not return. In which case, we will not find Barish himself. Only the eleven. Your Gamesmen.”

 “The eleven,” I murmured. “Barish’s eleven. And a machine to resurrect them.” I clutched at the pouch in my pocket. Perhaps, I said to myself, the machine is broken. Perhaps it cannot be used. The other ones, those the magicians had, were broken. If it is there at all, it will be centuries old. Rust and corruption and rot might have spoiled it. The serpent coiled cold upon my heart, and I thought of Windlow.

 “Logic says it should be there,” she said. “If it was used to wake Barish at intervals, it will be there, where he was.”

 “And what then?” asked Chance, eager for more mystery.

 “And then,” she said, serene as the moon in the sky, “we will do whatever it was Barish would have done if he had returned.”

 That one struck me silent in wonder at her audacity in saying it, even more at her colossal arrogance in thinking it.

 “Barish was a Wizard.” I laughed at her, the laughter fading as she turned cold eyes upon me.

 “Well, certainly, Peter,” she said. “But then, so am I.”



 8
Hell’s Maw

  



 ONE OF THE EARLIEST THINGS they had taught me at Mertyn’s House in Schooltown was that one does not meddle with Wizards. Himaggery was the only one of the breed I had known, and I couldn’t say that I knew or understood him well. Strange are the Talents of Wizards, so we are told, and I could not have told you what they were. Had anyone other than Jinian made claim to Wizardry, I would have laughed to myself, saying “Wizard indeed!” I did not laugh. Jinian did not joke about things. If she said she was a Wizard, then I believed her. Surprisingly, all I could feel was a deep, burning anger at Silkhands that she had not told me and had let me play the fool.

 Oh, yes, I had done that right enough. I had said to Jinian that she was very young, that she did not understand. One does not say to a Wizard that the Wizard does not understand. I must have muttered Silkhands’ name, for Jinian interrupted my anger with a peremptory, “Silkhands did not know, Peter. Does not know. I would prefer she not. You keep my secret, I will keep yours.”

 “I have none left,” I muttered. “Silkhands has given them all away.”

 “I think not,” she said. “Queynt knows what Queynt knows, but not because Silkhands has told him.” Then she smiled me an enigmatic smile and we jogged our way on to Learner.

 So, in the time it took me to consider all this, to feel alternately angry and guilty and intrigued, let me stop this following of myself about in favor of telling you what was happening elsewhere. I did not know it at the time, of course, but I learned of it later. What I did not hear of directly, I have imagined. So, leave Silkhands on the wagon seat beside strange Queynt; leave King Kelver and his men trotting along beside, full of courtesies and graceful talk; leave Jinian there upon the road, calm as ice; leave ChanceľOh, how often I have left Chance; leave Yittleby and Yattleby in their unvarying stride, their murmured krerking. Leave me, and lift up, up into the air as though you were an Armiger to lie upon the wind and fly toward those powers which assembled against us and which we knew nothing of.

 Go up, up the sheer wall of the Waenbane Mountains, high against that looming and precipitous cliff to the place where they say the wind has carved monstrous, organic forms which they call the Winds’ Bones. Do not look north to Bleer. We will travel there soon enough and stay longer than we would wish. Instead, cross the mountain scarp and the high desert to come to that gorge the Graywater has cut between two highlands. There is Kiquo and the high bridge, narrow as a knife edge, and the steely glint of the river, then high cliffs once more and another highland north of Betand.

 Find the wide roadway there which leads into the northlands, see the strange monuments built along it, the greeny arches which hang above it. In spring, it is said, they glow with an undomainish light and have been known to drive travelers mad. Follow this road as it approaches the gorges of the River Haws and along the edge of that gorge to the town of Pfarb Durim. Hanging there high above Pfarb Durim, turn your head back toward the east and notice how all the lands between this city and the Wastes of Bleer lie flat and without barrier. A man might walk from one place to the other in two or three days, an Armiger fly it in much less time. Yet it is true that Peter did not think, nor Jinian, nor any in that company of the place called Pfarb Durim along the River Haws.

 Look down now at that city. Come down to Pfarb Durim. The walls are high and thick and heavily manned. What do they defend against? What are these mighty gates closed against? Why do the balefires burn upon the parapets of Pfarb Durim? The city seems of an unlikely antiquity. Where else are these strange, keyhole-shaped doors found? Where else these triangular windows which stare at the world like so many jack-o-faces cut into ripe thrilps? Well. Leave it. Go aside from the walls and walk down the road which cuts the edge of the gorge, down to an outthrust stone where one may see what lies belowľthe place called “Poffle” because the people of Pfarb Durim are afraid to say its name. The place which is Hell’s Maw, held now by a certain Gamelord, Huld the Demon.

 Let us be invisible, silent, insubstantial as a ghost, to slide down that road to find the truth of what is there.

 We will go down a twisting track, graven into the cliffside, sliced into that stony face by the feet of a myriad travelers over a thousand yearsľmore, perhaps. Perhaps the city, the trail, Hell’s Maw were there before the Gamesmen came. The trail winds down, deepening as it goes, until it is enclosed by stony walls on either side, shutting off any but a narrow slice of sky. Walk down this darkening gash until the rock edges above close to a silver’s width of light; find that dark pocket of stone which nudges the path with a swath of shadow; step in to find yourself at the upper end of a cloaca which bores its echoing way into the bowels of Hell’s Maw.

 It is dark, and the dark clamors, but as silent feet edge forward, sensible sound intrudes upon the cacophony of echo, and voices converse there in the terrible dark, voices of skeletons fastened to the walls with iron bands and the voice of their warder in hideous conversation.

 “Take this torch, old bones. Pass it along there, pass it along. Some one of the high-and-mighties will be along that path soon, and they’ll want light whether we need it or not.” The warder may have been a Divulger. He is dressed as one, but flabby jowls droop beneath the black mask, flesh wobbles loose on the naked arms protruding from the leather vest. His eyes are blanked almost white with blindness, and he feels the end of the torch to know if it is alight. Behind him in the dark another Gamesman lies stretched upon a filthy cot, dressed black and dirty gray, a Bonedancer, empty face staring at the stone ceiling as acrid numbing smoke pours from his nostrils. “Hey, Dancer,” the warder calls. “Kick up the bones there. They’re slow as winter!”

 The voice, when it comes, is full of sighs and pauses, long unconscious and unwitting moments. “Slow. Always slow. Well, why not? Bones should lie down, Tolp. Lie down. Slow and slow in the summer sun. Summer sun. I remember summer sun.”

 “I remember summer sun,” cries a skeleton from the wall, waving the torch wildly before its empty eyes. “Summer sun. Winter cold. I remember pastures. I remember trees.”

 “Shush,” says the warder, mildly. “Shush, now. Remembering is no good. It only makes you careless with the torches, Bones. Don’t remember. Just pass the fire along there, pass it along to the end so the high-and-mighties can see their way.”

 “Who?” asks an incurious voice from the dark. “Who is it using the way to Hell’s Maw, Toip? They came yesterday, I thought. The legless one and the skull-faced one and the cold one...”

 “Came and went and will come again,” replies Tolp, lighting yet another torch. “Legless one is a poor Trader, Laggy Nap. They put boots on him, he said, and sent him into the world. When the mountains blew up, so did the boots, and now he has no legs...”


 “No legs, no pegs; no arms, no harms...” the bones sing from the dark wall. “No ribs, no jibs...”

 “Shush. Cold King came yesterday, too. Old Prionde. Not liking what he sees here much. Well, he’s not far from bonedom hisself.”

 “And the Demon, Demon Master, Huld the Horrible?” The Bonedancer laughs, a sound full of choking as the miasma pulses in and out of his cankered lungs.

 “Went out, will come in again. Always. Since he was a child. For a while he was in Bannerwell with his pet prince, pretty Mandor, but Mandor’s dead so Huld is here now, almost always. Hell’s Maw has been Huld’s place for a long, long time...”

 The Bonedancer sighs, coughs, sits up to spit blood onto the slimed floor. “Huld’s been here forty years. Old Ghoul Blourbast brought him here first when Huld was a child, before he was even named Demon. You remember him then, Tolp. Used to help you in the dungeons.” The Bonedancer laughs again, a hacking laugh with no joy in it. “Liked the hot irons, he did, specially on women.”

 “Oh, aye. I remember now. Forgot that was Demon Huld as a child. Mixed him up with Mandor. Well, Huld’s only been here really since Blourbast died in the year of the plague in Pfarb Durim. He sent all the way to Morninghill for Healers, I remember. Caught some, too. I got them before he was dead.”

 “Healer, healer, heal these bones,” sing the skulls from the wall. “Call the Healer, broken bones, token lones, spoken moans... A clattering echo speeds down the line of them into the mysterious, endless dark.

 “Hush,” says Tolp. “Hush now.”

 “Wish I had one now,” says the Bonedancer. “Any Healer at all.”

 “There’s some up there with flesh power,” says Tolp. “One came through here not more’n two days ago.”

 “Flesh power! That’s how I’ve come to this pass, letting those with flesh power lay hands on me. They may be able to Heal when they’re young, Tolp, but when they’ve laid bloody hands on a few, they forget how to Heal. All they can do is make it worse. No. I mean a real Healer.”

 “Been long,” answers Tolp, “since a real Healer set foot in Hell’s Maw. Those I Divulged for Blourbast was the last.”

 “Those you killed, Tolp. Say what’s true. You tortured them and you killed them because Blourbast wanted vengeance on them. They wouldn’t Heal him. You killed them, and no Healer will lay hands on you ever because of it. Nor on me. Nor on any who’s come here of their own will.”

 “We could go away,” says Tolp. “Travel down to Morninghill ourselfs. They wouldn’t know us there.”

 “They’d know.” The Bonedancer lies down with a gasp, takes up the mouthpiece once more to suck numbing smoke and release it into the dank air. “Don’t know how they’d know, but they’d know. Soon as they touched you, they’d know. Left a print in your bones, somewhere. Any time you hurt a Healer, they leave a sign on you. Even if they can’t get at you right then, they lay sign on you. I always heard that.”

 “Lay sign,” sing the bones. “Pray shrine, weigh mine...”

 “Hush,” says Tolp. “They’re coming. I hear them at the end of the tunnel.”

 And the light comes nearer as skeleton fingers pass the torch from fleshless hand to fleshless hand keeping pace with those approaching. First legless Laggy Nap on the shoulders of a bearer, a loose mouthed pawn wearing one of the jeweled caps of obedience; then cadaverous Prionde, tall crown scratching the rock above him, deep set eyes scowling over bony cheeks as he draws his robes fastidiously about him; then Huld in trailing velvets which his followers must leap and jitter to avoid. Followersľa Prince or two from the northern realms; a monstrous Ghoul from the lands around Mip; three or four Mirrormen in the guise of other persons; lastly a scarred Medium who drags a limp body behind. Tolp and the Bonedancer crouch in the redolent dark, drawing no attention. Huld does not look at them when he passes, merely calls into the swampy air, “Let this body be hung with the others.” To which the hideous Medium grunts a response as he lets his burden fall. Then they go on down the tunnel, the torches following them from bone to bone until they pass from sight and hearing.

 “Now it’ll stink again,” says the Bonedancer. “Stink for days. If he wants bones on the wall, why can’t I take them from one of the bone pits? Why put bodies on the wall while they stink?”

 “This one isn’t even a body, yet,” says Tolp. “Still alive.” He turns the lax form over with one foot to peer blindly down into a child’s unconscious face. “Isn’t even grown. What’d he bring us this for?”

 “So you can hang him on the wall and listen to him scream and then cry, then whimper, then sigh, then beg, then die,” says the Bonedancer in a husky chant. “Then rot, then smell, for he’s come to Hell...”

 “Why? I just asked why?”

 “Because he’s Huld,” replied the Dancer. “Because this is Hell’s Maw.” Silent under the pulsing smoke, he reflects for a time and then speaks again. “I think it would be good for you to take the one who isn’t dead yet out of here. Up to Pfarb Durim, maybe. Leave it on their doorstep.”

 “You out of your head, Dancer? Huld’d roast me.”

 “Huld’s got lots on his mind. Might not even think of it again.”

 “Might not! Might not! And might, just as well. You stick to keeping your bones moving, Dancer. Leave the hanging up to me. Might not! Devils take it.”

 The Bonedancer shakes with another long spell, half cough, half laugh. “Oh, old Tolp, you’ll be hung on that wall yourself, don’t you know? You and me. Besides, I’m not keeping the bones moving. Haven’t had the strength for that for a long time now...” His words are choked off by Tolp’s horny hands upon his throat.

 “If you aren’t, then who is, Dancer? Who is? Tell me that? Whose power?”

 The Bonedancer’s head moves restlessly from side to side between the choking hands. When Tolp draws away, growling, the Bonedancer only mumbles. “Ghostpieces, maybe. Who knows whose power?”

 “Abuse power,” cry the bones. “Blues devour. Choose hour.”

 Down the black gut of stone the bones cry, gradually subsiding into restless, voiceless motion, finger bones endlessly scratching at the wall, heels clattering on the stones, a ceaseless picking at the iron bands and chains which hold them. One day a skeleton finger will find the keyhole of the lock which binds them, will fiddle with it until the simple pins click and the lock falls open. Until that time, they remain chained to this stone. Pass it by. Go on beyond the last, small skeletons to the oozing stairs. So much I, Peter, have imagined from what I later saw and what Tolp was still able to say. What follows we have been told is true.

 At the top of the stairs an anteroom opened to an audience hall, shadow-walled, its ancient stones dimming upward into groined darkness. Many powerful Gamesmen feasted at the lower tables. Huld and Prionde were seated upon a dais, Huld listening to Prionde with a semblance of courtesy, though his impatience could be judged from the hard tap-tap of a finger upon the arm of the massive chair.

 “What meat is this?” asked the King.

 “The animals are called shadowpeople.”

 “You eat them?”

 Huld gestured at the raised hearth, the fire, the spits, around which were littered the woolly feet and wide ears discarded by the feasters. “Why should I not? There is no flesh forbidden to me, Prionde. Nothing is forbidden to me. Is it forbidden to you?”

 “It seems near to human,” said the King doubtfully. “Very near to human, in appearance at least.”

 “Why should that matter? When I hunger, I eat. Meat is meat, human or otherwise. It is all fuel to my fire, Prionde. I think it can be fuel to yours as well.”

 The King stirred the delicate finger bones on his plate with a finger of his own. Indeed the ones on the plate did look very kin to the finger which stirred them. “Why do you roost here?” he asked at last. “Why in this place, Huld?”

 “Because it chills you,” the Demon sneered. “You, and any who come here, and any who hear of it. It is the age old place of terror. It was terrible when I was a child and Blourbast brought me here. Mandor found it terrible, and fascinating, as I had in my time. It is the place of ultimate pain and horror, ultimate evil. From what better place may we strike terror into the minds of all? Our task will be easier when the world knows we move upon them from Hell’s Maw. This is the place of atrocity, and power!”

 “And yet your Ghoul did not return.”

 Huld shrugged, rubbed his greasy hands upon his velvets in complete indifference. “He was not expected to return. The Phantasm who flew in the trees and observed what happened, though, he did return,” and Huld made a gesture of command to one of the Gamesmen sprawled in half drunken abandon in the hall below, a summons which the Phantasm was quick to obey. He knelt at Huld’s feet, head bowed, the lantern light flashing from the faceted mask he wore.

 “Tell the King what you have reported to me.”

 The Phantasm began: “I waited as I had been ordered to do, in the forest near where the Ghoul made his foray against the women on the road. When the Ghoul brought them into the forest cover, I followed, staying ahead of him and hidden in the boughs. He had not come far before someone came through the trees behind him. I heard the person cry Game and Move upon him, a risk call. I could not stay hidden and see clearly, but I heard the Ghoul cry out in triumph, as though the pursuer had played Gamefool.

 “Then there was a cry from the pursuer, as though to some other Gamesman, words I could not hear clearly. Then a fire came up, all at once, as though a Sentinel had been present. I came closer to see, but the smoke and fire drove me away. I heard someone blunder away through the trees, and it was not the Ghoul. I did not let myself be seen, but came away as instructed to do.” The Phantasm remained bowed down, awaiting the King’s pleasure. Huld gestured him away.

 “The point is,” said Huld, “that the pursuer, Peter, arrived too quickly to have Flown. We must assume he Ported. Also, the fire came about because of him.”

 “What is he? I thought he was Necromancer named?”

 “He was named Necromancer inaccurately. It misled me for a time. I believe him to be a twinned Talent. We have seen their like in the past. Minery Mindcaster, for example, was a strong twinned Talent, Pursuivant and Afrit. In my youth I knew of another, Thaumaturge Mirtisap who was, I know, both Thaumaturge and Prophet, though he denied it. Some say they start as twins in the womb, but the stronger swallows the weaker and is born with both Talents. Perhaps Peter is twinned Afrit and Archangel. When I encountered him in the caverns, I thought he was merely Afrit, but Afrits do not have a skill with Fire.”

 The King sneered beneath his beard, narrow lips curling in a mockery of humor. “You have forgotten that he seemed to have Beguiled Mandor’s people at Bannerwell. I never learned that an Archangel has a skill with Beguilement.”

 Huld waved an impatient hand. “Churchman, then. Churchmen have both Fire and Beguilement. I do not intend to search the Index to find what combination of Gamesmen he is, or what obscure name is given to such a combination. He may be called Shadowmaster for all I care. Enough to know that now we know it, he will not escape me again. No, he will lead us as the arrow flies to that place we want to go, to obtain that which we want to obtain...”

 “Which you believe is ...”

 “Barish, King Prionde. Barish of the ancient times. Barish with his knowledge of the old machines, the old weapons, before which the knowledge of the magicians is as nothing. Barish who lies there in the northlands somewhere. Where we have not been able to find him, but where Peter can lead us.”

 “And how do you know all this, Demon? Whose head have you rummaged it out of?”

 Huld chortled, a nastiness of tongue and mouth as though eating something foully delicious. “No person’s head, King. I have put it together out of books, old books, books which lay unread in the tunnels of the magicians. Out of books, legends, and common talk. Out of things Nitch told me before he died, his intellect o’er leaping his pain to find things to tell me. I had an advantage Nitch had not. I saw the machine. I saw how the tiny Gamesmen are made! I saw the bodies stored away in caverns like so many blocks of ice. Well, they will not come to life again. The machine which could have brought them to life once more is dead and broken and blown to atoms.”

 “Assuming you are correct, then how will Barish be brought to life again? If the machine is gone, buried under the mountains?”

 “I think the machine beneath the mountains was not the only one. There will be another, alike or similar, where Barish lies.”

 “And what is it makes you think Peter will guide you there? What is he that he should do this thing? What interest has he? His aim, what Game?”

 “Only that he was mind-led by the old Seer of yours, King. Windlow the Seer was searching for the same thing I have been searching for, I’m convinced of it. He’d found something. He knew something, or had a Vision of something. Why else does Peter go north now, into the lands of mysteries?” He laughed, a victorious crow. “Why else does he go north, now, in company with my man? Mine!”

 “Nothing more than that? It is all so indefinite and misty, Demon. I would hesitate to commit my men on such a Game had I nothing more than what you have told me. Perhaps it is not Barish who lies hidden in the north. Perhaps it is the Council.”

 Huld mocked. “There is no Council save ours, King Prionde. When I had worked my way into the confidence of old Manacle, the fool, and his lick-heels, I asked how long it had been since they had heard directly from this Council. Not for seasons, he told me. The machine which brought the words of the Council no longer spoke. And so I told them I brought messages from the Council, and they believed me. So judge for yourself.”

 “You think if the Council still existed, it would not have let its communication be interrupted. Nor would your representations have gone so unquestioned.”

 “Exactly. Whoever, or whatever, the Council was, its last member has gone, or died, or found something else to play with. No, we are the Council, Prionde. I regret only that we have no more magicians to do our work for us. I found only those few tens of techs, scattered among the valleys.” Huld gestured at a far wall where a few forms huddled in sleep. “I would like to find the one who led them, Quench. He knew things others did not. I would not have been surprised to learn that he knew of Barish, that his many times great forefather had passed some such knowledge along to him. Well, we may find him in time...

 “And meantime we build terror, Prionde, and utter despair. And when Peter has led us where we want to go, we will descend upon him in horrible power. I do not think he will withstand us. Even a twinned Talent is not immortal.”

 And so they went on feasting and drinking, while the people of Pfarm Durim kept watch upon their walls lest more innocents be swept up and chained in the endless tunnels of Hell’s Maw where Tolp, even then, fastened the iron bands around the kidnapped child. In the blackness, the Bonedancer coughed his life away and lay quiet. When he had not moved for several days, Tolp fastened his body beside that of the child.



 9
Nuts, Groles, and Mirrormen

  



 THERE HAD BEEN SOME DISCUSSION during the ride between Reavebridge and Learner as to the route we might take to reach the top of the Waenbane plateau which hung above us in the west. Certainly, it would not be up the eastern face, a wall as sheer as that of a jug, almost glassy in places. My map showed the long notch coming into that tableland from the north, the way they called Winds’ Gate, leading up into Winds’ Eye, Waeneye. Queynt said he had been there, but I was not that trustful of Queynt.

 When darkness came up and we had set camp only a league or so outside Learner, I decided I would ride on into the town and make some general inquiries. It had the advantage of getting me away from Jinian as well. Something in our relationship now made me rather uncomfortable. As I left, I saw King Kelver riding away with a stranger, the King looking very angry and disturbed. I thought to call out, offering assistance, then told myself he had able assistance from his own Dragons if he wished help. I often have these good ideas which are as often ignored. So it was in this case, and I let him go. The results were unpleasant, but then, that’s yestersight, which is perfect.

 My way led down quiet lanes through the nut orchards. We were well into Nutland by then, so called because of the orchards which pimpled the flats along the river. The ground nuts bulge out of the ground like little hillocks, at first gray-green and shiny, a ring of flat, hairy leaves frilling their bottoms. As they grow wider and higher, the shells turn brown and dull and the leaves squeeze out into multiple ruffles. Some nuts are round, some elongated. When they have ripened, the orchard master drills a hole near the ground into the shell and feeds up to a dozen sausage groles into the hole. This is done at dusk. When they emerge at dawn, as they always do for some obscure reason of their own, their heads are lopped off and a lacing run through the skin of the neck. This is grole sausage, to be smoked or dried or otherwise treated to preserve it. Sausage groles are rather small as groles go, thick through as my thigh and a manheight long or more. Their teeth are formidable, however, for all the small size, and grole growers have terrible tales to tell about being caught inside a nut with unmuzzled groles. At the side of the road were piles of sawn nutshells, stacked like so many great bowls. I asked a nut sawyer what use would be made of his odd shaped pile.

 “Why, Gamesman, these go down river to Devil’s Fork, then up river again to the very top of the East Fork of Reave, then over the hill to the upper reaches of the Longwater and from there down to the Glistening Sea. We grow the best boatnuts here grown anywhere. It’s a special strain my own granddad worked on to get it so long and narrow.”

 “I knew they made houses of them,” I said. “I had not seen boats before.”

 “Oh, for housenuts you go over the West Fork to the orchards in the north of Nutland. People around there won’t live in anything else. Warm and dry and smooth to look at, that’s a good housenut. I saw one over there big enough to put three stories high in, five manheights it was, ground to top. There’s vatnut groves along the river there, and one fellow had a tiny strain he calls hatnuts. Novelty item is what it is. Merchants buy them. But then, they’ll buy anything to sell up north. Well, good evening to you, Gamesman.”

 And with that he shouldered his nutsaw and walked away into the dark. I smiled at the notion of a hatnut and then stopped smiling as I thought how light it would be in comparison with a metal helm. Nutshells were said to be tough as iron.

 I went first to the Minchery, the school for musicians and poets, run by a sensible group of merchants on the same lines as a School House is run, except that the students are pawns, not Gamesmen. Except for that, it was much the same in appearance. The young are very much the young, no matter where they are. Which was not quite true. Mertyn’s House had never been so melodious as this place sounded.

 I had thought out my story well in advance. A certain song, I said, had won a prize at a Festival in the south. The prize was to be given to the songwriter. I hummed a bit of it, sang a few words, and was taken into a garden to be introduced to a frail, wispy girl whose eyes were misty with dreams and songs. I put the gold into her hand and told her the same tale, glad I had thought of it for it brought her great happiness.

 “Did it come to you all at once?” I asked, careful not to seem too interested. “Or did you compose it over a long time?”

 “Oh, truth to tell, Gamesman,” she piped, “I dreamed it. The tune was in my head when I woke one morning, and the words, too, though they took some working at to fit into the music. It is almost as though I dreamed them in another language.”

 Well, there was nothing more to be got there, so I thanked her, complimented her skill, and went away to find some place where merchants and traders gathered. It was not difficult. Learner lies upon the main road between all the fabled lands of the north and south. I came soon enough to a pleasant-smelling place, went inside and sat me down beside a leather skinned man with smile marks around his eyes. He was not averse to conversation, and by luck he had been up the Wind’s Gate.

 “Curiosity is what I did it for, Gamesman. Nothing up there to buy or sell, far as I knew, nothing to trade for, no people, no orchards, no mines. Curiosity, though, that’s a powerful mover.”

 I told him I thought that was probably so.

 “Well, so, I’d traveled along this road between Morninghill and the jungle cities for thirty years, boy and man. Saw these cliffs every time I came this way. Saw those old bone shapes up there. So, one time there wasn’t any hurry about the trip south, and when we came to the notch there, the one they call the Wind’s Gate, I said, well, fellows, we’ll just turn in here and go up this notch to see what’s there.”

 He seemed to expect some congratulations for having made this decision, and I obliged him with another glass and a hearty spate of admiration for his presumption.

 “Well, Gamesman, there’s a kind of road in there. No real trouble for the wagons save a few stones needing moving where they’d rolled down off that mountain. Little ones, mostly. We moved and we rolled and moved and rolled, and the ground began to go up. Now I’ll tell you, Gamesman, there at the end of that notch the ground goes up like a ramp. Like it had been a built road. You’d think it would all be scree and fallen stuff, loose and slidy, but it isn’t. It’s hard and sure underfoot, just as though somebody put it there and melted it down solid.

 “We didn’t want to wear out the teams. We left them at the bottom and went on to the top, me and some of the boys. Right up where those bone shapes are, and aren’t they something? I’ll tell you: Unbelievable until you see them close and then more unbelievable yet. Wind carved, so they say, and that’s hard to countenance. Well, we looked around. There’s nothing there. Waste. Thorn bush and devil’s spear. Flat rock and the Wind’s Bones. That’s it. Then, not far off, we heard that krerking noise the krylobos make, and a roar like rock falling, and one of my old boys says, `Gnarlibar,’ just like that, `Gnarlibar.’ Well, we hadn’t seen one, but we’d heard about ‘em, and we weren’t about to stay up there and wait for a foursome to show up, so we turned ourselves around and came back down quick as you please.”

 “What have you heard about gnarlibars?” I asked. Perhaps I might find out, at last, what the beasts looked like.

 “Big,” he said. “And bad. Low, wide beasts they are. They come upon you four at a time, from four directions. Always hunt in fours, no such thing as a single gnarlibar. Contradiction in terms, so I’ve heard. Well, who knows. Somebody told me they’re born in fours, twin ones to each female of a four, so every four is always related. It may be storytelling for all I know. We didn’t stay to see.” And he laughed over the limits to his vaunted curiosity.

 I thanked him sincerely and left. There was no traffic at all on the road when I returned, guiding myself by our campfires which gleamed lonely against the dark bulk of the mountain. I found the place quiet, Silkhands busily talking to Queynt. I asked her where Jinian was, and she told me Jinian had ridden out a little time past in company with someone who had brought her a message from her brother Mendost. I went on to the separate fire where Chance squatted over his cookery, readying a bowl for me.

 “Well, lad, did you find our way to satisfaction? Did some keen eyed merchant tell you the truth about our journey?”

 This led to chaffing him at some length about gnarlibars and his former desire to have me Shift into such a beast. “They come in fours,” I said. “You would have been riding an anomaly had I Shifted into a mere single beast, Chance. Your widow would have despised you for lack of knowledge.”

 “Ah, well, Peter, since you say it’s a wide, low beast, it’s as well you didn’t. There’s plenty of tall, dignified beasts what don’t require all that company.”

 I chewed and gulped and gazed across the fire to the one where Silkhands sat. There, riding into that light was King Kelver, returning from his errand, face bleary and ill-looking as though he had been stricken with some disease or had been drinking since he left us. Chance saw it, too.

 “Ah, now he doesn’t look like he’s feeling crisp, does he?”

 “He doesn’t,” I agreed. “I wonder what the problem is?” And then, noting her absence, “I wonder why Jinian hasn’t returned?”

 Chance struck his forehead a resounding blow and fished around in his clothing to bring out a sealed message. “Fuss me purple if I didn’t forget it in all this talk of gnarlibars. She left you this message and said give it to you soon as you returned.”

 “Chance! I’ve been sitting here over an hour!”

 “Well, you got so stiffy about my opening the last message for yourself that I didn’t open this one. What I don’t know the contents of, I can’t be overconcerned with, can I?” He was getting very righteous, and I knew he was angry at himself.

 As well he might. The message read, Peter, if I have not returned, it is because I cannot. This is a fool’s errand, but I must find out. Say nothing to Kelver. Find me quickly, or likely I am dead.

 For a moment it did not enter my mind as making sense, then I screamed at Chance, “Which way did she go? Tell me at once! Which?”

 “Which way? Why, lad, I wasn’t watching! Somebody came and said they were from Armiger Mendost, and she should come along to the person carrying the message. Though that doesn’t make sense.”

 It did not make sense. If her brother Mendost had sent a message, it would have been delivered to her in the camp. No need to ride elsewhere. “That was all a trap, a snare,” I hissed at him. “Somewhere this minute she may be dying. Did anyone else see her?”

 “They paid no more attention than I did, Peter. They were talking among themselves, Silkhands, Queynt, the Dragons.”

 “Not the King?”

 “No. He’d gone away with some messenger before.”

 I was frenzied, not questioning the frenzy, not questioning why my heart had speeded or my mouth gone dry. I was lost in a panic of fear for Jinian, not thinking that a Wizard should be able to take care of herself.

 It was very dark. No one could follow a trail in this dark, and yet she had said, “Find me quickly.” To find her at all was beyond me. “How?” I demanded of him. “I must find her.”

 “A fustigar,” suggested Chance. “Trail her?”

 I had never tried to follow scent, was not sure I could. In any case, the fustigar hunts mostly by sight. I shook my head, frantically thinking. Could I use one of the Gamesmen of Barish?

 “Not Didir,” I mumbled aloud. “No one here knows where she is. She misled them herself, purposely. Not Tamor. Who...” Even as I spoke, I fumbled among them. Oh, there was Talent enough to move the world, if one knew what one wanted to do, but I didn’t know where, or how, or when...

 “If I had only seen which way she went,” mourned Chance. “If I’d only seen ...”

 If he had seen. If I could See. I did not much believe in Seeing. It seemed unreliable at best, so much flummery at worst. I had never called upon Sorah, but what choice had I else? I could not find her with my fingers, so dumped the pouch onto the firelit ground, hastily scrabbling the contents back into it before Chance saw the blue piece among the black and white. Sorah was there, at the very bottom, the tiny hooded figure with the moth wings delicately graven upon her mask. For the first time, I wondered how it was that the machine had made blues dressed as Gamesmen when, to my certain knowledge, the bodies they were made from often wore no clothing at all? The question was fleeting. I gave it no time. Instead, I took Sorah into my hand and shut my eyes to demand her presence.

 At first I felt nothing. Then there was a sort of rising coolness as though calm flowed up my arm and into my head and then out of itľoutward. I seemed to hear a voice, like a mother soothing a fractious child or a huntsman a wounded fustigar. I could feel her stance, arms straight at her sides, shoulders and head thrown back, blind eyes staring into some other place or time, searching.

 “What is she like?” the voice asked. “Think for me. What is she? Who is she?”

 Likenesses skipped. Jinian in the river pouring water over her head, face rosy with sunset and laughter. Jinian speaking to me seriously on the wagon seat, telling me things I had not thought of before. Jinian angry and chill, turning in my doorway to instruct me. Jinian bent over a book; Jinian beside me laying hands on the great grole; Jinian ...

 Within me, Sorah turned and bent and reached outward once more. Evocation ran in my veins. A net of questions flung outward toward the stars. Jeweled droplets ran upon this net, collected at the knots to fall as rain. An imperative upon the place. “World. Show me this!” Jinian a composite, a puzzle, breaking light like a gem.

 And I saw. Jinian, held tight between two men. Dusk. Hard to see. They were beside a ground nut, taking out the plug, thrusting her within. I could hear groles inside, grinding.

 Where? High to the west one bright star hung in an arch of Wind’s Bones, fainter stars to left and right, above a close, high line of cliff. Around me only scattered hillocks of nuts, stones, wasteland ...

 The vision was gone. Sorah was gone. I dragged Chance off with me to the horses, and we two mounted to ride away. No one called after us to know where we went. It was as well. I do not think I could have answered. I could barely get the words out to instruct Chance what to look for as I sharpened my own Shifter’s eyes to scan the rimrock silhouetted against the stars. “North,” I hissed. “Closer to the cliffs than here.” We galloped into the dark like madmen, our horses stumbling and shying at things they could not see.

 I almost missed the arch of bone shapes upon the height. They were smaller than they had seemed in Vision, a slightly different shape seen from the side. Also, the stars had fallen lower against the rimrock but were still unmistakable. One bright, two fainter neighbors. We slowed to pick our way farther north. The nut orchards around us had given way to drier land, the plants themselves were sparse, scattered, oddly misshapen. When I saw the right one, my eyes almost slid over it before noticing the plug. Only that one had a plug cut.

 We thundered toward it, dismounted at the run, and hammered at the side of the plug until I thought myself of pombi claws and Shifted some for the job. Then the plug fell to the ground, and I leaned into the dank, nut-smelling dark to call, “Jinian! Jinian!”

 There was an answering cry, faint as a breath and hoarse. We began to climb in, but I heard the gnawing of the groles. They cared not what they ate. They loved the taste of bone. I thrust Chance to one side, muttering fiercely at him. “Stay out of here. Do not come in! But, keep calling. I need to hear her to lead me to her.” Then I had crawled into the place, all tunneled through with grole holes like the inside of a great cheese, and Shifted.

 Do you care to know what it is to be a sausage grole? It is an insatiable hunger coupled to an unending supply of food. It is a happy gnawing which has the same satisfaction as scratching a not unpleasant itch. I began as a rather generalized grolething. Within moments, I encountered a real nut grole, and my long, pulsating body slid over and around that of my fellow in a sensuous, delightful embrace, half dance, half play. After that, I was more sausage grole than before. I heard a shouting noise somewhere, another one somewhere else. Neither mattered. Nothing mattered except the food, the dance.

 I suppose it was some remnant of Peter which brought me out of this contented state, some artifice or other he had learned to use in Schlaizy Noithn, perhaps, or the touch of the Gamesmen from within. At any rate, after a little time of this glorious existence, the grole-I-was began to make purposeful munching toward the screaming inside the nut. Groles have no eyes. I remedied this lack. There was no light. I remedied this as well, creating a kind of phosphorescence on my skin. I saw her at last, high on an isolated pillar of nutmeat, crouched beneath the curve of the shell, three groles gnawing away at her support. In light, she might have been able to avoid them. In the dark? I doubted it.

 So there was Jinian atop the pillar; there was Peter in shining splendor below. What did one do now? She solved the problem by half falling, half scrambling over the intervening bodies and onto my back where I grew a couple of handholds and a bit of shielding for her. It was no trouble, and I was pleased to think of it. We got out in a writhing, tumbling kind of way, over and under, and I was still not quite full of nutmeat when we slithered out of the shell and I gave up all that bulk to become Peter once more. It lay behind me, steaming in the night air, and I wondered what the grole growers might make of it when they returned at dawn.

 Only then did I realize she was crying. I put my arms around her and let her shake against my nakedness, gradually growing quiet as I grew clothes. I did not release her, merely stood there in a kind of unconscious, not un-grolelike content, stroking her hair and murmuring sounds such as people make to small animals and babies.

 “I was frightened,” she said. “It was dark, and I was afraid you would not come. I was afraid you would not come in time.”

 I gave Chance a look which should have fried him into his boots, and he had the grace to mumble that it had been his fault. I told her I had used Sorah.

 “I knew you would do something,” she said. “I knew you would find me because you are clever, Peter, though you often do not seem to know it. But so much time went by, and I became terribly afraid.” After which we murmured nonsense things at one another and did not move very much until Chance harumphed at us.

 “All well and nice, lad, lass. I’m sure it’s gratifying in all its parts, but we don’t know who put you there, do we? Or why? What’s next? Will they be coming back to find out whether you’re sausage or what?”

 She stepped away from me to leave a cold place where warm content had been. “It would be better if they think I’m dead, Chance. We must find some place to hide me. Queynt’s wagon, I think. The ones who took me must think they succeeded, at least until we find out what’s going on!” And she directed us to replace the plug as it was when we found it, turning the pombi-scarred place to the bottom.

 She told us what had happened as we rode back. “I saw King Kelver leaving the camp. I thought there was something odd about it, about the way he looked, or the men with himľsomething. Well, perhaps foolishly, I decided to follow him. After all, it is Kelver I am promised toľif, indeed, he still cares about that promise, which I have doubts over. I followed for a time, then lost them. I searched, quartering about, and was probably seen doing it. I gave up and returned to camp.

 “Then in an hour or so, came a fellow saying he came from Armiger Mendost with words I should hear about King Kelver. I knew that was a lie. Mendost sends messengers, but never yet sent any except Heralds or Ambassadors or others in full panoply. Mendost is too proud to do else.

 “But I thought even lies lead to the truth, somewhere, if one knows them for what they are, and a lie announces a Game as well as many a truth. So I left word with Chance and went with the fellow. He had another hid nearby, and the two of them bagged me and would have fed me to the groles surely had you not found me in time. As it is, I never saw what Gamesmen they were.”

 “And all that merely because you followed King Kelver?” I asked, thinking it did not seem like much.

 “For no other reason,” she said. “Something is toward there, Peter, and whoever Games wants no one to know of it. So I must hide and you must find out what goes on.”

 She thought to hide in Queynt’s wagon. I didn’t trust the man. We argued. She won. She thought she could hide even from Silkhands, though Silkhands rode upon the wagon seat all day. Well. What could I do. We hid her away in some brush near the camp, and I returned with Chance. At first light I sought out Queynt and took him aside as quietly as the man would allow me to do so.

 “Consult with me, young sir? Ah, but I am flattered that such a proud young Gamesmanľfor surely pride goes with honor and ability, isn’t that so?ľ would have use for such an old and traveled body as myself. Advise, I often do. Consult, indeed, I often do. Though when advice and consulting are done, who takes any serious regard for the one or puts any faith in the otherľwhy, it would surprise you to learn how seldom words are given even the weight of a fluff-seed. Still, I am flattered to be asked, and would lie did I pretend a false and oleaginous humility ...”

 “Queynt,” I said in a firm voice. “Hush this nonsense and listen.” His jaw dropped, but I saw a humorous glitter in his eyes. It went away when I told him someone had tried to kill Jinian, that we wanted to find out who, that she needed to hide in his wagon. “No one must know,” I said. “Not even Silkhands. And, Queynt, it is Jinian’s thought to trust you. I don’t. So, if no one knows but you, and anyone finds out or harms her, I will consider my suspicions justified.”

 He coughed. I thought he did it to hide laughter which was inappropriate for there was no matter of laughter between us. “I will guarantee to hold her beyond all possibility of discovery, young sir. The word of Vitior Vulpas Queynt is as highly valued as are the jewels of Bantipoora of miraculous legend. Say no more. Wait only a bit and then bring her to the camp. I will have sent all eyes to seek another sight that she may come unobserved.”

 “Queynt,” I replied, “I will do so, but I tell you that you talk too much.”

 “But on what topics, Gamesman? Ask yourself that? On what subjects do I talk not at all?” He smiled at me and went away. In a little time Kelver and Silkhands and the Dragons rode away toward Learner. Queynt opened the wagon door at the back of the vehicle, and we brought Jinian to be lifted in. It was a well-fitted place, almost a small house, with arrangements for food and sanitation. “A technish toilet,” said Queynt. “Something I obtained from the magicians long ago, when I used to trade with them.” He greeted my incredulous stare with equanimity. Jinian took his words at face value.

 “Thank you, Queynt,” she said. “I will treat your property with respect. If I may lie up within for a few days, we can perhaps discover who means us ill.” She gave him her hand, and he bowed over it, eyes fixed sardonically on me. I left them, hoping she would have sense to shut the door in time. I need not have worried. When Silkhands and the others rode back from their expedition to the orchards, the wagon was shut tight. Silkhands, however, was in a fury. She came to visit me and Chance.

 “That little fool Jinian. The King tells me she has left us! Without a word to me! Mendost may Game against me, or against the House in Xammer because of this. She did not even tell me goodbye.”

 Chance blinked at me like an owl and went on stirring as I feigned surprise. “King Kelver told you this? When was that?”

 “This morning. Queynt suggested we might like to see the grole sausage made, so we rode over to the orchards. We had gone no distance at all when the King told me she had gone. Gone! It seems she told him she did not like the bargain she had assented to and intended to return to her brother’s Demesne.”

 “The King must be mightily disappointed,” I said carefully. “He looks very ill over it.”

 “I know.” She dabbed at her eyes where tears leaked out. “He does look ill. I reached out to help him, Heal him, and he struck my hand away as though I had been a beggar. He is very angry.”

 “Ah, the King did not want you to help him.” I cast another long look at Chance who returned it with a slow, meaningful wink. “I will tell the King we share his distress,” I said, rising and walking off to the other fire.

 Once there, I bowed to the King where he sat over his breakfast, the bowl largely untouched before him. I murmured condolences in a courteous manner, all the time looking him over carefully beneath my lashes. Oh, he did indeed look very unwell. The crisp curl of his beard was gone, the hard, masculine edges of his countenance were blurred, the lip did not curl, the sparkling eyes were dim. The man who sat there might have been Kelver’s elder and dissolute brother.

 I returned to our fire, comforted Silkhands as best I could, and waited until she rejoined Queynt upon the wagon seat before saying to Chance, “It isn’t Kelver.”

 “Shifter?” he asked.

 “No, I think not. Few Shifters can take the form of other Gamesmen. Mavin can, of course. I can. Most of Mavin’s kindred probably can. It isn’t easy, but those of us who can do it at all can do it better than it has been done here.”

 “Perhaps someone less Talented than Mavin’s kindred, but more Talented than most Shifters?”

 “I think not,” I said. “Instinct tells me not. Is there not some other answer?”

 Chance nodded, chewing on his cheeks as he did when greatly troubled. “Oh, yes, lad, there’s another way it could be done right enough. I like it less than Shifters, though, I’ll tell you that.”

 “Well? Don’t make me beg for answers like some child, Chance. What is it?”

 “Mirrormen,” he said. “Never was a Mirrorman did anything for honorable reason, either. When you find Mirrormen, you find nastiness afoot, evil doings, covert Game, rule breaking. That’s always the way with Mirrormen.”

 I cast frantically back to my Schooldays for what I could remember about Mirrormen. It was little enough. Something ...

 “They will need to keep Kelver close by, and unharmed,” I said. “They will need to take his reflection every day or so, so they cannot harm him or keep him at any great distance.”

 “Oh, that’s true enough, so far as it goes,” said Chance. “If by `harmed’ you mean maimed or ruined permanent. They’ll have done something to him, though, to prevent his using Beguilement on them. He’s a King, after all. He can be pretty discomforted, let me tell you, and still give a good reflection.”

 “There must be two Mirrormen,” I said, remembering more from my Schooldays.

 “Two,” he said. “That’s right. One takes the reflection, which is back wards, like seeing your own face in a mirror. Then the second takes the reflection of the first, which makes it come out right. That’s what makes it a bit blurry, too. They can’t usually get it very crisp. Well, wherever Kelver is, he isn’t far from here.”

 So we made it up between us to find King Kelver as soon as dark came once more. Meantime, since we had been up through the whole long night, we slept in the saddle throughout the whole long day, nodding in and out of wakefulness as the day wore on. Learner vanished behind us, the road went on north, and at last we came to the fork where we could look back to the southwest to see the huge notch in the highlands and feel the warm wind rushing out of it into our faces. “Wind’s Gate,” said Chance.

 “Wind’s Gate,” called Queynt from the wagon seat. “A great and marvelous sight, gentlemen, Healer, where the highlands slope into the lowlands and the wind travels that same road. Oh, many a traveler’s tale could be told of the Wind’s Gate, many a marvelous story woven. See how Yittleby and Yattleby stride lorth, eager to see their kindred upon the heights. Oh, you will be amazed, sirs, Healer, at the wonders which await you there.”

 There was no real reason for King Kelver to accompany us, now that Jinian was gone. Some spirit of devilment in me called him to account for his presence.

 “It was courteous of you, King, to accompany us thus far in our journey. We understand that it was courtesy offered to young Jinian, promised to you as she was, and that you might feel reluctant to withdraw that courtesy now that she is gone. However, may I express all our thanks and willingness that you feel no obligation to continue. Indeed, sir, you have done enough and more than one might expect.” There, I thought. That’s out-Queynting Queynt himself, and find an answer to that, Mirrorman.

 He hemmed and hawed, reminding me of the way Riddle had fumed and fussed when I had called him to account similarly. “Not at all, Gamesman,” he finally managed to say. “I am led by curiosity now. Having come so far, I will not go home again without having seen the heights.” And he smiled a sick, false smile at me which I returned as falsely. Devil take him.

 When we started into the notch, Chance told me to watch to the rear with my Shifter’s eyes. “They have to bring the real King along near,” he said. “They couldn’t try to bring him anyway but by this roadľthere is no way save this road unless they fly. So you look back there for dust. That’ll tell us how far they are behind.”

 We had gone on for several hours before I saw it, far behind, just then turning at the fork. I could not have seen it had the land not sloped down behind us so that we looked upon the road already traveled. Even then, no eyes but a Shifter’s would have seen it. I did not make any great matter out of peering and spying. It was well enough to know that the true King was probably behind us several hours upon the road, which distance would likely be decreased under cover of dark.

 So when evening came we built our separate fire once more, and Chance and I made much noise about weariness, how we had not slept the night before out of worry over Jinian and how we must now go early into our blankets. I made up a convincing bundle and slipped away into the dark. Behind me Chance conversed with my blankets. Once away from the light I Shifted into fustigar shape and ate the leagues with my feet, carrying with me only one thing I thought I might need.

 I found them without any trouble at all. There were two of them and a closed wagon, not unlike that which Queynt drove. One of the men was an Elator, a cloak thrown over his close leathers against the night’s chill. The other was Mirrorman, right enough, got up in King’s robes and a feathered hat like Kelver’s.

 The wagon was shut tight. I had no doubt Kelver was in it. I would learn all I needed by waiting for the other Mirrorman, the false Kelver, to return to his allies. I lay behind a rock and watched the two as they ate and drank, belched and scratched themselves. Finally the false Kelver arrived, riding in out of the darkness, and they unlocked the wagon. I saw where the key was kept, crept close behind them to peer through the crack of the door. The true King was bound and gagged, lying upon a cot. When they took the gag from his mouth, he swayed, obviously drugged. He could not bestir himself to anger, mumbling only.

 “You are dishonorable, Gamesmen. Your Game is dishonored. Who Games against me?”

 One of the Mirrormen struck him sharply upon the legs with a stick he carried. “Silence, King. Our master cares not for your honor or dishonor, for rules and forbiddings. You may keep your life, perhaps, if you cause us no trouble. Or you may lose your life, certainly, in Hell’s Maw.”

 I had heard Hell’s Maw mentioned a time or two, by Mertyn, by Mavin, both with deep distaste and horror. I knelt close to the door crack, not to miss a word.

 “Hell’s Maw,” the King mumbled. “What has Hell’s Maw to do with me?”

 “Hell’s Maw has to do with the world,” said the Elator. “Our Master, Huld, moves from the mastery of Hell’s Maw to the mastery of the world. You are in the world. Therefore, you are in his Game. Now be silent.”

 The first Mirrorman took up his position before the true King, stared at him long and long. I saw his flesh ripple and change. When he turned, his was the King’s face, but reversed and strange. Now the second Mirrorman, the false King, stared at the first in his turn, the flesh shifting slightly along the jaw, around the eyes. What had been a blurred, sick looking image became slightly better, not unlike King Kelver. Still, while all who knew the King would have accepted this face, they would have thought the King very ill, for it was not the face of health and character which friends who knew the King knew well. They gagged Kelver once more and left him there. I saw where they put the key.

 They talked, then, of Hell’s Maw. I learned much I would rather not have known, of Laggy Nap and Prionde, of many powerful Princes from the north. I heard of the bone pits and the cellars, the dungeons and bottomless holes. These three talked of all this with weary relish, as though they had been promised some great reward when the ultimate day arrived. Finally the Elator flicked away, was gone a short time, then returned. There were a few further instructions for the false King. He was to signal the Elator if Peter left the others, signal if anything was discovered. The Mirrorman mounted and rode away toward the camp he had left some hours before. Only then did I move after him to take him unaware in the darkness. When a Mirrorman meets a pombi there is no contest between them. The pombi always wins.

 I returned then to the Mirrormen’s camp, the false King trailing behind me, obedient to the little cap I had brought with me. I had said to him, “You are King Kelver, the true King Kelver. You will hear no other voice but mine. You will lie quiet in the wagon, drugged and quiet. You will say nothing at all. You are the true King Kelver, you will hear no voice but mine.” Then I laid him behind a stone to wait while the other two drank themselves to sleep.

 Then it was only quiet sneaking to get the key, to open the wagon, untie the King, hush his mumbling. “You must be silent! Hush, now, or I’ll leave you here tied like a zeller for the spit!” At which he subsided, still drooling impotent anger into his beard. I put the false Kelver in his place, cap fastened tight under the feathered hat the King wore. Before we left, I reinforced his orders once more. I intended to come back the following night, perhaps, to take the cap from him before he lapsed into emptiness as the Invigilator had done in Xammer.

 When we had come the weary way back to camp, the night was past its depth and swimming up to morning. I took him straight to Silkhands and told her all the story, after which it was only a little time until she had the poison out of him and he sputtering by the fire, angry as a muzzled grole.

 “The Elator will probably spy on us,” I said. “We must decide how to keep them from knowing.”

 “They will know in any case,” said the King. “When I do not return tomorrow for my reflection.”

 I snapped at him. “Nonsense. Of course you will return. They will expect to see a Mirrorman come in the likeness of the King, and you will come in the likeness of the King. If you do not, I must, and that is too many Kelvers entirely even for this group.” He seemed to be chewing on this, so I gave him reason. “The false Kelver will simply lie there, thinking he is you. The other Mirrorman will do what Mirrormen do, no different. Surely you have guile enough for this? To keep them unsuspecting? To feed information back to Hell’s Maw which may be to our liking? If for no other reason, to work vengeance upon them for what they would have done to Jinian.”

 I was angered that he did not seem as concerned as I about what they had almost done to Jinian.



 10
Wind’s Eye

  



 HE MAY NOT HAVE BEEN CONCERNED enough about Jinian, but his concern knew no bounds for Silkhands. When I quoted to all of them the words I had heard from the mouth of the Elator concerning Huld and his desire to master the world, Silkhands turned away retching. Kelver went to her, held her, and she cried between saying that Huld had come to her often while she was captive in Bannerwell, had threatened her, invaded her mind, set such fear in her that she had not dared think of it again. Now she was drowning in that same terror. King Kelver began to burn, hot as fire, swearing vengeance against those who had hurt her, mirrored him, Gamed against any of us. “Your enemy is mine,” he swore, putting his hand on mine. “We stand allies against those foul beasts.”

 I had heard more of the Elator’s talk than he had, more than I had repeated to any of them. I was glad of any who would stand against terrors I was uncertain I could face myself. We put Silkhands in the wagon with Jinian to let them comfort one another as to what had been misunderstood between them. I needed no further proof that Kelver was no longer interested in Jinian or that Silkhands would never be more than my friend. So I drank with the King and shared objurgations of all enemies with him until we slept at last from inability to do anything else.

 On the morning we climbed farther to the endless chattering of the krylobos. Queynt clucked at them indulgently. I asked if he feared to return to the place he had found them, and he shook his head. “It is impossible to say. It was all so very long ago.”


 “How long ago?” I asked.

 “Ummm.” He grimaced. “A very long time ago. I was searching for a place. There had been a great catastrophe, and my maps proved useless. You have heard of the cataclysm, flood and wind, storm and ruin? It caused great destruction the length of the River Reave.”

 “The same catastrophe which destroyed Dindindaroo,” I said. “I have been told that was flood and windstorm. Do you know what caused it?”

 “Most certainly. When we come to the top, you will see for yourself. A moonlet fell from the heavens, blazing with the light of a little sun. It thrust into the top of this tableland like a flaming spear, causing the ground to shatter for a hundred leagues in all directions, breaking natural dams and letting loose the pent floods of a thousand thousand years, sending forth a hot, dry wind which spread from this center to blow forests into kindling. You may see the destruction in Learner yet, in certain places.

 “Many ancient things were uncovered. And perhaps many other ancient things were covered past discovery.” He was quiet then for a little time, loquacity forgotten, before he said, “Perhaps it is only that the signs were lost, the trails thinned...”

 If he had been attempting to astonish me, he succeeded. “I have heard a song sung to that effect,” I managed to choke.

 “Ah, young sir, so have I. It was that song brought me all the way south almost to the Phoenix Demesne searching for a Healer and a Gamesman to whom that song might mean something.”

 “Our meeting was no accident then,” said Silkhands, entering the conversation from her wagon seat. “No accident at all!”

 He flushed a little, only a touch of rose at the lobes of his ears. “No, my dear. Not totally accident. But intended for no evil purpose for all that.”

 It was too much. I was not assured of his honesty and could not fence with him further. I waited until Chance came up to me, then spent a league of our journey complaining about mysteries, Gamesmen in general, an education which had ill fitted me for the present circumstances, and other assorted miseries including a case of saddle chafe.

 Chance ignored me, cutting to the heart of my discomfort. “He’s a one, that Queynt,” he said. “Says more than he cares about and knows more than he says.”

 “Spare me the epigrams,” I begged him. “Can I trust the man? That’s all that matters now. He has not seemed to hurt us in any respect, but he has been far from honest with us...”

 “As we have been with him,” said Chance. “I suppose he’s wondering if he can trust us. I would if I was him.”

 My own honor and trustworthiness was not a topic I chose to think upon. Not then. I could only go on with the journey by not thinking of it, and so I whipped my horse up and rode ahead of all the rest to the top of the notch, seeing the monstrous bone forms edging the rimrock on every side so that I dismounted to stand in amazement while the others caught up to me.

 Queynt jumped from the wagon seat to stretch and bend himself, puffing a little in the high air. “They were not here,” he said, “these bone forms were not here before the cataclysm. They were buried deep, buried well, buried for a thousand thousand years. When the moonlet fell, the soil which covered them was blown outward to fall upon the orchards of Nutland or was carried by the wild winds to the edges of the world.”

 The huge shapes were all around us, north, south, west as far as we could see. They were indeed like the skeletons of unimaginably prodigious beasts, pombis or fustigars perhaps. Here and there the shapes were pentagonal, star shaped, like the skeleton of any of our tailless animals, so like a pombi’s that I could not believe them wind carved. They felt and sounded, when struck, like stone. Jinian came out of the wagon to lay her small square hands beside my own. The spies were far behind. She could risk this brief escape from the wagon. We remained there, staring, for a long time before turning away.

 The King came to us with the Dragons. I had seen them conferring together as they rode, and now he came to ask my advice. “I have two Dragons here who can be sent as messengers. Would you have any thoughts about that?”

 I had been worrying the thought of taking Hafnor in my hand and Porting to the Bright Demesne to ask for help. I had not done because I was not sure I could return, not sure I could visualize clearly enough the surroundings where we traveled. This offer was welcome, and I thanked him for it, suddenly wishing most heartily for Mavin and Himaggery, but most of all for Himaggery’s host.

 “If and when word reaches Huld that we have found what he is seeking,” I said, “he will come. We could give up the search and go away. But Huld would move against the world and us, sooner or later. We may find what we may find and keep it secret. But Huld will come, sooner or later. The Elator who follows us says that there are bone pits outside Hell’s Maw piled so deep that no man knows where the bottom of them lies. Huld will come with Bonedancers and Ghouls and Princes of the North who share his ambitions. He will come in might with a horrible host. If that host could be met and conquered in this wasteland ...”

 “Or even delayed,” whispered Jinian. “Fewer would suffer.”

 “Except ourselves,” said the King.

 “Except ourselves,” I agreed. “So while we hope for powerful allies before us, let us call upon whatever others we may.”

 King Kelver examined me narrowly. “What allies before us, Gamesman? I have not been told of any ... formally.”

 I flushed and turned from him. Had Silkhands hinted to him? Hoped with him? Well, probably. Behind me, Jinian said, “There may be none, King Kelver. We hope, that is all.”

 He laughed, not with any great humor, and made some remark about fools living on hope. Well, that was true. Fools did. My hope was in Mavin.

 So it was that one scarlet Dragon sped northeast, trailing fire and pennants of smoke to make himself even more conspicuous while another, slate gray with wings of jet, fled south close upon the mountaintop, unseen, to the far off mists of the Bright Demesne. He carried a message from me which said, without any circumlocution, “Help!” Meantime Jinian dressed herself in the Dragon’s cloak and brave plumed helm to ride alongside the wagon. If the Elator got a look at us, we were precisely as we should have been: one King, one Queynt, one Chance; one Silkhands, one Dragon, one Peter. One Jinian, gone, eaten by groles. One Dragon gone, flown back to the Dragon’s Fire Purlieu with much noise and fire.

 Having thus done what we could against the certainty of Huld’s coming, we rode forward once more, to the north where Yggery’s charts identified the Wastes of Bleer though it was difficult to imagine a place more waste-like than that we traveled already.

 We crossed long lines of scattered ash which led away to the south. “There’s a hole there that would hold a battle Demesne,” said Queynt. “Where the moonlet fell, spewing this ash in trails across the stone. In time the thorn will hide it...”

 Little thorn grew on the flat, though the canyons were choked with it and devil’s spear grew thickly under shelter of the stones. Else was only flat, gray and drear. The farther north we went, the more fantastic the twisted stone, convoluted, bizarre, no longer looking like isolated bones or joints but like whole skeletons of dream monsters. It was like moving in a nightmare, dreamy and echoing. Had it not been for the wide sky stretching above us to an endless horizon, it would have felt like a prison beyond hope of release.

 It was almost dusk when we came to the chasm, knife edged and sheer. At either end of it a mountain had sprawled into an impenetrable tumble of stone. “Abyss opens, mountains fall,” sang Queynt under his breath. I knew it was not the first time he had seen it. “It opened at the time of the cataclysm,” he said. “Before that time, one could have ridden on into the wastes.”

 “Tomorrow,” I said wearily. “There is no sense worrying at it now. We have other things to do.”

 And, indeed, there was enough to do for the evening. King Kelver and I would make his obligatory visit to the Mirrormen, he ostentatiously, I secretly to guard him. With many pricked fingers and scratched arms, we hacked enough thorn for a fire. The King had speared two ground-running birds which we roasted and ate with hard bread and dried fruit. The abyss had stopped us early, so that we had finished our meal before dark, the light falling red behind the line of mountains beyond Graywater. We were gazing at the sky thinking our own gloomy thoughts when the giant strode into our view against the bleeding light.

 He was coming toward us. As we had seen him from the gentle valley of the Boneview River, so we saw him again, this time from a frontal view. He strode toward us, towering against the sky, shredding and fraying at his edges as though blown by a great wind, ever renewing his outline, his gigantic integrity of shape and purpose. The sun sank behind him; stars showed through him as he stalked toward the place where we sat wordless and awed. There was something so familiar about him, something so close to recognition. I strained at the thought, but it would not come.

 At last the giant came so close the shape of him was lost. We felt the cold, ill wind blow around us, heard that agonized voice, “Kinsman, kinsman, find the wind...” and then it had gone on past. We turned to follow its progress over the abyss and beyond where it changed, tumbled, seethed into another shape, a tall, whirling funnel of darkness which poured down into some hidden pocket of the world.

 In that instant I saw what I had not seen before, how the shredding edges of the great form resembled a furry pelt, ends flying, how the great shape shifted, Shifted ...

 “Thandbar,” said two voices at once. Mine, and Queynt’s.

 There was a long silence full of waiting and strain. Then Queynt said, “It is fitting I should recognize him, Peter. I knew him. Now, how it is that you would know him?”

 I was not sure that I should answer. Silkhands gave me no help, merely staring at me owl-like across the fire. It was Jinian who finally said, “Tell him, Peter. If you cannot trust Queynt, you cannot trust any in this world and we may as well give up.”

 It was there, then, in the dusk of the Waeneye, beside a dying fire that I set the Gamesmen of Barish upon a flat stone, reserving only the blue of Windlow to my secret self. They stood under the eyes of all, but it was only Vitior Vulpas Queynt who leaned above them with tears flowing down his face as he touched them one by one. I wanted to strike him, wanted to seize the Gamesmen and flee into the dark. I could feel the serpent within, knotting and writhing. Only Jinian’s eyes upon me, her hand upon my knee, kept me quiet as the man picked them up, turned them, called them by name.

 Oh, Gamelords, but they were mine. Mine. Not his.

 In a little time, the worst of the feeling faded, and I was able to speak and think again. I had to tell him I could speak with them. Read them, and he looked at me then with such awe I felt uncomfortable.

 I tried to explain. “It is my brain they use to think with, Queynt. Otherwise they are as when they were made. I have been under the mountain of the magicians. I have seen how they are made. Have you?”

 “Oh, yes, Gamesman,” he affirmed, no longer joking or voluble. “I have been beneath the mountain. I went there last some decades ago to search for Barish.”

 We waited. He seemed to debate with himself whether we should be enlightened or not. At last it was Jinian again who spoke, as she had to me. “Queynt, we’ve trusted you. You’ve hinted to us and hinted to us a hundred times asking if we know what you hope we know. Now is time to set all mystery aside. There may have been reasons to stay hidden, but they are in the past. Now we must trust one another.”

 “Barish and I,” he said, “were brothers.”

 He stood to walk to the side of the abyss, stood there peering northward as he talked, seeming not to like the sight of our faces. “We came to this world together. You know that story. If you do not, it is not important now...

 “Well, let it be said. We came, Barish and I, and a host of others. We came to serve a lie. There were wives who were loved and children who were loved and a world approaching war with another world which neither would winľwell. Some powerful persons of that world sought to send certain loved ones away to safety. They needed an excuse. A fiction. A lie...

 “There was a woman, a girl. Didir. Some thought she could read minds. Others thought not. The people of her home place were afraid of her, true, naming her Demon and Devil. The powerful men of the place said they would send researchers away to another place to find out about this strange Talent she had. In later time it may prove useful. However, the research may be long, so it will be necessary to send support staff and agriculturists and bio-engineers and technologists and so on and so on.’ Their wives were the agriculturists and their children the bioengineers. Among them were a few, a very few, who really knew something about such matters.”

 “You,” said Jinian. “And Barish.”

 “I,” he admitted, “and Barish. And a few others, though most of the so called scientists were second rate academics caught in a strange web of vanity and ambition. They stayed under the mountain, caught up in their dreams of researchľresearch on `monsters.’ When we would not let them have Didir, they created monsters of their own. And we, the rest of us, came out from the mountain into this new, supposedly uninhabited world...”

 “Supposedly,” prompted Jinian.

 “Well, supposedly. There were living things here. There were intelligent creatures here. There was material the bio-engineers could use, mixes, crosses, deliberate and inadvertent. Children began to be born with many Talents. The Talent of Didir proved to be real. Barish said it was simply evolution, a natural evolution of the race. I said no, it was this world, this place.”

 He was silent for so long after that that Jinian had to prompt him again.

 The rest of us were silent, afraid if we spoke we might stop him, interrupt his disclosure and never learn what he would tell us.

 “Well, the poor fools stayed under the mountain. The Talents began to be born, and to grow, and feed on one another. Some were good people. Others were truly monsters. Barish was always an activist. He decided to intervene, to make plans...

 “He stole one of the transport machines, disassembled it, brought it here to the wastes. Then he sought out the best of the emerging Talents, seduced them with hope and high promises, and brought them here. There were twelve with Barish, the Council. They made plans. They would accumulate those among the Gamesmen who had notions of justice, accumulate them like seed grain, and when the time came, they would plant that crop for a mighty harvest.”

 He returned to us by the fire, shivering, though the night was not yet that cold. “It was not enough to plan a great future if one might not be alive to see it. So he asked me to work with him to develop a strain of people who would be immune to the Talents of Gamesmen and immutable through time. Well, we had longevity drugs and maintenance machines as well as the transport machines themselves. It gave us centuries to work. When there were enough of the Immutables, Barish made a contract with them. They were to find the good seed among the Gamesmen and communicate those names to those under the mountain. Those under the mountain would have them picked up, blued, and stored in the ice caverns. He got their agreement very simply, by playing on their fears. He told the `magicians’ that those identified were a danger to them, a danger to be removed but preserved as a later source of power. They believed Barish. Everyone believed Barish.

 “And so, the Immutables became the `Council.’ Up until the death of Riddle’s grandfather, some eighty years ago. The chain was broken then. We may never know why.”

 “And Barish himself,” prompted Jinian as I was about to do so.

 “And Barish himself lay down beside the eleven others he had brought up here to Barish’s Keep. Once every hundred years the Immutables were to come and wake him, bringing with them some brain-dead body which he might occupy in order that his own not age, for he wished to save his lifespan for the great utopian time which was to come. And once every hundred years I met him in Learner, he in one guise or another, I always as Queynt, to talk of this world and its future. Once a century we would argue about the methods he had chosen, I urging him to waken his stored multitudes and learn from those who had been here before he came; he saying that there were not yet enough, to give him just another hundred years...”

 “Until?” I asked, knowing the story was almost at an end.

 “Until some eighty years ago I came to Learner to meet him only to find it in ruins. No Barish. Until I came up here to find his Keep, where I had been only once before, to find tumbled stone and Wind’s Bones, abysses and fallen mountains. I went to Dindindaroo to ask Riddleľthe current Riddle of that timeľwhere Barish was. Dindindaroo was in ruins, Riddle dead, the new Riddle ignorant of the very name of Barish.

 “I grieved. I went against my judgment and kept up his work. I became the new Council as Riddle had been before me. I sent my hundreds into the icy caverns. I waited for Barish. He did not return. And then, at last, a year ago the mountain of magicians went up in fire and I knew Barish would not come again of himself.

 “He lies upon this mountain, or he is gone. I seek him. You seek him. And we must find him because where he lies is the only machine which can restore Barish’s multitude to life once more. If this thing is not done, he will have lived and died to no purpose, and I will have been party to a very grave miscalculation...”

 I believed him. We all did. There was no fantastic pretense in him now, no egregious eccentricism. He was only one, like us, driven by old loyalties and a sense of what could be good and right. If Windlow had been there, he would have taken the man by the hand and reassured him, so I did it, wordlessly, hoping he would understand. It seems he did, for he said, “Your purpose is like mine. If you have been guided here by songs, by Seers, by a giant form striding to the north, wellľif there is anything of Barish remaining, he will be trying to reach me.”

 “As Thandbar tries to reach his kindred,” I said. “His is the only Gamesman I have never touched. His was my own Talent, so I never called upon him.”

 “I never knew that any living thing or any known device could reach what lies preserved within the blues,” said Queynt. “Though some once said that travelers between the stars sometimes wakened with a memory of dreams. Who knows? I don’t. I know very little.”

 “Do you know how you have lived this thousand years?” asked Jinian. “While I am much inclined to trust you, Vitior Queynt, this is one thing about you I find unbelievable.”

 “I have lived this long by learning,” he said, “from shadowpeople and gnarlibars and krylobos and eestnies. You have not seen eestnies, but they were here before we came and would teach you, too, if you asked. Barish had not the patience for it, so he said. Then, too, he kept thinking I would die. He will be offended I have not.”

 Well, we had enough to chew on for one night. King Kelver went back along our trail to appear as a Mirrorman. He retrieved the cap at the same time, and my help was not needed. It seemed that the Elator or the Mirrorman suspected nothing.

 When morning came, Queynt suggested that Jinian and I take Yittleby and Yattleby and continue the search across the chasm. “The birds can leap the abyss,” he said. “If the rest of us stay here or spend some time seeking a trail, it will delay those behind us a bit more. Perhaps we will spend a day or two searching off in different directions while you and Jinian go in the direction we believe correct.” It seemed as good an idea as any other, so I Dragoned across, carrying Jinian, then showed myself high in the air to let the followers know that the abyss had been crossed by Dragon. The others were scattered among the rocks, seeming to seek a way through the maze. From my height, I could see several, and I knew they could follow us whenever they felt it wise to do so. Delay, obfuscation, Game and more Game. I was as weary of it as possible to be.

 Yittleby and Yattleby had leaped the chasm, galloping to the very edge to launch themselves up and out with ecstatic cries, long legs extended before them, for all the world like boys vying with one another in the long jump. They were saddled, which surprised me, and they knelt at our approach to let us mount. Then it was only necessary to hang on while they lurched upright and began their matched, unvarying stride toward the north. They would bear no bit or bridle. One or two attempts to guide them taught me merely to point in the direction I wanted to go.

 Late in the day I saw a fallen stone with a waysign painted upon it. By matching the stone to its broken pedestal, I could see which way the arrow had originally pointed, and I indicated that direction to Yittleby. She ignored me. I tapped her on the neck, sat back in startlement as the huge beak swung around to face me. “Krerk,” she said, stamping one taloned foot. “Krerk.”

 At that moment I heard a harsh, rumbling roar as of a great rockslide. As it went on, rumbling and roaring, I realized it was not the sound of stone. “Gnarlibar?” I whispered.

 “Krerk,” both birds agreed, turning away from the line I had indicated. When the sound changed in intensity, the birds again changed direction, ascending a pile of rough stones. Halfway up they knelt and shook us off, gesturing with their beaks in an unmistakable communication. “Go on and see,” they were saying. “Take a good look.” They crouched where they were as we crawled to the top of the pile.

 Below us was a kind of natural amphitheatre, broken at each compass point by a road entering the flat. Assembled on the slopes of the place were some hundreds of the shadow-people, their chatter and bell sounds almost inaudible beneath the ceaseless roaring. In the center of the place a single, gigantic krylobos danced, one twice the height of Yittleby or Yattleby, feet kicking high, feather topknot flying, wing-arms extended in a fever of wild leaping and finger snapping. The roaring grew even louder, and through the four road entrances of the place came four beasts.

 Jinian clutched at me. My only thought was that this was what Chance had wanted me to Shift to and he had been quite mad. They were like badgers, low, short-legged, very wide. They were furry, had no tails, had a wide head split from side to side by a mouth so enormous either Yittleby or Yattleby would have fit within it as one bite. They came leat, that is to say, from the four directions at once, each uttering that mountain-shattering roar. The giant krylobos went on dancing. Queynt’s two birds came to crouch beside us, conversing in low krerks of approval, whether at the dance, the dancer, or the attack, I could not tell.

 As the gnarlibars reached the center, the krylobos leapt upward, high, wing-fingers snapping, long legs drawn up tight to his body, neck whipping in a circular motion. Yittleby said to Yattleby, “Kerawh,” in a tone indicating approval. “Whit kerch,” Yattleby agreed, settling himself more comfortably.

 The gnarlibars whirled, spinning outward, each counter-clockwise, in an incredible dance as uniform in motion as though they had been four bodies with one mind. The krylobos dropped into the circle they had left among them, spun, cried a long, complicated call, and then launched upward once more as the four completed their turn and collided at the center in a whirling frenzy of fur.

 “Krylobos, bos, bos,” cried the shadowmen over an ecstasy of flute and bell sounds. “Gnarlibar, bar, bar,” called another faction, cheering the beasts as they spun once more and retreated. In the center the enormous bird continued his dance, her dance, wing-fingers snapping like whip cracks, taloned feet spinning and turning. “Bos, bos, bos,” said Yittleby, conversationally. I had raised up to get a better view, and she brought her beak down sharply upon my head. “Whit kerch,” she instructed. I understood. I was to keep low.

 The circus went on. I did not understand the rules, but it was evidently a very fine contest of its kind. When the gnarlibars withdrew after an hour or so, roaring still in a way to shake the stones, Yittleby and Yattleby rose to lead us down into the amphitheatre. Almost at once I heard familiar voices crying, “Peter, eater, ter, ter,” and my legs were seized in a tight embrace. Flute sound trilled, there was much shrieking and singing in which I caught a few familiar words of the shadow language. One small figure pounded itself proudly upon its chest and said, “Proom. Proom.” I remembered him and introduced Jinian with much ceremony. She was immediately surrounded by her own coterie all crying “Jinian, ian, an an,” to her evident discomfort.

 “What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

 “It looks rather like a festival,” I suggested. “I was told once that the shadowpeople are fond of such things. Some here have traveled a long way from the place I met them.”

 I felt a hard tug at one leg and looked down into another familiar little face, fangs glistening in the light. They had never come out into the light when I had traveled with them before. Was it that they felt safe among the krylobos and the gnarlibars? Or that a time of festival was somehow different for them? Whatever the answer, my wide-eared friend was busy communicating in the way he knew, acting it out. He was going walky, walky, pointing to the north, patting me and pointing. I nodded, turned, walky walked myself toward the north, going nowhere. He opened his hands, so human a gesture that Jinian laughed. “What for?” he was saying. “Why?”

 Inspiration struck me. I held out a hand, “Wait,” then peered into the south, hand over eyes. The shadowpeople turned, peered with me. At first there was nothing as the sun dropped lower. Then, just as I was beginning to think it would not come, there was the giant striding upon the wind toward us once more. I pointed, cried out. Jinian pointed, exclaimed. All the shadowpeople chattered and jumped up and down.

 “Andibar, bar, bar,” they chanted. “Andibar!”

 Jinian and I were astonished. “The sound is so very close,” she said. “They mean Thandbar!”

 “Andibar,” they agreed, nodding their heads. We waited while the giant approached, dissolved into wind and mist around us, then went on to the north. I cried out to the shadowpeople, pointed, made walky, walky. Aha, they cried, louder than words. Aha. They were around me, pushing, running off to the north and returning, indicating by every action that they knew the way well. We went among them, propelled by their eagerness.

 Ahead of us we could see the giant twist and change, flowing onto the stony mountain like smoke sucked into a chimney. Yittleby and Yattleby followed us, conversing. We half ran, half walked among the mazes of stone and Wind’s Bone to come, starlit at last, to a pocket of darkness into which the shadowpeople poured like water. Jinian and I dropped onto the stone, panting. We could not see well enough to follow them.

 They returned, calling my name and Jinian’s, querulously demanding why we did not come. Yittleby said something to them, and they darted away to return in moments with branches of dried thorn. One burrowed into my pocket to find the firestarter, emerging triumphantly in a bright shower of sparks. Then we had fire, and from the fire torches, and from the torches light to take us down into the earth.

 We needed the fire for only a little time. The clambering among tumbled stone was for only a short distance before we emerged into corridors as smooth as those I had seen beneath the mountains of the magicians. There was light there, cool, green light, and a way which wound deep into a constant flow of clean, dry air. At the end of the way was an open door...



 11
The Gamesmen of Barish

  



 THE SHADOWPEOPLE OPENED THE DOOR wider as we approached it. The place was not new to them, and I had a moment’s horrible suspicion that we might find only ruin and bones within. Such was not the case.

 The pawns have places called variously temples or churches in which there are images of Didir or Tamor or of other beings from an earlier time than ours. I had been in one or two of these places on my travels, and they were alike in having a solemn atmosphere, a kind of dusty reverence, and a smell of smoky sweetness lingering upon the air. This place was very like that. There were low pedestals within, clean and polished by the flowing air, on each of which one of my Gamesmen lay.

 The shadowpeople had surrounded one pedestal and waited there, beckoning, calling “Andibar, bar, bar,” in their high, sweet voices. When Jinian and I came near, they sat down in rows around the recumbent figure and began to sing. The words were in their own language, but the music...

 “The wind song,” whispered Jinian. “The same melody.”

 Though the singer in Xammer had played it upon a harp and these little people upon flutes and bells, the song was the same. I knew then where the frail singer in Learner had heard it first. How she had translated it into our language, I might never know. They sang it through several times, with different words each time, and I had no doubt what they sang and what I had heard differed very little in meaning. When they finished, one very tiny one leaned forward to chew on Thandbar’s toe, was plucked up and spanked by another to the accompaniment of scolding words. It did not seem to have damaged Thandbar. He was fully dressed, helm lying beside him, fur cloak drawn about him under a light coverlet. Jinian laid her hand upon him and shivered. “Cold.” I already knew that. Except for the ceremonial setting, the careful dignity of his clothing, his body was as cold and hard as those in the ice caverns. And yet, something had left this body to pour into the evening sky, to wander the world and beg his kinsmen for release from this silent cold.

 I walked among the others. Tamor and Didir, looking exactly as I had known them; Dorn, piercing eyes closed in endless slumber; stocky Wafnor, half turned on his side as though his great energy had moved him even in that chill sleep. Hafnor bore a mocking smile as though he dreamed; and Trandilar dreamed, likewise, older than I would have expected, but no less lovely for that. Could she Beguile me, even through this sleep?

 Shattnir lay rigid, hands at her sides, crown in place, as though she had decided to be her own monument. Dealpas was huddled under her blanket, legs and arms twisted into positions of fret and anxiety. Buinel’s mouth was half open. The machine had caught him in mid-word, And, finally, Sorah, the light gauze of her mask hiding her face. I drew it aside to see her there, calm, kindly looking, eyes sunken as though in some inward gaze.

 And lastly ...

 Lastly. I gasped, understanding for the first time the implications of what Queynt had told me. “Barish,” I said. He lay before me, wrapped in a Wizard’s robe embroidered with all the signs and portents, two little lines between his eyes to show his concentration even in this place.

 “Barish,” Jinian agreed. “He has a good face.”

 He did have a good face, rather long and bony, with dark bushy brows and a knobby nose over wide, petulant lips.

 “I did not expect to find him here,” I said.

 “Only his body,” she replied. “Queynt said he was awakened into different bodies each time.”

 “Perhaps he wasn’t awakened. Perhaps the blue is here, somewhere.”

 “If it had been,” she said soberly, “Riddle’s grandfather would have taken it to Dindindaroo with all the rest.”

 Still, we looked. There were cabinets on the walls, doors leading into other rooms. We found books, machines. In a room we identified as Barish’s own there was a glass case which still showed the imprint of a Gameboard which was not there. I fit the Onomasticon into a gap in a bookshelf. This was the place from which Riddle’s grandfather had removed the treasures he had sworn to preserve.

 We returned to the outer room. The machine was there, behind a low partition, a tiny light blinking slowly upon its control panel. “There is still power here,” I said.

 Then I said nothing for a while.

 Then, “Let us go out of here. I have to think.”

 She gave me a long, level look, but did not say anything until we had climbed upward through the tumble to the open air. The little people came with us, chattering among themselves. When we took food from the saddlebags, they clustered around, and I realized there were more of them than we could feed. “I must go hunting,” I said. “They will be happy to stay here. Their word for fire is ‘thruf.’ If you can keep one going, with their help, I’ll bring back some kind of meat.”

 Then she did try to say something to me, but I did not wait to hear. Instead, I Shifted into fustigar shape and loped off into the stones. I did not want to think, and it is perfectly possible not to think at all, if one Shifts. I did not think, merely hunted. There were large, ground-running birds abroad in the night, perhaps some smaller kin of the great krylobos. They were swift, but not swift enough. I caught several of them, snapping their necks with swift, upward tosses of my fustigar head. What was it brought me up, out of mere fustigar to something else?

 Perhaps it was the awareness of my bones, the long link bones between my rear legs and forelegs, the shorter link bone between the rear legs, the flat rear space where a tail might have been but was not, the curved link bones between shoulders and head, the arching, flexible ribs which domed this structure and anchored all its muscles...

 The starshaped skeleton of this world. Unlike the backboned structure of our world, whatever world it might have been. This world, into which we came, uninvited, surely, to spread ruin and wreck. And yet into which we were welcomed. The shadowpeople waited beside the fire with Jinian for the feast their friend would bring them. They would call Peter, eater, ter, ter into the darkness, play their silver flutes, ring their bells, sniff the bones twice when they had done, and sleep beneath the stones. And they might gnaw a bit on Thandbar and be spanked for it.

 And in Hell’s Maw they were meat for Huld. So had said the Elator, laughing, as he ate other meat at his campfire.

 Some acid burned in my fustigar throat, some pain afflicted my fustigar heart. Ah, well, I could not leave them behind me to flee into a darkness forever.

 The animal turned itself about and ran back the way it had come, to stand upon its hind legs and Shift once more. Into Peter once more. Into the same confusion I had left.

 They welcomed me with cries, of pleasure, assisted in cleaning the birds and spitting them over the fire while others foraged for more thorn and devil’s spear. We ate together, bird juice greasing our chins and hands, and sang together in the echoing dark. I saw Jinian’s eyes upon me but ignored her as if I did not understand. Tomorrow was time enough for decision.

 “I sent Yattleby with a message for Queynt,” she said.

 “Ah,” I replied. “A message for Queynt.”

 “Written,” she said. “I gave it to Yattleby, pointed back the way we had come and said ‘Queynt.’ He seemed to understand.”

 “I’m sure he did,” I said, fighting down anger. I did not need more pressure on me. Through the thin fabric of my Shifted hide I could feel the pouch I had carried for two years. Inside it were Didir and Tamor. Mine. Shattnir. Mine. Even Dealpas. Mine. “When I give them up,” I said in a carefully conversational tone, “I will be powerless to confront Huld. If I had not had them, you would have been meat for groles instead of sitting here beside me, eating roast bird.”

 “When you saved us from the bones in Three Knob,” she said, “it was by your own Talent. If you had not had Sorah to call upon outside Learner, you would have found another way. You need nothing but yourself, Peter.”

 “I do,” I shouted at her, making wild echoes flee from the place. “Without them, I am nothing. Nothing at all...”

 She wiped her hands fastidiously, poured water from her flask to wash her face, turned that face to me at last, quiet, unsmiling, unfrowning, quiet. “I have told you I am a Wizard, Peter. I will give you Wizardly advice. Think on yourself, Peter. Think on Mavin, and Himaggery and Mertyn. Think on Windlow. Carefully, slowly, on each. Then think on Mandor and Huld. And when you have done, decide with whom you will stand.”

 Gamelords, I said to myself. Save me from the eloquence of Wizards. She sounded like Himaggery, or rather more like Windlow, though Windlow had been a Seer, not a Wizard. This abstraction called justice was all very well, but when it meant that one had to give up one’s own power... One considered being Huld-like.

 “Jinian,” I cried. “Do you know what it is you ask?”

 “Of course,” she said. “Wizards always know what they ask. And they ask everything.”

 I held out my arms and she came into them to hold me as a mother might hold a child or a Sorceress her crown. When we slept, it was thus twined together, and for a time I did not think of her being a Wizard. The shadowpeople let us sleep. They faded away in the morning light, into the deep caverns of the rock, to return at dusk, I was sure, expecting another feast, another song fest. Well. Perhaps by then we would have more guests to feed. So saying, I took Jinian by the hand and we went back into Barish’s Keep.

 “Which of them first, Wizard?” I asked. “Shall it be Shattnir or Dealpas? Buinel or Hafnor? I think not Buinel. He would ask us to prove our authority before raising the rest.”

 “Thandbar,” she said. “It is he who has searched for his kinsmen, Peter. It is not fitting he should be raised first?”

 I should have thought of it myself. We lifted the rigid body of Thandbar off the pedestal on which it rested, tugged it around the partition to the machine, and spent both our strengths in heaving it onto the metal plate which was precisely like those I had seen on similar machines under the mountain of the magicians. There was even the small, circular receptacle for the blue. I set it in place, stepped back, and thrust down the lever as I had seen Mavin do it.

 Nothing happened. There was no hum, no scream, no nothing. No sound. No movement. Jinian looked at me with quick suspicion. I protested: “This is how Mavin did it! There is power here. The light is on. Perhaps it must be set in some way.” She helped me wrestle Thandbar to the floor before I began a twisting, pushing, turning circumambulation of the device, moving everything movable upon it. I tried the lever again. Nothing.

 I turned to her to expostulate, explain, only to meet her level regard, no longer suspicious. “This is why he never returned. Why Barish never returned.”

 Seeing my confusion, she drew me away to Thandbar’s pedestal where we sat while she puzzled it out. “They would wake Barish every hundred years. They would bring some brain-dead but living body for him, some poor fellow brain-burned by a Demon perhaps, and would put the body in that machine with Barish’s blue. Then he, Barish, in a different body each time, would go into the world to meet Queynt, assess the progress of his plan. He would return here after some yearsľhow many? Ten perhaps? Twenty? Give up the blue again, and the attendant Immutables would take the body away to be buried.

 “But the last time he was awakened, the machine malfunctioned? Yes. I think so. Something went wrong. Either during the process or right after? Yes. Otherwise his blue would be with the rest. That red light you see upon the device is probably a warning light, something to tell the operator that things are awry within. So Barish was no tech. Or if he was, he had no part or lacked some contrivance. The fact that he did not fix it means that he could not. And whoever or whatever Barish was, it went forth from this place knowing it would do no good to return.”

 I went back to Thandbar’s body, lying on the cold floor of the place. Such is the contrary nature of mankind, or perhaps only of the Peters among mankind, that I now wished most heartily to do what I had fought before against doing. Now that it was impossible, I was determined to do it.

 “Since you are so reasonable, Wizard,” I said. “Reason us a way out of this dilemma.”

 “I will wait for Queynt,” she said. “Since he may have some knowledge of the device. If he does not, then we will think again.”

 She went up out of the place. I heard her talking to Yittleby, who had remained behind when Yattleby went away, saying something about patience. I took some confidence from the impatience of the krylobos. It was better than fear. I walked around and around the machine. Surely there was some way it could be understood? Surely some way that a Shifter could understand it.

 In Schlaizy Noithn, I had become a film upon a wall in a place where my very presence was a danger. I reached a tentative finger to the machine, flowed across its metal surface like oil, a thin film, an almost invisible tentacle. This filament poured into a crack, down through the interstices of the mechanism. Here were wires and crystals, hard linkages, soft pads, rollers, some kind of screen which scattered light, a device for casting a narrow beam and manipulating it. I went deeper. This is what Dealpas had done to Izia upon the heights of Mavin’s place. Here were strangenesses which I entered and surrounded, tasting, smelling, creating temporary likenesses of. Where was the failure? Where the malfunction? No part of it ached, throbbed, was fevered. Should this dark crystal be alight? This cold wire, should it be warm? Who could tell? No network of nerve enlightened me. I flowed deeper yet.

 Who were the voices crying to me? Why did Dorn cry so loud? Why did Didir sting me with her voice? Out? Out of where? Of what? The mysteries which lay around me were tantalizing. Why come out?

 Was that Jinian? Silkhands? I felt hands upon me, pulling me, some inner person walking my veins and my nerves, hauling upon my bones. I wanted to tell them to let be, but it would take a mouth and lungs to do that. A mouth. Lungs.

 Panic. So does one who is more than half drowned struggle to the surface of water, gasping for breath, unable to breathe. Someone helped me from within. Silkhands.

 And I lay upon the floor of the place while Silkhands and Queynt hovered over me and screamed and cried on me.

 “Fool, fool,” said Silkhands. “Even Mavin would not have tried such a thing.”

 “Fool, fool,” wept Jinian. “Oh, Peter, but you are hopeless and I love you.”

 I was not afraid until I knew what I had done, which was to spend the better part of two days trying to become a machine. Silkhands was worn and exhausted. She had spent the time since her arrival trying to extricate me. If there had been no other reason for her to come to the Wastes of Bleer than to save my life, I was grateful for Windlow’s vision and the musician’s song. It was she who had come into my inside out body and followed it down into madness, calling it out of its strange preoccupation. When I learned of her effort and my foolishness, I wept tears of weary frustration.

 “I don’t know what’s the matter with it,” I confessed.

 “And nor do I, my boy,” said Queynt. “I had little knowledge of maintenance. We had techs who were specially trained to do that work. It may be that the books are here, somewhere, and even the parts we may need, but I find Jinian’s reasoning persuasive. If Barish could have fixed it, he would have done.”

 “I find it odd,” said King Kelver, “that the plans of a thousand years would be allowed to go awry on the failure of one mechanism.”

 I could not have agreed with him more. However, I had no time for such fine philosophical points because of the news they brought. “The Elator told me last night that Huld is coming,” said the King. “I am to betray your location to him when he arrives. He grew impatient and left Hell’s Maw last night.”

 Jinian had my map upon the floor, measuring the distance with her fingers. “Three days,” she whispered. “They will be upon us within three days. Four at most!”

 In a few moments I built and discarded a hundred notions. I could take Wafnor and make a mountain fall. Buinel would burn the bones as they came toward us. Hafnor would flick me to the Bright Demesne where I would repeat my call for help. Didir would Read Huld’s mind. All these wild thoughts tumbled one upon another until Jinian took my hand, and I knew she had followed them almost as though she could have Read them.

 “Peter. You can manage two or three of the Gamesmen of Barish at a time. If worst comes to worst, you will do it and we will all pray your success. But oh, how much better it would be if all of them fought at our side.”

 She was right, of course. I leaned upon her shoulder and gave a great sigh, half weakness and half weariness, thinking the whole time of roast fowl. My weakness was simple hunger, and I said so. She remedied the lack as soon as I expressed it by putting a mug of hot soup into my hand and crumbling hard bread into it. As I ate it with a tired greediness, she went on.

 “There is something we are not thinking of,” she said. “Something simple and obvious. The song we heard in Xammer was learned at the Minchery in Learner from a young songsmith who dreamed it. It is the same music we heard when the giant strode across us in the hills behind Three Knob. It came from Thandbar, somehow, and Thandbar’s blue is in your pocket. Somehow, Peter, the separation of body and blue is not as complete as we thought, for something sensible of Thandbar escaped, rose up from his body lying here in the cold wastes of Bleer to stride across the world crying for our help. There is a clue there we are not seeing, Peter. Help me think.”

 “It probably has something to do with cold,” I mumbled around a mouthful of bread. “In the School Houses, we always kept the blues cold. They have not been cold in my pocket. Perhaps that has something to do with it. Perhaps it is natural for them to recombine, and the machine only aids that process...”

 “What does the machine do, Peter?”

 “Ahh,” I said, remembering chill wire and hostile casing, the infinite lattices of crystal in which I had lost myself. “It warms the body, warms the blue, scans the blue and Reads it into the mind of the body. Having seen the innards of the machine, I can do part of what the machine does. I can Read the blue, I think, with Didir’s help. And Shattnir can help me warm the place. But I don’t know how to Read the thing back into a body. It seems all a puzzle...”

 “I can Read the body,” said Silkhands. “If you will link with me, as they linked in the Bright Demesne when they searched for you. As Tragamors sometimes link to increase their strength.”

 I shuddered, remembering that such a linkage was precisely what Mandor and Huld had demanded of me in Bannerwellľof me, or of Mavin. Still, this was to no evil purpose. It took me a while to work myself up to it, but once we were started it seemed to flow along of its own movement. It was not as simple as that sounds, and yet it was simpler than I would have expected.

 First was Shattnir, gathering all the warmth she could from the sun to bring it below and warm the chamber of the Gamesmen. Then was Didir, to set her pattern firmly in my head, telling her what we intended, begging her to stay within and help me, show me the way.

 Then I took the blue of Thandbar in my hand and put my arms tight around Silkhands as she laid her hands upon Thandbar’s head. He came into my mind and greeted me with such joy that it burst through me in a wave, a wordless, riotous joy, the rapture of a prisoner released, a caged thing set free. “Only free,” I heard him murmur in my head. “Only free.” I remembered it as one of his names and knew in that instant what innate quality it was had enabled him to escape the cold room and move out across the world. His Shifter’s soul could not have been held, had not been held. I had no time to think of it, for with Didir’s pattern tight in my mind I began to Read him, spark by spark, shivering lattice by lattice, sending my warmth down the chill circuits of his being, following those circuits as Silkhands Read them from me and impressed them once again into the body before her.

 Time went, seeming hours of it, days of it. Pictures fled through my head. I saw Schlaizy Noithn, bright in the noon light, where Thandbar walked with a loved one. I saw far mountains as seen from above by the eyes of a mist giant. I heard music, not only the wind song I had heard before but generations of bell and flute in the high, wild lands of the shadowpeople. I became tree, mountain, road, a whole legion of beasts I had never seen and knew nothing of. In Thandbar’s day, they had lived closer to mankind. In the intervening centuries they had fled away.

 I saw memories of Barish: Barish lecturing; Barish pounding a table; Barish laughing; Barish cajoling. I felt horror at the things being done by some Gamesmen, revulsion, anger, and felt Barish play upon that horror and revulsion. In Thandbar’s mind, I heard Barish’s voice. “We will accumulate the best, like seed grain. We will plant them in the ground of today, for a mighty harvest in the future,” his voice ringing, passionate. In Thandbar’s mind, I Read belief, then doubt (centuries of doubt), then terror at a conviction of eternal imprisonment. Out of that terror he had fled like mist, to walk the wide world calling for help from his kinsmen.

 So the pictures fled across my mind as the blue melted away in my hand, becoming a featureless lump, a sliver, a nothing at all. The body before us stirred, stirred again, until at last its eyes opened, its mouth moved. “I dreamed you, Healer,” it whispered in a voice whiskery with dust and age. “I dreamed you.” The eyes blinked, blinked, tried to focus. I knew they saw only blurs of light, mute shadows. At last they fastened upon me, and the dusty voice said, “Kinsman. Thanks.”

 And after that was a long, cloudy time in which Silkhands lay upon the floor exhausted and I trembled in my place like a wind gong perpetually struck, and the others had to take us up, we two and Thandbar, to wrap us up warmly and feed us to the wild piping and cheers of the shadowpeople. It was night. “How long?” I whispered to Queynt.

 “You were both exhausted when you began,” he said. “You must not try any more tonight. Silkhands could not, in any case. On the morrow, raise up Dealpas. She must help you. Then Didir, for she can do what you have done if I understand it aright.” So I slept. Bones marched against us from over the edge of the world, and I slept. Horror collected itself and thundered toward us with drums and trumpets, and I slept. If I had been condemned and upon the scaffold ready to be hanged, I would have slept. There was no more strength in me to stay awake, and morning came and moved itself toward noon before I wakened again to find Silkhands sitting beside me, looking a little wan but determined.

 “Come,” she said. “Let us waken Dealpas.”

 Which we did, though Barish’s Healer did not wish to be wakened. She fought us the whole way, moaning and weeping, carrying on as though she were the only creature in the world ever to have felt pain. Her whining sickened us, and I was ready to give up and let her lie there forever, but Silkhands was not. I felt her do something I had never known of before: she administered a mental spankingľa lashing along the nerves like a snake strikingľand we had Dealpas’ attention at last. When we had her awake, she began to moan, half-heartedly, and Jinian came forward to shake her into full wakefulness.

 “I have no patience with this Broken Leaf nonsense,” she cried into Dealpas’ pouting face. “I know not why Barish chose you as a worthy one of his Eleven, why he chose you from among all Healers, unless perhaps there were no others in your time. Well, you are not the best, by any rule, not fit to wear Silkhands’ smalls, but you will do what you will do or by the Giant of Thandbar I will teach you what pain is!”

 Dealpas was stung, furious, her pain forgotten. I linked with her, somewhat reluctantly, to raise Didir, and in that linkage I learned what had set Dealpas upon her course of whines and plaints. Barish had thought her pretty, had babied her, had petted herľthe more she whined, the more petting. So it was I began to doubt that Barish was what I had thought him to be. Wizard, perhaps, but not all wise to have spoiled her so.

 We did not work together as well as Silkhands and I had done, but Didir was helping from within to raise up her own body, so all went well and expeditiously in the end. She came up off the stone slab in one fluid movement, not at all grandmotherly, but lithe and still young. “Peter,” she said to me, looking full into my eyes, “there will be a better time than now for thanks. Be sure that time will not be forgotten.” She hugged me then, and kissed me as a mother might (as Mavin never had in my memory) and went off above to gather some power and settle some ancient matter between herself and Dealpas. When they returned, they were ready for work, and I did not hear Dealpas whine again.

 The two of them began with Shattnir, who rose as she had slept, straight, all at once, rising as if she had lain down the night before. I saw her keen eye upon me, recognizing me, and was not surprised. There had been much more life in the blues than I had known. They had changed while with me, while within me. They had used me as I had used them, and I prayed as I saw her glance that she would consider the bargain good. Then she gave me a quick, mocking smileľnothing about Shattnir was ever wholly humanľand went about her way.

 Meantime Silkhands and I awakened Dorn. Having done this once before, I did not need Didir’s help again but was able to Read out the blue of Dorn as though I read a familiar book. Oh, there were surprises, particularly in his youthful memories; and there were terrors as he gained his Talent and learned to use it, but still, what I had known of him was the greater part of him, and he rose at last to greet me by name.

 “You do know me,” I mumbled.

 “How should I not, Peter? Have I not walked in your head as a farmer walks his fields? Have we not raised up ghosts together?”

 “I wasn’t sure you would remember,” I said weakly, remembering myself thinking things I had rather he not know of.

 “Why shouldn’t I remember a friend?” he asked me, drawing me into an embrace. I had never felt for Mertyn or for Himaggery what I felt in that instant for Dorn. I had never known Mertyn or Himaggery as I knew Dorn. Perhaps he had shaped some essential growing in me, as a father might shape it in a pawnish boy or a loving thalan who knew his sister’s child from infancy. What he said was true. I remembered him as a friend. He had never had to do me any hurt, not even for my own good, and so there was no taint between us.

 Then Dealpas and I awakened Buinel while Silkhands rested and Didir took time to learn all that was happening. I felt her searching mind go forth, seeking Huld, I thought. It was not difficult to raise up Buinel, only boring. In my whole life I was never to meet anyone so relentless in putting down any spontaneous thought or evanescent desire as was Buinel. He wanted rules for everything, and he wanted them graven in bronze or cut into stone so that he could see they were no temporary things. Well, we persevered, Dealpas and I, she with her mouth all twisted up in distaste and some anger still. When we had him fairly roused he became deeply suspicious of us for having wakened him, so we turned him over to Queynt and Dorn. If they could not settle him I cared not whether we got him settled, though I did owe him much for having saved our lives from the Ghoul. Then Silkhands and Didir returned to wake Hafnor, Wafnor, and Tamor, one after another, each time quicker. It was true, with practice the thing became much easier. Wafnor gave me a glad hug, from a distance, his sturdy body creaking as he bent and twisted, trying to free himself in a few short minutes of the stiffness of centuries. Hafnor gave me a teasing wink. If he had had more power, he would have done something silly and boyish, I knew it, but he had to go above to warm himself in the sun. There was no power below except what Shattnir brought down to us from time to time for the work.

 Then Silkhands and I were alone once more, only Sorah and Trandilar upon their pedestals. And Barish. I stood there looking down at him, fingering the lone blue in my pocket. Now that I had given up the others, it seemed an evil thing to keep Windlow by me, an evil thing to keep him so imprisoned. He had no body of his own. It had been burned and destroyed in the place of the magicians. Barish had no blue. It had gone into some other body, perhaps, or been destroyed by the machine. Why not put the two together? Then Windlow might at least live again, live long, and be no worse off than he was now. The body would be strange, but surely it was better to visit a strange place than not to live at all. Silkhands and I were alone in the place. The others had all gone above to seek for Huld or plot their strategy or discuss ways in which we might leave the mountaintop without condemning the rest of the world to Huld’s fury.

 I called her over and showed her Windlow’s blue in my hand, letting my eyes rove over the body of Barish.

 She did as I had done, looking back and forth from one to the other. “Why not,” she said. “Let us do it now before someone comes down and makes some objection.”

 “He may only live a little while, to be killed in that battle which is coming,” I warned her.

 “He will at least die in reality then,” she said bitterly, “not be lost in some rock crevasse forever, caught in neither living nor death, perhaps in that same terror Thandbar felt.”

 I nodded, took Windlow’s blue into my hand and put my arms around her as she laid her hands upon Barish’s head.

 Then was maelstrom. Nothing which had gone before had prepared me for it. There was Windlow, surging in my mind like a flood, like a mighty stream pouring over a precipice. There was something else, surging to meet it as the tide meets the outflow of a river, battering waves which meet in foam-flecked flood to crash upon one another, flow around one another, mix together in an inextricable rush and tug and wash. Cities toppled in my head; rivers burst mighty barricades; millennia-old trees fell and splintered. Faces passed as in an endless parade. The sun made a single glittering arc across the sky, flickering between darkness and light as day and night sped past. Then the struggle eased, slowly, and I felt things rise in the flood to heave above the waves, to rock and stabilize themselves upon the flow like boats until all within was liquid and quiet above the steady roll of whatever lay below. Windlow’s blue was gone. Silkhands leaned back within the circle of my arms, exhausted. I heard someone come into the room behind us, recognized Queynt’s step but was too strained to turn to him as he gasped.

 The figure before me on the pedestal opened its eyes. Someone behind those eyes smiled into my face and said, “Peter?” Then that same someoneľor anotherľlooked across my shoulder and spoke to Queynt. “Vulpas?” I felt myself thrust aside as Vitior Vulpas Queynt moved to

 His brother’s side.

 His brother.

 My friend.

 Windlow.

 Barish.

 The same.



 12
The Bonedancers of Huld

  



 “YOU HAD HIM ALL THE TIME!” Queynt advancing as though to strike me.

 A voice from the pedestal, laughing weakly, not Windlow’s voice. Not entirely Windlow’s voice. Pattern and intonation different. Not so peaceful, not so kindly. “Oh, Vulpas. He didn’t know he had me. Poor lad. And he didn’t have much of me, at that, or all of me, depending upon how you look at it. He didn’t know; Windlow didn’t know.”

 So that Queynt turned again to that voice which seemed more familiar to him than it did to me. “Windlow?”

 A long silence. I looked at the body on the pedestal, close wrapped in its Wizardly robes. It had not moved yet, seemed uncertain whether it could. One hand made a little abortive gesture; a foot twitched. The eyes were puzzled, then clearing, then puzzled once more. When he spoke it was tentatively, slowly, as though he had to consider each word and was even then not certain of it.

 “The body they brought for me, Vulpas. The bodies were always supposed to be brain-burned. Plenty of those around. Every Game always left them littered about, weeping women, mothers crying, pathetic bodies, able to walk, breathe, eatľnothing else. They were supposed to bring one like that. So they did; body of a Seer named Windlow. Only it wasn’t brain-deadľmaybe half, maybe only stunned, sent deep...

 “The machine. It had been acting strangely. Meant to go to the base and get some tech to come back with me and fix it. I didn’t go. Why? Forget why. The time before, the last time I was in this bodyľthe machine didn’t separate me. Not all of me. Most of me was still here, in the body, cold. I dreamed...

 “Dreamed I saw Thandbar go out of this place like a wind, like a mist, singing. Dreamed little people came in here, singing. Wanted to say `Help,’ wanted to ask them to find Vulpas, find Riddle. Imprisoned. No movement. No voice...”

 “Who was it then, who went out of here?” demanded Queynt. “Who was it Riddle put the blue into? That last time. When you were supposed to meet me?”

 The figure on the slab moved, a supine shrug, a testing of long unused muscles. “Windlow, mostly. Partly me. The machine broke that time, once for all, finally. Screamed like a wounded pombi, like a fustigar in heat, screamed and shrieked and grated itself silent. The light went on. I saw it when I departed, and Riddle said something about not bothering to come back, there was nothing anyone could do...”

 “But if you knew all that,” I said stupidly, “then why didn’t you tell me, Windlow? Why all the mystery? The hiding and hunting and not seeming to know everything there was to know about the Gamesmen and the book? Why all that?”

 “Ah, lad.” Whoever it was began to sit up, struggling more than any of the others had had to do, achingly. I moved forward to help him, and he patted me on the arm in a familiar way. “I didn’t remember. Windlow didn’t remember. It was all so dreamlike, so strange. How would Windlow tell the difference, Vision or reality? And it was then that the moonlet fell, the world shook and tumbled and fell apart. Then it was run and run and try to stay alive, partly Windlow, partly Barish, the memories all mixed and tumbled with the world, all the people and all the landscape. I forgot Vulpas, forgot the Gamesmen almost, forgot the book almost. Then later some memories came back. Were they memories? Visions of a Seer? How would Windlow-Barish know? And then the memories began to tease, began to make mysteries. Then Windlow-Barish began to search for the book, search for the Gamesmen, remember odd things. Did he ever come back here? Why would he? If he did, the way was lost I suppose...”

 “What do you mean, did he?” I shrieked at him. “If Windlow is in you at all, he knows whether he did or not! Think him. Ask him.” I was grieving. I had not meant to trade Windlow, whom I loved, for this stranger.

 There was long silence from the pedestal, then the rustle of his cloak, the harsh scratch of the embroideries rubbing upon one another. His voice, when it came, was more as I remembered it. “Right, my boy. Of course. I did not come here. I did not remember this place. I did remember the book, the Gamesmen, but did not remember why they were important. Well, why would Windlow remember any such thing?”

 I turned to him desperately. “Are you in there, Windlow? Have I killed you?”

 He laughed, almost as Windlow would have done. “No, Peter. No. See. All of Windlow is here when I reach for him. I remember the garden of Windlow’s House, the meadow you chased the fire bugs through. I remember the tower in which Prionde had us imprisoned, the way we escaped by creeping through the sewer...”

 “You did not creep,” I said. “We carried you.”

 “You carried me. Yes. And I came to Himaggery’s place, to the Bright Demesne. It’s all there, my boy, all the memories of Windlow’s life. They may not be exactly as they were in Windlow’s head before, but they are there.”

 I felt as though someone had told me I was not quite guilty of some grave crime. The face was not Windlow’s face, the body not Windlow’s body, but in those memories Windlow still lived. Exceptľhe lived alloyed with another. Silver melted with tin is still silver, and yet it appears in a new guise. One cannot call pewter silver with honesty, and yet all the silver one started with is contained therein. Unless, I thought, the mix was rather more like oil and wine, in which case the oil would rise to the top and the wine lie below, seething to be so covered. Was he silver, Windlow, or oil? Or was he wine? Did it matter, so long as he lived? For a time.

 For it would be only for a time. Until what he knew and thought became no longer relevant or necessary and was forgotten. But that was the same with all of us. We were only what we were for a time, at that time. Then our own silver began to mix with the tin of our future to change us. I knew this to be so and grieved for Windlow while I grieved for me. In time I would not be this Peter, even as now I was not the Peter of two years ago who had grieved for Tossa on the road to the Bright Demesne. Yet that Peter was not lost. So Windlow was not lost, and yet he was not Windlow, either.

 Silkhands took me by the hand and led me away, shaking her head and murmuring to herself and me. She had loved him, too, perhaps more than I had done, and I wondered if she felt as oddly torn as I did. We did not speak of it just then. Instead, we sat beside the fire, drinking tea and looking into the flames as though to see our futures there, my head feeling like a vacant hall, all echoing space and dust in the corners. We heard Queynt and Barish-Windlow come up out of the place, so we went below to raise up Trandilar and Sorah. If what was to come was wreck and ruin upon us all I did not want them lying helpless under the stones.

 There was some milling about when they were all raised up, with much talk, before Hafnor flicked himself away to the north, hoptoad, to see what moved against us. Night was coming, the second night since we had raised up Thandbar. I had spent two days and a night below, and the morrow would be the third day since Huld’s host had left Hell’s Maw. I warmed my hands at the fire while hoping Himaggery and Mavin would reach us before Huld did, even though I feared it unlikely. There was nothing much we could do in the dark. I told Thandbar of my meeting with the Bonedancer outside Three Knob, and he chuckled without humor. “Grole, eh? Well, I’ve done that, or something like. It’ll take time to grow big, though, so I’ll go back among those rocks when we have eaten. I relish the taste of these birds more than the flavor of stone.” He had been hunting, as I had done a few days before, in the guise of a fustigar.

 So we sat eating and warming ourselves, thinking small thoughts of old comforts and joys. I kept remembering the kitchens in Mertyn’s House and the warm pools at the Bright Desmesne. In the hot seasons, one does not often remember how delicious it is to be warm, but beside this fire in the high, windswept wastes, I thought of warm things. Jinian sat down beside me to take my cold hand in her own and rub it into liveliness. I used it to stroke her cheek, feeling I had not seen her for days. Across the fire, Kelver did something similar with Silkhands and smiled across the coals at me in shared sympathy. Queynt was talking to the krylobos, freeing them from their harness so that they could leave us. They stalked away over the wasteland, into the darkness, making a harsh, bugling cry. “They do not like those who feed upon the shadowpeople,” Queynt said. “They will bring some help for us from among the krylobos and gnarlibars. I do not expect it will amount to much, but they will feel better for its having been tried. I wish there were some of the eesty here, though they would probably refuse to interfere...”

 Dorn talked of laying bones down again which another had raised, telling stories of the long past and the far away. Some, I am sure, were not meant to be believed, but only to cheer us. Some were funny enough to laugh at, despite the plight we found ourselves in. Then Trandilar took up the storytelling, stories of glamour and romance and undying love, turning the fullness of her Beguilement on us so that we forgot the bones of Hell’s Maw, forgot Huld, forgot the cold and the high wastes to live for a time in such lands and cities as we had never dreamed of. And all this time Sorah and Wafnor passed the food among us, saving nothing for the morrow, thinking, I suppose, that we would be too busy to eat then and glad of anything we had eaten tonight. So it was we were all replete, and so Beguiled by Trandilar that danger had vanished from our minds, and we were calm and still as a day in summer, lying close together in our blankets, to drift into sleep. I think Trandilar probably walked among us all night long, softly speaking words which led us into pleasant dreams, for when we woke in the morning, it was with a sense of happy fulfillment and courage for the day. Now it was Barish passed the cups among us, but I saw him gathering the herbs he put into them from the rock crevasses, and the way he searched them out and bent above them, the way he crushed them and brought them to his nose, all that was Windlow. The brew was hot and bitter, but it brought alertness of an almost supernatural kind. We had just finished it when Hafnor returned to tell us our fears were less than the truth.

 “This Demon Huld, whom you have made so effectively your enemy, must have been recruiting Necromantic Talents for a generation or more. He has Sorcerers as well, aplenty, and such a host of bones and liches as the world may collapse under. They stretch from horizon to horizon, across the neck of the wastes from the gorge of the Graywater to the valley of the Reave.”

 “What of the Gamesmen within that host of bones?” asked Jinian. “Talents which are useless against bones may be used against the Gamesmen.”

 “If one can get at them through the host of bones,” replied Hafnor. “You will have to see it for yourself. The Gamesmen are within the bones as a zeller stands in the midst of a field of grain. You cannot get to them without scything what stands in between.”

 “I have found chasms full of brush,” offered Buinel. He was not quite so odd in person as I had pictured him, still fussy and inclined to procedural questions, but he seemed to have grasped the danger we faced and be trying to make sensible suggestions. “When the bones cross them, they will cross a river of fire.”

 “And I will seek out Huld among the hosts of bones,” said Tamor. “He comes from the north, which means I can come at him from out of the sun. If my hands have not utterly lost their cunning in these long centuries.” He bent his bow experimentally, heard the string snap, and bit back a curse. “Well, I have others. Lords, what a time and place to awaken to.” A little later I saw him go out with his bow strung.

 Didir had spent some time with Barish. I saw her holding his hand, leaning her head against his, face puzzled and remote. She had loved him, I had heard. Now he was no longer the Barish she had known. I pitied her; Windlow was her stranger as Barish was mine. Neither of us quite knew our old companions. She stood up beside him at last, laid her cheek against his, then moved away. “I will do what I can to let you know what is in Huld’s mind,” she said. “Though it is probable that we know exactly what is in his mind now. He will overrun us in order to demonstrate his strength to those allied with him. He says he seeks Barish, but that is probably only pretense. He seeks to overrun the world, and this will be his first trial.” She moved off to some high place, striding with great dignity but, I thought, a little sadness. Barish looked after her, the expression on his face one of remote sorrow. I turned from them both, for it hurt to see them.

 Trandilar announced her intention of going down into the cavern, with Sorah and Dealpas, and staying there until needed or wanted by someone. “We will be out of the way,” she said. “You need no Beguilement. If Visions will help, we will bring them to you. If a Healer is wanted, call down to Dealpas.”

 Hafnor had gone back to spying on the host. Wafnor had placed himself near a pile of great boulders. Shattnir was standing in the sun, arms wide, soaking up all the power she could to help us all. This left me, Peter, among the WizardsvBarish, Vulpas, Jinian. King Kelver stayed with them also, but I thought I would emulate Thandbar and become a grole once again.

 I had barely time to engrole myself and gain size before I felt the tickle in my head which said Huld was seeking his prey. Long and long I had leaned upon Didir’s protection in such cases, and strangely enough it did not forsake me. I remembered the pattern of her cover and dipped beneath it as I went on chewing at the stone. He could not find me. With Didir on watch, I thought it unlikely he could find any of us.

 I had set myself in a high notch between the flat plateau he marched across and the tumbled stone we were hidden in. Stone lay above me as well as below and to either side. I made eyes for myself for, though groles were blind, I chose not to be. I needed to watch for Himaggery. I needed to see Huld’s approach. It was not far to see, not far at all, for he came upon us like a monstrous wave, a creeping rot, a fungus upon that land, white and rotten gray with the brilliance of banners like blood in the midst of it. I could not see individual skeletons, only the angular mass of it, as though a heap of white straw blew toward me in a mighty wind, all joints and angles, scattered all over with white beads which were the skulls of those which marched. I could not see the Gamesmen. I only knew where they were by the shimmering of the banners, for the bones carried nothing but themselves. Within that mass somewhere were drummers, for we could all hear the brum, brum, brum which set the pace of the bones. Perhaps the Bonedancers marched near the drums, to keep their time from the far west of the great horde to the far east of it, coming in an unwavering line. Brum, brum, brum. It sent shivers through the stone I rested upon, louder and louder as they came nearer.

 First into the fray was old Tamor, though he had not been so old as to warrant that name when he laid down to sleep. He was younger than Himaggery by a good bit. I saw him come toward the host out of the sun, saw his arrows darting silver, then a retreating streak as he fled away before the spears which came after him. Huld’s Tragamors were alert. I did not see him again for a time, then caught a glimpse of him, glittering and high, just before another flight of spears. This time the spears arched higher, and I thought I saw him lurch and fall, but he did not come to the ground. I felt Demon tickle, then Didir’s voice in my head. Evidently she knew me so well she could speak to me easily even now. “We see him, Peter. Kelver and Silkhands are working their way around to the west where he came to the ground. There are birds here who will carry them...”

 So. Yittleby and Yattleby had returned, their recruitment done, to help us as best they could. Well, at least Silkhands would be out of the battle. At least she and Kelver would have some time to themselves, to share what had been growing between them all this long way from Reavebridge. If Tamor were not seriously injured, perhaps all three would survive. For a time. Looking at the army marching toward us, I thought there was little hope for any survival longer than a season or two. Huld would not stop with overrunning us. As Didir said, we were only an excuse to try his strength. If he had truly wanted Barish, he would have come with fewer and cleverer than he had brought. No, this was to be warning to the world, a flexing of his muscle. I hated him in that moment, hated him for all he cared nothing aboutľfor love and honor and truth and a word he had never heard: justice.

 The bones had come closer. They were approaching a great chasm now, a canyon brimmed with thorn. The bones leapt across it, light as insects, not even brushing the branches. They came in dozens and hundreds and thousands, then the Gamesmen behind them, Bonedancers lifted over the tearing thorn in Armiger arms.

 The chasm went up in flame, all at once, a sheet of fire leagues long and tower high. I was too far away to hear the Bonedancers screaming, but I saw them fall in fiery arcs into that towering pyre. The bones kept coming, piling in and burning, falling as the thorn burned away to make room for more. They never stopped, not even for an instant, but went on scrambling across like spiders. Somewhere inside my great grole shape Peter puzzled at what he had seen. Why had the bones kept coming when the Bonedancers died? Other Bonedancers back in the host? Or simply one of those special cases in which things once raised went on of themselves? If that were so, then whatever we might do against the Gamesmen themselves would not help us.

 “Some are gone, Buinel,” I whispered to myself. “But there are more coming than all the thorn in the world can burn.”

 The rock beneath me throbbed; boulders began to heave themselves up from the hillside to launch away in long curves toward the center of the host. They were aimed at Huld, surely, but his Tragamors deflected them. They flew aside, bowled through acres of bones, crushing a hundred skulls or more to leave the fragments dancing, a shower of disconnected white, like a flurry of coarse snow. The first great stone was followed by others, and the center of the host milled about, slowed for a moment. What did Huld intend? Would he merely overrun us, smother us under that weight of bones? Or were some among that host seeking us, seeking Barish, making an excuse for this Game, Great Game, the Greatest this world had ever seen?

 Still they came on. We had done nothing to slow them, not with Tamor’s arrows or Wafnor’s great stones. I had seen no evidence that Dorn had tried to put this host down, and having seen the size of it, I did not blame him. It would have been like calming the sea with a spoonful of oil. Far to my right I saw the first files of bones entering the defile where Thandbar waited. “Good appetite, kinsman,” I wished him. He was not far from me. Even as I made my wish for him, the first of the horde poured onto the flat before me, threading between the mighty Wind’s Bones, the huge star-shaped skeletons of this world, bones arranged like my own grole bones. I settled myself, scrunching into the rock, mouth open.

 Didir called in my head. “Peter! Sorah has Seen ... Seen...”

 Gamelords, I said to myself. What matter what she has Seen. They are about to overrun us, bury us, sift us out with bony fingers and take us away to the horrors of Hell’s Maw. Far out on the field I saw the rush and flutter of krylobos attacking the fringes where some Gamesmen stood. Run, kick, and run away. A few bones fell, a few liches stumbled, nothing more. Big as they were, the big birds were not large enough to afflict this host.

 And now a circlet of banners came toward me, Huld in the midst of his Gamesmen, Prionde at his side, borne on the shoulders of his minions, Ghouls posturing in tattered finery around him. Was that Dazzle among them? Oh, surely not. And yet, given Huld’s purposes of terror, why not.

 And, as I had done for two years, over and over, I reached for the Gamesmen of Barish, for comfort, for kindness, for safety, for reassuranceľand found them. All. All with me in my great grole body with its star-shaped skeleton, all with me in my great this-world shape, looking out at the threatening horde where it poured like water among the Wind’s Bones...

 Between me and the marching skeletons a leg bone loomed, half buried, stone heavy, not stone, so obviously not stone I gasped to have thought it stone so long. These were not Wind’s Bones. These were not carvings done by wind and water. These were old bones, real bones, true bones, this-world bones of some ancient and incredible time. I cried to Dorn and Shattnir in my head, screamed at them to help me raise that bone up, to feed me the power to raise that bone up, screamed to Wafnor to break the soil at its base, to all of them to look, see, join, move, fight. I saw the mighty bone heave, the rock around it cracking and breaking to spatter away in dry particles. It came out of the ground like a tree, growing taller and taller, lunging upward from its hidden root, one great shape, and then another linking to it, then another and another yet, the five link bones and then the arching ribs, the neck, the monstrous skull armed with teeth as long as my legs, the whole standing ten man heights tall at the shoulder, moving toward the skeleton host who came on, unseeing, into fury.

 The Wind’s Bones went to war, to war, and not alone. Others sprouted from the soil of the place, a harvest so great and horrible no Seer would have believed it. They came out of the rock in their dozens and hundreds, sky tall, huge as towers, flailing, trampling down with feet like hammers of steel, the pitiful human skeletons falling before them like scythed grain to be trampled and winnowed by prodigious feet and by the wind. Particles of bone went flying on that wind, west and north, away and away in an endless, billowing, powdery cloud.

 Before me the first monster had overstepped Huld to leave him behind with a few of his Gamesmen, a Bonedancer or two thrown into panic, a Ghoul, and yesľDazzle. They looked about them wildly. I heard Huld screaming at them, threatening them for having raised up these giants. Were they to retreat? Of course. Away, away from the horrors they thought they had raised, away from the creatures who had owned this world before they came, away from this justice they had not sought, into the defile where they might find a way out, but did not.

 You must believe me when I tell you that I shut the grole maw upon them and merely held them there in that rock hard prison of myself while I thought long about justice and goodness and all those things Windlow had often told me of. I did not grind at once. I waited. I waited, and thought, and listened to them within, for they could speak and pound upon my walls and threaten one another still, though they did it in the dark. I tried to remember any good thing Huld might have done. He had played a part in Bannerwell, pretending shock and remorse at his thalan’s terrible plans and as terrible deeds, but that had all been pretense. It had been his way of doing what he pleased while pretending not to be responsible for it; thus he could continue for a time in the respect and honor of the world. His true self had been seen in the cavern beneath the mountains of the magicians, and in Hell’s Maw, for though I had not seen him there, I had heard enough to make me sure of him. What was he, the real Huld, the true man?

 And after a time, I answered my own question.

 He was not true man at all. He was only aberration, beast, hate and hunger, without a soul. If the Midwives had delivered him, he would not have lived past his birth. As it was, he did not deserve to live further. So. Then the grole bore down and gained out of him what good there was in him. In return for the terror you brought Silkhands, and the pain you brought me, and the horror you brought the world, I bring you peace, Huld. So I thought.

 And after a long time there, watching what it was the great bones of this world did upon the wastes of Bleer, I gave up bulk and went up onto the stones to find my friends. Then we sat there together in wonder until the thing was done. Dorn was not moving them, nor was I, nor Wafnor. They drew no power from us. They warred because the world desired that they do so.

 I saw in them giants which could have been pombis, or fustigars; things long and curled which might have been groles of some ancient and mightier time. Things with great scimitar teeth raged among the Gamesmen while the trampling of the bones continued. It went on well into the night. Long, long after the last of Huld’s Gamesmen were dead or had fled away, the great beasts of the heights continued their battle. Only toward dawn did they begin to collapse and fall, to lie as we had seen them first upon the high plateau, like wind carved things, dead, gone these hundred thousand years. Among them ranged the shadowpeople, singing lustily, piping upon their flutes and calling my name and Jinian’s. When we went down to them, they clustered about us and begged earnestly for something roasted and juicy. Not for them any lasting awe, thus not for me. We fed them, and sang with them, and in the dawn we saw Himaggery and Mavin falling toward us out of the sky.



 13
Talent Thirteen

  



 THEY CAME, DRAGON AND DRAGON-BACK, Mavin and Himaggery. Behind them came a small host of Armigers, flown not from the Bright Demesne but from some place north of Schooltown. One of Himaggery’s Seers had told him help would be needed long before my message reached them. I began to be a little acid about this until Mavin hushed me.

 “The Seer said we would not be needed during the conflict, but afterward. Indeed, look around you. Where are any Gamesmen standing against you? There are none. Not against one of my tricksy line.”

 She was right, of course. Somehow the battle had been not merely turned but decisively won. Chance was jogging about saying “Obliterated” over and over. He had observed the battle through his glass from a safe distance. “Obliterated.” The word, I thought, could be applied to a number of things with equal pertinence. There was no time to consider it. Himaggery had to be introduced to Barish and to the Wizard’s Eleven, he so overcome by awe and respect during this process as to lose all his crafty volubility for the space of several hours. When Mertyn arrived, the introductions were repeated, and again at the arrival of Riddle and Quench.

 I was very stiff with Riddle. He flushed bright red and almost sank to his knees begging my forgiveness. “My only thought was to learn what I could, Peter. I did not want you to know about it, as it was a matter secret to the Immutables. Quench assured me the cap was perfectly safe, that it could not harm you in any way...” He fell silent beneath my glare.

 Jinian, who stood beside me during all this ceremony, saved the situation. “Peter knows that you meant him no harm, Riddle. But a Pursuivant is dead in the forests near Xammer, and whether you meant Peter harm or not, the result was harm to someone.”

 “My fault,” asserted Quench. “You must forgive Riddle, young man. I did not understand the complexity of all this Gaming. I did not realize that death often results. I was too many years in that pest hole beneath the mountains. Nothing was real there. All was ritual and repetitions and hierarchy and concern about relative positions in the order of things. Nothing was real. You must forgive him. Hold me responsible, for I am.”

 The end result of which was that I offered Riddle my hand, though not smilingly, and accepted his explanation for what it was worth.

 “It was a year ago, Peter, that I found some old papers of my grandfather’s. They told of an ancient contract, a promise of honor between our people and Barish. I had never heard of it. My father was only a child when his father died. I was only a child when my father died. So if there had been a contract, this sacred and secret indebtedness, the chain of it had been broken at Dindindaroo. The papers spoke of a certain place in the north. You recall traveling with me a year ago. I left you below Betand to go on to Kiquo and over the high bridge into these wastes. It was all futile. There was no guide, no map, nothing.

 “Then, not a season gone, came this fellow Vitior Vulpas Queynt to tell me of this same contract. He was full of hints, full of words and winks and nods. And at that same time, some of our people found Quench here wandering among the mountains to the west. Well, Quench and I put our heads together, and it seemed the only way we would know anything surely was to raise up my grandfather. As I said, we meant no harm.”

 “So that is why you were burrowing about in Dindindaroo,” I said. “You had only recently learned of this ancient agreement.”

 “Learned of it,” rumbled Quench, “for all the good it did us. I wanted proof the Gamesman Huld was a villain. I wanted to know where Barish had gone, and what this Council business was all about. Our own history spoke of Barish, mind you, and Vulpas too. I wanted to know everything, real things, but you sent us scurrying off to the south on an idiot’s quest. Well. I suppose we deserved being ill led for having led you ill. Let it be past and forgotten.”

 “When we returned,” said Riddle, “with empty hands, we went to Himaggery as we should have done in the first place. I knew him to be honorable. We should have gone there first.”

 “It would have saved us much thrashing about,” said Himaggery, who had come up to us in the midst of all these revelations and confessions. “We were hunting Quench all over the western reaches from Hawsport south, and we were hunting Huld everywhere but Hell’s Maw. We knew it for a den of horrors, a Ghoul’s nest, but we did not envision Huld as master of the place. He had seemed too proud for such dishonor.”

 “I believe,” said Jinian, “that we will find it necessary soon to revise our notions of dishonor.” She squeezed my hand and left me to ruminate upon that while the others continued their explorations into history in a mood of such profound veneration that it almost immobilized them.

 Dorn was not among the group. I went off looking for him. He was with Silkhands, Tamor, and King Kelver upon a bit of high ground near Barish’s Keep. Tamor had been healed of his wound, though not of the wound to his pride, for he had been the only one of us to be wounded at all. He bowed himself away after a wink at me, as did Kelver and Silkhands, hand in hand, oblivious of much else in the world. I think I sighed. Dorn gave me a sharp look which I well recognized, though I had not seen it with physical eyes before.

 “You had plans concerning her?” he asked.

 “No. And yes,” I confessed. “Yes, some time ago. But no, not since Kelver came along.”

 “And Jinian came along?”

 That was rather more difficult. True, she had said she loved me at some confused point during the last day or two. True, she had told me I was clever and that had proved to be marginally accurate, if the outcome of the battle was any test. True, parts of me stirred at the thought of her, at times. But ...

 “She says she is a Wizard,” I said.

 “Ah,” said Dorn. “That is difficult.”

 “I think it is hard to love a Wizard,” I said. “Though it is very good to make alliances with them.”

 “Who else knows of this Wizardry?”

 “No one. I was not supposed to tell anyone, but you and Didirľwell, you are part of me. It is like talking to myself. Oh, Chance knows, for he was there when she told me. But she doesn’t trifle with the truth, Necromancer. If she says she is, she is.”

 “Oh, I have no doubt of it. I wonder if you’ve thought what else she is?”

 “Another Talent than Wizardry! I didn’t know such was possible.”

 He laughed. “Peter, the young are truly amazing. In each of the young, the world is reborn. No, I do not mean that Jinian has any other Talent. What she is, other than a Wizard, is a human person, female, about seventeen years old. In my experience, human persons of that ageľand those considerably older alsoľare much alike. Most of them love, hate, weep, lust, tremble with fear. Most of them fight and forgive and resolve with high courage. May I suggest, if you are resolved upon friendship with Jinian, that it be with the person rather than with the Wizard. Likely the Wizard needs no oneľnot even Jinian herself. Likely Jinian needs someone during those times that the Wizard is not in residence.” And he patted me very kindly as though I had been some half trained fustigar.

 This so gained my attention that I wandered off for several hours and did not talk to anyone during that time.

 Chance caught me when I returned. He wanted to talk about the battle, about the great bones, the mightiness of them. “And they went on and on, long after you’d all given up raising them. So Dorn and Queynt say.”

 I was truly puzzled by that, but I told him it was true, so far as I knew. “The forces of the world,” he said, “according to Queynt. Oh, there’s things here we know nothing of, according to Queynt.” He spoke proudly, not at all awed or envious, possibly the only person in all that company save Jinian who accepted Vitior Vulpas Queynt as mere man. I knew Queynt had found a follower, a companion, a true friend. Well, part of me said, I no longer need a child minder. Well, part of me said, you will miss him dreadfully if he goes off with anyone else.

 So.

 What may I tell you?

 Of Mavin and Thandbar? She approached him warily, ready to become a worshipper if he proved to be an idol, holding reverence in readiness. When I passed them an hour later, Mavin was telling him some story about Schlaizy Noithn, and he was bent double with laughter. I sniffed. I had not thought it that amusing when it had happened to me.

 Of Barish-Windlow and Himaggery, circling one another in mixed antagonism and love, Himaggery full of protest and fury at the fate of the hundred thousand in the ice caverns, Windlow equally distraught, Barish trying to fight them on two fronts, justifying his experiment on the grounds of human progress. Himaggery wondered what it was a hundred thousand master Gamesmen were to do, how they were to live when released from age old bondage; Barish overrode Windlow’s concern to shout that he expected people to use their heads about it. I pitied Barish and envied him. He had too much Windlow in him to be what he had once been. But then, what he had once been had needed a lot of Windlow in it.

 Later I saw him bend down to pluck the leaves from a tiny gray herb growing in a crack of the stone. He crushed the leaves beneath his nostrils and touched them to his tongue as I had seen Windlow do a thousand times. I went to him then and hugged him, looking up to see the stranger looking at me out of Barish’s eyes. But it was Windlow’s voice which called me by name and returned my embrace.

 Of Quench and the techs, gathered around the machine in Barish’s Keep, talking in an impenetrable language while some of their group scavenged among the bookshelves. “Fixable!” Quench crowed at last. “The machine can be fixed! There are spare parts in the case. We can take the thing apart and reassemble it in the caverns...” So he had been set on a proper track by Himaggery and Mavin, and I was glad to have him among the people I liked and trusted. I decided to forgive him for that business with the cap. He had not meant it ill.

 Of Mavin and Himaggery and Mertyn when they heard that the machine could be fixed? Of their plans to raise up the hundred thousand from their long sleep and bring them all to the purlieus of Lake Yost and the Bright Demesne? They were determined to raise them all in one place and build a better world from them.

 Windlow-Barish, hearing this, was puzzled and torn once more. He started to say, “Now wait just a minute. That’s not the way I had planned...” But then he fell silent, and I could sense the intense inner colloquy going on. Then the argument started all over again, and this time Windlow-Barish had things to say which Himaggery listened to with respect.

 Later, of Jinian and Himaggery.

 “Will you have Rules?” she asked. “In your new world?”

 “There will be no irrevocable rules,” he said ponderously.

 “How will you live?”

 “We are going to try to do what Windlow would have wanted,” he said. “He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game. It was the laws, the rules which made Gaming. It was Gaming made injustice. We can only try something new and hope that it is better.”

 She left it at that. I left it at that, thankful that the thing Windlow had cared most about had a chance to survive.

 Of Barish and Didir, standing close together and so engaged in conversation that they did not see me at all.

 “Well, my love,” he said. “And are you satisfied?”

 “How satisfied? You told me to lie down for a few hundred years so that we might wake to build a new world out of time and hope and good intentions. So I wake to find others building that world, others in possession of your seed grain, others planning the harvest, another inhabiting you, my love. Perhaps I should think of something else. Have a child, perhaps. Raise goats...”

 “There are no goats on this world, Didir. Zeller. You can raise zeller.”

 “Zeller, then. I will domesticate some krylobos, become an eccentric, learn weaving.”

 “Will you stay with me, Didir?”

 “I don’t know you. This you. Perhaps I will. But then I would like to know what it is that Vulpas knows. How has he lived all this time while we slept?”

 “Will you stay with me, Didir?

 “Perhaps.”

 Of Buinel and Shattnir, drinking wine in Barish’s Keep.

 “And my thought was, Shattnir, that he should have written it down very plainly, not in that personal shorthand of his, and have made at least a hundred copies. They could have been filed in all the temples, and certainly it was a mistake to confide in only one line of the Immutables.”

 “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Shattnir, cold, impersonal.

 “It’s not a question of it mattering. It’s a question of correct procedure! If he’d only asked me, I could have told him...”

 Of Trandilar.

 To me. “Well, my love, and what does your future hold of great interest and excitement?”

 I blushed. “I haven’t had a chance to think of it yet, Great Queen.”

 “Ah, Peter. Peter. Great Queen? Gracious. So formal. Do we not know one another well enough to let this formality go? Do you need to think about it, really? I should have thought your future would have raced to meet you, leapt into your heart all at once like the clutch of fate.”

 She was laughing at me, with me. She stroked my face, making the blush a shade deeper, and then went on.

 “You do not want to be part of Himaggery’s experiment, do you? There is scarce room in it for Himaggery and Barish, let alone any others. You would not live under their eyes and Mavin’s? No. I thought not.” She beckoned over my shoulder to someone, and then rose to hold out a hand to Sorah who sat beside us, laying her mask to one side.

 “Sister,” said Trandilar, “you see before you one who is quite young and confused. It would help him to know where his future lies.”

 Solemnly, but with a twinkle, Sorah put on the mask, smoothed it with long, delicate fingers, held out her hand in that hierarchic gesture the Seers sometimes make when they want to impress a multitude.

 “I See, I See,” she chanted, “jungles and cities, the lands of the eesties, the far shores of the Glistening Sea, and you, Peter, with a Wizardľa girl, yes, Jinian.” Her voice was mocking only a little, kindly and laughing, and I readied myself to laugh with her. Then, suddenly, her voice deepened and began to toll like a mighty bell. “Shadowmaster. Holder of the Key. Storm Grower. The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell...” And she fell silent.

 Trandilar shook her head. “Peter, learn from me. Mock Talent at your peril. It is no joke.” And she helped Sorah away to find a place to lie down.

 Of Peter and Jinian.

 “It is probably difficult to live in close association with a Wizard,” she said to me. “I believe Mavin found it so, which is why she and Himaggery have this coming and going thing between them. But then, it is not easy to know a Shifter, either.”

 “A Shifter is usually the same inside,” I objected.

 “Usually, though not always. Do we not learn from our shapes what we are? You have told me of Mandor. Did he not learn from his beauty what he became? Oh, I do not mean that there is goodness in some shapes and evil in others, but simply that we learn from them to our own good or ill. So might you change, Peter?”

 “Don’t Wizards change?” I wanted to ask her, desperately, what the Talent of Wizards might be, but I was too wary of the answer I might get. “Are they always the same?”

 She grinned at me. “Oh, we change. I was quite content, so I thought, to become an alliance for my brother with King Kelver, until I met you, Peter.”

 “Kelver is better looking,” I said.

 “True, but then he is older. He has had a chance to grow up to his face. You may do the same, in time.”

 “You do not think me too young for alliancing?”

 She sighed. “I think we are not too young to decide what we will do when we leave this place. Himaggery will expect you back at the Bright Demesne. I could return to Xammer. Neither of us wants to do that. I said a silly thing when I said we would do what Barish would have done. Barish will do it. Himaggery will do it. It is their plan, not mine.”

 I shifted from foot to foot, bit my lip, wondered what to say next. Then I thought of Sorah’s words, not the bell tolling ones, but the earlier, laughing ones.

 “Jinian, would you like to see the jungles and cities, the eesties, the shores of the Glistening Sea? Queynt is going there, so he says. He would let us go with him.”

 “Oh, Peter, I would like that more than anything.” So what is left?

 Hell’s Maw.

 We went there, Dorn, Himaggery, Mertyn, Mavin, and a host. There were bones there wandering free, moving on their own, talking to an old, blind man who wandered among them with a key, trying to find the lock he had lost. Dorn put them to rest, large and small, in such form as they may not ever be raised again. There is nothing left of the place now. Every stone of it has been tumbled and spread by a hundred Tragamors as far away as the Western Sea. There I linked the Gamesmen once again, realizing for the first time that I had what Himaggery called Talent Thirteen. Jinian was right. I do not need anyone but meľand a hundred or so Gamesmen with large Talents.

 So you may picture us now as we ride to the very highest point of the road across the Dorbor Range, that place where the road bends down toward the jungles of the north. Queynt and Chance are upon the wagon; Yittleby and Yattleby are pulling them along with that measured, effortless stride. Jinian and I are looking back to the south where all the lands of the True Game are spread, town and demesne, land and stream, tower and field, far and veiled by distance in the light of the westering sun. There is no mist giant now to walk the edges of the world. We may walk it ourselves, in time, in chance, in hope.

 Who knows?



-----------------------------------------------

End of the Game (jinian’s Trilogy)
Jinian Footseer:

 I began to write this account upon the Wastes of Bleer, by firelight as others slept, sure I would die upon the morning. I was there because of love, and my own youthful foolhardiness. Even now, thinking back on it, I would not have wanted to be anywhere else.

 I had come to that place with Peter—and with Silkhands and King Kelver of the Dragon’s Fire Demesne, with Chance and Vitior Vulpas Queynt. Six of us. Upon that barren height Peter had raised up the Gamesmen of Barish—he had carried them in his pocket for several years—embodying them once more in their own flesh. Eleven of them, plus Barish himself. We were eighteen.

 And against us was coming a horde, a multitude, a vast army of living and dead, live flesh and dead bone, which none among us thought we could withstand. Seeing our fear, Queen Trandilar had beguiled us with tales of glory so that our apprehension was allayed. All had fallen asleep except me.

 It wasn’t my battle. I had not sought it except that I had sought Peter, determined to be with him no matter what should come. It would be fair to say I didn’t care much about the battle. Huld, the monster, was nothing to me. I had not been harassed and tortured by him as Peter had. Hell’s Maw was nothing In me. I had not seen it. I was sixteen and in love and about to die. The one I loved was asleep, snoring gently, his face like a child’s in the dim light of the fire. So—I took pen and paper and began to write, thinking perhaps that someone might find the pages, long afterward, and remember me for a moment. A tenuous kind of immortality, but the best I could hope for then.

 No.

 That is not entirely true.

 There was more to it than that. I know the story of my life up until then was no stirring account of battles and quests as Peter’s was. I had not sought adventure; I had merely fallen into adventure of a dirty, laborious kind with little glory in it. Still, when my labor was done and my taskmistresses satisfied with the result, I had more than calluses on my hands to show for it. I had a great, world-terrifying mystery by the tail, a mystery I thought not many others had any inkling of. It was more important than I was. Someone had to know. I knew Peter’s family would come after the battle and search for our remains. His mother was Mavin Manyshaped. She would come. Or the Wizard Himaggery, his father. And my account would be there for them to find. One of them, I thought, would go on where I had left off. They were that kind of people.

 So, I wrote, almost until dawn. And later, when we did not die in that battle (as you know, if you have read Peter’s account of it), I went on writing, adding to the account as time went by.

 I am called Jinian Footseer by some. By some, Jinian Star-eye. And by some, the Wizard Jinian. One or two call me Dervish daughter. But I think of myself most often still as merely Jinian, an unloved daughter of Stoneflight Demesne, who found love later in a strange way. It is that Jinian I wrote of first, there in that horrid night, and that Jinian I must write of at last.

 1

 When I was quite young, not more than five or six, my older brother Mendost used to amuse himself by making me wet my pants. He had come into his Talent of Levitation—Flying, as we say—some years before, and he thought it fun to pick me up by whatever appendage offered itself and haul me a few manheights into the air before threatening to drop me. He was, I suppose, twenty or so at the time: a big, brutishly handsome man with red, wet lips. His—our—father, Garz, sometimes observed these occasions with bellowed laughter and loud advice as to which cobble-stones Mendost might best drop me on. Garz and Mendost were not unlike in nature.

 One afternoon—I will never forget it, not the smell of the air or the way the wind curled down the low hills to rise about us or the crazy spinning of the courtyard below where the cobbles waited to splatter me—as 1 was about to faint from combined fear and fury, something snapped. Something cold and old sat up inside my head and remarked, It may be better to die than to live like this. I went limp, then. No more screaming, struggling , grabbing at him. I simply went limp with my eyes wide open as I waited to die. My treacherous sphincters stayed shut. Mendost jounced and hollered as he always did, but I simply hung there, waiting for the end. After a time he tired of it and put me down. There were only a few attempts after that, each ending in sulky yelling on his part, “Dead body Jinian, dead ass, dead ass.” Soon he gave it up and let me alone.

 All Demesnes have some pensioned-off oldsters about, Gamesmen or pawns useful for running errands or watching babies. There was one old woman—Murzemire Hornloss, her name was—who had come to Stoneflight Demesne from someplace to the north when I was a babe. She pulled me over to her after Mendost put me down that first time, wiping my hot face with a bit of rag and patting my hand. “Th’art a Wize-ard, chile” she said. It was the first time I had heard the word, the first time anyone had said anything to me indicating I was more than an unnecessary impediment to the business of the Demesne. I never forgot it.

 Mendost was the oldest of us children, all of the same mother but with varying inheritance from male progenitors. Mother, Eller of Stoneflight, was scarce more than a child, fifteen or so when she bore him. One father begat Mendost and me—first and last, as Mother used to say (and I had my doubts about it, even then)—but Garz had been absent for many years in between and at least two other men begat my three brothers, Jeruval, Poremy, and Flot. I don’t believe we ever knew which man begat which brother, and since both Gamesmen had gone elsewhere in the lands of the True Game, it didn’t much matter. Mendost’s father, who was also supposed to be mine, was an Armiger, a Flyer, as Mendost was. The other two had been an Afrit and a Pursuivant. Mother, though of Gamesman caste, seemed to have no Talent of any kind. She was so beautiful she did not need to be anything else. I hid sometimes behind hangings or in the orchard when she was sunning there, just to look at her. I thought I would look like that when I grew up, and did not much consider that she had no Talent else. I fully expected to become an Armiger in my time, like Garz. It seemed a logical expectation. Though I was the only girl in the family, it never occurred to me that the matter of sex would make any difference, and I made no separate prognostication on that account.

 There were many other children in the Demesne. Bram Ironneck, Mother’s oldest brother, and her other brothers had fathered a number of them. Their mothers occupied various apartments in and around the place, and I had plenty of opportunity to observe them and the children. I formed the conclusion that while most mothers behaved with remarkable similarity toward their offspring, that is, with a certain baffled forebearance masking a persistent affection, this rule simply did not apply to my own mother.

 Mother had very limited forebearance and seemed to have no affection for me at all, though her attitude toward Mendost bordered upon idolatry. As younger siblings sometimes do, I attributed this to the fact he was oldest. Oldest, and a son, and Garz’s child to boot. Though I was supposed to be Garz’s child as well, and that fact earned me no rides on the Festival Horse. Even Garz seemed unaware of it, never calling me “chile” or” Jinian”. I was always “her” or “thingy” to him. “Send thingy down to the stables with a message for Flitch.”

 “Tell her to get out of here with that mess.” On the few occasions he addressed me directly, it was likely to be with a kick and a pointed finger. “Out.”

 As a result of this treatment, I learned early to escape the Demesne whenever things looked to get stormy among the inhabitants. I had a pony, Misquick, so called for her habit of stumbling when she tried to hurry, and a long-legged, neutered fustigar named Grompozzle, Grommy for short. Both of these creatures were mine by virtue of the fact that no one else wanted them, and looking back upon their propensities, I can quite see why. It was our habit when the day’s schooling was done—Bram insisted we know written language and calculating in addition to cartography and the Index, one of the few sensible things he insisted upon—and when not otherwise occupied or forced into uncongenial labors by older relatives, to take ourselves as far from Mendost and Jeruval as possible.

 Poremy and Flot were never as pernicious as the older boys, but at that time I never sought their company, though much later we were to become fairly good friends. If departure seemed prudent and there wasn’t time to ride away into the hills, there were other places where one could hide successfully.

 If I wasn’t going off somewhere by myself, someone else might take me. It was almost a season after Mendost stopped tormenting me that the same old woman, Murzemire, came to me one evening as I was hiding in a rainhat bush along the stream, listening to the water and throwing windfall berries to hear them splash. She asked if I would come with her on an errand to the village. I recall going along happily enough. There was a sweet-shop in the village, and also the house of a wood carver who made toys for children. Even if it were not a Festival day, one could watch him carving the toys and think about receiving one, perhaps, when a Festival day came along, though that had never happened to me in the past.

 The village was part of the family Demesne, of course, but quite outside the walls of the family place. It was not a fortress. It was a strong Demesne, since mother’s three brothers were all in residence and Garz lived there as well. Bram Ironneck, an Elator, had recruited still others to our banner, making the place secure and well founded. We had plenty of pawns on the land and in the village and had never felt the need for walls. Anyway, old Murzy took me along with her into the village, and we went a twisty way. I don’t remember ever seeing before the house we came to. It was a simple cottage, with a paling fence in front and a garden full of herbs. The door was painted blue, as many doors are in our part of the world. It is supposed to be a color favored by the old gods and much avoided by ghost pieces.

 Inside the house were three or four old women not unlike Murzy herself. They gave me cookies, and honey-sweetened tea, and talked to me about many things. They asked me odd questions, too, which were exciting to think about, and I was sorry when Murzy told me we must go back to the family place. As we left, one old dam, Tess Tinder-my-hand, handed me a silvery trinket on a bit of thong and told me to keep it by me. I have it still. It is a pendant in the shape of a star with an eye in its middle, the pupil and cornea of the eye set in black and green stones, the whole polished flat. I heard the old woman telling Murzy to keep an eye on me (at the time I supposed the eye that was to be kept on me was the one they had given me) and bring me back from time to time to see whether the wize-art would come to me. I overheard this and asked Murzy about it, “Will it come to me, will it?” not knowing what it was that was to come.

 She told me to be patient, that it was a slow gift, long in the coming. I escaped to that cottage hundreds of times over the succeeding years, but after the first few times tried to put the whole business of the gift out of mind, resolved not to ask again whether it would come for fear the asking might queer the gift, slow or not.

 2

 Once I had decided I would rather die than care what Mendost did to me any longer, it was not long before he stopped bothering me much. It was no fun for him if I did not scream or beg. Thus, once I had stopped fighting him, he soon stopped lofting me high above our Demesne, and it was only two or three times more I got to see the world from above. I suppose Armigers get used to it and no longer see the wonder of flight. I know that the day I realized I would not be an Armiger was bitterly sad for me, for I had hoped to see the world often as a bird sees it.

 That isn’t the thing I meant to speak of, however. On one of those last times Mendost had me dangling by one foot high above the Demesne, with me simply hanging, refusing to be frightened, I looked away northeast and saw a city there, upside down, hanging against the ceiling of the world like candle drippings. When I had been put down again and had time to do so, I went to old Murzy and asked her what I had seen.

 “A city, chile?” she asked. “Not off there. Nothing there but roones.”

 It was a short forever before I learned what “roones’ were. That happened thiswise.

 One of my favorite rides was to go down through the sammit fields to the much eroded badlands at the northwestern edge of the Demesne where the flood-chucks were at work. Long in the past, according to Murzy, there had been no flood-chucks at all, but there had been two totally different creatures, one a dam builder and the other a dry-land digger. The great ancestors had somehow bred them together—don’t ask me how. What the great ancestors had the power to do is quite beyond my power to explain—to come up with flood-chucks, great fluffy brown beasts who love to cut trees and brush and build dams across gullies where water might one day run destructively. I liked to watch them work. If one bowed to them, they would line up to return the bow, the head-chuck first in line, each one in the line bending a bit more deeply than the one before. Very ceremonious beasties they were, and they liked me, which won me to them completely. They liked me and horses liked me. Sometimes the stablemen would ask me about the horses. “What ails the mare, Jinian? D’ya think she had a gutache, or what?” And I would say, “She’s been into the startle-flower, Roggle. Give her some charcoal and she’ll be fine.” Like as not, she would turn out to be just that. Horses were funny. No other animal we used had so many little sicknesses, almost as though they found the world not totally to their liking.

 Anyway, on this particular afternoon, after a day particularly filled with Garz’s bluster and Mother’s screaming—Mother was a screamer; Garz would tease her about it sometimes, calling her Eller the Yeller—Misquick, Grommy, and I set off down along the flood-chuck works, pausing there only long enough for a long, mutually satisfying bowing session, then turned away into the hills north of the Demesne. I had taken my camp kit and the usual provisions, enough for half a day’s wandering, and had not figured on being late to return.

 However, a storm came up; Misquick, frightened by the thunder, tried to gallop back to her comfortable stable and ended sliding down a muddy slope into knee-deep water and thence into a kind of twisty canyon which no one of us could find our way out of again. Grommy at once went foraging, the one thing he was good at, and brought us three fresh bunwits. I found table roots growing along the stream, and Misquick made up for losing us by locating a sizable patch of giant wheat. A little bashing with a stone, a little chopping with a knife, and we had a stew to share between Grommy and me and plenty of grain for Misquick. Night came on, and we sheltered in a half-cave, feeding the fire through the night and setting out at first light to find our way home.

 We followed the twisty canyon so far as it would lake us, then climbed up a crumbly path to a low saddle of the mountain which I thought might give us some sense of direction. If nothing else, we could wait there until dark and get some sense from the stars. As it was, however, we had no sooner come upon the saddle than we were set upon by a tribe of half-naked, leather-lean creatures I did not at first take for human, so hairy they were, and so given to showing their teeth. They took us off, Grommy by a rope, Misquick by her bridle, and me over the shoulder of one of them to the very city I had seen from the air. There were crumbling walls and domes with great holes fallen through, a line of street half-obscured beneath fallen stone, and other buildings reduced to fang-sharp protrusions of metal. The doors that went through the ancient walls were a strange shape, narrow at the bottom and wide at the top, and the walls themselves were great, thick things. Inside a few of the most ancient buildings were statues; idols, I suppose could be said, though it was hard to tell what the stones might have been carved to represent, so worn with weather they were and polished by the hands of the hairy people. There was one all lumpy that looked rather like a mole, and one with wings, and one that looked like a tangled pile of rope. A d’bor, probably. Several were star-shaped, like my star-eye, and I made the star sign reverently. One never knew what might be looking.

 I guessed they might have something to do with the old gods. In our part of the world, Murzy said, the evidence of them was often found, here and there, though mostly among ruins. Then I realized that “roones’ were “ruins”, and that this was the ancient city I had often heard of but never seen before, Old South Road City.

 If this were Old South Road City, then the people in it were the blind runners, and this brought a new kind of fear. The blind runners were said to eat children. That virtue was claimed for them by every nursemaid who ever was, and every harassed mother as well. “Be still, now, or I’ll have the blind runners come eat you up!” I’d heard it over and over until I was old enough to leave the nursery. I think children hear it still, all over the world, whether their minders have ever seen a blind runner or not. As I was only about nine years old, it occurred to me that I might still be of an appetizing age.

 They did not immediately offer to eat me, however, and by the time I thought of it again, it was obvious they ate mostly fungus and roots and giant wheat. They did not even gesture a sharp stone toward Misquick, and she was fat and juicy as any animal ever was.

 They sat me down among them, Misquick beside me and Grommy at my feet, while they garbled and howled as though they had been wranglebats. It was some time before I perceived the howling to be melodic and the garbling intelligible, but once it came to me that they were singing, I recognized the intent well enough. They were singing “On the Road, The Old Road,” which is a children’s jumprope song, or a song to go with playing jax, or even a much-tag song. One of the younger ones fingered the amulet I had been given by Murzy’s oldsters, crying out some “looky here” or other, and then they were all staring at my front, where the little star hung, its green-and-black eye peering back at them.

 “Footseer?” one asked of another, and the next thing I knew they were blindfolding me and taking off my shoes. Then I was whirled and whirled, as in a game of blind man’s grab, and set down in a sudden silence. I felt a tingle in one toe and reached tentatively toward it, setting my foot down on something hard that tingled more—not in pain, you understand, but a tickly, pleasurable feeling.

 I went toward it, until both feet were on it, and found that by continuing to move, the tingling would go on, though if I simply stood still, it stopped after a moment. So I wandered myself, quite happily, humming as I went, until a great cry went up from the assembled crowd, “Footseer!” and they took the blind-fold away. I had been following a line of half-buried stones, part of an ancient roadway, and had done it without seeing it at all.

 After that we had some food and drink with much garbling and good cheer, and one of them took me back to a road I knew. I went to find Murzy to ask her about them, and she said they were the blind runners—blindfolded runners—indeed, those who looped through all the lands of the True Game on the Old Road. Old South Road City was the place they began from, and while not all the runners lived there year round, it was there they gathered to begin the journey.

 “Chile,” she said in the comfortable nursery dialect she always used with me then, “it’s as well tha came on them when tha did, for they are more or less sane this time of year. When the time of storms comes, then looky out. They begin to foam and fulminate on the road, blind as gobblemoles, stopping for no man nor his master.”

 “Why do they do that, Murzy?” I asked her. The ones I had seen had been sane enough, certainly, and not bad hosts, either. They had a kind of seed cake made with honey that was as good as anything from our kitchens.

 “Story is, chile, they’ll run the road until they find the tower. Tower, if tha sees it, sucks tha up by the eyes. Tower, if tha sees it, eats tha up. So, they go running, running, thinking they’ll run into it full tilt, blind and safe, and rescue the bell from the shadows.”

 “What bell is that, Murzy?”

 “The only bell, chile. D’tha grow big and get the wize-art and tha’ll maybe find what bell. ‘Tis the one bell, the two bell, that cannot ring alone. The old gods’ bell.” And that was all she would say, no matter how I begged.

 “Why did they look at my star and call me a footseer?” I asked, dangling it before her on its string.

 “It’s a seer dangle, sure enough, and no secret about that, with the eye on it plain as plain. But don’t flourish it out for the world to see.” So I tucked it into the neck of my shirt, abashed, not knowing why. She had not understood my question.

 After that, I would often go off into the woodland to the line of stones that marked the Old Road, shut my eyes, and walk along the roadway, feeling it in my toes. After a time, I was able to run full tilt along the way, never losing it for a moment, rejoicing in the thrumming tingle, a kind of wild, exhilarating feeling which grew wilder and better the faster I ran. When the Season of Storms approached, however, Murzy told me to stay away from the road. “They care not who they trample, chile, or what. Tha or tha pets or tha kin Mendost would all be the same to them.” So I took to hiding in the trees and watching. Sure enough, they began to come running by, bunches and hundreds of them, all running with their hooded heads up, as though in answer to a summons no one but they could hear. If one crept close to the Old South Road City, one could hear them howling—singing, as it were—through the dark. “On the road, the Old Road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone.” When we jumped rope to that, two would come in at the “cannot ring alone” and jump, counting together, hands on waists. “Shadow bell rings in the dark, Daylight Bell the dawn. In the tower hung the bells, now the tower’s gone.” At “gone” one would run out of the rope, leaving it slapping behind, and then to and fro through it, on the swing, as many counts as one could do. That’s only one rope tune, of course. There’s one about the first Eleven, and one about Larby Lanooly and a dozen more. Now that I am grown, wherever I go in the world, I hear children winging jax tunes or bounce-ball tunes or jumprope tunes, and they are the same in a dozen different tongues, the same all over the world.

 Stories, too. They used to tell me stories, the old dams. Especially Murzy. The one about Little Star and the Daylight Bell. She learned it when she was a girl from an old dam in Betand, but that story is told everywhere. How Little Star went wandering? You remember? And he came to the gobblermole, draggling in the earth. And he asks the gobblemole what he’s druggling for, and the mole says, “I’m druggling for the Daylight Bell.” Then when Little Star starts to druggle, too, Mole catches him and binds him up. And Little Star tricks him into getting loose, and binds him up, and demands a boon to let him go again. Remember the story? After the mole, he meets a d’bor wife grodgeling the water, and then a flitchhawk grimbling and grambling the air, and each of them is tricked into a boon. I loved that story. All children do.

 It was soon after the visit to the blind runners that I got sick. Cat Candleshy, one of the dams, said later it was probably some disease the runners had among them that our people had no resistance to. After a day or two of it, with me no better, and the fever burning hotter with each passing hour, old Murzy demanded a Healer be sent for. Through the haze of fever and pain, I remember Mother standing at the foot of my cot, her hair wild and lovely in the light from the window, saying impatiently, “There’s no need, Murzemire. She’ll get better or she won’t, and that’s all anyone can expect.” When they had shut the door behind her, Murzy cuddled me tight and said to hold on, she herself was going to Mip for the Healer. It seems she did, going completely on her own and sneaking the Healer back with her. She, the Healer, said she’d been fetched just in time. My lungs wheezed and sucked, and I couldn’t get air into them. She put her hands on me and reached down inside—I could feel it—to twist something or untwist it, whichever. It hurt. I remember yelling, partly from the pain, partly from the relief at being able to breathe again.

 She had to do it again, the day after, and it hurt again, but then I began to improve and the Healer merely sat by my bed, telling me stories about bodies. She told me of bones, and how the heart pumps the blood ‘round, and of the network of nerves from toetop to headtop, with tiny Elators flicking on the network to deliver messages. “Electrical,” she said, shaking her head in wonder at it all, “and chemical. Like lightning.”

 I remember sleepily asking her what they were called, the little Elators. She shook her head, laughing.

 “I call them nerve transmitters,” she said. “You might call them nerve Elators, if you like.” After that, I often thought of the little Elators in me, swift as storm, carrying their messages between my head and my fingers or toes.

 During my slow recovery, I remembered what Mother had said to Murzy. “She’ll get better or she won’t, and that’s all anyone can expect.” There was nothing unusual in her attitude or tone, neither more nor less interest about me than might have been there at any time previously. It was just then, every sense sharpened by the fever and the pain, that I understood the meaning of it. The meaning was, “Jinian will die or she won’t, and who cares?”

 I think I cried over this. There’s a vague memory of Murzy holding me on her lap in the rocking chair—me, a big girl of nine or ten—as though I were an infant. Later it didn’t seem so important. It was just the way things were, as thunder is loud or lightning unselective. No point arguing with the thunder or threatening the lightning. Just seek cover and wait. That’s probably how many young ones survive childhood. Seek cover and wait.

 The next thing I remember especially is when Murzy look me on an expedition. All the old dams were going out to pick herbs and fungi, bitty here, bitty there, to last us the cold season when nothing would be growing. Our teacher was off on a trip to visit his relatives up near Harbin. The boys were off into the hills, and when Murzy suggested to Mother I be let go with them, she said, “Oh, take her, Dam Murzy. Take her for heaven’s sake. Now if Garz and Bram would get themselves off, we’d have some peace around here.” Considering Mother was the one who usually disturbed whatever peace anyone else might have, I thought this was a bit overstated and started to say so. I hadn’t been disrupting anything and was in a mood for considerable self-justification toward this woman who had not even cared whether I died. Murzy, however, caught me by the back of my jerkin and bore me out of the room on a flood of “Thank you, ma’am’s”. Next thing I knew I was in the wagon with six dams and the horses clattering us off down the road to the forest.

 It’s a bit difficult to tell just what happened next, because it was and it wasn’t much. We went on for a bit on the road, with the old ones singing the funny song about two lovers in a briar patch and all the odd rhymes to the last line, “And he scratched it!” Then we turned into the forest road and they fell quiet. Three of them got down from the wagon. We came to the forest bridge.

 Forest bridge is a small high wooden one, curving up from one rocky mossy wall to another rocky mossy wall over the tinkly torrents of Stonybrook. There are ferns in the walls, and a cool, wet smell even on hot afternoons. So ...

 One old woman, I think it was Tess Tinder-my-hand, whispered something into the air, then set foot on the bridge, stamping her foot, so, just a little. Bridge drummed, bowom. Second old woman whispered, set her foot, bom bom bowom. Third old woman set foot on the bridge, bom bom bowom wommmmm. And then quiet. Horses quiet. Wagon quiet. All the old women quiet, waiting. I crept down from the wagon, bunwit still, sneaky, crept out onto that bridge. Old women set their feet, bom bom bowom wommmm, and just when the echo was starting to come up from below I set my foot down quick, and the echo came wom wom bawom bom bom with a sound of laughter in it. I kept right still then, listening while the laughter went on. There was something living down there, under the bridge. Then the old women began singing about Larby Lanooly, and old Murzy shook up the horses to come over the bridge, in a rum-a-rum-a-rum of hooves, and we got back in the wagon and that was that.

 When we came to the groves, though, old Murzy look me by the hand to each of the old women, putting my hand in each one’s old hand, saying, “Welcome our sister, our child, for today she begins upon the Way.” When I’d done it with all six of them, she took me aside, speaking to me for the first time without the baby-talk “tha’s, as she would to a grown-up person. “Jinian, girl,” she said, “you’ve the wize-art. In part, at least, and none know whether the whole will come until it comes. Now you must promise me something or the sisters and I’ll be gone come night and come not nigh you again.”

 “Where will you go?” I remember I asked this, more curious about that than about what she might say next.

 “Away,” she said flatly, and I believed her. “Now listen. What we tell you is secret. What we teach you is secret. What you learn from us is secret. You do not talk about it. Not to your mother, not to any in the Demesne. Not to your lover, come that time, or your husband or child, come that time as well. To one of us, yes, if you see the star-eye and hear the proper words. Otherwise, never.”

 Well, I had no lover, that was sure. And I wasn’t inclined to tell anyone at the Demesne anything important, nor Mother anything at all, important or not. So I gave her my hand and promised, she putting the little star into it as I did so.

 “Always keep this safe, Jinian. It is a sign to tell any Wize-ard anywhere that you are one of us, a sister in the Way, but most times you don’t go dangling it out where the world can see it and ask questions. Long time ago it was called the Eesty sign, and some still call it that. So, if one of us asks are you Wize-ard, or are you star-eye, or do you carry the Eesty sign, it all means the same thing. Do you hear me, Jinian?”

 I said I did. It made Tess’s gift more precious than ever, and I took to polishing it every night on my nightgown when I went to bed. However, just then I wanted to know about what had just happened.

 “What was it, there at the bridge?” I asked.

 “Bridge magic, child. Calling up the deep dwellers. One of the ten thousand magics, and not the simplest. We learn a simpler one today, herbary, and see you pay attention.”

 I did my best. I certainly never forgot what they taught me that afternoon. Rainhat root, pounded with the seeds of shivery-green, when the seeds are still in the pod and the root taken on the same day, will bring a sleep no power is proof against—no, not even Healing. “A day, a drop,” said old Tinder-my-hand. “Two days, two drops. Drink a flagon of it, and a man will sleep a year and starve while asleep, for in this sleep he will not swallow nor shit nor pee nor aught but barely breathe, girl.”

 “It sounds ... dangerous,” I said.

 “It sounds useful,” she corrected me. “May come a time you’d like Mendost to be asleep for a few days? Well? But never for anything small, girl. We don’t use the wize-art for small things.”

 So I learned the formula for sleep, and another very complicated one for making people or creatures fall in love—that one had sixteen ingredients that had to be mixed in the right order and the right quantities—and yet another for reducing temper. Murzy caught my eye and reminded me, “Not for anything small, Jinian. Put that thought right out of your head,” so I stopped thinking of putting it in Mother’s tea. Still, it would have been an improvement.

 Herbary isn’t really secret. There are books, often not even hidden away, where you can find out about it. So it doesn’t matter if I say some things about it. You’ll notice I don’t tell what the sixteen ingredients are. Murzy says it wouldn’t be wize at all. But I can tell the story without telling the truly secret things. Besides, some of them aren’t truly secret anymore since the changes.

 After that, I spent a great deal of time with the sisters. Murzy. Tess Tinder-my-hand. Margaret Fox-mitten. Bets Battereye. Cat Candleshy. And Sarah Shadowsox. And Jinian Footseer. Seven of us, which is the usual number. I have talked of them as though they were all equally old, but Tinder-my-hand was oldest, white-haired and frail, forgetful a bit at times and at others so quick it surprised you. Murzy and Bets were next oldest, alike enough to be sisters, both full of bustle and no-nonsense. Cat was dignified and knife sharp, dark hair drawn up in a braid crown. Sarah had wild red-brown hair and eyes like a mountain zeller, all soft caution. They were about middle-aged, I suppose, thirty or so. Margaret Foxmitten was tall and thin as a whip and not much older than Mendost, and she could be more beautiful than Eller when she chose, but there was something forbiddingly elderly about her, for all her soft skin and shining hair. When she sat in the dust of the courtyard, husking fruit or chopping grain, no one would have looked at her twice. It was a kind of disappearing, of invisibility, and Murzy suggested I would do well to learn it. I seemed to be disturbingly visible whenever I was present, and I decided I was just too young to bring it off.

 Time went on. Jeruval got his Talent—I‘ve honestly forgotten what it was. Pursuivant, I think. He went off, then, to Game with some Demesne or other until he got tired of it or got killed. Poremy still had a year or so to go before he could expect to get his Talent, if any, and Flot perhaps two years. It comes, usually, around the fifteenth or sixteenth year, though I’ve been told Witchery comes earlier than that and Sorcery much later. I was about thirteen years old, just getting my breasts and woman-times. That’s when Murzy told me to get myself ready for a trip.

 I heard her talking to Mother.

 Overheard.

 Well, listened. It was on a teetery branch of a tall tree outside the tower window, so I guess you couldn’t say “overheard”. I just happened to be there. Looking for birds’ eggs.

 Murzy was saying, “My oldest sister, ma’am. Not much longer in this life, I shouldn’t think, and it would be nice to spend Festival together. So, a couple of the dams and I decided—with your permission, of course, ma’am—we’d go on up to Schooltown and spend a few days with her. I’d be happy to take young Jinian with us, too. Get her off your hands. The girl’s got a good heart, but heaven save us, she’s always into mischief ...”

 Mischief! I was into no such thing, and started to say so, but the branch cracked under me and I decided to be still.

 Mother fingered the crystal she had on a chain around her neck. Mendost had given it to her, and she always wore it. “Children are a trial,” she said. That was nothing new. She often said it, especially to me.

 “They are that, ma’am.” That was new. Murzy always said to me that children are one of life’s great joys, so I knew she was up to something. “I think any conscientious mother needs a rest from time to time.”

 “You’re right.” Mother sighed. You would have thought from that sigh she didn’t have two hundred pawns around to do whatever they were told, plus all the kinfolk, plus Garz and Bram. From that sigh, you’d have thought the whole weight of the Demesne was on her head. “They wanted me to make a Dervish of her, you know, Dam Murzy. I wouldn’t do it to a child of mine, but I’ve wondered since if it wouldn’t have been best for her. With her nature and all.”

 “A Dervish? My, my. What a thing that would have been to be sure.” Murzy’s voice was all choked. She shook her head, and I tried to think what Mother could possibly have meant by that. “Well, taking the child away may relieve your burdens just a little.”


 And, of course, Mother said yes. I so admired the way old Murzy did it, I didn’t even fuss at her about saying I got up to mischief. I hardly ever did. Mischief, 1 mean. I didn’t remember to ask about the Dervish business, either.

 “So why are we really going?” I asked her. “Not just to visit your old sister, I’ll warrant.” .

 “I’m very fond of Kate,” she said, somewhat stiffly. “And we will visit her, you may be sure.”

 “But,” I begged her. “But?”

 “But we’re going, at least partly, to continue tha education. And to amuse ourselves. Now, don’t ask any more questions. Trust old Murzemire. She hasn’t done you wrong yet, has she?”

 She hadn’t. Not once. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know why we were going anywhere. Some of the things I already knew were very heavy in my mind from time to time. Having something else in there even heavier didn’t attract me. Learning more was merely ordinary to me, but traveling—that was a wonderful treat.

 At least so I thought until we had done some of it. Then it turned out that traveling was doing everything one had to do at home with none of the conveniences for doing it. I was kept very busy gathering wood for the cookfire, and checking the horses’ hooves for stones, and rubbing them down and watering them, and arranging the wagon, and washing our clothes in the streams. It is a long way from our Demesne to Schooltown, a long slow way when one travels so as to avoid getting involved in Game on the way. There was nothing interesting on the way but scenery, and by the time we arrived I was heartily surfeited with scenery and very glad to see walls once more. We stayed at an inn, thank the Hundred Devils, one owned by sister Kate. She looked nowhere near to dying to me, and she had her own servants to fetch wood and water. As a child of Gamecaste, I thought I would not have to do anything at all. In which I was mistaken. The day after we arrived, all seven of us were back in the wagon going off through Schooltown and into the countryside to an old, tumbly building with moss all over its rocks and its walls gaping up at the sky like teeth. There was a broken tower and steps that wound up and around onto old roofs and down and around into old dungeons. I looked about me doubtfully while the others unloaded their picnic lunch and their work-baskets and then traipsed up the stairs to a comfortable room in the tower. It had a fire, cushions to sit on, translucent shutters over the windows, and the six of them sat down there like brood hens, Murzy waving me off. “Explore, Jinian. The whole place. Come back when tha feels hungry.”

 So I did. Up to the roofs and down to the cellars, then below the cellars to the dungeons, old and slimy and full of things that squeaked. It wasn’t fearsome, that place, just old. So I wandered it and wandered it, and got tired and went back for a bite of lunch, then wandered it again. Come dark we got in the wagon and went back to the inn. Next day, back to the place again. Murzy and the dams had been teaching me to use my senses, and I used them as best I knew how, but about the third day, I began to be bored with it. “All right,” I said to them all, hands on my hips. “What’s it all about?”

 Murzy put down her needle and pointed to the window in the tower. “There’s bridge magic, Jinian. And window magic.”

 I couldn’t think what she was talking about. I stood there, staring at the window. Then I walked out into the corridor and stared at another window. Then back into the tower room, where the six of them chatted and clucked like hens. And then, quite suddenly, I began to get a glimmer.

 A stone wall: which implied a builder, which implied a closed space, which implied protection from an outer world, or retreat from that world, or hiding from that world. And a window cut through: wide, with a welcoming sill, on which one might curl up on pillows to dream away a morning or long evening, looking out at the light making patterns beneath the trees. A window was a kind of joining, then. A kind of linkage between worlds. And a wind would come in, and light could come in, with tough, translucent shutters standing wide but ready to shut against bitter blast or hard rain. Gray of stone, blue of sky, with the bright green of new leaf blowing against it. Hardness of stone, softness of air. Shadows moving across the window. A memory of firelight, with soft breezes moving from the window to the fire. And in this room, welcome. Murzy nodded to me, picking up her needle again.

 Breathless with what I thought I knew, I left the room and ran away down the stone corridor, finding the hidden entrance to the stair that twisted down inside the tower. At the third curve was a window, a narrow slit cut through the wall to peer down at the castle gate from an unsuspected angle, high and secret, hidden in the shadow of the tower. Suspicion. Fear. Stone within and without, the broken gravel of the hard road making on obdurate angle at the edge of the wall, edged with more stone, the spears of the raised portcullis making fangs at the top of the gate. Not joining, but separation.

 I nodded to myself, fleeing downward once more, through the hidden door at the bottom and then down ancient ways to the empty dungeons at the bottom of the keep. There was one where a slit window at the ceiling fed a narrow beam of pale light reflected from a slimy pond outside. The wall sweated moisture, a dank smell of deep earth and old mold lay in the place, and a green ooze covered the wall. Here the light lay upon the ceiling, reflected upward, wavering, a ghost light, gray and uncertain, lighting only the stone in a ceaseless, agitated motion, without peace.

 I looked at that watery light for a long time before climbing back up to the room where they waited. Murzy nodded to me once more, not failing to notice the stains of slime on my hands, falling into the common folk nursery talk they often used when it suited them.

 “Tha’s been adown the deeps? Nasty down there.”

 “I’ve been discovering window magics, Murzy. It came to me all at once.”

 “Well, if it comes at all, it comes all at once.”

 I sat down at Murzy’s feet, suddenly adrift from the possession of knowing, the certainty of action. I knew, yes, but what was it I knew? “Different,” I said to her, feeling my way. “Different windows. Magic, because they have an out and an in, because they are linkages of different kinds. Because they are built. Because they are dreamed through and looked through. But—something more, I guess ...”

 “Well, there’s actually going through a window, isn’t there? Or calling someone through a window. Or summoning.”

 “Summoning?” I thought about that. Summoning. Through windows. Of course. “If one summoned through a window—if one did—what answered the summons would be different, depending on the window, wouldn’t it?” I wasn’t sure about this, and yet it made a certain kind of sense. I might have summoned something into the dungeon very different from a thing I could summon into this room now.

 “Think of calling to a lover,” said Margaret Foxmitten dreamily, her needle flashing in the sun. “Calling from this room. Think of calling something from the dungeon. Think of summoning a presence. Into this room. Into the dungeon.”

 “Ah,” I said, getting some misty idea of what they were getting at. “If I ... if I wanted to summon something frightening or horrid, I’d call something out of the dungeon through that high, watery window. And I would lead it in again through the open portcullis.”

 “You could do that,” said Bets. “Or you could find the tiny, square window which looks out through an iron grille over the pit where ancient bones were dropped. You might call something in through that window more dreadful still.”

 “But,” said Murzy, ‘suppose you wanted to summon Where Old Gods Are?” Where Old Gods Are was the name of a very powerful spell they had taught me.

 “I would summon through this window, here,” I said, opening the shutters and looking out on the peaceful pastures and the blowing green of leaves.

 “Good,” said Murzy, packing up her work. “Think about that.”

 I thought about it for some time, putting bits and pieces of it in place in my head. Not all of it connected to other things I knew, but some of it did. By that time it was dark, so we returned to Schooltown and the Festival.

 So, came Festival morning and they decked me out like the Festival Horse, all ribbons. Murzy had given me a new blue tunic with a cape to match, and Bets Battereye spent most of the previous evening braiding my hair wet so it would wave. “We want you to be a credit to us,” she said, yanking bits of hair into place. I thought it unlikely I’d be much credit to them bald, which is what it felt like, but I’d learned that uncomplaining silence was best in dealing with the dams. Come morning, the hair was brushed out into a wavy cloud, then they dressed me up and told me to stay in the room and stay clean until they came for me. So I pulled a chair over to the sill, and opened the casements wide. I could see people going by, and it put me in a fever of anticipation, but nothing would hurry them so I spent the time practicing summons and distraints.

 It was a good window for summoning, broad and low, with a wide sill overhanging a fountain-splashed courtyard. Smell of water on the stones—that’s important for some summons. You know the smell? That first smell of water on dry earth or dry stone? That’s the grow smell. Water, earth, and grow smell make one of the major triads of the Primary Extension of the Arcanum. That’s not secret. Everyone knows that. Gardeners use it all the time. Beneath the window was a herb garden with the shatter-grass, bergamot, lady’s bell triad. There were five other triads within sight or smell, too, including two other majors, making seven all together. Not bad for a mere learner, and more than enough to call up something fairly powerful if I’d liked.

 Sarah brought me a hot nutpie. “I know you’re starving, but patience a bit longer, chile. We’ve called the Healer for Tess. Poor thing, she’s no younger than she was yesterday, and it tells upon her. Still, give us a bit and we’ll be ready to go festivate with the rest of the town.”

 At which I fidgeted, sighed, cut a slice of my pie, and laid out the summoning tools once more. Murzy said there was no such thing as practicing too much.

 What would I practice this time? Lovers Come Calling, that’s what. The window was perfect for Lovers Come Calling, so I would have window magic and the summons reinforcing one another. First the Pattern. Two hairs from my head. Mirror. Bell. Coal from the fire. Spidersilk for winding, binding. Spidersilk? Murzy’s sister Kate kept her place entirely too clean.

 Finally I found some at the corner of the chimney. Then lay it all out in proper form. Whisper the words . . . Pause. Ring the bell. Pause. The words again. Pause.

 There was a brown, round little man in a clean cook’s apron passing below the window, herding half a dozen boys before him. He looked up just then and called, “Happy Festival to you, lassy.” And the boys stopped, looking up. Stocky boys. Jeruval and Flot boys. Ordinary boys. Meaning nothing to me at all. They paused and went on incuriously, while one of them remained behind, mouth open, staring up at me. He was small, smaller than I, one of those boys who get their growth late, with his shoulders just beginning to widen. His face was serious and quiet with ruddy hair in one thick wave across his forehead. His eyes dug deep at me, as though he would understand everything they saw by sheer determination. The last of the words of Lovers Come Calling was. still on my lips.

 Only then I realized what I had done. I had called. He had come. There was something else necessary, some final thing. I struggled with it. The spell was not complete until something was given between the two. A token. Something given as a token. Without thinking, I leaned out the window to put the warm slice of nutpie in his hand. He took it, bit it, smiled a small, rather puzzled smile, and then was dragged away by the little brown man.

 And I sat as one lost forever, betrayed by what I had done.

 Margaret Foxmitten came in behind me, stood there. I could feel her eyes examining the Pattern on the sill. “Did I see someone leave?” she asked. “Just now?”

 I nodded, unable to speak.

 “Who was it?”

 “I don’t know,” I croaked. “I don’t know, Margaret.”

 “The more fool you,” she said. “Now you’re trapped and no way out of it. You’ve done Lovers’ Call and someone’s come in answer. Think of that.” She went out into the corridor, calling for Sarah to come hear what Jinian had done. I was too sunk in misery to listen. Misery and delight, of course. I was in love. Only thirteen, but in love. I wondered who he was.

 I wondered if I would ever see him again. For if I did not, likely this love would haunt me until I died. No one could break the call unless we were both present and consenting.

 “Now what’ve you done!” demanded Murzy, bustling into the room. “What’s this?”

 “I was practicing,” I said lamely. “And I practiced Lovers Come Calling. And he came.”

 She just stood there looking at me, a very curious expression on her face, almost as though she had known already what I had done, or perhaps what I was likely to do. “Well,” she said at last. “We’ll go out into the town. If you see him again, tell one of us right away. At least we can find out who he is.”

 But, of course, I didn’t see him again. I don’t remember much about Festival. We had some good food, I do remember, and there were fireworks. Most of the time I spent thinking about the boy, reconsidering his appearance and his smile, wondering what his name was and where he might be found. The morning after, we were in the wagon headed home once more, and I said to Murzy—trying hard to sound plaintive, though I was really put out that so little had been made of the whole thing—“Murzy, why did I do such a silly thing?”

 “Well, chile. You’ve made some difficulty for yourself, truly. Which is something we all do, so no sense fretting overmuch about it. Take it as a lesson and profit therefrom, as Grandma used to say.” She sounded so righteous and solid. It made me angry.

 I fumed about that for a time, deciding at last that it wasn’t worth getting huffy about. As one of Gamesman caste, I ranked the lot of them and could have made their lives miserable when we returned home. I considered doing this, but I knew it would end making mine worse. So, in the end I only asked, “What do I do now?”

 Murzy considered this seriously. “Well, for a few years, nothing much. Keep close to us, Jinian. You’ll go on with your schooling from us this next few years. By the time you’re grown, we’ll know more. We’ll find something out ...”

 And that was the total I could get out of them on that subject, however much I tried.

 Later, however, as I considered the matter, I realized that when one practices the wize-art, one should stop somewhere short of the last word or phrase. Or something should be mimed rather than done. Or one must use an inert ingredient rather than an active one. It was not the very worst way to learn such a lesson—death would have been that. But it was not a comfortable way, for now I was haunted by the boy, the small, serious boy with the narrow, searching face. When I lay down to sleep, I thought of him. When I woke, I reached for the cool space in the bed as though he should be sleeping there. In the night he touched me, making me flame and start awake. When I looked into the mirror, I saw his face behind my own. We might have been brother and sister, both fair and ruddy-haired, as unlike Mendost and dark-lovely Mother as could be. As time went by, I felt more and more akin to him, to this stranger, this unknown boy, this mysterious, lost boy. Oh, he was my true love, no question about that, but it would have been better not to have known it for some years yet—until I was old enough to do something about it.

 3

 Margaret and I got to talking on the way home. She wasn’t that much older than I, and she seemed more sympathetic than the others, so I had someone to talk to about him. We rode along, me talking, sighing, she nodding. The thing that worried me most was that it would be a love unreturned, for such is the power of Lovers Come Calling that it will summon one who is loved but who has no feeling at all in the matter.

 When Margaret had taught me the spell, she told me she had seen it happen. An Armiger came to a Wize-ard woman in the Northern Marshes—it was Margaret’s kinswoman, and Margaret was there at the time—saying he had found no maid to suit him in all his flights and wanderings, for none was so bright and pure and kind as his dream told him maids should be. So he paid well, in gold, and the Wize-ard laid out the Pattern on the doorstep of her place and summoned up who should come.

 And there were noises in the wood of a horse, crippled and dragging a foot, and came from the wood a maid leading her mount, pure and pale and kindly as the sun. And it was the true love the Armiger had longed for, so that his heart started out of him and he turned blue as ice in the heat of the day.

 But she was betrothed to King Froggmott of the Marshes, so said Margaret, and cared no whit for the Armiger’s pleas. And so he could do nothing but serve forever in sight of her and suffer; or go elsewhere in the wide world and suffer; or take his life and love to the world beyond, which he did, falling to his death from a great height upon her doorstep. “At which,” said Margaret, “she cared not at all except for the mess it caused the servants.”

 Oh, she had used to tell me that story and we had giggled together at the foolishness of that Armiger. I did not now. I understood how the Armiger felt, and how evil a thing it would be to love in that way one who loved not at all in return. And yet, one would have to accept it at the end and do what one could to go on living.

 Except, I vowed to myself as we jogged along, one could make a potion. A potion to guarantee he would love me, truly and forever. I vowed to do it if necessary, chanting to myself the list of ingredients of the love potion Murzy had taught me to make until I knew them as well as my tongue knew my teeth.

 4

 My thoughts on that trip home made me wonder why it was that Murzy and Margaret and the others were all pawns. When I asked Margaret, she said, “Jinian, Gamesmen are all panoplied up with their banners and helms, fringes flying and Heralds announcing them to all and his cousins. They attract a lot of attention and they die by the dozens. Stupid pawns stumble in where they’re not wanted or worse, where they are, and they die by the hundreds. But pawns who are never around when you’re looking for someone to do something dangerous; pawns who seem gray and dull and quite a bit boring, why, Jinian, no one even sees them and they live practically forever.”

 I began to understand. Though I was Gamesman caste in the Demesne, there would come a time I could leave it and perhaps could become as hard to see as Murzy herself.

 By the time we reached home, I had resolved to be a good student, to be invisible as the wind, and to get away from the Demesne as soon as possible. All these good resolutions merited me a great, joyous surprise. Mendost had gone away! He had gone Armigering for some Demesne north—Dragon’s Fire, Mother said—and was likely not to be back again for many long seasons. It was like Festival all over again. Without Mendost to put them to deviltry, both Poremy and Flot were fairly decent. Without Mendost to upset her, Mother was, if not exactly reasonable, at least unlikely to fly into screaming fits without any reason at all. She wandered about a lot, not seeming to see anything, and drank far more wine at table, passing into sodden sleep instead of into her rages. Garz left for some reason or other. Bram Ironneck was, as always, remote, and often simply gone. Elators have that habit, I’m told. If I could flick from one place to another, any place I had ever been or could see in my head, I would not stay in one place, either.

 It was the best time I could remember in the Demesne. Everyone let me alone. I spent most of the days with one of the dams learning one or more of the magics or stories of the old gods or songs or verses or matters of practical value. At the end of a few seasons I had only dipped the tip of my tongue in the brew, as Murzy said, but it made me thirsty for great gulps of it. There seemed no end to the wize-art, and yet it went on all around us, all the time, as everywhere as air, and as little regarded.

 Naturally, just when I was beginning to be really happy, something had to happen to spoil it all. Mendost came home. He came home, not alone, bringing with him a Negotiator from the Dragon’s Fire Demesne, seeking to ally our Demesnes through marriage between King Kelver and Jinian, the only sister Mendost had to offer. It did not seem to matter to him at all that I was barely fourteen years old.

 Naturally, I said no.

 Predictably, Mendost threatened to kill me painfully if I didn’t do what he and Garz and Mother were agreed was a good idea. Mother had a fit at what she called my “intransigent stubbornness’ and hit me hard across the face in front of the whole family and assorted hangers-on.

 Murzy found me in my tower room, half-melted in tears, staring at the fancy dress I had been told to put on for the betrothal feast. Mendost must have brought it with him, for I had no such garments. Since I had no Talent yet and was a virgin girl, it was a pale ivory dress trimmed with green and purple ribbons at the waist and wrists. “Do not Game against” colors.

 “I’d like to know what colors mean “Do not marry”,” I sobbed, wadding the dress into a bundle and throwing it under the bed.

 Murzy dragged it out, brushed it off, and hung it neatly on a hook in my guardarobe. “Marrying tomorrow, are you?”

 “Nooo,” I bellowed, sounding like a waterfox cow. “Nooo. Never would be too soon.”

 Margaret Foxmitten came in behind Murzy, an expression of pain on her face. “Do be still, Jinian. You’re behaving pawnishly.”

 Well, that set me up. “Pawnishly,” I said dangerously. “Well, you ought to know.”

 “Stop it,” demanded Murzy. “You’re upset. Don’t compound the difficulty by insulting Margaret. You are behaving pawnishly, just when you need the wize art. Now hush. Breathe deep. Consider fire.”

 Considering fire—or water—was something they often had me do when I was in a state. It didn’t mean anything, but it was very quieting. So I considered it for a while. “I’m sorry,” I said to Margaret. “But hardly anyone gets married except pawns. Why does this stupid King want to get married? And why me!”

 “That’s all right, Jinian. I would probably be very upset, too, but you really haven’t time for a tantrum just now. I don’t know why the King chooses to marry, but he seems to prefer it. In fact, he has a wife now!”

 “Now? Can he have more than one? I didn’t know that was ever done.” I found the idea very surprising.

 It wasn’t done, at least not often, and not by Gamesmen of good repute, Margaret told me at great length. “And not without some overriding purpose. So, in order to find out what all this is about ...”

 “We’ve been cosseting the Negotiator’s servants with drink and baked goods,” said Murzy.

 “Nutpies.” Sarah giggled, most unlike her shy self. (I think she’d been drinking as part of the cosseting.)

 “It seems King Kelver already has a wife,” continued Margaret. “Queen somebody or other. A Seer, however, has told the King she will not have a long life. She sought to keep her children by her rather than send them to a School somewhere, but the King was in one Game after another and all his children were lost but the youngest. It’s true, says one of the grooms, that she isn’t well and the Healer has told the King it is her mind that is ill, not her body. Which, since no one knows where Mind Healer Talley is, means nothing much can be done to help her. So perhaps the King looks far ahead. Far ahead, Jinian. Years, perhaps.”

 “It doesn’t explain why he would want me,” I snarled.

 “That’s true,” said Tess Tinder-my-hand, who had come in while I was having my tantrum. “I wonder what lies Mendost told him about you?”

 Now that was a thought, one that opened my mouth and put no words in it. Murzy laughed, and Cat Candleshy actually snickered, rare for her. She was usually humorless as an owl. What had the King been told about me?

 “Now that we have your attention,” said Murzy, “let’s think this out a bit while tha dress thaself.”

 “We have learned the details of the contract,” said Cat. “Mendost offered you in return for ten years’ alliance. One thing we may be sure of, Mendost believes he can continue to dominate you no matter where you are ...”

 “Dominate me,” I sputtered. “He can not!”

 “He thinks he does,” Cat went on calmly. “Mendost is not long on thinking, but he has a clear picture of himself as he believes he is. He believes he dominates you, and your mother, and Garz. He intends to continue doing what he believes he already does. We understand why Mendost might want an alliance -any alliance. He fears King Prionde of the High Demesne, as who does not ...”

 The High Demesne was southeast of us, a goodly distance by foot, but no distance at all for an Armiger or Elator. King Prionde was known as a suspicious, narrow man, who went so fearful through life he would attack first and determine enmity later. Worse, so it was said, was his sister-wife, Queen Valearn. Some years before, she had lost her eldest son, Valdon, a boy she much doted on, and this loss drove her to become an Ogress, a strange, reclusive creature from whom no child in all the southlands was safe, a beast more raging than the King himself. Oh, the nursery tales told about Valearn made the blood stop in your veins. Yes, Mendost’s desire for an alliance could be understood.

 Cat was still explaining. “But the Dragon’s Fire Demesne is far to the north. Why it should want an alliance this far south and west, we do not know. Perhaps it is some Great Game King Kelver has planned—in fact, we think it likely. Nonetheless, he is willing to take you, but he already has a wife. So, you have a bit of bargaining room if you are wise ...”

 “Bargaining room?” I asked doubtfully. I had never had much luck bargaining with Mendost, and as for Mother …

 “With the Negotiator,” said Cat in her firm, seldom used scholar’s voice. “We all know it would do no good to talk to Mendost or Garz. We believe ...” She gestured at the gathered dams, all of whom were in my room by now, having sneaked in invisibly, by ones and twos. “We believe the King does not want you, not now. We believe he does want the alliance, and takes this way of getting it. We believe he would consider allowing you to do something else for the next few years. Perhaps School? In Xammer?”

 “Xammer! It would cost a fortune!” Everyone knew that Xammer was terribly expensive. Most Schools were, of course, but Xammer!

 “Not only Xammer,” Cat continued calmly, “but Vorbold’s House.”

 “You’re crazy,” I said, forgetting to be respectful. Cat glared at me, and Murzy moved in with a quieting gesture.

 “Now, now. Cat’s right. If tha think to ask for some thing, always ask for the best. Tha may not get it, but tha never will if tha don’t ask. And tha’ll have to be firm about it, Jinian.”

 “I don’t know anything about Vorbold’s House,” I said sulkily. “It’s probably awful.”

 “Well, for one thing,” said Bets, “Mendost would not be allowed to get at you there. Not ever. Which would neatly eliminate that part of his scheme, whatever it is. And Eller wouldn’t be likely to make the trip, as you well know.”

 It was true. I didn’t think Mother would bother. “Neither would you,” I argued. “And my Schooling’s being done by you dams, by us seven.”

 “Wait a bit, wait a bit. We’ve talked that over. No reason we have to stay here. An old pawnish dam is an old pawnish dam. Not much value, not much missed, isn’t that what they say? I figure two of us could go with you. Even Eller wouldn’t be so silly as to send you off to Xammer without servants. Most of the students have two or three housed in the town. Margaret could go, and Sarah. They’re the youngest. That’s two.”

 “I would sneak away soon after,” said Tinder-my-hand, “with Cat. We’ll not be missed.” She sounded almost wistful, and I thought how boring it must be for her in the Demesne. Invisibility was all very well, but sometimes it must become wearing. “Since Murzy has been most useful around here and might be sought for, she might have to delay a bit. Perhaps she could take to her bed with a fever, down in town.

 “Which will go on and on,” said Bets. “I would be needed to nurse her, of course. It’d be a season before anyone would come looking for us, wondering if we lived or died.”

 “So,” I said, considering it. “Still, the time would come my Schooling would be done. Then the King might expect me to be ... available.”

 “That’s later,” said Margaret Foxmitten. “Later we can worry about it. Now’s time to figure out how you’re going to get the King’s Negotiator to agree.” And they began a long session of quite specific instructions about that. Finally Murzy sighed and shooed all of them away.

 “One way or another, chile. One way or another. Now, wash tha face, put on this pale dress, and let me comb that hair. Tha’ll never be a beauty, and that’s all to the good. Invisibility’s hard for beauties. In this case, though, tha’re on show, so we have to make the best of what’s there.” Which she did, with rouge pots and dark stuff on my lashes to make my eyes look greener, and a pumice stone to rub the brown calluses off my hands. My hair had never been so clean, and she brushed it until it gleamed like polished, ruddy wood. She was right: I was not beautiful, but on that occasion I was not difficult to look at.

 She did a small spell casting, too. Inward Is Quiet was the spell, something very calming. Enough that I went down to dinner in full command of myself, intent on being graceful and quiet and well mannered. I sat beside the Negotiator, determined to be charming. Of course, Mother drank too much, got into a violent whispered argument with Mendost, and threw a tantrum you could have heard in Schooltown halfway through the soup, but Garz and Poremy covered it up and I pretended not to notice. The Negotiator’s name was Joramal Trandle, and he gave me several boring gifts and one nice one and some well-thought-out compliments. Margaret and Murzy had thought up a couple for me to return, and by the time they brought in the cakes, we were getting along very well. I told him then that I must speak with him privately, after the meal, in the gardens, and he agreed, though he did look puzzled.

 So, later in the evening he insisted on talking to me privately in the garden—which Mendost did not like at all. After I thanked him for the third time for the scent bottle carved out of greenstone in the shape of a frog, I remarked that it would have been nice if Mendost had cared enough about me to ever be kind to me. It would have made me feel more secure in the current situation—more sure that I would be treated well in future. This was said rather wistfully while batting my eyelashes the way Margaret had showed me. Joramal turned a little pink, then white, and I knew he was trying to figure out how he was going to tell King Kelver that Mendost’s sister certainly wasn’t Mendost’s friend. Though if the King had any sense, he would already have figured out that Mendost didn’t have any friends.

 “I am sure King Kelver will not want an unwilling wife?” I asked, smiling. “Unwilling allies are so dangerous to one during Game.” I had practiced this line twelve times in front of the mirror with Cat sitting beside me, coaching me.

 “The, umm, King,” he ummed, “desires willing and, umm, enthusiastic allies. Umm. Of course.”

 “As you have noticed, I am very young.” This was demure. It is not easy being demure. I had wanted to say, “I’m too damn young to get married, and I don’t want to,” but older heads had prevailed. Instead, I looked down, twined my fingers together, and tried to evoke pallor.

 “Ah,” Joramel said. “Yes.”

 “I do not feel that marriage—or even guest status within the King’s Demesne while he has yet a living wife—would be appropriate. It would be beneath the King’s honor. I am a mere child, after all. Without Talent. Or Schooling. No. It would not be honorable.”

 “Ah, no,” he said.

 I looked up. Now was time for the firm, friendly look. “However, if I were to attend School in Xammer for a few years—Vorbold’s House would do—then the King’s honor would not be questioned. Nor could I question his ... friendship.”

 He smiled at me, really smiled, with a definite twinkle behind it. “Young woman, I would be happy to accede to this request on the King’s behalf. It would, quite frankly, ameliorate certain aspects of this alliance which neither the King nor his Negotiator have found ... becoming.” He gave me a long, level look, and I knew we understood one another. The King was playing some Game or other, and Mendost was an unsuspecting part of it, but the King did not wish to Game against me. Good. The dams had, as usual, been right.

 I gave Joramal Trandle my hand, and we agreed. I told him I could not possibly go to Xammer without my two servants and my pony, Misquick—even though the pony was not a mount that lent me much dignity. He was very grave about this, agreeing only after an appropriate amount of consideration to show he took the matter seriously. I told him my servants were Margaret and Sarah, stressing that Mother some times forgot the proprieties. He made a note of their names, right there in the garden, so I thought we would have no difficulty about that.

 And when Mendost came up to me afterward with a bloody word in his mouth, ready to smack me if things hadn’t gone his way, I smiled sweetly at him and told him I thought traveling with Joramal Trandle would be immensely enjoyable. Joramal was beside me, ears quivering as Negotiators’ always are. They must see and hear everything and use it for the benefit of their patrons. Mendost didn’t dare say anything at all, much less haul me heavenward by my left foot. I caught the Negotiator looking at me out of the corner of his eye, watching me and Mendost together, as though he wanted to know a great deal more about that particular relationship.

 I continued to be charming throughout the evening, though I had begun to feel a little odd because of the wine. It had begun by making me warm and relaxed, but as the evening waned it gave me a sad, weepy feeling. Murzy’s spell was wearing off, and I felt a little sick. When the party ended, Mother went up the stairs just ahead of me, and I followed her as she turned along the corridor leading to her own suite, not out of any plan—after all, everything was said and done except the contract itself—but more out of that sadness, as though I were about to lose something ephemeral and wonderful that I could never have again. So I went after her, slipping into the room behind her, saying, “Mother ...”

 I’m sure it was a whiny little voice. She turned on me, her hair billowed out around her head like a cloud, her favorite jewel held against her lips, her eyes lit up with a kind of bleary impatience.

 “Well, and what is it now, girl! Have you some other complaint?”

 “No,” I said. “It’s just that I’ll be gone. And we may not see one another again ...”

 “No great loss,” she told me very cheerfully.

 I could not let it rest. “I ... I think it is. I mean ... I know you haven’t been very satisfied with me. I know you like the boys better. But still and all, you’re my mother, and I want—”

 “Out,” she said in a flat, toneless voice, as though she were ordering the fustigars from the kennels. “I’ve had enough of your maundering. Do you think I haven’t seen you all evening, playing up to that fool Joramal, trying to get out of it? Well, you’ll not get out of it. You’ll get in it and do as you’re told. Now out. The contract will be done after breakfast tomorrow, and you’re to be there. After which you’ll be no trouble of mine and I’ll need listen to no more whine of Mother this and Mother that. I would as soon have mothered a kitchen pawn.”

 She shoved me out, not gently, and shut the door in my face.

 I went up to my room, waking Murzy where she sat by my fire ready to undo my laces, and I said not a word to her about it. It came only as a confirmation, not as hurtful as one might think—at least not where I could feel it, though I had a sense something deep had been mortally wounded. No matter. The deep things stay buried unless one stirs them up. I had been feeling a little guilty about maneuvering Joramal the way we had, but there was no more guilt. There was only a kind of cold, hurt calm at the center of things which lasted me all night and on the following day throughout the reading of the contract. It let me enjoy the faces on Mendost and Mother when the matter of Xammer was read out. There was anger there, some large, private anger, and I knew covert plans of theirs had indeed been upset by my personal negotiations. It was too late for them to do anything about it, however, and the ceremony proceeded during which Mother—white-lipped and angry-looking—formally turned me over to Joramal Trandle as surrogate for the King. From that time on, by Game law, I belonged to King Kelver for at least the period of the alliance. My family no longer had any claim on me whatsoever. Then I went up to my room and cried for an hour. It was very refreshing. After which I considered fire for a while, then went to sleep wondering if travel with the Negotiator would be like traveling with the dams. In which case I would get very little rest.

 We were making ready to leave the following day when someone realized I had no clothes. There was then a delay while the seamstresses outfitted me. I had been wearing some cast-off things of Poremy’s and had only the one gown. I think Murzy may have said something in Mendost’s hearing about Jinian being a laughing stock in Xammer because she had no clothes. At any rate, Mendost and Mother had a screaming match over it, but I did get some clothing. Except for the betrothal gown, they were the first things I had ever had made for me. I was amazed to learn that girls’ underdrawers are made differently, though when I stopped to think about it, it did make sense.

 “What happens when I outgrow them?” I asked Cat. She was watching Sarah take the bastings out of my favorite suit. Red leather riding trousers and a gray-and-red-striped tunic top with a red half cape. “The way I’m going, I won’t be able to wear this more than three or four seasons.”

 “I understand that Vorbold’s House provides,” Sarah said, rolling up bits of threads. “When the King pays your way there, he pays for everything, and they see that you’re properly clothed for any occasion. It isn’t just a School, Jinian. It’s—well, it’s a special place. Only for girls, you know.”

 I hadn’t known. I wished I didn’t know. Something that was only for girls had a sound to it I didn’t like. “Why?” I asked. “Why only for girls?”

 “Because it’s for young women of families who seek alliances,” Cat said in her tart fashion. “To get them out of Games’ way, for heaven’s sake. This Demesne could get involved in some Great Game tomorrow—and knowing your brother Mendost, that’s likely. It’s only we’re so remote from anything or anyone has kept us peaceful so long. If you were here during Game, you could be taken hostage, or killed, or set up in the Game some way. Xammer is neutral territory. No one Games in Xammer. Girls can grow up there, find their Talent—if any—and make some decent or useful choices when they’re old enough to do so.”

 I didn’t know she was speaking prophetically, or I might have paid more attention. As it was, I only nodded and humphed. I still didn’t like the “girls only” aspect, but I had to admit it sounded sensible. Murzy had gone to some pains to describe Game to me in terms that were anything but attractive or exciting. Many Gamesmen—and women—seemed to end up dead very young, or worse.

 “Besides,” Murzy interjected, “you’ll learn a good deal. Not the kind of thing we’ve been teaching you, but useful stuff nonetheless.” She held up the cape with satisfaction. “We’ll need to put a student’s knot on this.” She meant the green and purple ribbons that students or pregnant women or scholars wear to show they are on neutral business and should not be involved in Game.

 “Don’t,” I begged. “We can put it on later, just before we leave. It will clash with the red, and I want to wear it to ride Misquick today.” I had it in mind that Grompozzle and Misquick had never seen me in new clothes, proud and Gamesmanlike, and it would be fun to ride out in something besides the tattered trews and leather shirt I always wore. I was far too big to ride Misquick at all. However, though our Demesne raised horses that were sold all over the world, I had never been given a mount other than the pony. I was allowed to work with the horses, but not to ride them. I think Mother and Mendost made that rule just to be annoying. At any rate, I would have a last ride on the poor pony, just to say good-bye. Joramal, after seeing Misquick, had carefully hidden a smile and promised me a more fitting mount. “When I get back,” I urged Murzy. She agreed. Well. How could she have known? How could I?

 So, just before noon I packed a lunch, whistled up Grompozzle, saddled Misquick, and made off for the hills, waving to Murzy as I clattered through the courtyard. I didn’t intend to go far. There wasn’t time, and I didn’t really have the heart for visiting favorite places much. This was more in the nature of a nostalgic farewell, full of bitter-sweet memories, very self-dramatized and all. I had a mental picture of me in the new clothes that probably looked as little like the real me as Grompozzle looked like a real hunting fustigar. I noticed a horseman on the line of western hills as we set out, but I thought nothing of it. The forest east belonged to Stoneflight, or so we say, as far as the ridge line. North is the Old South Road City of the blind runners, and south is only badlands. But the forest west of the Demesne is open country and full of game, so riders are seen there often enough. I headed north. The Season of Storms was notime near, and if I encountered a runner, he would only give me honey cake and send me home. They and I had become fairly friendly over the past several years. Once I asked a runner how they got started on the road. He gargled at me for a long time, and I gathered some great-great-ancestor far back had been summoned to run the road, particularly the bad spots where it was all broken. That’s why they valued the footseeing so, to find the broken places between the stretches anyone could see. They were a very strange people.

 Several times as I rode, I saw the same rider on the western ridge. After a time, it began to make me nervous, so I left the open trail and reined Misquick into the trees where we couldn’t be seen. Where we couldn’t have been seen if I’d been wearing my old clothes. I’d forgotten the bright red cape, the red leather trews. Well. Nothing to do about that. The three of us wended our way around a little hill and down into a little valley beyond.

 There was a rider east of me, on the skyline.

 I didn’t know whether he’d seen me or not, nor could I tell what Talent he might have. If he were a Demon or some of that line who could Read minds, he could tell where I was easy enough. Though why anyone should want to know was beyond me. It seemed prudent to head for the Demesne, so Misquick and I turned about and made for home. I kept it slow, remembering times when Misquick had tried to hurry and ended up in trouble.

 There were two mounted men waiting at either side of the trail, just inside the hollow. Two ahead of me, plus one to the west and one to the east. All of them were on tall, fast-looking horses, and it was silly to think of outrunning them. I pulled Misquick up and sat, waiting. They didn’t leave me in any doubt at all.

 One of the men was larger than the others with him. He had a long face with a heavy jaw; wide, sneering lips; eyes that brooded at me from under heavy lids as though they did not see me directly but through some veil. They were not quite focused on me. I had an uneasy feeling that I was someone else to him, some different image he had already seen and dismissed.

 “You’d be Jinian,” he said, getting the name right first try as he took hold of Misquick’s bridle. “Mendost’s sister.”

 I thought of lying about it, but it was obvious they knew. “Yes,” I said. One thing Murzy had drummed into me was to say no more than necessary.

 “Good enough,” he snorted. “Then you’ll come along with us, girl. You won’t be hurt if you don’t try anything silly.”

 I had no intention of trying anything, silly or not, so I whistled to Grompozzle, who came slavering up, offering to lick the hands of my captors in his usual indiscriminating style. Then we went off to the northwest, over the ridge and away, moving a good deal faster than Misquick was accustomed to moving under the best of conditions. As we pushed under a webwillow tree, I caught a handful of twigs and then dropped all but three. The three I stuffed into the saddlebag, in the bag with my lunch. Then Misquick did just what I’d thought she would, stumble, slid halfway down a bank, and ended up mired in a mudhole. “She can’t go that fast,” I said apologetically. “She’s not very surefooted.”

 “I’ll take the girl,” the large man said, the only one who had done any talking at all. “Leave the pony here.”

 I objected, to which they paid no attention at all, but leaving Misquick was what I wanted to do. She would head for home as soon as she settled down, carrying the saddlebag, which the men didn’t think of taking. When Murzy saw the twigs in the pocket, she would know I was in trouble—that’s what three of anything put where it doesn’t belong means. Three stones in a shoe, three twigs in a pocket, three feathers under a saddle. Then the dams would know as much as I did. That is, if Murzy or one of the dams saw the saddlebag first. Well, I’d done all I could, so I put it out of my mind.

 “Would you mind telling me who you are, or what this is all about?” I asked.

 “My name is Porvius Bloster,” he said. “Tragamor. This is about Game. We announce Game against Mendost of Stoneflight Demesne.”

 “But, but ...” I sputtered, “I’m a student. I’m going off to Xammer tomorrow. I’m Game exempt.”

 “You’re not wearing exempt colors,” he snorted. “Which I was careful to determine before accosting you. You should have worn the dress you wore that night you were wandering around the garden talking foolishness with that friend of your brother’s.”

 I didn’t want to talk about clothes. This whole thing was too silly for words. “What kind of Game is this?” I pursued the subject. The kind of Game could be very important.

 “This is Death Game,” he snarled. “For I am weary of your brother’s perfidy. Twice I’ve had him challenged, and twice he’s slipped by me. He’s a dishonorable Gamesman ...” Which wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. “We have taken this step to guarantee he stands to Game.”

 “You’re expecting Mendost to stand Death Game with you in order to save my life!” My honest amazement must have come through to him, however slightly.

 “Of course. For the honor of the Demesne.” He was very much the mature Gamesman enlightening the child. The man took me for an utter fool.

 I pleaded with him. “You’ve said yourself that Mendost is dishonorable. Worse than that, I’m not even Mendost’s concern anymore. I was betrothed to King Kelver of Dragon’s Fire Demesne three days ago!”

 “You?” He burst out laughing, which didn’t make me feel any better about the whole thing. “You’re a child!”

 I had never felt more the child. For a blinding moment, I wanted a Talent, any Talent, so long as it was strong and destructive and could get back at this muscle and little-wit holding on to me who did not seem to see me as a person at all. He was like a man reciting a role, uttering speeches he had rehearsed. I tried to get his attention, explain to him. “I know I’m very young. King Kelver is having me Schooled at Xammer. As part of an alliance ...” The more I tried to explain the circumstances, the more he smiled into the air, not seeing me, disbelieving me.

 “You’ve a good imagination, girly,” he said at last. “A very good imagination. If you live to get older, maybe they’ll put you to work making dream crystals. Or being a Seer. Most of what they tell you they make up out of their heads. I don’t believe them, either. So, we’ll take you along to the place we’ve got ready, then we’ll send our message and wait ‘til Mendost shows up.”

 “He won’t show up,” I said hopelessly.

 “For your sake, girly, he’d better.”

 “Would you ask ransom?” I suggested, hoping that King Kelver might see fit to increase his investment. He had already gone to considerable expense and might not mind a little extra.

 “The Game is between Mendost and me,” he said offhandedly. “Why should I want ransom? Ransom will not avenge my honor. Mendost struck me without warning. He did not announce Game before striking me.”

 “If he’d been drinking,” I said, “it wasn’t Game at all. It was just bad temper.”

 “If it wasn’t Game for Mendost then, he must learn it is Game now,” he said, turning the horse through a screen of trees and down into a hidden hollow where a camp had been set up. “The Herald has delivered my demands by now. He was on his way to your gate when we picked you up.” Porvius Bloster sounded so self-satisfied, so pompous, I knew there would be no reasoning with him. Which is probably why Mendost hit him in the first place. If you are ever captured by someone, pray it is not a stupid, pompous man who sees the whole world through a haze of his own preconceptions. As I analyzed the situation, it seemed fairly hopeless that he would ever believe me. He was not living in the same world I was. He was simply too sure he was right.

 There was a tall, greasy-looking post at one side of the camp, and I saw with alarm it had been fitted up with a tether and harness. Sure enough, they put the harness on me, hooked up behind where I couldn’t reach it, and the tether went to the top of the post where I couldn’t reach that end, either. There was a small tent nearby where I could sleep. I could get into the thicket if I needed to go. They weren’t going to torture me or anything. In fact, as they went about their business, it was obvious they weren’t very interested in me at all. I sat in the entrance of the tent, getting familiar with the camp, thinking. It seemed to me the best thing to do was to become invisible.

 Now the first rule of invisibility is that you have to be where you can be seen. You sort of blend into the scenery. Never hide. If you hide, people wonder where you are and what you’re doing, so you don’t hide. You do whatever you’re doing right out in front of everyone, but it’s what you do all the time. So I began to wander around, into the thicket and out. Among the trees and out. Into the tent and out. Over near the fire to get warm, then away. Down to the little pool to get a drink. Pick up a few sticks and put them down near the fire. Pick a rainhat berry and eat it. Rainhat berry. Still walking aimlessly around, I set myself to search for shivery-green. It wasn’t common. Not nearly as common as the rainhat bush. Thinking of that, I picked a couple of leaves and put them beside the tent. If it rained, I could use them to replace the rain cape in the saddlebag Misquick had taken home.

 I didn’t find any shivery-green that day. Night came. They gave me some food, not very good. They sat in the light of their fire, mumbling to one another. Porvius Bloster had a chain about his neck with a pendant on it. I had noticed it during the day several times and now it was even more noticeable in the light of the fire. He fingered it now, turning it in his fingers. When the others lay down to sleep he sat there, turning it, turning it, at last laying it upon his tongue and sucking upon it as a baby does a sugar tit.

 I knew what it was then. I’d never seen one before that I knew of, though there was talk of them in the Demesne, as there is always talk of things exotic and strange. It was a dream crystal. If what I had heard about them was true, it was no wonder he could not deal with the reality around him. He had already dreamed this occasion, dreamed its progress and conclusion. Nothing I could say would disrupt the dream. Too much confusion between the dream and the reality would unbalance him completely, and who knew what he might do then.

 I waited, scarcely breathing until he let the thing fall from his mouth and wandered toward the tent. The tent the men slept in was out of reach of my tether, so I couldn’t sneak in on them in the night. I could get up very, very early, however, and start my wander once more. It took until noon to find a plant of shivery-green. Only one plant of it, trembling like a little emerald fountain between the buttress roots of a great tree, with three little seed clusters nodding at the tips of the stems. So. Now the location of it was known, if one could only figure out what to do about it.

 I began to be ubiquitous around the fire. When and if the rainhat roots and the shivery-green seeds were put together, the juice would have to get into their food somehow. Once they were asleep for some little time, the tether could be pounded on a rock until it frayed through. Then I could get a knife off one of them and cut the harness. King Kelver’s gift was in my pocket, the scent bottle in the shape of a frog. That would hold a lot more of the juices than was needed.

 Invisible. I began bashing up some bark into strips to make a basket. Right away Porvius sent one of the men over to see what was going on, and I ignored him while threading webwillow twigs and bark pieces together. It wouldn’t have fooled a dam for a minute. Any child knows you can’t make basket of webwillow bark, for it breaks as it dries. Wet, however, it looked all right, and he went mumbling back to the fire, while I went on bashing, interrupting it from time to time to wander about and dig roots. In the late afternoon when it began to get dark, I picked the shivery-green seeds and bashed them up with the rainhat root on the same hollow rock I’d been bashing things on all day. A piece of rainhat leaf made a spoon and a funnel, all in one, and the juice went in the scent bottle, which had been previously emptied in the thicket. It made the thicket smell better, which by that time it needed.

 Now there was enough juice to put them to sleep for a season, about. Well, for ten days at least, I thought, not realizing how much webwillow pulp and fragments had remained on the rock to adulterate my brew. My own ignorance saved me. An experienced herbalist might not have tried it without better equipment.

 I was just getting ready to go over to the fire once more, this time to put the juice in their stew—I’d have to go without eating anything tonight myself—when there was a hail from the mountain and I looked up to see a Herald in full panoply and two people with blindfolds on. It was Joramal Trandle and Murzy, but not Mendost. Bloster was swearing in a tight, ugly voice.

 Another thing Murzy had told me about invisibility. If you do what you always do when other people are distracted, they simply won’t see you. So I kept right on moving toward the fire, scent bottle in hand, reached for the stew spoon, and took a bite—burning my mouth—then dumped the juice in it as the spoon went back. All the men were watching the Herald. None of them was watching me.

 “Let all in sound of my voice give heed,” cried the Herald. “Mendost of Stoneflight Demesne, Armiger, against whom Game has been called by Porvius Bloster, Tragamor, denies any interest in the person of Jinian, sister, person of Stoneflight Demesne—”

 “I told you so,” I muttered.

 “—and denies challenge to Game, saying let Porvius do to the person Jinian what Porvius will, for he cares not. However, on hearing of the abduction of Jinian of Stoneflight Demesne, did one Joramal Trandle, Negotiator for King Kelver of the Dragon’s Flight Demesne, assert right of interest in the dispute. I bring here Joramal Trandle and one Murzy, servant to the person Jinian.”

 “That coward!” yelled one of the men. Porvius didn’t say anything. He had a confused look on his face, as though he couldn’t track what was happening. Well, I’d tried to tell him. It occurred to me then that the dams and I might have outwitted ourselves. Perhaps my private negotiations with Joramal had ruined any value I might have had to Mendost. Certainly he had wanted to use me for something, some bargaining point. Well, now it was up to Joramal.

 Joramal called, a little uncertainly, “If we may have the blindfolds removed, we would Negotiate for the person Jinian.”

 “It’s a bluff,” snarled Porvius, turning to glare at me.

 “Truly, Gamesman, it is not,” I said, trying to look meek and inconspicuous and not worth killing. “Mendost simply doesn’t care what you do to me. He wouldn’t care if you killed the whole family.” He hadn’t sucked on the dream crystal since the night before, not that I’d seen. Perhaps the effect had weakened enough to let him deal with reality. I crossed my fingers and prayed to several newly invented deities.

 He snarled and swore, but after a few minutes he allowed the blindfolds to come off. Joramal went with Porvius into his tent, and Murzy was allowed to come about a manheight from me. Not close enough to give me anything, though she’d brought a bundle. Looking at her face, I was mightily distressed. I had never seen Murzy this upset before, but she was really frightened. I couldn’t tell whether it was because of my predicament or something else, but whatever it was, it made me pay very close attention to what she said.

 “Jinian,” she began softly, fixing me with her eyes. “This is a dreadful thing to have happened.”

 The man who was listening yawned and took a step or two away, never taking his eyes off her.

 “I’ve brought you some warmer clothes,” she said, pointing to the bundle. “More suitable.” There was a long pause. Then, “You know how important it is for you to go to Xammer, don’t you?”

 “Yes, Murzy,” I said. There was a message there. I didn’t understand it, but I jotted it down in memory.

 “What have you been doing to pass the time?” she asked in a grandmotherly voice.

 “Oh,” I said, “I found some rainhat twigs and some bark of shivery-green, and I’ve been making a basket,” pointing at the half-finished webwillow basket next to the hollow stone.

 She gave me a look that said she understood what I’d been up to. “It’s good to keep busy,” she said. “Your task should be finished as soon as possible, Jinian. You should keep in practice.”

 Then there was yelling from the tent and Joramal stumbled out, very white and with his mouth narrowed to a tight line. “Tell Mendost he has until dawn!” screamed Porvius. “Until dawn. Then this one dies, and her head will be carried to Stoneflight Demesne as challenge of Great Game upon all who dwell there!”

 “You understand that King Kelver may bring Game against you,” Joramal was saying. “Against you and yours. This is his betrothed…”

 Murzy was saying quietly, under the other noise, “The Demesne is not a healthy place just now, not for me or mine, tha or thine. The east is safer than the south.”

 “No King of honor would betroth a child!” Porvius screamed, making little stones leap around under Joramal’s feet. “This is another of Mendost’s dishonorable, craven tricks. Put the blindfolds back on them and get them out of here.” Well, he was back in his own dream of events again.

 Murzy, however, was not distracted. She tapped her chest several times, mysteriously, then was blindfolded and led away. Grommy went with her, treacherously abandoning me, and I wasn’t sad to see him go. That was one less thing to worry about. I sat down quietly before my own tent and waited for the men to eat their dinner.

 They did everything else. They talked, argued, stamped around. Porvius made a small earthquake, just to illustrate his displeasure, during which I lay down and whimpered. If I’d appeared poised, it would have made him angrier, I figured. At last they filled their bowls, giving me none; since Porvius said someone being beheaded in the morning didn’t need dinner. Then they ate. Then they sat, and drank, and talked, and talked, and talked. I was wondering what I’d done wrong. Were the seeds not ripe? Had I dug up the wrong roots by mistake? Had I ... Not for the first time, I longed for a Talent. For the first time I began to wonder if I would ever get one. Not an early one, certainly. I was already past that age.

 At last there were snores from the campfire, and I sighed, only then realizing how impure the mixture must have been, which meant, of course, there was no telling how much time I had before they woke.

 I did a spell, Mothwings Go Spinning, picking a rainhat berry out of the bush and sending it circling, wider and wider, tilting and tumbling. “Touch all,” I muttered under my breath, keeping it up until it banged Porvius Bloster on the head where he lay, him and then his henchmen. Any Tragamor could have done the same with his Talent, but this was a movement spell and according to Sarah I could do it very well, better than most Wize-ards. I liked the spell because it took no paraphernalia, only certain words and a few small, precise gestures to pick up any smallish thing and send it flying. So I banged upon Bloster and his men enough to be sure they were soundly asleep, then picked up a rock and began bashing at the leather tether.

 It seemed to take hours. The leather was tough. All it wanted to do was crush, not cut. Finally it came apart. I took a knife from Porvius’s belt, considered killing all four of them but couldn’t quite get up the gumption to do it, picked up the bundle Murzy had brought for me, and made for the horses. I had never ridden anything that size before, but I wasn’t about to take off on foot and have them following me. I tied all four horses together, then led the first one over to a tall stump and climbed on top. He was well schooled, thank the old gods, and didn’t act up. It was a cloudy night; I had no idea which way was home; the important thing seemed to be to get gone.

 So, I got.

 5

 It was dark and very misty when I left. There was a long, straight canyon which appeared to be the shortest way out of the place. It seemed to go generally east, though I couldn’t see beyond the first gentle curve. The horses and I went that way and kept going until light, during most of which time it rained. I hoped the rain would wash away the hoofprints. When it got a little bit light, I took one horse over a ridge and turned him loose. He went off into the slush very nicely. Horses and I had always understood each other very well, and he was probably thinking about hay and a warm stable. The other three of us went a bit farther, then another one went loose, and the last one just before noon. It may have been noon. There was a sort of general lightness at the top of the sky which might have meant that. Or it might have meant the clouds were thinner there, who knows. If anyone were following me—if they weren’t Seers or Pursuivants or some other finder kind of Gamesman—they might follow one of the loose horses instead of the one I was on.

 The last horse and I went on together a bit more, but by that time it was really difficult to stay on. No sleep to speak of for two nights was more than I could manage. The rain was letting up, and it seemed a good opportunity to rest. I slid off the horse, walked back a way, and found that the hoofprints were disappearing in the muck. So, we were lost but not trackable. That was hopeful. It left only one major worry—that we’d been traveling in a circle and would come trotting back into Porvius’s camp just as he woke up. There wasn’t any point in considering that, really. I’d done my best to hold a straight line, and that’s all anyone can do.

 We found a dry place under a great needly tree. Horse stood on one side of the tree, and I lay down on the other. Murzy had packed some food, a rain cape, and some warm clothes, still dry inside the oilskin pack. Almost, I said to myself, as though she knew I’d be off on my own in the rain. That set me to thinking about that strange interview we’d had. Whatever else her mysterious talk had implied, it had certainly meant I was not to try and get back to Stoneflight. She had said to hurry, which I had. She had tapped her chest over and over. I tapped mine, something beneath my fingers biting into my skin. The star-eye. Tap, tap. She wanted me to remember the star-eye? What did that mean? I gave up, my mouth full of bread and cheese. When I woke in the night, there were still bits of bread and cheese between my teeth, so no time had been lost in wakefulness.

 The sky had cleared and was full of stars. It was easy to tell which direction was south, and I sleepily marked the trunk of the tree with the knife before rolling over and going back to sleep. When I woke again, it was half-light. Thinking time.

 The fact was, I did not know where I was. Stoneflight Demesne might have been east, or south, or west of me. The Tragamor’s camp had probably been northwest of the Demesne, but the canyon I had followed when I left had curved back and forth, and I could have been almost anywhere.

 During the night, Murzy’s message had come clear, however. She had meant, “Get the hell out of here; try to get to Xammer as quickly as possible; stay away from the south—the High Demesne and the Ogress Valearn—use the wize-arts and be sensible.” That sounded like Murzy, though she had not exactly sounded like herself during that last conversation. It might be that Mendost had threatened her or one of the other dams. It would have been like him. Not healthy for me or mine, she had said, and Mendost often made places unhealthy for people. So—on to Xammer.

 Which lay far, far to the east. That was the one direction of which I was certain.

 The town of Mip lay northwest of our Demesne, down the canyon and across the mountains and down into the valley of the Dourt. If I had gone in Joramal’s wagon, we would have gone from Mip, up the river to its confluence with the Haws, then up the mountain road to the Banner, down the Banner to the Gathered Waters, and down the Gathered Waters to River Reave, to Gaywater, and thence east to Xammer. That’s more or less the way we had gone to Schooltown long before, and it would have taken a long time to get there.

 Or one could put a canoe in Stonybrook, follow it down to the falls, carry it down the old stone stairs into the canyon below, thence into Long Valley and the great open fields above Lake Yost. Then, if one didn’t wish to paddle upstream on the Reave and the Gaywater, one would walk to Xammer, the whole business taking twenty days or less.

 So I had two perfectly logical routes to Xammer, east or west. If I kept going west, I couldn’t fail to run into River Dourt. If I went east, I couldn’t fail to encounter Stonybrook—which became Stonywater lower down—or the walls of the great canyon. According to Cat Candleshy, once past the falls, Stonywater was calm and easy enough in contemplation, though I had never done it.

 Despite Murzy’s warnings about the High Demesne, I had no real fear of coming upon it. There was all of Long Valley between our mountains and Tarnost—the Demesne of King Prionde and Valearn the Ogress. I was far enough north not to fear from the Ogress of Tarnost. I thought. It did not occur to me then that she might go elsewhere.

 Well, tic-tac, front or back, dark or bright, left or right, fast or slow, here we go. I picked east. It seemed shorter.

 So warmed, rested, fed, we set out. Though I had never been allowed to have a real horse before, I could mark definite advantages over Misquick. This one didn’t stumble, didn’t fall down, and didn’t stand with his head down refusing to move the way Misquick often did. He looked intelligently at the way we were headed and picked a simple, sure-footed way along it. I thanked him for this, which seemed to please him, and we went sedately along. Which left me free to think about other things.

 I chose to think about the old gods. Prompted by Murzy’s chest tapping, probably. The star-eye was a symbol of one of the old gods, one of the elder people of the world. Not the True Game world, the whole world, which went on beyond the boundaries of the True Game in all directions, to the Southern Sea, the Glistening Sea, the jungles of the north, and even beyond those. Tess Tinder-my-hand had an old, old rhyme:

 Bright the Sun Burning,

 Night Will Come Turning,

 Warm Fire Is Sparkening,

 Sleep Brings a Darkening,

 Bitter Tears Falling,

 Lovers Come Calling,

 Egg in the Hollow,

 Hatching to Follow,

 Mothwings Go Spinning,

 End and Beginning,

 Inward Is Quiet,

 Dream Chains to Tie It,

 Silence and Shadow,

 Music and Meadow,

 Eye of the Star,

 Where Old Gods Are.

 Each line of the verse was a spell. Egg in the Hollow was a hiding spell. Music and Meadow was a summoning of the deep dwellers used in bridge or tree magic sometimes. There were hundreds of couplets if one knew them all. Some weren’t used often. Hatching to Follow was a pregnancy spell, for instance, and it wasn’t often used. Though each line is a spell, there’s more to it than that. It has meaning in groups of lines—if you look at different groups, you can see how they fit together—and as a whole, too. Taken as a whole, Tess said it meant the old gods held it all together, in balance, so that everything had a place: fire, water, life, death, earth, and sky—everything. And everyone. I used to comfort myself with that sometimes at night when everyone had been after me all day and it didn’t seem there was any place for me at all. Then I’d sing, “Silence and Shadow, Music and Meadow, Eye of the Star” to myself until I went to sleep.

 So, I had said, if it had all been so nicely balanced when the old gods were around, where were they now?

 “Lost,” said Sarah, sadly.

 “Betrayed,” said Margaret.

 “Imprisoned,” said Cat. “The deep lookers and far studiers say that. Imprisoned. Locked up. No one knows where.”

 “If I were a god,” I had said to Cat Candleshy, “I would not allow myself to be locked up.”

 “Perhaps they didn’t know what was happening until it was too late,” said Cat. “Perhaps they were great, slow beings who did not imagine that any creature would do such a thing. And perhaps those who did it didn’t know it was gods they were shutting up. Each time they may have thought it was something else, like a hurricane or a thunderstorm or even a plague of gobblemoles. I rather think things like that were the ... the vocabulary of the old gods. As well as being their identity.”

 Cat talked like that sometimes. Margaret said something once about Cat having been a Gamesmistress in a School, though she could not have meant exactly that. One would have to be Gamesman caste to be a Gamesmistress. Perhaps Margaret meant another kind of teacher. When I asked her, though, she refused to discuss it. I did ask Cat about something that confused me, however. “Cat, I’ve never heard anyone speak about old gods except the dams. I never heard anyone in the Demesne speak of it, nor anyone in Schooltown when we went there.”

 She puckered her mouth as though she wouldn’t answer me at all, but then said, “It’s part of the wize-art, Jinian. We hear certain things and draw certain inferences from that. Often inferences are all we have. We hesitate to pass them on lest they acquire an unmerited currency, but among ourselves we speak of it. Now, ask no more. You’ll learn in time.”

 Don’t you hate it when people tell you you’ll learn in time? Obviously, the time to learn is when you’re interested! There was no use arguing with Cat, though, so I had to let it go. Now, on the mountainside, going east with the sun on my forehead and my stomach saying it was time for lunch, it would have been nice if she’d told me more. Perhaps she was thinking the same thing!

 Lunchtime came and went. Sometime about mid-afternoon it began to occur to me that Stonybrook or the edge of the canyon should have appeared some time ago. We went from Stoneflight to Stonybrook every summer to get rushes for baskets, sometimes several times during the summer. It wasn’t a long trip even in a slow, bumpy wagon. Even if I had been at the extreme western edge of the table-mountain, right above the valley of the River Dourt, I should still have come upon Stonybrook by now. Which meant ... what?

 Which meant I’d crossed it? No. Couldn’t have. Crossed no stream. Which meant I was so far north, I’d missed it completely, as well as the great east-west canyon it fell into.

 Possible. Probable! If so, horse and I were on the north side of Longbow Mountain and would shortly arrive at Pouws! We climbed the slope to the right, looking for a place with a view east and north. If Pouws were anywhere near, there’d be smoke. And I knew people from Pouws. There was a girl a little older than I, Lunette. She had an older brother. I’d forgotten his name. They had guested with us at Stoneflight after being caught on the road by storm, oh, five or six years ago at least. I had been only eight or nine at the time. The older brother had ended up challenging Mendost to Game of Two, and Bram had had to put a stop to it by forcing Mendost to apologize for breaking guest privilege. Mendost and Dorto—that was his name!—had been unfriends ever since, though neither of them had taken it further ...

 There was smoke! High, curling over a frowning ridge of stone, black, roiling smoke. No cookfire smoke, that. Horse cocked his ears forward, made a little uneasy sound in his nose, then he and I went farther up the mountain. When we came to the foot of a tall, sentinel stone, I left him there and clambered up the back of it like a tree rat, lying on top ratrug flat the way they do. Below me in the valley lay the Demesne of Pouws with Pouwstown on beyond it and a few farms scattered beyond that. What was burning was quite a large grain storage barn, and who was burning it was a Sentinel I knew very well because he was Mendost’s man. There was a Herald down there, too, and two or three others who were quite familiar to me. The situation was easy to read. Mendost, having made an alliance with King Kelver, was now setting out to even old scores. Which for Mendost meant declaring Game against everyone within six days’ ride of us in any direction. Including Dorto of Pouws.

 Not precisely the time for me to ride into Pouws Demesne and ask for help. Sister of an attacker, betrothed to his ally. Lovely! Thus far I had kept my spirits up, planning each step ahead, but now I wanted to cry. With Mendost on a rampage, there would be no friends within reach. Behind me somewhere was Porvius Bloster, who was just stupid and prideful enough to declare Game against me personally because I’d outwitted him. Below me were Mendost’s men, dangerous as vipers. All I could do was keep riding east, staying well away from the conflict. I tried to recall what I knew about the country east of here. All I could remember was that there were no traveled roads.

 No roads.

 No roads because at the east end of Longbow Mountain is the Forest of Chimmerdong, where nobody goes.

 I remembered the chant:

 Tearful the music, full of woe,

 In the stone deep, fern steep woods of Zoe.

 But a stranger voice sings a sadder song In the sorrow-wild Forest of Chimmerdong.

 “By all the old gods,” I said to horse when I had come back down the rock, “this is the dirtiest trick Mendost has played me yet.” Knowing even as I said it that Mendost had not thought of me at all—never had, much.

 When we had passed all but one of the outlying farms, I rode up to the last farmhouse and traded with the little farmwife there. My suit of red clothing—which I had worn only once, I assured her—for whatever food she could spare that would travel well. She looked over the wet red trews and the striped tunic, brushing it off, admiring it. There was a youngster playing out back who would look well in it in a year or two, and I told her so. She asked if I’d stolen it, and I said I’d be glad to put it on to prove it had been made for me, but she smiled and said no. She said I seemed young to be out on such a large horse, and I said the horse was younger than I. At which she laughed. We ended making a bargain, and I took enough dried meat, roadbread, and dried fruit away to last me for several days, as well as a leather-covered flask full of beer. The beer wouldn’t last long, but the bottle could be filled at any stream. I told her someone might come looking for me, in which case I would be mightily thankful if she said I’d gone northward. She frowned, not at me, nodded, and said she would indeed. She had done well by me, so as I left I turned and offered to sign the place friendly to the wize-art. I don’t know what made me offer it. When it came from my mouth, I expected her not to understand what I was saying, but instead she came up to me, knelt down, and took my hand, clutching it tightly.

 “Art Wize-ard?” she begged me.

 “Learning,” I answered her honestly. “I’m learning.”

 “Bless this house, then,” she said, and I did, taking the star-eye out of my blouse and turning it so that it saw every part of the house and the land about it. “Under the Eye of the Star,” I cried, “whether forest or meadow, under sunlight or shadow. Woman or man, elder or child. Bless all here.” Then nothing would do but she run back in the house and bring me out a sweet cake to eat on my way.

 I did not need to worry about the forest for two days, for that was how long it took to come to the end of Longbow Mountain, through the pass between it and the Tits—two huge, rounded protruberances to the north—and stand at last at the top of that pass looking downward on the endless black fur of the forest. Looking at it, I felt like a tick, like a flea about to burrow onto a very large fustigar. Looking at it, I knew time had come for me and horse to separate. There were no trails. Branches grew low over the ground. I could walk under those trees fairly well. I could not ride.

 So I unsaddled the good creature, smacked him upon his rump, and sent him back the way we had come. I hoped he would come to the farmhouse and stay with the farmwife. I hoped Mendost wouldn’t find him. I hoped Porvius wouldn’t, either, for I could sense that Tragamor’s anger still behind me and coming after me. Perhaps only fantasy, but I thought not.

 The truth was far worse than I imagined.

 6

 Even with the food I’d traded for, my pack wasn’t heavy. I had no gear at all except a knife and firelighter. Not even extra boots. I don’t know how many times Murzy had told me never to go anywhere without extra boots. And underwear. Well, it was her doing. If she’d wanted me to have them, she should have packed them.

 So thinking, I strolled down the rock-strewn slope to the trees. The edge of the forest seemed a little misty, but it didn’t worry me much. Ponds, I thought, giving off a veil of vapor. Then, as I got closer, I saw it wasn’t mist at all but something else. A grayness. A vagueness. The trees looked not quite solid, rather like the reflection you see in a pane of glass looked at sidewise. Odd. When I came beneath the nearest tree, I reached out to feel it.

 My hand went into it. Not far. Not like into soup or mud, but more like into—oh, really punky wood. The kind you can squash between your fingers. A harder push, and my fingers went in farther. When they came out, a great hunk of the tree came with them. The tree creaked and gulped. Like someone does who’s been crying for a long time and tries to catch his breath. Sad. Then I forgot the sorrowful forest, for my hand began to burn like fire, and then my lungs, as though they were full of smoke. I coughed, hacked, turned about, finally ran from the forest to recover myself after some time lying flat on the grassy slope. Not good, Jinian. Not a good place to be. There had to be some other way in, even if one had to go all around the outside of it.

 But something was calling, in that sad, sad voice. Wanting. Begging. I could hear it, not with ears, but inside. As a loving mother might hear a child in trouble when it was too far away to really hear. Or so I told myself.

 I tried again, and was driven out again. Then I began to think and plan sensibly. The gray area wasn’t deep. There was darker, healthy-looking forest beyond it. The burning sensation was strongest beneath the punky trees, so they should be avoided. All up and down the edge I went, hearing that sad pleading, finally finding a place where there were no trees at all, merely a long, flat waste of deadly gray. I rinsed out my kerchief in a nearby stream, tied it around my face, and ran for it.

 It seemed endless. For a time I was sure I’d die there, in the middle of the gray, lungs burned out by whatever it was, but in what was actually a very short time, I fell onto the grass at the other side, heaving, eyes flooding, telling myself I would live, looking back the way I had come.

 The grass and bushes were slimy gray. Only the rocks were hard, and the soil. Up to the place my toes touched the earth, everything was this pale, soft, almost fungus kind of forest, and then quite suddenly, as though to a line drawn by a great pen, the trees were all right again.

 I did not understand it; there was nothing I could do about it. I put it out of my head and starting walking east.

 I’d been in forests before. For the first half-dozen breaths walking under the healthy trees, I still believed that. Then it was clear I had never been in a forest before, not until Chimmerdong.

 It’s not that it was dark. It wasn’t as dark, for example, as the woods down the north-south canyon behind Stoneflight where the sun only reaches for an hour a day. It’s not that it was silent. It was much quieter on the back side of Longbow Mountain. The thing was that the forest seemed to be aware of itself. That sounds silly. It sounded silly to me, too, when I first thought it, but this is what happened.

 There was a bunch of blue flowers, little bells, almost like lady bells with silver centers. They stood in a shaft of sunlight, against a mossy stone. And the tree above them moved a branch, just a little, so that the sun would go on shining on that bunch of flowers. No wind. No. It wasn’t wind. And it wasn’t a tree rat or some other small dweller pushing or pulling. The tree simply did it. It liked the feel of the flowers in the sun, so it moved.

 Well, I had been standing there, watching the flowers, and I noticed all at once that the shadow of the rest of the tree had moved, but that one branch’s shadow had stayed quite still. So, being sensible, as Murzy had suggested, I marked that down in my mind and went on my way, being very careful where I stepped.

 Then there was the waterfall. I heard it long before I saw it, gurgling to itself in a melody that repeated, over and over, five notes in different order but that five over and over in a melancholy, satisfied little gurgle. As I came to the fall, a cone dropped from a tree right into it, wedging itself tightly on a stone. The music changed, a sixth, gargly note added. And all at once a wave came down the stream—now this is a tiny brooklet I’m talking about, no wider than my arm is long—and this wave came down and dislodged the cone and the little fall went back to singing its tune. One wave. Like a horse, twitching its hide when it has a troublesome fly. Twitch—well, that fixes that—then back to whatever it was doing. That particular brook sang that particular sorrowful song, and it didn’t wish to be interrupted.

 Things went on in this way generally, as I walked deeper and deeper in, the sun gradually moving up overhead and then falling behind me. There was no attempt whatsoever to interfere with me. I munched some roadbread as I went, sharing the crumbs with a tree rat and a bunwit that came begging, then went on walking, talking to the animals in a soft voice, amazed that they came along even after the food was gone. There were ups and downs, none of them very steep or long. There were streamlets and small clearings. There were leaping bunches of small horned animals with bright golden behinds, perhaps a kind of forest zeller, and flocks of mournful birds which followed me for half the afternoon. Nothing threatening at all. Except that the forest was quite aware I was in it and would decide what to do about me.

 Well, think about it. Trees that can move their branches, and streams that can make waves. If such things decided they didn’t want me where I was, there were twenty ways they could get rid of me quickly and quietly without so much as a bloody splash. I should have been frightened to death but wasn’t. The star-eye was hanging on its thong, visibly bobbing against my chest. That, I was sure, was what Murzy had meant.

 Eventually, it began to get dark. There was a mossy stretch of ground surrounded by small trees, edged by bunches of the blue, silver-centered bells and with a tiny clear pool in a rock basin. No point looking further. The place might have been made for me.

 There was dried fruit and bread to eat, water to drink. There was the rain cape to lie down and roll up in. Sleep came at once, as though someone had given me shivery-green, then there was a complicated dream about the old gods and I wakened up to find that my bed was taking me somewhere.

 The small trees around the moss bed had raised up the mosses, stepped out on their roots, and were going somewhere. In the starlight, the little pool tilted silver into my eyes. The flower bells swung. We moved along under branches, among big trees, the moss bed rocking gently as we went. Wize-ard, I cautioned myself. Either the thing knew I was there or it didn’t. If it did, my making a fuss would not improve matters. If it didn’t, remaining quiet might keep it in ignorance of my presence. As Murzy and Tinder-my-hand had so often counseled, I remained invisible. We rolled on through the forest, a curiously hypnotic movement, not at all threatening. I may have fallen asleep for a while. When I noticed the motion next we were climbing down into a deep round hollow. The trees around us were larger than any I have ever seen, like huge castle towers. Down we went, and down again, and at last came to rest in the very bottom of the hollow, the little pool quivering then becoming still to reflect one star at me as in a mirror. I stayed right where I was without moving. It was warm, dry, and still dark. No sense roaming around in the night.

 “Person,” said a voice, whispering. “Person?”

 “Child?” asked the—another?—voice, also whispering.

 “Child person?” said the first. “Star-eye?”

 It would have been impolite not to answer. “I am here,” I said, leaving it at that. Least said, Murzy often told me. Least said, least promised.

 All this time, I was looking about for the source of the voice or voices, up and down, peering into the shadows. The starlight was very bright, the shadows very dark. When I saw the face at last, I didn’t believe I was seeing it. Then the lips moved, and I heard the whisper.

 “Are you there?”

 “Yes,” I breathed, open-mouthed, staring at the face. It was made up of leafy branches against the sky. Each eye had a star reflecting in it. The lips were two twisty branches. It was all there, even a cascade of leafy hair above and to the sides. Each time it spoke, the mouth moved, the eyes blinked. “Can you tell me what you are? If it’s not impolite to ask?” I whispered.

 “I ...” whispered the voice.

 “We ...” whispered another one. I looked over my shoulder to confront another face, then saw that I was surrounded by them. There were at least a dozen. “It!” asserted a third. “All,” said a fourth. “Forest.”

 “This forest?” I asked. “I ...”

 “We ...”

 “Every ...”

 “All forest,” the first repeated. “Broken. All, all forest.” The stars that reflected its eyes glittered in dark, leafy hollows. It was through these eye hollows I saw the shadow come like some great sea creature, all tentacles and flow, reaching out of the dark, covering the stars, covering the light. Suddenly the face was obscured, the stars of its eyes put out. The face vanished. Its component parts were still there, but it was like a cloud face which vanishes when you look away, all the subtle modelings changed, deranged, lost.

 “Help ...” I heard a whisper, so softly I could hardly hear it, the forest vanishing in shadow.

 “Hellllp ...” A last, faint hiss of the leaves, crying such sorrow that I wanted to weep.

 The shadow flowed, coiled, sent its tentacles down searching for something. At which point I lay down, rolled up in my rain cape once more, and pretended to be any tiny, furry thing that came to mind. The small trees picked up my moss bed and slithered it between the giant trunks, up the slope, and into the more ordinary forest. Behind us in the hollow, I could feel the shadow gathering, darker than dark, filling the hollow, looking for something. For me? For whatever had spoken from the forest?

 The forest had wanted to talk to me. Something else had prevented it.

 Now what would a Wize-ard do about that? The very young Wize-ard, me, did nothing at all until morning. I fretted a bit, but only a bit, because the shadow kept lurking about and it seemed safer not to think at all. Considering water instead of thinking put me to sleep. When morning came, the shadow was gone, but so was any sense of the forest presence that had been there the night before. I ate my boring breakfast and thought very hard.

 Something here. Something I’d never heard of. Something vast and ... well, helpless. Helpless. Unable to help itself. Well now.

 If I were unable to help myself, needing someone else to do something for me, it would be to do something I could not do myself. Self-evident. Right? Right, I assured myself. Now, what could one young person—child person—do that a forest could not? A forest that could move its own branches and make waves in its own streams. I thought about that, lying there on my back, staring up at the sun dapple. All around me was growth and green. All around me was birdsong and rustle as little things moved here and there. The tree rat sat on my foot to beg crumbs. Seeing this, a gray bird wafted over on silent wings and demanded a share, which the bunwit disputed. He and tree rat owned me. No mistake about that. Crumb sources were not that easy to come by. All about me was bright, growing, green—and sad. Overlaid with a terrible melancholy that was almost more than one could bear.

 What could I do?

 I could leave. I could move out of the forest and go elsewhere. I could go away, taking the knowledge with me that something here needed help. After lengthy consideration, that was all I could come up with.

 I said, moderately loudly, “I’ll do what I can to help, but you have to realize, I’m not sure what’s needed, and it may take a long time.” I waited.

 The hush was unbroken. Sighing, I got up, put on my pack, and turned eastward once more.

 7

 A brown bird gave the warning, erupting from their path before I heard them myself. First a bird scream, then feathers diving past me to make me stop right where I was, hardly breathing, then the sound of voices and something large blundering about in the woods.

 “Fine tracker you are,” growled a voice. Porvius Bloster.

 “I am not a tracker,” hissed the other. Oh, what a cold hiss. “As you know. No Pursuivant was available.”

 “Basilisk, then,” Porvius said unwillingly. “Fine Basilisk you are. Here we are, lost in this wilderness, and you keep saying the girl is here. Where? We’ve been wandering for a day!”

 Another voice, this one recognizable. One of the three men who had been with Porvius when he’d captured me. “No trail down that way, Bloster. Want me to try up the stream?”

 “Well, Basilisk?” Porvius sneered. “Shall he try up the stream?”

 They were separated from me by a screen of trees, close set, their branches tangled together with briar. I stayed frozen in place, not thinking, only listening, letting myself be as silent and invisible as possible. Basilisks have the Talents of Reading, Beguilement, and Shifting. I have heard the Reading and Beguilement are strongest when the creature is in its lizard shape, and strongest of all if it can fix you with its eyes, but that did not mean it could not Read me now if it stopped arguing with Porvius and scanned the area around. Away past the men several tree rats started a violent quarrel, throwing nuts and chittering at each other. Under cover of that noise, I slipped to the ground and lay there imagining I was vegetation. “Yes, try up the stream,” the Basilisk hissed. “And you, Kinsman Porvius, put sweeter words in your mouth or I’m back to the Demesne to have a few words with your sister while letting you hunt your quarry on your own.”

 “So far I might have done as well,” said Bloster. “ ‘Twas you said the girl was not with her brother Mendost. I still think we’ll find her there.”

 “The farmwife had seen someone like her,” the Basilisk hissed. “Seen her not long before. And in the child’s mind the picture was clear of the girl riding east toward this forest. And in the woodman’s mind the memory of a loose horse, coming from this direction. What more would you, Porvius Bloster? A map? A chart? The creature is here.”

 “Then why haven’t we found her?”

 “Because all around is a confusion of thought, small things, animals, birds, a constant commotion. Once we find a quiet glade, once night comes and the small creatures sleep—why, then we will find her. Then I will enjoy the hunt.” I could imagine the thing licking its lips.

 By Towering Tamor, I could not help thinking, but they must have been on my trail only hours after I had gone if Bloster had had to get himself to some Demesne to find this Basilisk, then backtrack the way I had come. They had not dallied! He must want me very badly to have ridden so hard, I thought. While I was ambling along the side of Longbow Mountain, he must have been lathering his horses to get somewhere. “Why bother with her?” one of the men asked, echoing my thought. “It’s Mendost you’re after.”

 “Mendost was my Game,” he growled. “Mine and no others. But when I returned to the Demesne, I found a message awaiting me there concerning this Jinian. It seems she has become larger Game than I knew. There are those—we will not mention names—who want her dead. They want her gone. They want her head sent up to them to verify I tell them no tales. There are those—still nameless—to whom I have sworn certain allegiances, let us say.

 “Even if this were not so, I would have sufficient cause for personal enmity. If you are asked why, say because she poisoned me!”

 He lied. I had done no such thing, though I could have killed him while he lay there. Had he thought of that? Certainly not! I heard the Basilisk draw a hissing breath and realized I had been thinking—clearly, angrily.

 Consider water, I told myself desperately. Limpid, cool, gently sloshing to and fro in a pool, slosh, ripple, slosh, cool, sliding, slosh.

 “I thought for a moment I sensed her,” the creature said, “but it was only some fish ...” And then they moved away, up the stream, where I knew the forest had opened a path for them. Lovely forest, trying to protect me. How far could it go in doing things without drawing the shadow to investigate? Little as I wanted to fall to that Basilisk, still less did I like the idea of that shadow.

 I learned how far the forest would go when the voices retreated past hearing. There was suddenly a daft bunwit at my side tugging at me, whumping off a few paces, then turning to tug at me again. As clear a game of follow-me as had ever been played. This was my own, crumb-fed bunwit; I had no fear of him nor any now of the forest, but much fear of that creature which had gone hissing off up the rivulet, so I followed. We went back toward that same deep, hidden hollow of huge trees, this time me on my own two feet struggling down the slope. “Murzy,” I mumbled, “I wish you were here.” She would have some commonsensical thing to tell me that would make things go more smoothly. Tess Tinder-my-hand would give me a little lecture, possibly irrelevant. Cat would be silent and urge me to be the same. Bets and Sarah would argue about what to do next. And Margaret Foxmitten would smile a secret smile. It was my own style to grumble, so I grumbled. I can admit it now. The grumbling covered fear. Even when Mendost used to threaten to drop me from great heights, I had been no more afraid than of that Basilisk.

 The hollow bottom was no less mysterious by day. The trees were great towers, lunging upward until all their tops drew to one point, a tiny circle of distant sky. Giant rocks stood among them, tilted centerward like heads of listeners, and dark lay deep and gentle among them all.

 Tug, went bunwit. Tug, tug, hop. We went between two of the large rocks, turned left, and found ourselves confronted with a ladder. Very neat it was, sides straight as string, little steps all in a row, fading upward into invisibility, becoming no more than a spider’s web against the great trunk far above. Bump, went bunwit against my bottom. Up, it was saying. I couldn’t believe it.

 Resolving to be unafraid when hauled aloft by Mendost and one can do nothing about it is one thing. Resolving to climb a ladder that looks like spidersilk into a height so monstrous even an Armiger might take fright is something else again. I stood where I was, unmoving. Bump, went the bunwit again, impatiently. I stood, mouth open.

 Far back in the forest a noise was building, loud shouts and calls, rather the sound of men on a hunt. I knew the Basilisk had caught scent of me somehow. Perhaps some mental trace I’d been unable to cover. Perhaps they had blundered across a place I had actually been, and from there it would be like a fustigar trailing prey. Part of me knew this. The other part stood at the foot of the ladder, paralyzed. Bump, went bunwit yet again, frantic.

 Far up the trunk a speck emerged from the foliage and began to run down the trunk toward me. When it came very close, I saw it was a tree rat, running head downward as they do, all its teeth exposed as it chittered at me. It bit at my hair, tugged upward, growling angrily between its teeth. The bunwit pushed once more from below, desperately, and near in the forest came the sound of a horn.

 The paralysis broke. I scrambled for the ladder, realizing it would be far better to fall to a splattery death than into the hands of the Basilisk—or of Porvius Bloster. Below me the bunwit leapt into the circling trees, and I heard him blundering away, thrashing about, making a great deal of noise. Above me the tree rat chittered and growled, tugging from time to time, moving below me to nip my behind when I seemed to lag. We approached the first limb, and I foolishly looked down, only to lean into the ladder, clasping it like a lover, mouth open and dry. The tree rat would have none of this. It bit me, quite hard, and cursed at me in an almost recognizable language. In another moment we came to a hollow in the trunk, and I was urged within. There was a slithery, scraping noise, and the ladder moved in front of the hollow, going up. When the bottom of it reached the level of my feet, it stopped.

 It was no mechanical thing, that ladder, but something grown by the forest itself. Even while I lay in the tree hollow, panting, heart thubbing away like a drum, I knew the forest had grown the ladder for some purpose of its own. Then the sound of shouts came up from below, and I risked a peek over the edge, half-masked by a leafy spray. Setting his mighty claws into the bark of the tree was the Basilisk. Even from this distance I could see his long tongue dart out to taste the air. He tasted me. Those red, burning eyes were looking up, here, there, wanting me to look into them so he could Read me, Beguile me, bring me into his jaws ... I started to go out and climb down.

 The tree rat bit me again. It was getting to be a game with him, or he had acquired a taste for me. Chittering, he threatened me onto the ladder and we climbed once more, this time the ladder moving up with us on it, a slow, easy glide into the heights. After a time I merely clung, too tired to climb, the tree rat deciding it, too, preferred to ride. We ascended together, branches and leaf clusters passing us by: great, pale bunches of flowers circled by flimsy green-winged flying things, rising into view and then dropping below. From far, far down the trunk shouts rose up, then a great howling hiss. “Zzzt,” said the tree rat, beginning to climb again. Evidently the Basilisk had gained the bottom branches.

 At last we came to the end, a place where the ladder curved over and disappeared into a hollow in the tree, presumably dropping its incredible length down inside. We moved onto a branch that zigged, and another that zagged, climbing upward always, toward the sun. The wind was making gusty noises. I realized this for some time before noticing that the gusts did not move the leaves. The tree rat prudently fell behind, nipping at me to show I was to go on. There was no earth any longer, only this cloud of leaves with the sky above. A gust came again, loudly, and I thrust my head above the leaves to be buffeted over the head by a feather.

 It knocked me down. There was a great “Keeraw!” and the wing the feather belonged to moved aside. Golden eyes the size of washtubs looked down at me, and one great talon moved to hold me tightly to the branch. It was not necessary. I was holding quite tightly on my own.

 The thing—the thing was a flitchhawk, really. One the size of a small keep or a large barn, with wings like roofs flapping. The thing reached out with its left foot and grabbed at a passing cloud, then the same with its right foot. Then again. Remember the old story I told you of, the one Tinder-my-hand had learned from a woman in Betand, many years ago, and told to me? The one about Little Star and the flitchhawk? I couldn’t help it. I had to say, “What are you doing, flitchhawk, grimbling and grambling that way?”

 And the flitchhawk said, “Grimbling and grambling to find the Daylight Bell, Little Star.”

 Well, what could I do? I mean, the story was what the story was. The next line was what it was, and so I said it. “Well then, let me help you, flitchhawk, and I’ll grimble and gramble, too.” So I stood up on that branch and grabbed for the clouds that went by, left hand, right hand, and as soon as I was standing up, the flitchhawk grabbed me.

 “Now I’ve got you, Little Star!” it screamed. Well, it certainly did. Of course, he’d had me the whole time, so to speak, so I went on with the story as though it had been a nursery play, trying not to remember how far down was.

 “Now why did you do that, old flitchhawk?” I cried, giving it the next line. “Just when you grabbed me, I caught sight of the Daylight Bell right there, behind that cloud.” My voice trembled terribly, but the flitchhawk didn’t seem to notice.

 “Where? Where?” he cried, just as though it wasn’t exactly what he was supposed to say. “Let me see,” as he sat me down on the branch. Well, I had no rope, no nothing to tangle him in, and he was too big for that anyhow, so I took the star from my neck and wrapped the thong around one talon, shouting at the top of my lungs, “Now I’ve got you, flitchhawk. Daylight Bell in treetop can’t be. Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie, now give me boon or else you die!” Which was about as silly a thing as I have ever said under any circumstance. This whole thing was not sensible. I was quite aware of that, even at the time. One might have thought it was a kind of magic, perhaps, with the exact words having some esoteric meaning, but that was not the sense of it. It was rather more like a play in which the players are required to know the cues and give the correct responses before they can move on to the next act. So, I merely went on with it in a kind of delirium, not learning until a long time later that it made a terrible kind of sense if one only knew what was really going on.

 “What boon will you have, child?” asked the flitchhawk, and it sounded to me similar to the voice of the forest, rather sorrowful and very quiet. It had quit grimbling and grambling and was standing very still, great wings outstretched, the sun coming down through them. He didn’t need to ask me twice.

 “Please, sir or ma’am,” I begged, “will you take me out of here and save me from Porvius Bloster and the Basilisk?”

 Which explains how I came to be delivered to Vorbold’s House in Xammer in a manner that made my life there somewhat a problem for the next several years.

 8

 As Murzy said to me from time to time, “A little pomp is no great matter, but ostentation should be avoided.” And then you will recall her counsel on the matter of invisibility. And finally, you may know something I did not of the nature of girls. I met girls for the first time at Xammer.

 I was delivered at dusk on the roof of Vorbold’s place by the giant flitchhawk. Because it was dusk and because it was the roof, only a few people saw it. One was the gatekeeper, who came lurching up the stairs, out of breath and furious, to berate the person responsible for such an outrage. Such deliveries were improper. During her attempt to say so, she was knocked down by a departing stroke of the flitchhawk’s wing. She then dragged me before Queen Vorbold herself, who demanded to know the name of the Gamesman—Dragon or Colddrake, she presumed—who had broken custom by Gaming, that is, Shapeshifting, in the town of Xammer.

 I told her honestly that so far as I knew, the creature that had brought me to Xammer was only itself, a pure flitchhawk of giant kind, no Gamesman in Shifted shape. When she pursued the question, I told her something of my adventures—leaving out quite a lot, including anything about the forest asking for my help, as I realized even then she would not understand it and would much resent that fact. I did leave in some parts about Porvius Bloster. That could be checked. The College of Heralds keeps a record of every official challenge, and the business between and among Porvious, Mendost, and Dorto of Pouws should have been open, public, and official enough for anyone’s notice.

 Seeing no diminution of the disbelief in her face, I thought to give her a convenient way out. “Of course, Gameswoman,” I said, “someone may have taken that shape without my knowledge. I am only an ignorant girl. That could have been possible, but if so, it was without my knowledge.”

 Since she could think of no other questions to ask, she drew herself up and demanded, “Where is your baggage?”

 I’m afraid that made me disgrace myself by crying. It was precisely the right thing to have done, for unlike girls who arrived in flitchhawk talons at the supper hour, girls who arrived in tears without baggage were familiar ground to Queen Vorbold. She arranged for me to have clothing and a room at once, and for a message to be sent to King Kelver and another to Joramal Trandle.

 So far, no occasion for dismay. However, my arrival had been seen by one or two others, and from them rumor spread throughout the School. Jinian had been delivered by Dragon from Dragon’s Fire Demesne, King Kelver disdaining the customs of Xammer. Jinian had been delivered by a tame beast from a circus, since she was actually the daughter of a pawnish acrobat by some Gamesman of note. She had been dropped out of a cloud by a Wizard, reason unspecified. It didn’t matter what the story was. Whatever story was told made me an object of speculation, something bizarre and questionable. Any such thing could be either interesting or suspect.

 They would have been even more interested had they been present to hear the words of the flitchhawk as it set me down. “This has been a small boon, child,” it said. “I will owe you another. The ways of the sky are mine, treetop and cloud, sunlight and starlight, wind and rain. If you have need there, call on me.” Whatever the girls of Vorbold’s House might have said of my arrival, they had not heard that. I was not sure I believed it myself.

 At any rate, that was the way in which I entered Vorbold’s House.

 What can I tell you about the place? It was quite luxurious. We were pampered with good food and clean laundry, excellent wines and occasional entertainment. The classes—well, compared to what the dams had been teaching me, the classes were not much. After only a few days, I realized they were not supposed to fit us to take any major part in Game.

 We were taught crafty things, calligraphy and flower arranging; costume design and stitchery—we needed to be able to supervise the making of all the clothes needed in a Demesne, including all the Game costumes involved—and then how to walk and sit in the costumes we had designed. And conversation. Hours and hours of conversation. We spent ages learning to make graceful compliments, and I was reminded of Cat Candleshy drilling me before my talk with Joramal.

 We learned precedence and protocol, who would walk first in procession, who would sit by whom at dinner. We learned the Index. We learned a lot of cartography, the names and locations of Demesnes, which ones were allied with which and which should be avoided. (At all costs stay away from the Dukedom of Betand, the High Demesne, and a new Demesne northeast of Betand ruled by the Witch Huldra.) We learned a good bit about contracts, since most of us would be contracted for in one way or another.

 There was a class called The Way of Prudence, which I assumed to be something literary (we were encouraged to read books, since it kept us out of trouble) but found to be the study of all the various ways one might duck for cover. Things like determining whether a dangerous level of tension existed and getting oneself out of it—excusing oneself to go to the privy, for example. And how to appear so stupid and generally inadequate that enemies would pay no attention to one. And how to set up a ransom fund for oneself as part of a contract, just in case prudence didn’t work. Part of this class was dedicated to things like stopping bleeding or fixing broken bones temporarily until a Healer could be found.

 And, surprisingly, we had a class in babies. I hadn’t thought of such a thing at all until I came to Vorbold’s House, but it made as much sense as many of the other things we learned. Queen Vorbold got the babies from the town around. I very quickly adopted one for myself whom no one else wanted. He reminded me of Grompozzle in a way—that same sad-animal look to his eyes. I think his own mama whapped him entirely too much for his good, but we got along quite well. It was expected we would all have babies as part of whatever alliance we had, so we were taught some few useful things about that—including an absolute prohibition against using midwives. Midwives can see into the future of the babies they deliver, and those who will not get a soul, they do not allow to live. The great Demesnes do not care much for souls; they care more for power. I marked that down to ask Murzy about. If I had a child who would never have a soul, I think I’d not want it to go on living, contract or no contract. I determined to use a midwife if the need arose, prohibition or not.

 None of it was very ... well, intellectually challenging. I wanted to know about the dangerous new alliances, and who Huldra was, and what we might choose to do if we didn’t make an alliance for ourselves. I was politely hushed and told none of that was relevant to my future. It was no wonder the girls occupied themselves with silliness. There was certainly nothing very serious for them to talk about. None of it was the kind of thing the dams were teaching me. That had reach to it. Even the easiest kinds of magic have oddly curled edges to them, places where the understanding goes away into some other dimension and one has to intuit meaning and draw similarities from complexity. This is called simply “connecting”, and it is anything but simple.

 Some of the girls, whatever they may have heard about my arrival, offered me politeness, which I respected. None offered friendship, which I understood. Most of these girls had been in school since they were four or five. They had no experience of the world at all. Their ideas of reality were oddly at variance with the world I knew, sometimes more romantic and notional, other times more brutal. All their opinions were formed by others, not by themselves, and so they suspended their attitudes toward me, waiting for someone to tell them whether I should be accepted or not. None of them decided for themselves. They were in Xammer to remove them from the Game until some good alliance could be made, and each of them would take her own positions eventually through some Gamesman or other. So, all their intelligence was bent on capturing or holding the interest of a major Gamesman, and the talk of the powers of this one or the Talents of that one and the wealth of some other one occupied all their time and attention. Some of them had Talents of their own, which they were forbidden to use in Xammer and discouraged from making much of wherever they might be, for most Gamesmen would value them as subject allies or breeders but would reject them as Gameswomen. Still, many of them had Talents. I had none. It did not make me feel any more secure.

 I didn’t realize all this at once or even very soon after arriving. Much of it I did not put together until much later when I was older. It was all strange, this place, and I knew nothing at all. I was gauche. I broke the custom every time I opened my mouth or took a step. I asked “why” in class instead of “who”. I said things were “interesting” rather than “potent”. (That was a favorite word at Vorbold’s House that year, “potent”.) I ate because I was hungry, whether or not the foods being served were in fashion. I refused a taste of a dream crystal that Banila of Clourne offered me—she had a case of them, all colors, which had been given her by a kinswoman. It seemed to me then, and now, a dangerously stupid gift for a girl, but then, Banila was a dangerously stupid girl. And once the novelty of having clothes of my own wore off, I couldn’t maintain much interest in the narrow distinctions of dress that the girls occupied themselves with. I couldn’t make myself believe it was important to wear stockings that were embroidered with names of prominent Gamesmen! Or draggle my hair over my ears in rattails. I thought it made them look like fools, but they all did it.

 I might have been considered merely an oddity who was not worth cultivating. However, my gauchery was not the reason—or not the whole reason—the first half year in Vorbold’s House was very lonely.

 That was occasioned by the arrival, soon after my own, of Dedrina-Lucir, daughter of a Demesne I must have passed closely in approaching Chimmerdong Forest. It lay just east of the Tits (which were called, according to Dedrina-Lucir, Mother Massif) and a little north of the route I had taken. I had never heard of it before. Daggerhawk Demesne, it was called. Its device was a flitchhawk impaled by a blade. The manner of my arrival came to Dedrina-Lucir’s attention early—I had some reason to suppose that she had arrived already aware of it—and she remarked that in Daggerhawk they saw fit to make flitchhawks the prey rather than the other way ‘round. “Rather than be dangled like a dead bunwit,” were her exact words. This led to some interesting nicknames for me, ending at last in the one everyone adopted, “Dangle-wit”. My place of origin was called “Dangle-wit Demesne”, and my betrothed’s place was known as “Dangle-fire Demesne”.

 Needless to say, Dedrina-Lucir never put a foot wrong. She knew instinctively what utensil to use at table, which wine to praise and which to deprecate—or, if she did not, everyone preferred what Dedrina preferred, so it made no difference. What Dedrina wore became the fashion, and what Dedrina said became the rule. Dedrina, I soon learned to my anger and confusion, had ruled that Jinian was to be the butt of all their little jokes and pranks. Jinian was the enemy. They were “us”, and Jinian was “her”.

 It was more or less the same kind of treatment I’d had at home, but that didn’t stop my crying into my pillow. Thank all the gods old and new that Vorbold’s House set a premium on privacy and we all had rooms of our own. My room had no visitors; it was mine alone. I preferred it that way, and as I settled into it and became quieter in my mind, I realized Dedrina was making it necessary for me to do what I should have done anyhow: follow Murzy’s advice and become truly invisible.

 To go about one’s business, Murzy had said, in such a manner that no one notices.

 Simply not to hear the nicknames and hawk calls. Simply not to notice the mimicking behind the back, the faces and sneers. Simply not to react …

 To dress so that no one notices. To arrange one’s hair so that no one notices. To study the classroom matter so that every answer could be calm, correct, and without any excitement whatsoever. To show the Gamesmistresses precisely the right shade of deference to prevent resentment without one jot more to provoke fondness. To eat whatever was offered, without comment. I could hear Cat Candleshy reading off the recipe for invisibility, her low, calm voice going on and on, repeating; never tiring, never moving as she spoke. I could see Bets Battereye’s hands gesticulating, her rubbery face showing me proper facial expressions as she told me how, when, under what conditions to wear each one. I could hear Murzy saying, “There, there, chile. ‘Tis only a time, and a time. Nothing permanent.”

 And I worked at it. The first month or two were very hard, for there were falsities presented as truths and idiocies got up in the guise of facts, both by the girls and by the Gamesmistresses. I kept wanting to shout or argue or bite someone, but as I worked at it more and more intensely, it became easier. Not only easier, but fascinating. There were shades to it, like shades of green and blue and gray in water, shifting, none one could put name to. So there were shades to my invisibility, nameless shades, varying states of unnoticeability. And success, as well.

 I knew the first success one day at midday meal. We were always seated with some ceremony at the daised tables in the great hall in order to learn to eat gracefully in public, since most of us would have to do that in our future lives as hostesses to some Demesne or other. I was looking across the room with a pleasant, meaningless expression on my face, one that would attract no eye, evoke no response from anyone. There was a tight feeling at the back of my neck, and I looked up to catch Dedrina-Lucir’s eyes fixed on me, her face blind with fury. Not merely ill-temper or the spitefulness I had noticed among many of the girls. No. Fury. Rage.

 I had done nothing to her to occasion such anger; therefore she had brought it with her when she came. Later that evening, I asked one of the Gamesmistresses, casually, as though it didn’t matter, if Dedrina-Lucir were not related to Porvius Bloster. Oh yes, I was told. Dedrina was his sister’s daughter. His thalan.

 “Daggerhawk Demesne, then,” I said, “is Bloster’s place?”

 Oh, yes, yes, indeed it was.

 So. Mendost had slipped the Game of Dedrina’s thalan, Bloster. Then the girl had come prepared to fight me, but through acting invisible, I was slipping her Game. Or more accurately, I had slipped her Game thus far. I wondered how far this magic of invisibility would take me and was not such a fool as to imagine there would be no further challenge. There was no mistaking the intent on her face. Though Gaming was forbidden in Xammer, Dedrina-Lucir would Game when it suited her. Loneliness, I thought, had been spiced with danger.

 However long the danger might go on, my time of loneliness was at an end. At the supper hour shortly thereafter, I was given a visitors chit. The visitors rooms were off the courtyard, and we might meet there with women relatives or friends. You can imagine my feelings when I found the room occupied by Margaret Foxmitten, her beautiful face glowing in the lamplight, and Sarah Shadowsox, looking up when I entered with her alert, startled expression which always reminded me of some small forest creature. They were there! They had arrived! Little got said and less decided. All they did was hold me, pat my shoulders, and say “There, there.” All the tears I had bottled in half a year came out.

 Thereafter we managed much talk. Cat and Tess Tinder-my-hand were on their way to Xammer. It was expected that Murzy and Bets Battereye would manage to get there before the Season of Storms. Margaret and Sarah had already found a house in the town; both had informed Vorbold’s House that they were the servants of Jinian. As such, they could come to me—or I to them under certain circumstances—privately and without trouble. Some such fiction was necessary. Best of all, I was no longer alone.

 “Joramal Trandle was furious that Mendost left you to Bloster that way,” said Margaret, her eyes sparkling at the memory. “He said things to Mendost which would have burned your ears to hear. Mendost, of course, was scarcely troubled by it, but it did many of the rest of us good. Joramal has offered us a stipend to stay in Xammer to serve you, and he will visit you in due course to see that all is well with you. And now, you must tell us the truth of how you came to Xammer!”

 Which I did. Which they disbelieved.

 So I told it again, in exhaustive detail. I don’t think they really believed it then, either, though there was something about the tale that implied something to them it didn’t mean to me. They asked over and over about the giant flitchhawk, and I told them.

 “Why?” I said at last. “What do you think it means?”

 Margaret shook her head. “Too soon to say, Jinian Footseer. The story of Little Star and the Daylight Bell is a wize-art story, a seven-dam story, passed down and passed down, and to have it come true in that way, well ... Murzy may have some idea about it. If not, we may be told.” But they would not say when, or by whom.

 Margaret and Sarah had brought a horse with them, a horse for me. A real horse. A better horse than the one I had borrowed from Porvius Bloster. Joramal Trandle had sent it. It did not trip or stumble, and I immediately named it Surefoot. Having the animal meant I could ride out through the town of Xammer, even into the surrounding area, which was beneath the Game ban. School servants were always within sight whenever the students rode, but they were there for our protection. Dedrina, seeing me enjoying myself, sneered that I must take care: Basilisks were said to frequent the fields where I had been riding. I smiled and thanked her, promptly reporting her remark to Queen Vorbold, together with a quiet comment concerning the School’s negligence in tolerating vermin in the area. She took me to mean Basilisks, which in one sense I did. I had been careful to attribute the rumor to its originator, so for a time after that, Dedrina was quieter, and angrier.

 At last, coincident with the first storms of the season, Murzy and Bets arrived, Murzy with her gray hair in tangles and her shawl every which a way, Bets as busy and bustling as ever, and we were seven once more. We celebrated my fifteenth year with a cakes-and-wine party, and Murzy demanded a strict accounting of the year I had been without her. She did not seem displeased when she had heard it.

 “Well, chile, we will believe that bit about the flitchhawk until someone proves it not so. I feel it was not a Gamesman in Shifted shape, though we may not discount that idea entirely. Some great Shifter could have done it. I’ve heard of those that could.”

 “What about the Schooling?” said Bets. “How does it go?”

 So I told her what I had learned, and they made faces at most of it. I told them about Banila’s dream crystals, and they were horrified, so I talked about classes. We did have a good Gamesmistress to teach cartography, mannish and gruff though she was, and I had learned much about the world of the True Game, and even some things—though no one would vouch for their accuracy—of the world beyond. When I spoke of Dedrina, however, Murzy gave the others a cross look and said, “This isn’t necessary, now is it, dams?”

 “It’s all right, Murz,” I said. “I can handle her. Truly. I just get quieter and quieter, and she gets madder and madder.”

 “I know,” said Murzy, frowning.

 “Such increasing anger is dangerous, Jinian,” said Cat. “Dedrina-Lucir comes from a line of Basilisks. The one you saw in the forest was probably near kin. All the females of that line have been Basilisks of great power for seven generations. We have reason to think she has come into her Talent long since.”

 I thought it over. She had certainly Beguiled the girls and mistresses in the School. She had not done any Reading of others’ minds that I knew of, but Reading was both forbidden in Xammer and easy to detect, whereas simple Beguilement was often impossible to tell from natural attractiveness. “She warned me to be careful where I ride, for Basilisks roam the fields outside the town.”

 “Ah,” said Murzy thoughtfully. “So she warned you, did she? And I suppose some at the School have heard of this warning.”

 “The girls before whom it was said, and Queen Vorbold,” I said, wondering now whether I should have told the Housemistress.

 Murzy merely nodded. “The fields outside the town, but still inside the ban?”

 “Oh, yes,” I replied. “Still inside the ban.”

 “Then I think we may expect an attack,” said Murzy, not seeming greatly troubled. “Dedrina-Lucir was announcing covert Game against you, Jinian Footseer.”

 “She’s been Gaming against me ever since she arrived,” I complained. “Without announcement.”

 “Well, perhaps. And perhaps what she has done up till now could be considered only girlish temper? Ah? Or mere human nature? But if she does as I expect she will, then it is truly Game, and knowing her people, I doubt it will be done in accordance with honor. She will Game you to death, but she will not tell you why, and I think Bloster’s quarrel with Mendost is not sufficient reason. Well and well, Jinian Footseer. Let me think on it a bit more.”

 Then is when I should have told her of Bloster’s words in Chimmerdong, but to tell the truth they had slipped my mind. What had come immediately after had been so wildly strange as to drive other thoughts away, so I did not remember. Instead, I left her to her cogitations, and went back to my classes, a good bit more secure and happy than I had been in some time, though somewhat troubled, too, remembering that look in Dedrina’s eyes.

 9

 When next I met with the six dams, they told me their considered opinion: Cat, laconically; Margaret, calmly; Sarah, shyly; Bets, at some length and in great detail; Tess Tinder-my-hand, with homely examples and memories of ancient times—well, older times, to be sure—nodding her white head and losing track of what she was saying; and Murzy, firmly, expecting no nonsense. The sense of all their talk was that I must bring matters to the boil. Nothing would be served by delaying tactics. We needed to find out why Dedrina-Lucir and the whole of Daggerhawk Demesne seemed intent upon the demise of one insignificant girl.

 So, we plotted a bit, and I went back to the School, riding my gift horse and feeling kindly about King Kelver for sending him, though I knew it was probably Joramal’s idea. When I arrived, I went straight to my own Gamesmistress—each of us had one assigned to assist us with personal matters; mine was Gamesmistress Armiger Joumerie, the geographer—and told her I would like to be reassigned at table.

 “And why is that, Gameswoman?” she demanded. “Have you suffered some fancied slight at the mouths of your table mates? It so, we can resolve the matter.”

 “Not at all, Gamesmistress,” I said, staying as cool and unemotional as possible. “I have become aware of an unGamesmanlike tension between Dedrina-Lucir and me. As is natural, the students are taking sides. This distracts them from their studies, and needless to say, it distracts me from mine. During the day, we have no reason to meet. It is, rather, avoided between us. Thus we have little chance to work out whatever the difficulty may be. I thought if we were forced into close proximity at a time when honorable and merely social discourse is—”

 “Stop, stop,” she shushed me, waving her hands. Gamesmistress Joumerie was a very large woman, with great shoulders and breasts. I have never been able to imagine her as an Armiger, Flying, and perhaps she had grown too heavy for it. She was very formidable, however. “Stop. You go on and on with this eloquence, which all boils down to what?”

 “If we’re forced to sit at table together, maybe I can find out what the problem is.”

 “Well, why in the name of the Hundred Devils didn’t you say so? I’ll speak to her table mistress.”

 So, in a day or two, there was a general reassignment of tables, and I found myself at the same one as Dedrina-Lucir. She had been stripped of some of her closest followers in the reassignment and some new students had been included, so we started on more or less equal footing.

 I had thought she might wait a day or two before attacking, but evidently her anger would not let her. At the end of the first meal, she slitted her eyes at me over the fruit and said, “You’re the girl they call Dangle-wit, aren’t you?”

 “I am the Gameswoman you call Dangle-wit,” I replied quietly, smiling at the pawn who was serving the soup. “Though it is a discourteous thing to call any fellow student by other than her correct name. I am sure you will learn that, however, if you stay here at Vorbold’s House long enough. They are excellent teachers of courtesy and Gamesmanlike behavior.” I then smiled at her, a very open, friendly smile, one I had practiced with Bets for at least an hour. That smile was faultless, and I made sure the table mistress saw it.

 Dedrina’s eyes narrowed. I saw the lizard for a moment. Almost I heard the hiss. “I thought it was your name,” she said. “Everyone uses it.”

 “Everyone you have Beguiled to do so uses it,” I said. “Though I’m sure you have not intended to influence them in this way. I understand it is terribly difficult not to use one’s Talent when one is accustomed to it. Being a Basilisk must be very difficult for you. Not having any Talent myself, I can only accept what I am told by others.”

 These well-rehearsed words were triple-edged. It told those at table she was Basilisk, though she had chosen to wear no device. It reminded them not only that using Talent in Xammer was forbidden, but that using it against a student who had not yet showed Talent was considered plain un-Gamely. She flushed. I saw it and so did two of her hangers-on, who looked puzzled and somewhat ashamed at her discomfiture. I, however, merely smiled again and got into conversation with the newly arrived student across from me. I had been astonished to find I knew her. It was Lunette of Pouws, and I wanted to be sure she knew my standing, or rather lack of it, in the Game between Pouws and Stoneflight.

 “I was contracted to King Kelver as part of an alliance,” I told her in my most sincere voice as soon as I had reminded her who I was. “I’ve never met the King, and since he has a living wife, I may not meet him for many years. I did not seek the betrothal, or the alliance, though I must say it was one way to escape from Stoneflight Demesne ...”

 “I remember your mother,” she said, making a little face. “We stayed at Stoneflight once. I remember Mendost, as well. He tried to get me into his bed, though I was only a child, and Dorto objected to his behavior.”

 Lunette was chilly, but not hostile, and under the circumstances I considered her behavior generous.

 “Mendost is impossible,” I murmured. “He will end by getting himself killed, but only after he has sacrificed every other inhabitant of Stoneflight Demesne. If you speak to your brother, Dorto, tell him from me to trust no settlement or negotiation which Mendost brings.”

 “Why would you tell me this?” she murmured, under cover of the dishes being cleared. “You are his sister ...”

 “I have as much reason to hate Mendost as you do,” I answered. “But I have no reason to dislike Pouws, or any person from that Demesne. I offer you my friendship, Lunette. Take it if you will. If you will not, at least know that I am no part of Mendost’s Game.” Then, I could not forebear adding, “And watch out for Dedrina-Lucir. She will draw you in and use you if she can.”

 “I heard you say Basilisk,” she murmured behind her napkin. “Was that true?”

 “Watch her, and make up your own mind.” We rose then, I to go off to the courtyard visitors room. Dedrina-Lucir went who knows where, but very pale she went and burning with rage. The table mistress had rebuked her for discourtesy, and for one of that proud nature, it must have felt like the blow of a sword.

 “Well?” asked Bets, eyes shining, wanting to hear every detail. I told them what had happened.

 “She’ll bite.” Tess Tinder-my-hand nodded, her white hair waving. “She’ll bite. She’s too angry to do anything else. By Mother Didir, she will.”

 “I fear for Jinian,” whispered Sarah. “Have we gone too far?”

 “Dangerous,” Margaret Foxmitten agreed, “but necessary. We must bring her out into the open.” She bent above some needlework she was doing, hair shining in the lamplight. I wondered why Margaret stayed without a man. In some lights, in some times she was so beautiful.

 My thoughts were interrupted by Murzy. “You’re right, Margaret. She’ll bite. But the teeth will be sharp. Which means we must be ready. Now, what shall it be? Herbary? Field magic? Summoning? Casting?”

 “It cannot be Talent. It must not be wize-art,” said Cat. “Jinian may be questioned about it.”

 It was true. If something happened to Dedrina, I might be asked. I might be asked by a Demon. We had at least one Demon Gamesmistress who could Read what I had for breakfast yesterday after I had forgotten what it was myself. If there were sufficient reason, the ban against use of Talents in Xammer would be set aside.

 “Stones,” said Cat, suddenly.

 The rest were silent, thinking. I had no idea what Cat meant. I had learned no stone magic. They looked as puzzled as I did.

 “Footseer,” Cat said impatiently. “Old Road.”

 “Old Road here?” asked Sarah, her face full of wonder. “In Xammer?”

 “Just outside,” I said. Gamesmistress Joumerie had pointed it out during some lesson or other. A lengthy chunk of Old Road ran just east of Xammer, parallel to the Great North Road. “But what of it? What use is it?”

 “Basilisks can’t see in the dark, no more than you or I,” said Cat. “On the Old Road, Footseer can.”

 They started plotting, and arguing, and plotting more. At last I had to leave them, for the hours for visiting were done.

 “Mind, now,” said Murzy. “You don’t ride or walk or go anywhere alone until this is planned out.”

 “Yes, Murzy. No, Murzy,” I agreed. “I won’t.” Remembering my former encounter with a Basilisk, I wasn’t at all eager to meet another.

 10

 The next evening, Margaret Foxmitten came to visit, and we strolled about the courtyard quite openly, she giving me instructions in a quiet voice between louder bits.

 “Say you are going riding tomorrow after dark,” she instructed.

 “Tomorrow night, Margaret, I am going riding after dark. It is very lovely in the fields in the moonlight.”

 “It will rain tomorrow,” she said loudly. “Don’t go out. It will be black as char.” Then, in a softer voice, “Tell me you’re sure it will clear later on.”

 “Oh, it will clear later on, “ I said carelessly, then murmured, “What in the name of the Hundred Devils is going on, Margaret?”

 “Ride out at dusk, barefoot,” she said. “Be sure you find the Old Road and dismount before it gets completely dark. Lead your horse. You’ll see two red lights, lanterns, north and south. Position yourself about midway between. You’ll know when to run. Let go of the horse, we’ll get him later, and run toward the northern light like a bunwit—a long-legged bunwit. Be sure you stay on the Old Road. It makes two or three sharp little swerves right there, so be sure you stay on it. When you pass the red lantern, Murzy will be there with a wagon. She’ll have some shoes for you, and one of us will bring the horse up.”

 “But, but, but,” I sputtered. “What’s going to happen? What am I doing it for? Why do I—”

 “Just do it,” said Margaret. Then, loudly, “Well, if you won’t listen, you won’t listen, Jinian. Mark my words, if you go out after dark, you’ll be sorry.”

 As I returned to my room, I saw a skirt flick away around a corner. I recognized it as belonging to wretched Banila, the stupid little girl from some tiny Demesne behind Three Knob. Dedrina’s particular follower. She’d been listening to me, and now she was going to report. As Margaret had undoubtedly counted upon. I shook my head. One of these days the dams would start telling me things first.

 So, the night went by, and the day went by, and after supper I saddled up Surefoot and we went out into the dusk. The School servants were there, as usual, and I knew they expected me to return well before total darkness. So, I went east of town, seeing the little red lanterns glowing before me as it got darker and darker. I heard one of the Schoolmen calling me, then there was a shout as though his horse tripped. I slipped my shoes off, putting them in the saddlebag, then headed for a point midway between the two ruddy lights.

 Between the lights was a ghostlike paleness against the ground, long chunks of the white stone of which the Old Road was made. I dismounted, feeling for it. Oh, it was strong here, much stronger than near the Old South Road City. I turned, facing north, and began to pace slowly along, leading the horse. The world was very quiet. There were yells off somewhere to the west, and a flicker of light. Evidently the School servants were about to mount a search for me ...

 Then I heard it. A hiss. A long, shuddering hiss that reached deep into my self and grabbed something there, wringing it, twisting it into a fearful, terrorized tangle. Hiss. Again. Going on and on until it seemed nothing could have enough breath to continue that sound. “Turn around,” it said. “Turn around. Look me in the eye.”

 Margaret had said, “You’ll know when to run.” Almost I was too paralyzed to run, but Surefoot had no such difficulty. He reared back, jerking the reins from my hand. That released me from the spell. I ran. Light-footed, quick-footed, feeling the road tingle in my feet.

 Behind me the hiss came again in fury. Again the command to turn around, to look in the eye. Then I heard the slithering, scraping of the scaled beast blundering after me. It had four legs and I only two. It could run as fast as a horse, so I’d been told, but my feet knew where I was going and its feet didn’t. I lengthened my stride and prayed that Margaret knew what she was doing.

 The road swerved. I swerved with it. Behind me the scraping and slithering slowed as the creature listened, finding me again. Then it was behind me once more. The road straightened, and I with it, and the pursuer gained. Almost I could feel its breath on my heels. I was beginning to tire. Running was not something we did a lot of in Xammer, and I knew I could not run as fast nor as far as I had done at Stoneflight. I would have given my ears then for the Talent of an Armiger to Fly, the Talent of an Elator to be anywhere else at all. The Talent of a Sorcerer to turn and blast the creature behind me with stored power. Any, any Talent at all to save me. Surely the creature could follow my sound now, for I panted, heaving as I ran.

 Then another swerve. I almost didn’t feel it in my weariness, but the flat-footed plop as my right foot dropped off the road told me I was awry. I swerved, curving away in a sudden swoop, following the road, actually moving away from the red lantern just a bit. The slithering behind me didn’t stop. It had seen me making for the red light and it was going straight to that place, faster than I could run.

 Then the sound of its following wasn’t there anymore.

 Trickery! I told myself. Don’t believe it. I didn’t believe it. I went on running, panting, heaving, until I could see Murzy seated beside the red lantern. I plodded toward her.

 “Gracious, chile,” she said. “Tha’s all out of breath.”

 I was too out of breath to be pert with her, which I much wanted to be. In a few moments, Sarah Shadowsox brought Surefoot back, lathered and rolling-eyed, a badly frightened horse. Somewhere there was talking, a wagon moving about.

 “When you are asked,” said Cat, coming out of the darkness. “You must tell the precise truth. You went out for a ride. You were walking, leading the horse. You were frightened. The horse reared. You began to run. After a time, you came to some friends who caught your horse for you. Only the truth.” She smiled one of her rare smiles at me, and helped me up on Surefoot, who danced this way and that, unsure he wanted to carry anyone or go anywhere that evening. I rode toward the gates of Xammer, and in a few moments the School servants found me and gave me quite a tongue-lashing for having lost them. I apologized in a properly subservient manner and they were in a better mood when we got back to Vorbold’s House. I was not even late for bed check.

 In the morning, I learned that Dedrina-Lucir had disappeared. By noon, there was a general alarm and search. By evening, certain of the students were being questioned. Perhaps one of them mentioned me. Perhaps Gamesmistress Joumerie did so. In any case, I found myself before Queen Vorbold with a tight-faced Demon seated at her side.

 “Jinian, do you have any idea where Dedrina is?”

 I said, truthfully, I had not.

 “Would you mind telling me where you were last evening?”

 “Not at all, Gamesmistress,” I said, seating myself comfortably and folding my hands in my lap. “After supper last night, I went out for a ride. I rode east. It became quite dark, and I don’t really know where I was. I saw a light north of me and began to walk that way, leading my horse, when suddenly there was a terrible hiss. My horse reared, tearing the reins from my hand. I ran to the light, and found some people I knew. One of them caught the horse for me, and I returned to the House.”

 “You did not purposely avoid the School guard?”

 I said, truthfully, I had not.

 “Michael says he was waylaid by a woman he has seen with you.”

 “Waylaid, Gamesmistress? Assaulted?” Michael was one of my favorite guards. I would have hated to have him hurt.

 “Not at all, Jinian. Merely stopped and asked a question by a very pretty woman. Did you know about that?”

 I said, truthfully, that I did not. I guessed, however, it had been Margaret Foxmitten.

 Queen Vorbold turned to the Demon; the Demon shook her head; and I was dimissed. The Demon would have told her that I told the exact truth.

 11

 “All right,” I said to Murzy. “Where is she?”

 “Where is who, chile?” she asked me, all innocence. “Don’t ask me anything tha shouldn’t know.”

 She meant that having been questioned once with a Demon present didn’t mean they might not do it again. I humphed about, but I didn’t ask her again. Instead, I said, “Is there anything you can tell me, Murzy, about Daggerhawk Demesne? Anything useful?”

 To which she replied, “Not yet, chile, but I’m sure we’ll learn many interesting things in time.”

 And I had to be content with that. The only things the Demon could find in my head, assuming she was still looking, was that I had been badly frightened by something that hissed at me. Hissed, and tried to get me to turn around. That would indicate “Basilisk” to anyone who had studied the Index even slightly, and Queen Vorbold would remember what I had said to her earlier about Basilisks. Well. Very soon she called me in again. Demon was there. So was a foreign Pursuivant, a Gamesman, one I’d never seen before. Evidently Daggerhawk Demesne was bringing some pressure to bear.

 “Jinian. This is Pursuivant Cholore, sent by Daggerhawk Demesne to assist in the search for Dedrina-Lucir. We know you will want to help us.”

 “I will help you, Gamesmistress, if I can, though I do not want to and do not care what has happened to Dedrina-Lucir. She was most un-Gamely with me, and I have no reason to care for her.” This made the Pursuivant blink. Which, in turn, made the Demon turn on him sharply, snarling between her teeth.

 “What Game is this, Pursuivant? Your mind betrays ill intent toward this girl Jinian.”

 The Pursuivant put up his hands, shaking his head. “Only suspicion, Demon. Truly. Why, I must be suspicious of all here or I could not seek the answers I have been told to seek.”

 I kept carefully quiet and as invisible as I have ever been. Queen Vorbold wasn’t accepting any of this, and they got into a three-way wrangle with me outside any of it. The Pursuivant obviously had a great deal more than suspicion, as the School Demon immediately confirmed. Queen Vorbold was having none of that. She came abruptly to herself and snarled at me, “Outside, student! This is evidently not the time to ask you anything.”

 The time was the following morning, but the Pursuivant wasn’t present. This time there was only one question. Why would Dedrina-Lucir or any other member of the Daggerhawk Demesne hold enmity toward me sufficient that they might have breached the ban in Xammer? Question.

 Answer. I don’t know. But wouldn’t I like to have known!

 Truth. I didn’t. The Demon shrugged, gestured, and they sent me away again. About noon they were back. Did I think the flitchhawk that had delivered me to Xammer was in any way connected with hawk as in Daggerhawk Demesne?

 This surprised me. I had not really thought of this connection, but when one stopped to consider the matter, it was curious. Curious, I mean, that Daggerhawk should be so near to Chimmerdong Forest. Curious that a particularly giant flitchhawk seemed to frequent that forest. Curious that the Demesne seemed to find some special significance in the killing of a hawk. I mentioned these curiosities to Queen Vorbold and the Demon, and they looked at me in a bad- tempered way. Obviously they wanted answers, and all I was giving them were enigmatic suggestions. They couldn’t be angry with me, however, for I was trying to be helpful, and the Demon knew it.

 They sent me away again. Two days later they found a woman’s body out in the fields east of Xammer. The face was mauled and unrecognizable. There were Basilisk bites on her arms and hands. The body was presumed to be that of Dedrina-Lucir. From the School tower, I saw the Pursuivant riding away west. He would have no good news for those at Daggerhawk Demesne. I wondered if Murzy would have any news for me.

 I think she did.

 But she refused to tell me anything about that.

 Actually, she refused at first, but then she and Cat and Margaret got into an argument in the kitchen that I overheard. Murzy was saying something about “trust” and “complete confidence”, and Cat was being firm as any Gamesmistress about “the rules’ and “the covenants”.

 I was sitting with a book in my lap when they came back, and Murzy told me, with some consternation and head shaking, that there was certain information vital to me. That I might have it if I were truly a member of a seven. That I was not yet really a member of a seven. That there were certain oaths, certain vows, certain initiatory rites ...

 “By Trandilar the Glorious,” I said, peevish enough already over the whole thing, “stop this muggling and mubbling and tell me what you want to tell me!”

 “You’ll have to take an oath of celibacy, Jinian,” said Margaret in her usual calm voice. “Murzy’s worried about that.”

 “Well, I should think so.” I thought it over. While it wouldn’t be a problem just now, the thought of the boy in Schooltown still turned my insides soft, and while he certainly was some years from being concerned with my virginity, still ... “Forever?” I asked, my voice wavering a little.

 “Three years,” said Cat. “From the time of the oath taking. And it’s not a vow can be broken.”

 “It seems a little silly,” I said. “Mother always said it was much fuss over nothing.”

 “That’s not the point,” snapped Cat, annoyed. “The point is that for three years from oath taking the maximum possible time and attention needs to be on the art. There is simply no time for lolgagging.”

 “And you won’t tell me until ... unless ...”

 “We can’t,” said Cat. “It would be dangerous for us.”

 That was their final word on that.

 Three years. I would be eighteen. I couldn’t really imagine wanting to ... needing to ... before I was eighteen. So, I thought about it for a day or two, then told them I’d do whatever needed to be done. At which Murzy sighed deeply, and they all went into Tess’s bedroom (she wasn’t really able to be up much anymore) and got into one of their six-way conversations with me on the outside.

 The first thing that needed to be done was get me out of Xammer for ten days.

 It wasn’t easy, especially not right after the Dedrina-Lucir affair, which was still boiling. Daggerhawk had threatened to declare Game against Vorbold’s House. Vorbold’s House had replied very stiffly through the Referees. Schools were simply not Gameable, and everyone knew it. Fines could be assessed on behalf of Schools, however, and that’s what Vorbold’s had requested—a fine against Daggerhawk for sending someone to School under false pretenses. According to Cat, if the Referees did their usual concentrated job of consideration, no decision would be offered for several years.

 The fact that a student had lately disappeared and a body had been found was of immediate concern. All the security around the place was doubled up, and it became impossible to get in or out without six people asking for your pass or your reasons. Finally, after we’d tried several other things, Murzy gave me some fever-leaf, and I retired to my bed.

 The Healer came, of course, and fixed me up. The next day I was in bed again. And the Healer came again. The third time, Queen Vorbold herself came to visit the invalid, considerably annoyed. She was beginning to suspect, I think, that Jinian of Dragon’s Fire was more trouble than she was worth.

 “Well, Jinian,” she said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

 “I think it’s Breem fever, Gameswoman,” I said. “If you will let old Murzy come nurse me for a few days, I’m sure it will pass.”

 “We don’t allow outsiders in the School, girl. As you well know. Which is why we have three times sent the School Healer to you. Little good has it done.”

 I shook my head sadly. “I’ll be glad to go down to town, ma’am. I’m sure it will pass, given a little time. And at far less expense to the School than these constant Healer visits.”

 “No doubt,” she said dryly. The Healer came yet again, but, when I still had the fever the following day, I got a pass to go down to Murzy’s place “until sufficiently recovered to engage in normal student activities”. Murzy shook her head over me and said it looked like Breem Hills fever, which was endemic in our part of the world. She said she thought I would be fully recovered in about ten days, and the School servants who brought me accepted this. As soon as they were out of sight, we started packing for a journey. Murzy, Cat, and Margaret were going with me. Sarah, Tess, and Bets Battereye were staying behind, partly to cover for me and partly because Tess couldn’t travel. She was becoming very feeble, and I’d heard Sarah saying that we might be seeking another seventh soon. I didn’t like to hear that. Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me the star-eye, and fed me cookies, had told me many fascinating and wonderful things. I went to the kitchen and cried about it for a while, then put it out of my mind as I lay in the bottom of the wagon with the other three as Bets and Sarah drove it out of Xammer, across the bridge to the south, and then away southeast. After a time, they let us out and returned to Xammer.

 We proceeded on foot, down the south fork of the Gaywater, which emerged from the walls of a narrow canyon that we soon entered. There was a good path, though not wide enough for two of us to walk abreast. Other paths fed into it, paths coming down from the heights and from little, windy side canyons. Cautioned by Murzy, I did not say anything when the first fellow-traveler came down the path and joined our procession. Silence was the rule on the canyon walk. Others came, from time to time. When it grew dark, we lighted lanterns, and the others who came down the paths carried them also. Looking ahead, one could see a procession of fireflies winding along the canyon, the lights reflected in the still waters of the river, which lay utterly quiet between the rocky walls.

 Just as I was beginning to feel both terribly hungry and thirsty, I saw the fireflies disappearing into the rock wall ahead. When we came to the place, it loomed open, a great mouth in the side of the wall, carved around with vine leaves and grain and starshapes, birds and beasts and little moons. At the top of the door was a pair of lips, a long, carved dagger thrust through them to shut them. I took this sign as was intended, as a warning.

 We went in. To our left a hooded woman was busy taking small sacks of grain from the travelers. We each carried one, which we turned over to her without a word. Next was a stop at a rack where robes and hoods hung in long, dark array, arranged from long to short. We put these on over our clothes. While the hoods didn’t hide our faces, they did shadow them, and I had the feeling no one was supposed to pay much attention to faces while we were here. I wanted to ask. I didn’t.

 Finally there was a journey down a long corridor lined with doors. All of them were open that we passed. When we came to the first one shut, we turned back and took the next two, closing the doors to the corridor and opening the one between after bolting the connecting doors on each side.

 “Now,” said Murzy, “if you’re starving, I’ve brought some fruit, which is allowed. Other than that, you’ll get only the porridge they serve morning and night.”

 I was starving. I took my fruit and lay down on one of the cots, wondering what was coming next and not certain I should ask. Murzy, meantime, was at the door looking at a printed sheet posted there, one I had not even noticed.

 “All right,” she said, “anyone have anything on the Eesties? Shadow tower? Storm Grower? The questionable alliances? Daylight Bell? That’s you, Jinian. Room four oh five, second bell in the morning. Ah. Let’s see. Chimmerdong, Chimmerdong. Nothing. It will be under Miscellaneous Topics, I guess. Cat, you and Margaret go to two oh three at the third bell tomorrow. I’ll be in initiation application all morning. Fourth bell, we can all gather here.”

 “What do you mean, “That’s you, Jinian”?” I complained. “What’s me?”

 “The topics under investigation as part of the wize-art are posted here.” She pointed to the list. “New ones are added from time to time, and old ones removed. Each day, there will be someone—sometimes one of them—at a particular time, in a particular room. Anyone with new information is asked to come there and give information. That’s all.”

 “So how come I’m Daylight Bell? How come I’m not Chimmerdong?”

 “Well, you could be either. We’re going to be here for several days, and the Auditor who hears you tomorrow may ask you to speak to someone else about Chimmerdong later on. Cat and Margaret have some other information about Chimmerdong gleaned from ... ah, someone we knew. So. You go along and tell whomever about acting out Little Star and the Daylight Bell and about the giant flitchhawk. That’ll be new to them. One interview may lead to another. Then, there are some reports on new things that have been discovered—listed here under State of the Art. There are one or two of those that might be interesting. We may not need to stay longer than a day or two, or we might be here for eight or nine. I’ve never had to be here longer than that, not even going to every lecture I could sit through.”

 “And that’s all?” I said, unbelieving. “That’s all there is to it?”

 Cat snorted, Margaret made a shushing noise, and Murzy stared them both down. “Now. It’s the first time for the chile. You may have forgotten how you both reacted, but I haven’t.” Margaret flushed a little, smiled, and turned away to hide her face. “No, I haven’t forgotten about you, either, Cat Candleshy, though it was twenty years ago, almost. You just relax, Jinian. We’ll get some sleep, now, and at the second bell tomorrow, I’ll show you how to find the room ...”

 Late as it was, and tired as we all were, I forgot to ask about “them”. I was, therefore, utterly unprepared to meet one of “them” in the morning.

 12

 The first bell rang in pitch darkness. Of course it did, we were underground. I heard Margaret stumble out of bed, saw the hall door open and light coming in. She brought back a spill to light the lanterns, and we dressed by lantern light before going on to the privies and wash places, all of which were very clean and steamy and crowded with women and quiet. Oh, there was noise. Shuffle and splash and a voice saying, “Excuse me.” That was about it. Then down to a vast, cavernous refectory, where we shuffled in a long line to get our porridge bowls, then in another long line to leave them off again. After which Cat showed me where the stairs were, and how the rooms were arranged, and whispered to me to wait outside room 405 until the bell rang, then go in.

 “There may be some other people there as well,” she said. “In that case, you’ll all go in at once. The person or persons inside will tell you to wait, or sit down and listen, as they choose.”

 I did as directed, all by lantern light, beginning to feel more and more like some burrowing, night-living creature, like some gobblemole, perhaps. The bell rang, and I went in.

 There was a top spinning in the room. Humming. Quietly twirling. Silver. I backed against the door and waited, wondering what to do next. Gradually it slowed, slowed, and I saw it was a person. Long silver fringes covered it from the edge of its wide hat to its toes. I could not see its face. I knew what it was, of course. No one who had received a first in Index could not have known. It was a Dervish.

 I have heard many strange things about Dervishes.

 Oh, they say things about Wizards, too. “Strange are the Talents of Wizards.” Mostly that’s a joke Wize-ards made up among themselves. Whenever we do something egregiously wrong, or silly, we say, “Well, strange are the Talents of Wizards!” and everyone laughs. But the things they say about Dervishes are not merely jokes of the trade, so to speak. When people speak of Dervishes—even when Gamesmen speak of Dervishes—it is with awe and mystery. They have the Talents of the Flesh, Shapeshifting, and Power Holding. I have read, also, that some of them have Seeing the Future, though that is not in any Index. So they are said to do strange things to others. To change others, perhaps.

 They are, in short, frightening. When I realized I was alone in a room with one, I wanted to wet my pants.

 However, I took a deep breath, reminded myself that Murzy would do nothing dangerous for me, and bowed. That seemed prudent, under the circumstances.

 “You may sit down,” said the Dervish in an absolutely toneless voice. “Over there.”

 Over there was a hard bench. The Dervish did not sit down; merely stood concealed in its fringes, like a silver column. “You have something to tell about the Daylight Bell.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. “You may begin.”

 So I told about going into Chimmerdong, about the edge of the forest turning to mush, about the flower in the sun, the cone in the brook, the bed that moved, and finally about the bunwit and tree rat who took me into the great tree. Then I told the Dervish about the story, the way we had played it out, the flitchhawk and I. And then I sat very quietly, waiting, because the Dervish didn’t move, didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure it was breathing, even.

 At last it trembled, as a tree might tremble in the tiniest breeze. “Your name?” it whispered. This time it was a question.

 “Jinian Footseer,” I said.

 The figure before me started. “Footseer? Explain?”

 So I explained, about the blind runners, and the honey cookies, and running on the Old South Road when I was no more than a baby hardly.

 Then nothing, nothing.

 Then,” Jinian Footseer, you may go.”

 I went.

 I went very quietly down the stairs, and very quietly along the corridor to the rooms we occupied, and very quietly in to curl up on the cot and wait. I heard the third bell ring. Not long after that, Cat and Margaret came in. And just after the fourth bell rang, Murzy came.

 “Oh,” she said. “You’ve seen one of them.”

 “Not merely one,” said Cat. “I think it was Bartelmy.”

 “Bartelmy of the Ban? The one who ... ?”

 “Yes. That one.”

 I heard her, but I didn’t move. I didn’t ask, “The one who what?” even though later I was to wish I had. After a time they went away. Later they came back, bringing a mug of something hot and strange tasting. I drank it. My insides began to settle somewhat, though they still felt twisted.

 “It....she ...”I said.

 “The Dervish,” prompted Cat.

 “The Dervish did ... something to my insides.”

 “No. Really not, Jinian. It may feel like that, but the Dervish really didn’t. And you may say ‘she”. All Dervishes are female. Sort of.”

 “Then what made me feel that way?” I asked, beginning to recover. “I felt sick, and dizzy, and as though I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere.”

 “You’ve been looked at, very thoroughly, is all. Rather as a Healer might, but with more attention to mental things.”

 “That’s exactly it. Someone’s been rummaging through me!”

 “Don’t say rummage.” Cat smiled. “Not about a Dervish. One of them would never do anything so disorderly. Well. How do you think you did?”

 “Did what?”

 “Do you think you told her something new? Something that will earn you initiation? As a Wize-ard?”

 I had no idea. There was that tiny shiver, and when I told them about that, they seemed almost excited. About that time, a bell rang, and they all went off to hear something new about the Eesties, or maybe about the Shadowpeople, I’m not sure which. I curled up again and went to sleep and didn’t wake up until they roused me for evening porridge. By that time, my name had been posted as approved for initiation, which pleased them, and me.

 “What would you have done if I’d not passed?” I asked, half-teasing, certainly not expecting the answer I got.

 “There are Forgetters here,” said Margaret. “You would not have remembered anything at all about the place. And we would have sought another seventh. That’s all.”

 That was quite enough.

 13

 The Forgetter I was introduced to at my initiation took my hand and said, “I hope you will never be brought before me, Jinian Footseer. Hold your tongue and keep your memories—for now—dedicating them to the wize-art.” The threat was explicit.

 Which was neither here nor there. My initiation was quiet, almost private. There was one Dervish present, the one who ... or some other one. There was the Forgetter, and the dams as witnesses. And there was the tall, frightening presence of a male Wizard in full regalia, a friend of Murzy’s, who administered the oaths. Then we walked in still procession down endless ramps and stairs to a place hidden in the secret heart of a cavern lit by a thousand candles. At the center of these lights was a circular pool with a raised, star-shaped curbing. Very still, that pool, like some forest ponds I have seen when there is no wind, full of milky, silvery stuff. We knelt around it, all of us, staring at it. At first I thought nothing was there, but then I saw the bits of shadow, coalescing, separating, coiling. And bits of light. Shaping, unshaping. In endless motion. Within the pool. Still ... so still. I know my head fell forward, because Murzy reached out and touched me to bring me to myself.

 “The shadow grows,” whispered the tall Wizard, his voice twisting off into the cavern to raise a flock of sibilant echoes, like restless birds in the dark.

 Those assembled said, “And yet there is light,” in firm, comforting unison.

 The Wizard took a pair of long, curving tongs into his hand. The Dervish held out a shallow bowl. Everyone breathed in, a quiet kind of gasp.

 He took a grayish flat fragment of something from the bowl, holding it up in the tongs so everyone could see before dipping it in the pool, carefully not touching the pool with his hands.

 There was a thin, high singing when it touched the pool. Then he drew the fragment out and laid it on the curb before me.

 “Take it,” whispered Cat.

 I picked it up, feeling it slip into my fingers like a knife into a sheath, a flat, triangular piece of something with one curved edge, about as long as my middle finger. Then we all stood up and proceeded out of the place in absolute silence. The whole ceremony had taken only a little time. When we got back to our rooms, Murzy gave me a kind of locket to put the fragment in so it would hang safely around my neck. “Or you can carry it wrapped in a cloth in your boot, or sewn into your garment,” she said. “Just so it is always by you and you never lose it.”

 “What is it?” I demanded. “What’s it for?”

 “It’s a symbol. It shows you have been initiated. It puts some of the life of the pool in a form you can carry always, to remind yourself who you are.”

 “But what is it? What is the pool?”

 “Nothing we’ve made,” said Cat. “The pools were here before men came, you may be sure of that. Large ones and tiny ones. The large ones are rare, and hidden. Some say they are eyes which look into the heart of the world. Some say they are eyes which look out. And we say as long as the light moves in the star-eye, the shadow has not conquered.”

 “Religion?” I asked doubtfully.

 “One might say,” said Cat.

 We stayed two days more while all of us went to “lectures”, which were actually kind of story-telling sessions given by people who thought they might have learned something new. The procedure is to tell an Auditor first (someone like the Dervish who heard me) and then, if the Auditor agrees, tell all the Wize-ards who are interested. Since I was new, they did not ask me to tell about Chimmerdong and the flitchhawk, but Murzy said the Dervish had done so. It was all so new to me, I didn’t remember very much of what I heard, and note taking was not allowed as it was in Xammer. One listened and one remembered. I listened as best I could, but there were no hooks in my head to hang much of it on.

 Then we were leaving, taking off the robes and hanging them up, going silently away down the canyon until we came to the plains once more. Sarah was waiting with the wagon. She and Bets had been trading days to come wait for us, and we all got aboard. Only when I was settled into the wagon did I realize how exhausted I was. I felt beaten, and old, and as though I had run thousands of miles.

 “Well,” said Murzy when we were all settled, “it’s time to tell you what happened with the Basilisk, Jinian. Now don’t interrupt me with questions until I’m finished. I know you, and you can’t keep your mouth shut for anything.”

 So challenged, of course I had to be absolutely still, even though it griped me immensely.

 “We had some men from one of the farms dig us a pit, right in the curve of the Old Road,” she began. When you ran, you swerved, but the Basilisk didn’t. It was a deep, straight-sided pit, the Basilisk fell directly into it, and we backed a wagon over it at once, so it couldn’t get out or be seen.

 “Then we began asking the Basilisk certain questions. It hissed and snarled and didn’t answer, of course, but our Demon could Read the answers ...”

 “Demon!” I couldn’t stop myself. “Where did you get a Demon?”

 Murzy just looked at me, pressing her lips together until I subsided, then she turned and nodded at Cat. “That’s our Demon, fool-girl ... Always has been.”

 Cat! A Demon! I thought suddenly of the times I had congratulated myself that I was Gamecaste and they were merely pawns and was suddenly hideously embarrassed. Were the rest of them ... ?

 “We’ve all got Talents of one kind or another,” said Cat. “We don’t play with them, that’s all. We don’t Game. So far as the world knows, we six are pawns only. We say so for our own protection. Some of the Wize-ards choose to call themselves Wizards, some call themselves other things, and some call themselves nothing at all. It’s all in what one is trying to accomplish. And we couldn’t tell you until you were one of us. Listen now, and don’t interrupt.”

 “Our Demon,” Murzy went on unperturbed, “learned that the Daggerhawk Demesne has a very ancient rule of enmity against Chimmerdong Forest.” She let me think about that for a moment, seeing I was about to explode. “They call themselves the Keepers of Chimmerdong. Since the giant flitchhawk is a ... What would you say, Cat? Resident? Numen?”

 “Perhaps numen,” said Cat. “Friend. Guardian. My own guess is, it’s one of the old gods. It is certainly a being which is interested in the forest, which cares about it. You hinted at that, Jinian, when you said the voice of the flitchhawk sounded rather like the voice of the forest. The Dervishes agreed that it was an interesting possibility for investigation.”

 “Yes. It was that which got you initiated, Jinian. They didn’t know either of those things, not about Chimmerdong and the flitchhawk or about Daggerhawk Demesne.

 “Well, we asked our questions, received no answers, but got our answers anyhow. The creature was down below the wagon in the dark, so it couldn’t Beguile us with its eyes. It tried with its voice, but we’re old birds, well schooled against Beguilement.”

 “I wasn’t,” I said, annoyed. “If it hadn’t been for Surefoot rearing, I might not have run in time.”

 “Well, chile,” she said, “if you hadn’t run in time, you wouldn’t have been one we wanted for a seventh, would you?”

 That shut me up, in several ways.

 “We found, also, that those at Daggerhawk have bonded themselves in service to some northern power. Dedrina-Lucir did not know much about this; it seems to be a covert kind of arrangement. Her thalan, Porvius Bloster, and her mother, Dedrina Dreadeye, are the ones through whom the orders came. Dedrina-Lucir had the idea that this liege of theirs, whoever it may be, was also interested in your discomfiture or death. So—you have Porvius as an enemy because you witnessed his embarrassment at the hands of Mendost and then escaped from him; you have the Daggerhawk Demesne because of your friendship with Chimmerdong; and you have this unknown northern power for some unknown reason.

 “When we had found out everything the Basilisk knew, we were going to let it loose, telling it we would act against it if any harm came to you, Jinian. However, when we arrived to turn it loose, we found it gone. It had dug its way out one end of the pit. Since the body they found had Basilisk bites on its hands and arms, we assume it was so enraged during the digging that it bit itself and died of its own venom—though Basilisks are somewhat immune to their own bites. When it was dead it must have changed back to human shape ...”

 A sudden terror hit me, and I shivered. “No,” I said. “I think not.”

 “I saw the body,” said Cat.

 “Did you notice whether the third fingers were as long as the middle fingers?” I asked. “Dedrina had odd hands. I watched her enough to know.”

 They looked at each other uncertainly.

 “You might try to find out,” I said a little bitterly. “The body won’t have reached Daggerhawk yet. Is there an Elator among you?”

 There wasn’t.

 “There’s at least a possibility she’s still alive,” I said. “I feel she is, somehow. Who the dead woman is, I doubt we’ll ever know. Some trader, perhaps. Some pawn from the town. We could ask around, see if anyone is missing.” I had no real hope for this. People came and went all the time.

 “Gamelords,” said Murzy. “If she’s still alive, she’s back at Daggerhawk by now, and she may know who we are and that we’re on to them. We won’t only have her to contend with, but her mother and aunts as well, and there’s a plague of them, you may be sure. Basilisks are clanny and poisonous. I don’t like this.”

 “Be wary, Jinian,” said Cat. “Simply be wary. They are not particularly subtle Gamesmen, and in the beast form they lose intelligence, though they may fool you. It should be good enough simply to be very careful where you go.”

 I had no intention of going anywhere. “I’d like to know what all this is about!”

 “It’s difficult even to make a guess,” said Cat. “Of course, no one is supposed to enter Chimmerdong except the Keepers. No one ever does. They’ve circulated all kinds of stories about it to frighten people off. They don’t want anyone wandering around who has been in Chimmerdong. Not only have you gone in, but you’ve communicated with the forest and come out again. Oh, I don’t know how much that has to do with it, but it has some part. Of that I’m sure.”

 I remembered then, and started to tell her; what Bloster had said to the Basilisk in the forest, but just then we drew up at the house in Xammer and Bets came running out to tell us that Tess was much worse. We all went to her bedroom, where Tess Tinder-my-hand was lying, looking very old and sleepy, though peaceful. “Ah, chile,” she whispered. “So you’re our seventh. I’m glad. I would look upon the pool once more.”

 Murzy put her hand on my shoulder, keeping me from saying anything. All around the room the others were finding their fragments, digging them out of hems or out of boots. I took mine out of the neck of my tunic, laying it on the table as the others did. Tess leaned from her bed, trembling, to put her own there. She had been holding it in her hand.

 Then each of the six pushed her fragment into alignment, points together, curved line on the outside. Together, they made a circle. When only one wedge was empty, I pushed mine in as well and the separate fragments suddenly became a pool, seeming as deep as the one in the cavern, as round though smaller, flicking with the same light and shadow. Murzy helped Tess out of bed and we knelt there, peering down into the pool where the lights and shadows swam.

 “Still time,” old Tess murmured. “Not yet the shadow.”

 “Not yet the shadow, Tess,” said Cat. “Why, see, there is light there yet, swimming in forever. Never fear, old friend. We’ll balance it yet, we Wize-ards.”

 Then Tess shivered, cried out a little cry, and leaned back, her hand to her chest. They all rushed to help her, leaving me frozen over the little pool. Something had moved there, but I was the only one who saw. The only one who saw the shadow start at one edge of it and swim across the whole thing, black as char, deep as night, leaving at last only a thin, tiny edge of light. From inside that darkness, something flapped within the pool and seemed to look out at me.

 I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing. The shadow flicked away. Then the dams were all around, picking up their pieces, putting them away, putting Tess’s fragment in her hand.

 She died that night with the fragment held tight. When I went in to kiss her good-bye, I saw it was only a bit of metal, gray and dim, with neither light nor shadow in it. Without Tess, we were six again. None of us could look on the pool we carried until we were seven. We had been seven for a very short time.

 There was no way to verify what I thought I had seen. I was sent back to classes. My study group had spent most of the time I had missed on Index review, and as I already knew the Index very well, I didn’t miss much. We had a new Gamesmistress, a Healer named Silkhands. She seemed very pleasant, not much older than most of the students, but with a weary air about her that intrigued me. We started to make friends. I could do that now that Dedrina-Lucir was gone. Without her, things were comparatively peaceful.

 In the nights immediately following my return, however, I several times woke myself with muffled screams, starting straight up in bed, sweating and cold at once, thinking I had heard the horrid hissing of Basilisks or the sly flapping of watchful shadows.

 14

 The fourth or fifth night I wakened deep in the dark hours, I was reminded of myself as a child, bearing Mendost’s abuse and deciding I would rather die. Perhaps it would be better to die now than to wake in this terror at the sound of flapping. My room was high in one of the towers. Perhaps the sound had a cause; perhaps something was really there. Wrapped in a heavy robe against the cool of the night, I left the room silently and went up the cupped stones of the winding tower stairs to the roof.

 As I climbed, I became convinced the sound had not been merely a dream. Dream, yes, but not merely that. Dream grafted upon reality, perhaps, as the gardeners of the House graft blooming stock upon hardy roots, the lesser reality upon the greater. This was a muddy thought, and I took time to untangle it, lost in metaphor, hardly realizing the sound I heard was a sound as real as my own heartbeat. Flap, flap, hiss. Not the hiss of Basilisks; the hiss of wind on feathers. It came from above me, and I turned face up to see giant wings fleeing across the stars.

 “I am here,” I called, as I had called once before in the forest, not loudly, fearful, yet not fearful enough to be silent.

 Wings lifted and folded. The flitchhawk stooped, down, down, wingtips canted to guide its flight, talons stretched before it. Just as it would have dropped upon me, the wings scooped air, and the giant came to rest before me, opening its beak to let out a rush of air scented with the breath of pines.

 “What is it you eat to have a breath so sweet, flitchhawk?” I said, almost in a whisper.

 “What is it you eat to have words so sweet, Star-eye?” and there came the puffed, creaking sound of hawk laughter.

 “I told the Dervish about you, flitchhawk.”

 “We knew you would.”

 “What is it you want now?”

 “You promised the forest, girl.”

 “I promised to do what I could, when I knew what to do, flitchhawk. I haven’t any idea, yet. They have made me a Wize-ard, and I’m no wiser than I was.”

 “Then you must do out of ignorance, girl. You must help the forest.”

 “I said I would, when I knew how, but there’s been no time.”

 “No time,” agreed the flitchhawk in his creaky voice. “No time, Jinian Footseer. Now. Now is the time. This moment.”

 He reached for me with one talon. I stamped my foot, really angry. “I will not be dangled,” I said. “I was dangled last time. It has caused me no end of embarrassment, and I will not be dangled again.”

 He stepped back. If a beak can be said to express astonishment, then the beak on that bird face did. However, the eyes were not angry. Reflective, perhaps. Amused, perhaps, but not angry. “What would you suggest?” he asked. “I cannot have you on my back, for there is no room between my wings on the upstroke.”

 “Wait,” I cried, moved by sudden inspiration. “One moment:” I ran down the stairs again, peeling off the robe and gown as I went, covering half the last corridor bare as a willow twig. There were stout boots in my room and leather trousers, a heavy jacket and some tunics not woven of the thistledown we usually wore. My knife and pack were there as well. I left a message.

 “Take this message to Murzemire Hornloss, house at the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. “Murzy, the flitchhawk has come for me and will not delay. I will return. Make my peace with Vorbold’s House.””

 There, I thought. That ought to cause some consternation. I could imagine its being well read by Vorbold’s House before ever it was taken to Murzy. Still, she would get it in time. Someone had to explain to King Kelver and Joramal. I thought Queen Vorbold would duck that duty if she could.

 Then back up the stairs, stopping at the end of the corridor for one of the great woven baskets that collected our dirty bedclothes and towels. It had long straps because the men who gathered them up carried them on their backs down Laundry Street, amid all the steams and smokes and sounds of washerwomen shouting. I thrust the thing before me onto the tower roof to find the flitchhawk stalking this way and that, peering over the edge from time to time like an owl seeking some small prey. The thought made me shiver. I was the prey in this case.

 “Here,” I told him. “I can sit in this, and you can carry the straps in your claws. It will be easier for both of us.” And it would. The high sides of the basket would allow me to breathe, at least, which I could not remember having done during the trip to the tower dangled from those same claws.

 “In, then, Jinian Footseer,” he creaked, and I plunged down into the basket, thankful there were already a few sheets in the bottom to soften it. The thing jerked, swayed, soared, and I was flying once again high above Xammer, above the towers, the walls, looking down on the ancient bridges, the quiet streets. I could see the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. There were lights in the windows. So late? Were their faces at the window? How could there be? Still, I leaned from the basket at risk of my life and waved. Perhaps they knew, or had been told by their mysterious informant who seemed to know everything.

 Then the town was behind us and we moved south along the river, then west toward the heights. They loomed before us. Flitchhawk began to circle, catching some warmer air from time to time, though he labored with his wings to climb and I knew it was more difficult at night than when the sun warmed the earth and made great updrafts to carry him. We crossed the wide expanse of Middle River, silver glinting on its waves. Lake Yost gleamed to the north. Then came the soft, velvet depths of Long Valley and at last the cliffs, falling away like a sweep of carved wood, gleaming under the knife of the stars. There the forest was before us, trees taller than any I had ever seen or imagined. Leafy tops shifting. Smaller wings circling. A scented breath rising, like the flitchhawk’s breath: field mint and pine; bergamot and rose; webwillow and shatter-grass. Sweet, spicy, catching the breath in one’s throat with memories of lost childhood among the grasses at the brookside. “Chimmerdong,” I cried, unable to help myself. “Chimmerdong.”

 “Jinian,” I imagined the forest calling in return. “Jinian.”

 The flitchhawk folded his great wings and took hold of a treetop, rocking there. “Here,” he creaked. “Here. The ladder is beneath you in the tree.”

 I had climbed out onto the branch and was taking inventory of myself, somewhat windblown but otherwise intact. “See here,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me something. I’ve been dragged from housedoor to cellar, from kingpost to rooftree without a word of explanation. Now, what’s going on here, and what am I supposed to do about it?”

 “Daggerhawk Demesne is killing the forest. You’ll know what to do, Jinian Footseer. Use your eyes, your ears, your feet.” His wings came down, knocking me flat on the branch as usual, and he was up and gone. Far off at the edge of the world I saw the rim of the sun and knew he had not wanted light to disclose him upon the forest roof. Nor did I want to be seen there. I plunged into the leafy wilderness, scrambling about until I found the ladder. It carried me down as it had carried me up. No immediate course of action presented itself. The first thing to do would be to find out what was going on. Perhaps the next thing would be to talk to the forest again. If I could. If it could. If the shadow would allow. Hows and perhapses kept me thoughtful the entire journey down, and I was utterly unsurprised to find both a bunwit and a tree rat at the bottom of the ladder waiting for me. My same ones or other ones? My same ones, I thought. They sat there propped on their hind legs the way they do, bunwit with his pointy ears and tree rat with his round ones, bunwit gray and white, tree rat black and copper, both with round, curious eyes fixed on me as though I had answers. “I’ve got no answers, beasts,” I told them. “But if you know where something is going on, I suggest you show me.”

 Tree rat started for me. I picked up a branch. “Just for the record, rat, if you bite me even a little, even one time, there will be one dead rat.” He backed off, surprised. I still had teeth marks on my rear from last time.

 They looked at each other, conferring, I thought. Perhaps they did. At any rate, we went off through the trees at an easy pace, one or the other scouting ahead, then coming back to be sure I still followed. It was not long before we heard a sound. Both of them came back, close to me, pressing against my legs.

 “That it?” I asked. They pressed closer, ears cocked toward the noise. It was a whuffling, snorting, growling noise, with crashes and smashes in it.

 We were on a rounded hill with an abrupt rocky ledge above a clearing. We peered between the rocks, seeing nothing but shrubs and grasses. The noise was near, perhaps behind a screen of trees. Nothing. Then a glitter, as of sun on polished bone. Then again. Crash of branches. Gouts of soil and turf flying, a small tree toppled, snorting, and then ...

 I said, half to myself, “What in the name of the Hundred Devils is that?” The beasties only pushed closer to me, not answering.

 The thing had come into the light. Great snout over curved tusks. Little pig eyes. Sharp pig hooves. It came and kept coming. Three pairs of legs, four, five. I counted silently, in awe, not even aware I was counting. When I got to fifty, I stopped counting. The thing had at least a hundred legs, like a centipede. “Centipig,” I breathed to my cowering beasties, watching the turf fly in solid, muddy slabs. Champing and whuffling, the centipig ravaged its way out of the clearing and down the hill. “By Dealpas, the Doleful,” I hissed to myself.

 Familiar voices followed the pig-path into the clearing. Porvius Bloster. In a moment he was beneath me, he and another man, both carrying tanks with hoses and tubes. We use similar tanks in the Stone-flight Demesne to spray the sammit seedlings with water. Both carried outlandish, pig-snouted masks in their hands.

 “Give it a year,” Porvius shouted, waving his hands at the destruction around him. “Give it a year and it will have flattened half of Chimmerdong.”

 “It would be faster and surer if you had more than one,” the man with him said. At first I had not recognized him, but then I realized it was the pursuivant who had corne to Vorbold’s House seeking Dedrina-Lucir. Cholore? If he were Reading, he would find me. Not likely, though. Who would expect Jinian to have left the luxury of Vorbold’s House to return to this muddy, tangled place? I eased up one eye, peering through a crack.

 “The price for this one was high enough. It was expensive. Twelve little girls from the Demesne, two of them offspring of my own. Plus much ore from the hills, as well as fruit and herbs and rarities. Still, the Magicians will make me another if needed.”


 “It is mechanical, then? A device?”

 “No, it lives. The Magicians make such things in their secret place to the west. Monsters. In their monster labs. That’s what they call the place, you know. A monster lab.”

 “And when the monster is finished with Chimmerdong,” said the Pursuivant in an insinuating voice, “how do you get rid of it? I would not want that roaming the edges of the Daggerhawk. It is long since you have repaired the walls.”

 Porvius shrugged, a trifle uncomfortably, I thought. “Oh, they will give us a thing. Perhaps another plague, like the forest edge plague. The monster will not cross that plague. They will give us something to kill it with.”

 “And then another thing to kill the thing that kills it, no doubt,” said the Pursuivant in his sly voice. “For another dozen girl-children from the Demesne. For more ore. For more herbs and rarities. Oh, I have heard of these Magicians. Gifters, aren’t they? If one can survive their gifts.”

 “No one has died of the forest plague,” Bloster said. “I told you it was perfectly safe to use.”

 “You told me, Bloster. Just as you told Bankfire, the Sentinel, and Warlock Wambly. And the family who farmed at the northern fringes. Still, they’re all dead, aren’t they.”

 “Disease. Some disease, is all.”

 “A disease the Healers couldn’t fix. Oh, I’ll help you spray your forest edge plague, Bloster. It hasn’t killed you, yet. But don’t ask me to stay about where it’s been.”

 The two of them went off, we three quiet creatures sneaking along behind. We came to the edge of the forest quite soon. Here the mushy, fungus look of the forest edge had been encroached upon by a lively green. Bloster and the Pursuivant put on their masks and began to spray something from the tanks upon the new growth, something oily, glistening, which settled in a deadly film on the green, smoking slightly, turning it black in the instant. When they were done, the two of them turned back the way they had come. I didn’t follow. Instead, the bunwit and I approached the sprayed places and sniffed at them. It was a dead smell, acrid as burned metal. All the places they had sprayed smoked thinly, and the forest trembled at the edge as though wounded.

 I walked aside from the place and plopped myself down on a green hillock. “Well now,” I advised the beasties, they being the only audience I had. “We have one hugeous pig. We have some stuff that’s been sprayed at the forest edges. Forest is hurt, no question of that. The stuff at the edges holds the forest in, eh, bunwit? That’s clear. It makes an edge. A dam. A dike. Hrum te dundun.”

 The problem seemed to have no corner I could get a finger under. Kill the pig? Possible, I supposed, but then what? Porvius Bloster would merely come again with another pig, a longer pig, a millipig, perhaps. He would sell a hundred little girls from his Demesne (and at this thought I shivered, well able to imagine myself one of them, sold into some unknown horror at a tender age) to buy another, more monstrous creature.

 Could one kill Porvius Bloster? Possibly. It would not solve the matter, however. The Basilisks of Daggerhawk would, presumably, send someone else. Their reasons would still be unknown, their motivations—for pig and Bloster both—dim and uncertain. In this same forest a year before, Bloster had said there was Game against me, personally, directed by another than himself. Who might that be? And why? I wondered if it had anything at all to do with the forest.

 I needed more understanding of what was going on here. The flitchhawk had not been helpful. The dams had told me nothing of reasons—indeed, I doubted they knew any. Someone, somewhere, knew more. Of this I was certain. That person had not helped me, however. Perhaps that person did not know I needed help. Or knew and did not care. Or knew, I said to myself, and cared, but was prohibited from helping me.

 “Oh, Jinian,” I said to myself, annoyed with this endless round of speculation. “What matter who knows what? They, whoever they are, are not here and Jinian Footseer is. Now get on with it.”

 The question was, what? Even if I were to figure out something to do, I could not be certain it would be the right thing or a good thing unless I knew more. Even as I told myself this, I had no doubt at all that the forest knew what needed to be done, if the forest were allowed to speak.

 Well now, what did I have to use? Eh? Door magic. Window magic. Bridge magic. Herbary. Summoning. Come now. I sat in the midst of the forest and could not think of a thing. No doors. No windows. No bridges. Herbary all around and simply not useful. Summoning, yes. I could use Where Old Gods Are. Assuming that category applied to the forest. That could be done, but I needed something to control what answered the summons and keep the shadow out. Window magic once again?

 “Was ever a dwelling in this forest, bunwit? Eh? Castle, keep, lodge, stable? Ever any dwelling here, great or humble? Any bridge, any structure? Eh? Two stones on top of each other?”

 Bunwit had his head cocked as though listening. Since he couldn’t be understanding me, he must have been getting his information from elsewhere. Not about castles or keeps, no. About whereness. Abruptly he turned and began hopping away through the trees, so quickly it was hard for me to keep up.

 “Easy, bunwit,” I called. “I’ve only got two legs,” at which he gave me an astonished look. I’d forgotten, so had he. At least, only two used to hop with. We whipped off through the trees, up slope and down, underbrush tangling my legs and ferns crushing in my path. We came to a place. It had that look about it, you know, as though something had been there, that slightly unnatural look as of ancient stones, buried. I knelt to scrape at the surface, disclosing pale stones beneath the moss. The pile stretched away on either side, higher at the center.

 What had it been, once? I walked around it, in it, on it, feeling a kind of tingle, not unlike the feeling in my feet when walking the Old Road. I lay down in the middle of it and shut my eyes. Tingle. I listened. I half shut my eyes and peered at it and out of it at other things.

 There was a very minor magic to use in cases like this. Taking a deep breath, I turned myself in the proper whirl, made the proper gestures—catching a glimpse of astonished bunwit in the process—shut my eyes, and did the ‘deep look”. I wasn’t very good at deep looking then. I got better later on. Margaret was the best among us seven. She could see inside mountains to the ore, Murzy said. Well, no matter. I deep looked, tilting the look backward the way Bets Batter-eye had tried to show me, back, back ...

 To catch a glimpse, only a glimpse, of a strange building, doors wider at the top, high-domed, with sweet-smelling smoke rising inside, and a long wing under the trees where travelers might rest, and funny ... funny-looking travelers coming and going ... not people. Others.

 It was gone. What had I seen? A kind of temple? An inn? An inn, perhaps. Nothing inimical, certainly. Nothing hurtful. A restful place. A quiet one. So.

 The pile of earth-covered stone before me was low, long, obviously deep-buried. I had no idea whether I could move enough of it to see the structure. The beasties seemed to have some understanding of what I needed, so I tried that. “Bunwit, I need help. I need diggers. Builders. Handy creatures. Do you think you could find some?”

 He had his head cocked again, listening. One could have thought he understood me, so intense was his appearance of concentration. However, he did not offer to go find several Tragamors for me. I estimated it would take three or four, at least, to get the stones moved. With a Sorcerer or two standing by to hold power for them.

 Sighing, I turned away and began to shift uncovered stones. Many of them were too large for me to move at all, but I could lever the smaller ones where I wanted them, and each one moved away gave access to others beneath. In order to use window magic to control Where Old Gods Are, there would have to be at least two standing walls and a window. Actually, four walls would be better, and it would need a roof. Window magic, even with ruined windows, required the sense of enclosure, a thing built that opened upon a world not built. There are more Wize-ardly words to describe it, but the sense of it is that. With everything tumbled, moss-grown, and earth-covered, it was very difficult to find corners.

 Bunwit had gone. They are not notable for their building skills, though they are good diggers. Perhaps he was tired, or hungry. I went on moving rocks. I thought I had found a corner hidden under a tumble of shards that looked as though a heavy roof of tiles had fallen in.

 Then I heard sounds around me. I wiped sweat out of my eyes and looked at them, a dozen furry bodies at the center of the ruin, pushing and shoving with many heaves and grunts. Flood-chucks! Great, fluffy flood-chucks, moving earth for all they were worth.

 “Flood-chuck a chuck a chuck,” I called to them, bowing. All of them stopped what they were doing with a chuckle of appreciation, lining up to bow in return. Then we got back to work. They watched what I did and did likewise, digging out stones and earth from the old rooms, uncovering the old walls. Bunwit sat on the top of an earth pile, supervising. I waved a thank-you at him and went on working.

 About midafternoon we stopped digging and wandered about the place, peering through the openings. We had found half a dozen rooms and doors. One of them had an almost complete fireplace as well, with an intact hearth and three walls half-standing around it, so we had concentrated on that. The chucks were experimenting with dry stone courses to raise the walls higher. One of the walls had a window, almost complete, with sill, sideposts, lintel. It looked out one side of the ruin onto a quiet glade where lily flowers bloomed. We were unlikely to do better.

 “Here,” I called, gesturing around me. “Here. Roof. Walls. Floor.” Gesturing, sketching with my hands. Bunwit squeaked and ran to get out of the way.

 The flood-chucks built the walls higher, cursing in their own grunting tongue as they worked, telling jokes to one another, pausing to laugh and scratch their bellies, like fat women who had just taken off tight clothing. They grinned at me when I thought so, showing two great chisel-blade teeth. When the walls were high enough, they gnawed small trees down and dragged them over the walls to make the roof. Tree rat came down with several friends to weave thatch. I’m not sure how raintight it might have been, but it looked very roofish when they were finished. The flood-chucks cleared the room down to the stone floor, and I swept that with a bunch of straw bound to a stick.

 I rigged a sapling rod above the window and hung my rain cape on it as a curtain. For a time, I thought we would have to build a door, but bunwit found one buried under a section of roof, virtually dry and un-rotted. We propped it in its place and gathered armloads of wood to pile beside the hearth. Then the flood-chucks bowed at me, and I at them, and yet again, while bunwit fidgeted on his mound, until at last, surfeited by these courtesies, they departed, chatting with one another as they went.

 I had been surprised—and, admittedly, annoyed—when I had learned that much of any magic is simple hard work. Muscle and sweat, no different from any pawn digging in a field to grow grain. “All magics must have a starting place,” Murzy had admonished me. “Did you think it an easy thing?” I had thought it an easy thing and was ashamed to admit it. Wize-ardry in all the old tales seems a fine and effortless exercise, like the soar of a flitchhawk, without labor and certainly without sweat. During those early years, I had assumed a day would come when I could stand back from the work and say to myself, “Now the fun begins.”

 Not so, according to Murzy. “All magics build upon something, one’s own work or the work of others,” she had said in that firm, unequivocal voice. “’Wall, window, door, roof, bridge or floor, garden or field, each has its yield.’ So we say, we Wize-ards. And we do not destroy what we find already built for our use. There are those who will destroy the work—or the lives—of others to make their own magics, but we do not speak of them unless we must.”

 Well, though I’d received some help, I’d done a great deal of it myself and destroyed nothing in the process. I had earned my window magic and summoning.

 Dusk had come and I was starved. Bunwit arrived with a cheekpouch full of fruit and nuts. Tree rat showed up with more, and they cheeked at each other about who should feed me. Finally, dark came and they went off into it, leaving me alone.

 “All right, forest,” I whispered to myself. “Let’s give it a try.”

 Leaving the curtain open, I built a fire upon the hearth. Certain things from my pack were laid out there, in a certain form. A pattern was drawn on the windowsill. Then I leaned from that sill and called, “Come into the light, the warm. Come into comfort. Come where fire is. Come where no shadow may come. Come in such guise as you choose, such shape as you will. Come, forest, come. Where Old Gods Are, a suppliant waits.”

 Then I sat down to feed the fire. The summoning was done. It was not long before something began to gather at the window. I fed the fire and kept very still. It was something pale, I think, and tremulous. Something a little clammy, like the night. Something twiggish, leafish. Which reached across the sill and found purchase in the room. Which entered. Which shook itself into shape and stood up, a little taller than I. Twiggish. Yes.

 Staying very quiet and calm, I went past it to the window and closed the curtain carefully, closing every gap, laying small stones on the bottom of it to hold it in place.

 “Come nigh the fire,” I whispered. “Yet not too nigh.” It sat down near me, cross-legged, holding its hands to the fire in imitation of mine. “You are the forest,” I whispered. “Aren’t you?”

 “Forest,” said the twiggy thing in a breeze voice, scarcely articulated. It turned its leafy head to the window behind it. If it had had eyes, it would have looked at the curtain there.

 “By the law of dwelling, the shadow cannot enter here.” It was true. Only what was summoned might enter dwelling when fire was present if windows and doors were shut and the proper words pronounced. So all the Wize-ards of the world believed. So I trusted. “Gathers,” it said, moving its hands as windtossed branches move. “Out there.”

 “Out there, Not here.” It was silent for a time, then said, “Hears.”

 “No. It cannot hear.” I was less certain about this, but it seemed logical. I had laid a closure upon the window when the curtain was closed, a closure upon the roof when the tree rats had finished with it, as well as one on the door when we had propped it in place. “No. It cannot hear.”

 Still the thing sat, shifting its shape slightly as its leaves moved, as its parts moved. It was one thing mostly, but could easily be another. And it did not speak. When I had been here last, the forest had spoken clearly. Why, now ... ?

 As though it read my thought, it pointed to itself. “Small,” it said.

 I nodded. Yes. It was small. It had to be small to avoid notice, perhaps.

 It pointed at the window. “Large, out there.”

 “Yes,” I agreed, beginning to get the drift. “Small words,” it said, gesturing at itself once more. “Ah.” So the forest had sent a messenger, but the thing it had separated from itself was only a part. A small part. With small understanding, small words.


 “Damnation,” I muttered at myself. More riddles and conundrums, more quips and oddities. Why couldn’t someone in the world simply tell me what was going on? The creature reached a finger—a woody protuberance, sharp, pointed—to touch my face, drawing it away with a tear hanging from it. “Sad?” it asked.

 “Confused,” I whispered, astonished at its sympathy. One does not expect that from a ... whatever it was. “I only get pieces of things. You don’t tell me. The Wize-ards don’t tell me. Dervishes don’t tell anyone anything. All this mysterious, weird stuff going on, and I don’t understand any of it.”

 “Shhh.” It reached to me again, touching the locket that hung at my throat, next to the star-eye. “Please.”

 I clutched at it. The fragment? Please what? I didn’t want to take it off, but I did, opening the locket. The thing leaned forward, as though it had eyes. “Please, Star-eye. Look.”

 I looked. It was what it was, a silvery fragment with no ... Wait. The twiggy finger touched it. The forest touched it. Touched it and it swam with light. A pattern. A circle of black. Inside that, a circle of light. Upon that, a design of such brilliance it made my eyes hurt. A cross—not a regular one, more like a letter “Y” with a center post through it. No, flatter than that. The top branch was forked at the edge. The brilliance ran through the dark circle. Outside the dark circle was a gray mixture, grains of dark and light mixed, swimming together.

 It pointed to the brilliant design with its very pointed finger, then reached down to touch my foot. The voice came like a tiny wind. “Same. Uncover it, Star-eye. Fix it.”

 And then it was gone. Oh, I don’t mean it left. There were tumbled branches and fragments of moss upon the floor, still shivering from the suddenness of their collapse. Outside something huge and ominous gathered, listening with all its attention, but there was no longer anything for it to listen to. I put the fragment back around my neck, then slowly, slowly fed the leafy branches to the fire. Even this, my teachers would have told me, has meaning. When you think an event is ended, look past it. The things that happen immediately following—or sometimes, just before—have great meaning. Fire, I mused. Branches to the fire.

 I went to the window, pulled the makeshift curtain to one side, only a crack, drawing back as though stung. Something cold had lashed at me. I replaced the stones and crept to the fire, first humming, then singing to drown out that feeling of terrible disquiet. The song wasn’t much. A love song. Come to my fireside and shelter, my love, and so forth and so on. Gradually the silence turned to evening sound: birdsong, small animals calling, the rush of a quick rain. When only the sound of the forest was there, I took the rain cape down from the window, wrapped myself in it, and went to sleep. Just before doing so, however, I took one of the charred branches and drew on the stone hearth the design the forest had showed me in my fragment. I wanted to remember it in the morning, to look at it again in the light.

 When I woke, bunwit and tree rat were there with breakfast, both of them stepping quietly aside from the design I had drawn, bringing my attention to it with their feet. Well, I had remembered it correctly. A radiant three-branched tree, the top branch forked, set on a circle of light, surrounded by a circle of dark. Outside of which was the mixture of light and dark. I marked it in with the charred stick and stood looking at it, chewing on a stalk of rootcane. It was sweet and crisp, gnawed only slightly with bunwit teeth marks. Which was still far better than having to dig my own.

 The design meant something. What it meant, I didn’t know. But the forest had said. “Fix it.”

 Uncover it?

 Well, so much was clear. The gray slime that Bloster had sprayed at the edge of the forest was obviously part of what had to be fixed. In so doing, we would uncover the forest and fix it, in a sense. If the gray circle were broken ... Wait. I looked at the design again. If the dark circle represented the slimy circle around the forest, then the light circle represented the forest itself. And by breaking the gray circle, the forest would not be cut off any longer. The rest of the design could be deciphered later.

 “A way out, ninny,” I said to myself. “This forest is shut in, disconnected, and it needs a way out. All right, then. Try to figure a way to get rid of that filthy gray slush they’ve sprayed all over.”

 Bunwit stiffened and whimpered. Off in the trees I heard a snorting whomp, whomp. Centipig was tearing up the shrubbery again. “And at the same time,” I promised myself with determination but no idea at all how to begin. “No. First we deal with that pig.”

 15

 We spent five days following the centipig, trying to find out where it went, what it ate, when it drank. The results were very discouraging. It went everywhere, ate everything, and drank every time it crossed a stream. In the five days, it crossed its own trail a hundred times but did not establish any habits whatsoever. Trapping a thing that size without any habits one can count on would be impossible. This caused me some tears of frustration and a sleepless night or two until I thought of Dedrina-Lucir. They had trapped the Basilisk by digging a pit for it to fall into as it chased something else. So if we could get the pig to run after something, we could perhaps put a pit in its way.

 Next day we tried to get centipig to chase the bunwit, or tree rat, or even me. I had the most luck, but even that couldn’t be called successful. It would come after me, eyes burning, tusks flashing, but the minute something else moved, bird or beast, it would forget me and take off after the other thing. I tried standing in front of it, waving my arms and shouting insults, but it merely stared at me, unable to decide whether I or the bird flitting across the clearing made the most appetizing target. Whatever monster shop they had made it in, they had forgotten to put in any brains.

 I learned when it did chase me that one way to escape was to run downhill. Going downhill, its legs got tangled and it would sometimes fall over. None of this helped, however. The thing was too big to tie up. There may be ropes strong enough somewhere, but they were not where I could get them in Chimmerdong Forest. Meantime, centipig destroyed great stretches of beautiful woods, leaving ugly, tangled messes behind it, piled with trampled greenery.

 I considered putting it to sleep, but making enough potion to keep a thing that size asleep for very long would have taken pots and kettles and a large-size root masher. There was none of those available, either. At last, out of desperation, I decided to try a love potion. Love potions work no matter what the size of the creature involved, and all the ingredients I needed were in plentiful, proximate supply. Bunwit and I went back to the ruined inn and stayed two days while I gathered the sixteen herbs and earths. Bowl-fruit were ripe, so I even had bowls and containers in which to measure and compound the mixture. I made it just as I had memorized it on the way from Schooltown, long ago. When I was finished, I had a neatly corked hollow bowlfruit full of potion, another one in reserve, and a pretty good idea where the centipig was, since it had been whuffling and snorting within earshot most of the afternoon.

 We sneaked up on it, managed to get in front of it, then I tossed the bowlfruit directly into its path. Piglike, it whuffled and snorted and kicked the fruit aside, thundering through the woods with its wicked little eyes gleaming. Bunwit retrieved the bowl and we tried again.

 My idea had been that bunwit should be the first thing centipig saw after eating the bowl of potion. I’d thought it out very carefully, and that seemed best. Bunwit was very fast on his feet and couldn’t possibly be overtaken even at centipig’s fastest. But after nine tries to get the pig to eat the bowl, I ... well, I became careless. Anticipating still another failure, I was leaning against a tree waiting for the pig to kick the bowl away for the tenth time when it whoffled it up in one gulp and turned its piggy eyes straight on me. They were full of rage and fury, just as always, but as I looked into them I saw them change. The only thing I can think of as a comparison would be the expression on Grompozzle’s face when he used to come licking my hands and begging for biscuits. It was a much more frightening expression than the beast-destruction look it had worn before. This was truly horrifying. A kind of sucking, intense desire. An unthinking hunger. I knew what I’d done in a moment. The thing was so big that, without even thinking about it, I’d made enough potion for any hundred persons. I’d forgotten that size doesn’t matter with love potions. “Size doesn’t matter,” Murzy had said. “It’s not like a sleeping drug.” Well, I’d remembered her saying it, but I’d forgotten it in the doing.

 It came for me, ready to eat me out of love, ready to pursue me forever, and I screamed as though Basilisks were biting me and got out of there. Enough sense remained to remember to run downhill and then away. It bleated horribly, then began to track me. By the Eleven and the Hundred Devils, it had never tracked anything before, but now it was tracking me.

 “Water!” I screamed to bunwit. “Get us to running water.” And we screeched along, first one in front and then the other, with the crashing behind us coming closer and closer.

 We got to water just in time, a deep, slow-flowing stream. I dived in and swam underwater, coming out on the other side a long way downstream. It was some time before bunwit found me, and I knew he’d had forest help to do it. It was impossible to go back to the ruined inn. My smell was all around that place. The only safe place to spend the night was in a very large tree—one too big even for centipig to knock down—while the shadow crept and prowled.

 Next morning we sneaked away to the northwest, to the edge of the forest nearest Daggerhawk Demesne, and got the flood-chucks to come help dig a pig pit. It was a narrow pit, very deep, very steep sided. It had to be long enough to hold the whole pig, steep-sided at the front and sides so he couldn’t climb out, narrow so he couldn’t turn around. Then it had to be roofed over with a net of branches and twigs strong enough to bear my weight since I’d be running directly across it. During the time they dug it out, I sat to one side, my ears up like a bunwit’s, alternately shivering and sweating. From time to time, I’d fall into a sickly doze only to wake with my heart pounding. At the time I thought the expression on the centipig’s face had given me nightmares. Being loved by a centipig was like being loved by a Ghoul, rather. A mindless passion that could as easily kill as kiss. I sat and shivered and watched the flood-chucks working with their usual deliberation. It took them all day and was then too late to try the pursuit. Another uncomfortable night in a large tree.

 And something more than discomfort. A kind of sickness taking hold of me. By the middle of the night it was clear that this malady was not simply a pig problem. Something other than that was wrong, but there was no time to figure out what.

 For morning had come, a rainy morning with slick footing. I had to decide whether it would be better to wait for good weather or get it over with. The thought of waiting seemed worse to contemplate than the terrible footing.

 So, bunwit, tree rat, and I went off to find the pig. When we found it, I showed myself, wishing there were some other way and trying very hard not to see its face. Had to see its face, of course. Had to see that long, long tongue come slavering, dangling out, those eyes fix and bore into me, hear that sound, part whine, part growl, part bleat, part grunt. Then it was after me and I away.

 We did it in short pieces. Somehow it was possible for me to run only a little at a time. We did a piece ending in a hillside, and I got away. Then we did a piece ending in the river, and I got away again. Each time I saw that face it drained more strength away. That kind of bestial, blind adoration sucks at you. It was as though the pig drank me up every time he saw me. Even then, though, I knew it was something more. A real sickness.

 The third race almost ended it for Jinian Footseer. I stumbled and fell with the pig so close I could feel the breath from his mouth. I screamed silently, begging for help. Bunwit flashed across in front of him in a long, zigzaggy bound, and that distracted centipig just long enough for me to limp into a rock tangle where he couldn’t follow. I sat down and cried. Bunwit and tree rat come in after me, snuggling close, warming me up. There was only one more piece to go, but no person around to do it. Jinian was lost somewhere else, gone. Centipig was still whomping around, but shortly he would lose interest and move away and we would have lost all the effort we had made. After a little time, bunwit hopped away, returning quickly with a few ripe berries of an unfamiliar kind. They were purple, with a green bloom upon the skin. He nibbled one to show me they were all right. I ate one, then another. Warmth ran into me and my head steadied. Well, I thought, that’s one I need to tell Murzy. I had never seen them before, and had I known how rare they are, I might have saved one to prove they exist.

 So, it was back into the forest again, and showing myself to the pig again, and letting it run after me one last time, blundering, thundering, with its hooves cutting up great chunks of turf and all the flowers pounded into mush where it went. Bunwit flashed ahead, finding the path for me. Tree rat chittered from above, saying, Close, closer, there it is. And there it was, the mat of branches I had watched the flood-chucks lay down.

 Careful, careful I went. Slowing. One step, two.

 Don’t let the foot fall between the branches. Set the feet down. Careful, careful. Centipig came on behind, heedless, not knowing, not caring, the whole thing shaking and heaving like a boat on the sea. The branches at the head of the pit were stronger, to take the weight until the whole beast was on it. I ran on, feeling the structure begin to tremble beneath me. It was weaker here. Then I was at the end, stopping, turning, letting it see me plainly.

 It came on and on. Its face was fixed on mine, eyes wide, a horrible anticipation there. I thought the branches would not break. We had built them too strongly, built too well, oh, it was coming on and I was not far enough back. I stepped back, stumbled over bunwit, who was at my ankles, and sprawled on my back as that hideous face loomed over me.

 And then a cracking, crashing, and the whole thing went down in an instant. There was centipig, horri-bleating in the bottom of the pit, and there was I, safe above, shaking like a tree in storm as though I would never stop. I sat down and hugged bunwit for some little time, crying as though I had been a tiny child.

 “Maybe we’ll ask the tree rats to feed it,” I whispered into the wide, furry ears. “Maybe we’ll want it for something. Right now, though, I’m going to sleep for a day and a night.”

 We returned to the ruin, I stumbling and weaving while the animals held me up until I could get to the leafy bed and into sleep as one falling into a well.

 The centipig pursued me into sleep.

 I sat in the window of a high tower and the pig rooted at the foundations far below, looking upward now and then with a glance of devotion, drool falling in long droplets from its mouth as it stared. It adored me, and that adoration slimed my skin as though it had licked me with its tongue. It loved me and would destroy me if it could, out of love. I wept in the tower, longing to escape, but the blind passion of the pig shut me in. There was no way out, no way around. Soon the very foundations would begin to shake. My small boat floated in a shallow pond and the pig wandered on the shore, calling to me ceaselessly, casting his offal in my direction with his hooves, a filthy offering, deeply sincere. Soon he would begin to drink, and the pond would go dry ...

 The cave trembled and I within it, as the pig strove mightily with the stones that composed it, grunting a paean of adoration for my beauty. “Love,” grunted the pig. “I will prove my love!” His great boar’s prick waggled as he rooted at the stones. Already most were rolled away, soon the others would follow ...

 And I woke. From far off in the woods came the sound of the trapped pig, squealing at the sky, demanding his love with brute virility. I sat up, screaming. “Come,” I called to the beasties beside me. “What one potion can do, another can undo.” And I ran into the darkness, they after me, before I realized I would need a torch to find what I needed and returned shamefaced to get it.

 It was only after the pig was dead that I began to shiver and vomit, sick at heart and soul, eventually exhausting myself. And only as I drowsed toward sleep did I consider why Murzy had said, “Never for anything small, chile. Never for anything small.” Then to remember with revulsion the decision I had made long before as I’d left Schooltown after a Festival. I had thought, then, if he did not love me, I would make him love me.

 I gagged on hot bile, choking on it.

 However else I might win the love of the mysterious boy, it would not be with a potion. How dishonorable and vile the creature who would force love from another. I had looked on the face of that kind of love, a pig love which cared not what it did to that it loved.

 How could it? How shameful and sickening to have one’s affections raped away. I would not be that low and would not bring that kind of shame upon him. And so resolved, the horror in me quieted at last and I slept.

 16

 I dreamed again. I was very ill. Murzy was holding me in the rocking chair. Someone said, “Either she’ll get well or she won’t. That’s all one can expect.”

 Murzy said, “Nonsense. She’ll get well just as soon as she knows how sick she is. She’s only moving out of habit.”

 There was a sound then. In the dream it seemed that the foundations of my world were being destroyed, and I woke in the chill day of Chimmerdong to a continuing blast of muttering thunder rolling ceaselessly out of the sky.

 The dream remained, a clear reminder of my illness, even as I climbed a tall tree in lethargic spasms of effort, getting above the lower roofs of Chimmerdong to peer toward the west. Pillars of vasty cloud and needles of lightning played there in fitful dark as the sound beat upon us. I clung raglike to the branch, limply absorbing the fury of the sky, growing soggy and droopy with it, climbing down at last to lie at the foot of the tree like an overfull sponge, oozing resentment at having been wakened, too weary for surprise, too depressed for wonder.

 “Something happened there,” I said to bunwit. “Some very large thing.” That was all I could manage. Later, of course, when I learned what had happened, that the lair of the Magicians had been destroyed in that one monstrous cataclysm, I felt sorry not to have known, not to have cared. At the moment, however, there was no energy with which to care. I crawled back into bed to sink into my dark core of sleep. There are animals that sleep in that fashion, spending a whole summer, a whole storm season, lost in kindly darkness. I wanted to sleep that way, so deeply that no dreams would come at all, so well that nothing could wake me. I could no longer ignore the sickness that had come upon me. After the forest visited me. Before the pig was trapped. Between those two events some essential link within me had been corroded by this creeping disorder, and I could not repair it. I did not even know it had been eaten away.

 The sleep would not last, however. In a time I awoke, suddenly, preternaturally alert, as though by some efficacious drug that sharpened sight and sound and intellect and energy, all in one dose. This was more of the same illness. This wild energy was no less abnormal than the lethargy that had preceded it. Briefly, I wondered what the name of this cyclic disorder might be. It was a passing wonder.

 I rose, jigging in place, feeling the tingle on my bare feet which said remnants of the Old Road were there beneath my toes. With no motivation at all beyond a need to use this hectic excess of enterprise, I began to walk along it, here, there, first in one direction then another. Sometimes the road was there and sometimes not. Parts were buried under mountains of mud and rock with huge trees grown up in it. In some places a river ran where the road should run, and wherever the road entered the slime it simply disappeared. I couldn’t tell whether it was underground or gone. It gave no sign of being there, and even digging down a little—oh, what a stench when that ground was dug into—disclosed nothing. Reason said perhaps the road was still there, but eyes, ears, fingers, feet said nothing.

 From the northernmost edge of the forest, when I reached that point, I could see Daggerhawk Demesne squatted like a toad on the top of a rock, glaring down at me from a dozen glassy eyes. It was hypnotic, that place. I found myself staring at it, open-mouthed, without moving while the sun slid over the sky. I shook myself, muttered angrily, only to begin staring at it again. They were there, the Basilisks, the mother and mother’s sisters of Dedrina-Lucir, probably De-drina-Lucir herself, the vengeful, the threat to my safety, to my life. Porvius Bloster was there, my enemy, my captor, my adversary. Those who hated me and opposed me were there, all there, and I felt a red glow of anger kindle deep inside at the sight of the place.

 Eventually I left it there to wander a nearby path which wound among groves of green-trunked trees to end in a stretch of meadow around a house.

 A house. I had been alone in the forest for a long time, aware of no other occupant, yet now I stood in baffled confusion, confronting someone standing before a house.

 “My dear,” called the person, “I did hope you’d feel free to stop by. Do bring the darling animals and come in.”

 He—she? It? This stout, much painted and powdered person, with rosy circles drawn upon its cheeks and long diamonds of black paint drawn vertically through its eyes; this clown, acrobat, actor, pawnish performer of some kind or other, invisible within its robes and makeup; this incredible visitant posed in the door of the dwelling and beckoned to me as some merchant might summon reluctant custom from the street. Thoughts of wicked Witches, of the Ogress of Tarnost, of Trolls, and Ghouls, came to mind and were discarded. Whatever this person was, it was not precisely that. There was menace, but a menace more subtle than that; terror, but a terror more insidious. Had all my will not been paralyzed by the strange illness that had come upon me, I would have fled. As it was, I approached, mouth gaped like any simpleton at a fair.

 “I wanted to thank you, my dear, for disposing of the pig. Monstrous great thing. I can’t imagine what they were thinking of. Daggerhawk, I mean. They’ve never been known for sensitivity, but releasing a thing of that magnitude into a closed system—and I’m sure you’d be the first to agree that Chimmerdong has been most dreadfully closed of late—simply begs for disaster.”

 “I think that was their intention,” I said, mouth going on where wits were absent. “They seemed determined upon destruction.”

 “No! You don’t say so. Well, Porvius Bloster was a nasty little boy who always picked his nose at parties, but I didn’t think he’d grow up to be like that. His sister, of course, we used to call—behind her back, I do assure you, my dear, she’d have been livid—the Lizard Duchess because of her cold, reptilian nature (one duplicated, so I understand, in her daughter), but I did think Porvius had a hint of warmth to him.”

 The person fanned itself for a moment, looking off into the distance with a smile in which satisfaction and a certain cynicism were blended. Then it turned to me with its false, painted smile.

 “Oh, my dear, I’m forgetting my manners entirely. Just see what a little stress will do to normally well-behaved people. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Oracle. Not only am, but have been for the remembered past.” It gestured toward the door. “Please. Do come in. You must be very tired after all that road trotting, and I have some soup warming on the fire.”

 I had already smelled it. It was the one thing that could have tempted me into the house. I told myself a rogue and devil might mimic good humor and kindliness, and most of them do, but surely no one could connive the smell of good soup. For a moment the smell lifted my depression, taking me back to the good smells of kitchens when I was a child. We went in, bunwit, tree rat, and I, and the Oracle seemed not unkindly disposed toward any of us.

 That person was now standing against a wall of its room, taking bowls from a cupboard and wiping them on a corner of its fantastic robe. This was made up of straps in bright colors, purple and blue and gold, all depending from ornamental strips that went from wrist to shoulder, across over the ears and head, and down the other side. Except for the long, pale hands, the creature was totally covered with fabric or paint. “I haven’t met an Oracle before,” I said, struggling to be polite, to make conversation. Even this minor effort was almost beyond me, and I silently cursed the dangerous extent of my debilitation. I had a brief, petulant vision of myself reduced to permanent catalepsy, unable to move at all.

 “Well, my dear young person, I should think not,” it said in astonishment. “I may be the only one at all. In fact, that is entirely likely. It is certain there is no Oracle in the Index. I’ve had the matter looked into. That has been, in fact, part of the problem. They have their Seers by the dozens, all with the pretty little mothwinged masks, available on any street corner. Why should they seek an Oracle! Hmm! I ask you. And, of course, I’ll answer you, too, my child. Because the Oracle really knows. That’s why. Tell them that, and what do they say? They snort, or mock. So. I’ve given up talking to them at all. I know. That’s all. Let them fumble.” It declaimed this last, waving the soup spoon with sufficient force to throw droplets around the room. One landed on my lips, and I licked it up. It was, indeed, very flavorful soup.

 “Do you really know?” The endless whirl within me spun into silence. Oh, to have answers, to have the realities. To hold in one’s hands the keys, the cure! “Everything? And could you tell me?”

 “Well, of course I could. Will I? That depends, doesn’t it. On whether you have the price. No freebies. Doesn’t do to dispense freebies. Persons of consequence don’t respect you. High prices mean high respect. Would your bunwit like some soup as well?”

 I mumbled something about the bunwit liking anything leafy, or one of the fruits I could see on the table. It took a proffered vegetable, munching away watchfully while the Oracle gave me soup and bread with soft yellow cheese.

 “You see,” I said at last, driven to it by the silence and the desperate need to fasten upon some subject, some perception of actuality. “I’ve been asked to rescue the forest. And I really have very little idea how to be successful at it ...”

 “Well, of course you will do it, my dear. Quite unmistakably. You’re the heroine type. A survivor. When it comes to matters like that, one always wants a heroine type.”

 “Well, this heroine type doesn’t know how to proceed,” I gritted between my teeth, wanting only to be away from there, curled on my leafy bed in the ruin. Not thinking of anything. I bit my lip until the blood came, ashamed to show this incredible weakness. “How come you stay in the forest, here, by the way? You can’t get much company.”

 It shrugged, blinking its diamond-painted eyes so they squinched into four-pointed stars, then opened again. “At one time there were quite enough. That was before Bloster’s forebears decided to cut the forest off, of course. Stupid men. I don’t know what they thought they were doing.”

 “You don’t?” I asked. “An Oracle should know, shouldn’t one?”

 It waved a spoon at me in mock chastisement. “Silly girl. I don’t mean I don’t mean I don’t know, I mean to make conversation. I mean, conversationally, that it seems ridiculous for them to have done so. Doesn’t it?”

 “Not from what I know about Bloster and his kin, no,” I replied, struggling to set words together. Whatever the creature was before me—and a good cook was certainly part of it—it was no giggling schoolgirl, much though it talked like one. “It seems entirely in keeping with knavery and lying and bad Gamesmanship. Bloster took me captive when I was a student, not even Gameable. Then he switched Game to me when I evaded him. Then he sent his thalan, a Basilisk named Dedrina-Lucir, to kill me, a task which she failed, in Xammer, a Schooltown which had been held free from Game by every Referee ever. Exactly the kind of man who would kill off a forest for the sheer joy of it.” My words dwindled away into silence, the spoon falling from my hand.

 “Oh, my dear child, how you have suffered,” it said, seeming to push its top lip down under its lower teeth in that expression of sympathy which I detest. “Such a brave little girl.”

 “Nothing of the kind,” I whispered. Though I had been thinking exactly that. Some deep, sad vein had been opened to bleed exactly such suffering thoughts. I was choking on them. I could not admit it. “Annoyed little girl. Increasingly angry little girl, if you like.”

 “Well, yes,” agreed the Oracle with irrepressible gaiety. “That, too.” It offered me more bread and cheese, which I refused. “I wonder if you could come up with my fee. It might be worth it to you, considering the way you’re feeling.”

 “How much?” I murmured. “How much, Oracle? In what coin?”

 “Well, it would depend on how many questions, wouldn’t it. How many do you think you have?”

 I sighed. All my gut turned and tumbled in that sigh, nausea moving with it, sickness rising like a tide. I sat very still, tasting the bitterness of bile, willing it away. “One,” I said, beginning the enumeration, “why did my mother love me so little that she cared not whether I died? Two: Why did my brother Mendost share this dislike of me? Three: Why am I here, alone, faced with some task I do not understand? Four: How may that task be accomplished?

 “Five: Who is it directs Porvius Bloster to Game against me to the death? Six: How could I be sure to make someone love me without using potion or spell?”

 Question six had not been one of those I had thought to ask, though it had obsessed me since the killing of the pig.

 “Seven,” said the Oracle, “is there only this one task for you to do, or are there other things, greater and more? I will answer that one for you. There is much more, Jinian. Much more indeed.” It giggled, a high, humorless sound rasping like a file.

 My throat was full of tears. The thought of more of anything made me weep.

 Oracle gave me an arch look. “Interesting questions, those,” it said. “Very interesting.” It hummed, did a little dance, turning around and around like a wheeling moth. “Have more bread, dear child. See, the bunwit likes it very much. I made the cheese myself. Would you credit it? With these very own soft, white fingers. Not at all what one was brought up to do, but then times change, times change.”

 “Thank you.” I nodded, unable to move. We sat in muffled silence, the very air around me heavy with my own malady. The Oracle had fed me well, though it had eaten nothing itself. I did not wonder about that, being too busy wondering whether the Oracle was going to set me a price or not. Perhaps it was thinking about it. I began wondering whether the creature was male or female, and it gave me such a look!

 “I thought better of you, dear child. Really I did.”

 “I was just ...” I made an equivocal gesture. I didn’t care, really.

 “Well! Whatever, whichever, no one cares but me and mine. Keep your mind decent and the rest of you will follow, so my Great-Grandma Acquackabby is said to have said.”

 “Was she an Oracle, too?”

 “No doubt,” it said, mouth twisted in amusement. “No doubt. Well. I’ve decided. I’m going to give you an answer. Not a freebie. You can owe me for it. I’ll think of a price later on when our heads are clearer. I’ve decided to answer question number six. That’s the one you care most about, child, and we both know it. Six is a lovely number. I have a passion for easily divisible numbers. So nice to deal with. Besides, it has been my experience that petitioners often know the answers to most questions before they ask, so I’ll answer the one question you can’t answer and trust you for payment. If I may say so, my dear, you do seem trustworthy.

 “How can you assure that someone will love you without potion or spell? Well, you do that by letting him save your life a time or two. There is a problem with it, of course. It would be better to be sure you don’t get killed in the process. I see something nasty by way of groles or Ghouls in your future, perhaps both. Saving you will require a risk, and it might happen both of you will be lost. Or, it could happen”—and it looked at me here with that terrible sidelong glance which seemed to say things no ears should hear—“it might be he would be killed and you would be quite safe.”

 It let me think about that, let the picture of it penetrate my disordered brain, let me begin to shudder at the thought. Even through the fog of depression, the thought of his death brought tears bubbling out of my eyes. I bit my lip as the Oracle went on, “You could guarantee his safety and your own, of course, if you had the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne in your possession.”

 “What dagger is that?” I mumbled through the fog.

 “I have a copy of it here,” the Oracle said, taking it from the same cupboard in which the bowls were stored. “It amused me to make the copy once when I thought of stealing the original. The people at Dagger-hawk had annoyed me. Dedrina Dreadeye, her sisters, her daughter. Bloster. Annoyed me greatly. All their power comes from the Dagger, and I thought that removing it without their knowledge might be a proper punishment. However, after a time I cooled.” It laughed, a high, tinkly laugh without amusement. “Here. Ugly, isn’t it?

 The wings of an impaled hawk made up the guard, a coiled Basilisk the handle of the weapon. I took it cautiously in a hand that trembled beneath the weight. “Couldn’t I use this one to protect myself?”

 “It’s only a copy, child. It has none of the powers of the real one.” The Oracle’s face swelled and receded, like a face in delirium, like a Festival balloon. I wanted to laugh but could not.

 “Which are?”

 “Death, death to the person touched by it in anger. Death to any creature touched by it in anger. A ghost raised from the grave would be returned therein by the Dagger of Daggerhawk.”

 “A dangerous thing to handle,” I said.

 “Not at all. It will not harm one to whom it is given, or one who steals it. Only one against whom it is used in anger, dear girl. On consideration, I decided I was not angry enough to use it for anything.” The Oracle laughed again. Perhaps it was not anger but some other dark emotion behind that laughter, something I did not care to examine more closely. Instinct told me to leave the place, then, at once, with no further conversation.

 Instead, I heard myself asking, “Where’s the real one?”

 “On the wall of the council hall of Daggerhawk Demesne. Where any good thief could have it down in a minute. And most of the power of the Basilisks with it.”

 “And you say it would protect me—me and the one I love—if need be?” To which the creature only smiled.

 And I lost track, then, of what was said. It went away, I think. When next I looked about me it was gone, though I held the false dagger still in my hand. Some of the bread and cheese remained upon the table, but the place was empty and echoing otherwise. I would have preferred, somehow, that the Oracle remain in one place. The thought of it roaming the forest in its own or some other guise was disquieting. Enervating. I crawled out upon the doorstep to sit in the sun. All that talk had been to no purpose. I would not have energy to steal anything at all, even to save my own life.

 When night came, I built a fire and curled up beside it, retreating into sleep from forest and flitchhawk, from duty and desire, from endless expectations, hoping, I think, not to waken. For a time the fiery core of life and hope burned low.

 Bodies are stubborn. Minds are stubborn, too. Came morning and my own mind and body sat up once more, burning with purpose once more, full of a dream in which I fed branches to a fire, brimming with hectic initiative.

 I would steal the Dagger from Daggerhawk Demesne. I would clear the slime from the edge of the forest. I would do both at once, with fire. By feeding branches to the fire.

 The day went by in a rush of effort, dragging branches into a pile that grew into a hill just inside the screen of forest. Above, Daggerhawk Demesne squatted on its cliff, glaring down from malign sunset eyes, red and furious. Then dark came, the eyes shut, and somehow the small mountain of wood was moved out onto the gray. Just there the gray was thin, worn away, not as choking or burning as elsewhere. Perhaps the Basilisks had walked there often enough to scatter the gray dust. Perhaps there had never been as much of it in that spot. Whatever the cause, we were able to work there without dying. Once I was moving, it was easier to go on moving than to decide to quit, even as my forcefulness gradually left me.

 “Yes,” something whispered to me, “but what will you do when the pile is moved? Then you’ll have to run, leap, exert yourself. You’re too tired. Too exhausted from trapping the centipig. Better lie down now, Jinian. Get some rest.” I heard the voice but disregarded it. It was no different from the voice I had heard sometimes in Vorbold’s House, selling despair, selling loneliness.

 The voice made it easier to work up a little anger. I would lie down when I felt like it. Until then, I would pile wood.

 We began the pile at the edge of the healthy forest, dead wood, fallen branches, bits of dried brush, all in a long, heaped line across the gray. It was dark, but I kept catching glimpses of things I couldn’t identify, twiggy things, mossy things, besides plain tree rats and more bunwits and something that looked very much like a long green dragon. I didn’t ask questions. I was too busy. Purpose had long since begun to fail. I did not want to do any of this. I wanted only to lie down and stop being. Nonetheless, I went on. We had to have the pile in place by dawn.

 When the false light appeared along the edge of the sky, we stuffed dried grasses in all the chinks along the bottom. It would have to go up all at once, before Daggerhawk could come put it out. Still, they would have to try. With what little time remained, we built a few more lines of dried wood out into the gray, among the fungusy trees. Though there was probably a Sentinel on watch, he might be asleep. Once we lit the pile it must still be dark enough for the fire to show up, yet late enough that someone would be awake and sure to see it. Finally, there was no time to wait longer.

 Then I lighted a dozen torches with my firelighter and gave all but one to the bunwits, who took them nervously. They are not accustomed to using fire. We set out along both sides of the long pile, lighting the fuses of grass. Then the bunwits scampered back into the forest, and I scrambled into the half-dark of the dawn, straight up the hill toward the squatting toad of Daggerhawk.

 I wanted to turn around and watch the fire but didn’t dare. When Daggerhawk saw it, I had to be nearby. Close. So close I could see who went and who stayed. As it was, I almost didn’t make it.

 I heard the alarm sound while climbing the last little bit of rock to the north of the main gate. There’s a cleft in the rock there, full of dark. They must have had a Herald on the ramparts, because he let go full voice, “Let all give ear; let all give ear; fire. Fire. Fire.” It was an efficient alarm. Lights went on in every window, and the uproar started right away. Everyone was looking down at the forest. No one was looking at the gate.

 The portcullis was down. It didn’t matter. It would have stopped a man on horseback, I suppose, but not a skinny girl. Slender. Queen Vorbold says we must refer to ourselves as slender. Slender, then. The bars were no barrier, nor was the door of the little room where the rope that draws the portcullis winds around its machine. What do they call it? Capstan? Or is that on a ship?

 Whatever they called it, someone came at it very quickly, half-dressed and dragging on his trousers. He set to work hauling up the gate, never glancing into the shadowy corner of the ceiling where I was crouched on a beam. When the gate was up, he locked the roller down with a lever and went running back the way he had come, leaving the door for my spy post. They all went by me, not one manheight away, Bloster and the Pursuivant and dozens of men and women, all carrying buckets and flails. Buckets and flails would not help them much. We had built a pile that would burn fast and hot as tinder, and there was no stream nearby. Still, let them try, let them try. Let them get out of there.

 And at last the ones I’d been watching for. A group of women, all of whom looked much like Dedrina-Lucir, all with that same reptilian grace. Dedrina herself, I thought, and mother and aunts, slouching across the courtyard as though they did not care who might be watching. When they had gone after the others I waited only a little longer. Surely the place was empty. I ran across the courtyard. The central keep was off to the left a little, located long since from a treetop in the forest. If it was like most such places, the way to it would not be direct. We all try to make our home places confusing for invaders—Elators, for instance. If they cannot see where they are going, it makes it more difficult for them to get in.

 So I cast about, finding my way. If everyone was not at the fire, those left behind were at windows where they could see the fire. I saw no one except a bare-bottomed baby lying in a basket on my way to the great flight of stairs with the heavy door at the top of them.

 Quickly then, puffing a little, for it had been a long climb, I found the council hall. Found it. Stared into it in dismay.

 The room was huge, square, and lofty. Across from the door, two high windows looked out onto nothingness, a wide gulf of air above the forested valley. On the right-hand wall was a fireplace with a monstrous, carved mantel high on the wall, and above that the Dagger hanging in lonely significance, a tiny dot upon that stone. To either side was an arras, which may have covered other doors. To my left was a dais with a table, two doors behind it, and down the center of the room between me and the windows another long, heavy table with a line of chairs down either side.

 It would have taken an Armiger to reach the Dagger.

 Or a dragon. Or a bird. I despaired, biting my lip, feeling the tears gather. Then I saw that the high chairs beside the table had ladder backs higher than my head. They were not so heavy that I could not walk one of them over to the hearth. Then I could scurry up the back, climb onto the mantel, take the Dagger, and hide it under my cape while substituting the false one the Oracle had given me.

 It was done almost as quickly as thought of; I came down the chair and walked it back to its place by the table. It was a chair from the end nearest the hearth, the side nearest the windows. It slid beneath the table with a silken, hissing sound, a sound infinitely prolonged, a sound that I only gradually realized came not from the chair but from the doorway through which I had entered, a sound I had heard before in the dark night outside Xammer. The Basilisk’s sound.

 In the doorway stood Dedrina-Lucir. Not dead. Not even injured. The Demesne had not been empty after all. Those who had gone had done so only to trick me.

 “When we ssssaw the fire in the foressst, we knew it wasss a trick,” she hissed at me. “My auntsss and I.”

 Gods. One of the doors on the dais swung open as a blunt reptilian head came through it. Across the room an arras moved, and the sound of slithering came from behind that. Had they been here when I came in? Or had they only now arrived? Did they know? Oh, gods, if they already knew I had the Dagger, they would give me no chance. Only if they thought ...

 “I came for that, Dedrina,” I said, trying to sneer, trying to sound cocky, moving toward the dagger on the wall.

 “You may not have that,” hissed a voice from behind the arras, the heavy body thrashing across the floor to get between me and the hearth. There were three of them. Was that all? I stepped away toward the window to see the whole room. There were only the three. Between me and the way out.

 “Having you ever sssseen ssssomeone bitten by a Basssilisssk?” This from the one between me and the false dagger, a fully lizard shape, a high crown of spines rising between its eyes, eyes as lucent and glorious as jewels fixed on me and me on them, on them, on them. I wrenched my face away, remembering almost too late that I could not look at them, at any one of them.

 “I have heard the filth of a Basilisk’s bite is worse than a Harpy’s mouth,” I said, still trying to sound unafraid. I wanted them unthinking, if possible. Murzy had said—someone had said; Cat?—that they were not subtle. Someone had been fairly subtle here; more subtle than I. But, Cat had said, in beast shape they lost some of it. Oh, gods, let them not be subtle. “I had heard it comes from the filthy nature of the beast, whether in the shape of it or not.”

 “And why did the idiot Dangle-wit come to steal?” she hissed, every sibilant drawn out in her serpent’s voice, long and ominous. “What would it try to do with the eidolon of Daggerhawk?

 Dedrina didn’t know; they didn’t know.

 It was the only advantage I had.

 Still, there was no way at all that one slender girl could physically fight three giant Basilisks and come out victor, even with the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne hidden in one hand.

 “Have you come to declare Game against usss?” She threw back her head and laughed, a kind of racking laughter, like hammers on flesh. We had never heard that laugh in Vorbold’s House. “Simpleton. Hawk bait. Dangle-wit!”

 “I need not declare Game,” I said as firmly as possible, moving away from the chair so they wouldn’t start thinking about its laddery back. “Game was declared by your thalan, Porvius Bloster. And you declared Game against me, Dedrina-Lucir. The Game is yours. I need not declare.”

 “Need not!” she spat at me. “Need not. Indeed, need not. Need not ever again, need not breathe, or move, or speak. Need not see or taste or hear. Need not live, Dangle-wit. Need not again.”

 And then she began to change.

 First the claws at the ends of her fingers came out, long and yellow as dirty ivory. The hands turned greeny brown, leathery and scaled, and this crept up her arms, the arms swelling and her clothing ripping to fall away. The eyes grew wider, rounder, moved out to the side of her head so that she turned it a little to keep me in sight, and those eyes burned, spoke, “Look at me, look at me.” I could feel the paralysis creeping. Her aunts hissed. “Yes, Jinian. Look at her, at us, at the Basilisks. Come to us, Jinian. Foolish child. Stupid girl.” Down in the forest I had been stirred into a little volition. Now I could feel the last of that small purpose leaving me.

 And I was glad of the loss. It would be nice not to have to move. Not to worry that I had no Talent. Not to be concerned about the past, the future. Mother, Mendost, King Kelver—all. All would vanish in some venomed haze that would last only a moment and be gone. No more seeking answers that never came clear. No more frustration. No more senseless demands by curious creatures.

 She should have kept still. I could not have opposed her. My will was gone, but still Dedrina went on speaking.

 “First you, Dangle-wit. Then your friends from Xammer, the old women.” She laughed again. “My mother is not here. She has gone north for a time. She will regret missing our amussssement with you and your friends. A little bite to make the dying last, Dangle-wit. From Dangle-flight Demesne.”

 I knew that voice well. I had heard it too often in the courtyard of Vorbold’s House, had heard too often that epithet thrown at me from behind my back. I had heard that same hiss in the fields outside Xammer. Her words recalled misery and loneliness, and I felt rage rising up, turning me away from those eyes. “No, ugly lizard,” I whispered with a thick tongue. “I will not look at you.”

 Perhaps this infuriated her. She was not completely changed. Her head and upper body were changed, but the lower part of her was still shifting, the legs and tail were only partly there. Still, she fell belly down and came writhing across the floor at me, faster than I would have thought possible. If Dedrina had been able to see me in the fields outside Xammer, if she had moved like this then, I would not have lived to tell of it. Jaws were gaped wide behind a fog of venomed breath. I backed away from the carved table and drew the Dagger from my tunic, hiding it from her. With every movement, I grew angrier, for she would not stop hissing her vile words.

 “Dangle-wit. A child without Talent? A girl without ability? You should have been born here, Dangle-wit. We sell your kind to the Magicians. They need no wits, there. Only soft young bodies. Betrothed to Dangle-fire, is it not? To some witless, deformed King? Who must betroth his wives young or will not get them at all. Loving sister of the foul Mendost, the foul, un-Gamely Mendost ...”

 The two at the sides closed in. Dedrina came toward the table that separated us, reptilian head high to peer across it. I knew she would drop that head to slither beneath when the others had come close enough, thrusting her way among the chairs. I was backed against the window, nowhere to go, no time to do anything ... anything but ... Her head went down.

 “Mothwings Go Spinning,” I said, laying the Dagger upon one palm. It was heavy. Heavier than anything I had ever moved. “Eutras,” I murmured, making a quick gesture with my left hand. “Bintomar. Sheilsas. Favian. Up. Up. Touch all. Mothwings Go Spinning!” And I bent all my intention on it, moved by the swelling anger the Basilisk’s words kept burning.

 The Dagger trembled on my hand, trembled, shook, rose, began to spin. Oh, so slowly, rocking unsteadily upon the air. Seeing the Dagger, the Basilisks to either side had begun to scramble, their hard nails slipping on the polished floor, panting like fustigars, mouths gaped wide. “Mothwings,” I gasped, “Go Spinning!” It moved faster, whirling, circling, moving out. I moved away from the wall to give it more room as it circled out and around me, tilted my left hand to guide it down, and out, and down. High behind me, low in front, tilting, whirling.

 Still she was not silent. Still she went on invoking Mendost’s name, the foul, un-Gamely Mendost.

 Mendost was foul and dishonorable, and perhaps Eller was no better, but it had nothing to do with me save to infuriate me. I had not designed either one of them nor clung to them from affection. The Dagger, sensing my rage, spun faster. “Mothwings Go Spinning,” I cried, widening the gesture. “Eutras. Bintomar. Sheilsas!” I realized they were names I was calling. Names of what? Who? Did it matter? “Favian! Up. Up. Touch all!”

 And the spinning Dagger touched the Basilisk to my left. It did not scream. Came a hiss like some great engine under pressure, a howling hiss, gargling in the throat as from something already dead, but it stayed where it was, the eyes glazing over, still erect, jaws wide, as though it yet lived. Across the wide-flared nostrils lay a little line of blood, like a thread. That is all, one threadlike line.

 From my right a scream as the second lizard saw what had happened to the first. Oh, they were not subtle. I would have retreated, but it did not. It came on as I tilted my hand to the right, sending the Dagger down on that side like a toy whirled on a string. It crossed the Basilisk’s eyes, only touching them. Only touching, yes, but I was red with rage. Again the howling hiss, again the creature frozen in place with dull eyes. And now was only Dedrina-Lucir before me, beneath the table. The Dagger could not reach her, but neither could she see what had happened.

 “Now, my mother’s sistersss,” she was saying, “we will ssslowly take this Dangle-wit, this stupid girl. Ssslowly, ssslowly.” And she moved out from beneath the table.

 My eyes dropped and were caught by the deadly net of the Basilisk’s gaze, feebly struggling as a fly struggles. She licked her mouth with a horrid anticipation and moved toward me as the Dagger, released from my spell, fell onto the floor between us. She looked down for an instant, surprised at the clatter, more surprised to see what lay there. Her head came around to look up at the wall where the false dagger hung.

 It was all the time I had, all that I needed.

 “Eutras, Favian,” I mumbled through a dry throat. “Touch all.” The dagger lifted from the floor, only briefly, wobbling in its flight.

 It was enough. She was not subtle; she did not think; she put out a great taloned paw to catch it and the point spun across the scales, cutting them. She had time to turn that head toward me again for one glance of horrible comprehension, and then was frozen in place.

 I was left alone among the bodies of these great beasts. Among the bodies of these women.

 One of them was tall and muscular and not beautiful, though young. So, all the beauty had been Beguilement, the Basilisk’s Talent. As tall and well-muscled were the other two, but their hair was gray. All the lizard eyes were dull and dead. My eyes were as dull. I could feel the rage dwindling, the anger departing, the shadowy blankness coming back again. What was to be done now?

 If I were to go on living, I would want to keep this Dagger for reasons of my own, I told myself, not caring whether it would happen or not.

 And yet, if Bloster or his kin found these bodies, so little wounded, scarcely scratched, all dead—he would know. He would come hunting with others of the kindred, and they would find me soon enough, for my little rage had burned out and I could not move at all. And they would find the dams, for they knew about the dams. These I had killed were not the only Basilisks of Daggerhawk Demesne. Dedrina Dreadeye had not been here. She was elsewhere, alive. Soon she would be full of vindictive anger.

 I did not care what happened to me, not then, but I did not want Murzy to suffer. Nor Margaret.

 There was a window at the side of the room. It looked out over sheer walls to the valley beyond. If I leaned from it a little, I could see the line of fire and tiny black figures battling it. Mostly, however, it looked out upon air.

 In a kind of dull, fatalistic haze, I opened my belt pouch and took from it those things needed for a summoning, laid them out upon the wide sill while I mumbled the powering words. There was no power in me, only in the words I had learned, but such is the efficacy of those words that they carry their own power.

 Then I said, “Flitchhawk; numen of the skies, enter this place to take up a burden, for it is your burden more than mine.”

 I stood waiting in the window, head down.

 Nothing.

 The tiny black forms in the valley were giving up in disgust. Already some of them were halfway back up the hill. Were there oubliettes, dungeons where bodies could be hidden? I thought of dragging them there, giving up the notion in the instant. One, perhaps. Not three. I thought vaguely of stabbing them all again to make it appear they had died from more serious wounds.

 Then at last, when I had given up expectation—never having felt hope—the sound of wings. The window was large but scarcely large enough. His mighty talons gripped the sill, and his beak jutted in as he spoke.

 “Well, Jinian Footseer. Have you summoned me for the boon I promised you?”

 “No, flitchhawk. Not for a boon for myself. For you and the forest, perhaps. Here is the Dagger of Dagger-hawk.” I held it so he could look upon it, so he could see it clearly. When he saw the image of the hawk impaled upon it, something went hard and icy in his eyes.

 I went on wearily, “If these bodies are found here, flitchhawk, they will come for me. And for the forest. And perhaps for you. I cannot carry them away. I cannot carry myself.”

 “A boon for me indeed,” the bird whispered, a high, keening whistle that set my hair on end. “And what of you, Jinian? Do you still refuse to be dangled?”

 “I will be dangled,” I whispered, hearing shouts from the courtyard below. “There is no time for anything else.”

 So, I was dangled once again. Only as far as the bottom of the hill, behind a stony scarp, where we could not be seen. Then the hawk was away, the corpses of Dedrina-Lucir and her aunts tucked up beneath him in one mighty foot like bunwits in the talons of an owl. The thought did not bear following to its logical conclusion, so I thought of nothing as I hid the evil Dagger away and trudged down into the gray, thence into the green, thence along the edge of the forest to the place we had set the fire.

 It was still burning, spreading into the surrounding gray, which smoked with a sullen, creeping glow, like charcoal, stinking as it smoldered. The forest had drawn its skirts, away from the fire. A tree pulled up its roots and walked back among its fellows, three bushes and a clump of silver-bells following its example.

 “Perhaps it will burn forever,” I said to myself in a dull, lifeless voice, not recognizing it as my own when I heard it.

 “Oh, dear child,” said the Oracle from behind me, “I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it did. What a stench. Not that one wouldn’t have done it, even knowing what a smell it would cause.” It was standing under the shelter of the trees, leaning against one of them, its fantastic face shadowed by the leaves. “Do you have news for me, dear girl? Oh, I so hope so.”

 I shivered. “Yes.” There seemed no point in saying more than that. Undoubtedly the Oracle already knew. I took the thing from my tunic and displayed it, only briefly. “I will not put it into your hands. I will not tempt you with it.”

 “Oh, my dear girl, how sensitive of you. But then, the heroine type would be, wouldn’t she. Better you keep it, dear child. To protect yourself with. You and your love ... if it should come to that .. .”

 The voice faded back into the trees. The feeling was strong even then that I hadn’t heard the last of it, though it was some time before I saw the Oracle again.

 17

 The grayness burned and went on burning as though it had contained some volatile material that could not be extinguished. Though it rained in the night, on the morning the grayness continued to smoke, sending long, ugly coils of black into the air to be blown away toward the east. I thought of those in Xammer, looking to the west only to see all these smelly vapors.

 I could not get near the place we had put the woodpile. There was too much smoke and ash. So while the fire burned itself farther away on either side, east and west, bunwit, tree rat, and I wandered about, doing nothing, with me sometimes spending long hours sitting at the foot of trees, believing I was thinking. Looking back, there was no thinking going on. It was a mere, mushy grayness in my head, no whit different from the plague of Chimmerdong. It surrounded me and held me in. I had not the wits to know it. Once tree rat chivied me up the ladder tree to spy upon Daggerhawk. A mounted party rode out in the mid-morning, returning late that afternoon. There seemed to be some shouting going on. Near evening, I saw Porvius Bloster come down the road from the fortress, the Pursuivant at his side. Tree rat and I went down, he headfirst, I less ebulliently. We hid in a copse and listened.

 “You could not find Dedrina-Lucir while she was held captive, now you cannot find her or my sisters. Cholore, perhaps your time of service to our Demesne is at an end.”

 “Oh, do not bluster so! I am no neophyte to be accused in this fashion!” The Pursuivant turned a harsh face upon Bloster, chopping the air with his hand. “I can find what is to be found, but you know as well as I that things can be hidden where no Pursuivant, no Rancelman, no finder of any kind can come upon them. Your thalan was hidden from me for a time. She and two of your sisters have been hidden from me now, or have hidden themselves for some purpose of their own. You have other sisters. Soon Dedrina Dreadeye will return from the north. Perhaps she knows.”

 “Those two would not have left the Demesne without the Dagger. Dedrina-Lucir would not have left. Not voluntarily.”

 “So, they were abducted. You will receive Game declaration from some Gamesman soon enough, offering them for ransom. Perhaps from Mendost of Stoneflight, whom you so much detest. Perhaps from some other you have offended. Whatever. One would think you had no experience of such things.” He turned away, disgusted.

 “Somehow,” said Porvius, eyeing the greenery around him with a suspicious glare, “I think not.” He ventured toward the fiery place only to be driven back as I had been by the choking smoke. “We will have to spray this again when the fire burns itself out ...”

 “Why?” the Pursuivant asked in irritation. “Why this obsession with Chimmerdong, Bloster? I know the people of Daggerhawk have called themselves the Keepers of Chimmerdong, but why? It seems a futile, useless task.”

 “A bargain made when the world was young, Cholore. The Demesne, the power we have held—all given us in exchange for guarding Chimmerdong and keeping it inside the circle. This was an end much desired by the Magicians.”

 “Your Demesne has been close to the Magicians?”

 “Close! Who can say close? Who knows what Magicians think or want? They send messages by their traders, we send messages in return. Who knows if the traders tell them what we have really said, or tell us what the Magicians really desire?”

 “And it is they who want that girl Jinian killed? The Magicians have some reason to want her dead?”

 “The Magicians? I doubt they know she exists. No. That order came from others. The ones who gave us the Dagger. Them. You know. From up north.” These words were in such a portentously gloomy tone, they caught my attention even through the lethargy. Porvius Bloster was stroking the dream crystal which hung on his chest.

 “Them? Dream Miner? Storm Grower? What brought you into their indenture, Bloster? I did not know you were addicted to the Miner’s wares. I thought you smarter than that.”

 I was surprised to see the Pursuivant pale as he spoke, this Gamesman who had seemed beyond any feeling.

 “What they want, they find ways to get. And they grow stronger as time passes.” Porvius snarled as he turned toward the road once more. “They know more than any Seer, see deeper than any Demon. The future, the past, all are one to them, and they move us like pieces on a gameboard. If they have decided on this girl’s ruin or death, it is for reasons they consider sufficient. Better her ruin than mine, and better you not speak of them at all.”

 Porvius, like his sister, should have talked less. If he had come and gone silently, I would not have had energy to oppose him. I could barely find intention enough to feed myself. This talk of mysterious persons in the north who would give casual orders about my life or death, however, was an irritation. Though I felt strangely little curiosity about it, anger was raised in me again. Only a little anger, but enough to make me vengeful. That night bunwit and I slipped into the fortress and set fire to the storehouse where the sprayer things and the cans of gray stuff were kept. Just as the forest burned, so that storehouse burned, with a mighty, hot malevolence that kept all at Daggerhawk busy for some days.

 When the fire was out at last, the place was beyond habitation. It was filthy with smoke, stinking of greasy ash, and where one set bare skin, blisters erupted that refused to heal. Tree rat and I watched from the treetop as they left the Demesne, wagon and cart, horse and fustigar, going north. Much later I realized I should have paid attention to that direction. At the time, it meant nothing.

 At the head of the procession rode Porvius Bloster, head down and chin dragging, a lean, reptilian woman at his side. When all of them had gone, I went to the place, wrapping my boots with leaves and vines, careful to touch nothing. The false dagger was stuck through some papers into the top of the great table. Evidently they had tried its powers, for there was a pawn in the corner, wounded slightly on the arm, then stabbed through the heart. Perhaps, with Dedrina’s mother in the north, Dedrina herself gone, and two other of the Basilisks missing, Bloster had attempted some ceremony of allegiance to himself. If he had, his demonstration of the dagger’s power had failed. Now it served only to pin a document to the table.

 I looked at it without curiosity, a thing of swirling black letters upon parchment, the letters leaping out at me in fragmented phrases. My own name. “The girl called Jinian is ...”

 “Daughter of ...”

 “Must be eliminated ...” The form of the letters themselves brought an uncontrollable terror. I shuddered, fleeing the place. Good sense did not prevail until much later, but when I returned to the place, the papers were gone, removed by what? Or whom? No living thing could have walked unscathed amid that ash unless protected as I was. It had been no bird or small beast collecting paper for a nest, of that I was certain.

 By this time, the fire had burned a swath of considerable width. One could walk from the edge of the forest outward, through the circle the gray had made to the fields once more. Moved by an unconsidered habit of tidiness, I swept at the ashes with a broom of dried grass. One pale stone appeared, then two. Then another, then a line. I wished for creatures with broomy tails. Neither tree rat nor bunwit had any. While wishing, I kept on sweeping. A road was there, under the ash, not whole, broken in places, but not badly. I moved stones, swept ash, got filthy. Once the ashes were swept away, rocks could be moved without burning the skin. I sometimes removed my shoes to feel where the stones could be found. At the end of a long day, one could look down the line of pale stones from the forest’s edge to the land beyond. Whatever wished to enter or leave Chimmerdong upon that road could do so. I had intended only to break the gray ring, but in doing so I had uncovered a road. In the slow, endless days that followed, the beasts and I went on uncovering it as far as the ruin, a silver thread leading to the world outside.

 Then even that slight excuse for activity was gone. All anger been used up, all old pains mined out for what rage they could supply. There was nothing more to use. I sat on the tailings of my discontent, staring out the window, thinking nothing. Time went by unmeasured, dark and light. How long? Very long. Perhaps. No one counted the time. Nothing mattered.

 Sound came. Rain, perhaps. A pattering. No. Wind? Odd. The sound was somehow familiar. Curiosity brought my head up and my feet under me. The remote, uncaring person inside me watched some other Jinian get herself outside the ruins where she might listen.

 More a whirring sound. Like a giant top, spinning.

 Then of course I remembered even before I saw the shape come spinning down the road from the north, the road I had unburdened. A Dervish. Perhaps the Dervish—Bartelmy of the Ban. The one who ...

 It came to a stop before me, the fringes settling into their disturbing stillness. “Jinian Footseer,” it said to me in that toneless, emotionless voice. “The road is open. Well done.”

 “That is true,” I said.” A road is open.” My voice was as toneless as the Dervish’s. Truth to tell, I didn’t even care about the Dervish.

 “When one is open, workers may come in,” she said. “When one is open, workers will come in. Tragamors, perhaps, to move great hills? Sorcerers to hold power for them?”

 I did not answer. What was there to say?

 “What have you to tell me?” it asked then, still not moving, as though we had all day and night to stand there and talk before the ruins. I wanted to sit down.

 “Will you come in?” I offered. It was only studied politeness, the habit learned from a year and a bit at Vorbold’s House.

 “Stand,” it said. It wasn’t a preference. It was an order. I stood. “Tell me.”

 I mumbled a bit about summoning the forest, about the Oracle, the Dagger, the Oracle again. The Dervish hissed, not like the Basilisk but like a tea kettle, full of hot annoyance. I had not thought they ever became annoyed.

 “The Oracle! Here! Where is the Dagger?”

 “I have it,” I said dully. “I will use it, if need be. I learned I will need it, as the answer to one of my questions.”

 An angry buzz then, like a whole hive of warnets. A cry almost of pain. “Oh, Jinian, what questions did you have!”

 Something snapped in me. “A lot!” I screamed at her. “A hell of a lot! Nobody tells me anything! Why don’t I have any Talent? That’s one question! How come Mother and Mendost were always so hateful? That’s another! How come Murzy keeps things from me? How come I’m all alone out here in the middle of nowhere with everybody, including you, coming at me from all sides! What the hell am I supposed to do!” Then I sobbed. I don’t know where the pain and tears came from, all at once, out of nowhere. I thought I had used them all, but there were more ...

 The Dervish trembled. I saw it even through my own tears, feeling as surprised at that as I did at my own uncontrolled emotions. The Dervish trembled like a tree in wind, as though it wanted to move—toward me? away from me?—but could not. A sound came from it. If I had not known better, I would have said it was an anguished sound. Not from a Dervish, though. Never.

 Perhaps never. When it came, the voice was still toneless, unemotional, but it held a timbre as of concealed sorrow. “I will come into your dwelling, Jinian Footseer. I will answer your questions, those I can.” She spun once more and moved through my ancient doorway. I saw with astonishment that the door was shaped correctly for it, narrow at the bottom, wide at the top, as though the creatures that had come here in the far past might have been like this one who came here now.

 And I followed to bend over the hearth where a small fire burned. Habit made me offer the Dervish tea, a quiet, minty brew made of plants Murzy had showed me. The pot was always full of it. It was all I had eaten or drunk for a long time. The Dervish accepted a cup and stood there, pillar still, with the hand and cup beneath the fringes as she drank, her face invisible. The cup came down empty in a wide hieratic gesture, like a ritual. I thought suddenly of thirst endured for its own sake, of hunger endured for its own sake. Of endless, whirling hours spent in concentration. Of never sitting, seldom lying down. Of becoming something other than oneself. In that moment I thought all those things and knew the Dervish thought them, too.

 “You don’t care that you have done a good thing,” she said at last. “You don’t feel at all.”

 “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I try to care, but I can’t.”

 “Ah,” she said. “When did this unfeeling begin?” I tried to think. It had begun before I had trapped the pig, for this deadly lethargy had almost killed me then. I had never noticed it until after talking with the forest. Perhaps then. When the shadow had gathered. My body had continued to move for a while, out of habit, then for a time out of anger. I said this. She nodded, slowly. “You went to the window and pulled the curtain aside, only a crack, but that which waited outside needed only a crack. It lashed within as a whip lashes. It touched you. It needs only touch, no more than that. I have seen it before. The vital web which controls your body and connects it to your mind has been broken. Your mind thinks, but your body will not move. Or perhaps it moves wildly, without control. Sometimes you sit for hours, oppressed by a weariness so deep there is no relief from it. Sleep does not cure, it merely postpones. Instead of standing poised within the flow of all, you have fallen below it, into depression, into subsidence. There is no hope in you.”

 She was right. I didn’t care, but I knew she was right.

 “I have seen some persons so sunk in shadow they do not move for years,” she said. “Standing like stones. I have rescued some such. Perhaps you have some immunity to it, for you have managed to go on living. Pay attention now.” She reached for me, touched me.

 She hurt me.

 She hurt me and went on hurting me.

 It was worse than the time the Healer had come when I was a child. Worse than the time at the citadel when she had looked at me in the Dervish way. Worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Worse than the pain of thorn or bruise or insect bite. Fire running down every nerve, meeting obstruction, then leaping across that obstruction in an explosion of heat and color that was felt, not seen. Bridge! my mind screamed, agonized. Bridging broken places with fire. Oh, stop, stop. Oh, gods, stop. Please. I babbled. I twitched, fell down, the Dervish’s hand coming with me. Back, ribs, chest, arms, then down into my groin, my legs, every toe, liquid fire running everywhere.

 How do I describe pain? Everyone knows pain. The bitter companion, the hated protector. I learned in that one, endless instant to know pain. And when it was over, to value it. But not until later.

 “There,” breathed the Dervish over my sobbing, thrashing body. “The shadow breaks all webs, shatters all nets. The shadow disrupts all continuity. I have bridged the places that were broken. It is painful, for the broken places must be shocked into awareness, realigned and reconnected. Now they are alert again.”

 She made me look at her, made me follow her pointing finger with my eyes. “Shhh. Settle now. It is over. You have done a similar thing yourself, Jinian. There.” And she pointed to the length of road, clear to the north. “You, too, have bridged the broken places. Consider whether there may have been pain when you did so.”

 I looked at the pale line of road in shocked amazement, suddenly granted an insight which I cursed myself for a fool that I had not seen before. The tingle I felt when I walked upon the road. Dissimilar only in intensity to that I had just felt.

 “You see.” She nodded at the charcoal pattern upon my hearth, pointing it out with that preemptory finger. “There is a pattern of the roads of Chimmerdong, and there”—the finger directed my attention out through the open door—“there is the reality. There”—indicating the swept white line leading away north—“there is the reality restored. Now you see.” She stood away from me. “And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are.”

 I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the teacup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. “Pain of being as I am? I don’t understand.”

 “But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?”

 Well, I had, of course. Not really easy, perhaps, but easier than this. I guess all children expect life to be easy. It seems easy, just looking at it from outside. Being half-dead as I had been for the past while was easier than this.

 “It’s easier to be dead,” she said, seeming to Read me. “Always.”

 “I think I would rather be alive,” I managed to say. “Even if it hurts.”

 “As it will,” she said firmly, standing back from me to become the silver pillar once more. “Now, Jinian Footseer, you had questions. You ask what it is you are to do. I will try to answer that.

 “Long ago when our people came here—that is, when human people came here—there were creatures already here governing this world. They were not simple beasts or people. That much we can infer. They were not discrete things with edges and centers, brains, hands, feet. They were different from that ...

 “And our people were arrogant. What they did not understand or perceive easily, they either attempted to kill or dispose of. And so they did with these old entities.”

 “Old gods?” I asked wonderingly. “Gods?”

 The Dervish pondered. “That is what some of the Wize-ards call them. What are gods, after all? Do we know? Call them old gods if you like. And say our people wounded them or imprisoned them, though I do not believe we succeeded in killing them or any one of them.”

 “How could they imprison a god?” I demanded. I didn’t think it could be true.

 “As you were imprisoned, Jinian, alive in your own body, only minutes ago. Reduced to small volition. Living from little rage to little rage. With your nerves cut. So your brain might live and your lungs pump and your heart beat, but you would be isolated, imprisoned in your own skull, helpless. Separated. Cut off from the world, as our people cut off these old ones. As they did here, in Chimmerdong.”

 “The ruined roads?”

 “The ruined roads. And those that ran them, those who carried the messages to and fro. They were cut off so that forest was sequestered. And mountain, or great tree, or river. Or beast. All the great old entities. All, we believe, but one.” She fell silent for so long I thought she had forgotten me.

 “One?” I prompted her at last.

 “All but shadow. We do not know what it is. We call it shadow because we can see only the darkness it draws about itself. Even that is not easy to see. We can infer it was not so great before we came. Without the other forces to balance it, however, it seems to have grown.”

 “I saw it in the forest. More than once.”

 “Most of our kin have seen it. Seen it near the Old Road where the blind runners go. Seen it near the shadow tower where I have seen it often myself. Oh, yes, we have seen it. Studied it as best we could, though that is a dangerous occupation. And from what we have inferred about its nature, we believe there must once have been something to control it. Those you call the old gods, perhaps. We have been searching for them for a very long time.”

 “I should think they would want to be found,” I said.

 “Want to be found? By us? Wounded already by us? Hurt? Untrusting of man? Go into the great marshes of Firth, Jinian, seeking a wounded zeller in the limitless swamps. It would be easier to find that zeller than to find a wounded god who has no reason to trust us.

 “Still, over the centuries, we have learned some things. Those who could feel the Old Road seemed to have an advantage in understanding, so we bred for that. Those who are tough and resilient learned more, so we bred for that. Women learned more than men most times, so we built the sevens mostly and the Dervishes entirely of women. And increment by increment we learned, tiny inference piled upon tiny inference.”

 “What do you truly know?” I begged, afraid she would not tell me.

 “What do we know firmly? Without question? There are creatures called Eesties,” she said. “Among them is at least one of the old entities. The Shadowpeople know of it. It is called Ganver. There is an old entity in Chimmerdong, and you tell me you have spoken with it. There are others. We have not seen them, but we know they must exist. Perhaps you have spoken with one of them, also?” I thought of the flitchhawk and nodded. Perhaps I had.

 “We know the roads are the key to understanding, and on this key we have based our existence, our future, our destiny. And we believe, for very ancient songs and chants speak of it, that there is a shadow-master somewhere. Something that controls and guides what we call the shadow. It may have something to do with the ancient tower the blind runners sing of. I may have seen that same tower. Others have seen what I saw. Himaggery the Wizard. Chamferton the Wizard. Mavin Manyshaped, the Shifter.

 “And there is something in legend called the Daylight Bell ...”

 “Little Star and the Daylight Bell. The story I played with the flitchhawk!”

 “A very old story. There are truths in these old tales, Jinian. They persist. The very words persist, century after century. Like rituals. Not merely tales for amusement, but rituals of truth. Perhaps the thing itself exists. And those are the things we know, Jinian Footseer. Little enough, you may say, for some hundreds of years at the task of learning more. That is the task we were given by our founder: to learn more yet. To await the renewal of the roads. To prepare for the destiny of the Dervishes.”

 Came a long silence then. There were many things I should have asked her. About Porvius Bloster and the things he had said. About the Dream Miner and Storm Grower, which—who?—had ordered my death. About the enmity of the Basilisks, so deadly and so unexplained. About the Oracle, who or what it was, and why I had sensed malice from it, and danger. So many things. I asked none of them. I was so awed to think I had talked with an old god that I couldn’t think of anything much to say. I moved a finger, tentatively. It felt good to move. It had not felt good to move for a very long time. I rose on my toes, wiggled my arms. The silver Dervish stood, watching me.

 At last, however, the sight of that still, silver pillar became oppressive and I murmured, “I thank you, Dervish. I confess I did not think one of your kind would tell me anything, and though I do not know why you have treated me so kindly, I thank you for it.”

 “You are my child,” she said.

 The words were senseless. They might have been spoken in gnarlibar growl or bunwit squeak for all the meaning they had.

 “You are my child,” the Dervish repeated. I saw one arm quiver, as though she wanted to reach out and could not. “We cannot bear as others bear. The way we are reared makes our bodies ... different. We have not some of the essential parts for bearing. So, we beget, but we do not bear. We choose healthy, strong women to bear for us, and we pay them well.”

 “My mother?” I asked. “Not?”

 “The woman in Stoneflight Demesne, not.” It was a final word. Odd as it was, what she had just said, I did not doubt it, not for an instant. “When we came for you, she would not let you go. Sometimes women do that out of love for that which they have carried. It was not love with her. She demanded other payment, of a kind we could not make. We could have forced her. But one of our kind looked deep and told us better not. Good would come if we did not, she said. ‘Let the child grow in this hostile soil,’ she said, “’for her own strengthening. Send her help, and love, and let her grow.”’ So we did, Jinian Footseer.”

 “Sent me ... what?”

 “Our servants. Our friends. Murzemire Hornloss, the Seer. Cat Candleshy, Demon. Sarah Shadowsox, Sorceress. Bets Battereye, Tragamor. Margaret Foxmitten, glorious Queen, Tess Tinder-my-hand, Midwife. She who delivered you”

 “The old dams.” I was struck dumb.

 “Yes, Jinian Footseer. The old dams.” Was there, could there be amusement in that voice? “The Wize-ards.”

 I took up the cup, then set it down, noting that it was almost empty, feeling the wet on my trousers where I had spilled it. “Then Mendost ... Mendost knew. Garz, he knew? They all knew I was not of Stoneflight Demesne?”

 “Of course they knew. How could they not know? Was Eller of Stoneflight Demesne a woman who concealed her feelings? Was she secretive, quiet, sly?”

 I remembered Mother’s rages, her loud furies, during which she would scream anything that entered her head. Those at Stoneflight had kept it from me, yes. They had not wanted me to know. But Garz and Mendost had known.

 The Dervish went on, “We bid her be silent. We paid her well. But if she would not honor one agreement with us, why would she honor the other? In this case we did not judge well whom we chose. The time closed about me, and there had been recent ... distractions.”

 Something in me hurt. “When you do that, how do you know, how can you say who is mother and who is not? Whose child anyone is? How do you know!”

 “Intent,” she said. One word. It tolled like a bell. “Intent, Jinian Footseer. It was my intent to beget and rear a child, and that made the child mine. Before ever you were conceived, there was that intent. And so, no matter how it is done, the intent is all that matters. And if there is not that intent, until that intent, nothing else matters, for the child, however begat or born, belongs to no-one and has no parent.”

 I thought back to childhood. Humiliation and pain. Loneliness assuaged with wandering in forest places. Beast and bird and tree and flower. The Old South Road City. Grompozzle. Misquick. Murzy. The old dams. Things and bits, places and times. Had it been ... had it been dreadful? Or merely uncomfortable from time to time? Would I have changed it? Become someone else? Not myself as I had learned to be?

 “It’s all right,” I said at last, amazed to find that it was perfectly true. “I would not be other than I am.”

 “Even without known Talent?” The Dervish had turned away from me to peer out the window where the lily flowers swung in the sunlight. They would have chimed had they been bells. Almost one could hear them.

 “Even ... even without Talent can I still be Wize-ard?”

 “Most certainly. Many without other Talent are.”

 I took a deep breath. On the turf the lily bells swung, up and down, tossing their heads. They had no Talent, either. They merely were. So.

 “I will be content,” I said. “I will be content.”

 “And cease weeping?”

 I wondered how she knew, not realizing my face bore tracks and tracks of it, dirt and tears mixed. “I will cease weeping, Dervish.”

 “And get on with your work. Now that you know the nature of the illness here, there is much healing to be done.”

 “Is this task truly mine?” I looked out upon the road I could see, realizing how much of it was hidden. It was a very great task. A great burden.

 “Yours and none other. Perhaps this is what was foreseen by my kinswoman. Perhaps some other purpose is served here, but you feel, as do we, it is a purpose for good. Yes. It is your task. In that, the Oracle spoke true. If you meet the Oracle again, Jinian Footseer, remember that it always speaks the truth, but never all the truth, and that its speaking comes most often to pain, and malice, and death for someone. Remember that.”

 There was pain in the Dervish’s voice. I wondered if she would touch me. I thought not. Could she touch anyone without bringing that pain? She trembled once more, saying, “In future time, I will come to you again. In future time, you will come to me.”

 She did not touch me. I think she would have said something more but could not. Then she spun, spun, and spun away, whirling down the road to the north, the open road, the road I had built again. There were so many things I should have asked Bartelmy of the Ban. Things, perhaps, a girl might ask her mother. And I had asked nothing. Nothing.

 There was a pool nearby. I wanted to see who I was now and went there to be astonished at this ashy, red-eyed creature with the tangled, dirty hair. I stared at it for a long time. It was not I, not Jinian Footseer. So, I set about turning it into myself. There was soaproot in the marsh. There were warm springs there as well. There were sandy-bottomed pools, and I had a comb in my kit. Clothes dried in the sun. Boots dried by the fire. Steam and smell of wet hair. All in a dream that said, “Whatever you are, you are Jinian. So be her.”

 And at last another look in the pool to see whether she had returned. And she had, clean and neatly combed, hair braided into coils as Murzy had braided it when I was a child. I was not quite comfortable with the eyes. They were still very red and did not look accustomed to themselves, not yet.

 Very well, Jinian, I told myself at last. You are what you are, now get on with it. On my hearth was the design I had drawn, the one the forest had showed me. A road from the south to the north, one slanting off west, one slanting off east, and I had cleared only the nearest end of the northern branch. As I had been wounded and brought to life again, so I must bring this forest to life again. It was my task to do.

 I turned to tree rat and said with great severity, half to myself, needing the severity to convince myself that this was real, “I need all the flood-chucks in the forest, tree rat. I need any that are within reach. We have much road to restore, and I cannot do it alone.”

 Then, to bunwit, “If one actor from the old tale was here, bunwit, why should not the others be? I need the largest gobblemole in the forest. Now lead me.” I fully expected bunwit to look at me with that maddening, listening look, and then go dig roots. He did look at me with the maddening look, but then he hopped away, rather slowly for him, waiting for me to follow.

 “Well,” I said to myself. “He got something of that.” I thanked the forest for telling him what I needed.

 We went southwest, into a part of the forest we had never wandered through. There were vast open tracts there, wide to the sky, meadows of the sort the gobblemoles prefer, where their draggling can be through soft soil. We saw many, but the bunwit didn’t stop. None of them was above average size. I heard sound from the final clearing before ever we came to it, a kind of scrape-chunk, scrape-chunk. From the edge of the trees we could see the earth flying, high on either side of a long, deep trench. It was a great, blind gobblemole, the largest I have ever seen. I came out of the woods to climb upon the draggled bank, remembering what Bartelmy of the Ban had said. Truth in old tales. Rituals of truth.

 “What are you draggling away there for, old gobblemole?” I cried, clutching the star-eye in my hand like some luck-piece.

 “Draggling for the Daylight Bell, Little Star,” he rumbled, spewing bits of soil all over me. His fur was as close and tight, black as midnight dark, velvet all but his snout and those hard, horn claws. “Draggling for the Daylight Bell.”

 “Well then, I’ll help you druggle,” I said, letting go the star-eye to climb down into the trench. It was deep and moist, full of crawly things and ends of root. I pushed in beside the mole and began to druggie, throwing tiny handfuls of earth on either side. I was conveniently placed for him. He caught me in one foot, the horny claws bending around me like so many curved swords, not touching yet, but sharp as any blade might be.

 “Now I’ve got you, Little Star,” his voice drummed at me. As he very well did. As the flitchhawk had had me before.

 This time I managed a tone of petulance. “Now why did you do that, old gobblemole! just when you caught me there, I caught a glimpse of the Daylight Bell. Right there where you were druggling!”

 Then was a long pause, as though the mole didn’t know the words. A long, long pause while Jinian thought she had miscalculated. A long, long time when nothing happened at all and I thought the tale had gone awry or I had not spoken my lines aright.

 I was about to give up and resolve to die when it said, “Where, where,” dropping me and starting to druggle again as it had before.

 So I put the thong about a back foot and cried out. “Daylight Bell in earthways wan’t be; Daylight Bell in treetop can’t be. Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie, now give me boon or else you die!”

 And it said, just as the flitchhawk had, “What boon will you have, child?”

 So I told it what needed doing.

 “That is not much boon, Footseer,” it rumbled at me. Its eyes were so buried in its thick fur I wondered if it saw me at all, but its claws around me were not threatening. They were huge, hard as stone, and I leaned against them, exhausted, looking up into the great gobblemole face to see a glint of light in those hidden eyes. “We will do as you ask, but a boon is still owed you. Earthways are mine, and things old and buried. If you need help with such things, call on me.”

 Then it set me down, and turned back to its druggling, leaving me staggering there, uncertain of my footing or my senses. Bunwit and I went back to the ruin. Next morn early I went to look, and there were a thousand gobblemoles druggling up the earth that covered the road, throwing it to either side, making huge mounds, and leaving the road beneath as clean as old bone. What they didn’t get, the flood-chucks got, and as the days went by, I could walk farther and farther on the Old Road without losing it or having to go barefoot to feel it. It was slow work. The covering hills were monstrous big, but we progressed.

 Days would go by during which we got great stretches of the road uncovered, and then a morning would come when the shadow lay everywhere. On every clot of earth. On every stone. Nothing moved in the forest then. No bird, no bunwit. Nothing. The flood-chucks wouldn’t come near us, nor the moles. Everything stopped. On those days, I would lie close to the hearth, the window shuttered, a small fire built, and say the protection words over and over to myself with bunwit and tree rat huddling close at my side and not a sound from the forest. I knew what the shadow could do if it touched me, and I did not want it to happen again.

 Then, a morning would dawn with the shadow gone, and we would resume the work as though nothing had happened. After a time, I began to think of the shadow as a kind of traveler which could not be everywhere. So, it came and stopped everything, but while it was here, it could not be elsewhere, and eventually it had to go stop what was happening somewhere else. When it went, we would go on. This was a comforting thought.

 The weather turned cold. The Season of Storms came on. Tree rat and his friends put on another roof over the first one, and I built a pair of shutters for the window. Someone left me a thick blanket woven of moss, and bunwit carried in stacks of soft, dried grass for my mattress. I didn’t go hungry. Tree rat and bunwit seemed to have a bottomless cache of dried fruits and nuts. Some bird left me eggs every day or so. There were edible fungi and roots. The gobblemoles were still working on the southern road. The eastern one was clear. The flood-chucks had started on the western one. There were a couple of problems, not least the river to the south and west which ran right over where the road should go.

 At first it didn’t occur to me to finish up the story. The third creature in the story is a d’bor wife. D’bor are ocean creatures, though sometimes found in very large lakes. They are not river creatures. They are very fearsome, a wild, unfamiliar kind of beast, neither furry nor feathered. I did not like the thought of the d’bor wife. Still, there was that river running half around the forest where it had no business being. Finally, after many many days had gone by, I sat bunwit down and put the problem to him.

 “I don’t suppose there are any d’bor in the forest,” I said. Bunwit went on chewing, paying no attention.

 “Are there any d’bor?” I asked. It looked at me. I sighed.

 “Take me to the d’bor wife,” I said at last, fatalistically. He would or he wouldn’t. Trying to hold back wasn’t doing me any good.

 I wasn’t really surprised when he hopped off in his usual errand-running manner. Southeast. Into the deep chasms of that part of Chimmerdong. Dangerous terrain. Leg-breaking terrain, and no Healer closer than Lake Yost. We slipped and slid. Night came on, and we slept under a tree. It was colder than comfortable. Morning came, dim under black clouds. We went on slipping and sliding.

 Midday, I heard the sound. A waterfall. Sizable. A constant tumult of water into some deep, forlorn place. We were coming to it along the bottom of a canyon. The canyon opened out, wider and wider, and there the pool was before us. More than a pool, a lake. Across it the pillars of stone loomed up to the top of the sky and water fell in a strong, crashing flow.

 And at the edge of the pool, grodgeling in the shallow waters, was a d’bor wife. She was slick and black and hideous. Her flappers were long and hard, shaped like coffin lids. Her one eye peered at me out of her tentacled head, and her jaws clashed their beaky plates together. I stood where I was, going no closer at all, and cried, “Why are you grodgeling away there, d’bor wife?”

 She gargled at me. It took a little time before I understood the words. Story words. Oh, yes. Grodgeling to find the Daylight Bell. The lake spray tasted salt. Might be, I thought, it was tied through underground ways far and far to the Western Sea or the Southern Sea or even the Glistening Sea, far to the east. I did not want to go near her. Her mouth smelled of blood.

 “Well then,” I cried, voice trembling so I could hardly understand myself, “I’ll grodgel with you, d’bor wife.” And I stumbled forward to bend above the shallow waters and begin grodgeling at it, splash, splash.

 And I saw it, there, just sinking away beneath the waters, just the edge, the very edge, golden as dawn, curved, unmistakable, a bell sinking beneath the waves of the lake ...

 So when she took me up, I screamed in real surprise and anguish. “I saw it! I saw it! Just then when you took me up, d’bor wife, I saw the Daylight Bell, sinking beneath the water ...”

 There was no time to be frightened. She dropped me then, at once, and began trying to find it. I forgot the thong, forgot it all. Only after a long time, as she whuffed away in the water did I come to myself enough to slip the thong around a back tentacle and cry, hoarsely, through my tears, “Daylight Bell in water shan’t be; Daylight Bell in earthways wan’t be; Daylight Bell in treetop can’t be. Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie, now give me boon or else you die!” For I knew then it was too late. We had almost found it, the d’bor wife and I, but we had lost it.

 When I told her the boon, she gargled, deep bubbling sounds like fountains at the bottom of the ocean. Her hide was dark as char and hard, half leather, half shell. Her tentacles wove spells before my eyes, and the suckers on them opened and closed like hungry little mouths. “Not a great boon,” she gargled. “I will owe you a boon more, ground-child. The things of the deep are mine, all things washed by ocean or sea. If you have need in such places, call on me.”

 Well, you know the way of these stories. The river that blocked the Old Road was changed in its course, for the d’bor wife grodgeled it back where it belonged as her boon to me. The moles finished their work, and the flood-chucks. Each road was opened once more to the gray, and we set fires there that burned and burned in ever-widening arcs. When the Season of Storms was done, so was I. The Forest of Chimmerdong was open to the world on every side.

 I sat in my room in the ruin and summoned forest, expecting the small twiggy creature to return. I had not thought, truthfully. It had been a long task, a dirty, endless task, with leagues run every day to spy out all the edges of the road and clear them all. So I summoned, glad it was done, not thinking much, not expecting much.

 It came. I was thrust back against the wall, breathless, as all leaf came into the room, all tendril, all bark, ramifications of trunk and twig, fortresses of root, everything in one, in itself, enormous yet contained, all smells, all light, rain and sun, mist and moonlight, stargleam on pond, dawn on marsh, noon on brook, sparkle and splash. Murmur of wind was there, and howl of storm. Quiet of evening was there, and rattle of hail on high limbs against the sky. Moss, fern, tracery of forest, lip of blossom, whir of wing, cry of beak, all, all, all.

 Field mint and bergamot, rose and startle-flower, lady lily, zeller flower, Healer’s balm, sweet grass.

 Rustle in the underbrush, crash of fleeing prey, howl of predator, shriek of watcher, hum of unconcerned bee creature in the hollow of a stump. All. Wings folding, unfolding like gems; rise of fish from the deeps to make the single, opening ripple that reached, reached, reached outward. Night, morning, noon. High cry of the hawk on gold, low croak of the froggy marsh walker, joined, joined, music, melody, from top to bottom of being, speaking, saying—what?

 “Well done ...”

 Below hearing. Above hearing.

 “Well done ...”

 I could not breathe, did not care, died and did not care. Upon my breast the fragment burned within its locket, a heart of fire upon my own. Then it went away all at once, and I lay on the floor where I had fallen, sucking in air like a beached fish. A forest is a very large thing to come into a room that size.

 Perhaps I had not really believed in the old gods, not until then.

 And yet, though it had been huge, immense, beyond comprehension in its size and complexity, still I had had the feeling it was not a whole thing. A thing made whole, yes, but not a whole thing. There was more, elsewhere. After much thought I decided it was rather as though my foot had spoken to me, a good useful foot without blemish or ill, and yet only a foot for all that. Not a person entire.

 And what I thought I meant by that, I was not certain an hour later. On my breast an arrow of fire remained, the skin red and burned. It left a scar there when it healed, but there was never any pain.

 On the morning after that, as though carefully timed for my task’s completion, the old dams came singing down the road in the wagon, all five of them, with a cheerfully plain girl of about twelve sitting on the seat beside Cat Candleshy. “Sister,” Cat said, “greet Dodie, who joins us upon the way.”

 I knew we were soon to be seven once more.

 18

 I said hello to Dodie, politely. She greeted me a good bit more eagerly than that, and I looked her over, approving of her. A slightly uncomfortable silence fell.

 I broke it. “You took a long time finding me,” trying to keep a whine out of it.

 “Well, chile,” said Murzy, “we had word you were doing well enough. Coming to grips, you know, the way we all must. Seemed best to leave you at it.”

 “But now,” said Margaret, putting her arms around me and her cheek next to mine, turning the full blaze of Beguilement on me so that she glowed with it like a little furnace and me with it, warming, “we must be with you to celebrate your sixteenth year.”


 That was surprising, but of course a year had gone since we’d had cakes and wine in Xammer. More than two years since Joramal had come to Stoneflight Demesne. Three years since I had been to Schooltown. Ah. The thought caught me all at once and I breathed in with a sob, as though I’d been hurt.

 “Why, chile, chile, what is it?” Murzy was hugging me and listening to me breathe as though something were broken inside.

 “Will you want me still?” I asked. “The Dervish says one can be Wize-ard even without Talent, but oh, I did want something ...”

 “Bartelmy!” muttered Cat.

 “All the sensitivity of an icicle,” murmured Sarah. “We should have known.”

 “Oh, shush,” said Murzy. “Bartelmy is what she can be. Now. You’ve had a hard time, chile, but that’s no excuse for feeling sorry for yourself. Of course we would want you, Talent or no. Once a seven, always a seven, ‘til death breaks us. That’s the way of it, and that’s all.”

 “However,” interrupted Cat, “there is no question of that. You have a Talent, according to Bartelmy. A very strong, unusual one. And, quite frankly, I am surprised that a girl as intelligent as you should not have realized it. No!” She held up her hand as Margaret started to speak. “Let her figure it out for herself. It may give her several hours or days—or, by all the old gods, weeks, if her current silliness continues—of honest bewilderment. Which is always good for the soul. Now, let us have supper.”

 So we had supper. Smoked fowl and bread and candied fruit from Xammer. And wine. And nuts as a gift from tree rat, and fresh fruit as a gift from bunwit. To all of which I paid no attention at all, lost in wonder what my Talent was that Bartelmy should have known of and I not.

 My preoccupation did not stop the celebration. There were gifts. A pair of gloves hand-stitched. “Tess made them,” said Murzy quietly. “Before she died. It was she who birthed you, she who took word to Bartelmy that the woman would not keep her bargain and relinquish you. She grew to love you dearly, Jinian. Remember her kindly.”

 There was a strange package, wrapped up with coils of twine and a tough parchment layer within. Inside was a worked leather scabbard of a size to hold the Dagger. On the parchment, a note. “The Oracle told true that the Dagger would protect you. It will threaten you as well. Be sure of your anger before you use it. It is safer in the scabbard than outside it. Remember me kindly.”

 It was signed with a scribble, as though she had started to write one word, then substituted another. “Bartelmy.”

 “Everyone should be remembered kindly,” I said, perhaps a little bitterly.

 “Being a Dervish is not easy. They sacrifice much.” This was Sarah, soft-voiced and sympathetic as always. “If the woman at Stoneflight had given you to them as she was paid to do, you would have been one of them, Jinian, and would have felt loneliness for its own sake, because you chose it, and the lesson of the shadow, because you would have had to know it. So, you felt it without choosing it and learned the lessons as you would have done anyhow. Do not think Bartelmy has not yearned over you, even though she is not allowed to show it.”

 There were assorted other gifts. Including a book from Joramal on the history and geography of Dragon’s Fire Demesne.

 “Then King Kelver cleaves to his bargain.” I sighed, wondering what I would do about this.

 “He does. And his wife died not a season ago.” This from Cat.

 “We have come to return you to Vorbold’s House. Queen Vorbold has agreed to say nothing to the King about your lengthy absence. Provided that you leave for Dragon’s Fire soon.” Bets Battereye, very busy making plans. “That is, ostensibly we came for that.”

 “And what are we going to do about that? I have no intention of marrying King Kelver, you know.”

 “We know.” Sarah sighed. “We haven’t decided yet what is best to do.”

 So we talked, and plotted, and drank wine, and came to no conclusions. And I talked, and drank wine, and wondered what my Talent was. And night came on. They brought mattresses and blankets out of the wagon into my dwelling, and we built another little fire there and talked, still, into the dark hours.

 And Cat Candleshy said, “Ouf, but that wine has made me thirsty. Where is the pool you drink from, Jinian?”

 And I, deep in conversation with Murzy, said, “Ask the bunwit. He’ll show you.”

 And then silence came down, with all of them looking at me, and Sarah trying not to laugh while Margaret did laugh.

 “How would you suggest I do that?” asked Cat.

 And my mouth came open, then shut, then open again. Because, of course, she couldn’t. No more could I, except that I did. Because it had not been the forest all along that spoke to the animals for me; it had been me, myself.

 “What is it?” I breathed, afraid to say it out loud for fear it would go away. “What is it called?”

 “Not in the Index,” said Murzy. “Nowhere. Reading, some, I should think. Perhaps some power of the Flesh. Who knows? Bartelmy thinks it has something to do with your being born Dervish, but not reared Dervish. One must be reared to Dervishdom with all its special rites and foods to become a Dervish truly. But your Talent is not like theirs. It is yours. No one else’s. Bartelmy says it is most unusual.”

 “Why did she ask me, then, about having no Talent?” I shouted. “Why?”

 “Shhh,” said Cat. “She probably asked you about not having a known Talent, Jinian. An unknown Talent might be, in some cases, like having none. What insignia would one wear? What is the costume of the type? Ah? We said to Bartelmy when she found us upon the road that it would not matter to you, for you had learned the first lesson well. She asked you only to satisfy herself.”

 The first lesson. Of course. The lesson of invisibility. As the old dams were invisible. Their Talents mattering not, except when they needed them. So what was I? A Beast-talker. Jinian Footseer, Beast-talker. I said it out loud. Giggling.

 Then we were all giggling, even Dodie, who had watched all this with wide, wondering eyes, and the night closed in around us peacefully, the fire went out, and we slept. During the night bunwit came in and snuggled next to me. In the morning he was still there. Wondered, just for a time, could he come along with us. Decided not. He would be easy prey for any hungry Gamesman, and his life was in Chimmerdong. Still, when I left him there, it was harder than leaving Grompozzle or Misquick had ever been. They had helped me little, but the bunwit had helped me much. I kissed him on his nose. I don’t know what he made of that.

 Slow, the wagon in its way back to Xammer. A long road, that, twisting down from the heights to the ford of the north fork of the Stonywater. Down Long Valley, easy, among fields as bright as jewels with the horses muttering in their noses and I telling them what good, biddable beasts they were. Talking to geese. Talking to strange bunwits in hedges. Singing to birds in the air or on treetops, sometimes out loud and sometimes silently. Made no difference to the beasts. They heard me, either way. I was beginning to hear them back, more clearly every day. It was embarrassing to realize that bunwit and tree rat had been talking to me the whole time I was in Chimmerdong.

 “I don’t suppose there are d’bor in Chimmerdong,” I had asked.

 “Oh, yes, ma’am,” had said bunwit.

 “Are there any?” I had asked, cursing him for not answering me in the first place.

 “I told you, yes,” he would have said, hurt. “You never listen!”

 Like one deaf, I. No longer. No, I sang and tweeted and muttered up my nose like any horse. Cat told me at last to cease making such noises, as it sounded like a zoo. It didn’t trouble her, really. She was only cautioning me for the future.

 Because there was a future. Oh, yes, indeed, indeed.

 Ferry across the Middle River. Then a bit faster down the good road to Gaywater, across and into the town. When we came to Vorbold’s House, the Queen was there to greet us. She did not look angry. Merely firm.

 “Your friends have advised you? Good. You will depart soon for Dragon’s Fire. I have decided to send one of the Gamesmistresses with you. Silkhands, the Healer. She needs a break in duty; you need someone to keep an eye on you, Jinian.” That was all. She started to go in before me, then turned.

 “I’d almost forgotten. Your mother and brother have asked to meet with you as soon as you return. The visit will be chaperoned, of course. They are in the town now. I will have word sent.”

 I felt my face turn cold, knew it was pale, for the pallor reached deep within. I started to say no, reached out as though to stop her, then held my hand. Mendost. And Mendost’s mother. Not mine. Garz was Mendost’s father. Not mine. And Mendost was not my brother. Good. So let them come.

 Murzy took me by the shoulder. “Tha’ll be awright, chile.”

 “I know. Don’t worry, Seer Murzemire. Your seventh will take care of herself. If worse comes to worst, I have a certain Dagger.”

 “Oh, chile, don’t even think of that unless you must. It’s a wicked weapon, to be sure. Remember always that those of the wize-art do not use great powers for small things. And great weapons, we use those only for great need.”

 But I had thought of it. If I had not thought of the Dagger, it would have been impossible to face the two of them—not even with the School servant sitting only a little way away, as he would, where he could see anything untoward that might happen.

 I went to the Queen. Somehow she was not so forbidding as I had remembered.

 “I have learned I am the daughter of a Dervish,” I told her, giving no preamble. “You will know how Dervish daughters are born, though I did not.”

 She blinked, flushed, started to say something, then was quiet. Finally she nodded for me to go on.

 “The woman they paid to bear me is no blood kin to me. The child she had borne earlier, Mendost, is no kin to me at all. They have asked to see me, and though they are not kin, I am willing to see them. But not like this!” I gestured at myself. Tattered leather trews. A new, clean shirt, but it was too small. Murzy hadn’t known how much I’d grown. My boots were full of holes. “I am a Dervish’s child,” I said again. “I will meet them when I look like a Dervish’s child.”

 “You are ... a Dervish?” She was very curious about this, and I realized that no Dervish daughter would ever be Schooled in a place like this.

 “What Talent I have is my own affair. I do not ask for the fringes of a Dervish. I ask merely for dignity suiting my station. I am the betrothed of a King and a Dervish’s daughter.” What station that might be was subject to some bitter conjecture. Only in this false world did it have importance. To me, what did it mean to be a Dervish daughter?

 That night and the following day, for the first and only time at Vorbold’s House, I took advantage of the tiring women and the bath attendants and all the rest of it. My hair was cut and curled. My nails were trimmed and polished—and a hard time the woman had of it, too. There were ashes beneath my nails that had been there for two seasons. They made my dress gray, like a Dervish’s dress, with fringes that would remind one of a Dervish’s fringe, but of an iridescent fabric, glistening like a seashell, with a flowing cape and train and a close headdress with a veil. I was asked if I would wear a device, and I told them yes. Beasts embroidered in an endless procession on the hem of the cape. I think six sewing women stayed up all night to finish it. I refused to be ashamed. It would go with me to Dragon’s Fire if I had to go to Dragon’s Fire. It was not too much to ask in return for what the King had paid. After all, Vorbold’s House had not had to feed or clothe me for most of a year.

 And on the morrow I went to the visitors room off the courtyard, letting them wait a good time for me before I showed myself.

 She, Eller, was smaller than I remembered. As a child I thought her beautiful, longing to be like her, enough like her to be loved by her, perhaps; but now I saw the deep lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth and her eyes darting at me, quick and away, quick and away, like some predator seeking prey. Mendost had grown fatter, with piggier eyes, but then I had not had centipig to compare him to before. His expression and hers had not improved. They were hot and avid both, Eller with a fine bead of moisture on her forehead. I moved to my chair quietly, regarding them in silence. The School servant was one I knew well, Michael, bigger even than Mendost. He sat quietly in one corner, merely being there in case he was needed. Except for meetings with female servants and kin, some such servant—strong, discreet, very well paid—was always present at meetings between students and the world outside. Only if King Kelver himself came calling could I be alone with him. Mendost looked at him and shifted uneasily, hitching his chair closer to mine.

 “Leave the chair where it is, Gamesman,” rumbled Michael. I smiled at him. Mendost did not.

 “Jinian,” said Mother—what do I say now? un-Mother? Not-Mother? “Jinian. We have quite longed to see you.”

 “Oh?” I asked politely. I moved my arm so the gray fringes swung. She saw the fringes but did not understand. Her forehead creased as it had used to do before a tantrum, but she bit her lip, turning to Mendost, those tiny beads of sweat glistening above her brow.

 “We have thought ... perhaps we did not do well to ally you to Dragon’s Fire,” he said, all in a rush.

 “You didn’t ally me,” I reminded him. “You sold me. It was you who were allied. Or are. If the alliance has not been broken.” I knew in that moment that they wanted to break it. They had sought to use King Kelver, but he had turned the Game on them and used them instead.

 “No, it hasn’t been broken. But ... but you were very young ...”

 “I believe I remarked so at the time.”

 “Well, at the time perhaps we didn’t give that fact sufficient weight. But ...”

 “But, Jinian,” said un-Mother, “we’ve thought it over since. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sure if you were to tell the King you are unwilling ... too young ... he would consider breaking the contract.”

 “After all,” interrupted Mendost, “He already has a living wife.”

 “Had,” I said, giving them time to think that out. “Had a living wife.”

 Mendost recovered first. “Even so. You are still very young ...”

 “I am sixteen,” I said, “Of those who marry, many do so at that age.”

 “You could stay here at Xammer until you are twenty some odd. Though you have no Talent, Stoneflight Demesne would pay ...”

 “As we should have done, dearest daughter. As we should have done.” Mother was patting the air with her hands, gulping, aware that a tantrum would not answer, a fit would not accomplish, but unable to come up with much else in the way of response. What monstrously important thing must have brought her here that she controlled herself like this! “Now that Garz is gone, there would be no objection ...” As though Garz had ever objected to anything she or Mendost had wanted. As though Garz had been solely responsible for their treatment of me!

 Enough of this, I said to myself.

 “Why would Stoneflight Demesne pay for a Dervish’s daughter?” I asked them.

 Un-Mother started up from her chair, face chalk white, hands raised against me as against a ghost piece. Mendost growled in his throat, turning red, and I saw his hands clench. Now, if the servant had not been there, he would have hit me. I pretended not to notice.

 I went on, “I am grown now. I have met my true mother. She is not pleased that Eller of Stoneflight Demesne broke contract with the Dervishes. Perhaps Stoneflight Demesne should consider what it will do if the Dervishes declare Game against it. A broken contract with them can be very dangerous, I understand.” I stood up, turning to make the gray fringes swirl and flow. Let them think what they would about my true inheritance. Let them fear it. Let them fear lest I choose to return to Stoneflight Demesne. Let them fear to return there themselves.

 “They wouldn’t ...” Mendost.

 “It was long ago ...” Un-Mother.

 “It was that same sixteen years,” I pointed out, “which you say is not long. No, no, Mendost. If I am very young, then sixteen years is a short time. If sixteen years is not a short time, then I am not young.”

 “Why would they?” he blustered. “After all this time.”

 I pretended to consider this. “It may have been concern for my safety which has held them until now. Once Stoneflight Demesne sold me to King Kelver, however, my safety was no longer a concern. Now the Dervishes will do as they like.” I said this idly, as though I didn’t care, staring out the window into the courtyard the while. The Dervishes would do exactly as they liked, of course, and ignoring Stoneflight entirely would probably be part of it. No matter. The two of them didn’t know that.

 When I turned back to them, I wore the expression I believed Dervishes might wear. Remote and cold as ice. Whatever the reality, my pretense was good enough. They could not answer it. Could not speak to it. They had found guilt enough in themselves to tally over for a season or two, seeking where the danger to themselves might lie. They had not thought of that when they had cheated the Dervishes. They had not thought of that when they cheated me. Well, let them think of it now.

 I had intended to let it go, coldly, as a Dervish might. The sight of them there, so avid, so intent upon their own needs, stirred me to a baffled fury. “Why?” I demanded of her. “Why didn’t you let them have me? Why didn’t you let me go among my own kind, where I would have been ... been cared about? You didn’t care about me, and they’d paid you.”

 “Not enough,” she cried, shaking her hair into a circling cloud, moved by some wild imagining to become for an instant as mist-eyed and lovely as I had dreamed her as a child. “Oh, not enough. We had a dream crystal, Mendost and I. It showed us. There’s a thing the Dervishes can do. To be young again. New bodies. I wanted one.” And she reached to Mendost, clinging to him, so I saw in his face that mixed repulsion and lust toward her which I had seen so often in his face without understanding until that moment.

 Mendost and his mother. Lovely Eller and her son. I had seen that balance changing, too, over the years as the dream crystal dwindled and the lust faded and the revulsion increased.

 A dream crystal! Fools, oh, fools. Every simple Schoolgirl knew the dangers of that. Every pawn, every half-wit. What of themselves had they sold to buy a dream crystal? What of themselves had they sold to suck it together, like two avid children with a lolly? And such dreams! False, foolish, corrupt. Oh, gods, why had I let them come here at all?

 “Dervishes can’t do that,” I said flatly, telling her what Cat had told me without caring whether they would understand it or not. “The Dervishes can’t do that. They can only prolong their own lives through such self-denial as you would not submit to for a moment, but that is all. The crystal was false. Most of them are false, I understand. Long ago there were true ones, but no more. You’ve sold your safety for a false, obscene dream. And now the dream is dead.”

 So he sat looking at her with an expression I could not define. Was it pity mixed with horror? I think perhaps. And she at him, a kind of haggard terror. And both at both, hideous and hellish. I knew then that their crystal was gone, sucked to a shard, to nothingness, that the dream which had held them had faded.

 “Michael,” I said, sickened, “show these people out.”

 And that was the end of my tie to Stoneflight. The Demesne did not last long. Poremy and Flot came to Xammer a few days later, stopping to see me, telling me they were going to Dragon’s Fire. Evidently they had struck up a friendship with Joramal and had been won away to the banner of the King. They did not know we were not kin, and I did not tell them. They were not bad boys.

 Mendost did what I assumed he would, Gamed so ardently on his own behalf that he died soon thereafter. His rages were already legendary, but his life was brief. I didn’t find out for some time what happened to Eller. Truth to tell, I did not ask.

 After that one dramatic, self-indulgent scene, I went back to invisibilty. The gorgeous dress was hung away in dust sheets. From somewhere they found half a dozen simple gowns and suits for me. I went back to classes feeling like a large goose in gosling school. I knew—oh, I knew things they did not. The classes seemed not only irrelevant but childish. What did they have to do with the real world in which old gods walked and the shadow loomed? Only in this false little world of Xammer, this false little world of the Game ... Well. No matter.

 I talked often with Silkhands. She knew something of the real world and she was only a few years older than I. If someone had reached her in time, she might have joined a seven, I think. Now her mind was full of other things. Coming as she did from a much frequented Demesne on a main road, she knew a lot of what was going on in the world. She whispered of the strange alliances that were rumored in the north, those even the sevens had worried over. “Huld the Demon,” she said, “and Prionde, King of the High Demesne! One would think Prionde would have learned from Bannerwell not to trust the Demon.” I told her I had heard of Prionde, and of his sister-wife, Valearn, the Ogress.

 “Valearn!” she said. “Another strange alliance. Valearn is reputed to have gone north of Betand and joined there with Huldra, Huld’s own sister-wife. So the two men stand together at Hell’s Maw and the two women farther north under the protection of the Duke of Betand, so it is said!”

 I did not know what to make of this. “I’m sorry, Silkhands. Should I know of this or be concerned?”

 “Know of it? Not necessarily. Huldra has scarcely been heard of since her son, Mandor, was born. If you remember my words at all, Jinian, simply remember to give wide berth where any of these are: Huld or Huldra, Prionde or Valearn, or the Duke of Betand. Where they are, trouble and death are, also.” She shook her head, her face full of sad remembering. I mentally added Dedrina Dreadeye to the list and committed it to memory.

 Silkhands, too, had suffered at the hands of those who should have been most dear. Brother, sister, one dead, the other lost, partly through the connivance of that same Huld. Sometimes she was very sad, and we sat together in the sun, commiserating. I think it helped us both. She told me of her friends, the Wizard Himaggery and the Shifter Peter, and all their adventures. It was then I learned that the lair of the Magicians was no more, that her friend Peter was responsible both for its destruction and for thwarting Huld’s plans for it. I marked her warnings in my mind, not really thinking I would need to pay attention to them. Dragon’s Fire Demesne was far east of Betand. It was not likely I would encounter the dangers she mentioned.

 Time waddled on. So long as the weather remained unsettled we were in no hurry to depart. The old dams still had much to teach me, and I spent all the time with them I could. They had not yet decided whether to travel north with me when I went there, but all seemed agreed that I was to go for some reason or other. Not to marry King Kelver, but for some other thing. I remembered the calm gong of the Dervish’s voice, ringing in the forest. “Murzemire Hornloss, the Seer,” she had said. Murzy, who evidently saw more and further than I had ever given her credit for. She, too, spoke of my going north.

 “There’s many a seven separates for years,” she said quite calmly, while leaving me in no doubt as to her affection. “Some meet only at long intervals. And there’s others tight together as flea on fustigar. No matter where you go, you’ll come to us or we to you. No matter where any of us be, you’d find us.” They did not seem worried by it, as though Murzy had some Seer’s vision that reassured them. Long ago I had given up asking. They would tell me when they felt it wise or appropriate and not until.

 The season wore on to the time of the song competition at Xammer.

 The song competition is a tradition in Xammer. There are contests at all the Houses, though Vorbold’s is probably the most prestigious. It goes on for ten days. Each of the first seven days there is a topic assigned, and all the songwriters must come up with something on that topic to be sung at banquet. During the last three days, the entrants sing their own selections. Students participate by choosing the topics or by submitting songs.

 The final three days are most interesting—both musically and for the content of the lyrics—as the best songs are sung then, old or new, including some the musicians have written. Those who receive the prizes are those who please the audience most each night at banquet—and the judges, of course. Old Vorboldians, all of them, brought back through what they call the “old girls’ net”.

 So, since it was a splendid affair, I chose to wear my fringed dress and was not out of place to do so. There were those present who wore ten different dresses, one each night of the gala, but they were the girls who were being approved by some Negotiator or Diplomat or even by the Gamesman who was seeking alliance himself. I remember Lunette of Pouws being very nervous at competition time. Her brother was trying to make an alliance with the Black Basilisks of Breem—though I understood that no Basilisks had been born in Breem for fifty years. It was mostly a Demesne of Elators, now, though there was a strong strain of Tragamorians running in the people there. Lunette seemed well content with the idea of alliance, so I did not speak against it. There was a hard-faced man representing Burmor of Breem who came to dinner each night and stared at her.

 I had no such worries. Silkhands had told me we would leave for the north soon after the competition was over. There was nothing I could do about that, not at the moment, so I was extraordinarily relaxed and amused by the whole thing.

 The final night came. The favorite singer, Rupert something or other, was to present something entirely new that no one had heard before. There were many giggles and little squeals from the younger girls, who talked of him as though he had been some major Gamesman rather than a mere pawn, however skilled. I was to be at Silkhands’ table.

 See it, if you will. The great arched doorway is carved all about with leaves and fruit, two stories high, and the massive doors that swing in it are carved also in massive forms that shine like oil in the light of the chandeliers, crystal and silver, holding one thousand candles when they are filled. During the competition they are filled and every candle lighted. Great fat candles, too, to last out the evening. A long balcony runs around four sides of the hall, and on three sides of this are guest tables, laid in white cloths and silver, with crystal shining and more candles. Eight steps down from this to the floor, where the daises are raised up five steps again, each with its table. And between the tables the servants go, below the level of our eyes, so we do not see them.

 The great doors open on the fourth side of the balcony, where no tables are. So the guests assemble and are shown to their tables on the balcony. Then the great bell rings, and a trumpet sounds, and a Herald shouts, “All present give ear, all present give ear.” Drums, more trumpets, and we come in, glittering like frangi-flies, all jewels and draperies, to descend the stairs to the floor, then up once more to the proper dais, where we sit on backless chairs in order that the view of us not be impeded.

 I had done it hundreds of times.

 That night I did it again, remembering my train and draperies, which weren’t normal attire with me, but it was the tenth night I’d worn the dress and I was getting used to it. The guests were assembled at their tables. Ordinarily, I paid very little attention to them. Their voices were only a low, masculine rumble under our usual sounds. Mostly I was thinking about the dinner because I was very hungry.

 He was sitting directly across from the entrance, only two tables away from Silkhands.

 I stopped at the top of the stairs, all my breath gone in one explosion of disbelief, and was pushed from behind by Lunette, who said, “Will you move it, Jinian? I’m standing on your train!” So I moved, in shock, not breathing, somehow getting around the dais and into my chair. He had not seen me. He was looking at Silkhands, who was now coming into the room, lovely as a flower. It was all there in his face: fondness, affection, lust. I wanted to cry. I had known him at once. The hair was the same, and the eyes, though he was taller now, taller than I, and with broad shoulders and narrow hips.

 “Whom are you staring at?” whispered Lunette. “Your mouth is wide open.”

 I snapped it shut. “The young Gamesman at the middle table,” I said. “The ruddy-haired one. Ah, I think I knew him back in Stoneflight.”

 “You think you did?”

 “Ah, we were children. He’s grown.”

 “Well, do you or don’t you?”

 “I don’t know. Lunette, would you go over there during the interval? Find out who he is?”

 “What’ll you give?”

 “Friendship, Lunette.”

 “I’ve already got that.” She giggled. “What else?”

 I didn’t have much. “My scent bottle shaped like a frog that King Kelver sent me,” I said at last. I loved that bottle, but the other was more important.

 Lunette looked at me with her weighing expression. “That’s all right, Jinian. If it’s that important, I’ll do it for nothing.”

 After the interval, Lunette returned. “His name is Peter,” she told me. “A friend of Silkhands. I think he comes from the Bright Demesne.”

 So this was Peter, of whom Silkhands had spoken so much. So this was Peter, whom I had given a nutpie in Schooltown, years ago. So this was Peter, whom I had dreamed over since, lusted over, longed over, loved with a passion beyond my years and an intensity that had not waned. I tried to think. The Bright Demesne was a Wizard Demesne! Was it possible we shared ... “Wizard?” I asked. She shook her head.

 “I think not, Jinian. Something else. He’s wearing no insignia at all, but he’s unmistakably Gamesman. Besides, he talks like a Gamesmaster. He told me all about Ephemera.”

 “You already know about Ephemera. We all do.”

 “Well, he didn’t seem to know that.”

 Then there was a rather strange occurrence.

 The favorite singer sang, and was loudly applauded. To which he responded by singing something new, very strange, and seeming to direct it at Silkhands and at her friend. “Healer,” he sang. “Heal the wind. Gamesman, find the wind.” It was a strange song, with much longing in it, chill as a wind itself and personal as a blow. I saw their faces, Silkhands’ and Peter’s. Theirs looked as mine must often have looked in the Forest of Chimmerdong; confused by a strange voice that seemed to summon them to a task ill understood at best, with unknown limits. So they looked, baffled yet intrigued. When the song ended, Peter looked across at Silkhands and she at him, then his eyes fell on me. Oh, I knew those eyes. I had known those eyes for three years. No matter how he would change, ever, I would know those eyes. And as he looked at me, his face showed curiosity, a touch of bewilderment, as though he knew me, recognized me, but could not remember when or where.

 The song had not been much appreciated by the rest of the audience. The singer quickly went to something else, and the competition went on.

 At last the judges spoke, the prizes were given, and the dinner was over. He, Peter, left by the front door which led from the balcony to the courtyard steps; I from the great door which led inward to the living areas and classrooms. I would never see him again. I wanted to scream, and faint, and carry on. I wanted to have a tantrum.

 Instead, I went to Silkhands’ room. She didn’t mind the students coming to see her occasionally.

 “The singer sang directly to you and some young Gamesman, Silkhands. What was that about?”

 “I wish I knew, Jinian. He’s been singing about wind and Healers and such nonsense all week. I hear him first thing in the morning.” She gestured to her window, which overlooked the courtyard. “Infuriating!”

 “And you have no idea what it’s about?”

 “None. Peter may, of course. I’ll have to ask him.”

 “Was that your friend? At the middle table?”

 “Friend? Peter? Oh ... well, yes. I suppose. Isn’t that funny. Peter is a friend, of course, but I’ve always thought of him as a kind of brother. Perhaps to take the place of the one I lost.” And she smiled at me, her own sweet, tremulous smile. And I smiled at her, my own gleeful, dangerous smile.

 Brother, was he? Oh, glorious. Still.

 “He’s very good looking.”

 “Isn’t he! He’s grown so this past year. It quite surprised me. Not a little boy anymore.”

 “Where does he come from?”

 “Bright Demesne. The Wizard Himaggery’s Demesne. At the upper end of Lake Yost.”

 “And is he a Wizard?”

 “No. Shifter. Thank the Eleven.” Of course. She had talked of him before. I just hadn’t made the connection. Shifter. I began to remember the stories she had told me. She had gone to Bannerwell in his behalf and had been held there, threatened with death by Prince Mandor and the Demon Huld. Peter, Shifter, had saved her. It all popped into my head. Strange. When she had told me those tales, it had been like hearing stories told by the old dams. I had not thought of them as real.

 “He’s the one who conquered Bannerwell,” I said.

 “Yes. And after I came here, he went into the north-lands to find his mother—have I spoken of her? Mavin Manyshaped? A very strange person, Jinian, very strange indeed—and while there was instrumental in destroying the place of the Magicians. Of course we all saw that! Who did not? Smoke rising halfway up the sky and ash which made the sun turn red! That was while you were in the Forest of Chimmerdong.”

 “Ah,” I said intelligently. “I heard something or other about great Gamesmen held by the Magicians.”

 “A hundred thousand of them,” she said promptly. Well, then she had been in touch with someone near to Peter to know all this. “A hundred thousand great Gamesmen held frozen under the mountain. And no one knows how to restore them. A terrible tragedy. Himaggery is quite distraught over it.” And she went on then to tell me more about them, and Peter, and Windlow the Seer, until I felt I had all his history tight in my mind.

 So I knew who he was. And where he lived, at least from time to time. And now I had only to figure out how to bring myself to his attention. He might be a bit taken with Silkhands just now—and she was very lovely, that I will admit—but she obviously thought of him as a sibling.

 In an instant, my complacency was shattered, for she said, “I’m glad you dropped in, Jinian. There are new rumors of trouble in the northlands. Before things get any worse, we should get ourselves to Reavebridge. I thought we’d start within the next few days, and I wanted to ask if you need any help getting ready to leave.”

 Next few days. Next few days. What matter that I knew where he might live, or his name, if we were to go north day after tomorrow? What could I say? I nodded, mute, feeling myself falling away into thin shreds, as she went on.

 “It would be good to have Peter with us on the trip. Perhaps he will be going in that direction. Or perhaps I can inveigle him to join us. You’d like that, Jinian. He’s a good companion.”

 I took it for a promise, slipping away early the next morning to give the dams the news. Murzy quirked her lips at me, smiling with her eyes. Cat looked slantwise, tight-lipped, as though to consign all love and lovers to some far-off pit, shaking her head the while. Margaret rejoiced with me.

 “So you know who he is! And what he is, and that a proper Gamesman. Well, and to think of it. Strange that he, too, is going north.”

 “Not strange,” snarled Cat. “Part of the Pattern. Jinian summons Peter with Lovers Come Calling. Kelver summons Jinian with an alliance. Jinian summons Silkhands to accompany her. Silkhands summons Peter. A kind of round dance. Though what it dances ‘round still eludes us, there in the northlands somewhere.”

 Her words brought back something I had forgotten until that instant. Bloster, heading away north with all that was left of Daggerhawk Demesne. Bloster’s words at the edge of Chimmerdong. “Do any of you know anything about the Dream Miner and the Storm Grower?”

 They became very still, in the manner of creatures so startled they do not move for fear of attracting attention. After a silence, Cat said, “Shhh. Jinian, don’t speak of them loudly. Not even here.”

 “Who or what?” I demanded, though more quietly. “They plot my death!”

 They hesitated, even Murzemire Hornloss, who seldom suffered tongue loss. It was Cat who spoke at last. “We have spoken of those Wizards who destroy in order to gain power. The things they choose to destroy sometimes appear randomly chosen. As are the things we choose to build with—they, too—would appear randomly chosen to those unfamiliar with our art. Would a layman know why we lay an owl’s feather upon a black stone? Why we set our heels upon a bridge sometimes, or place a stem of maiden bells beneath the spray of a fall? We have a reason. So, if Dream Miner and Storm Grower have marked you for destruction, they have a reason. It is said they dwell in the north. If they plot your death, they do not do it idly and you will be walking toward it.” She looked at the others. Grave faces all around.

 “But that is where Peter is going.” As I recall, I said it calmly, without foreboding. But then, I have never been thought to have a Seer’s Talent.

 Murzy did, and what she said was, “Why must Storm Grower and Dream Miner have everything their own way? Perhaps we have walked in fear of them too long.”

 Silence. Finally a sigh from Cat. “True, Murzemire. Though the very thought chills me.”

 Margaret looked at me with love in her face. “Go, Jinian. Return to us when you can. Or perhaps we will find you first.”

 “I wish there were time to see to your clothes before you go,” said Bets predictably, completely destroying the melancholy mood we had all fallen into.

 Dodie was out in the countryside learning herbary with Sarah, so I could not even tell them farewell. Those who were there, I kissed good-bye, not really understanding the separation was to start at once.

 19

 We left a few days later, after such a flurry of preparation as left me no time to see the dams again. The words of the Oracle had not been forgotten. Nothing pertaining to Peter was ever forgotten so far as I was concerned. “Let him save your life a time or two,” the Oracle had said. “I see something unpleasant in the way of groles or Ghouls.” Groles I had not seen. Ghouls I had. I preferred not to see one again, but this trip northward might be the opportunity the Oracle had in mind. In which case Peter’s life, and mine, might be endangered.

 I strapped Bartelmy’s gift scabbard to my thigh, high beneath my skirts, where it could be reached through a slit pocket, then stood for a long time looking at the weapon it would hold. It was an ugly thing still, breathing with a palpable menace, a hard, horrid chill. But ... but I had labored hard for the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne, risked my life for it, been dangled and threatened, all to have the tool to save Peter’s life and my own should it be needed. Would it be needed? I had only the Oracle’s word, and the Oracle never told all the truth.

 At last I slipped it into the scabbard, recoiling as the pommel touched me. It lay angrily against my skin, an intimate hostility. After a few hours, I grew accustomed to the feeling. It was never less than discomfort.

 And in the brightness of a morning Silkhands and I got into the light carriage that was to carry us north, waved farewell to Queen Vorbold (on whose face I read definite indications of relief), and were trotted out onto the road north.

 Peter later wrote an account of that time. I have read it, being alternately amazed and amused. I do not remember saying some of the words he attributes to me. And though in the main it is an accurate enough account, from my point of view, things were not quite as Peter recorded them.

 Since this trip was to offer an opportunity for Peter to save my life, it was obvious that I had to be careless enough to put my life at risk. I knew from Silkhands’ chatter that Peter was being harassed by some enemy, possibly that same Huld who had caused him so much trouble in the past. Both Silkhands and I knew that someone out in the wide world very much wanted me dead and gone. Despite this, neither of us spoke to Queen Vorbold about it, and we set out in a light carriage with only two guardsmen, both of them old, ready for retirement, and half-blind.

 This was not unlike Silkhands. Healers tend to be a bit casual about security. I, however, looked the guards over cynically when we left, hoping they would not be victims in what was likely to occur.

 As it happened, when the Ghoul came out of the woods, with a great troupe of staggering dead, the guards could make only a token resistance; both were injured immediately, one may have been killed. Silkhands was a Healer, not a fighter, and despite all my plots and plans, I was so surprised and horrified that I had all I could do to keep my hand away from the Dagger. Since the Ghoul made no immediate move to harm us, however, I concentrated on what was happening; counted the liches; and memorized the Ghoul’s face in the event I should meet him again.

 Just as I was about to decide that using the Dagger would be prudent inasmuch as this wasn’t the occasion the Oracle had in mind, I heard Peter screaming—his voice always cracked when he was excited; it went on doing it until he was well into his twenties—screaming, “Ghoul’s Ghast Nine.” And then he swooped up the two of us, Silkhands and me, and carried us off to a treetop.

 Unfortunately, he had used the last of his power in that swoop, while the Ghoul had plenty in reserve. We clung and kicked and cursed a bit, and finally Peter got a grip on one of the tiny Gamesmen he carried in his pocket—Buinel the Sentinel, it was—who stirred up a fire which burned up the Ghoul and the liches and very near barbecued us in the process. I didn’t, quite frankly, think it was terribly good planning on Peter’s part. Still, he had saved my life as the Oracle had suggested. Since he had saved Silkhands, too, however, it did not produce the desired effect.

 We went on. Some of his enemies caught up with him in Three Knob, and I was able to suggest a stratagem that didn’t require his using the Gamesmen of Barish. I thought he might act more prudently and consistently if he were not used to calling on them all the time. Loving Peter was sometimes like loving a committee. He often went into these odd, silent conferences with himself, them, leaving one very much on the outside. It was obvious he would not be able to love anyone by himself as long as he carried the Gamesmen in his pocket and in his head. Finding a solution to their presence would have to come soon. It could not come soon enough, so far as I was concerned.

 King Kelver turned out to be a strikingly handsome man, younger than I had expected. The first moment he set eyes upon us, I knew he preferred Silkhands to me. Part of that was my own doing. I had not wanted him to like me much. Still, it was a bit crushing to find one had succeeded so well. His feelings seemed to be returned by Silkhands. She looked at him in a way she had never looked at Peter.

 I considered them both, Silkhands and the King, and twiddled my thumbs thinking of Murzy’s warning. “Never for anything small, chile,” she used to say. So far as I was concerned, it was not for anything small. I found the sixteen ingredients for the love potion with some trouble, found privacy with which to mix them with a little more trouble, and then—then threw them out, threw myself down on the bed, and cried for an hour or so. It was no good. Remembering the centipig, that horrible, witless lusting that was compelled rather than felt, I could not do it to either of them. Things would just have to take their course. After only a few days, I knew no potion was necessary. She was quite besotted with him. Seeing them together, I wondered how often potions were used between two who might have loved anyhow. Well, no matter. King Kelver would obviously not object to breaking the contract.

 And once Silkhands was disposed of in such a friendly fashion, I allowed another occasion on which Peter could save my life. I had to appear to do a very foolish thing, of course, and had it not been for my special Talent, it would have been a foolish thing in truth. I was shut up in a housenut that was being eaten out by groles. This time was actually much less dangerous than the previous time, since groles are beasts and quite responsive to being talked to. I kept them well away from me until the last minute, though when Peter arrived they were chewing away at my perch with every appearance of eating me imminently. He rescued me very nicely, held me as though I were precious to him, realizing for the first time that I was female.

 Had it not been for Peter’s old friend Chance, grumphing away in the background, my oath of celibacy might have been forgotten right then. From that point on, Peter began to have feelings for me. They were troubled feelings, yes. Uncertain feelings. Still, I thought in time he would come to love me a good deal. The whole matter might have been less complicated if there had not been that oath which still had two years to run.

 We found the solution to the Gamesmen of Barish upon the heights of Bleer. Though he fought against it, Peter did the right thing. He and Silkhands raised them up, restoring them to themselves, and I was not even jealous. Silkhands saved his life in the process, so we all seemed even up with nothing owing to anyone.

 A nice conclusion to the tale, his and mine. A good place to leave it, is it not? All of us properly paired off, loving couples or with some hope of being, having achieved great things. Many of the old stories end in such a way. “And then they lived happy all their lives.”

 And so with us, except that our lives were to be short ones lasting at most only a few hours from that time. As it was, we few stood alone upon the Wastes of Bleer waiting for too short a time to pass before we died. It was then and there I began this tale.

 From what I have said, you know we did not die. The way of our salvation was this.

 We stood together then upon the Wastes of Bleer, the great convoluted forms of the Wind’s Bones all around us, eleven Gamesmen plus Barish-Windlow, and five of us who had come there, seventeen in all, while against us marched an army of bones stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. I had reconciled to dying, almost, and the others as well. We would die, but we would fight. We would die, but we would die honorably—and I considered the distinction with some wry, mordant cheer. A false distinction, but better than none under the circumstances. I had cried and scribbled one night away, sorry I could not have forgotten the oath for that last night. It seemed such a futile thing if I were to die, never to have loved him fully. But then I thought if I were to die, better to die true to myself than false. And who knows, making love under such conditions might not have been very wonderful the first time. I understand it often isn’t. Margaret explained that to me. So, I stood there facing the marching horde, the Dagger in my hand, hoping I would have a chance of letting one of the human movers of that horde feel the edge of it, grieving a little.

 Then there was no more time to grieve over lost loving, for the army of bones was upon us. Peter had Shifted into a grole, ready to eat as many of the enemy as he could. The rest of us were ready to fight, knowing it would be futile against that array, about to be overrun.

 And then ... in the middle of that great tumult I felt Peter trying to raise up the Wind’s Bones, those great buried hulks that lay all about us, trying to link with the Gamesmen as he had so often in the past, trying to use their strength to bring the great old bones of the world to our defense. They were too monstrous, too deep, too heavy, too far buried. He could not. They quivered only slightly, shifting reluctantly in their age-old bed. And yet, they had been beasty things after all, no matter how huge. Things of the earth, I thought half-hysterically as the marching skeletons came in their white rattling thunder toward us. Buried things, old things ...

 The words rang in my head like a bell. “Earthways are mine, and things old and buried. If you need help with such things, call on me.” The boon I had been promised by the gobblemole.

 There was no time to do what I did! Time slowed around me as I ducked into a hidden place between the stones, set out the articles, drew the design, said the words of summoning and the boon requested, all in one great gust of breath as though I would not have a moment in which to finish. Never before, and not often since, have I felt the power of word, gesture, and intent unified into an irresistible summons as it was in that moment. I did not see old gobblemole, but I could feel him, feel him in the way the great bones heaved up all at once, higher and higher, monsters of ancient times trampling up into the daylight with the mold still falling from them. Bones to fight bones. Dead things to fight dead things. The dead things of this world to fight the dead things that had come from another world.

 Gobblemole held them in himself, of course, just as forest held every tree and silver-bell, just as flitchhawk held every darter’s wing, just as d’bor wife held every minnow. Old gods, holding all their kind in their minds, marvelous and mighty. And I heard them speaking as if they were beasts alive once more, heard their subterranean fury swell from the clinging soil to burst with shattering ferocity upon the skeletons of men: “Adown the false, foul, outlander bones. Adown the brittle, breaking, wildly shaking skeletons from the afars. Adown the interloper, stranger, alien horde. Adown them all, all, into dust, sand, soil, stone ...”

 And in the end, as you know, they were indeed adown, into dust upon the wind, blots upon the stone, while the great old beasts trampled still, only falling to the stones once more when the long day was done. When it was over, we felt like rags, sodden and limp, the sweat drying clammy on us, unable to raise a finger. It was timely to see Peter’s folk come down at us out of the sky, bearing little help for what we had been through but much comfort and food and cheer now that it was over.

 In the quiet that came at last, I set my feet upon the ground to feel the tingle there where the Old Road still ran.

 They shut up the old gods, Bartelmy the Dervish had said, shut them up. Wounded them.

 “I would not allow myself to be shut up,” I had said to Cat once, knowing nothing about it at all. It had seemed a simple thing.

 It was not that simple, neither the shutting up nor the turning loose. Certainly the towering anger that came in answer to my summons was not a simple thing. There was wrath beneath my feet, vengefulness, a great force that might be loosed against all things not of this world. As I was not. As Peter was not. Though it came to my call, that was no guarantee it hated me less than it had hated the bones. No. It was not a simple thing to shut up an old god. So were my thoughts, momentarily.

 There was no time to ruminate upon it. I walked among the Gamesmen of Barish, looking them over as others were doing, wondering to find myself here among legends and almost-gods. I heard them talk with one another, with Mavin and Himaggery, heard them plan for a new age, a better time, plotting to raise up a hundred thousand great Gamesmen to achieve their purposes. There was Tamor, Armiger; Dealpas the Healer. There was Thandbar, the first Shifter, forebear of Peter and his mother. There was Trandilar, great Queen, mistress of Beguilement, cosseting Peter in a tone that turned me red and eager, not with envy but with some hot feeling it was not easy to put down. Sorah was there, the great Seer of ancient times, pretending to have a vision for him.

 Then I saw her face change and the vision became a real one. She was saying. “Shadowmaster. Holder of the key. Storm Grower. The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell.”

 And I did not consider it. I laughed, with Peter, both of us red-faced and a little embarrassed, and we forgot it. The terror was over. All either of us could think of was the fermenting, bubbling joy of being alive, of having a future. Nothing else seemed important. I knew nothing then about the shadowmaster except what Bartelmy had told me. I did not care to hear more about Storm Grower. I had only seen one edge of the bell—had I really seen it at all?—and knew nothing of the book or light. I was only a young girl. I was alive, who had thought she would be dead. I was in love.

 I did not give much thought to Bartelmy’s words, or those of the Oracle who tells only part of the truth—not then. Peter had invited me to go with him, northward still, to see the world we had not seen before.

 There were things ... things my head wanted. And I’ll confess it, even then a faint fatal curiosity was beginning to brew.

 But Peter had asked me to go with him northward.

 And for that little time, that was enough.

 Dervish Daughter

 CHAPTER ONE

  Just across the chasm from the town of Zog a bunch of wild brats with crossbows—and poisoned arrows, to add to the general sense of fun—had given us quite a run. We’d barely gotten away from them with our skins whole.

 There had been constant storm damage blocking the roads, continuous sullen clouds, and a threatening mutter of sentient-seeming thunder. I had a huge, aching lump on my forehead from not being quick enough ducking into the wagon during the hail storm four days before. Hail the size of goose eggs!

 Add to that the remains we kept finding along the way, more and more of them as we went farther north. Human remains, mostly, and the yellow dream crystals that had killed them.

 Throw in the fact we’d been driving two days and nights without sleep, dodging shadow, which seemed to be everywhere.

 Then season the whole horrid mess with a harsh scream as a night bird plummeted across the moonlit sky screeching, “Lovely dead meat, not even rotten yet!” I understood it as easily as though it had been shouted at me by some old dame in the underbrush.

 The bird’s cry said “human meat,” not some luckless zeller killed by a pombi’s claws. I put my hand over Queynt’s where they lay on the reins.

 He snapped out of his doze, immediately alert, as I reached beneath the wagon seat for my bow. “More trouble ahead,” I said wearily, nocking an arrow.

 Queynt yawned, giving my bow a doubtful look.

 Though he had been teaching me to shoot with the stated intention of providing for the pot, my inability to hit anything smaller than a gnarlibar had become a joke. They had begun to call natural landmarks that were suitably huge a “good target for Jinian.” The problem was that I couldn’t shoot anything that talked to me. Oh, if someone else shot it, I could eat it, and if something came at me with unpleasant intent, I was able to kill it readily enough no matter what it was saying. Bunwits and zeller and tree rats, however, were safe from my arrows so long as they said good morning politely. I hadn’t discussed this with Queynt, though I thought he suspected it.

 He glanced down, then back into the wagon where his Wizard’s kit was. I knew he was considering getting out his own bow or taking time to set a protection spell, evidently deciding against it. We’d learned to trust the instincts of Yittleby and Yattleby in times of danger, and neither of the two tall krylobos pulling the wagon seemed overly disturbed. Their beaks were forward, their eyes watchful as we came around a curve at the crest of a hill, but neither of them showed any agitation. We came out of the jungle at the top of a long, sloping savannah, dotted with dark, crouching bushes and half-lit by a gibbous moon. I could see all the way to the bottom of the hill where the forest started again and two twinkling lanterns, amber and red, moved among the trees near the ground. That had to be Peter and Chance. They’d been riding ahead and had evidently found something, disturbing the bird at the time. Queynt clucked to the krylobos, and we began the slow descent toward the lanterns with him looking remarkably alert for such an old man.

 Vitior Vulpas Queynt is over a thousand years old.

 Everything I have learned about him indicates this is really true and not some mere bit of rodomontade. He hadn’t made a special point of claiming to be that old, mind you; it simply came out as we went along. Peter and I had met him a couple of years before, or rather, he had picked us up on the road—he and his remarkable tall-wheeled wagon and the two huge birds that pulled it. He had picked us up and made use of us and we of him, all in a fit of mutual suspicion, and when it was over we found ourselves quite fond of one another. And the birds, too, of course. Krylobos are very large—tailless, as are all native creatures of this world, with plumy topknots and somewhat irascible tempers. They like me since I can talk to them, and I like them because they dislike the same things I do.

 Bathing in very cold water, for example. Or eating fruit that isn’t quite ripe. They don’t have teeth to set on edge, but the expression around their beaks is quite sufficient to evoke sympathy.

 Which is beside the point. Queynt has a fondness for fantastical dress and ornamental speech and enjoys being thought a fool. He says he learns a great deal that way. He is an explorer at heart, so he has said, and exploring is what he and Peter and Chance and I had been doing for some time. He is the only person to whom Chance has ever given unstinting admiration. So Peter says, who has known Chance far longer than I.

 This admiration is more understandable in that Vitior Vulpas Queynt and Chance much resemble each other. Both are brown, muscular men who look a little soft without being so at all. Both are jolly-appearing men who seem a little stupid and aren’t. And both have quantities of common sense. As for the rest of it, Queynt is a Wizard of vast experience and education, while Chance is an ex-sailor with a fondness for gambling who was hired to bring Peter up safely and did so more or less. Both of them have had a certain tutelary role in our lives. Peter’s and mine, and truth to tell, I like them both mightily. Even on an occasion like this, when weariness made it hard to be fond of anyone.

 We approached the lanterns. A faint sweetish smell told me everything I wanted to know about it before we got there. More dream crystal deaths.

 Before we ever started on this trip—after the Battle of the Bones on the Wastes of Bleer it was, when we were all remarkably glad merely to be alive—I had known about dream crystals. My un-mother (the woman who bore me but did not conceive me, if that makes sense) had had at least one. It had led her into ruin and ended, I supposed, by killing her. My much hated enemy, Porvius Bloster, had had one, and it had done him no good at all except to make him exceed his limitations and bring destruction upon his Demesne. Even girls at school had had dream crystals, assortments of them, like candies. I had known what they were in a casual way, known enough to stay away from them and mistrust those who used them, but it was not until this trip that I had seen them in general use. Misuse.

 Whatever. It was not until this trip I had seen them killing people by the dozens. There, that’s plain enough.

 The current situation was a case in point. It was another of those pathetic encampments we had seen entirely too many of during the past season.

 One couldn’t dignify the structures even as huts.

 They were the kind of shelter a bored child might build in a few careless moments; a few branches leaned against a fallen tree—its trunk loaded with epiphytes and fogged by a dense cloud of ghost moths—and a circle of rocks rimming a pool of ash. And the corpses.

 Three of them this time; man, woman, and baby.

 Starved to death, from the look of them, and with food all round for the picking or digging—furry, thickskinned pocket-bushes full of edible nuts, a northern thrilp bush—smaller fruit, and sweeter than the southern variety—table roots just beside the tiny stream.

 “Hell,” I said to Queynt, disgusted. “I suppose they’ve got those yellow crystals in their mouths, like all the rest.” Half-right. In the lantern light we could see the male corpse had one on a thong around his neck; the female had one in her mouth, having sucked herself to death on it. Their bodies were still warm. The baby was cold, probably dead of dehydration after screaming his lungs out for several days trying to tell someone he was hungry and thirsty and wet.

 Chance and Peter were dismounted by the corpses.

 Peter gave me a troubled look, knowing I’d be upset by the baby. Chance eased his wide belt and mused, “I suppose we could dig them in, though there seems little sense to bother.” At first we’d stopped to bury the human dead along the road, but they had become more and more numerous as we came farther north. There had soon been too many to bury, but it still bothered me to let the babies lie. “I’ll bury the baby,” I said in a voice that sounded angry even to me. “Let the others alone.” Queynt shook his head, but he didn’t argue. All the babies reminded me of one I’d taken care of in a class back in Xammer. The one in Xammer had the same baffled look when he fell asleep that many of the dead babies did, as though it had all been too much for him and he was glad to be out of it. I wrapped this one in our last towel, reminding myself to buy towels the next time we got to any place civilized—if there were any place civilized in these northlands. I’d used up our supply burying babies and children.

 Queynt said, “Jinian, if you’re going to go on like this, I’ll lay in a supply of shrouds. It would be cheaper than good toweling.” I flushed, getting on with the half-druggled grave I was digging with the shovel we used for latrine ditches.

 “I know it doesn’t make sense, Queynt, but otherwise I get bad dreams.” He already knew that; we’d discussed it before.

 There’s a city somewhere ahead,” said Peter, trying to change the subject. “I can hear it.” It wasn’t surprising. He had Shifted himself a pair of ears which stood out like batwings on either side of his head. Probably hadn’t even realized he was doing it. I turned away to hide the expression on my face—he did look silly—only to see Queynt touching his tongue to the crystal the dead man had had around his neck.

 Even though Queynt had told us over and over he was immune, seeing him do that made me shudder. I was going to find out about that alleged immunity sooner or later, but so far he hadn’t explained it. Now he saw me shiver and shook his head at me.

 “We have to know, girl!” Well, he was right. We did have to know. Those louts outside Zog had had crystals hanging around their necks, too. Reddish ones. Queynt hadn’t had a chance to taste one of those, but then he hadn’t needed to. It was evident what dreams of violence and rapine they were breeding in the brats. Along with everything else, they had been chanting a litany to Storm Grower while they tried to kill us. We’d been hunting Storm Grower for some seasons now, and hearing the name in this context made the hunt seem even more ominous than we’d already decided it was.

 Queynt nodded at me about this yellow crystal, telling me it was like the others we’d found beside the dead bodies along the road. Anyone touching it to his tongue would be utterly at peace, in a place of perfect contentment with no hunger, no thirst, no desires.

 Someone sucking a crystal like that wouldn’t hear a baby crying or the sound of their own stomach screaming for food. Someone sucking on that dream would lie there and die. And there were hundreds along the road who had done just that—families, singletons, even whole mounted troops, dead on the ground with the horses still saddled and wandering. We’d found one pile of small furry things which Queynt believed were Shadowpeople, though the carrion birds had left little enough to identify. All with yellow crystals in their mouths, their hands, or on thongs around their necks.

 We hadn’t found a single one on anyone still living.

 When the grave was filled in, I pulled myself up on the wagon seat again. Queynt nodded sympathetically as we started off into the gray light of early dawn.

 “Someone’s getting rid of excess population,” he mumbled. “Dribs and drabs of it.”

 “What I can’t figure out is how and why certain ones are so all of a sudden excess! We’ve found dead Gamesmen and dead pawns, young and old, male and female. All with these same damn yellow things. The crystals are all alike, same color, same size. Someone has to be making them!”

 “You’ve mentioned that before, Jinian. Several times, as I recall.” He sighed, yawned, scratched himself. “You know, girl,” he drawled, going into one of his ponderous perorations, “though we may conjecture until we have worn imagination to shreds, theorize until our brains are numb with it, baffle our knowledge with mystery and our logic with the futility of it all, until we find out where they’re coming from, anything we guess is only hot air and worth about as much.” He fell into a brooding silence as we rattled on with the krylobos talking nonsense to one another and Peter and Chance riding just ahead. So we had ridden, league on league, hundreds and hundreds of them, ever since leaving the lands of the True Game. Some days it seemed we’d been riding like this forever.

 I could see Peter’s animated profile from time to time as he turned to speak to Chance. His face was bronze from the sun. He’d grown up, too, in the last few seasons. The bones in his cheeks and jaw were bold, no longer child-like, and there was a strong breadth to his forehead. It was his mouth that got to me, though, the way his upper lip curved down in the center, a funny little dip, as though someone had pinched it. Every time I saw that, I wanted to touch it with my tongue. Like a sweet. No. Not like a sweet.

 Well, I needed comforting, and seeing him there within reach, within touching distance, made me want to yell or run or go hide in the wagon.

 Sometimes I wished that the way I felt about Peter was an illness. If it were an illness, a Healer could cure it.

 As it was, it went on all the time with no hope of a cure.

 Every morning when the early light made sensuous wraiths of the mists, every evening when the dusk ghosts crept into erotic tangles around the foliage (see, even my language was getting lubricious), I found myself thinking unhelpful thoughts that made me blush and breathe as though I’d been running. I furnished every grove with likely spots for dalliance, and lately I’d taken to crossing off every day that passed, counting the ones that remained until the season my oath of celibacy would be done.

 Queynt had been watching me; I caught his kindly stare and blushed. “Troubled about your oath?” he asked me sympathetically.

 He caught me unaware. One of the things that bothered me about Queynt was his habit of knowing what I was thinking. He wasn’t a Demon. He had no business just knowing that way. “Yes.” I turned red again. It wasn’t any of his business, and yet. “By the Hundred Devils and all their pointy ears, Queynt, I can’t understand the sense of it. They said it was to let me study the art without distractions, but I’m not studying the art! I’m traveling. Trying to keep my skin whole. Trying to locate Dream Miner and Storm Grower and find out why they want me dead. Praying Peter keeps on being fond of me at least until the oath runs out. Celibacy doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense!”

 “Oh,” he said mildly, “it does, you know. If you examine it. For example, you’ve been doing summons, haven’t you?” Well, I had, of course. A few. I might have called up an occasional water dweller to provide a fish dinner. Or maybe a few flood-chucks, just to help us get through some timber piles on the road. I admitted as much, wondering what he was getting at.

 “Well, if you’ve been doing summons, have you ever stopped to think what an unconsidered pregnancy might do to the practice of the art?” An unconsidered pregnancy—or even a considered one—was about the furthest thing from my mind at the moment. But this was something not one of the dams had mentioned to me, not even the midwife, Tess Tinder-my-hand, who would have been the logical one to do so. My jaw dropped and I gave him an idiot look.

 “Well, let’s say you’re pregnant and you summon up something obstreperous in the way of a water dweller. Then you go through the constraints and dismissal, but the water dweller considers the child in your belly was part of the summons. That child has neither constrained nor dismissed. So, time comes you give birth to something that looks rather more like a fish than you might think appropriate. Recent research would indicate a good many of the magical races are the results of just such Wize-ardly accidents.”

 “Mermaids? Dryads?”

 “Among others, and not the most strange, either. Have you ever called up a deep dweller?” I had heard them laugh a few times during bridge magic but had never called them. Murzy had told me to be careful, very careful, with them. I shook my head again.

 “I have. Pesky, mischievous creatures, but more than half-manlike, for all that. If it weren’t for their fangy mouths, you’d think them children. I shouldn’t wonder if that race came from some magical accident during pregnancy. Not that deep dwellers are common.” All of which was something to think about. I snapped my mouth shut and thought about it.

 I’d never really understood the reason for the oath—three years of celibacy (virginity in my case)—sworn when I was just fifteen. I’d done it, of course, because they wouldn’t let me be in the seven otherwise, and if I weren’t in the seven, I couldn’t go on studying the art.

 At that time, the art was just about all I had to care about except for the seven old dams themselves. Well, six and me.

 So, I took the oath, and got initiated, and learned some fascinating things, all a good bit of time before Peter came along. When he did come along, however, the oath began to feel like a suit of tight armor. There was it, all hard and smooth outside, and there was me, all sweaty and passionate inside. And that’s the way this trip had gone, with me being hard and cold half the time and hiding in the wagon the rest of the time, afraid of what might happen if I came out. I didn’t wonder that Queynt could see it. No one could have missed it.

 Peter came galloping back, head down, looking thoroughly tired and irritable. “More trees down. A real swath cut up ahead. We’ll need to find a way around. No possible way of getting through it.” When we arrived at the tumble, it was obvious he was right. Seven or eight really big trees, fallen into a kind of jackstraw mess, their branches all tangled together. Lesser trees were fallen in the forest, the whole making a deadfall that we could have scrambled through if we’d had a few extra hours with nothing better to do and hadn’t minded leaving the wagon behind.

 Off to the right the forest thinned out a little. There were wide-enough spaces between the trees to get down into a meadow, and the meadow looked as though it stretched past the obstruction and back to the road. Chance was at the edge of the open space, beckoning.

 Queynt krerked a few syllables to Yittleby and Yattleby, they turning their great beaks in reply. He had said, “Can you handle this?” and they had replied, “Why even ask?” He had picked up a few words of the krylobos language over the years. I wasn’t always sure that he knew what he was saying.

 It was first light, still very dim. I got off to walk beside the wagon as it tilted from side to side over the road banks and through the scattered trees. Watching where I was walking had become a habit, and when I saw it I stopped without conscious effort, hollering to Queynt, “Shadow! Stop. Look there.” Unlike the rivers of dark we had seen flowing along the road farther south, this patch was a small one, the size of an outspread cape. It lay under a willow copse, directly in my path, easy to miss in this half-light.

 When we’d started this adventure, traveling along the shores of the Glistening Sea among the towns of the Bight, we’d seen shadow piled on shadow. We’d taken refuge in the wagon more than once when we’d encountered great swatches of it creeping and crawling about us in the forests and chasms. In comparison to that, this little patch was almost innocent looking.

 “What’s holding you?” asked Peter, riding down behind us.

 “Shadow.” Queynt was laconic about it. Though he claimed to have seen it seldom before we started our northern trip, he had accustomed himself to the sight better than I. Shadow never failed to give me a sick emptiness inside, a fading feeling, as though I had become unreal. I had been shadow bit once, in Chimmerdong. As they say, once bit, twice sore.

 “Well.” He sat there for a moment, staring at it, shifting from haunch to haunch, looking cross the way he does when he’s hungry. “It doesn’t look any different from any other we’ve seen. Are you going to sit here all morning looking at it, or can we go around it and get back to the road?” Peter was, as usual, impatient.

 There was no reason to watch it. Shadow seldom did anything. When it was angered, and as far as I knew no one knew what made it angry, it attacked. Otherwise, it simply lay. Anything that stepped into shadow, of course, would be better off dead sooner than it died.

 Moved by a fleeting curiosity, I took off one boot and set my bare foot on the ground. There was a tingle there, very slight, which meant there was a remnant of the Old Road buried deep beneath us. I’d had the suspicion for some time that the shadow gathered mostly where there were remnants of the Ancient Roads, though I had no idea what it meant. Seeing Queynt’s curious gaze focused on me, I flushed and put my boot back on.

 We led the birds around the shadow patch, though I think they were fully capable of avoiding it on their own, and then back up through the meadow to the road once more, where the stack of shattered trunks was now blocking the way behind us. Since hearing those Zoggian brats chant their litany to Storm Grower, I had a pretty good idea where this kind of damage came from—not that we could verify it. Ever since we’d first seen this random destruction, we’d asked about it.

 Those we’d asked didn’t answer. Since we had no Demon with us to read minds, we had given up asking, but we hadn’t given up wondering. We went on, with me still suspiciously looking for shadow as we rattled along the road.

 “There’s the city Peter heard,” said Queynt.

 We had topped a rise and looked down into a green valley, a city cupped at the center. The place was crowned with ostentatious mansions, much carved stone and lancet windows and so prodigious a display of banners—which were either excessively pink or blushed by the sunrise—some festival must have been in progress. I sighed. Towns of any kind seemed to mean trouble recently, and I was too tired even to fight for my life.

 “I wonder if there’s an inn with a good cook?”

 “Burials make you hungry, do they?” I swallowed my protest. Fact was, they did make me hungry. As did traveling, practicing the wize-art, talking to animals, or virtually anything else one wanted to mention. “Good appetite, long life,” I said sententiously.

 “I suppose you’re right.” He sighed, peering down at his own round belly. “My appetite is very good, and I seem to have lived some time.”

 “Which is a story you have promised to tell me, Queynt. About long life, and immunity to crystals, and things.”

 “Ah, well, Jinian. Sometime.”

 “I’ll make you a deal, Queynt. You tell me about you and the crystals after breakfast, and I’ll tell you something you don’t know.”

 “It’s a long, dull story.”

 I snickered. Queynt didn’t tell dull stories. Oh, he could be dull, but if he was, it was for a purpose. At storytelling, he was a master. I said, “I presume as much, and we haven’t time now, anyhow. The city will be all around us shortly. But when we find lodging? Is it a promise?”

 “You won’t let me alone until I do. You’re a presumptuous chit. A nuisance. Still, there’s no real reason not to tell you, and it may gain me a little peace.”

 I held out my hand to clasp his, making a bargain. I’d wanted to hear that story for a long time, but Queynt always seemed to evade telling me about it.

 A difference in the sound of the wagon wheels rang in my ear. Paving. The talons of the krylobos scraped upon cobbles. Beside the wagon a sign. BLOOME WELCOMES YOU. Another, only slightly smaller. SHEBELAC STREET.

 CHAPTER TWO

 We rode on Shebelac Street, paved as far as the eye could see with glistening cobbles, shiny as turtle backs from the night’s rain. At either side were high, carved curbs, and above that, slabs of walk-stone, embellished with an incised serpent’s twist, to make them more interesting to walk on, I suppose. On either side of the walks, the houses and shops of the outskirts of Bloome were still quiet against the jungle in the dawn time, not bursting from doors and windows with banners and bells and drums as they would on the morrow.

 It took us very little time to learn that five days before had been the procession of Jix-jax-cumbalory and that tomorrow would be Finaggy-Bum. It took us no time at all to learn that today the procession route would be announced, and every house and shop holder attentive in the forum to know whether he would need to spend the night getting ready or might sleep for once.

 Those along the Forum Road, Tan-tivvy Boulevard and Shebelac Street had given up sleeping long since. All processions came to the Forum along one of those three and left by another of the same. A one-in-three chance of sleeping the night before procession meant less and less as the season picked up speed. Five days hence, we were told, would be Pickel-port-poh, with Shimerzy-waffle three days after. The cloth merchants would rise early. The banner makers not long after.

 Tent and marquee manufacturers would be in their shops even as we rode. As I say, we were soon to learn all this. And more.

 And in the high mansion upon Frommager Hill, reached from the Forum by the twisty peregrinations of Sheel Street, Dream Merchant’s man Brombarg—whom we were shortly to meet—woke in an unusually foul temper. Time had come to make a decision. Time to go on or get out, one or the other, and he couldn’t make up his mind. If he decided to retire, he’d need a naif to lay the job off on, and there weren’t any strangers in Bloome to choose from.

 He rose, fuming, yawning, scratching his crotch with erotic insistence. (I am not certain about this, but it seems in character.) The festivals of Finaggy-Bum and Shimerzy-waffle! Merchants’ men were always elected on the one and sworn in on the other. He could wear the pink vertical for the election. No one had seen it yet, and hideously hot and uncomfortable though it was, it was the most stylish thing he possessed. And it was pink! It would be at least a season before the fashions would swing back to anything comfortable to wear, and it might be forever before there was any other acceptable color. Damn the machine. Couldn’t afford the fine if he was judged to be far out of fashion, either. Being Dream Merchant’s man took every coin he could lay hands on. (It did, too. The poor fellow had next to nothing of his own.) Still scratching, he leaned from the westernmost of his tall, lancet windows. From this tower he could look across the city walls to the jungle, brilliantly, wetly green in the morning light, swarming with birds. From here every street in Bloome was clearly visible. Only the huddle of servitors’ huts along the walls themselves could not be seen, they and the prodigious mill that rumbled on the eastern border of the town, shivering the ground in a constant hyogeal vibration.

 Sheel Street sinuated down Frommager into the Forum. He followed it with his eyes, imagining himself on a capacious horse riding there. Down Sheel, across the Forum, into Tan-tivvy and along that, titty-tup, tittytup, all the way to the city edge and away northwest.

 Leaving it. Dressed in a simple shirt, mayhap, with trousers that fit. A cape to keep off the storm and a hat to shelter his eyes. “Oh, by all the merchants in Zib, Zog, Chime, and Bloome,” he moaned. “But I am sick of this.” And he was. He would leave it in a minute—if they would only let him!

 A distant movement caught his attention.

 There. Entering the city along Shebelac, which ran south, far south, becoming merely a track at the base of the mountains if one went far enough. What in the name of five foul fustigars was that? A wagon drawn by birds? And two riders alongside on great southern horses.

 Sweating with sudden excitement, Brombarg moved toward his closet. Day before procession he could get away with something fairly simple. He dressed quickly, knowing he had to get to them before anyone else did.

 Them, of course, was us, riding down Shebelac in the early morning. Chance and Peter kept their eyes busy looking at the houses and shops while I yawned and struggled to stay awake. The two days without sleep, mostly on the run, was taking its toll.

 “Years since I’ve been here,” Queynt said, looking about him with interest. “Three, four hundred, maybe. Cloth-manufacturing town, as I remember. It isn’t much bigger. They used to have a special kind of wineghost—Good merciful spirits of the departed. What’s that?” Queynt drew up the reins, and the tall, dignified birds halted as one, their long necks bent forward to examine the creature that had come into the road at the distant corner and was now plodding toward them.

 “Gods,” I murmured sotto voce. “A madman, perhaps?” At that first instant, I really thought it was, and my hands started for my bow.

 But Peter shook his head. “A player, maybe. The town shows signs of festival. Costume booths on every corner. Banner wires across all the streets.”

 “Trust you to notice such a thing.” I gave him a relieved and adoring look—remembering too late to make it merely friendly—and he flushed with pleasure, pushing back the ruddy wave of hair that seemed to be always draped across his forehead. I went on hurriedly, “I did see the streets were freshly swept. Look at those trews!” We examined the trousers together, equally interested, unequally appalled. I didn’t care that much about dress, quite frankly, and was simply dismayed at the thought of wearing any such thing. As a Shifter, however, Peter was professionally intrigued, busy calculating how the vast protrusions were kept afloat. The man coming toward us seemed to have a huge hemisphere of fabric around each leg, which bulged forward, back, and to either side like halves of a monstrous melon.

 From the back of his shirt, five vasty wings exploded, their inclined planes just missing the edge of his huge, circular hat brim. Glitter shot from his hands; more glitter from the throat, where some seal of office—a plaque of jet picked out in brilliants—hung on a lengthy chain. Only the boots seemed rational, and even they were topped with a fringe of chain that swung and tinkled as he walked.

 “He comes,” intoned Queynt, “robed in glory.”

 Tinsel, I thought. Robed in tinsel. As a student in Vorbold’s House I had learned to distinguish quality, and there was no quality in this apparition. The materials were sleazy. The seams were crooked, gaping, shedding frayed thread from the edges.

 “I greet you, strangers,” puffed Brombarg, horribly out of breath. The balloon pants were hell to walk in; he had forgotten that. (A perennial optimist, Brom. He did tend to forget unpleasant things.) “Welcome to Bloome.”

 Peter and I bowed politely. Both of us had been school-reared for sufficient time to make courteous behaviour almost second nature. Chance and Queynt were subject to no such disadvantage. In any case, Chance wouldn’t have submitted to mere courtesy.

 “What in the name of Seven Hundred Devils are you got up as?” he demanded.

 Heaven smiles on me, thought Brombarg. A naif has come to save me. “Clothing, stranger,” he said. “We’re having a minor festival, and we all dress a bit ... fantastical during it.” (I can tell you what he was thinking. Later it became more than obvious.)


 “There,” said Peter. “I knew it.”

 I had seen lies before, and I knew one had just crossed Brombarg’s mind, though his lips might have told most of the truth. Still, I smiled with a kindly expression. “We’ll need costume, then, if we decide to stay.”

 “Not obligatory.” He waved a coruscating hand, throwing sun-sparkles into my eyes. “Certainly more fun, wouldn’t it be? But no need to go to any trouble. I’ve a wardrobe full of festival dress. You’re welcome to it. And to the hospitality of the mansion. Yonder.” He gestured again, upward at the looming bulk of the walls upon Frommager Hill. “A short way up Sheel Street.”

 “Then you are?” I pursued the point, catching Queynt’s skeptical look. He was no credulous youth to believe everything he heard. Chance, neither, who was still staring at the apparition before them, breathing heavily through his mouth as though to taste what it might be. “You didn’t tell us your name.”

 “Auf!” Dramatic blow to the forehead to illustrate his own stupidity. “Dream Merchant’s man. Brombarg. Everyone calls me Brom.”

 “Dream Merchant’s man? I don’t think I know the title.” Still smiling, though inside every fiber quivered to alertness. A solid lead to the Dream Miner, perhaps? I knew Brom wouldn’t take offense at a woman. Queynt was keeping still. He knew what I was trying to find out, though Peter didn’t, shifting on his horse impatiently as he was. Well, poor man, he had been riding all night.

 “Ah ... why, there used to be a Merchant’s man in each town hereabouts. Cloth Merchant’s man in Bloome. Pottery Merchant’s man in Zib. Metal workers were over in Thorne, and so on. Merchants’ men did the job of managing the towns—you know, Zib, Zog, Zinter, Thorpe, Fangel, Woeful, Chime, and Bloome.” He chanted this last like an incantation, grinning and sweating the while. “All the towns need someone to see to the garbage, you know, and to the streets and the fire brigade. So, when the Dream Merchant set up in Fangel, he took over all the old Merchants’ men and made ‘em Dream Merchant’s men. Different title but same duty, you know.” The man was a fountain of inconsequential information.

 “Dream Merchant?” Queynt was smiling, quiet, nonthreatening, helping me out. “That’s one I haven’t heard before.”

 “Would your invitation include breakfast?” This Peter, breaking our concentration, changing the subject. “I’m starved.”

 Sighs all around. I was peeved at the interruption, thinking it too soon to put ourselves in the man’s arena; Queynt likewise; Chance and Peter both hungrier than consonant with good sense and relying, as usual, on Peter’s Shifter Talent to get them out of trouble that a little patience might have avoided. Brombarg grinning, turning to lead us up Sheel Street. Windows beginning to open, now, and him in a hurry to get us high above the town before someone said or did the wrong thing.

 Yittleby and Yattleby, the two giant krylobos who drew the wagon, turned to one another, then to Queynt. “Krerk whittle quiss?” I heard the question conveyed in this wise. “This man is dishonest, friend-humans. Do we follow him or kick him to death?”

 “Follow,” I said to them in a croaking whisper. They whistled a few choice phrases and nodded plumes at me, argumentative but obedient. Queynt cast me a sidelong look. Perhaps I wasn’t fooling him. Perhaps he knew what my Talent was, though I had not told him.

 Peter had already dismounted to walk beside Brombarg. “What is the nature of your festival, Merchant’s man? Is that the correct title?”

 Brom nodded, puffing. “We are a festival-ridden city, my friend. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

 “Peter. Just that. We don’t much use other titles.”

 Brom smiled more widely. In his experience, those who had titles used them, and those who had none said they didn’t care for them. So, likely these were insignificant creatures of a certain eccentricity. (He had begun to patronize us.) The birds, for example. Now there was a team worth having. (This was evident from his expression.) He revised his earlier vision to include himself on Queynt’s wagon seat, riding titty-tup down Tan-tivvy toward away. (Extrapolation, but not unjustified.) “The lady’s name is Jinian. Beside her is Queynt, and the other one is Chance.”

 “And you come from?”

 “Far away,” said Queynt firmly. “To the south.”

 Brom smiled more widely yet. No titles, no place of residence. Drifters. Tra-la. He did not notice my eyes fixed upon him from behind, like a gimlet into a hole, no longer smiling. “As to our festival, it is the festival of Finaggy-Bum, during which are processions, bands, feasting and gaiety, dancing in the streets, and fireworks at dusk. And,” he said with a sidelong, sly look, “the determining by the Cloth Merchants’ Council of who should be Merchant’s man for the next year.” He must have been disappointed that we showed no interest in this topic. Instead, Peter changed the subject once more.

 “Are there many Gamesmen hereabout?” We had seen none of the familiar Game garments among those on the streets.

 “Gamesmen? From the True Game lands? Oh, no, young sir, indeed not. It seems their Talents are somewhat muted in these Northern Lands. Was a Tragamor came through only a season ago told me he could not Move a filled cup off the table here in Bloome.”

 “Krerk,” said the left-hand krylobos, most probably Yittleby. “Liar.”

 “I know,” I agreed. Still, there were very few Gamesmen about. Either they did not come here, or did not stay here, or ... Or they stayed here in some other guise than their own.

 “Keraw whit,” agreed the birds.

 The way up Sheel Street was lengthy because of its many turnings as it wound back and forth across the hill. There were wagons everywhere, transporting bolts of cloth, mostly of a vile, organic pink color. There were more costume shops, and here and there a booth blazoned, NEWEST CRYSTALS: NEW FEELINGS; NEW TALENTS: NEW WORLDS OF SENSATION, with a display case of dream crystals glittering inside, green and violet and amber orange. I didn’t see any of the reddish ones we’d seen at Zog or any of the piss-yellow ones we’d found on the corpses, but every other color was shown.

 Large, ornate houses stood on either hand, most of them in some state of disrepair, sounds of occupancy beginning to be heard in the street, “Morning, Brom,” said one gatekeeper curiously, leaning on his broom as he spoke. His hat was two armspans tall, with a ruff of feathers at the top, and his trousers were made up of narrow ribbons wound ‘round his legs, ending in a kind of obscene pink tassel over his crotch. “Visitors?”

 “Visitors.” Brom waved offhandedly, not stopping. “Hungry visitors, Philp. Can’t stop. Have to offer some breakfast before they fall flat.” Then, as the road turned to come back above the sweeper, “Nice fella, that. Cloth merchant. ‘Course, most of us in Bloome are, come to that.”

 We approached the portal and were admitted to the courtyard through a narrow door set in the greater one. Queynt unharnessed the birds, refusing the assistance of a rat-faced stableman, and left them to guard the wagon. We hadn’t walked twenty paces down a corridor after Brom when a terrified squeal from the courtyard brought us back. The rat-faced man lay supine beside the wagon, a large bird’s foot planted on his belly. “I was just having a look at the wagon, having a look, that’s all.”

 “I wouldn’t,” said Queynt cheerfully. “The birds don’t like it.”

 Brom’s face was not quite as cheerful as he led us the rest of the way to the dining room. He left us there while he spoke to certain kitchen people, obtaining enough reassurance from that to regain his grin by the time he returned. “Breakfast coming,” he said. “Baths if you want them. Then—why, then I can lend you some clothes to wander about town, if you like.” He seemed almost to be holding his breath as he awaited our response.

 “Perhaps after we’ve eaten,” I said firmly, in a don’t-contradict-me voice. “We’ll talk about it then. And we would appreciate a bath, if you don’t mind.” Thinking it would be the one way we could get off to ourselves.

 Which I, but only I, achieved after refusing an officious offer of service from a chambermaid. Brom accompanied the men to their bath and stayed with them. Peter told me later he thought Brom would probably have washed their backs for them given half an opportunity. They came back for me when they were clean and brushed, and without ceremony I invited Peter and Queynt inside, saying, “Excuse us a moment, Brom. There are a few things we need to discuss ...” waving him away with Chance, hearing Chance’s voice start up immediately.

 “This is a city worth seeing, sure enough, friend Brom, but let me tell you about the city of Cleers. Well, now...”

 “For heaven’s sake, Jinian. What’s the matter?” Peter knew from my expression I was bothered.

 “I have a notion of trouble, and the man’s a liar.”

 Queynt was examining the room for hidden panels or grills. “What do your notions tell you, friend Jinian?”

 “Hints only, but worth considering. Whatever the Merchant’s man is up to, it isn’t what he says he’s up to. I suggest we go wary, Peter, wary.”

 “Seems a nice-enough fellow.”

 “I’m telling you.”

 “I hear you. Seems determined to get us to wear his old clothes, doesn’t he?”

 “That, yes. Among other things.”

 “You think he’s connected to this Dream Miner nemesis of yours?”

 “Could be.”

 “A lot of villainy to lay on one strangely dressed fellow.”

 “I know. He may not be involved at all, but he’s mighty sweaty and eager over something. It’s that which bothers me. He’s trying to use us for ends of his own, all excited over some possibility or other. Go wary, folk. That’s all. Don’t eat anything I don’t.” I laid down my hairbrush, threw my hair over my shoulder, and led the way to the door. “I thank him for the bath, at least. It’s been a while.” I scarce knew myself these days, so breezy and casual I’d become. It was the only way I could manage to get along with Peter, I’d found. Intensity itched at him, and since my celibacy oath prevented our being . . . well, closer than mere friends, it was better not to itch at him with things he could do little about. So, I’d adopted this manner, this easy loquacity, which sometimes rubbed me raw. Now, for example, all I wanted to do was huddle in the room with the others discussing all the possibilities and deciding what to do next. It’s my basic nature to be a long thinker and slow mover; it’s more Peter’s nature to push at things and see what happens, getting himself out of scrape after scrape by pure intuition and flashes of sudden, inspired fire.

 Queynt merely watches a lot of the time, humming to himself often, as though he were invulnerable and it didn’t matter what we do. He did so now, probably wondering what Brom planned to give us for breakfast.

 While in the bath, I had wrought a small spell over my lips, Fire Is Sparkening, setting them to burn if they touched anything unhealthful. So, I tried the sliced thrilps in syrup, finding them delicious, and the whipped eggs and sliced, smoked zeller, finding them likewise, the menfolk politely letting me eat first. Seemingly, I had worried over nothing. That is, until I raised the teacup and felt more than a natural heat from its steam. I coughed.

 “This tea,” I said, allowing my voice to complain a little. “It has an odd smell, friend Brom. Acrid. Something I’ve smelt before but don’t remember where. I think it must have become spoiled somehow. Here, smell it?” Holding it out to him so that, perforce, he must sniff at it and make up a puzzled face. “Yes? I thought so. I have some lovely stuff we bought in Zinter, and I’ll just whip into your kitchen and brew some for us all.” Brom did not drink the tea he had sniffed, nor did he insist the others do so, regarding me glumly when I returned with a steaming, well-rinsed pot.

 “Your kitchen help seem oddly depressed, Brom. Is it all these festivals? Hard on kitchen people, I’ve always thought.” Passing clean cups. Seeming to pour it around, filling Brom’s cup, chatting the while in that casual, wordy way that cost me so much effort. Peter was looking at me with his face squeezed up, two vertical lines between his eyes. He knew I was up to something.

 Brom drank. We seemed to drink. Brom’s face cleared like a misted window under the caress of the sun.

 “Oh, that’s very good!” And it was, for that which had gone into his cup, and only into his, was a Wize-ard brew that guaranteed both calm and truth a good deal of the time. Bless herbary. It’s so useful.

 “Why do you want us to wear your festival clothes?” I asked him in a friendly voice.

 “They’re out of fashion,” he said, suddenly desirous we should understand. “Last year’s. Last season’s. So, if you wore them, the arbiters might pick you up, you know, and sentence you to service for being out of style. They might elect one of you to be Merchant’s man. Then you could deal with the garbage and the roads. And the Cloth Merchants’ Council, and the festival board. And the distribution of the crystals. More cloth coming every day, all to be made something of before tomorrow. More crystals arriving every day from Fangel and all to be sold before the next lot comes. I’m tired of it all. I want to ride away, down Tan-tivvy, you know, titty-tup, titty-tup, going north.”

 “Oh, I see. You were sentenced to the duty for being unstylish? Well, why haven’t you become stylish? Surely they could find someone less stylish than you?”

 “Bribes,” he muttered. “They bribe the costume makers. My outfits are never right. Never. Too big, too small, too red, too green. Whatever.”

 “And you can’t bribe the costume makers?”

 “With what?” he cried, anguished. “Being Merchant’s man takes every coin. Who pays for the street sweepers? Eh? Who pays for the parade horses, the musicians? All of that falls on Merchant’s man. And nothing coming in but taxes on cloth, and that never enough!” He put his head between his hands with a gesture of despair.

 “What would happen to you if you simply went away?” asked Queynt, tapping his glass with a fork to make a tiny, jingly sound in the room, an obligate to Brom’s moans.

 “Death. Death sudden and horrible. So they say. Merchant’s man who’s derelict in his duties or goes without leave is taken by the shadow. So they say. I don’t know. So far it hasn’t been bad enough to risk it.”

 Me, eyebrows halfway to my hair, nostrils narrowed in disbelief. “So what was in the tea you gave us, Brom? Not healthful stuff, that.”

 “Zizzy stuff was all. No worse than a bottle or two of wineghost to make you happy with life. So you’d wear the clothes and not realize how old-style they were. Oh, Devils and dung-lice, I’ve done it now, done it, and no other naifs coming to town soon enough. FinaggyBum tomorrow, and that’s the last chance, for after that I’ve been summoned to Fangel. I’ve no time. No time.”

 “Shhh.” Me once more, sorry for this unfortunate, ineffectual fellow. Poor thing, caught in some trap or other. Well, he bore the name of dream and dream we sought. “We’ll stay a while,” I said. “Perhaps we can think of a way to help you.”

 “You’re crazy,” Peter said to me affectionately. I knew I was a sometime enigma to him, the oath standing between us like a perforated screen, half hiding, half disclosing, driving him wild sometimes, wanting to see what was really there. He was not sure of the true shape of me, even now, even after months of traveling together. This was merely one of my new insanities. “Quite crazy. You go ‘round and ‘round.”

 “ ‘Round and ‘round,” said Chance, making hypnotic circles with his head. “’Round and ‘round. If the rest of you are as near to sleep as me, you’re talkin’ through your ears. I’m for findin’ a bed.”

 “As we all should be.” Peter dabbed his mouth with the napkin and rose from the table. “We’ve been riding all night, after all, and lucky to do so. I thought we never would escape those brigands on the slopes above Zog.”

 “Children,” said Queynt sleepily. “Mere children.”

 “Children with crossbows,” said Peter. “And poisoned arrows. Deadly children. Thank you, Jinian, for the whatever-it-was-you-did! I thought we’d die there, late supper for the owls.”

 “It was nothing.” I shrugged. It had been the hiding spell, Egg in the Hollow, done masterfully quick in time to save our lives, a good deal more than nothing, but Wize-ards didn’t talk about that. “Come, Brom. Take us to a room we may share for sleeping. We’ll keep watch, as we would in any unfriendly territory, but that won’t stop us trying to help you.”

 The man’s face, as he rose, was a study in halfness. Half disappointment we had found him out. Half hope the finding out would come back to his own advantage.

 CHAPTER THREE

 Brom gave us his own rooms in the tower, trying to court our favor, I suppose, but kindly meant for all that.

 There was an inner room with a wide bed, which the menfolk allotted to me, and an outer room full of great soft couches, which they took for themselves, barricading the outer door against intrusion with several items of furniture. Perhaps we were overly cautious, but I had no quarrel with the barricade. More than once on this trip we’d been awakened to danger in the middle of the night.

 Then Queynt got out one bottle of wineghost and Chance another. Queynt, I knew, would try to give me at least two glasses. He found me very funny when I had had several. “Serious as an owl when sober, silly as a duck when zizzy,” so he said, pretending to think it a good thing for me to be unserious from time to time.

 This time I gave him no room to get started. “We have a bargain,” I announced. “You are to tell me about your long life and what you learned from the Eesties.”

 “Arum, ah, oh,” he mumbled, “but that would be a bore for the others.”

 “Oh, not a bit of it,” said Chance. “I’ve wanted to know about those rolling stars all the years of my life, ever since my own mother told me tales of them at her knee. Wonderful things they are, and a wonderful tale it is, I’m sure. Tell away, Queynt, and I’ll keep your glass filled.” He muttered a bit, but with us all set against him, he couldn’t refuse. He settled down with a full glass. The rest of us gathered around, and he began.

 “It was shortly after I’d put brother Barish to sleep in that cave along with his Gamesmen, most of a thousand years ago, give a hundred or so. He had arranged to be wakened every hundred years, and I was supposed to meet him—supposing I lived that long, which wasn’t at all certain. We’d extended our lives quite a bit by then, but I was doubtful I’d meet him more than once, if that. So, having put all my kith and kin into storage, so you might say, I went looking for something to do with myself.

 “There were many stories about the rolling stars. People had seen them, particularly back in certain parts of the Shadowmarches. They were said to be thick there, so thick that the people left their farms. Not just a few people, but many. A veritable flood of people coming out of the north, frightened and hungry.” His voice lost its usual pompous, theatrical tone and fell into the rhythm of the storyteller, dreamy and possessed. We did not interrupt him, listening with our mouths open and glasses largely untouched at our sides. “They said that nothing prospered there ...”

 Nothing prospered in the Shadowmarches. Crops withered or were eaten by beasts. Domestic zeller broke the fences and wandered away or went mad and attacked the herdsmen. Rank growths sprang up along the streams, poisoning the water. Noises in the night woke the inhabitants from deep, drugged sleep, and the dawn came through greenish mists with a sharp, chemical smell.

 And there were sightings of the rolling stars. Great wheels rolling on the hills, spinning discs down the river valleys, the smell of burned air and hot metal.

 Vitior Vulpas Queynt heard all this as rumor in the farm town of Betand, a day’s travel south from the ancient city of Pfarb Durim and as close to nothing as a town could be, a few implement merchants huddled along one dirt street together with one general merchandiser, one farmstock merchant selling both hybrid and thisworld livestock and crops, two inns, and five taverns.

 Don’t forget the taverns, said Queynt to himself as he came into the Blue Zeller to stand a moment waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. No matter what world one came to rest on, there were always taverns, and those taverns were always dark. A re-creation of the primeval cave, Queynt thought. Smoky, as from campfires, with rituals as old as time. Probably earliest men crouched in a place not unlike a tavern, fortifying themselves with something brewed or distilled, getting ready for the hunt. Man did not seek to return to the womb, as some alleged. He sought to return to the cave. Drier than a womb. More congenial.

 Though not always. The Blue Zeller did not look or sound congenial. The place was almost empty except for a depressed-looking couple against the far wall on either side of a sleepy child.

 “Got run out of the Marches,” said the barman, Guire, nodding in the direction of the family. “Lost everything to the rolling stars.”

 “I didn’t know it was the stars causing the trouble,” Queynt remarked in his usual uninterested voice. The way some people were feeling lately, it didn’t do to take any position very strongly.

 “If not them, then what?” brayed the woman, thin lips drawn back over stained teeth. “You never see anything but them! Them and dead stock. Them and dead crops! You never hear anything but their music—singin’ wild in the hills.”

 Queynt commiserated. “Things are better in the south. If you’re set on farming, why don’t you try west of the Gathered Waters. I just came from there.”

 “No stock left,” grumbled the man. “Nothing left. Horses died.”

 “Horses don’t like it here much anyhow,” Guire remarked, wiping the bar in an immemorial gesture. “And there’s nothing local to cross ‘em to. Still, the animal market says they’ve got a new strain’s more likely to make it.”

 “My dad’s dad said it was a damn fool world didn’t have some kind of draft animal on it,” the woman bleated. She did not seem to be able to speak softly. “Nothing but pombis to eat your stock. Nothing but warnets to run you out of your house.”

 “If you decide to try south,” Queynt said, “I’d be glad to lend you enough to stock up for the trip.” He did not expect them to thank him, and they did not. Both ignored the statement, peering at each other as though for some confirmation of a closely held suspicion. Queynt did not repeat the offer. They would think it over, and the town was not so large they could lose him in it. He turned back to his beer.

 “What about those wild Talents,” the woman shrieked. He wondered if she were deaf, pitching his answer very softly to find out.

 “What about them, ma’am?”

 “We heard they was profligatin’ down south. More all the time. Traggymores. Flickers. Dragons and all that. Freezin’ out the common folk.” She had heard him. The shriek was simply a harpy’s cry for notice.

 “It’s not that bad,” he assured her, lying only a little. It wasn’t bad, quite, though it was getting worse. At first the Talents had been interesting and, if not benign, at least not overtly harmful. Lately, though, there had been more and more births of Gamesmen, the name they had chosen for themselves. Not exactly a game, he thought. Talents were not easy to handle. Someone needed to start some schools for the youngsters, teach them some rules or something. He made a mental note.

 “The towns around the Gathered Waters need food,” he said. “The Talents leave the farmers pretty much alone.” Which was more or less true. Gamesmen would be fools to meddle with the farms. Though Queynt had yet to see the limit of their foolishness. Some of the things the new race of Gamesmen did were not only unbelievable but childishly silly and cruel. “There’s lots of good land west of the Lake, and plenty of it left. The farmstock market in Laketown sells on credit, too. I’d recommend you go there and give it a try.”

 There. He’d given them his best advice. He finished the beer and left, hearing them coming after him before he was halfway down the short street.

 “Sir! Sir!” Her voice like a whetstone, he thought, wondering how the man and child could bear it. Maybe they were deaf. “We’d be mighty grateful for the loan you offered.”

 “You’ll go south?” He kept his face neutral, still. No loan would help them if they were determined to return to the northlands.

 “South,” the man agreed in a toneless mumble. “We won’t need so much, actually. We do have one good milk zeller left.”

 He gave them money. “When you have prospered,” he said, “you are to make this amount available to someone else in need. It is a trust, you understand?”

 The woman turned away, eyes wary as a flitchhawk’s, but the man gave him a straight look. “I take it as such, sir. Don’t mind her. We left two children buried there, north.” He put his arm protectively around the woman and they went down the street, the child silent as a shadow at their heels. Queynt stared after them, not the first he had met, not the first he had sent south with enough to buy food and little more. And still he did not know the truth of what was happening there, in the Shadowmarches. He would not know, until he went himself.

 He went afoot, trusting no horse—new stock or old—carrying only a few odds and ends and what he needed to eat to supplement stuff taken from the wild.

 At one time, he thought sardonically, he would have distrusted anything resembling a hunch, but he was in the grip of a hunch when he walked alone up into the Marches. It was the woman’s plaint about music in the hills that had set him off, and he thought much about that remark during his travels. When he had come past the farthest reach of the attempted settlements, he found a tall rocky hill and camped himself on it in a half cave with its back to the wind.

 It was a high, lonely moor he sat upon, the stones at his back raising themselves like the heads of questing beasts toward the lowering sky. Low, woody plants carpeted the hills, amber and wine, bronze and green. At the bottom of the hill, the forests began, twisted and low in a furry mat like the pelt of some great beast, wide swamps of darkness lying beneath the trees. And over all a shrill, keening wind, coming and going like a visitant ghost.

 Queynt smiled, well pleased. He took the bait he had brought out of its careful zellerskin wrappings, an ancient instrument, one brought from the former world, a thin column of old wood with double reeds to blow through and a plaintive, importunate voice, unlike any in this world. The thing made a sorrowful, interlocutary cry, which would, he felt, summon any creature with a grain of curiosity in its bones—or whatever passed for bones with northern creatures.

 Waiting for a caesura in the wind, he played. While no great shakes upon the instrument, still he had a feel for it when he stuck to easy things, and the simple melodies winged out from the height like native birds seeking nests. A few quiet elegies and nocturnes were what he knew best. When he had finished, the hills around sank into waiting silence.

 It was the third day he was there—playing each day a bit at dawn, noon, and dusk, sitting in the meantime quietly over a steaming pot of grain and broth, mostly native stuff — that he heard a phrase from one of the elegies come fluttering at him out of the shadows along the hill. It was almost the sound of his double reed, but not quite, and the phrase was followed by a tiny spitting sound which could not be other than an expression of artistic annoyance.

 In a moment the unknown singer tried again, closer this time, but still not exactly. Queynt set the reeds between his lips, gave a faintly expository warble, then played the melody into the waiting air once more.

 A small creature, virtually invisible in the dusk, came out upon the hillside before him and sang. It had wide ears, huge eyes. From either side of its face soft, flowing whiskers swept back to join its shadowy mane, and needle teeth glimmered in the half-light. It had the flattish star shape of all the tailless, backboneless creatures of this world, yet with legs, arms, and head that parodied humankind. It stood there and sang.

 By the time full dark had come they had progressed to the point that Queynt dared assay a contrapuntal arrangement. The shadow voice dropped into silence.

 Queynt played the first part again, encouragingly, taking up the counterpoint when the singer began again. After several false starts the singer got the idea and they proceeded through the composition, harmonically intertwined. During this concert, Queynt was conscious of a soft gabble, interrupted by fragments of song, as though the audience were explaining to one another the intricacies of this new—obviously new—kind of music.

 So, he thought with satisfaction, they are musical but did not know harmony. What an interesting gift to have given them. He set his instrument down, put a few more sticks on the fire, and settled himself to await developments. There were none. There was only a softly retreating murmur interspersed with fragments of melody. After some time, he sighed and settled himself to sleep.

 The following night they progressed further. Not only did the singer keep strongly to the melody, but the harmony was picked up by other voices in the woods. By the end of the evening Queynt was sure he heard one flutelike voice in an original harmonic line high above the rest.

 On the third night they sang and Queynt listened ruefully, wondering if he would ever touch his own instrument again. When they had finished, he felt a small hand tugging at his own to put something in it.

 There were half a dozen jewels there, bright blue and faceted. He held them, admiring them, surprised when the same tiny hand took one from him and pressed it to his lips. His sucking reflex took it in, fondling it with his tongue.

 When he came to himself again, the fire was burnt to ashes, only a few coals blinking at him from slow, basilisk eyes. Nothing was left of the jewel. It had dissolved into him, permeated him. He could feel it moving in his veins, a flow of quiet certainty. Beside the dead fire crouched the singer. When it saw he was awake, it pointed to the pouch at his belt, to his hand.

 The jewels he had held had been put away. Finger on lips, the creature shushed him. Secret. Secret gift. Not to be mentioned. Then it summoned him with flickering fingers. Queynt packed up his few belongings and followed.

 Though he was an experienced woodsman, a good tracker, an excellent navigator, he was never able to find the place again. Sometimes, remembering it, he felt there had been some large, brilliant curved structure in the background. Other times he remembered only forest and rock. Whatever the setting may have been, he was sure of one thing. The Eesties.

 “The singers call us Eesties or Eeties, which in their language means “bone music” or “bone song” or some other such phrase. Call us something similar if you like.” The star stood to speak with him, tall upon two of its points, the other three moving as though blown by a harsh wind. Later he recalled it as having had a face painted at its upper end, but the voice spoke as much inside Queynt’s head as in his ears. He did not find this surprising. What he did find surprising was the tone of irritation, of an angry contempt that hid something deeper and more vital.

 “Why did your like come to this world?”

 Queynt spoke of several ships that had fled to this world in recent centuries, his own group only one among many, and of the wars and destruction they had fled from.

 “You have fled from destruction, yet brought it with you? Like a beast which flees from the plague it carries?” Since this was what Queynt himself had thought many times, he could only agree.

 “We try to flee. We, some of us, do not want such violent things, do not want conflict. So we try to run. But I suppose we do bring some of it with us.”

 “Like the little singers, the Shadowpeople. They, too, desire holiness. They, too, have little talent for it.” The creature’s irritation seemed exacerbated by this, a scarcely veiled hostility that did not at first threaten force, but rather seemed to imply anathema, a casting out. It was as though the Eesty tolerated Queynt’s presence at all only with difficulty, and now the mention of his yearnings for peace infuriated it. It was then Queynt thought he identified what lay beneath the anger, beneath the contempt. Guilt. This being, whatever it truly was, was guilty of something, and that guilt ate at it like a cancer. He did not know how he knew this. Later, he realized the crystal he had taken had enlightened him in ways he was scarcely aware of.

 “We want you to go hence,” the creature told him. “Go away, to some other world. This one does not need you. You do an evil thing here.” It moved away in a flutter of ribbons, leaving a stink of hatred behind it.

 Queynt could not understand what the evil was they were trying to communicate. The concepts swam in his head, half-formed, vertiginous edges of ideas which touched and darted away, only partly seen. A word.

 “Bao.” Or maybe “Bah-ho.” It had no meaning for him. In it there were Eesties, Shadowpeople, birds, beasts, trees, long white roads under a scarlet sun, stars spinning upon them in a constant glittering flow. Disruption. He tried to explain that the ships were gone, disassembled, that mankind could not leave. The Eesty went angrily away.

 It tried again later. “Badness is being done. (Most desirable of all things) is being destroyed.” Again he struggled with the concept. Humans were doing something wrong. He could not tell what it was. Not a matter of breaking a taboo, not a matter of destroying some holy site. More than that. They were doing this (had done this?) evil by merely existing.

 Then why did the creature feel guilt? What was it hiding?

 Then there were three of the Eesties, not now merely questioning him but examining him as well, looking into him as though digging some root crop, plunging through him to leave disruptive pain behind.

 One of them had his pouch, was looking through it.

 They saw the blue gems.

 Fury. Anger. Hot, hideous, destructive. The air blazed around him, fire hot, making him fear for his life until a great cry came from somewhere, from some other Eesty, perhaps, a warning, a threat? The creatures were all around him, whirling in a frenzy of hatred, frustrated hostility, desire to kill. Queynt fell to the ground, covered his neck with his hands, curled upon himself knowing he was to die then, there, in the instant.

 Against that anger was no possibility of reprieve. Even through his fear he heard the cry come again, louder, more impassioned, a kind of agonized command.

 Another of their kind had come and made them stop.

 “Ganver,” someone whispered. “Ganver.” Then it was all over and he was alone upon the hillside, unchanged, totally changed. He had failed, but so had the rolling stars; they had exhausted one another in their mutual failure.

 He had understood almost nothing. How could he have understood its frustration, its anger, perhaps its fear? The bright images swam in his head like fishes, but he had no hooks with which to catch them. There was an understanding that evaded him, a sense of incompletion.

 The singers came back for him, sadly, patting him on his bruised places and offering herbal teas and poultices.

 He came down out of the hills, sometimes playing for the Shadowpeople, sometimes listening as they sang for him. To accompany their singing they had only drums. When he returned to a town where there were craftsmen, he had bells made, and silver flutes, taking them into the Marches as gifts for the Shadowmen ...

 “And now, a thousand years later, I sit in a tower room,” he said, “in a strange city telling the story to Jinian Footseer, watching the wrinkle between her eyes deepening like a crevasse. You will be a quizzical oldster, Jinian. What deep thoughts has my story raised in you?”

 I was fingering the star-eye that hung about my throat, which had hung there since I had received it from Tess Tinder-my-hand when I was only a child. I had always thought of it as an Eesty sign. Now that Queynt had told me his tale, I was not sure it was an Eesty sign at all. The Eesties he described were not what I had thought then. They were not what Mavin, Peter’s mother, had thought them, either. A mystery there. I asked him, “But if they hated you, why have you lived so long, Queynt?”

 “Something to do with the blue crystal, I think. When I left the Marches, I knew I would live a very long life. No. That’s not quite right. I was conscious of death being remote, put it that way. The blue gem did that. It imposed a kind of understanding upon the fiber of oneself.

 “I said to Peter once they would likely do the same for him. I think they would do so for any of us. If whatever makes the gems could only make enough of them to go around, to make everyone understand what I did ...”

 I recoiled at this, but he did not see me. I could not bear the thought of being compelled by some outside force. I rebelled against it.

 He went on, “That is why I am immune to other crystals, I suppose. The pattern of the first one, the blue one, is too well set in me to be disrupted.” He sighed then, taking the pouch from his belt and pouring the crystals into his palm. “There are enough here for you to have one, and Peter.”

 I thrust out my hands, warding him away. “No! No, Queynt. Not for me. And I would hope Peter would say no as well. I do not like the thought of compulsion.”

 He shook his head at me. “Not compulsion, Jinian. Information, more like. It is as though I had been given a map which showed both the good roads and the swamps. Is it compulsion to avoid the swamps if one knows they are there?” I thought he was sincere, but still I would have none of it. Compulsion is always said to be something else.

 “Kind of you, Queynt, but no.” Changing the subject, “It is noon. We have been riding for two days without sleep. If you wish to drink and tell tales, do so, but quietly. I’m going to sleep.” Which I did, lying awake only a little time thinking about Queynt’s story and that strange word or meaning the Eesties had used. Bao. Bah-ho. I knew I would think of it at more length another time.

 CHAPTER FOUR

 I woke with a start to a cacophony of shouts, thuds, and explosions. Among these louder sounds were Chance’s whuffing complaint at being wakened and Queynt’s calm voice going on in one of his loquacious monologues.

 “... when one is having the best rest one has had for ages, something eccentric in the way of barbaric behavior breaks loose outside one’s window, and the peace of the evening is disrupted ...” It was disrupted further by more violent blows on the door and another explosion from the street below.

 “Friends, visitors!” Brom’s voice, frantic with a mixture of frustration and panic. “The fireworks shop on Shebelac Street has caught fire and is going up all at once. Let me in. You have the best windows!” Furniture-moving sounds came from the neighbouring room, the barricade being removed. I rose, albeit reluctantly, leaning out of my own window to watch bouquets of rockets blooming across the darkening sky above a volcano of spouting scarlet. Whistles and sirens competed for attention. Figures as dark and tiny as ants ran to and fro before the leaping light.

 It was night. We had slept the day away. I rummaged in my pack for something to wear, taking what was on top, one of the voluminous smocks they wore in the purlieus around Zog. Pulling the soft, bright fabric over my head, I went into the other room.

 Brom hung half-out the window, hitting his fist on the sill in an agony of amused apprehension. “Oh, what a mess! It’s funny, you know, but it isn’t funny at all. At dawn tomorrow comes Finaggy-Bum—not a major festival, but one that deserves some effort for all that—and there won’t be a rocket left. The revelers will be so disappointed.”

 “Revelers?” asked Queynt. “Who are the revelers?”

 “Why, Queynt, those for whom the festivals are held, surely. Those from the towns of Zib and Zog, Chime and Woeful. Those from the villages and farms around Thorpe. Those travelers from no settled place. We do all we can here in Bloome to attract them, though there are those who say our festivating so to excess has lowered our custom rather than raising it...”

 “Customers? For?”

 “Well, originally for anything at all made of cloth, sir. We’re a cloth-weaving town, after all. More recently for the dream crystals as well. What else have we to sell? Why else am I Dream Merchant’s man?”

 “Would some of these be yellow crystals?” I asked. “Yellow as piss, about the size of my thumb-tip?”

 “They would not,” Brom said in an offended voice. “They would be green ones, some large, some small. And amber-brown ones as big as my ear. And little red ones. Those yellow crystals were never intended for commerce. Dream Merchant sent a man here from Fangel. He told me to keep an eye out, confiscate any I found. Which I did. Told me to destroy any I found. Which I would have done. Save for that damned Oracle. Took the sack I put them in. Took them all. Stole them.”

 “Would this “Oracle” be a strange creature in a fancy robe?” I asked. “With a painted face, and full of emphatic language?”

 Brom assented at once to this description. “Oh, he came here, all ribboned up like a Festival Horse, wandered around Bloome, full of amusing stories. So, I invited him here to amuse my ... my friends. When every day is festival it’s hard to come by any genuine amusements. He was gone the next day, and so was the whole sack of yellow crystals meant for the disposal pits. And since, then I’ve been hearing troubles from every side. People who should have come to Bloome to take part in festival, who should have come to buy costumes, come to buy good crystals, dead along the road! Dead! What good will that do commerce? I ask you! Bad enough that half the roads are ruined.” For a moment, when it seemed he knew something about the crystals, I had been almost ready to fly at him, dagger in hand (and no small weapon, but the Dagger of Daggerhawk which needed only to touch in anger to cause death). Now I took my hand out of my pocket.

 The Dagger was in its holster high upon my thigh. It was seldom far from my reach, but Brom did not seem worth the use of it. Besides, what he had to say was interesting.

 I said casually, “And what has destroyed half the roads, Brom? Come. Tell us.”

 He choked. I saw him struggling not to speak. He had been told not to speak? Threatened, perhaps? Whatever it had been that kept him silent was no match for the truth tea we had given him.

 “Storm Grower,” he mumbled, making two syllables out of it, the last one a growl.

 “Why? Why is that, Brom?”

 “Does ... does that when she’s angry. When people don’t ... do what she wants. Oh, don’t make me speak. She’ll kill me, truly she will. Or Dream Miner will. Or the Merchant. He’s their son, you know. So he says. I don’t believe it, but so he says.”

 “So you are not responsible for ruining roads or distributing yellow crystals. None of it.”

 “None of it but doing my job,” he sulked. “And that’s no more than anyone would do. All I really want to do is go away.”

 “How was it you had the things in the first place?” asked Peter, watching the man through narrowed eyes. “Where did you say you got them?”

 “They came in a shipment from the Dream Merchant in Fangel, as all of them come. Neatly packed in boxes, a dozen to the box. They come to me from the district headquarters, in Fangel. They come to Fangel from the Dream Miner, I suppose. How these yellow ones got in with the others, no one says. No one tells me anything.”

 “And the Miner gets them where?” pressed Queynt, eager to learn something real after our long search.

 “Why, I suppose he digs them up! I’ve seen Dream Mines. Well, no, I saw one. A little one, just outside Fangel. Nice old fella there, him and his wife, they watch the place. He digs them up with a shovel and a pick, just like you’d dig for anything.” An idea nicked through my head, one of those quick, glittering ones that go before you can grab it.

 Something to do with mines and crystals. I sighed.

 “There for a moment, I thought I had something. By the Hundred Devils, Queynt, but this whole business gets stranger and stranger.”

 “There’s nothing we can do about it now, Jinian,” said Peter, doing what he too often did, coming close to me, putting his arm around my waist, his hand flat against my side, burning there with an aching heat. I took a deep breath and moved away, choking back a desire to return the caress.

 “I suppose you’re right. But still, I’d like to know more about these mines.”

 “Well, of course,” said Brom. “If you’d like to come with me to Fangel, you could see the one I saw for yourself. But if you come with me to Fangel, you wouldn’t be staying here in Bloome, and I’d still be Merchant’s man.”

 I returned to the other room as Chance said, “And why’re you goin’ up to Fangel, friend Brom? Is it a city worth seein’?”

 “There’s to be a great reception there for the delegation of the Duke of Betand on his way north,” came the answer in a dull, uncaring voice. “Him and his new allies. The Ogress, Valearn. The Witch, Huldra. There’s another Gameswoman, too, but her name I can’t remember. All the Merchants’ men have been sent for.” I turned, suddenly alert, seeing Peter stiffen as well.

 He had responded to the first name mentioned; I to that of Valearn. Queynt, too, had suddenly grown very quiet. “Huldra?” he said. “Peter, I seem to recognize that name from conversations I had with Mavin. Isn’t that the twin sister of your old friend Huld?”

 “Gamelords,” Peter hissed. “I thought that family done with. Is there no end to them?” He began to enumerate them, coldly ticking them off with his fingers. There was Huld’s father, Blourbast the Ghoul. Huld killed Blourbast, and Mavin saw him do it. Then Mavin herself killed Pantiquod the Harpy, Huld’s mother, and that other harpy, Foulitter, Huld’s half sister. All that was long ago, before I was even born. Then I came along to fall victim to Huld’s son-thalan, Mandor. He died by his own act, though Huld held me at least partly responsible. I thought all were gone but Huld, and him we did away with on the Wastes of Bleer. That should have been an end to it! Now we hear there’s another one yet alive? That Huld had a twin?”

 “That and worse,” I said from the doorway. “You also did away with King Prionde on the Wastes of Bleer. But he had a sister-wife, Valearn. Their son, Valdon, was killed by the Faces some eighteen or nineteen years ago, so Mavin told me, though it is unlikely they ever knew Mavin’s part in that...”

 “My mother seems to have confided greatly in you both,” said Peter, not altogether pleasantly.

 “Peter, before we began this journey, you may recall that you and I and Mavin and Himaggery and a great mob of people all traveled together to Hell’s Maw, a trip of some days’ duration, during which time I got to know her rather well. She told me her life’s story, as she would have been glad to tell you if you’d ever taken time to sit down and listen. I continue: Out of grief, it is said, Valearn turned Ogress and feasted upon the children of our region. Those of us from the lands around the Stonywater in the south were warned to fear her more than her late husband, the King. And now these two are allies with the Duke of Betand? I heard of these dangerous alliances in Xammer!” (Actually, I had heard of them at the Citadel of the Wize-ards, but that was no one’s business but mine.) “Now, what is going on here? What is the reason for these alliances?”

 Brom was looking from one to another of us, his worried face growing more haggard with each word he heard us say. “It would be more likely for the Cloth Merchants’ Council to award you ten thousand bonus points than for me to know anything about that, lady. Do you think the Dream Merchant consults me? Do you think he asks a Merchant’s man, “May I take an ally?” He sends us crystals to sell, and sometimes he summons us up to Fangel for some do or other, and that’s all I know about the monsters you’re talking of. And I’m supposed to go be part of a welcoming deputation!” He sobbed. “I would as soon walk into a gnarlibar’s jaws.”

 “Ah, well,” I said comfortingly. “It is the Merchant’s man who is to go, is it not?”

 “I. Me. The Merchant’s man, yes.”

 “And on the festival of Finaggy-Bum, tomorrow, the arbiters of Bloome will select their Merchant’s man?”

 “From among the least stylish, yes. But you have found me out. You were not naifs at all. My chances of laying the job off on one of you are next to nothing.” So saying, he burst into angry tears, letting them flow down his face and into his beard without bothering to wipe at them at all. The truth tea had this effect of truth telling even upon emotions. Chance patted the fellow on the shoulder, commiserating, while Queynt tried to hide his smile.

 “I think we may assure your stylishness tomorrow,” I told him. “And one of us will wear your old clothes, friend Brom, thus guaranteeing that it will be one of us who goes to Fangel as Merchant’s man of Bloome.” Of course, which one of us it would be was another matter.

 “One of us, then,” I said to the troupe. “Whoever wishes to act the part?”

 “I,” said Queynt. “Peter and Chance may be known to Huldra or Valearn. You traveled in the High Demesne, didn’t you, my boy? Some three or fours years ago?”

 “We did, yes. But I never saw Prionde’s wife. Chance, did you?”

 “I didn’t see any such lady. Oh, there was talk of a wife hiding somewhere in a tower, but I never saw her.”

 “Still, she may have seen you. You, Jinian, will be needed for something else. Therefore, it must be me.” Queynt smiled again, posturing. “I will make a very good Merchant’s man.”

 “We are not too different in size,” said Brom. “The old things would fit you. But... but no matter what we do, it may be the Cloth Merchants’ Council will still hold me to the position. They’ve said I’m not bad at the job. Or maybe they just hate me. Oh, it may be hopeless!”

 “We will see to that,” I promised him. “Do they meet at any given time and place?”

 “They will meet tonight,” he answered. “In the loft of the weaving mill.” He turned away, his face working, murmuring as he went, “Think of it. Riding out of Bloome. Titty-tup, titty-tup, along Tan-tivvy Boulevard. Not to Fangel. No. West, I think. Or even south. Tittytup, titty-tup.” He went down the corridor, galloping as though he had a hobby between his legs, lashing one thigh with an imaginary whip.

 “Mad,” said Queynt almost affectionately. “Quite mad.”

  

 The great mill of Bloome crouched upon the eastern edge of the city, a heaped monstrosity, glaring banefully through a hundred eyes, growling and munching as it ate the provender brought by the citizens, spewing out its cloth in endless lengths to be rolled into bolts and carried away. Day and night those who were not involved in the festivals of Bloome were involved in feeding the mighty machine or carrying its excreta away.

 Just now all the shoulder-high slots in the courtyard were vomiting fabric of an excruciating pink color into waiting wagons. A bored knife man stood to one side, ready to cut the weave when each cart was full, and around him the drivers sat, some drinking, some playing at dice, some half-asleep.

 From this cluttered courtyard, a narrow door opened upon an even narrower iron stair, which twisted its skeletal length upward through roaring, dust-filled spaces to a loft. This space, tall as a church, was lit by grimed windows and a few scattered bulbs whose filaments alternately glowed and dimmed as the mechanicals below grumbled and howled. There, at a brokenlegged table, the Cloth Merchants’ Council of Bloome sat upon rickety chairs at its interminable meetings. It was here they were assembled while the fireworks shop burned on Shebelac Street, unable to hear the sirens for the endless growling of the looms below.

 If one looked out the dirty windows by daylight, one could see the hoppers at the rear of the building where the carts lined up each day to dump weeds and trees, trash and old furniture, last night’s costumes and banners and tents into the huge, shaking hoppers. The hoppers emptied into a steel enormity where no man had ever gone alive and from which only fabric emerged at the other end. There were only two rules of life so far as the Cloth Merchants’ Council was concerned. Never let the machine run out of stuff to weave. Never run out of ways to use the weaving up.

 The machine had run out of raw materials only once.

 Bloome had learned then that the machine had its own ways of collecting materials if it was not sufficiently fed.

 Babies, geese, fustigars, tame zeller, houses, people: the machine did not discriminate. Since that time (called “The Exemplary Episode” in the minutes of the council) the machine had not been allowed to run dry.

 That was practical politics, that rule.

 The other rule was religious.

 Bloome had been a cloth-making town as long as anyone remembered. The mill had always been there. It was assumed to have been put there by a god or by the ancestors, either to be equally revered. Since neither god nor the ancestors did things without purpose, the cloth, arriving in quantities ever greater and always far more than could be used in Bloome, must have a purpose. It had been up to the people of Bloome to find it.

 They had found it at last, after many trials. Festivals.

 At first only once or twice a season, later six or eight times a season, most recently every few days. Every few days a new festival, to deck the city with new banners.

 Every few days a new festival, requiring new costumes for residents and visitors alike. Every few days a new festival, with new tents and marquees to be sewn. And in the quiet times between, weary cleanup crews laboured to gather the materials to take to the hoppers again. A precarious balance, but better than another “Exemplary Episode”.

 “I’m not selling the pink stuff,” said a banner maker, who, as he often mentioned apropos of nothing, had been a member of the council for fifty years. “It won’t go. They don’t want it. Everyone is sick to death of it.”

 “Bonus points,” remarked a heavyset, dark-skinned woman, scratching her nose and making notes at the same time. “We’ll award bonus points for pink. The way we had to do with the puce chiffon three years ago. Machine made it for two seasons, and we couldn’t give it away.”

 “How about lining the streets with it? We did that once, I remember. In my mother’s time.”

 “Trouble is, the stuff tears so. Shoddy. You’d have half Bloome tripping and rolling around on the cobbles. No, we’ll award bonus points and double to tent makers if they’ll quilt it in layers. Next?”

 “Arahg,” growled the long-faced banner maker, referring to his notes. “Everyone’s running out of thread. Machine hasn’t given us any thread for three seasons. We’re going to have to set up to ravel if we don’t get some soon.”

 “We saved out a thousand bolts of that loose, blue stuff last year,” said the heavy woman. “The thread pulls right out. No weave to it to speak of. We can put the children on it.”

 “Going to look like hell,” growled the banner maker.

 “So what else is new?” The door opened to admit a wizened man in a violently striped cloak, notable for its inclusion of the pink stuff in wide, bias-cut borders. “Evening,” he said. “Mergus. Madame Browl. Gentlemen. Sorry I’m late. Stuck around my front door for a little extra time tonight waiting to see if Brom’s guests came out. I think he may have found a naďf.”

 “Evening, Philp. I didn’t know anyone came to town today. Why, when there was no festival?”

 “Wasn’t till early this morning. Don’t think they came for festival. Four of ‘em. Wagon with birds pulling it. Haven’t seen anything like that before. Two older fellows. One young one, one girl. Brom got to ‘em before anyone could stop him. They didn’t exactly look simple. Brom may have a time with ‘em.”

 “The problem is,” said Madame Browl, scratching her nose once more, “whether we want to let Brom off the platter. He’s been a good Merchant’s man, all things taken into account.”

 “Gettin’ restless, though.”

 “Well, restless is one thing.”

 “Mad is the other. Don’t want him doing anything silly. We had one once who did, remember?”

 “Tried to blow up the machine, by Drarg. Got a hundred or so of us killed.”

 “Still, I’d be disinclined to let Brom go. A visitor simple enough to accept the honour might be too simple to do the work!”

 “Might have been an honor once,” said Mergus, the droopy cheeks of his long, lined face wobbling as he spoke, one tufty eyebrow up, the other down in a hairy diagonal that seemed to slide off his face near his large left ear. “Since the Dream Merchant’s been in on it, it’s less so.”

 “Dream Merchant only took advantage of the fact we’ve flocks of revelers,” said Philp. “The Merchants’ men in Zinter and Thorpe have to distribute crystals, too. We’re not the only town with the burden.”

 “Not the only town under threat from storm, either. We haven’t been hit by wind or hail yet, but there’s towns farther north that have!” Madame Browl growled at them, looking from face to face. “Towns that complain learn to regret it. I say we do whatever’s needed to keep things peaceful and running, and Brom’s not been bad at that.”

 “Still,” said Philp, “there was a time the Merchant’s man of Bloome worked for the Cloth Merchants’ Council of Bloome, not for some foreigner. Makes it hard to hold him accountable.”

 “Come, come,” huffed Mergus. “We hold him accountable enough. Except for a day or two a year when he’s off to Fangel or a few days when the emissaries from Fangel come here, he’s biddable enough. I vote we keep Brom in the job, no matter he’s been tryin’ to bribe the costume makers to get him off the hook.” High in one shadowed corner of the room, a slithery shape that had been extended over a roof beam withdrew itself into a ventilation duct, slithering out again some distance down in the building with me in its dusty coils. Peter and I had heard all we needed to hear.

 “Well?” asked Queynt.

 “They’re not inclined to let him off,” said Peter, brushing the dust off his slithery skin even as he Shifted back into a shape closer to his own. “Funny thing. They don’t seem to be in control of the weaving machine. All these festivals? Just to use up fabric.”

 “Ah,” Queynt said, scratching his head with one finger. “What happens if they don’t use up the cloth?”

 “Two of the oldsters were mumbling about the machine seeking raw materials on its own. The way they figure, they have to use it up so they can feed it back in.”

 “It seems to be religion,” I said. “They’re predisposed to believe that the cloth has to be used for something.”

 “Ah. Well then, we’ll have to take that into account. If the problem has emanated from a religious source, the solution will have to come from some similar source. What do you think, Jinian? If it’s me to be the naif, then it’s you to be the plenipotentiary. From whom will you say you have been sent, do you think?”

 “A god, perhaps. There’s less chance of controversy that way. If I represent myself as coming from an ancestor, someone is likely to ask which ancestor, and that might lead to endless conversation. Who do they worship here? What gods are given houseroom?”

 “Few or none,” said Chance. “I trotted up and down half a dozen streets, in and out of a dozen taverns or so. They swear by no gods I know of, though they swear often in a cowardly craven manner by the wind and the hail...”

 “By Storm Grower?” I asked him.

 “Never. They swear by the wind and the hail, and then they spit, thus, to drive the evil away. Oh, and sometimes they swear by Great Drarg, Master of the Hundred Demons.”

 “Great Drarg of the Hundred Demons,” I mused. “There’s something I can use. Well. No time like the present.” And I went off that weary climb up those long, metal-echoing stairs to the room where the council met, leaving Peter to scramble into the ventilation ducts once more.

 I could read their faces well enough. The Cloth Merchants’ Council of Bloome had probably not been interrupted in living memory. Never by a stranger, certainly. Still, they were impressed by my demeanor, by my hauteur, my poise.

 “Good citizens,” I said. “Council members of the town of Bloome. I have arrived today as plenipotentiary of Drarg, Master of the Hundred Demons, sent to beg your pardon and ask a small boon on Drarg’s behalf.”

 The voice I used was one learned from my Dervish mother, Bartelmy of the Ban. It was a cold voice, without edges, which left nothing of itself lying about to be picked at by the argumentative. The best Madame Browl could do was stutter, “We ... what have we to do with ah... Drarg?”

 “Nothing, madame, save that his minions have been trifling with you. You have here a certain great machine established by your ancestors. Is that not true?” They nodded that it was true, very true. Since they were sitting on top of it, it would have been difficult to deny.

 “And this machine has a voracious appetite which cannot be stayed? Ah, yes. So we have been informed. Such was the work of the Demons. My master’s apologies. He has sent me to rectify matters.”

 “You mean ... you mean the mill isn’t supposed to be fed—isn’t supposed to run ... all the time?”

 I allowed frost to creep into my words. “Have I not said as much?” They nodded, shook their heads. Had this person said as much? Had she? Perhaps she had.

 “While my master is unable at the moment to correct the actions of his minions (he is far away on pressing business), he has directed me to take measures to alleviate your troubles. Measures which will allow the citizens of Bloome to sleep, to dream, to cook good food, to make love. Ah”—I changed the voice to one lyrical and romantic, lush as a summer meadow—”to enjoy all life’s pleasures.” It became cold once more.

 “Drarg wishes the boon, of course.”

 “Boon?” Philp trembled. “What boon would that be?”

 “Simply to release your current Merchant’s man from his position. It is not fair that he be kept in his job longer. He has suffered much, as indeed so have you all.” I stared around the table, meeting incomprehension on some faces, distrust on others, hope on a few.

 “How do you say, council members?” Madame Browl found her voice again. “If you can do as you say, ah ... Your Excellency? Your Worship? If you can relieve us of the constant necessity to feed the mill—oh, yes, we would grant any boon. Provided no blasphemy takes place. No heretical notions?”

 “None. On the festival of Finaggy-Bum tomorrow, pick yourselves a new Merchant’s man. There is an excellent candidate, one Queynt, among the visitors. As soon as that is done, send carpenters and metal workers to me where I reside at Brombarg’s house. They will be given instruction.” I turned, wishing for some glorious gown and high headdress to punctuate this speech and make a dramatic exit. Well, the smock from Zog would have to do. It was certainly unlike anything being worn in Bloome. I let myself out, not pausing to listen to the babble behind the door. Peter would be hearing it all from the ductwork, anyhow.

 “Done?” I asked him when he returned below.

 “Done! Half of them don’t believe you, but they’re all willing to give it a try. There are one or two say they’ll hunt Brom down and kill him if you’re lying, and another few who talk of putting you into the hopper if you’re leading them a fool’s track. All told, however, I think they’re peaceful enough. For now.”

 I nodded, thinking very hard. This put a serious expression on my face, and Peter did what he always did when I got that expression. He reached for me.

 That particular expression, he had told me, reminded him of Jinian when he had first met her, so serious, so determined, like a belligerent child, set upon knowing everything there was to be known. That particular expression turned his stomach to jelly, so he said, and he could no more stop himself reaching for me than he could have stopped eating ripe thrilps. He flexed an arm to draw me closer mere in the dusty, roaring room, me all unprepared for his lips on mine and the warmth of his body pressed tightly to my own.

 I trembled, adrift, unable and unwilling to do anything at all except drift there in his arms while the hot throb of my blood built into its own kind of ending. I was saved by an urgent summons from Queynt, a clatter of feet coming down the stairs. Peter tried to hold my hand, but I drew it away, suddenly so distressed I couldn’t speak. It wasn’t fair of him to do that. Not fair. I had talked to him about it. He knew well enough what gaining the wize-art meant to me. I felt tears beginning to burn, half frustration, half anger. Oh, why couldn’t he ...

 Fuming, I slipped down the stairs after the others, reaching the bottom only moments before the council members erupted into the street. Peter was looking for me, but I slipped away from him. He was doing this more and more frequently, as though to make my own body betray me. As though to test whether I would choose between him and my Wize-ardry. He simply wasn’t content any more to let patience solve the matter.

 My knees were weak. I could hardly breathe. I was angry, and sorry to be angry, and wanted to run after him, and wanted to run away. Things couldn’t go on like this. Once we had taken care of the matter of Brom, something would have to be done about it.

 CHAPTER FIVE

 Early in the morning, Brom was valeted by the three men. They dressed him in pink vertical, lacing and buttoning, rigging the internal bones and stays that held the unlikely garment aloft, trying vainly to keep their faces straight. There was as much of it above his head as there was from head to foot. That part above his head was decked with such unlikely ornamentation as to cast doubt upon the humanity of the wearer, and the part below his head was of sufficient discomfort as to deny whatever humanity existed. It took some time.

 I watched for a while, disbelieving any of it, then went to the tower room where I could be private and laid two spells upon him.

 First I laid Bright the Sun Burning, a beguilement spell. No one looking at Brom that day would consider him any less than stylish. He would gleam like the sun itself, making a warm space in any perception, a suffused glow like a little furnace. And, lest that perception wane as the day passed, I laid Dream Chains to Tie It, a keeping spell—though I had a devil of a time finding a live frog and finally had to summon one from the garden window. There were other and more esoteric uses for Dream Chains, but Murzy had always taught that the tool might be turned to the task if the Wize-ard willed. When it was all done, I tested it by going down and asking Chance how he thought Brom looked.

 “I thought it was enough to make a pombi laugh,” Chance said, walking around Brom and looking him over from top to bottom. “It looked like pure foolishness on the hook. Now—well, it has a kind of majesty to it, don’t it?”

 I nodded, contented. It was probable the council members would keep their agreement with me, but why have the town buzzing about their reasons for letting Brom go? If the town talked, some rumor might reach Fangel. No. Let the matter be self-evident. Brom had become stylish enough to escape, and a naif was present to take over the job.

 At the end, Queynt could not bring himself to wear Brom’s cast-off things. Instead he burrowed into the wagon and found those garments he had been wearing when he first met Peter and me, wildly eccentric clothing that was certainly not in fashion. Then Queynt and Brom swaggered into the street, a colorful exercise in contrasts. It would have been difficult to say which of them looked more ridiculous.

 Chance disappeared into the town with a few innocuous words. Seeing his compact form disappearing down Sheel Street, I shook my head over the fate of the gamblers of Bloome. Peter dozed in the garden, the warmth of the sun provoking dreams—probably erotic—that made him twitch and mumble in his sleep.

 Looking down on him from a window, I could almost tell what he was dreaming of, as though I could read his mind. I frowned and bit my lips. There were only two seasons of my oath to run, but while I had kept that oath to the letter, the spirit of it had been lost long since. It was impossible to concentrate on the art—or on anything else—with Peter around. The more casual I tried to be, the closer he came. There were a dozen things one might do; putting a spell on him came first to mind. A distraint. That same spell I had used on Brom, Dream Chains. I still had the frog. It would do Peter no harm. He wouldn’t even be aware of it.

 No! I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t compel him to do anything, or not do anything. Not ever. I would rather have lost him, or so I thought then, than do anything to put him under compulsion. No matter how tempting it might be.

 And it was very tempting. I could only distrain his touching me. Nothing else. And only for a short time. I could still allow affectionate speech, companionship.

 And yet—if he couldn’t touch me when he willed, something would have been taken from him. As something must have been taken from Queynt when he was given the blue dream crystal by the Shadowpeople.

 Though he denied it, I thought it must be so. It was unlikely he had not been changed by it. So he was compelled, whether he knew it or not, by something or someone outside himself.

 And yet, being honest about it, I’d met him after he’d tasted the thing, not before. So how could I say whether he was changed by it or not?

 I sat upon the windowsill, looking out over the town with its crumbling towers, its moldy roofs, the streets clean swept and shining for festival, the lower walls painted and gleaming, and all above the street level falling to dust and decay. The vibration of the mill shook the stone I was sitting on, a ceaseless quivering, a gentle dust of mortar from between the stones, a constant reminder the mill was there. The people of Bloome had made an uneasy peace with the mill, but I was going to change all that. Compellingly. But that was Game, of a sort. Compulsion was allowed, in Game.

 Barish, for example! He had arranged for himself to be put to sleep, to sleep for a thousand years or so. And while he slept, one hundred thousand great Gamesmen were to be abducted and frozen into sleep like his own.

 Compelled. For some misty idea he had about a better future world. An idea so misty that he and Himaggery had done nothing but argue about it constantly before we left and were probably still arguing about it. Meantime the hundred thousand rested beneath the mountain, still frozen. Compelled.

 Everyone else did it! So why did it bother me so?

 Besides, there were situations when it seemed right.

 If I had come upon that man and woman outside Bloome, for instance, sucking upon their piss-yellow crystals and lying there in their own stink. If I had compelled them, even against their wills, to give up the crystals and live again, wouldn’t I have been their friend?

 A better friend, perhaps, than their own inner spirits, who had let them die? Or was the right to die part of one’s own right? If so, was it everyone’s right, or only the right of some? A child, for example. If a child risked its life foolishly, without knowing what it was doing, shouldn’t one save that child by compelling it to forgo the risk? Or a stupid man, perhaps one besotted?

 Though if one were to follow that argument, it was probable the besotted one got that way of his own will and had been told often enough the dangers of it. Or true naifs, simpletons, those who would never learn the ways of the world, the eternally surprised, the perpetually astonished? Should they not be compelled, for their own good?

 When one played Game, there were rules—oh, often disobeyed, but still acknowledged. If one compelled outside of Game, then what was it one was doing? If one seduced, which was another kind of compulsion?

 “Saving one’s life, perhaps,” I mumbled, remembering too well what I had had to do to the centipig in the Forest of Chimmerdong. “Saving someone else’s life.” Or, said some deep voice, saving something more important than life itself.

 I remember putting my head down on the stone, wishing Murzy were there to give me some advice. It would be so easy to hold Peter at a comfortable distance, just for a time. Surely there were rules! Surely there were answers!

 Well, Murzy wasn’t there, so it did no good to wish it. I gave up the whole matter and went to find myself some breakfast.

 The delegation from the Cloth Merchants’ Council arrived a little after noon bearing Queynt on their shoulders and hailing him as the new Merchant’s man.

 He already wore the sparkling seal of office, the letters “DM” entwined in gems upon jet. Brom, sneaking along behind so as not to draw any attention to himself, stayed only long enough to divest himself of the pink vertical and get his horse out of the stable. It seemed he had been packed long since, for the merchants had scarcely begun advising Queynt of his future duties before the titty-tup of Brom’s horse’s hooves was fading down Sheel Street.

 “The garbage schedule tomorrow,” Madame Browl was saying in a firm voice. “First thing tomorrow!”

 “Not tomorrow,” said Queynt. “Tomorrow the Merchant’s man is summoned to Fangel. Brom told me so. I leave tonight.” The council members scowled at one another, robbed of their opportunity to show authority immediately and thus, some seemed to feel, robbed of it perpetually.

 “Well then, when you return. As soon as you return.”

 Queynt had no more intention of returning than I did, but he agreed amicably and things went on pleasantly thereafter as they discussed the matters of garbage and machine-feeding detail and the maintenance of the fire brigade. In the midafternoon the festival ended—early, because there would be no fireworks—and soon after that, the workmen I had asked for arrived. Peter and I went off with them to the great mill while Chance and Queynt prepared to depart. There was something in my boot, and as I stopped to empty it, I heard the two of them behind me.

 “What’s she up to, that girl? Lately she’s seemed troubled.” Chance was a dear to care like this. Though he never seemed to be taking notice, nothing really escaped him.

 “She has power, Chance. Power she may use, if she will. Power she fears using unwisely and thus fears using at all.”

 “Looked on Barish, didn’t she?”

 “Yes. Yes, she looked on my brother, Barish, and what Barish did. Jinian sees the implications of that, I think. She does see things like that.”

 “But Barish took the hundred thousand for something greater. So you said.”

 “Oh, yes. And now he must try to answer the question I’ve been trying to answer for these hundreds of years, Chance. The question those hundred thousand will ask when they wake. The question Jinian is trying to answer. Is there anything greater?” And there it was, of course. That was the thing that had been bothering me, and it didn’t help greatly to know that many others had wrestled with it as well.

 We went out onto the dusty cobbles of Sheel Street, littered with torn banners and tangled worms of confetti.

 Birds quarreled in the gutters over spilled confections.

 Wagons were moving from corner to corner while weary crews filled them with the festival flotsam. Down the hill we went, twisting and turning to arrive at the yard before the mill. We got to work, Peter and me and a dozen carpenters and metal workers, toiling away on the roof.

 When Queynt and Chance arrived in the wagon, each endless length of pink cloth that had spewed from the front of the building was drawn up like a great fustigar tongue, licking the nose of the mill.

 Chance was astonished. “Now, by all my grandma’s teacups, what’re they up to?”

 “Rollers, I should imagine,” said Queynt. “Drawing the stuff up the front, and across the top, and down the back into the hoppers. Saves all that using up in between.”

 “Well, why didn’t the silly Bloomians think of that?”

 “Religion, I imagine, friend Chance. Religion serves to prevent thought in many cases, and I’d say it had done so here. They started with the presumption that anything as complex as the mill must exist for a good reason. Then they spent all their time inventing a good reason—and some god to be responsible for it—rather than looking for a sensible solution to their problem. Jinian has merely substituted Drarg for whatever other deity they had involved.”

 “Clever,” mumbled Chance. “Only I don’t think she’ll let herself enjoy it. By night she’ll be worrying whether it was the right thing to do.” He leaned back to watch the carpenters where they hammered away on high and saw that I’d been listening. He merely winked at me. Chance wasn’t at all shy about his opinions.

 There was a cheer from the roof as the first of the cloth reached the hoppers in back. Queynt clucked to Yittleby and Yattleby, who strode off around the building to the rear. Wide bands of pink descended in a steady flow to disappear into the huge, shaking hopper.

 Queynt got down from the wagon and came to meet me as I came down the ladder.

 “They’re going to have to add some trash now and then, you know,” he told me. “The cloth alone won’t be enough.”

 “It won’t? I thought if everything that came out went back in ...” In fact, I had been rather proud of thinking this up, and his corrections made me peevish.

 “Not quite. It uses up some, you see. During the weaving. Better tell the workmen, or it may not work right.” He strode back to the wagon, pausing to take a bow to the group of council members who had just come around the corner of the building. Madame Browl was staring upward, face creased in concentration. Mergus frowned, at first unable to believe what he saw. Others murmured behind them, Philp among them.

 “An excellent solution,” said Queynt in a loud, definite voice, winking in my direction. “Drarg’s representative is to be congratulated.”

 “But, but...” Madame Browl seemed about to object.

 “No longer the endless round of festivals!” cried Peter. “The people of Bloome may sleep of a morning.”

 “No more uncomfortable clothes,” cried Chance, getting into the spirit of the thing. “No more being bedeviled by the Hundred Demons!”

 “No more banners,” someone cried from the rooftop.

 “No more pink stuff!” cried someone else.

 At the reference to the pink stuff, there was a general cheer, under the sound of which Madame Browl’s disapproving voice fell silent.

 “Leaving already, are you?” Philp asked Queynt, staring suspiciously at the great birds the while.

 “Drarg’s ambassador will ride with me to Fangel,” he replied in an innocent tone, bowing in my direction. “It seemed impolite to delay her. Inasmuch as she has helped Bloome so immeasurably.”

 “Well. Be sure you get back promptly. This”—he gestured at the mill—”is going to cause upheaval. Half the people in town won’t know what to do with themselves. Do we go ahead and arrange for Pickel-port-poh? I ask you, do we? And Shimerzy-waffle?”

 “Oh, I would,” said Queynt. “Definitely. However, as Merchant’s man, I’d suggest Bloome should start looking into handlooms for your weaving. No reason you can’t use some of the stuff from the mill, here, if it ever produces anything you want, but for real quality, one wants the handwoven stuff. That will provide jobs for all those ousted as hopper fillers, and it will be better quality than you’ve had for centuries. That, in turn, should increase custom. No reason you can’t still sell costumes, and have processions. And fireworks. The fireworks factory should be half-rebuilt by the time I’m expected back. I’m sure the Cloth Merchants’ Council can hold things together while I’m in Fangel.” And thereafter, I thought to myself. And thereafter.

 I came to the wagon, walking in my best plenipotentiary manner.

 “Madame.” Queynt bowed.

 I gave them all a haughty look before climbing to the seat. “When Drarg returns, he will see to turning the mill off for you, though I am bound to tell you he may not return for several hundred years.” Then I waved at them all in an imperious manner while Queynt krerked to the birds and took us off.

 Peter and Chance mounted up and plodded behind the wagon. “We could’ve got one night’s sleep,” complained Chance. “Before settin’ out again. Those were good beds there in the mansion.”

 “I think our Wizards are on the track of something,” said Peter a little sullenly. He was cross and irritable, overtraveled, underslept, underloved. With a sudden clarity I realized that if I was finding our relationship difficult, Peter was finding it damn near impossible, and this threw the whole matter into confusion again.

 If he felt grumpy and uncivil about it, well, so did I.

 We followed on Brom’s track for the first part of the way, back up the twists and down the turns of Sheel to the Forum Road, thence northwest on Tan-tivvy until it came to a crossing some way out of the town. Painted signboards pointed the way to a dozen places, east to Omaph and Peeri and beyond them to Smeen. Northeast to Jallywig and the unexplored depths of Boughbound Forest. Northwest to Luxuri and the Great Maze.

 South, the way we had come, to Zib, Zog, Zinter, Chime, and Thorpe. North to Woeful and Fangel.

 The way from Zinter to Bloome had been river bottom, a flat road and an easy one, which went on through Bloome to Luxuri through the warm, moisture-laden airs of the jungle. The northern road to Woeful climbed abruptly out of this basin onto a narrow ridgeback above the trees. We looked down onto a steaming roof of vegetation, where flocks of bright parrots screamed their way toward the setting sun. The road stretched upward, no end to the slope in sight, and after some leagues of it, the krylobos decided abruptly that they had had enough for one day. They communicated this fact by squatting and waiting to be unharnessed.

 “They never stop unless there is water near,” commented Peter. “I’ll find it.” He set off down the western slope, listening as he went. In a few moments he called out, returning shortly thereafter with a full bucket. “A spring,” he said. “Running into a lovely, cool basin. Supper first, then cold baths if anyone wants.”

 “How far to Fangel?” I asked.

 “A long day,” replied Chance. “The fellas I talked to usually make it in two, stopping in Woeful for the night, but that’s with a late start. I figure we can make it in one.”

 “The fellas?” inquired Peter. “What were you up to, Chance?”

 The round, brown man shrugged elaborately in response. “Well, we have to know what’s goin’ on.”

 “There wasn’t a small game, was there?” Peter asked.

 “Might have been,” Chance replied with a complacent expression. “Looky here.” He squatted at the side of the wagon, spreading the contents of his pouch on a flat rock. Coins, large and small, silver and gold. A piece of worked gold—half of a lacy brooch. And an amethyst dream crystal, larger than others we’d seen, of a curiously muted color, as though a shadow lay across it.

 “They gamble with crystals? As though they were coins or gems?”

 “This one fella did. I said no to him twice, told him I didn’t want it. Fella insisted. Said it was valuable, not like any others we’d ever seen.”

 “You won, of course.”

 “No reason not to.” He shuffled his loot upon the stone, running it through his fingers. “Wonder what good it is?” Before I could move to stop him, Queynt reached for the stone and touched it to his tongue. Truly, I did move to stop him, warned by something, perhaps by the shadow that seemed to lie across the color in the stone. I was too late.

 It was as though he had turned to lava, a kind of liquid stone that surged slowly beneath the skin, changing him as one watched, but so slowly one could not see change from moment to moment, could not say, “See, see what just happened,” for nothing just happened. His face changed, and his body, not as a Shifter changes, but as water in a bucket changes, sloshing to and fro, returning always to the shape of the container. I couldn’t keep myself from screaming, a little high-pitched shriek of horror that brought Peter to us at once.

 Queynt was weeping, huge tears welling from both eyes to make long dust tracks down his broad face, and he making no effort to stop them or wipe them away, meantime shrieking a high, lifeless sound like a knife upon a whetstone. His eyes were distant, unfocused, his breathing shallow and slow. The hideous shifting under his skin went on for a moment longer, then stopped slowly, like a tide ebbing away as he sagged onto the ground, the thin, shrieking sound going on and on, endlessly. The amethyst crystal dropped into the dust. I seized it and put it away, where it could do no more damage.

 He had showed me the blue crystals he carried, those few the Shadowman had given him in the long ago, the ones he had offered to me. They were in his pouch, and I burrowed for it, trying to move his heavy, shrieking body aside, finally dragging it out and pouring the contents into my hand, three of the small blue crystals he had shown us in the tower of Bloome.

 I didn’t know what to do! Surely these had some curative properties if one of them had kept him alive for a thousand years. There was nothing else to try. No wize-art could be used against the totally unknown, and I could not taste the amethyst crystal to see what horrible thing in it Queynt had encountered. Peter read my terrible doubt and indecision and said, “Do it, Jinian. Something awful has him. Anything’s better than this ...” as he helped me get one of the blue stones into Queynt’s mouth.

 For a time nothing changed. Then the thin, tortured shrieking ended, the tears stopped flowing, and he looked more or less like himself. We held him between us, warming him. After a long time he spoke in a distant, windy voice not like his own.

 “I thought I was immune.” The words were said so slowly I had to recapitulate the sounds to understand them.

 “What was it? What did it do?” He could not or would not answer. He could not or would not say anything. We sat beside him, watching his face. After a time, his eyes closed. After a longer time, he began to breathe as though he were asleep.

 We wrapped him warmly. After a long time, we left him there. The two krylobos had come nearby during his shrieking, and they sat by him, keeping him warm.

 We prepared a meal, laid out our blankets, fed the birds, who were up now, striding nervously back and forth, staring at Queynt from the sides of their eyes, muttering bird talk that I could not really understand because they didn’t understand it. I took it to be some kind of rote-learned ritual or invocation.

 We ate. Chance took a bowl of broth to Queynt and spooned it into his mouth, whispering to him the while. I think Queynt slept then. Later, when we were all almost asleep by the coals of the fire, he began to speak, little more than a whisper, so we had to strain to hear him.

 “I thought I was immune. The blue crystal I was given so long ago—oh, it does not seem long sometimes, but now it seems an eternity since that happened. The blue crystal—often I tried to tell myself what it had done to me. All I could think of to describe it was to say I had swallowed a map.” He fell silent again, as though thinking what he might say next.

 I sat up, seeing the fire reflected from Peter’s eyes where he sat half against a wagon wheel.

 “Perhaps it was not a map or not only a map, but a set of instructions, a guide in cases of perplexity, a set of consistent directions to be used in all eventualities.” He struggled up on one elbow, reaching for the water jug.

 I gave him a drink, hushing him. “No, no. You worry, Jinian, that the crystal took my will from me. It did not. If one has a map which shows two routes going to a place, one a good road, the other through a swamp, does it destroy one’s will to know the swamp is there and reject that direction in favor of the better road? You are not sure. You would like all choices to be equal. Only if all choices were equal could one be sure one had free will. Otherwise ... otherwise ...” He pushed himself up, half-sitting.

 “Otherwise one always wonders if someone else is pulling the strings. However ... however, I had swallowed the map and it was part of me. From that time to this I have never felt anyone else pulling the strings. Inside myself the map was clear. Avoiding the swamps was simple good sense. Avoiding accident. Avoiding death. Avoiding pit and dragon, both. So. I wandered the world of my map …

 “Which, like most maps, did not specify a destination.” I could hear him breathing, deep, fast breaths as though he fought to climb some great height.

 “A destination?” I asked at last, prompting him.

 “Most maps are tools one uses as an aid in journeying. They do not usually give a destination.”

 “And the other crystal?” asked Peter hesitantly. “The amethyst crystal? Did it show a destination, Queynt?”

 “A wrong one,” he sobbed. “Yes. A wrong one.”

 “Shhh,” I said, putting my arms around him, cradling him to me as though he were a child. “Shhh, Queynt. Tell us. What do you mean, a wrong one?”

 “It summons to another place. Not on the map I was given at all. To some horrid cavern beneath the earth where monsters roar in the dark and all dreams are murdered.”

 “Summons you, Queynt? Against your will?”

 “Not against my will, child. Making it my will to go! That’s the horror of it! But bless you, child, the blue one is there as well, saying, No, not the right place, not the right thing to do.” He could not say any more. Perhaps he would not say. I sat there cradling him well into the night, he still crying without a sound and Peter sitting by, the fire making mirrors of his eyes, glowing disks turned in my direction. At last Queynt slept.

 “Well, Wize-ard?” said Peter.

 “I won’t let it happen,” I said. “I will prevent it.”

 “What will you do to save him?”

 “I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know. Whatever it is is inside him. Perhaps by morning it will have worn off. Perhaps it’s addictive, as the yellow ones were. We must watch him, protect him. But I don’t know what I’ll do if he isn’t well by morning. I haven’t any idea at all.” It was some time before we slept.

 I woke Chance early, while it was still dark, whispering to him, “I need to know what was said about that amethyst crystal, the one Queynt tasted.”

 “What was said? Little enough, girl. Let’s see, there was five of us gaming. Man named Chortle, two brothers from a place somewhere north of Bloome, man named Byswitch, and me. Byswitch had most of the coins and the big crystal. Said it was new, no one had anything like it, very unusual. Said I ought to try it. Share it with my friends. Just came, he said, from That Place.”

 “That place?”

 “I don’t know. That’s what he said. “’That Place north of Fangel where the Dream Miner is.’“

 “Would you say—Chance, would you say the fellow lost it easily?”

 “Didn’t put up much of a fight, that’s true. We gave him a chanst to get even, but he wasn’t up to much. Said he had a woman waiting for him.”

 “Who lost, besides him?”

 “Nobody much. All the rest of us was more or less even.”

 “So he lost, you won, and nothing else much changed hands?”

 “You’re thinkin’ it was a plot? Thinkin’ I was supposed to bring that thing where Queynt could get it?”

 “Queynt, maybe. Or Peter. Or me. Or all of us.”

 “More likely Queynt, I think. He’s been around long enough to attract attention. You, girl, you’re practically brand new.” I didn’t talk with Chance further about the Dream Miner. So far as we all were concerned, it made little difference which of us was the intended victim. Perhaps any of us would have served. If Queynt had not been to some extent immune, perhaps all of us would have been.

 I lay down, only for a moment, to wake much later with the sun a handsbreadth above the eastern mountains. Queynt was sitting up, staring at his hand from which the two remaining blue crystals winked and gleamed like eyes.

 “Two,” he said, noticing that I was awake. “I have two left.”

 “And the other?”

 He shook his head. “Like being drunk. I can see the map I have carried for this thousand years: forests and roads. Sparkling. Whizz. Dart. All speed and sureness. Mmmm. Cities, full of Full of people. Not quite. There’s a white road leading to a good place ... an inn. A place to rest. And over that is another, dark and hideous, and yet seductive. Leading to that terrible place. Buried down. Oh, too deep. Too deep.”

 “Are you going to take another of the blue ones now?”

 “I’m going to wait to see if the other wears off,” he replied with great dignity. “It is less demanding already than it was last night. Foolish of me to have done that. I was so sure I was immune. Why should I not be?”

 “Because the crystal you tasted had been sent particularly for you,” I said. “I think. Designed for you. Designed to get through whatever immunity you might have. Hell, Queynt, you’ve been wandering the world a thousand years. You think nobody knows about you? You think nobody knows about the blue crystal? We can’t be the only ones you’ve told. You must have had wives. Lovers. Friends, at least. You must have got drunk sometimes and talked about things.”

 He flushed. “Perhaps I have. Long ago. The Eesties knew I had it, of course. And perhaps there are Seers and snoops in various guises all around us. Why me?”

 “Why any of us?” I asked. “Perhaps it was designed for any of us or all of us. Why? Why did Porvius Bloster get an order to do away with me from Dream Miner and Storm Grower—it’s no fiction, I saw the parchment myself, read the writing on it. I didn’t even know such a thing as a Storm Grower or a Dream Miner existed. So, if it is nothing in my past, our pasts, then it is something in our future. Perhaps some Seer has told these two, whatever they are, that in the future something will happen which involves one of us, or all of us.”

 “I thought your search for these creatures might be a foolish one,” he said. “I did not even think they existed. Now we are sure they exist, perhaps it would be wiser not to seek them!” He sighed. “Though perhaps we will learn more in Fangel.”

 Queynt shut himself in the wagon that morning. I did not ask him what he was doing. The art is a secret art. Each Wize-ard had his own solitary ways. I know he worked to do what I could not do for him, protect himself. He did not ask about the amethyst crystal, and I did not tell him it was hidden away in a pouch beneath my skirts. Besides the crystal, it held the locket with my Wize-ard’s fragment in it and a lock of Peter’s hair. Since Shifters could grow hair as they pleased, of any kind and color, I had never been sure why this sentimental gesture had occurred to me. Nonetheless, I carried it just as I carried the star-eye around my neck, as a symbol of what I was and what I intended.

 It was a steady climb from the campsite to the city of Fangel. We passed the trail to Woeful at midmorning and stopped only briefly at noon. We walked a good part of it to save the krylobos and by late afternoon could see the walls of the city on the heights above us.

 We were no longer alone on the road. Other wagons and riders had filtered in from the east so that we were hard put to it to find a space for ourselves and the fire.

 We camped on a rocky shelf separated from the height by a tangle of steep roads and paths with no wood nearer than the jungle far below. A charcoal vendor moved among the wagons, doing brisk business, and we bought a sack to warm our supper over.

 “When are the Merchants’ men due in the city?” I asked Queynt.

 “Tomorrow, I think. About noon. The Dream Merchant will meet the various Merchants’ men in the residence, according to Brom, to be given their instructions. Merchants’ men change frequently, he said. No one will wonder that I have a face new to them.”

 “If it is new to them,” grumbled Peter. “Let us hope none of them have seen you before.”

 “Well, I must take the chance of that. However, the rest of you may do better. Remember those half veils the people in Zinter wore? I bought some when we came through there, along with several sets of their black dress. It occurred to me then we might need a disguise somewhere along the road. All three of you can be travelers from Zinter. They’re known to be belligerent when bothered, like those from Zib and Zog, so the likelihood is you’ll go untroubled.”

 “And when does the delegation from the south arrive? The Duke and his unlikely allies?”

 “Also tomorrow, I think. It gives us little time to look around.”

 I had been somewhat distracted by my own thoughts, but this mention of the Duke reminded me of something, and I asked if Brom had said anything about the location of the crystal mines near Fangel.

 “Where are they? How can we get there?”

 Peter stood thinking for a moment, turning to look up at the town above us. “Near here, I think. Chance? Brom said the .mines were just below Fangel, didn’t he?”

 Chance went on stirring the pot as he tried to remember. “I didn’t pay that much attention, to tell the truth. No. Wait. He said there was an old fella lived there, remember? While we were dressin’ him up. He talked about it.”

 “Buttufor,” said Queynt. “Gerabald Buttufor and his wife, Jermiole. Guardian of the mines. Right?”

 “Where?” I was cross with myself for being impatient with them, but I was impatient with them, though there seemed to be no reason for it. “Come on, where?”

 “Well, while the pot boils, we’ll see if we can find out.” Peter stalked away among the wagons, asking questions, smiling, chatting, playing the good fellow, Queynt off in the opposite direction doing the same.

 They returned almost simultaneously with the same story.

 “Down that southernmost path. Not far. We can go now, if you like. Food will stay warm on the fire.”

 I did like, leading off in the direction they’d indicated with a haste almost frantic. Curiosity, yes, but not only that. Something more than that. Since Queynt’s disastrous accident, it had become very important to me to learn everything I could about the dream crystals.

 We came to a small house at the edge of a pit, two old folk sitting on the stoop, he with a pipe of some sweet-smelling stuff, she with a mug of some kind of happiness, chirruping like a tree frog in the evening.

 “Well, and well, visitors, travelers, folks bound for Fangel. Come to see the mine? Not much going on here anymore, not since the crystals started comin’ up spoiled, but you’re welcome. You’re welcome.” Nodding like a little doll, smiling at the shadows: I realized with a start she was blind.

 “You folks like a tour?” Gerabald Buttufor heaved himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. “Noticed two or three nodules this mornin’, ‘bout ready to bust. Interestin’ to see. Can’t use the crystals. Like Jermiole says, all spoiled now. Can’t say why. Don’t know why. Are, though. All spoiled.”

 Queynt passed coins into the old man’s palm. “We’d like to see it. Lucky we got here before dark.”

 “Oh, you could’a seen it after, as well. Nodules get all hot and feverish, shine like little moons, they do. Get along down here.” He led us, stumping along with the cane, down a twisting path into the declivity. The sides and bottom of it were pitted with rounded scars, as though from a shower of great stony hail or meteors.

 He went along a path, stopping abruptly beside a fistsized dome of stone.

 “Here.” He tapped it with his cane. It rang, twangingly, a harsh, ugly sound. “Good crystals don’t even sound like that. Used to like the sound of the good ones. Now you watch.” He struck the stone again, sharply, several times in one place. The cane was shod with iron. The ugly sound repeated, but on the last blow the rock broke.

 Fragments flew, disclosing the center. Like an egg, it held a yolk, a yellow crystal swimming in silvery liquid that oozed over the broken edge of the stone and into the ground. Peter leaned forward.

 “Don’t touch it!” I cried, seeing what it was.

 “That’s right, lassy. Not many know that unless they’ve worked the mines. Can’t touch the crystal milk, boy. That’s what we call it, crystal milk. Burn you right through to the bone.”

 I had last seen similar stuff in a great pool deep in the Citadel of the Sevens; I carried a fragment dipped in that pool as one of my most cherished things. It had been approached with great care and considerable reverence when I had seen it, enough so to make me wary of it.

 “May I borrow your cane, friend Gerabald?”

 I dipped the iron tip in the liquid to hear the same high singing I had heard in the Citadel of the Sevens, far beneath the surface of the earth. I clutched the pouch containing the locket, disbelieving. So! That most marvelous and esoteric stuff was, in fact, well known elsewhere.

 “How do you get the crystal out?” I asked.

 “Why, that’s no trouble.” He bashed away at the stone once more, breaking it so that all the liquid ran away, raking the crystal out onto the stone. “Soon as it dries, you can pick it up. Don’t taste it, though. It’s one of the death ones.” The others wandered off, but I waited while it dried, while the evening came on, bending at last to pick it up, piss-yellow and deadly as poison. I crouched over the empty shell, rising at last in some puzzlement.

 “Peter,” I called, seeing him turn and move toward me with more eagerness than I needed. “Lean down here,” I whispered. “Shift your eyes. I can’t tell, it’s too dark, but isn’t there a kind of channel or duct at the bottom of this hole?” He stretched out on the stone, taking the opportunity to put one arm around me as he stared into the hemispherical hole. Shift eyes, Shift nerves behind eyes, peer deep. Even in the deepening darkness he could see it. “Yes. A twisty little duct, leading down into the earth. You want me to look at some of the others?”

 “Please. Do. See if they’re all alike.” He wandered away, keeping his face with its oddly Shifted eyes turned from the loquacious old man who was lecturing Queynt and Chance on the intricacies of dream mining.

 “Sometimes there’d be a dozen little ones in one nodule, sometimes only one. Used to be pretty green ones in this mine, good ones, too. Happy stuff, no death dreams; forests and birds mostly. I ‘member one was about flyin’. Oh, me’n Jermiole shared that one, flew all over. Mountains, valleys. One great chasm we saw all full of cities built on tree roots, if you could believe that. Great groles down in the bottom of it, too, and up on top the hugest beasts you’ve ever seen. Saw parts of the world never knew were there. Well, p’raps they aren’t, if you take my meaning. In the crystal they were, sure as certain.”

 “Were a lot of these yellow ones dug out of here and put into commerce?” I asked Gerabald.

 “None from here. Fella used to work here dug up the first one, tasted it — well, we almost always did, you know. Didn’t know what to ask for ‘em until you tasted ‘em—and we found him four, five days later where he’d wandered off to, deader’n a baked bunwit, half the crystal still in his hand. Well, if that wasn’t enough, came some ijit through here a few days later, didn’t ask, didn’t tell anybody, and dug a bunch of ‘em, gave ‘em to his entire party, parents, children. They must’ve shared ‘em around, cause we found ‘em all gone. That was enough, let me tell you. We never sold another from this mine after that.”

 “If we’ve seen a lot of these on the road, then, they must have come from somewhere else?” I asked.

 The old man stumped over to me, looked up at me with rheumy eyes, whispered, “Way I hear it, lassy, they’re coming up ever’where. Used to be a mine over near Smeen, nothin’ but pure greeny-blue crystals. Most greeny-blue ones are the best kind. Make you healthy, they do. Long-lived. Me’n Jermiole’r more than a hundred ten, you know that? We just go on, cheerful as tumble-bats from the ones we used to get fifty, sixty years ago. Well, that mine’s nothin’ but these yallery things now. So I hear. Sad, too. I’ve got a few of those old ones left, but sad to think there’ll be no more.” He stumped away again.

 That was more than merely troublesome. It was scary. Peter came up behind me, began stroking my back. All I wanted to do was turn around, but I gritted my teeth and told my belly to stop melting in that ridiculous way.

 “All of them,” he said, continuing the stroking. “All of them have that little tube coming up from deep in the earth somewhere.”

 Gerabald Buttufor looked back at me, calling loudly, “Better throw that yallery thing away, lassy, pound it up to powder. Dangerous, those are.”

 “I know.” Who knew better than I? No one else had buried more of the victims than I had. Still, the thing went in my pouch. Sometimes one had need for dangerous things. This crystal was one. The idea I had just had was another.

 CHAPTER SIX

 As soon as it was light, Queynt arrayed himself quasifantastically as suited a Merchant’s man from Bloome.

 He wore the seal of office, the plaque of jet with the letters “DM” picked out in brilliants in a circle of multicolored gems. We three others put on the black garb from Zinter that Queynt had provided from his costume store. I considered it inauspicious clothing while accepting that nothing could be more anonymous. A stretchy black garment covered the body and head with a half veil over nose and mouth. Over all this went a voluminous cloak, dark as midnight, with one stripe, the color of dried blood, running from throat to hem. The cloak had a larger, metal-lined hood hanging at the back to be used in case of hail. The people of this region were preoccupied with the possibility of storm, and we were beginning to understand why.

 There were no boots among Queynt’s provisions, so we wore our own, decorated with new ornaments to make them look foreign and strange. I chose a pair of gilt snakes for the outside of each boot: Peter chose salamanders and Chance a pair of Basilisks. At the sight of these last, I couldn’t help shuddering.

 “What’s wrong?” Peter came to my side with a concerned expression.

 “Nothing much. It’s those Basilisks on Chance’s boots. Made me think of Dedrina Dreadeye. Dedrina-Lucir’s mama.”

 “Lucir? That was the one who tried to kill you?”

 “Yes, she tried, but I succeeded. I killed her, and I’ve walked in fear of the Basilisks’ vengeance since. Dedrina Dreadeye is still alive; sometimes I remember that and it makes me go all over cold. Porvius Bloster came northward, I remember. Likely his sister Dreadeye did, too. I keep expecting to encounter her, or him, or both.” I wandered toward the rocky edge of the shelf we had camped upon, stood looking toward the eastern horizon.

 “We’ve seen no sign of her, or him.” He stood beside me, giving me lecherous looks. No. I thought of them as lecherous. Perhaps he intended them only to be admiring.

 “True. I’d feel happier if we had—if we knew, for instance, she was headed off in some specific direction, preferably away from us. Ah, well. Not important now. What is important is Queynt. How’s he feeling?”

 “Seems in good spirits. Asked me what we’d done with the amethyst crystal.” He turned to look back at the wagon, where Queynt and Chance seemed engaged upon wheel repair.

 “What did you say?”

 “Told him I hadn’t seen it since the event.” He moved toward me with a purposeful leer.

 “Peter,” I begged weakly. “Don’t.”

 “Peter, don’t!” he mimicked savagely. “Gods, Jinian. I’ve had enough of “Peter, don’t.”“

 “You know why. It isn’t that I want to say it! It’s that you’ll never listen.”

 “I’ve listened long enough. You’re not studying the art now. The seven aren’t here. But you’re here, and I’m here, and all this going on about your oaths is meaningless. I know you love me—want me. Unless you’ve changed completely since the Wastes of Bleer. I remember a certain night there. If we’d had a little more time, the oath wouldn’t have mattered then!”

 “You know I haven’t changed. But we thought we were going to die then.”

 “I know. And we could die tomorrow. Which makes this oath business even more stupid. Well, Jinian, love, I’m not going to go on like this ... “ He had the look of a man who had spent a restless night of frustrated desire and was determined it should be the last.

 What I might have said was stopped by Queynt’s voice.

 “Time to move,” accompanied by a bugling cry from the krylobos.

 “I’m not going to go on, Jinian,” Peter repeated in a thick, passionate voice, pulling the veil up over his mouth so all I could see was the determination in his eyes. “If we’re to travel together, we’re going to have to be together. I can’t take much more of this.” He strode off, not waiting for me.

 Chance was already on the wagon seat. Queynt was mounted. “So far as Fangel is concerned,” Queynt said, “I am a mere Merchant’s man. You three black-cloaked Zinterites are the owners of this strange equipage. We travel in proximity, but not together. Isn’t that so?” We started off, Peter riding close beside the wagon, Queynt slightly after. Others from the campsite creaked into motion as well, a fragmentary snake crawling toward Fangel.

 The city lifted its roofs before us. Its towers bore long black pennants, like great tattery bats flitting silently above the hill. There was no sound from Fangel, not the creak of wagons nor the sounds of commerce, no vendors’ shouts, no children’s laughter.

 A silent city, it poised above with expectant gates like open mouths.

 It had no smell, Fangel, no woodsmoke, cookery, market goods, people-cum-animal smell. If there had ever been a kindly stench of people there, the jungle wind had blown it away. Now was only the graveyard odor of stone and dust.

 Outside the open gates a troop of guardsmen stood, each arrayed with the Dream Merchant’s insignia, looking us over with long, calculating stares.

 “Business?” asked one, leaning on the wagon step.

 “On our way to Luxuri,” said Chance. “No real business in Fangel.”

 “Turn aside to Dungcart Road, to your left outside the walls.”

 “We heard there was a procession. Thought we’d go in to see that.”

 “Procession this afternoon. In that case you can park the wagon off the avenue in the park. Leave before dark. No fires in Fangel. No rooms, either, and no food served after dusk, so don’t think of staying. We’ve plenty of room in the prison for vagrants who remain after dark.”

 Chance clicked to the birds and they moved through the gate. “Friendly,” he remarked. “A real friendly place.”

 Behind us we heard the guard saying to Queynt, “Business?” and Queynt’s reply. “Merchant’s man from Bloome, summoned for the reception.” We dawdled, letting Queynt pass us. High walls enclosed the street, blank walls marked again and again with the linked letters of the Dream Merchants. Above the featureless walls jutted ornamented facades of great houses or blank sides of long unwindowed buildings.

 “Factories?” I wondered. “Warehouses? Is this a manufacturing town, then? At this height?” The streets were empty. No person walked there; no curious head protruded from a convenient window. Our scanty caravan wove through the city to a central park, a place of mown grass, trees, and wide basins of polished stone in which water lay quiet.

 Even here there was no smell, as though the trees had been made of some inorganic material, the water poured from some sterile vat. Across a wide avenue a twisted metal fence made a barrier between the park and the much embellished walls of the residence. As we watched, the doors of this ornate building swung wide to emit a voluminous, almost architectural robe. A square head protruded from the neck of it, close-clipped no-color hair, a promontory of nose overhanging a clifflike upper lip beneath which the mouth writhed wave-like around fallen stones of teeth. “Thtrike,” said the mouth in a sibilant shout as the robe gestured with practiced drama.

 “Gods,” mumbled Chance, looking at the gong they were about to strike. “Look’t the size of that thing. Hold your ears!” The warning came barely in time. An earth-shaking “Bong!” set up a trembling reverberation throughout the city, the very ground shivering beneath us, the sound seeming to gain strength as it continued, permeating the buildings with an inexorable message.

 “Bong!” again, and yet again. Then a slow falling into momentary silence, broken at once by other sounds.

 Doors opening, people speaking, carts moving out of warehouses and onto the streets, a child screaming laughter, fountains suddenly splashing. Somewhere a band started to play.

 It had been like a stage set on which the curtain had suddenly gone up. It was unreal. I did not believe it. Queynt sat on his horse only a little way from us.

 “The man in the robe was the Dream Merchant,” he remarked. “Brom described him to me. The gong could be a kind of curfew, to keep everyone off the streets at night.” He did not sound convinced of this.

 Across the avenue the guardsmen opened the iron gates and propped them wide as the Dream Merchant retreated into the residence. Waiting beside the convoluted fence was a bulbous, beak-nosed man displaying a seal of office much like the one Queynt wore. He raised his hand to Queynt, beckoning.

 “Merchant’s man? New at it? From Bloome? Ah. I’m here from Woeful. We can check in with the Dream Merchant now if you like. I’ll show you the way.” Queynt dismounted, tied the horse to a convenient tree, and walked through the gates with the other Merchant’s man, leaving the three of us to ourselves.

 “I smell food,” said Chance. “No inns, but lots of food carts. Suppose I get us some breakfast.”

 “Do that,” said Peter. “Meantime I’ll take a short prowl around and see what’s to be seen. Jinian?” He invited me with a gesture.

 I didn’t want to go anywhere. If truth were told, I wanted to get out of Fangel, the sooner the better. The silence before the gong went; the lack of smell to it; the way the people moved; everything about it gave me the shakes. “No. It’ll be easier for you to go here and there without me. I’ll keep an eye on the wagon while you two roam about.” He turned away with rejected sulkiness, moving into the gathering crowd that was assembling to stare at the krylobos.

 “Aren’t they pretty things,” gushed a lady of Fangel, got up herself as a pretty thing, all ruffles and bows. “Great beauties. What do you feed them?”

 Not of a mood to be tactful, I said, “About a twenty weight of raw meat a day, including the guts.”

 The lady made a moue, tossed her head. “So savage! And where are you from? I have not seen garb like that before.”

 “From Zinter. It is the usual dress there. Our people have a dislike of displaying their faces.” I tried to look the woman in the face, tried to make eye contact. Each time I came close, her glance slid away as though greased. Her expression was not unkind, and yet there was something about her that set my skin aprickle.

 “Is it a Games dress of some kind?” She evidenced no particular interest in my answer, but I didn’t like the question.

 “No, madam. It is the ordinary dress of our people.” She posed, simpered, displaying her own face in several well-practiced expressions. On her bodice she wore a jet plaque with the letters “DM” picked out in brilliants.

 “How exotic. Do you allow others to know your names?”

 So here it was. “Jambal,” I replied. There are many spells, seizings and sendings that can be done against those whose names were known. Silly to suspect this stupid-looking woman of any villainy. Silly. Why then did I suspect it? “My name is Jambal.”

 “I am happy to meet you, Jambal. My name is Sweetning Horb. I live over there”—she pointed at one of the high-walled mansions along the avenue in Horb House. “Perhaps you will come to dine with us?”

 “Alas, lady, no. We are expected in Luxuri and will leave before long.” Thank all the gods.

 “All honor to the Duke of Betand. Hail Huldra. Hail Valearn. Hoorah for Dedrina Dreadeye. What a pity you must leave so soon.” I heard the name but did not. Dedrina Dreadeye.

 Frozen with shock, I was still alert enough to see that Sweetning Horb wore a dream crystal about her neck. It was a pinkish stone set in a gold bezel.

 Nausea struck at me; it was hard to raise my hand to stop her, but I managed to put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Please, who are these people you exclaim honor upon?”

 “Honor? Upon whom, Jambal?”

 “You said, “Honor upon the Duke of Betand.”“

 “I did? Well, undoubtedly he is an official visitor worthy of honor.”

 “But who is he?”

 “But my dear, I haven’t the least idea. I must run. Lovely to have met you, and your huge savage birds.” I was given no time to recover. An oldster with a raffish beard stood importunately before me demanding to know the names of the birds.

 “Yarnoff and Barnoff,” I said at once, trying to keep from shaking. “Yarnoff is the female.”

 “And where were they captured, madam? I am zoo keeper for the city of Fangel and would be glad to know where a specimen could be acquired. Honor to the Duke.” He wore the jet badge, the pinkish crystal.

 “It is my understanding they were taken as chicks from the mountains above the Southern Sea. However, since they came into my care as adults, I cannot vouch for the truth of this.” All lies, good safe lies.

 “All honor to the Duke of Betand. Hail Huldra. Did I understand you to say they are fed raw meat?” When I nodded, he went on, “From my own experience, I would counsel the addition of cooked grain. I have been told that krylobos in the wild do eat grain, and it might be their health would suffer from a diet of meat alone ...” He took his crystal in one hand and licked it reflectively.

 “Idiot,” commented Yittleby to Yattleby. “I’d feed him stewed grain. Actually, Jinian, a few ripe thrilps wouldn’t be amiss ...”

 “Hail Valearn,” said the man, looking at me earnestly. “Hoorah for Dedrina Dreadeye.”

 “I’m sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t hear. What was that you just said?”

 “That their health might suffer from a diet of meat alone.” He licked the crystal again.

 I shivered deep inside, trying to keep it from showing. “Whether it would or not, sir, they must be fed now. Will you excuse me?” Then, almost silently, “Yittleby, couldn’t you two clear the area somewhat?” Yittleby charged the onlookers with a hungry caterwaul. Yattleby began to kick, missing his targets but only slightly. The oglers drew back in dismay, some reaching for the pinkish crystals that all of them wore. Some sucked upon them, seeming not to notice that they did so.

 “The krylobos don’t like crowds,” I called, voice cracking. “Stand well back.” Now, I said to myself, it will be only a matter of moments before someone appears at my side with a pink crystal and insists I have a taste of it.

 It was Chance who appeared, however, bearing fragrant meat pies and pastries. “All honor to the Duke of Betand,” he remarked. “This place is enough to give you the grues. I’ve decided my name is Biddle, by the way.”

 “Thank the gods you were cautious. I’m Jambal. I hope to hell Peter had sense enough to—”

 “Don’t worry about him. He’s all right. Tell you something interesting, though Jin ... Jambal. There was a fella over there on the street in Tragamor dress. First Gamesman I’ve seen since we left Zinter. Came in on a wagon just behind us. Well, he was picked up by some woman dressed up like a Festival Horse, all ruffles, and before he could get two steps away from her, she’d given him a dream crystal right off her neck.” Chance wiped his brow as he set the food out on the wagon seat and cocked his head to the bird’s uproar. “Lemme get those birds some food and I’ll tell you the rest.” He went to the rear of the wagon where the meat stores were kept.

 I sniffed at the food ravenously. Seemed all right, but just to be sure I murmured a renewal of the Fire Is Sparkening spell, which would warn if anything unhealthful were encountered. I was halfway through a savory meat pie when Chance returned.

 “So, like I was sayin’, this flouncy high-nosed dame gave him this crystal, right off her neck. Then she teased him into tasting it. Well, that’s all right, just a taste doesn’t usually—you know. But it was like those yellow ones, Jin ... Jambal. He tasted, then he took off his helm and left it lying, and as he went off with her over there, he was sayin’, “All honor to the Duke of Betand.” Now, I ask you!”

 So this was why they had seen no Gamesmen. Gamesmen were particularly targeted to be supplied with crystals. And once given them, it seemed they were not only full of praise for the coming visitors, but also forgetful of their own status. Praise for the visitors did not so much distress me. The mention of Dedrina Dreadeye did, however, coining as it did out of the blue. Down the avenue we could see a tall black form returning. Peter.

 He arrived somewhat breathlessly. “Hail Dedrina,” he whispered. “Have you heard?”

 “Could anyone not hear? You didn’t tell anyone your name, did you, Peter?”

 “Nobody asked. I was moving too fast to get into conversation. Good idea not to, though. I’ll be Chorm.”

 “Jambal,” I announced. “And he’s Biddle. I wonder if Queyn—”

 “Queynt will take care of Queynt. He got along for some thousand years before you came into his life. Sometimes you sound like his mother. And mine.” He sounded grumpy again, still, very much like someone working himself up to some irrevocable pronouncement. Sensibly, I said nothing. Across the way the doors of the residence opened and Queynt emerged, along with his beak-nosed new acquaintance. They came across the avenue. “Ah, the travelers from Zinter. May I introduce you to the Merchant’s man from Woeful. Ballycrack Willome. My fellow travelers from Zinter. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your names?” His eyebrows waggled caution at us.

 “Jambal,” I said, bowing. “Biddle, there with the birds. And this is Chorm.”

 “I am gratified to know you,” said Willome. “All honor to the Duke of Betand.” I looked at his chest. Yes, he wore one of the pinkish crystals. And so did Queynt.

 “Hoorah for Dedrina Dreadeye,” Queynt said softly, shaking his head at me. “We are so looking forward to the procession and reception.”

 “The procession will enter Fangel shortly after noon,” announced Willome. “We Merchants’ men and you other visitors will cheer and exclaim with delight from the park here. Residents of Fangel will cheer from their windows or the streets. The Duke of Betand with a great retinue will arrive. Also the Witch, Huldra. The Ogress, Valearn. Both with their followers. And the Basilisk, Dedrina Dreadeye, recently allied with them.”

 “How exciting,” commented Peter, one hand on my shoulder to stop my shaking.

 Queynt went on, “When the honored guests have arrived, the Merchants’ men are invited into the residence grounds for the reception. After which we must take our latest shipment of crystals and get back to our own towns, eh, Willome? Hail Huldra. Hail Valearn.”

 “All honor to the Duke of Betand,” intoned Willome. “Will you all excuse me while I get some breakfast?” Belching gently, he moved away through the crowd, somewhat lessened since the birds’ threat upon the spectators.

 “I keep expecting someone to show up and force those things on the rest of us,” I said. “Queynt, you didn’t—”

 “Calm down, girl. No, I didn’t. Though it was chancy there for a moment. A little sleight of hand and enough sense to mimic what was going on around me seemed to do the trick. I’m using the name Abstimus Baffle, by the way. One of my oldest noms de guerre.” Seeing our puzzlement, “Never mind. A phrase from a former life.

 “Now, I think they will not force anything on you as long as you attract no more attention than our krylobos friends have already done. The pink crystals are only temporary, only for this event. They will be used, I suppose, so long as the Duke and his entourage are in Fangel. Since you are to be gone before dark, it is not necessary to “crystallize” you, so to speak. I, on the other hand, will be attending the reception and must be relied upon to act correctly. So.”

 Peter was astonished. “Do you mean to tell me that they have given those foul things to an entire population in order to assure the Duke gets welcomed appropriately? What do they do between visits? The people, I mean? And where do they get the crystals? Do they really come from mines?”

 “Why should there be a town here at all on this sterile height?” I asked. “There’s no water. There’s no agriculture to support the population. No reasonable explanation why commerce should center here. But it is a fortress easy to control. The population has to be engaged in the crystal commerce somehow. Or in something we can’t even imagine. I’ll tell you, this place makes me crawl.” I stared out at the street where the populace moved, buying meat pies and fruit, hot sweet breads and sugary candies, confetti and flags, moving and talking as real people move and talk, and yet every other breath stopping to put the pinkish crystals to their mouths, moving then again, to spew, “All honor to the Duke of Betand,” without knowing or caring what it meant.

 “Still, we’re here,” murmured Queynt. “Let not the time pass us by. Peter, learn what you can, will you, my boy? And you, Chance. Meantime avoiding those crystals as though they were Ghoul Plague! We should all be back here shortly after noon when the procession arrives.”

 Obediently we scattered, Queynt and I staying together as we walked the streets of Fangel. All the large, blank-faced buildings opened off secluded courtyards, and these courtyards had guards posted outside them. “By noon,” murmured Queynt, “Peter will have investigated a dozen places in as many shapes, I doubt not. You may be right about their crystal factories, though the probable methodology escapes me.”

 “I envision it having something to do with that silvery stuff the crystals grow in. Crystal milk, Buttufor called it.”

 “Is it the wize-art tells you this, Jinian Footseer?” He sounded amused.

 “It is my troubled heart tells me this, Queynt. That and what I saw at that little mine outside town.” Before I could go on, we were accosted.

 “Jambal! Are you enjoying Fangel? Sweetning Horb, remember? We met this morning! Oh, my, have you left those great brutal sweet birds alone? Oh, tisk, they’ll eat half the populace by the time you get back. I hope you tied them tightly!”

 “I did, yes. May I present Abstimus Baffle, Merchant’s man from Bloome. We traveled more or less adjacent from Bloome. Abstimus Baffle, Sweetning Horb.” I stepped back to let Queynt take over, which he did, bearing the woman off on a flood of words that put the quantity of her own to shame. I didn’t follow them. All day my discomfort had grown, my skin crawling in a spontaneous writhe of escape, convinced that someone was watching me. It was impossible to go on moving and acting as though nothing were wrong. I turned back to the wagon.

 “Was a twit here, Jinian,” said Yattleby. “I stomped him, only a little. Tried to poison us each with some pink thing.”

 “The whole town’s a trap,” I mumbled. “Keep watch, will you. I’m going to sleep in the wagon. I’m exhausted.” Peter had not been the only one to spend a troubled night.

 I fell into sleep as into a pit, disturbed by pertinent dreams of crystals and mines and dead bodies along the road, wakening when the others returned along about noon.

 “The lady wanted to be sure I shared the town’s need to honor the Duke,” Queynt confessed. “I came very close to tasting this pretty pink crystal, friends, though I managed to avoid it with a minor Wize-ardry. They are persistent here.”

 Peter was very white-faced and not in a mood for this jocularity. “Jinian was wrong,” he said. “The buildings I could get into are all full of people. Laid out on the shelves like so many sacks of grain. Children. Men. Women. And creatures, lizardy things. Furry things. Asleep, I think. When the gong goes, some of them must get up, but the others just stay there. There’s nothing in those houses but storage. And all of them have crystals in their mouths.”

 “Gods!” I had not even imagined this. “What do they have the look of, Peter? An army, perhaps?”

 “Could be.” He pursed his lips, thinking, making quirky wrinkles around his eyes. “Come to think of it, most of those on the shelves are fighting size—big. Men or other things, both big. Some smaller ones, but I’d say nine out often could be warriors.”

 “Gamesmen?”

 “It would explain where they’d all gone.” That was a disquieting thought. We didn’t have time to worry over it, however, for there was a trumpet blast that spun us around facing the avenue. Heralds rode toward us, horns in hand, tabards gleaming. “All those within sound of my voice give ear! All those give ear! His Grace, the Glorious Duke of Betand. Her Highness, Valearn, Queen of the High Demesne. Her Worship, Huldra, Heiress of Pfarb Durim. Her Eminence, Dedrina, Protector of Chimmerdong!”

 “Heiress of Pfarb Durim,” stuttered Peter. “Still claiming the city, is she? Not damn likely.”

 “Protector of Chimmerdong,” I snarled obstinately, even while my body melted in a sweat of terror. “Over my dead body.”

 There was no time to say more. The first of the procession was passing, a sonority of trumpets, a frenzy of drums, so loudly bellicose as to drown all other sound and all thought. Then striding banner bearers, then muzzled pombis shambling in formation with small, frightened shapes tied to their backs.

 “Shadowpeople!” hissed Peter. “And not here of their own will.” A huge cage on wheels with a gnarlibar inside, asleep: twelve chained krylobos who screamed such a cry as could have been heard in Schooltown far to the south when they saw Yattleby.

 “Rescue! Rescue!” they cried.

 “Wait! Wait!” cried Yattleby in return, a vengeful shriek. “We will!” Several of the guards along the route turned at this, scowling.

 “Hush,” I hissed at them in their own language. “You will betray your purpose.” The great bird subsided, his anger shown only by the huge toenail tracks he was scratching in the earth. “Shhh,” I said again.

 “All honor to the Duke of Betand,” piped Queynt, giving us cautionary looks out of the sides of his eyes. “All honor to the Duke of Betand!” He waved his fists, smiling as the cart came toward us on which the corpulent hulk of the Duke rode, canopied with silken draperies and jeweled like a Tragamor’s helm. He bowed from side to side, waving a puffy, negligent hand. Behind him marched his retinue, and behind them a line of captives in chains, both men and women. Most carried treasure on display. One stalwart couple carried a huge woven basket between them.

 Just behind them was a young woman in rags, carrying a child. She was a pretty thing, little more than a child herself, and I was about to say something to Peter about her when he made a strangled cry.

 “Sylbie!” he shouted, so loudly that the chained young woman heard him and turned searching the crowd. Her face was very lovely, though tracked by tears. The child she carried had a wave of ruddy hair across its forehead. “Sylbie,” Peter said again, a guttural snarl. “That bastard broke his bond.” The marching woman was not the only one who had heard. So had the Duke. He heaved his bulk upon the cart, trying to see who had called out, spoke sharply to one of his guards, who spurred away from the procession and into the park.

 “Happy he’ll be,” Queynt caroled in frantic rhyme with Peter’s exclamation. “Happy he’ll be. All honor to the Duke of Betand.” He had made his voice sound almost like Peter’s.

 The guard stopped, came forward more slowly.

 “What’s that you’re yellin’, Merchant’s man? Somebody’s name?”

 “No one’s name. No, only a fervent wish for the Duke’s happy future, Guardsman. All honor to the Duke of Betand!” This was echoed by the others in our group, and the guardsman galloped back to his place beside the Duke’s cart. We saw him speak, saw the Duke heave himself up to cast a smiling wave in our direction as the cart turned the corner to circle the park.

 “Gods,” murmured Queynt. “Don’t scare me like that again, Peter. Thank all the gods you’ve got that veil over your face. Who in the name of all that’s holy is the girl?” Peter didn’t answer. Only his eyes showed above the veil, the skin around them very red, then very white. I watched him with a sick, sinking feeling.

 “Someone you knew?” I prompted him.

 He nodded. “Someone … ah, someone I met in Betand. When I went through there some—oh, it would be almost three years ago.” I had judged the baby the woman was carrying to be about two. So.

 “You said the bastard broke his bond. You meant the Duke?”

 “He was set on having Sylbie for himself—set on having her dowry, at any rate. I did the town a considerable service while I was there. In payment, he was to let Sylbie choose her own husband. I don’t know what he’s done to her, but she was a wealthy girl when I left Betand.” Wealthy and pregnant, I said to myself. Queynt threw me a sidelong glance as though he read my mind.

 Peter was still worrying at it. “If she’s a captive in the Duke’s train, he’s done some foul thing. He was a mean-spirited bastard in Betand. It’s unlikely he’s changed.”

 “If she is a friend of yours,” I said in a voice as calm as a glacier, “then we must rescue her. Her, and some Shadowpeople, and several krylobos. It seems we have our night’s work cut out for us.”

 “Where’ll all that mess be stayin’?” asked Chance. “Inside the residence grounds?”

 “There’s a large guest compound there,” said Queynt. “Together with barns and dormitories. I saw it this morning. I’ll try to get a better look during the reception. Gods, Jinian, you mean to try getting the krylobos out, and the Shadowpeople, and the girl and her baby?” He popped his eyes at me in pretended astonishment.

 “Well, Queynt, I don’t think Yittleby and Yattleby will give you a choice about the krylobos. Either we do it or they will. In case you hadn’t noticed, Yattleby is about to take on the Duke of Betand and all his retinue, all by himself. He won’t restrain, so I wouldn’t try it. As for the Shadowpeople, I’ve wanted to meet them ever since Mavin told me about them. And the girl? Well, I think that’s Peter’s baby she’s carrying, so we have no choice there, either. Wave, now. Smile. Here comes Huldra!” Amazed at my own chilly calm, I waved.

 And there was a cavalcade of mounted drummers, beating an erratic thunder on great copper tubs, followed by a high, black cart with the still-faced Witch upon it, long dark hair curling around a white, red-lipped face with eyes that burned. The dangerous, watching feeling I had been having all day suddenly intensified like fire. It burned. There was a seeking feeling in the air, as though a creeping tentacle reached toward us. Peter turned to one side, hiding even his eyes. The invisibly flaming hunter passed with the creaking cart, turning the corner to continue the procession. Some kind of seeking spell. I shivered.

 Next a row of fan-horns, shattering the air with dissonant blasts to announce Valearn, gray hair standing in great spikes around her ravaged face, eyes like dead coals, black and lightless, and the skeletons of children rattling on the wheels of her wagon. It should have sickened me. Instead, I felt anger, hot and horrid. Queynt put a hand on my arm, hissed at me.

 Then came a row of men bearing huge wooden spirals that emitted a blood-chilling hiss when stroked, endless and chilling. Dedrina Dreadeye, mounted upon some great lizardish form that none of us had seen before, its monstrous tail heaving back and forth as it waddled down the avenue, head swinging left and right, as did its rider’s, left and right. At her side on a blindfolded horse rode Porvius Bloster, looking old and ill. This time it was I who turned my face aside. I felt the Basilisk’s attention on the crowd. She looked exactly like Dedrina-Lucir except for age, and seeing her was like peering back into time. I had already killed three who looked like this. Daughter and two sisters of this one. I had killed them with the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne. On my leg, that same Dagger burned and throbbed.

 The head of the procession had come around full circle and moved into the grounds of the residence, musicians, guards, and animals moving off to the left, honored guests to the right. The girl and her child went to the left. I asked Queynt, “Do we have a better chance during the reception, Queynt? Or after it, when all visitors are presumed to have left Fangel?”

 “After, Jinian. After,” he whispered. “My suggestion is that you depart northward now. I am expected to leave by the south gate when this affair is over. Is there a path from north to south outside the walls of this place?”

 “Dungcart Road,” answered Chance. “Along the western wall. Shall we wait for you then, Queynt? Outside the north gates?”

 “Wait for me there. Except you, Peter. You might slip along Dungcart Road and offer me help, if needed. Hard to say how many there’ll be in company when we leave. I’ll have to get away from them somehow.”

 Thus quickly were we determined. Two of us three putative Zinterites began hitching the birds while one talked with highly irritated krylobos. “We’ll come back, Yattleby,” I kept saying. “If we stay now, it will attract attention, and some of your kin may end up getting killed. If we leave, they’ll all go to sleep thinking there’s no danger. Wait until dark. Come on, now. Take the harness and quit kicking. We won’t leave your kinsmen—ah, kinsbirds behind.” Eventually the giant bird agreed, though I knew very well he wouldn’t go far from the walls. His eyes were red and furious. I had never seen them like this before. He was too angry even to talk to me.

 Queynt went to the residence, nimbly bowing and smiling, full of quirky gestures and fulsome words, echoing the universal greeting. “All honor to the Duke of Betand.” I know from him what he learned there and will tell it here.

 Inside the gate he encountered Willome once more, and they made their way to the tables where liquid refreshments were provided. “Will we be introduced to the guests of honor?” Queynt asked offhandedly, seeming to pay attention only to the spitted chime birds he had been offered.

 Willome shook his head. “I think not. Hoorah for Valearn. They have not done so on any occasion heretofore. We are here to fill the grounds, I think. As is proper.” He bit a crisply toasted bird in half, spluttering bone fragments in all directions. “Hail Huldra.”

 “Hail Valearn,” said Queynt. “I must find a place to relieve myself.”

 “ ‘Round back,” said Willome. “Near the stables.” But it was to the residence itself that Queynt repaired, carrying with him, so he said, the worried look of a man seeking a necessary with a view to immediate utilization. He carried the expression only so far as the deeply carpeted corridor leading to an ornate audience chamber he had located from outside. Here, sheltered from the glow of midday but visible to the mob on the terraces, the guests of honor and their more highly placed attendants eddied to and fro in a swirling slosh of sidling waiters. Here, hidden from observation behind heavy portieres of gold-crusted velour, Queynt came to rest, poised on one foot to flee if necessary, ears pricked and one eye applied to a judiciously located crack between the hangings.

 The Dream Merchant, seen only at a distance that morning, was less than a manheight away, his long face still as a carving, the looming upper lip immobile as stone, undisturbed by the words that sprayed from its foot.

 “Well, Betand! Tho you have come to Fangel at latht.”

 “Well, Merchant! So I was invited at last. Little wonder I came.”

 “Invited for what, I wonder. Has the Backleth Throne determined upon thome action? Ah?” The Merchant regarded his guest with suspicion. “Thtorm Grower and Dream Miner, my lovely parenth? Have they told you why you are thummoned?” The Duke belched lovingly, threw bones over his shoulder which struck the hangings before Queynt’s nose, almost startling him into betraying movement.

 “Have they told me? Come now, Merchant. Do they write me letters? I got this!” And he waved a bezel-mounted crystal in the Merchant’s face. “This. As did those three crones with me. Give it a lick and you’ll know everything I do. We’re off to That Place, higgypiggy, as may be, and Devils take him who lingers. I am much bewitched in this endeavor, may I tell you, Merchant, with three such ugly dams as you have yet to dream ill of. I will tell you that Valearn is enough to give a child nightmares for all his life, whether she threaten to eat him or no, and the lovely Dedrina does the same for me.”

 “And yet, even in thuch company, you go?”

 “Do you hear me preaching rebellion? There is profit in following the Backless Throne. They suggest this alliance, and so we ally. I do well by the Throne and they by me. I have always felt well paid.”

 “And you are taking all thith entourage with uth?”

 “Unlikely, Merchant. That lizard of Dedrina’s is only something Huldra called up and will as easily let go. The others ... well, when I go hence tomorrow night, I will leave most of the traps and booty here in your charge until I return.”

 “Not in my charge, Betand. I am to go with you. I am thummoned ath well.”

 “We will be six, then. Valearn will go, and that Witch, and the serpent queen, Dedrina Dreadeye, with her lackadaisical brother, Bloster. He wants only a minor catastrophe to kill himself over, so depressed he is. Well. We will go and find out what’s wanted and then return.”

 “I take it you have not been there before,” said the Merchant, sulky and offended at the Duke’s offhand tone. “If you knew what you will find there, you would thound leth casthual. I have not been there for a very long time, but I do not ekthactly look forward to the vithit.”

 “So much the better for us, to have your company. Though I am told some visitors don’t come out as well, I suppose we need not fear that. So long as they need us to distribute the crystals they send.”

 “They require enough of that,” he replied sulkily. “More and more crythtalth, more and more every theathon.”

 The Duke turned at this, piggy eyes burning into the Merchant’s face. “And what do the new ones require, Dream Merchant? More of the same? A little perversion there? A little treachery here? Self-interest in odd quarters? Subversion and deceit? Or is there something new?”

 “They will tell uth when they are ready for thomething new. They thay they are not ready for the latht thingth, not yet. And I mutht thit here until they are.” They were interrupted by the close approach of another guest, that woman who had been so curious upon the streets of Fangel. She simpered toward the two men, curtsying and nodding like some doll on springs, face creased like a nut in a hundred sycophantic puckers.

 “Sweetning Horb, Your Grace. I’ve been busy among the visitors to Bloome, as I was bid. I thought you might want word of them—though there’s little enough to tell.” The three drifted away from the portieres, leaving Queynt straining his ears. He could hear only fragments. “Say they’re Zinterites ... got their names in case you want them ...”

 Queynt watched as they turned away, then drifted out onto the lawn once more, thoughtful, breaking his concentration from time to time only to utter the obligatory “Hail to Valearn.” Meantime, we three had departed through the northern gate, where the guardsman referred to a list, checking us off as we went. They were careful to be sure all visitors who came in also went out. It made me nervous, this great care. What had there been in Fangel we had not seen? “Pleasant journey,” the guard wished us. “Hail to Huldra.”

 “Hail to Huldra,” snarled Peter, no happier than were the krylobos.

 Poor thing. Wasn’t he caught in a dilemma? It was Sylbie, and he had no doubt of it. It was his baby, and he’d no doubt of that, either. Perhaps he had even known that she was pregnant when he’d left Betand.

 Evidently he had taken some steps to provide for her, yet here she was, unprovided for. And here was Jinian. Not saying anything. He watched me from the corner of his eye. I didn’t help him, though it would have been kind to do so. He knew I had not missed any of it and knew well what he was thinking.

 “Oh, shit,” said Peter, muttering. “Pombi piss. Hell and damn and may the Hundred Devils dine on my gizzard.” He did not need to have invoked them. Seemingly he was feeling as though they already were.

 The road continued upward for a short distance before entering the jungle which had climbed to meet it. Out of sight of the walls of Fangel it began its twisting descent toward Luxuri. Here we left the wagon, unhitching the birds.

 “I think reconnaissance,” I said to Peter, keeping things quiet and emotionless. “They took the captives off to the left after they were inside the gates. Also, we will need something to cut chains if we’re to free the birds.”

 “That’s my metal saws,” said Chance. “All neat and nice in the tool box, sharp as a file can make ‘em. You goin’ to have a look around?”

 “Yes,” said Peter in a surly voice. “Julian. Jinian?”

 “You’d best go,” I said. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it. Or perhaps it was, but I wasn’t willing to do so.

 He went. Under cover of the jungle he laid the Zinter clothing aside and changed it for a fustigar’s hide. Once at the walls, he would change again. For now, however, he gave his soul some peace by growling hugely, setting up echoes that ran along the distant valley.

 “He’s upset some,” said Chance.

 “That was his baby with the girl,” I said calmly.

 “Well, happen I know a bit about that. It wasn’t any love affair, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. He did it to remove a curse from the city of Betand, and that’s the truth.”

 “Unlikely.” In a fatalistic mood, I was not allowing myself to accept logical explanations.

 “I don’t care how unlikely, it’s true. Some Necromancer or other had raised up the spirit of someone yet unborn and set it to haunt the city. So, all the travelers had to beget when they went through. Tryin’ to get the unborn born as fast as possible, that’s what they were doin’.”

 “He remembered her name.”

 “Well, it wasn’t that long ago and likely it was his first time, lassy. That kind of thing sticks with you. Mine’s name was Barbra. Barbra Queet. She ran an alehouse in Sabistown, beside the Southern Sea. She took pity on a lustful young squinch with two left feet and ‘nitiated me. Ever’ now and then I say a prayerlike thank-you for Barbra Queet.”

 I did not reply. It was not from lack of sympathy, but from seeing likely what was going to happen. It could hardly fail to happen. Not given Peter, as Peter was, and me as I was, and Sylbie—heretofore unknown but now known all too well. “Never mind, Chance. I’m not blaming him for anything. I’ve got to go settle the birds down.”

 “Why don’t you just say ‘talk to ‘em,’“ said Chance, miffed. “We all know you can.”

 I know that I flushed. There were no secrets. Silly to imagine there could be.

 Dusk was falling when we saddled the birds.

 “Slowly,” I counseled both Chance and Yattleby. “We want to arrive outside the northern walls under cover of darkness, not fly over it while it is yet daylight.” We got there shortly after dark, well enough, only to wait about in increasing impatience and worry, waiting for Peter and Queynt. By the time they arrived, it was almost midnight.

 “Gamelords, what a mess,” moaned Queynt. “There were a full dozen of us left the southern gates all at once, and nothing would do but that we travel together. Willome had a grip on me like a vice. I tried everything I could think of to break up the group. Finally, Peter had to Shift to gnarlibar shape and stampede the horses. Mine went with them, but I fell off. Luckily. I don’t think they’ll be back to look for me.”

 “Had to take on bulk to make the gnarlibar,” said Peter, “and it took me a while. Before that, I did find out where the captives are, though. Sylbie’s in a kind of dormitory right against the residence walls, along with some other captives. The krylobos are in a barn alongside that. The Shadowpeople are in the barn, too, in a cage. The krylobos are the only ones chained up, but it’s the kind of chain that runs through a metal loop on a metal cuff, so we’ll only need to cut one link. That’ll leave them with the cuffs on, of course, but we can deal with that later.”

 “Did you get a chance to speak to her?”

 “Sylbie? No. I was in the shape of a snakey thing, and I didn’t want to scare her to death. She has no idea I’m a Shifter. When I knew her, I barely knew it myself.”

 We stood there, looking at the walls, no one moving, as though we were all equally reluctant to go over. “Queynt and me can take care of the north gate,” said Chance at last. “You do the rest, and we’ll have it open by the time you get back.” We agreed. It seemed the best plan.

 Yittleby and Yattleby bounded over the wall. Peter Shifted into a huge, spidery shape with long, taloned feet and lifted the rest of us over. Queynt and Chance sneaked away into the darkness toward the north gate as we crept through the silent streets to the residence. Something about those streets set my teeth on edge, no less in the dark than it had in daylight, a kind of watching terror, as though something hugely ominous were held on a fragile leash which might break at any moment. Do you know that dreadful dream feeling? Walking up by the lair where the dragon is probably asleep. Stepping through the swamp while the Basilisks are probably away. In Fangel I always had the feeling that probably something awful was about to get loose.

 When we reached the residence it was dark in most of its windows; only a fugitive glow betokening some servant up late on the business of fires or breakfast. I needed no help to get over this wall. It was mere decoration. Evidently the city of Fangel relied upon its crystals and its curfew. Otherwise, except at the gates, it did not post guards at night.

 Otherwise, I amended to myself, it does not seem to post guards at night.

 There was one, however, lounging sleepily against a doorpost. Yittleby stepped forward without a sound and brought her beak down on top of his head. He slumped silently onto the stones. Peter leaping to catch his sword before it made a clatter.

 Inside was a babble of bird talk.

 “Krerk,” said Yattleby to his kin. “Be quiet.” We pushed open the heavy door, hearing the rustle of feathers, the harsh scratching of talons upon the boards of the floor.

 “Please tell them who we are,” I asked Yattleby. “And what our needs are in this venture.”

 “Krerk, gargle, quiss,” said a voice from the dark. “Why don’t you speak for yourself, girly-person?”

 “You might as well,” krerked Yattleby. “They can hear you anyhow.”

 “We are releasing some prisoners, yourselves among them,” I said. “You can help us if you will by remaining together and quiet and assuring that we all get out safely.”

 “Whirfle krerk. Will you release the little people?”

 “The Shadowpeople? Yes. Of course.” I had already heard a line of plaintive melody which located the cage of the Shadowpeople for me. The latch was tied down outside the reach of the captives, but Yattleby reached over my shoulder to make short work of it.

 The tiny forms went past us in a scurrying cloud, calling songfully as they fled into the night. “Lolly duro balta lus lom. Walk well upon the lovely land.”

 Peter was busy with the chain. “Krerk quiss?” the birds demanded urgently.

 “I’m sorry?” I turned to Yattleby. “I didn’t understand that.”

 “Whistle whistle krerk quiss. Rrrr.” What was this they were telling me? I turned to Peter in astonishment. “Did the Shadowpeople make a song for your mother?”

 “They did, yes. When she was very young. It was at the time of the plague in Pfarb Durim.”

 I turned back to the birds. “Krerk, Mavin Manyshaped, quiss rrr quiss.” This went on for some time.

 “They say,” I told Peter, “that there are two human people among the captives who came looking for Mavin Manyshaped. The Shadowpeople heard them say her name. We saw the people in procession. Carrying a huge basket.”

 “Friends?” asked Peter doubtfully.

 “Someone Mavin knows. Or someone who knows her. I don’t think we dare leave them, just on the off chance—”

 “All right, all right. Will the krylobos help us?”

 “Yes. They’ll help us. Out of curiosity, if nothing else.”

 “Quiss rrr,” said Yittleby. “Out of wonder at a person who can talk their language.”

 Peter was halfway through the heavy link, watched with intense interest by fourteen pairs of krylobos eyes, fourteen great beaks hung above his head like a threatening crown. He cut through with a muffled exclamation, and the krylobos began to pull the chain through the links of their leg irons, freeing themselves in moments. They stalked out into the paved court.

 “Next door,” Peter whispered. Here there were no guards at all, but the door was securely locked. Peter remedied this with one tentacular finger. We pulled it open, the birds standing about outside like so many great sentinels.

 “Sylbie?” Quiet into the darkness.

 “Who is it?” Plaintive.

 “Peter,” he said. “Ah—Nobody. Do you remember Nobody from Betand? When we broke the curse?”

 “Peter?” Wonderingly.

 “Are you tied or chained?”

 “No. No, I’m coming.” A glad bleat of words.

 “Is someone here looking for Mavin Manyshaped?” I called softly into the dark.

 “Here.” A woman’s voice, deep and humorous.

 “The person with me is Mavin’s son.”

 “Ah.” The woman laughed, “Come, Roges. It seems we have once again encountered a doer-good and are being rescued.” They came into the half-light of the courtyard, Sylbie staggering under the weight of the child, one shoe half-off, flinging herself into Peter’s arms with glad tears and he patting her there, soothing her, while I tried not to see him do it. The woman and her companion still carried the great basket between them.

 “What’s in it?” I asked. “Treasure?”

 “In a manner of speaking,” said the woman. “At least, it is something we should not leave behind.” She took a deep breath. “My name is Beedie. Whoever you are, I thank you. Now, how do we get out of here?”

 The Shadowpeople had already fled. However, with five people, six counting the baby, and fourteen birds we were still a mob. Burdened by the basket, the two strangers could not be expected to move very fast. The dilemma was solved almost before I thought of it. Yittleby and Yattleby stepped to the basket, each bending to take one handle, then moved into the night in their usual unvarying stride. The other krylobos spread at either side like skirmishers, and we went over the wall into the silent street.

 I reached out to take the baby. “Let me have him,” I said. “You fix your shoe, or you’ll trip before we’re halfway there.” The child snuggled into my arms, reaching to pat my face. Tears burned in my throat. I had had dreams, betimes, of carrying Peter’s child. Needless to say, I had not dreamed it like this. Peter went ahead, half carrying Sylbie by one arm.

 The streets echoed, footfalls magnified into approaching hordes that dissolved at each intersection into silence. Despite this, every building seemed to watch, to be intent upon us. The jeweled insignia of the Dream Merchants peered down from every wall. I squeezed eyes half-shut, concentrating. Something in those buildings was watching, not yet moved to intervention—but soon. I could not make an effective protection for us unless I knew what to protect against, but nothing betrayed itself. No creature could be seen. We were almost at the north gate when the alarm bell rang, breaking the silence with a hideous insistence.

 “Run,” cried Peter, setting his own command in action, swooping Sylbie into his arms and lengthening his legs all in one movement. I felt myself seized from behind by my belt: I squeezed the baby tightly with one arm and grabbed the bird’s neck with the other as one of the freed krylobos deposited me on its back and began to run. I gritted my teeth, thrust my legs in front of the stubby wings, gripped the baby as in a flitchhawk’s talons, and prayed we would not slide off. Beside me, Beedie and Roges had been unceremoniously mounted in the same fashion. We dashed down the street, the gate appearing impenetrably shut. Just as we came close we saw one of the mighty halves standing sufficiently ajar to let us through.

 “Krerk quiss rrrr, quiss!” I screamed. “Someone pick up those two men!” Then we were racing away up the long road toward the jungle as a flight of arrows struck the gate at our back. Something had wakened at last. Another flight whistled through the opening, shrilling above our heads to rattle upon the stone. I could hear Chance cursing and knew he had been wounded. I didn’t hear Queynt’s voice at all.

 We came to the wagon. “I think we may expect pursuit,” said Peter breathlessly. “You, Jinian, take Sylbie and the baby and these people in the wagon. Take Queynt, too. He’s been knocked silly. Chance, get the horse and go with them. If Yittleby and Yattleby will pull and one or two of their friends will go along as guard, perhaps the others will stay and help me?” I croaked this request in bird talk, voice breaking.

 The stalwart man and woman seemed accustomed to this speed of activity; at least, they were holding up the harnesses for the krylobos as though they had done it a thousand times. There was much krerking among the freed krylobos, then the matter sorted itself out. The wagon was moving speedily down the western road, past the fork that would have taken us to Boughbound Forest. Chance rode before us, dabbing at his shoulder with an already blood-drenched rag. Just behind us were two additional krylobos, one of them a giant of his kind, larger even than Yattleby, and behind us on the road something huge and furry was beginning to form itself.

 “What’s happening?” begged Sylbie in a small voice, looking back. “What’s he doing?”

 “He’s a Shifter,” I said flatly. “He’s Shifting himself into something very huge and horrible to turn back any pursuit that comes after us.”

 “A Shifter?” The offended tone made me quite angry.

 “A Shifter, yes. And you’d better pray, little girl, that he Shifts monstrously, or you may be back in the Duke’s clutches by morning.”

 “I didn’t mean it like that,” Sylbie whispered. “I was just so surprised. I wouldn’t ever say anything bad about Peter.”

 “Never mind. There’ll be time to sort it out tomorrow, if we’re still able to sort anything out. You go back there and sit down. All of you. Keep quiet. Keep out of my way. Right now, I’ve got to concentrate on driving.” Liar. Liar. No one needed to drive Yittleby and Yattleby, who would find any road needful, any hiding place needful by themselves. Liar.

 I didn’t care. At the moment all I wanted to do was forget that Peter or Sylbie or Sylbie’s child had ever existed.

 CHAPTER SEVEN

 The first of the sendings came on us just before dawn. I was nodding on the wagon seat next to Chance.

 He had tied the horse to the wagon and taken time to bandage himself with much cursing and help from the strangers, Beedie and Roges, friends of Mavin Manyshaped from far over the Western Sea, so they said. They had been useful in bandaging, useful in watching, and had offered to drive if I needed help, which I had refused, preferring to keep busy or at least appear so.

 Yittleby and Yattleby had passed the time in conversation with their kin, a bird tribe now mightily angered at the Duke of Betand. “Yerk quiss krerk,” conveyed fury and the details of their capture.

 “How did you folks get picked up?” asked Chance of Beedie and Roges.

 “We came into Hawsport on a ship,” said the woman, “asking in the port where we might find Mavin Manyshaped. We had gems to pay our way and buy information. A black-haired eel of a man attached himself to us, saying he knew where to find Mavin. The next thing we knew, we had been dragged off to Betand, where we were questioned at length about the source of the gems. The Duke’s people didn’t seem to be interested in anything but that. When we told the sleek one he could find the mines three years’ journey west and oversea, he cooled somewhat, but made no offer to release us.”

 “You don’t think it was using the name of Mavin that got you into trouble?” I’d been worrying over this.

 “Not then. Though when we spoke of her later, in our captivity, it seemed to stir the little furry folk.” They fell silent. Sylbie and the baby were asleep.

 Far off on the eastern sky lay a thin greenish line heralding light.

 It was then the sending came.

 It came shrieking down the trail far behind us, clearly visible over the trees at the top of the slope as it cast back and forth like a scenting fustigar, a blue, skull-jawed haze with a voice that shattered the dawn.

 The voice cried, “Jambal!” and then again: “Jambal.” Birds fled from dark foliage, screaming terror. In the underbrush small movements ceased. Yittleby and Yattleby stopped, frozen, turning their long necks to see what came.

 “Gods,” I hissed. “I should have been prepared for this. Quick, Chance, get out of those Zinterite clothes.” I was ripping the black clothes off, shouting hissing directions to Beedie meantime. “There’s a sack of straw back in the wagon somewhere. Find it. No, it’s bigger than that. That’s it. Here, stuff this garment with enough straw to make it shapelike. Tie the hood on top. Here’s the veil. Pin it. Cloak over the whole thing. Paper. Paper. Gods, Queynt, where did you put the paper? ...” Stumbling over Queynt’s unconscious form, I fumbled on the shelves. “Here. Now—hell, give me a piece of that charcoal.” I muttered a likeness spell, half stuttering in my haste, then leapt half-naked from the wagon to fasten the dummy high upon a branch. I labeled it with the torn paper, hastily scrawled in charcoal with the name “Jambal,” and left it dangling in the dawn wind as the blue haze circled down toward it, shrieking triumphantly, “Jambal.” We fled, leaving the haze to eat the straw manikin with great munching, masticating noises and cackling screams.

 “By the Lost City,” murmured Roges, “what was that?”

 “A sending,” I panted. “Sent by that Witch, Huldra, I’ve no doubt. It seeks an entity named Jambal. The entity named Jambal is hanging on that tree. That’s all Jambal was, thank all the old gods, a costume, a bit of playacting. Luckily. If it had my real name, I’d be Witch’s meat by now.” I flushed, began to look for shirt and trousers, only then conscious that I was shivering in my smalls. “Hurry up, Chance. They’ll be hunting Biddle next.” And to Beedie and Roges, “Get Queynt’s clothes off him, too. They may not connect him to us, but best we be ready if they do.”

 The dummy labeled “Biddle” was mounted high on a branch before the next sending announced itself, a purple haze with Demon’s face and banshee voice, howling the jungle silent in its wake. I didn’t remember the birds until this sending fastened itself with hideous voracity on the strawman; then I remembered my own voice saying, “Yarnoff and Barnoff,” or some such fool thing. They, too, had been named to a resident of Fangel. I chattered in krylobos, yelling at them when they refused to understand. It was the huge stranger krylobos, stepping forward to krerk at Yattleby in tones of unmistakable mastery, who prevailed. Sulkily, they tugged plumes from each other’s topknots, a, few feathers from wings, legs and breast.

 Soon there were feather tufts mounted high, labeled “Yarnoff” and “Barnoff,” while I was frantically wondering if it mattered whether I had put the right feathers with the right names.

 It was not done too soon. Wraiths red as hot iron came screaming from the sky to settle upon the hasty bundles. If we had delayed a moment, we would have delayed too long.

 “Now what?” begged Beedie, pale as milk. “We have no such things as these in the chasm.”

 “What chasm is that, lady?” asked Chance, breathing heavily. He had not liked the look of those wraiths and was eager to talk of something else.

 “In the chasm where we live, on the great root cities.”

 “Great root cities,” I said distractedly. “Are there things like groles there? Great things like huge worms?” And on being told there were, I was confirmed in an earlier supposition and saddened thereby.

 “I ask again,” said Beedie, amazed at this easy change of focus. “What now?” I rubbed my head wearily, trying to remember.

 “Well, now the Witch will be told by her wraiths that they have found and eaten the ones she sent them after. If she is not too clever, that will be enough. If she is very clever and does not mind the time it takes, she will examine the wraiths for blood scent and, finding none, know she has been tricked.”

 “At which,” came Queynt’s heavy, pained voice from the wagon, “she will be very annoyed. You should have put some fresh meat in the dummies, Jinian.” I was ashamed to have forgotten it. There was no excuse for it except funk, fear and funk from a growing supposition that something was terribly wrong. “I forgot.”

 “Well, you had little time to do anything. Sorry I was of so little help.”

 “Any meat? Why not blood of your own?” Roges asked.

 “Because that would feed the wraith and lead it directly to the source,” said Queynt. “No, any nonhuman meat would do. It is a clever Witch indeed who can tell the difference between man blood and zeller blood by smell. Of course, Huldra may be that clever. We know almost nothing about her, including the source of her animosity.”

 “Let us take her animosity as proven, Queynt, without worrying about its source.”

 “Not only hers,” he said. “The Dream Merchant spoke to the Duke concerning Storm Grower. They travel to meet with Storm Grower and the Dream Miner, who also have animosity toward you. I wonder why.”

 “Before traveling to the north with you, Queynt, I had heard the name twice. Once in Chimmerdong Forest, when Porvius Bloster said the order to kill me had come from ‘them, the Dream Miner and Storm Grower’. Then again on the Wastes of Bleer, Sorah the Seer said something to Peter about a Storm Grower. It made little enough sense, then or now.

 “Shadowmaster. Holder of the key. Storm Grower. The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell.” Make what you will of that, Queynt. It meant nothing to me.”

 “I make nothing of it yet. Nonetheless, there is a Storm Grower, and a Dream Miner, both somewhere together. And tomorrow the Duke goes there with his ghastly maidens.”

 I tried to make sense of this. “Oh, Queynt, I am too tired to think! I wish Peter and the other krylobos would come tell us pursuit has been sent aside.” Privately I was thinking it was not a long leap of suspicion from Jambal to Jinian, if the Witch knew Jinian existed. If the Witch cared. If the Witch were a creature of the Dream Miner. If. If. If. Perhaps another sending would come before long.

 As though summoned by my thoughts, a cry from the forest brought an answer from Yattleby. “Pursuit ended. Peter comes.”

 “We can stop,” I said thankfully, reaching for the reins. “We can stop,” I krerked to the birds.

 We did stop, gratefully, waking Sylbie and the baby in the process but otherwise much gratified to be able to stretch, walk about, go into the woods to relieve ourselves.

 “Doe see birs!” demanded the baby.

 “What’s his name?” I asked, in a fatalistic mood.

 “Bryan,” said his mother, surprisingly. “It was my older brother’s name. He had hair just this color. My mother always said I should name my first child after my brother, if it was a boy. This is Jinian, Bryan. Can you say Jinian?”

 So much for Peter’s inherited red pate! I stood by as the baby did go see the birds, seeming totally unafraid of the great creatures. “This one is Yittleby,” I instructed. “That one is Yattleby.”

 “Yilby,” crowed the baby. “Yalby.” He had a fine grasp of infinitesimal distinctions, this one. “Jinny,” he went on, giving me an effulgent smile.

 “He’s very friendly,” murmured Sylbie apologetically. “My mother always said I was, too, as a baby.”

 “A charming child.” I was cool, not very amused at myself for being so.

 A disruption in the underbrush announced Peter. He came out dressed in his own Shifter fur and carrying the Zinterite garments. “Damn,” he said when told of the wraiths. “I liked those clothes. Besides”—hopefully—”I didn’t tell my name to anyone.”

 “I did,” I apologized. “Unfortunately. Sorry, Peter, but it’ll be safest if you hang them.”

 “What was the name we used for me?” he wondered aloud. “I’ve forgotten.”

 “Chorm,” howled a hungry wraith voice, far back up the trail. “Choooorm ...”

 “Oh, yes,” he said, scrambling for the straw sack and the upward trail all at once, while I mumbled the likeness spell for the fifth time. When he returned he was paler. “Nasty thing, that was. All greenish and flapping. Gamelords, but I’m glad I hadn’t met a Witch before.”

 “You did,” corrected Chance. “We met one together on the road to Xammer. Before we met this Wizard,” indicating me, Jinian, with his elbow.

 “Well, that one was nothing much. All Beguilement, as I recall. Nothing compared to this Huldra!”

 “Huldra may have a Witch’s Talent,” said Queynt, “but mere Talent would not enable her to send these wraiths. No, she’s studied the arts. Not wisely, but deeply in a narrow way. Found some corruptible Wizard, most likely, and bought the secrets from him.”

 “Did I hear Chance say you’re a Wizard?” asked Beedie curiously, eyes turned weighingly on me.

 “Yes. Of a sort. A very young one,” I admitted.

 “Can you do ... things like that? Like those blue things?”

 “I could, yes. Likely I wouldn’t. There’s a blood price for doing things like that. One I wouldn’t want to pay, but that someone like Huldra wouldn’t mind paying. For each wraith she sends, someone dies. It is lifeblood which empowers the creatures. To Huldra, the life of a pawn or follower would be nothing. Her whole family was like that, starting with Blourbast, so I understand.”

 “Bloody intentioned,” agreed Peter. “Though sometimes they hid it for a time, to further their own aims.” He was remembering the time at Bannerwell when he had been almost convinced—for a very short time—of Huld’s honor.

 Sylbie and Bryan returned .from their bird watching. Bryan staggered to Peter and climbed onto his knees. Peter patted the child awkwardly as he blushed deeply. “Tows!” the baby demanded vehemently. “Tows!”

 “Baby wants his trousers,” said Sylbie. “I had to take them off him. They were wet and he was getting peevish. We were so long in the wagon, and I had no others to bring.”

 “Well, now,” said Roges heartily, “that’s easy to remedy. Let’s see if the wagon master keeps needle and thread and whether there is such a thing as a raggedy shirt no one needs any longer ...” He picked Bryan up, jogging him expertly, and went to query Queynt where he lay beneath a tree.

 “Roges misses ours,” said Beedie. “Though none of them are babies anymore. The youngest is eight by now, five when we left.”

 “Where is he? she?” I wanted to know.

 “She. Our first girl. We named her after Mavin. She’s home in Bridgers’ House, being spoiled rotten by my Aunt Six. We talked of bringing her, but the journey was so chancy.”

 “How did you meet Mavin?”

 “Oh, Jinian, that’s a story for a week in the telling. She came flying from far over the sea, down into our chasm in the shape of a great, white bird. Just take it she saved my life, more than once, and did a great good to our part of the world, too. When this came up, well, we couldn’t know what to do about it, could we, down in that great chasm with no contact with the outside? There seemed only one thing to do: bring it to the only outsider we knew well and trusted.”

 “This thing?”

 Beedie looked at Roges, and he at her. “That man is Mavin’s son,” said Roges, indicating Peter. “And these others are his friends. Some others ought to know, Beed.”

 “True. Others ought to know.” She went to the basket, then, taking the cover off and removing some leafy wrappings from within. “It may be,” she said, pointing to the basket, “that this was the reason we were kept captives by the Duke. He may have intended our friend here for his zoo.”

 “I aaam huuungry,” puffed a small voice from within. “Pleeeez foood.”

 “Do you have any meat?” asked Beedie, her voice concerned. “He hasn’t been fed for several days.” We gathered around the basket to peer within, seeing only a formlessness there, a roiling shininess.

 “How much do you want?” asked Chance.

 “A chunk, about head-sized.” She spoke into the basket. “Meat coming, Mercald-Mirthylon.” When Chance brought it to her, she lowered it into the basket and put the lid back on. “It will only be a minute.” Roges was busy with needle and thread and an old shirt of Peter’s, jouncing Bryan on one knee the while. “Not a pretty sight, watching them eat, so we don’t. I suppose, from their point of view, watching us eat could be mighty unaesthetic, too. I’d better warn you, don’t touch what’s in the basket. It will eat you as quickly as it will that meat, not intentionally but uncontrollably. That’s how it got the name of Mercald. Mercald was a friend of ours, a priest, and he thoughtlessly laid hands upon it.” Beedie nodded. “We call the race ‘the Stickies’. They are sticky on top and dissolve anything that touches them. In their native chasm land, they live on insects and plants and small fish which brush against them. Or larger things, if such are unwary. And if a Sticky eats something with a mind, then the mind becomes part of it, too. So, we have a creature here in this basket who has eaten two living men—one named Mirtylon many hundreds of years ago. One only twenty years ago or so, named Mercald.” She looked around at the circle of disbelieving faces.

 “Well, you shall hear for yourselves.” She removed the lid from the basket and turned it on its side. The moist shininess within rolled out onto the earth, settling itself into a thick disk, rounded upward at the centre, from which an ear and a small trumpet gradually extruded themselves.

 “How do you do.” It puffed. “I am gratified to meet you, Peter, Mavin’s son. (Puff.) I knew Mavin. She was very wise. Wiser (puff) than I.” There was then a strange, strangled sound, and after a time we realized the thing was laughing.

 “Jinian, you are very brave. (Puff.) I heard the sending screaming. Most frightening. (Puff.) Sylbie and the baby we knew already from the procession. (Puff.)” The trumpet collapsed into the general shininess, which quivered for a time before the vocal apparatus extruded itself once more.

 “I feel much stronger, thank you. (Puff.) I am happy to meet Chance and Queynt. (Puff.) Also the birds. I was a birder priest. Birds are (puff) messengers of the Boundless. (Puff, puff.)” Though I didn’t understand this at all, I translated it for the benefit of the krylobos and was rewarded by an incredulous hoot.

 “Well, perhaps they have not (puff) been taught of (puff) the Boundless.” The windy voice sounded sad.

 “Tell them about the discovery, Mer-Mir,” said Beedie. “You can talk about religion later.”

 “Yes. Ummm. While wandering deep in chasm (puff) found tunnel leading deep. (Puff.) Took others and formed expedition. (Puff.) Tunnel went very deep. Fires there. Pools of strange stuff. Silver. Thick. Very poisonous. One of us was dissolved (puff) in it. Near the pool were scattered blue crystals. Many.”

 “They brought a lot of them out to us,” said Roges, trying his handiwork on Bryan, who crowed delightedly. “How they got in and out of there, I’ll never know.”

 “Very difficult. Took much time. Effort. (Puff.) But we had touched the blue crystal. (Puff.) Once we had touched it, we had to bring it out. (Puff.) Touched it. Knew we had to. (Puff.)”

 “They touched it with themselves, absorbed some of it, and it turned out to be message crystal.” Beedie, striding about the clearing, swinging her arms, stretching.

 “Message crystal?” These words were like the ringing of an alarm bell. Everything inside me sat up to take notice of the world. “Message crystal?”

 “The things you call dream crystals, we call message crystals. In our land we have a necessary tool, the root saw. The teeth of the saw are made from jewel gravel, hard jewel gravel from the bottom lands, glued to a flexible band. The saw makers buy the gravel from traders, so much a weight, and among the real gems are often tiny pieces of message crystal. When we were brats, we would “borrow” the gravel from the saw makers so we could suck through it for message crystals. Unsanitary, as my Aunt Six would say, but you know how disgusting children are.”

 “What kind of messages?” I begged, sure that I already knew. “What did they say?”

 “Oh, pictures, mostly. Dim, dreamy things. The messages weren’t intended for us, you know. Now that I’ve been to the bottom lands, I can guess some of them were messages to the great bottom worms. Locations of vines to eat. New hot springs with special minerals to cure skin troubles. I found one crystal once that must have been intended for a bird, full of flying, strangeness, lands and valleys below, and a queer town with funny doors, wider at the top, and a lovely tall tower. It was a tiny crystal. It dissolved in a minute, but I’ve remembered it for years.”

 “The city you saw might have been Pfarb Durim,” I told them. “It has odd doors like that. Lots of places used to have doors like that. Gerabald Buttufor once found a flying crystal, too. He said it was full of great cities built on roots.”

 “Our cities are built on roots,” said Roges, amazed.

 “Think of that! Messages concerning your cities on our side of the world, and messages concerning our cities on yours. Well, it’s all one world, after all.”

 “Excuse me,” puffed the thing from the basket. “But we have to tell Mavin (puff) about it.”

 I said, “I don’t understand this necessity. Is there some astonishing message in the crystals?”

 “Astonishing?” Beedie thought about this. “No, Jinian. Not astonishing. The only astonishing thing is that we haven’t had this message before. You must see for yourself.” She burrowed deep into the small pack she carried, came up with what appeared to be a small, rough block of wood. “We couldn’t bring very many because of the weight. We got out of the chasm in a balloon made of flattree leaves, and weight was crucial. If we carried them openly, we were afraid they might be stolen. So, Roges made this.” She pressed the wood along one of its sides, sliding a thin slice away to reveal a cubby hidden inside, tipping it to drop something into my hands. A small, bright blue crystal.

 “Taste it.”

 I recoiled. I’m sure my face was flaming. “I ... I can’t.”

 “Let me,” said Queynt. “I’m already overdosed on the damn things it can’t hurt me worse than I already am.”

 “It won’t hurt you,” said Roges, shocked. “I’ve tasted it, and Beedie. All of our children. Almost everyone in the chasm by now, I imagine.”

 I didn’t object. He took the thing from my hands. I couldn’t watch him. In a moment, however, he gave it back to me and spoke in a puzzled voice.

 “I can’t taste anything, Jinian. It must be identical to the one the Shadowpeople gave me all those years ago. Why are you so nervous about it?”

 I tried to laugh. “Probably nothing. Nerves. The wraiths have put my skin on backward. Put it down to some personal quirk, Queynt.” I held the thing but did not taste it. “If you are agreed that it should be taken to Mavin, then take it. And if you believe it should be taken quickly, then take it quickly. If it will undo some of the evil those yellow crystals are causing, then do it, soon as may be.” I turned the blue crystal in my fingers, passed it from one hand to the other. I thought I knew without tasting it what the intent of it was.

 Queynt gave me one of his odd, concentrated looks. I stared him down, not letting him see how troubled I was. I could have been wrong. I wanted to think about it more. This time I couldn’t be breezy and quick. This time I wanted to crawl in a hole and think, and sleep, and think some more. I put the crystal in my pouch. Beedie had others. I might have need for this one.

 The baby, newly trousered, staggered toward Peter’s lap and almost fell into the fire in transit.

 Under cover of this confusion, I leaned near the strange being—very careful not to touch it—and asked, “Mercald-Mirtylon, in the cavern where the blue crystals were, was there any evidence of any living creature?”

 “(Puff.) Nothing there at all. Stickies were the first (puff) and probably only. Very hot. (Puff.) Not good for living things.”

 “Do you think the blue crystals had been there long?”

 “Very long. They were (puff) far from the white stuff. At the edges of the (puff) cavern. Only yellow crystals near the white stuff (Puff.) I think, very old.” I thanked the creature, remembering at the last minute not to pat it, which would have been my instinctive gesture of thanks with most beasties.

 The baby had been rescued, had gained Peter’s lap and plumped himself down there, chattering in sleepy infant talk which even my language Talent could not follow. Sylbie came to curl beside Peter and the child, inserting herself neatly under Peter’s arm so that he held her, perforce, without actually having reached for her. Still, he did not draw away.

 He looked up to catch my gaze, flushed in half guilt, then gave me an unrepentant stare as though to say, “Well, you won’t and she will, so gaze me no gazes, Jinian Footseer.”

 “We must sleep,” I said carefully, keeping my voice expressionless. “All of us need sleep.”

 As I moved about the clearing, preparing for the night, I stopped beside Queynt. His eyes were still red, and there was a great lump on his forehead, but he looked otherwise his own indomitable self.

 “These crystals the visitors believe are so important perhaps you have known their contents so long you have not really thought about them, Queynt? Perhaps you have not considered the implications—if, for example, everyone had had one.”

 He seemed surprised at this. “Well, yes, Jinian. That’s possible. In which case, someone new, someone like Mavin or Himaggery is needed to make a judgment. To consider, as you say, the implications.”

 I stared at him, willing him to pay utmost attention.

 “A bit farther down the hill, Queynt, there is a fork in the road. The southmost road leads down to Luxuri and thence to Bloome again. From there it is not far to the Great Road which comes north from Pfarb Durim. And on that road, the journey to the Bright Demesne should not take long—or no longer than any such journey will take. If you can get there, and if you can get Himaggery and Barish to quit calling meetings to discuss the hundred thousand, perhaps they would consider what the true meaning of the blue crystals may be. Perhaps Barish would do it for you?”

 “I can ask him,” he said.

 “It’s important enough to go, and quickly.”

 There was no point in further talk. No sense in worrying them with questions that could not yet be answered. We arranged ourselves for the night. To rest, if that were possible. Roges lay looking at the dark. Beedie close beside him. The creature was back in its basket. Peter had stretched himself out on a blanket by the fire, with the baby beside him, and Sylbie lay against Peter, half-curled around the baby.

 Peter slept, one arm across the child, the hand touching Sylbie’s breast, and she not moving away from this touch. I, wandering late, saw this. Well, where else would Sylbie sleep except beside the one among them she knew as a friend?

 I lay down away from the fire, able to see the flames as they undulated against the black of the forest yet unlit by them, lost in a pocket of darkness as in some secret closet, spying upon the outer world as through the keyhole of that closet, closed about with baffled jealousy coupled with the anxiety that my suspicions had aroused. If they were true, did it matter what Peter did?

 None of them saw. All the myriad clues were there in front of them, and none of them saw. Not even Queynt. Queynt, who should have seen long ago on the Shadowmarches, when he was given a blue crystal by a Shadowman and interviewed by the Eesties.

 Oh, yes, Queynt should have seen then. But he did not. Only I believed I saw, from this cavern of quiet darkness.

 And I could be wrong.

 But if I were right, could I do anything useful if I stayed here? Where Sylbie was and Peter’s child? I thought of the baby, opening each day with his bubble sounds, crowing like some cock-bird from his basket, pure joy unalloyed. Could I accept that, not grieve over it, and get on with what must be done? Even if I could accept it, what good could I do here? Could I think of staying only to stand between Peter and Sylbie and the child? Would Jinian take a parent’s love away from a child? Jinian, who knew well enough what it meant to be the victim of an abductor of love, a robber of faith? Should I do to another what Eller of Stoneflight had done to me?

 There was an easy way to do it. Jinian could go into these dark woods and gather the needful things: sixteen herbs and earths, and those easy to find, not scarce in any land, not difficult to locate even in the dark. A torch would be enough light. Her own senses would serve without any light at all. To make a love potion. To guarantee Peter loved Jinian, not Sylbie but Jinian, not the crowing child but Jinian. A simple thing, taking only from now until dawn. And then she could bring him his tea and sit by him looking into his face while he drank it...

 There was a pig that had loved me in the Forest of Chimmerdong, loved me well, unable not to love me. So would Peter be unable not to love me. And if I were a monster, he would love me still. And if I were Valearn, Ogress of Tarnost, still he would love me.

 And I, knowing that, would feel—what would I feel?

 If crystals could compel without blame, could not one small Wizard? And if what I feared was true, who would be alive to judge me for it? And if what I feared was true, what time would there be for any alternatives? And if what I feared was true, what point in refusing to taste the blue crystal and verify what I believed?

 Except that if I knew, I might be too terrified to act.

 But as long as there was doubt, however small, then action could take place.

 Exactly.

 Even if I did it totally alone, I had to do something.

 This was the lesson of Chimmerdong.

 So, not the sixteen herbs and earths. Not the liquor of love, the efficacious potion. Not love at all.

 And not a patient traveling with them, either, coming between them, becoming less myself with every passing hour as I sought to become whatever it was he loved, forgetting my oath, changing myself to the needs of love rather than being true to myself and doing what must be done. Not jealousy.

 And not the mere running off in a huff, to sulk in some distant place until the world was changed. Not anger. No. Not love, not jealousy, not anger. Duty instead. The lesson of Chimmerdong instead. I would need to depart, but depart to some purpose.

 I sneaked from my pocket of darkness to gather the things any traveler would need. Quiet as shadow I drifted into the forest, up along the hill, back toward Fangel. Morning would take me far enough from this place that they could not find me, even if they looked, which they would not. The need for them to move southward was too imminent, too persuasive.

 Pray Queynt understood this. A man as perceptive as he must understand it. Pray they did not delay.

 And I would do what I had to do. This was to find the Dream Miner and this companion, this Storm Grower, and see if they knew why the foul yellow crystals were being spread across the world. And, I reminded myself, learn why they wanted me dead.

 Behind me, a log broke among the flames, showering sparks, shattering into coals. An omen. Even the hottest fire would break and cool in time. It was a better hope than nothing. I moved into the night, pacing leagues back toward Fangel between myself and the sleepers.

 It was again near dawn the final sending came, high in the eastern sky, a pale gray blot white-fanged against the dark, the voice a howl of wind from between the stars. “Jinian,” and again, “Jinian.” So, whoever it was in Fangel had found me out, put two and two together to come up with six; put Jambal and Biddle and Chorm in a pot to pour out Jinian. Was it Huldra behind this sending? Or Dedrina Dreadeye? Or Bloster? Whichever, this one would not be put off with strawmen.

 There were defenses against sendings. Defense was a paltry game that waited upon others for its intentions. I was too tired and angry for defense. Therefore, let the forest beware!

 I left the trail, moving into the forest. Then.

 The amethyst crystal from my pouch. Set upon a stone. Then Music and Meadow to bring an innocent creature near, to wring its neck quickly so that it died without fear or pain. Unjust to use its blood so, and yet I could not use my own. Bright the Sun Burning set upon crystal and blood. Dream Chains to Bind It to hold an image there.

 “Oh, here I am, Sending,” I sang in the false light of predawn, dancing widdershins about the crystal on the stone, blood on the stone, song on the stone, herbs and twigs on the stone. “Here am I, Sending, deep in amethyst halls, deep in crystal silences, within, hidden within.

 “A twig of red rowan, a sprig of midnight tree, a leaf of web willow, shall summon you to me. Come, Sending, to find Jinian where her blood leads you. Come, Sending, and feast where your hunger waits.”

 “Jinian,” the sending called, spiraling down from the empty sky. “Jinian,” in a husky, hungering voice which raised bumps on the skin as a cold wind might. “Blood,” it called, rejoicing. “Blood.” Down to hover above the stone. It did not see as others saw, did not perceive as others perceived. It was both sent and summoned, and the blood led into another place. Into which it went, all at once, like a wisp of smoke drawn into a chimney, and then Jinian gathered the last of her strength to do Dream Chains once more, quickly, holding the wraith where it was, within the crystal, where it could not get out.

 And when it was done, she fell on the earth like a felled sapling, unconscious, limp, all strength gone and drained away, the place cold as a glacier around her. She, not I, for I was far away already, lost in some inner maze without any way out. On the stone the amethyst crystal burned, trembling. Around her, me, the dark changed slowly to day.

 CHAPTER EIGHT

 I was awakened by something, then lay for a long time on the cold earth wondering if me and I and whoever had reassembled themselves to be a person again. Where that person might be was another question which took some time to settle. I was near the trail that led from Fangel, hidden from it by a slope and a line of trees, and there were voices coming from the trail. I had lain there for about a day.

 I felt fairly weak, without much will or ambition, but otherwise normal. Beside me on the stone the amethyst crystal rocked as though inhabited—which it was in a sense— and I put it in my pouch rather unwillingly before crawling into the trees to see who came forth from the city into the dusk.

 It was the Duke of Betand, traveling from Fangel with far less panoply than when he had entered. His allies and the Dream Merchant traveled with him, escorted only by Porvius Bloster and a few Armigers and Tragamors, men evidently not corrupted by the crystals, for they went in alert watchfulness as outriders of the small procession. Huldra and Valearn had left their high-wheeled carts; Dedrina, her huge crocodile.

 They, like the Merchant and the Duke, were mounted on stocky ponies and wore sensible traveling garments. The air of menace that accompanied them was as great as when they had entered the city, however, and it brought me alert among the underbrush, suddenly threatened and vigilant.

 There was Valearn, the Ogress. All the fears aroused by nursery tales were made immediately manifest, swarming in the shadows, wakened more by this one danger than by the presence of others, equally perilous. In her lands of the High Demesne in the south she had walked the woods alone, garbed in ragged robes with the staff of an old mendicant, seizing children who wandered by themselves, leaving their bones half-gnawed for the were-owls to finish. She had not troubled adults, only children.

 Them she had sought relentlessly, the child from the cot by the window, the babe from the blanket by the fire, the toddler snatched from a mother’s arms. But, only children. Only children. I told myself this, more than once, assuring Jinian the child that she was too deeply buried in Jinian the Wize-ard for Valearn to find her, ever. Jinian the child was not so deeply buried inside me that she did not doubt this. We all doubted it together.

 I waited until the troop had moved almost out of sight, then laid a hiding spell, Egg in the Hollow, that I might not be seen by them, that I might most assuredly not be seen by Valearn. It was all very well to assure oneself that the child one had been was outgrown. Such children had a habit of coming back at odd moments, moments that might prove unpropitious indeed.

 I did not think of Sylbie’s baby, and Peter’s. Sylbie and the baby should have been far on the southern road by then; why think of them in connection with Valearn?

 The rest of the night was spent in scrambling down long dark roads the way I had come twice in recent days. A drift of krylobos feathers beneath a tree, a scatter of straw, confirmed the location. Here the sendings had come.

 The allies were not so far ahead I couldn’t hear them talking. “Clever,” drawled Huldra, seeing these telltale signs by torchlight. “Clever little bitch. She sent my creatures back to me full of straw and quills, them that cost good blood to send, back with nothing but trash in them. Save one which came back not at all.”

 “You think it’s that Jinian?” Bloster, sounding as bedraggled as he looked. “The one the Backless Throne wanted killed, the one who destroyed Daggerhawk Demesne?”

 “You don’t know that she destroyed Daggerhawk,” said Dedrina Dreadeye. “The Seers have not verified it.”

 “I know it,” he said obstinately. “Even if the Seers said she had not, I would know it.”

 “What ith thith girl? Thome great Afrit full of mighty powerth? Thome twinned Talent or other?” The Merchant did not sound really interested.

 “She’s the cause of my losing my captive,” snarled the Duke, trying to ease himself in the saddle. “You may lay money on that.” He was too fat to ride in comfort; he and the pony suffered equally upon the road.

 “And why doeth the Backleth Throne take an interetht in her?” the Merchant asked.

 “I was never told,” said Porvius, aggrieved. “Only that the Throne wanted her dead. As do I. I had her in my hands, like an egg between my fists. I was only concerned with her brother then; him I hated. But if I’d killed her when I had the chance, we’d not be homeless, traveling on the charity of our friends.”

 “Scarcely charity,” hissed Dedrina. “We pay good coin for our keep, brother. Cease your whining. If you have energy to spare, remember you are a Tragamor and spend it smoothing this road. It is unpleasant to travel full of bumps as it is.”

 “Talents don’t work well this far north,” he said, in the petulant tone of a child. “I have not the strength even to Move gravel.” Oh, how far Porvius had fallen, into this meekness, this whining infancy.

 “Keep silent, then, lest you waste what little power you have!” They rode on, becoming less loquacious as the hours passed. Near dawn they paused; and I was ready enough that they do so. I was wearier than the distance would explain. Following, keeping quiet, finding the trail in the dark, worrying that I might be about to step into shadows, all had been an exhausting effort. The fact that I did not step into shadows, that none of us did, should have told me something. I was preoccupied with other thoughts, however, and did not learn from what was not there.

 We had come to a small village. The Merchant called it Bleem. While the guards were left to camp in the forest as best they might, preparations had been made for the others to spend the night under roof. Someone’s house had been vacated and made ready for the group with a supper laid upon the table and the beds prepared with fresh straw. So much I learned from the lean-to at the back, where an old wagon lay half against the warm chimney, making a nest for me to supper in. I could hear them through the wall.

 Moreover, I could see out the open end of the shed well enough to observe the comings and goings of the people there. There was no rejoicing among them, certainly. I had seldom seen such a whipped-fustigar crew, their jaws dragging halfway to their bellies and more of the women crying into their neckerchiefs than not. I still had the hiding spell on me, so I left the cozy nest and went among them.

 Curiosity, I suppose. There was something about them that teased at me.

 There were two men standing at the well, one a fairly well-set-up middle-aged fellow, the other slightly older. He was lecturing the younger man, beating his fist upon the well coping, tears running down his face like a river.

 “I say we can’t go on, Dolcher. We can’t. You know that. First it was just a few zeller off to Morp. Then it was a few zeller plus a few old people. Now it’s all the oldsters and most of the zeller and half our children. By all the old gods, they’ll have your son next. This time it’s my Zenina they’ve chosen to take, and your boy was to wed her this season. Next time him. The time after that, what? There’s none of us left...”

 “Servants,” whispered the other man. “They want our young ones for servants, that’s all. When they’ve served a few years, they’ll be home again.” His gray face belied this.

 “Man, are you blind? Why take our oldsters if they want servants? They took Granny Zeeble, and she so trembly the children had been calling her Feeble Zeeble for ten years. They took your own father, who hadn’t walked a step without two canes for seven seasons. Hush. Here’s the wife.”

 A woman approached them, one of the weeping ones. “You can’t let her go, Vorge. You can’t let Zenina go. The time’s come to say no. We’ve given enough.”

 “Well, well,” the younger man said, patting her clumsily on the shoulder. “That’s what we’ve said to them at Morp, Lina. We sent that message only yesterday.”

 “But he’s here. The Dream Merchant. They say he’s their son. Talk to him. Beg him. Make him understand.”

 “Now, Lina. We’ve sent the message already. I wouldn’t want to get them upset.”

 “If you won’t, I will.”

 The man called Vorge shook his head, wrung his hands. “It would be better if you did, Dolcher. You’re village chief. It would be more natural.” The old man shook his head. “We’ve got to do something.”

 Two of them went away. Dolcher stood at the well, one hand dragging into a bucket of water, lifting it to drip the water into the well, listening to the slow plop, plop. I examined his face; hopeless. Something was tugging at my memory about Morp. I’d heard the name somewhere.

 I wandered through the village. There were empty houses, small places falling to ruin, empty stables. Of all the people left in the place, Vorge was about the oldest. So, the oldsters had been sent—where? And if not as servants, as what? Around the village stretched the small fields; between the houses were the gardens.

 Ill tended. As though the people could not spare attention for them. It had the look of a settlement upon its last breath.

 Dolcher still stood at the well. At last he shook his head and went to the house occupied by the Merchant and his group. I slipped back into the lean-to, my ear against the wall.

 “Well, fellow, what do you want?”

 “May I speak to you, Your Reverence?”

 “Thpeak. You are thpeaking. Tho thpeak.”

 “Your Reverence, they’ve come from Morp, from the Backless Throne again. They want our young people, sir.”

 “Tho?”

 “We can’t send our young people, sir. They’re needed for the crops. For raising the zeller. The Throne wants the zeller, too.”

 “Let me underthtand thith. You are refuthing to do the Throne’th will?” Silence. I could visualize what was going on. Groveling. Fumbling for words.

 “No, sir. Not the Throne, sir. Just Morp. Morp isn’t the Throne, and they don’t understand ...”

 “I hope you have not thaid thith to anyone!”

 “We did send a message, sir.”

 “Fool. Then why are you thtanding here? Get under your roof. Pray you do not all die.” The door slammed. I slipped out to watch Dolcher staggering away from that door, reeling from sorrow and apprehension. Over his head I could see the sky, boiling. It had an unhealthy look. Suddenly I remembered what I had heard about Morp. A charnel town. A town of butchers. Through the wall came exclamations from the group there.

 “The idiot hath refuthed the Throne. Yethterday he did it. Morp will have complained to the Throne. Thtorm will come. We will be fortunate to ethcape with our liveth.”

 Back outside I went. Yes, storm boiled over the western horizon. Black cloud, drooping at the bottom like great pustulent udders. High-piled, running toward us with the inexorable flow of lava. I got myself back into the lean-to and under the wagon just as the first drops of rain hit.

 It was a punishing storm. First rain and wind, tearing at the structures of the place, removing roofs and shutters, sending them flying like pennants into the east. Then hail, piercing what the rain had left.

 Then greater wind. And with it all, a screaming sound of fury. Time and another time, dark as night. Howling rage. The roof of the lean-to went, but I remained half-dry beneath the wagon. I had anchored it as best I could with stakes driven in during the first roaring moments.

 I lay flat, empty, the storm driving out all thought.

 There was no village. There was no life. Only this horror of falling water, this terror of screaming wind.

 One might as well die. I knew they were dead, I was dead. No point in being alive in this.

 And then, after a forever time had passed, it was over. They had given the best house in the place to the Merchant, and now it stood alone. From inside it I could hear snoring. The Merchant and his guests were asleep. Among the sodden ruins the people of Bleem struggled into the light. There were no fields left, no gardens left. I went out into the woods, took away the hiding spell, and came into the village from the other side. Dolcher was there, standing dazed in the midst of the ruin, staring with empty eyes at the punishing sky.

 “Dolcher,” I said. He had been deafened. It was hard to make him aware of me. “Dolcher. Listen to me. Take all your people, now. Right now. What little they can carry, nothing else. No wagons. Nothing else. Go. Go that way, back toward Fangel, around the city, not through it, and then south. You hear me?”

 “Who are you?” He looked at me, not really seeing me. “Who are you?”

 “It does not matter who I am. I am here with a message for you, to help you. Storm Grower will kill you all. You cannot pacify Storm Grower. Only when you are all dead will she rest. So, you must leave here. Go quickly. Go far. Find caves to protect you from hail. Forests to protect you from sight. Go. And go before those in the house waken.” I used every persuasive trick of voice I could manage, setting several small compliance spells on him meantime.

 Not enough to draw interest, just little ones. When I went back toward the lean-to, he was in motion, staggering, bleeding, crying, but in motion.

 It did not take them long. The longest time was spent simply in getting their attention. Once they understood, they moved quickly, as quickly as people can who are half-drowned and totally beaten. There were some dead. They laid them out in one of the wrecked houses and set fire to it. It bled smoke into the sky, smoldering. Then they went as I had suggested. Back toward Fangel, a sad, straggling procession. The last of them wended over the hill out of sight sometime before the Merchant woke.

 He came to the door, opened it, stared out into the shambles. I had restored the hiding spell and was sitting on the well coping. He did not see me.

 “Hey,” he shouted. “We will have our breakfatht now!” Needless to say, there was no response. He cursed for a time, which woke the others, and they came out of the place together.

 “Storm Grower?” asked Betand. “Did she not know we were here?”

 “I doubt they thought of it,” sulked the Merchant. “We will find no thuthtenance here. Let uth depart.”

 “What was all this about?”

 “The people objected to the levy from Morp. It ith Morp which provideth provender for Thtorm Grower and Dream Miner.” Provender was one way of putting it.

 Huldra came into the light, blinking, snarling.

 “How much farther? You have been to That Place before, Betand. How much farther is it?”

 “I haven’t been there,” he said in astonishment. “What made you think I had? No. I have been near there once or twice. The Merchant knows. He has been there.”

 “I don’t know,” the Merchant said. “I have been there many timeth, but each time there hath been a guide.”

 “Then how do we know where we are going?”

 “There will be a guide thith time ath well.” My ears pricked at this. What kind of creature could serve as guide to the Dream Miner? Premonition stirred, and the Dagger of Daggerhawk burned with sullen fire, as though it had ears of its own. I tried to ease it on my thigh and bit back a curse. I was wearing loose trousers with tight cuffs, almost a pantaloon, a very sensible garment for this kind of scrambling travel, but there was no slit in the pocket through which the Dagger could be reached. There was no time to remedy the situation. They were going off into the forest to find their guards.

 The Tragamors had Moved themselves a cave large enough to protect them from the storm. They were unharmed, perhaps even slightly amused to have had a better night than those they guarded. This was my own conjecture, from the few words I overheard as we went downward in the early light, the horses’ hooves making soft plopping noises in the dust of the narrow trail, the troop almost silent except for occasional exclamations when low-hanging branches buffeted them. The voice that greeted them startled them all, and me as well, though I realized I’d been half expecting it. My old friend the Oracle. I sneaked forward through the underbrush to get a clearer view of it. Somehow I had known it would be the Oracle.

 It stood half-concealed behind a leafy branch, only its painted face and one hand clearly visible. “Oh, my, isn’t this a fine array of Talent and perspicacity to bring before the Backless Throne. How marvelous Dream Miner will find you all, how intrigued the Storm Grower will be. I have waited for you for simply days.”

 “Nonsense,” grated Huldra. “We are here on the day appointed.”

 “One anticipates so! One cannot wait!” In this sober light of early day, I was struck by the artificiality of the creature, by a certain surreal quality. I had been too ill in Chimmerdong to notice much, but I wondered at myself for not having seen this. It still wore the hooded robe of straps, bright-colored ribbons that moved and swayed, hiding its form. It turned its face away as it spoke, and I strained eyes to see it. Had its mouth moved when it spoke?

 The question went unanswered as the Oracle swept away in a flurry of ribbons. It went through the trees, appearing now and then upon the trail, the ponies following from point to point. Within a few turns it led them aside from the main trail into a twisting path. Patches of shatter-grass and startle-flower grew across it, growing evidence it was seldom used.

 “Do you bring us to the Throne by some servants entry?” the Duke demanded. “Is this the honor done the Duke of Betand?”

 “Oh, Duke, my love, be not offended. There are only three entries to the Backless Throne! One from the center of the Great Maze, and we have not the time to take that path. One from the charnel houses outside Morp, where provender for the Great Ones is prepared, and we have not the stomach for that one. And this one. Of the three”—the Oracle giggled in a shrill mockery of amusement—”this is the safest.” Morp? Again Morp. I thought the people of Bleem had done well to escape when they had. I doubted their young had been useful as servants. Morp had an evil reputation. There was an entrance there. So. And another entry from the center of the Great Maze. I made a mental note, hanging back at a turn of the narrow path, waiting for them to get farther ahead.

 The way ended at a tunnel mouth, a gaping hole between two tumbled pillars that once had been carved in the likeness of some great beast. I identified claws, horns, a vast bell-shaped ear. Obviously this route had been more used in ancient times, and I wondered why it had fallen into such neglect, but this question, like others, had no time for consideration. The Oracle had plunged into the darkness.

 “Leave the guards to guarding, good friends. Come along! We are no doubt eagerly awaited!” Well, I had half anticipated some such problem when the hiding spell was set; now I reinforced it, binding it more closely about me. When I drifted from the trees and among the surly Tragamors and Armigers, they noticed me no more than they did the wind. Though I had taken little enough time, the others were far ahead, down distant turnings of the tunnel way.

 Since that time I have often pondered over my heedlessness. I think it was the label set upon Huldra that did it. She was a Witch. Wize-ards had nothing to fear from Witches. They were a minor Talent, no more, and nothing to worry us. Never mind that sendings had come from her; never mind that Queynt had taken the trouble to point out she had more than mere Witch’s Talent to her; still I thought of her as a Witch. This is the trouble with too much Schooling. One learns to manipulate the labels in a way that the Gamesmistresses approve, and one doesn’t realize that things do not always act in accordance with the labels in the real world. One doesn’t realize that the labels, come to that, are often wrong.

 Be that as it may, and even though I knew better, I had taken no steps beyond a simple hiding spell; there are a dozen forms of Egg in the Hollow, and I had used the easiest—to protect myself. It worked well enough against the guards, and I didn’t think beyond that. Ahead of me were the ones I followed, and that is all I was thinking about.

 Fortunately, there were no side ways, no mazes to confuse. One way, one way only, the dust of the tunnel clearly marked by their footprints. I sped after them, risking a wize-art light from fingertips to show the way. I heard their voices, extinguished the light, slowed to their pace. Now they were dawdling, moving without haste.

 “Is this the way guests of the Throne are greeted?” Huldra, more than merely annoyed. Sharply irritated; perhaps suspicious. “Hauled through dusty tunnels, league on league?”

 “Oh, lovely one, why say guests’? Are there guests honored in the great audience hall? Do plenipotentiaries arrive with their steeds all caparisoned, bringing gifts from potentates afar? Guests? Did you imagine you were asked as guests?”

 “What then?” Dedrina, stopping dead at the center of the tunnel. “If not guests, what?”

 “You should not imagine these are my words, dear friends, not my language at all, who am the perfect fount of diplomacy—but if asked—as indeed I have been — I would wager the word used by Storm Grower would be “lackey”. Dream Miner might say more than that, though both grow laconic with the passing centuries. Still, “lackey” will do.”

 “Lackey!” The Duke spat. “I have long been a faithful friend of the Backless Throne!”

 “You have long”—smiled the Oracle—”been a well paid puppet. Ath hath the Merchant here,” in bitter mockery of the Merchant’s lisp. “Come now. It is not wise to linger. Should Storm Grower grow impatient, we all know what consequence might follow.” This was sobering. For the first time, I began to worry. I had assumed what the Duke had assumed: he and his party were guests and would be treated with some degree of courtesy. If they were at risk, then so was I.

 They wound deeper under the earth, down twisting ways. Above us, I later learned, the Great Maze stretched its illimitable hedges; around us worm holes opened into the tunnel, admitting odors of swamp and jungle, hill and moor. They had walked half a day away with me scurrying in their wake when I began to hear the sound, the susurrus of the sea, the ebb and flow of waves upon a shore.

 Waves.

 Not quite. Not quite that ebb and flow. Two rhythms, rather, running almost counter to one another. One slightly slower. And with the sound the movement of air, laden with that same sweetish-foul stench we had smelled too often upon the road.

 Dead things. Decaying things.

 Huldra made some expression of disgust. The Merchant said something to her that made me shudder, something to the effect that it would be wisest not to notice the smell of anything she might soon see. They had fallen silent, so I slowed my pace, peering carefully around each corner before sliding around it into the next stretch of rocky corridor. Still that wave sound. The stench stronger. Still those ahead moving in the wake of the Oracle, now taking no notice of either smell or sound.

 They came to an open area, perhaps two manheights from floor to roof, that roof supported by several dozen great, rough-hewn pillars, irregularly set, much as though the diggers had left a pillar whenever they felt like it rather than by any plan.

 Beyond this hall of pillars was a much larger space.

 There was light there, though not much, and the sound of vast emptiness swallowing up the footsteps of the troop. They moved to the left among the pillars, and I to the right, keeping a pillar between myself and them. By this time the sound was enormous, great heavings of air which I felt gust past me in first one direction, then another.

 The hall of pillars ended in a gallery, a wide shelf curving high around one side of the greater space. A low parapet of stones set in mortar edged it. The others were looking over this parapet at whatever was below. At one point the parapet was broken as though something had struck it; the stones were tumbled inward upon the shelf. It was here I stretched myself, hidden from the others both by my spell and by the stones, looking out into the cavern.

 It was lit from above by a few worm holes piercing the stone. Dust swam in these beams of light, fugitive shining specks to speak of the day. At the center of the cavern a great pile hid the opposite wall, a monstrous, fantastic pile, twisted into organic forms; prodigious legs, monstrous warty arms, folded stone almost like gigantic faces; great jutting plinths of nose above twisted strata of lips. Wrinkled runnels of water-deposited stone above seemed to form gigantic cheeks and eyelids.

 Which opened.

 I was clinging for support to a block of stone while an enormous eye peered into my own. It did not blink or change expression. Only gradually, as my heart slowed, did I realize it didn’t see me.

 The others were at a point far to my left, somewhat around the curve. I could see them easily. The Merchant stood at the center of the group, his long face as impassive as the stones. On one hand were Valearn and Dedrina. Porvius stood somewhat behind them, his face down. The Oracle was some little distance from them, waving and bowing as it made introductions.

 “Dream Miner. Honored sir. Storm Grower. Monstrous madam. I bring you once again your servant, Dream Merchant of Fangel. Also, those you have summoned. Betand. Valearn. Huldra. Dedrina. Fop, cannibal, crone, and lizard. An assortment, madam and sir.” The huge stone lips writhed, revealing themselves as flesh capable of great, slow words, like rocks rolling together in avalanche. “If you say “cannibal” as a term of derision, Oracle, you would be wise to say rather less. Some of us eat what we will. So far as we are concerned, Valearn may eat what she likes.”

 “Come a little closer!” Another voice, one seeming to come from the opposite wall, enormously booming, higher in pitch. Hearing it, all those present squirmed, feeling the words as an assault. I saw them bend a little, twisting, trying to shed those words.

 “Come a little closer so I can see.” The voice was full of wind, horrid and cold. “Only a little closer.”

 “Careful,” said the Oracle, laughing. “I would not recommend that any of you leave this gallery. If you come within reach of the mighty madam or the honored sir, they may eat you. They cannot help it, poor dears. They are always hungry.” They moved down the gallery, however. I didn’t need to follow them. I could see the source of the other voice well enough from where I was, though it had its horrific head turned away from me. It was another giant, seated behind the first and faced in the opposite direction, a female, perhaps, though what I could see of the huge face had no delicacy to it and was as obdurate as the first. If they had been standing, they would have been ten manheights tall. They were about seven manheights tall, seated as they were back to back upon a colossal pillar.

 “The Backless Throne,” I said, surprised into uttering it half-aloud.

 Across the cavern on the gallery the Oracle turned in my direction. It had heard me! Through all that ebb and surge of mighty breathing, it had heard me. I lay quiet, not moving so much as an eyelid, letting the surge of air wash to and fro. With all the echoes in this chamber, it could not be sure. So I told myself.

 So I assured myself, sweating, swallowing, trying to get my heart back where it belonged. After a time, it turned back to the others, ribbons quivering as though in laughter, poised in its eternal mockery.

 I slipped back into the hall of pillars and worked my way toward them, pillar by pillar, keeping stone between. The damned Oracle might see through my spells. I thought it might see whatever it pleased, quite frankly—but it was not likely to see through stone.

 “Storm Grower, mighty madam, may I present your servants.” The Oracle bowed, gesturing to all those on the gallery. “Your most obedient servants.”

 “By all the gods,” said Huldra, amazed. “What are you?”

 “Oh, do not be offensive,” said the Oracle. “Giant madam may be most annoyed.”

 “I am not offended,” said Storm Grower in that voice of horrible wind. Her left arm came up, slowly, like a tree rearing skyward, bent, straightened, its skin like a lava flow, cracked deep, soiled with the dirt of centuries, its huge fingers like scaly pillars with nails twisted and ragged, slowly, slowly, then snapping toward the parapet with lightning motion, missing the parapet by less than an arm’s length so that Huldra stumbled back with a screaming curse, tripping over Bloster and falling full length upon the stones.

 Laughter then, monstrous laughter, as though volcanoes amused themselves. The left hand did not fall but stayed where it was, twisting and twisting as though to wring a neck. “I am always glad to educate lesser creatures. I am a giantess, sweet Huldra. Born with my brother many centuries ago in the monster labs of the humans. Reared there for a long, long time. Fled from there by my own courage and resourcefulness ...”

 “And mine,” rumbled Dream Miner. “You were not alone.”

 “Never alone.” The other laughed, shifting to display the obscene flaps of filthy flesh that bound them together, shoulder to shoulder, rib to rib, buttock to buttock. “No, never alone.”

 “Grown to great size and power over the centuries,” thundered Dream Miner. “Grown to a size and power capable of revenge.”

 “Handicapped somewhat in that their great size prohibits mobility,” chanted the Oracle. “Otherwise, most puissant, most powerful.”

 Storm Grower twisted her fingers once again, and a lightning bolt nicked from the air to the gallery where the Oracle stood, missing it by a finger’s width.

 “Subside, beribboned jester, painted riddler. You are useful, but you try our patience.”

 “Try our patience,” agreed Dream Miner. “Take those with you elsewhere for a time. We will tell them of our will later. Now we have other matters to see to. Besides, I am hungry.”

 The Oracle led them away. There were a number of lighted tunnel openings from the gallery, and into one of these the troop went, shuffling, seeming both fearful and angry. There was no point in following them. They would be returning. There was a narrow crevice to one side of the hall of pillars, one about my size. I decided to explore it, finding that it climbed upward and outward toward the cavern and it had a window in it, a place where the stone had broken.

 From this vantage point, I could look over the parapet and down into the cavern. I could see Dream Miner’s feet—not a sight to inspire confidence or good appetite—and a part of the floor of the cavern.

 To either side, right and left of the giants, low, long archways curved like bows led off into the darkness.

 From the archway at Dream Miner’s right, several dozen long poles protruded into the cavern, their nether ends hidden in the darkness.

 Dream Miner reached for one of these. His monstrous arm descended toward the rocky floor; the flesh between the two giants stretched, revealing its leprous, mottled surface, full of crusty sores and small, scurrying vermin; his hand grasped the pole and dragged it forth. Its end was burdened with the body of some large food beast, perhaps a giant zeller.

 This spitted beast was thrust into the giant’s mouth and half bitten from the pole, the pole withdrawn like the stem of some obscene fruit. It made two mouthfuls for Dream Miner, two huge, bloody mouthfuls gulped down with much gnashing and masticating.

 I put my face into the stone, unable to watch it.

 Until this moment I had not seen his monstrous nakedness. He was so stonelike, so monumental, that one did not think of it as flesh. The act of eating, however, with all its gustatory noises, the stinking belch that filled the cavern, the rubbing of the behemothian stomach—all this, all at once, horrifying and sickening both.

 Worse was to come.

 “Pass me one,” blared Storm Grower. “Pass me one as well.”

 “You don’t need it,” he bellowed. “You live off my gut as well as me.”

 “We live off our gut, monster. I have a tongue to taste food as well. Pass me one.”

 “Get your own, Cloud Teaser.” He set himself, grunting, not giving way as the flesh between them stretched. A lightning bolt flicked him on the ear and he bellowed, jerking upright. Storm Grower took advantage of this to pull out a pole of her own, this one decked with the body of a man. I stuffed my hand into my mouth to keep from crying out, for the body was not dead.

 “Not fresh,” she complained in her giant’s rumble. Stones quivered from the roof far above, and a sprinkling of dust fell upon them. “Not fresh enough.”

 “Keep your voice down, idiot. You’ll have us buried alive. And what do you mean, not fresh? I saw it squirm.”

 “Barely. Been there too long. Mostly dead. I like ‘em lively, Miner. Lively. So they tickle on the way down.”

 “I’ll tickle you if you don’t keep your voice down. You’re bringing rock on our heads.”

 “Time this cavern was opened to the sky, brother. Time to get the moles in again.”

 “Time enough for that when we’ve done with our plans for mankind, sister. Soon, now. Call the creatures back. Time to dispose of them. And keep your voice down.” Still the caverns quivered at her call, a vasty bellowing as though some cataract rumbled far beneath them, summoning the Oracle’s return. When it came, it brought the Merchant with it, but only him, to stand as they had before at the gallery edge.

 “Well, my son,” bellowed Storm Grower. “Have you done our will?”

 “I put the powdered crythtalth in their wine at the rethepthion, if thatth what you mean.”

 “All of them? Huldra? Valearn?”

 “All of them. They didn’t know it wath there. They thtill don’t. Tho far ath they know, they follow you of their own free will. Jutht ath I do.”

 “Ah. Well and good, my boy. Well and good.”

 “Tho, now I’ve done it, I want you to tell me.”

 “Tell our great boy what? What would he like to know?”

 “When I’m going to grow. When will it be? I am no bigger than ten yearth ago.”

 “Ah, well, when do you think it will be, Miner? When was it we began to grow?”

 “Not much for the first hundred years. We were no bigger than he when we escaped. After that, sometime. And mostly in the last hundred. You’ll be mobile a while yet.”

 “I want to grow.”

 “What’s this? The power you have in Fangel isn’t enough for you?”

 “I want to grow. I want to bring down the thky, ath you do. You have no idea what impertinenth I mutht put up with. They do not fear me ath they ought.”

 “Tush, my boy. Nothing. Mere nothing. You have your city, your servants, your hunters. You have your warehouses full of creatures ready to come out and do your bidding when we empty the world of men! You have your army laid away for the coming day. You have a city full to come out and play at the sound of your gong. What more would a boy want? Ah?” And the monstrous face broke in a cavity of laughter, laughter that did bring rocks down upon their heads and made the Merchant dance back into the tunnels to escape being crushed. I was safe enough where I was, wondering if this madman was truly their son and, if so, how such a monstrous thing might have been accomplished.

 “Enough,” snarled Storm Grower at last. “Be on your way out, my boy. Wait for the others at the entrance, they’ll not be long. We have one or two small items of business.”

 The Oracle led him away, very silently for the Oracle, usually so full of quips and speeches. For a time the cavern was full of breathing noises, then the Oracle returned with the others. All of them.

 “We have summoned you for a reason,” said Dream Miner in an insinuating whisper. “The time has come for one of our most-hoped-for projects to reach fruition. We must depend upon you for the next stage, but we know we can do so, for the rewards are great.”

 “Let us talk of those rewards,” drawled the Duke. He was standing well back from the parapet, well out of reach. “They have not been inconsiderable in the past, but let us talk of them further.”

 “Ahhh,” hissed Storm Grower. “Let us rather talk of punishments when our will is not done, for those are severe. I was limited in my range at one time, Betand. At one time I could bring storm only upon those places near to me. Then I began to grow, greater and more great. Over eighty years ago I began to reach out, and out, beyond this very world. It was I who tumbled a moonlet from the sky onto the Wastes of Bleer, I who wrecked Dindindaroo and all the lands between, foiling the works of Wizards and men. I am no longer limited in any way. As the disobedient people of Morp have found to their dismay. And those of Thorpe and Woeful. So will those of Betand, or of the High Demesne.”

 “Tsk,” said the Oracle. “We need not speak of punishments, lady. These good people are eager to help you.”

 “Hear us, then. In our caves here we have prepared a new crop of crystals. They are of a lovely amethyst color. Those who take them will be our slaves. They will find their way here, eager to do our will. It is our desire that they be widespread among the lands of the south. There are Demesnes there which we need to have under our sway. You will be our agents in this matter.”

 “Where do you want them distributed?” The Duke, sulky, not liking this. His notion of the fitness of things was suffering. Punishments were not a proper thing to have discussed. Still, for some reason, he did not seem inclined to rebellion. I thought I understood this. They sought their own advancement through following the giants and were as much the lackeys of these great beings as the Oracle had said.

 Storm Grower was continuing. “Firstly in the Bright Demesne, to a Wizard called Himaggery and one called Barish. I have ended their works before, but they have had the luck of man and may yet bring something from it. They are contentious. Ambitious. So far, all they do is meet and plan and devise processes while time spins away, and it is likely they will not need my crystals to spoil their future. They may do it for themselves. Still, why should we risk, eh? Give one also to a Shifter there called Mavin. And in Schooltown to Mavin’s brother, King Mertyn. Those first. Those most importantly. They are engaged in a project we do not wish to see fulfilled. They would raise the hundred thousand frozen Gamesmen, the great Gamesmen, those who lie in the ice caverns near the place we were born. We do not wish those great Gamesmen raised. Let them lie, let them lie, until time spins out and the world cools. Let no man come near that place.

 “Thus, when you have given crystals as well to all in Schooltown and the Bright Demesne and to those in Xammer, and Dragon’s Fire, and the other Demesnes in that land, and particularly among the Immutables—they are governed by a man called Riddle. Him first, then all others, being sure to include a man named Quench—I say when this is done, then go to the caverns I have spoken of, destroy those who sleep there, and guard the place until we tell you a guard is needed no more.”

 “We are your willing servants,” said the Duke.

 “You are what you are, Betand. And what you are is not quite good enough. Do not fear. You will enjoy being our servant. Enjoyment is built in.” Dream Miner laughed, a hugely hideous laugh that shook the rock walls, causing me to tremble to the floor and lie there curled against the wall, hoping it would not fall. “This, however, is a negotiable point. If you can do us a small service we have previously mentioned, you will earn your freedom of the crystals.”

 “Any service is too small to convey our gratitude,” Huldra, bowing, smirking. “The Oracle has told us what is needed. We will be glad to comply.”

 “We won’t discuss it here,” snapped Storm Grower.

 “What we may discuss is the yellow crystals.” I got up from the floor, pricked my ears, and listened. Yes, yes, the yellow crystals.

 “They must be stopped!”

 “Stopped! I thought they were yours?” The Duke, much surprised. “I thought you had dug them.” The cavern rumbled as the giants shifted upon the Backless Throne. Discomfort there, so I thought, some vast distress. What was it?

 Dream Miner, rumbling like a forest fire. “We have dug no crystals for fifty years. Until then there were many we could use, many we could change to suit ourselves. Our moles dug them in the deep mines and brought them here.” He gestured to the low arch at his left. “And here we changed them, corrupted them. We would look into the crystals to see what message they carried, and then we would corrupt that message. It is easy. Easy when one knows how. As we knew how.” Storm Grower, flicking tiny bolts of lightning around the cavern, playing, fitful gusts of wind teasing at the garments of those on the gallery. “As we knew how. Some we used to corrupt Pfarb Durim, ancient city of your kin, Oracle. And Hell’s Maw, which lay at its feet. And those who dwelt there. Some we used to move Huld—this should interest you, Huldra—into bringing forth the great army of bones upon the Wastes. He would not have done it had we not moved him. That was a favourite project of ours.”

 “He failed,” Huldra said, her voice dead. “He died there.”

 “He failed because someone opposed us. Some deep dweller brought forth by a girl, a creature called Jinian. A girl we were warned about in advance by our Seers. The girl you were supposed to have disposed of for us, Basilisk.”

 Dedrina Dreadeye looked coldly into the giant’s eyes. “We attempted to do so. I sent my own daughter to take care of it.”

 “It was not taken care of. You, Bloster, hiding there behind your sister. You had her in your hands.”

 “That was before,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know you wanted her dead, not then.”

 “Perhaps not. And let us speak of you, Ogress. We had another favorite project here in the northlands. We were using your son, Valdon—”

 “Do not speak of my son,” she shrieked. “My beautiful son. Valdon the glorious, the perfect boy. Do not speak of him.”

 “Do not tell us not to speak.” The lightning played at Valearn’s feet, making her dance. “We speak of whom we will. Valdon, for example, stupid Valdon, proud Valdon, sucked dry by the Faces his own servant had set in the Lake. Oh, we have seen it all, our Seers have seen it all. We know. We know. So Valdon failed us and we have you, Valearn. And Bloster and Dedrina-Lucir failed us, but we have both Bloster and Dedrina Dreadeye. And Huld failed us, but we have his sister, Huldra, as well. So. We will not fail again, will we? Though our strategy in these northlands has failed somewhat heretofore, it will not fail again. Not here. Not anywhere.” Silence. The threat was palpable. Even where I crouched, far across the cavern, I could see the sheen of sweat on Betand’s face, the sick slackness of Valearn’s jaw.

 “Never mind,” said Storm Grower. “Past is past. But tomorrow is ours, and we cannot brook delay or opposition. And we cannot use crystals which are dug from the mines, for they are all yellow ones, and the yellow ones we cannot change. We are forced to grow our own, but that does not stop the yellow ones being spread about upon the earth.”

 “What should they do about it, Great Ones? You have not told them how they can serve you.”

 “Find where they are coming from. Find whatever Wizard or Magician is responsible for them. Come and tell us. Whoever is making these yellow crystals must be sought out, caught out, destroyed! See to it!”

 The Oracle bowed. To me the gesture looked mocking, sinister, as though the Oracle, had it willed, could have answered many of the questions the giants were asking. Seemingly, however, the giants found no fault with it.

 “Go, now. We are weary of you,” rumbled Dream Miner.

 “Beware my lightning,” whispered Storm Grower. “If you think of disobeying. Beware my hail.” The troop I had followed came toward me along the gallery, moved into the hall of pillars. I crawled down to the entrance of my rock cleft, waiting until they had passed. The Oracle was still standing at the parapet, around the curving cavern. I heard the giant ask if all had been prepared and heard the Oracle say yes, it was all in readiness, these words almost in whispers, and then the Oracle swept by in a flutter of ribbons and all of them moved through the hall to the tunnel mouth from which we had come.

 I did not think.

 This is true. My head was full of giant talk, conjecture, ideas, theories. I wanted only to get out of there, out into the clean air once more. Behind me the great surge of breathing faded as we turned one corner, then another...

 Into blinding light and a chanting voice and a smoke that sent me reeling. A fire, a caldron, Huldra there with the smoke pouring forth, the others halfhidden in it, and the Oracle somewhere nearby.

 Huldra’s voice. “Disclose by the Deep Powers. Disclose by the Shadow’s dark. Disclose by the Night’s teeth. Smoke surround, dark betray, blood holdfast.” They saw me! All of them but one were turned toward me, eyes upon me, avid and victorious, not moving, not needing to move, for there were other things swarming around me, binding me, while the smoke held me fast and I could not move. Porvius Bloster lay upon the stone, a knife deep in his back. It was his blood that held me. His life.

 The words came as though in a dream, from some distantly echoing place. “Let me have her,” begged Dedrina.

 “No,” the Oracle said, looking in my direction. “Such is not what the Great Ones prefer.”

 “Ah, but let me have her, Oracle. I will dispose of her well enough. For my daughter’s sake, whom she killed, though we have never proved it. For my sisters’ sake. This one did us great harm, took from us a great possession. Let me have her.”

 “The Great Ones have their own ways. You have all done your part. Well done, I should say, particularly Huldra. You will all be rewarded for it.”

 “I will have her as my reward. Her and what of mine she carries.” Dedrina was persistent.

 “The Great Ones intend that you remain free as your reward. I may, of course, go back and ask them. If you would prefer.”

 “Shut yourself, woman,” demanded the Duke. “Leave well alone. You’ll have your avengement. She’ll not live long, and she’ll not leave here, ever.”

 “Ah.” The Basilisk seemed in agony, dimly perceived through the veils that were settling around me. “So, so, let it be.” She seemed deep in thought, turning to the Witch as though for guidance.

 Huldra turned her back, but not before I saw the gleam of triumph in her eyes, not before I heard the words, “Vengeance is sweet, Jinian Footseer. So dies the killer of my brother and the beloved of my son’s killer.”

 I hadn’t killed Huld, not really. Peter had. Still, I supposed I was responsible for it, in a way. “You didn’t give a damn about your brother,” I tried to say.

 I said nothing. Lips and tongue did not obey. No part of me would move.

 They went away into darkness then, Jinian Footseer became someone else. I, the observer, floated in the air somewhere, uninvolved, yet unable to escape.

 Where Jinian went, I would have to go. Something was dragging her through the rocky corridors. They came through beams of light from above, and I saw they were Oracles, six, eight, a dozen of them. Surely not. The smoke must have disturbed my reason. Still, they looked very much like Oracles. The same shape, size, costume. The same painted faces. The same napping ribbons. They slipped in and out of vision, finally fading into darkness.

 There were creatures. Moles. Not gobblemoles with their clean velvet skins and little pink feet. No, other moles, ragged creatures with fangs and hands and half-blind eyes, which dug and dragged and dropped Jinian in a corner, where her eyes stared, unable to shut. Creatures from Morp, Jinian thought.

 From the charnel house at Morp.

 There were people in the place. Someone came to peer down at Jinian. “This is the one,” she said. “This is the one I have Seen.” I looked up into a gauze mask painted with moth wings. A Seer, leaning forward to finger the little star-eye pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me when I was a child. A Seer in this place, speaking as though her gauze mask were thick as a curtain, sound-deadening. Though I did not seem to be present, still something within me heard and remembered. “This one wears the star-eye, Riddler. Here on her breast. She has worn it since a child. It was given her by a Wize-ard. And it was given to the Wize-ards by those you know. It has power, Riddler. I would advise you to take it from her.” Even in my weakness, something within me rebelled at the thought they would take my star-eye from me.

 “Why take it?” Laconic, a voice I knew. “The old ones, Ganver and the rest, they pretend it has significance. Oh, I recall that pretense, Seer. In my youth I was shown many things. ‘Watch and learn,”’ they said to me. ‘Bao,’ they said to me. So I watched, but it was only nonsense. They showed me this and showed me that, but it meant nothing. It was only pretense, done to mystify us young ones and keep us subservient. The sign has no power. It is nothing. A symbol only; a symbol of our degradation. If it had any power at all, it would be the power of our people, not hers. She could never learn to use it.”

 “You’ve been playing with her, Riddler. Playing. Games. Oh, I can See, See what you’ve been doing. Games. Risky Games. You gave her the Dagger.”

 “Why not?” it asked in a bleak, careless voice, full of malice and yet without emotion, as though its evil were an abstract thing, intended but not felt. “I created it out of my anger. I gave it to Daggerhawk Demesne, saying it came from them” And he gestured back, toward that place where the giants were. “In time I grew annoyed at Daggerhawk Demesne and wished to remove my gift from them. So I played with them, with her. Why not play with her, with any of them? A moment’s amusement at least?

 “Am I not protected by your Seeings, Seer? You looked into the future and Saw her fall into our hands. You Saw she could not use the Dagger against me. Now. Why should I not play with her? Why not, Seer? Are you saying now you did not See what you told me?”

 “No,” the Seer mumbled. “I Saw as I told you. And yet the place I Saw her was not like this. The time was not this time. Do you not fear, Riddler? Fear she may yet find the book and the light? Fear she may yet find the bell?” The words held association for me. They circled into my dizzy fog and whirled there, like moths made of light, and I remembered Sorah the Seer upon the Wastes of Bleer saying, “The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell.” What Wizard was that? Was it Jinian?

 The Oracle paid no attention, made no answer.

 She—I—was dragged away again, seeing things at the edge of vision, as through a cloud. Glass jars, vats, tall vats full of the same silvery stuff that had filled the pool of the sevens. Crystal milk. Wires hanging down inside the vats, and on the wire crystals growing.

 Green ones. Amber. Red. Amethyst. All with that shading across them, dimming the color. From the tops of the vats the wires ran out along the walls.

 Where? Where do they go?

 The moles have picked Jinian up again, tugging her along, head bumping on the stone. They are dragging her along the wall of the cavern, near the giants’ feet, just out of reach. See the fingers reaching for her, just out of reach. High against the cavern roof are great caps where the wires go. That’s where the wires go, into the caps, and the caps on the giant heads and the thoughts of the giants flow down into the vats and crystals grow. There. In the crystal milk.

 Darkness and pain.

 Then only darkness.

 I came to myself at last, knowing nothing except that a very long time had passed. All of me was present in one place. I wanted to giggle about that and couldn’t. Someone had put a gag in my mouth.

 Light.

 Low, at the level of my eyes where I lay. Dim. A long, bow-shaped arch between the place where I was and some other place. Out there the dim light swam and blurred. Things were moving between me and the source of the light. I slipped away, faded into black, realizing how uncomfortable I was. Something hard and curved was pressed into my back.

 When I came back, the light was a little brighter. I could see what lay to one side. A pole. A long pole, extending outward through the window into the light. There were a pair of hoofed feet in front of me.

 There was something tied to the pole. Something dead.

 I could move, some. I twisted my head, trying to roll myself on the curved surface. It shifted, rolled.

 On the other side, another pole, something tied to it as well. This body was human. The feet were on a level with my eyes. I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth, realizing for the first time that my hands were free.

 The gag first. It came loose after a time, some wad of filthy stuff. I spat it away, blacked out for a moment, then came back to begin a frantic exploration of the ropes that bound me to the pole I was on.

 No knots. Two heavy ropes bound below my breasts. Two around my thighs. I could move my arms, my lower legs, but it did no good. I was lashed to the pole.

 My pack! In it the things needed to lay some spell upon the ropes, some freeing magic. It had been a little pack. When Huldra’s smokes had caught me, it had been on my back. I raised my head, twisted, trying to see, sorry I had looked. The poles stretched away on either side, each with its burden. Not many.

 Half a dozen or so. Against a far wall was a packshaped blot, put where I could see it, where I could know where it was without reaching it.

 There was a fine cruelty in that. The Oracle, perhaps. It felt like a thing the Oracle would do.

 I lay back, breathless, screams trembling at the edge of my throat. I could feel them gathering there, like birds, fluttering in panic. They were ready to come out, fly out, shriek their way into the cavern’s quiet.

 Quiet. Too quiet. An expectant quiet.

 Perhaps that is what they were waiting for. To hear me scream. It was obvious they intended to eat me but had not done so at once. Why?

 Vengeance, Jinian, I told myself. They want to hear you scream, girl. Want you to struggle. Cry out. Beg.

 They will eat Jinian then. But not until then. Perhaps.

 So she would not scream. Would not let herself make any sound.

 Out of this frantic fear I heard an old voice, long remembered, harsh as a slap across the face.

 “Enough, Jinian. Consider water.” Murzy’s voice, coming clearly even through this hysteria and fear. So I took a deep breath and considered water. The dams had always suggested this as a way of recovering calm and good sense. I considered water in all its aspects, raging and still, bringing myself at last to a kind of quiet.

 Outside the low archway, in the light, something moved from right to left. By raising my head from the pole I could see its shadow. There was something familiar in that shadow.

 “Our vengeance approaches,” rumbled the voice of the Dream Miner. “Are you content at that?”

 “Who can say?” the answer came, a whisper, something familiar about that voice. “Who can say if we will be content?”

 “You have planned it. These hundreds of years, you’ve worked at it, as we have. It was you who began it.”

 “And yet, who can say we will be content? Some of us think not.”

 “Faugh. Some of you are witless fools, hiding in your graves like rotten nuts in their shells.”

 “Still, they are some of us. We feel their absence, Giant One. As you might feel Storm Grower’s absence if she were reft from you.”

 “In which I would delight,” came the other giant’s voice. “I would walk the world in joy.”

 “You could not walk the world at all,” said the Miner. “Nor could I. We have grown too great for our bones to carry us. Never mind.” The great voice paused, then continued speaking to the smaller creature, whatever it was. “No, never mind. Vengeance will come from here, at last, as it was begun a thousand years ago when you gathered up all the blue crystals and brought them here.”

 “Which some of us have since regretted.”

 “Fools. Hadn’t you suffered enough at men’s presence?”

 “We thought so, then.”

 “And now?”

 “Some of us still think so. Though we may find our vengeance bitter.” There was a titter then. Highpitched; the sound a bird makes in the night when it only dreams of singing.

 “It wearies me,” whined Storm Grower. “Send it away. Then give me one. I’m hungry.” There was a great huffing sound, as of lungs compressed. Into the light came great groping fingers.

 One of the poles was pulled outward into that light and the munching sound began. Another pole followed. And then two more. Chewing, swallowing noises, a scream. One of the poles had carried live meat. Now there were only three left. The ones on either side of me and the one I was lashed upon.

 I began to rip at my clothing. Perhaps they had left me the Dagger. If I could get to the Dagger, I could cut the ropes. It took only a moment to find what a vain hope that was. The scabbard lay at the back of my thigh, tight between my leg and the pole, bound there.

 The Seer. She had seen me falling to the Oracle.

 She had seen the Dagger being of no help to me. Of course they had left it. As they had left my pack, out of reach. Out of hope.

 I fumbled at my waist, trying to find the cord on which my pouch was hung. It was tangled deep in the fabric of the pantaloons, lost in them, which was probably why I had it still on me. If they had seen it or felt it, they would have taken it.

 I worried it out at last, opening it to pour the contents onto my chest. The amethyst crystal in which Huldra’s sending was trapped. The yellow crystal from the mines outside Fangel. The blue one Beedie had given me. A few restorative herbs. A tiny bottle of scent, shaped like a frog. A lock of Peter’s hair. My fragment from the well of the sevens. I lay, head up, looking down at these few things. After a time I returned all but two of them to the pouch, shoving it inside my shirt.

 The munching had stopped and the breathing sounds from the cavern had become louder, slower, as though the giants slept. Soon this breathing was succeeded by snoring, great rumbling sounds, rhythmic as tides.

 I braced my feet and arms against the rock on either side of the pole and pushed, trying to drag it back, out of the light. It moved a finger’s width.

 Again. Again a tiny movement. I timed the pushes to coincide with great snores. Once again. And again.

 Over and over, endlessly, exhaustingly. I was wet, even in the clammy cold of the cavern, soaked with the sweat of this effort. Push, and push again. The creature on my left was almost even with me now. I reached out to touch it. My fingers were a hand’s width from the thing’s mouth. I needed its mouth.

 Push again. The snores stopped. A giant mumbled in his sleep. A giantess answered in hers. Again the breathing of sleep. Push, and push again. My legs felt as though they had been dipped in fire. I could reach the thing’s mouth.

 I took the amethyst crystal in one hand, reaching out. I was trembling. My hand was slick with sweat. I dropped it, dropped it, rolling about on the stony floor.

 Tears then, silent and bitter and exhausted. And after the tears some measure of resolution. I rolled as far to my left as I could, explored the floor with my hand. It could not have gone far.

 Fragments of rock. Bits of bone. Things filthier than these. And then the hard, faceted shape of it in my fingers. I brought it back to my chest, wiped the fingers dry, tried again.

 I reached out and thrust it into the mouth of the dead thing next to me.

 Push, push again. The human corpse on the other side was farther back. Twice I had to stop to rest, the second time using some of the restorative herbs from the pouch, which left a bitter taste in my mouth but a painful clarity of mind. Then push and push again, and the yellow crystal in the corpse’s mouth. It was a corpse. It was dead. I wept at this, too. I had been wondering what I would do if it were alive.

 I peered down between my feet. The end of my pole still lay outside the window, in the light. With the last of my strength I pushed once more, seized a rock behind me over my head and pulled as well, seeing the end of the pole slide under the arch, into the shadow, into the room where I lay. So much for that.

 I let the swirling darkness swallow me up. Just for a time, just for a bit of rest, to wake thinking of the Oracle, perhaps having dreamed of the Oracle. Oh, I knew the creature now for what it was. Not a simpering, harmless creature. No. No. Full of malice and ancient guile. The true source of the evil in the north.

 The Oracle, not the giants. They were too simple. All their cleverness came from the Oracle. I prayed it had gone away. I prayed it had not stayed to see my end.

 “Aaaangh,” came a whining rumble from the other room. “Aaangh. Give me one. I’m hungry.”

 “Get it yourself. I’m tired of giving you. Get it yourself.” The sound of lightning. A frying noise. Complaint, monstrous hairy fingers groping at the window.

 There’s only two here.” Voice like thunder. “Where’s the other one? The fun one? The one that was supposed to be here. You there, minions. You from Morp. Provender!” Chewing, masticating noises. At the far side of the low room, a scurrying as some large furry creatures moved in and out of the light, moving poles, tying bodies to them. They did not come near me. I made not a sound. This had an air of calculation about it.

 The giants would not eat me until they had wrung the last shred of agony and apprehension from me. I played dead. Let them think I had fainted, or slept.

 Then an anguished howl, the howl of a tornado, of a hurricane. “Ouuuuugh, pain. Brother. Ouuuuugh, pain. I have got a pain in my gut.” I caught my breath. Across the dim room the furry shapes stopped what they were doing, froze in place.

 The howl was immobilizing, terrifying. It rang through the cavern, blasting at the stones. Dust fell.

 Gravel rolled.

 Oh, she should have a bellyache indeed, should Storm Grower. She had Huldra’s sending in her belly, dissolved out of the crystal that had held it, a voracious sending ready to eat its way out of its fleshy prison. It should find enough in Storm Grower to fill it. I wondered briefly what Huldra would think when it returned. This made me want to giggle hysterically, and it was all I could do to bite down hard on a finger and keep silent.

 “Hush,” breathed Dream Miner. “You are disturbing me. I want to ... want to ... sleep. Peace. Contentment. How sweet. I did not know how sweet...” She had the amethyst crystal. But he had the yellow one. He desired sleep. Peace. Contentment. I hoped it would last for some time. This would solve the problem of being eaten, but I was still firmly lashed to the pole.

 “Ooooogh, pain.” A sizzle of lightning ricocheted from the floor into the room where I lay. In the flash I saw one side of the room disappear in a sapphire glow. In the after-image I thought I saw a small form leaping there. Perhaps more than one.

 Wind began to blow. Wet wind, clammy with fetid smells in it. The pain the giantess felt was being translated into storm. “Ouuuugh, pain. Dream Miner. Wake. How can you sleep? Wake. I’m dying.” There was disbelief in that voice, horror and anguish. “I’m dying and you sleep!”

 “Lolly lolly alum baff?” sang a quiet voice. “Is the Wizard girl in here?”

 “Here!” I cried half-hysterically. “Who’s there?”

 “Proom,” answered the small voice, approaching.

 “Come to help you if you need help in return for the help you gave our people in the town.” He was not alone. Others of the small people had joined him; still others were gathered at the far wall in an excited horde, busy with something.

 “What did you do to the giants?” He seemed to know I had done it, though that was far from obvious, given my condition.

 “I fed them something bad for them. She may die of it, maybe not. He may die of it, maybe not. They are very big and what I gave them was quite small.”

 “Then we had best hurry.” He knelt at my side, busy with teeth and knife. I felt the rope loosen, then give, as I struggled to sit up while he worked on the ropes around my thighs. When he had done, I stood up, wavering on my feet, almost falling.

 “We will lead you out!”

 “In a moment. First. ... first I should be sure they do not recover.” I stumbled to the pack where it lay against the wall, falling over bodies of men and beasts, to stand over it panting. What could I use? No missile I could control would be large enough. There were two or three very complicated spells that might be useful. End and Beginning. That would take all day, and in the other room Storm Grower was summoning up such a storm as might kill us all. Lightning flashed around us, in and out of the room. No time for that.

 No, no, not that. No window magic usable in such circumstances. Gamelords, what? Rain splashed wildly around us. Water.

 “Proom, is there a river near? Any water? Anywhere near?”

 “Under us, yes. lean hear it.”

 Of course. There had to be a river there to carry away the filth of the giants, else they would have long since drowned in their own excretions. That was it.

 I burrowed into the pack, laying out the few things needful. I did the gestures twice and didn’t get them right either time. My shoulders kept going into spasms. Oh, gods and Gamelords, but I prayed the one I was about to call upon would remember. A boon a d’bor wife had offered me. The d’bor wife, rather. One of the old gods, perhaps. At least some thought so. A boon. Call on me, she had said. Call on me. I bowed my head, thought of water for a few moments, got myself together, and then tried it again.

 “All things of the sea are yours, great and small, of river and lake, of pond and stream. I call upon you, d’bor wife, for the boon you promised me.” Nothing. Only the raging of Storm Grower from the outer cavern, the stertorous breathing of Dream Miner. Nothing.

 And then a rivulet running beside my feet, corning from a gap in the wall. Rock breaking free to make it larger. A moist echoing space full of the sound of waters. Salt. The smell of tidal flats. The cry of gulls and the crash of waves in my ears. And with all this the harsh music of a well-remembered voice.

 “What would you have, Jinian Footseer?”

 “I would have this cavern flooded, d’bor wife. Filled from top to bottom so that those creatures within may be drowned.”

 “So be it, Jinian. I will fulfill the boon I promised you.” The Shadowperson had been standing beside me, watching me, seemingly unafraid. Well, this was Proom, Mavin’s friend. Proom, Peter’s guide. He had seen strange and mighty things before, this one.


 “Out,” I said to him. “We’ve got to get out, and all your people as well.”

 “No,” he cried, anguished. “There are things here we must take.”

 Things he must take? What? There were no victims left. He pointed to the far wall, where his people were dashing about, calling to one another.

 “Too late!” I pointed at the roof. A stream had broken through and was flooding down onto the sapphire heap where the Shadowpeople were at work. In the intermittent flashes, I saw what it was. A pile of blue crystals, a hill of them, millions. A shout of dismay was all I had time for, echoed by the little people. Then we were all running up the twisty stone corridors toward the light. Behind us the storm raged and the water rose.

 When we came into the light, it was into the heart of the storm. Hail fell around us in great, white boulders, and the wind raged against the night, throwing huge trees across the sky like arrows. We crouched in the entrance to the cavern, me, Proom, a dozen of his people bent protectively over their sacks of crystals, all staring with disbelief into the night.

 Storm Grower did not die easily. For hours the storm raged. Toward morning it began to wane.

 Then, as we watched in fear, a fog spewed from the hill above us and took the form of the sending; screaming with laughter, it dwindled into the east.

 “Is she drowned?” asked Proom. “Is the great giant Deviless drowned for all?”

 “I think so. Drowned or eaten. One or both.”

 “Then perhaps it is a good trade. Long and long ago did great Ganver send me seeking these things. Blue, he said, as a summer sky. A great thing of Lom, of the land our parent, a great thing misused and betrayed and hidden away.

 “’Find them, Proom,” he told me. “Go into the world and find them where they have hidden that we may undo the wrong which had been done.” So I sought, long and long but fruitlessly, and returned to my people to find they had been abducted by Blourbast the Ghoul. Then was the song of Mavin made. She was a young girl then. And now you come. And you are the friend of Peter, Mavin’s son.”

 I apologized to him, wearily, sincerely. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see the crystals were there until after I’d called for the boon. I didn’t know you were looking for them.”

 “Who would have thought to look in the lair of the giants? Who would have thought the evil ones would have brought them there?” He sighed, calling to his people. The storm had almost abated. “I must take these to Ganver. Farewell, Jinian, Peter’s friend.”

 “A moment, Proom,” I begged him. “Will you leave a few of the crystals with me?” He assented, pouring a small heap of them into my hands. Then he and his people ran off into the morning, leaping over the fallen trees, flitting like birds into the shelter of the forests—that of it which was still standing. There were a thousand questions I could have asked. A thousand answers he could have given me. I could talk to them. Mavin couldn’t. Queynt couldn’t. But I could. A thousand questions, Jinian, I told myself. At least that. But those I should have asked them of were gone.

 CHAPTER NINE

  I had no need to choose which way to go. The Duke’s party had gone back to Fangel, obedient to the instructions of the giants. Those instructions, once set in motion, would not have been stopped by the giants’ deaths. So, one must go to Fangel once more, brave that strange city once more, see what could be done to stop the amethyst crystals going south.

 I wished for some way of getting there more quickly. If I had only been a Shifter. Or if Peter were with me.

 “If wishes were geese, we would all have featherbeds,” I told myself sternly. “Come, girl, what is the matter with you?” The matter was I was exhausted, hungry, battered, worn. I knew the feeling well. I had felt it before in Chimmerdong and was too experienced in it to give it houseroom. I will eat as I go, I told myself. I will rest when I must. My body did not believe these promises, but the rest of me calmed down somewhat. I took time to fish out the Dagger of Daggerhawk and slit a seam from the pocket with it, returning it to a more sensible location, cursing all the leagues I had not needed the thing and could have had it in my hand, only to have needed it the one time it could not be reached.

 I climbed upward from the entrance to the cavern, over tortuous drifts of fallen timber, through slides of mud and rock, around piles of hail so high they looked like snowdrifts, wondering how long I had spent in that underground warren. How far ahead of me were the Duke and Valearn and Huldra? Huldra?

 Huldra. A shiver down the spine. A hard clutch at the stomach, pain behind the throat. It was Huldra who had caught me in the cavern. Huldra who had been ready for me, expecting me. How?

 There had been a Seer, of course. I vaguely remembered seeing a Seer. A Seer in the employ of the giants.

 Somewhere down in that underground warren right now there was a Seer, perhaps more than one, alive or dead, who had seen Jinian’s part in the battle on the Wastes of Bleer. And likely that same Seer had seen Jinian following the Duke of Betand into the cavern of the giants?

 Likely, yes. And once seen, the vision had been used to trap me. When the Oracle had taken them aside, he had told Huldra of it, told her to make herself ready. Those spells had been rehearsed beforetime. The ingredients had been laid ready to make the paralyzing smoke. Certain creatures had been posted in readiness to bind me.

 I dimly remembered Dedrina demanding to have me for her own. The Oracle had said no. No. The giants had wanted me for another purpose. To feel fear, panic, pain, humiliation. Was it indeed the giants who wanted me for that? Or had they been led to that thought by the Oracle itself?

 I reflected on this. How they must have hated mankind, mankind who had created them so monstrously, no less monstrously than the pig I had met in Chimmerdong. How they must have fumed and plotted through the centuries; how they must have welcomed the power that came to them, slowly, the hateful destruction moving out from them like a cancer. What did they desire in the end? That all men should be enslaved? That, at least. That all men be made as horrified, as panic-stricken, as humiliated as they themselves had once been? Oh, yes. They would have left me tied to a pole a long time. Long enough to wring every drop of agonized apprehension from me.

 But, as it happened, they had left me a little too long.

 Huldra believed I was dead. Still, Huldra was more than a Witch.

 And I had seen Huldra’s sending go screaming back to her, out of that dripping cavern. What might Huldra learn from that?

 “I hope it drops a washtub full of blood on her,” I muttered, too tired to ill wish more usefully. “She’ll be there in Fangel. Likely she is able to unspell any spell I set. Unless I can come up with something she’d have no knowledge of at all. Oh, Jinian, why did you decide to be a Wize-ard?” There was no answer to this. The Jinian who might have answered had crawled between two sheltering trees and had fallen asleep.

 I woke some hours later, feeling more hopeful, able to go on. I went past the place Bleem had been.

 There was nothing left of it but trash, and the remnants were awash in shadow. Where did it come from? Where had it come from so recently? Where had it lain, waiting? At least those poor unfortunates had had a chance to escape. I wondered if they had made it to safety. If any place could be called safe in these days. The farther I went, the fewer trees were fallen, the fewer landslides in the path. Storm Grower had not reached far with her destruction; she had probably been unconscious much of the time. I tried to feel some pity, could not.

 The way became easier, drier. I passed a scattering of krylobos feathers.

 “Back and forth,” I groaned aloud. “Back and forth. Like some backlewheep, bat, bat, bat.”

 “Jinian?” The voice was disbelieving.

 “Who?” I demanded, putting my back to a tree. “Who is it?”

 “Jinian?” No mistaking the joy in it this time. “It’s Peter!” Something large and furry slid down the tree, encompassed me in an enormous embrace, half smothered me before beginning to Shift into a Peter shape. “I thought you were lost forever.” He kissed me; I so surprised I could do nothing about it. He shook me. I did nothing about that, either.

 “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be on your way south, taking the blue crystals to Mavin!”

 “They’re going. Queynt and Chance are taking them, with those two from oversea and their monster in the basket.”

 “But you ...”

 “But I wasn’t about to lose you, stupid girl. I love you, Jinian Footseer. After we found you were gone, I sat there for hours trying to convince myself it was all for the best. You’re not easy to get along with, you know ...”

 “I’m not easy! I’m not!”

 “That’s what I said, you’re not. Neither am I, but we both knew that to start with. It doesn’t matter, though. I love you, and that’s all. I’ll just have to make the best of it.”

 “But. . . but. ...”

 “I know. It would have been easier to just let you go. I know why you went. At least partly. It was my fault. Some of it. But what decided me was thinking about Mavin and Himaggery, you know. They love each other and always have. The first time I ever heard my mother say his name, I knew she loved him. The first time I ever saw him look at her, I knew he loved her. She risked her life to save him, you know. Risked mine, too, come to that, though I was a bit too undeveloped to know anything about it. But he never really said the right things to her. And she never said the right things to him. And so they spent most of their lives apart and the time they spent together they spent fighting with each other. So, I said no. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t just let you go, and when I found you I wouldn’t sit around saying nothing. Even if I said all the wrong things and had to take them back.”

 “Sylbie,” I said stuttering. “The baby.”

 “Oh, well, yes. There is that. Stupid girl left the wagon and followed me. I didn’t catch her at it until it was too late to send her back. Then the first time I Shifted she went all hysterical.”

 “But she ... it’s your baby.”

 “Yes. It’s my baby. Which was begot, you might say, in pursuance of duty. Now I’m not going to do what Mavin would, which is not talk about it. And I’m not going to do what Himaggery would, which is talk about something else. You’ve got to understand this …

 “It was in Betand. They called it “the City That Fears the Unborn”. Some Necromancer had come there, got drunk, and summoned up a ghost. Instead of being a ghost of something dead, though, it was the ghost of someone unborn. So, every visitor to the city had to beget if at all possible in order to get the unborn born as soon as possible. You understand?”

 “I don’t understand what an unborn could do to send a whole city so silly.”

 “Well, Jinny, you’re going to have to take my word for it. The howling alone would have driven you crazy. It was a real haunting, no mistake about it. Half the people in the town had lost their minds. Well, so there I was, riding up to Betand, all innocence, trying to find out something about where Mavin was, and the next thing I knew I was in this room with Sylbie, having been instructed to beget. She was crying and carrying on, and I was scared to death. See, I’m being honest. If you don’t like that, tough.

 “It was more Trandilar who did it than me. I didn’t know anything about sex at all, Jinian. Not a shred. I knew it would be awful, so I summoned up Trandilar, and she actually did all the lovemaking and so forth. Of course Sylbie fell for that. Who wouldn’t? I would have myself. Trandilar is—well, you know what Trandilar is. So, we begot a baby, which was what we were supposed to do. As it happens, it’s likely the very baby who was haunting Betand. At least, so Dorn said when we put the haunting down. He’s turned out to be a very nice baby, but I don’t love Sylbie, I never did. It would be very easy to love the baby, and that would be pleasant, but not if it means giving up Jinian. If we can work out something including Jinian and the baby, very good. What I got to thinking was, suppose the baby turns out Shifter? Sylbie will fall apart.”

 “She really had hysterics when you Shifted?”

 “Full-fledged, whooping and screaming hysterics. All I did was a snakey little thing to get to the top of a tree, and it set her off.”

 I had seen some of Peter’s snakey little things and was not entirely unsympathetic with Sylbie. “Where is she now?”

 “She’s up this trail, a league or so. In a cave which I dug for her—took pombi shape to do that, and she didn’t like that, either—until I could get back. She’s got food and water.”

 I sighed, sagging back into his arms. It would be nice just to stay here, close held. Spend.the night, perhaps, cuddled in furry arms in the hollow of a tree. Too much had happened. Too much was going on.

 Too much was going on. Exactly. I drew him down beside me and told him the tale.

 “Giants? I never dreamed there were real giants. And Proom?” he whispered when I had done. “Really, Proom? He’s like some kind of fairy godmother following my family around. Mavin, then me, then you. Gods, those amethyst crystals. We’ve got to warn them. They have no idea.”

 “None of them have any inkling at all. Not Himaggery, nor Mavin, nor any of the rest of them. But there’s more to it than that.”

 I told him then what I suspected. What I’d been worrying over in my head ever since we saw the little crystal mine outside Fangel and talked to old Buttufor.

 “I’m afraid it’s true, Peter. Everything the giants said only confirmed it. Up until then, I thought they might be responsible for those yellow crystals, but they’re not. They were as frightened by them as I am.”

 His face was as drawn and hopeless as I’m sure mine had been many times in recent days. “What can we do?”

 “I don’t know. It may be too late to do anything, but we have to try. That was the lesson I learned in Chimmerdong, Peter. No matter how hopeless it looks, you still have to try. I got a few more of the blue crystals from Proom. You’ll have to take them south with you. Warn Himaggery and Mavin and all the rest. Then suggest to them in the strongest possible way that they stop arguing and get the hundred thousand out of the cavern. And when each one wakes, he or she must have a sliver of this crystal in his mouth. If the ones I have here aren’t enough, then more must be found in Beedie’s land. Perhaps Mavin can get them, and perhaps some of her kindred would help.”

 “You’re going with me.”

 “It would slow you down. I hope you can take some shape that flies, for that’s what’s needed now. You’ve got to go south. Gamelords, how I prayed for a Shifter outside that cavern.”

 “I can’t leave you.”

 “You have to leave me. The warning must be brought to our people, Peter. As soon as possible, delaying for nothing at all. I’ll meet you when you return. Ah. Where? Listen, if you follow this trail down to the northwest, past where the village of Bleem was, you’ll come to a trail leading north. The trail forks. The right-hand one goes to the giants, and the left-hand one goes up over the mountain by a huge red pillar of stone. I’ll meet you there, by the red stone, with or without Sylbie. I’ll go get her. Maybe I can find someone to take care of her and the baby, bring them south to Mavin. If not, I’ll keep them with me, but they should be taken farther from Fangel. I don’t like the idea of the baby that close to Valearn.”

 He wasn’t listening. But then, he hadn’t been reared on nursery stories of Valearn. “I don’t want to leave you! I’ll carry you with me.”

 “I don’t want you to leave me. But you can’t carry me and Sylbie and the baby without wasting time, and we can’t just leave them here alone.” Briefly I let myself melt against him, let all the turbulent feelings I had quelled for season after season burgeon between us until a new kind of storm began to batter at me, melting me. “I don’t want you to leave me. And whichever of us gets to the pillar first is to wait for the other one—forever, if need be. I don’t want you to leave me, but I have to ask you to.”

 “Jinian, I swear by all the gods and most of the new ones, if we get out of this ...”

 “Yes. Now go.” I didn’t watch him, not out of any sense of dismay at the changes, but simply because I was crying and didn’t want him to see. I heard odd sounds, a strangled cursing, and then the irregular beat of wings. When I turned at last it was to see a blackwinged form staggering across the sky. Evidently Peter had not recently practiced wings. The thing looked more like a dragon than a bird, and it was not built for speed. Even as I watched, however, the black silhouette elongated, became more slender, more streamlined. It plunged out of sight against the southern clouds.

 So much for that. I dried my face, noticing in passing that all my hermitish notions seemed to have left me. So much for the lonely life, then. If there were any future, I would spend it with Peter.

 If there were any.

 I plodded a league away, seeking the cave, calling softly when I should have been near it, and only after wreathing the area with Inward Is Quiet, a pacifying spell when done in the passive mode, to be sure no one lurked there with evil intent. No response. I walked another league, repeating the call. Nothing.

 Now seriously worried, I returned the way I had come, this time casting back and forth either side of the trail. Halfway to the place I’d met Peter, I found it, a cave well dug in sandy soil, half-hidden behind a fallen tree. And tracks around it. Boots. More than one pair. Two parallel lines, where someone’s feet had been dragged. The soil still moist. It had not happened long before. A baby nappy drying on a branch. It, too, still damp. Half-hidden under a stone, the baby trousers Roges had sewn, their bright checks showing up against the dun earth.

 I didn’t need window magic to peer into the past and learn what had happened. Huldra had been watching, through a Seer, perhaps. Through a sending, perhaps.

 Or perhaps Valearn herself had hired some Rancelman to help her find the food she yearned for. It did not matter which. More than one person had come here to drag Sylbie and the baby away. Up the hill a way were the tracks of horses, not on the trail. That’s why I hadn’t seen them as I searched. They did not join the trail to Fangel for another league beyond.

 Weariness left me. I went at speed through the waning day, forgetting the ache in my legs. At sunset the trail left the forest, sloped downward along the meadow toward the walls of Fangel. When dark came, the city would lie in a cataleptic sleep; watchers would watch, but they would not be the people of Fangel. Huldra? Valearn? Perhaps the Duke of Betand?

 There was no spell I could cast that Huldra might not be able to counter. Worse, if I used any spell at all, anyone competent in the wize-arts could smell it out. My use of the arts would say “Jinian” as loudly as the Fangel curfew gong. The only advantage I had was that they all thought I was dead.

 I sat, arms wrapped around knees. Shortly it would be night. If Sylbie was to be saved, it could not be put off until the morrow. On the morrow there might be no Sylbie, no child. The walls of Fangel loomed, the gates still open but shortly to close. I dared not use a spell, not the least one in my art, for Huldra was there and watching, there and waiting. Huldra might have learned much from the return of her sending. Full of Storm Grower’s blood and d’bor wife’s water, it might have had much to tell her.


 So. Get in. Without a spell. Without being seen.

 There were wains moving in and out of the north gate when I arrived, hay wains, others that had been loaded with meat and vegetables for the markets and were now returning empty. My hair was thrust up under a cap, my face dirtied, my clothes stained. I walked beside a horse, talking to it, it obligingly hiding me from the wagoner who drove, my face further hidden behind a sheaf of fodder I had picked up along the way. The team hid me not only from the driver but from the guards as well, troubled enough by this great load of hay arriving so late.

 “Business?”

 “Oh, come down from it, Gorbel. You know my business. I’ve got a load of hay for the residence stables, and I’m late enough without all this.”

 “You’re almost too late. Word runs there’s a hunt tonight. Get in and get out.”

 “I’d ‘a been in and out except for a broken wheel. Don’t shut the gate ‘til I’m through. Won’t be long.” When the wain turned into a side street, out of sight of the gate, I slipped away into an alley. The late afternoon light made cold blocks of shadow in the streets. People were leaving the park, the alleys. Doors were shutting. A food cart still plied along one alley; I hid my face behind a meat pie, working my way toward the center of the town.

 From there one could see in all directions down radiating avenues, almost to the wall. I ensconced myself in a deep doorway, black with shadow. After a time I heard the distant creaking of wheels as the last wagon went out through the gate.

 The gate closed with a metallic, clamoring echo.

 Nearby, at the residence, the great gong rang its tremorous demand upon hearing, shattering into silence.

 The streets were empty. On the western horizon the sun sank in a swollen ball, leaving a stripe of red like a bloody sword upon the horizon. Dusk came, then the rushing dark, then the first light of the full moon setting alternating blocks of gray luminescence and ebon shadow, long diagonal lines of black slanting down the sides of walls and into the street to make hard-edged crevasses of dark. I walked from light to dark to light again, no less conscious of being watched in the darkness than I was in the light. And yet, it was almost an impersonal watching. A machine kind of watching.

 High on the walls the twined letters of the Dream Merchant’s monogram glittered and twinkled, little gems gleaming with a light of their own. It was a machine watching! Up there on the walls were eyes.

 But who observed what the watchers saw? Was there some deep den in this place where human observers crouched, seeing through these glittering eyes? I thought not, sensed not. The city of Fangel watched for itself, but what it watched for or why it cared, I did not know. There was undoubtedly some action that would bring out the denizens of this place.

 Briefly I wondered what would happen if one rang the great gong now, in the middle of the night. The idea sent horrid premonitory shivers down my spine, a kind of visionary grue, as though a door had opened into some unpleasant future.

 I shut down the thought, crept around a corner, paused within sight of the residence, its serpentine gates now opened wide.

 Somewhere in the city a pombi roared and was answered by another, a howling, grumbling tumult that waxed for a time, then waned into silence. There were beasts loose in the city. And hunters. What had the guard at the gate said about a hunt tonight? For whom? By whom?

 Somewhere a baby cried, shockingly close, and a woman’s voice hushed it. Echoes from this, from one side, from the other. No direction. I sought the location frantically, running back the way I had come.

 Nothing. Nothing but the sound of my own steps magnified. Nothing but the sound of laughter. Laughter. Somewhere. Nasty, chuckling laughter, a sound that reveled in its hunt, in its prey.

 Valearn?

 Footsteps, not my own. I shrank against the wall, into a hollow there where a heavy door barred entry to the courtyard beyond. Out in the street a skulking figure walked from shadow to shadow, its long staff tickling the stones with a small clicking, barely audible.

 Again a pombi roared, closer this time, perhaps only a street away. The skulker turned, mouth stretched wide in a gape of surprise, Ogress fangs exposed to the moon. Yes. Valearn!

 She moved too fast for me to follow her. One moment she was there, the next moment gone.

 Again the baby cried, was silent.

 So. The Ogress was hunting the baby. Sylbie was fleeing from the Ogress. The pombis would eat either the Ogress or Sylbie, though it seemed the Ogress might not have known of their presence. And Jinian . . . What are you doing? I asked myself. You’re not being useful here!

 Light and shadow. A sound of something panting, a massive body running, scratch of claws upon the stone, heavy lungs heaving as the thing went past. I expelled my breath, tried to melt into the stones, thanking whatever gods there were that I smelled only of greens and hay. That had been something larger than a pombi. I remembered the caged gnarlibar in the procession and cursed silently. What kind of zoo was loose in the streets? How many hunters were there?

 Now a horn. A horn and the sound of hooves, far away. An echoing clatter in the hard streets. It was to be a drive. The game was to be driven into the hunter’s claws. Or the hunters upon the game? Or both against the wall for the amusement of whoever was coming?

 Enough of this. Risk or no risk, I had to find Sylbie and the baby. Huldra or no Huldra, I had to use the art. I fled along the streets, seeking. Somewhere should be something besides blank, closed walls. A window that could be used for window magic, to make a summons. Even a room, an enclosure, a corner of a courtyard.

 Everything closed tight, obdurate walls towering over my head, stone streets, black and gray, the moon swimming in silence, far off the horn and nearer than that the howling of things abroad in the night. A chuckle again, echoes, how near? Valearn.

 The distant hunt was circling the walls. The sound had come at first from the south, but now it extended east and west from there, a circle growing. As soon as I realized this, I knew what they were doing. They would circle the walls, then drive in along each street, ending at the residence, with all driven before them to a bloody conclusion there. Valearn could merely have waited to have Sylbie driven into her hands.

 Again the chuckle. Waiting was not Valearn’s way.

 I ran quick footed down that street, around the corner. I thought the baby noises had come from this direction. Nothing. Gamelords. I was planning what of the art to use. Assuming that Valearn had none.

 Assuming that Huldra was elsewhere, with the hunt, perhaps, not hanging around the next corner waiting to sniff me out.

 Abruptly, I saw it. There in the wall next to me was a grill, a rare, narrow window in the wall that separated courtyard from street. I grabbed the bars with both hands and went up it like a thrisbat, up and over the wall and down the other side. Unseen, one hoped. Unseen. I was in a barren little court, barred door at my back, barred gate to one side, grill before my face, blank wall to the other side.

 I could not lay a hiding spell on Sylbie if I didn’t know where she was. Or, truth to say, I could, but it would have taken too long. Each uncertainty one added into a spell made it take that much longer. All I could use was her name and the baby’s name, very important, true, but without knowing where she was, a hiding spell wouldn’t do. Besides, Egg in the Hollow wouldn’t cover the baby’s crying. There was another one I should have learned, one Cat was going to teach me. Damn. Too late. No point thinking about it now. It had to be something else. With the grill before me, I could do window magic. Summoning.

 Them to me. Or something else to Fangel, to confuse the issue.

 Which made me think of what Queynt had said about not being pregnant when one did summons.

 Which made me remember what he had said about summons resulting in mermaids and dryads. Which made me remember the deep dwellers.

 Mischievous. Pesky. And childlike.

 Valearn sought children.

 So. There were only two things I needed that I did not have in my pack, and I found both in that barren little courtyard. Luck? Perhaps. I set them out on the sill, where the iron bars were anchored in the stone, starting the summons silently. Music and Meadow.

 The bars were perfect for this window magic because it established that those summoned were barred from me. If the window had been an open one, I would have hesitated to try it.

 I called them up, those near, those far, those within sound of my voice, those within the intent of my action. Deep dwellers. By Bintomar. By Favian. By Shielsas. By Eutras. By the scent of this herb, by the sound of this bell, by the color of this stone. By the flame I flicked from a fingertip, by the winding of a hair. Dwellers of the deep, all you childlike creatures of the depths, come up, come up and into Fangel, where Valearn who loves children awaits you.

 The first sign I had that something had heard me was the rattle of a cobble in the street. I peered between the bars, quickly brushing the necessaries of the spell into my pack. I didn’t want the dwellers even looking for me. I had used Valearn’s name, and that was where they should be going.

 The cobble rattled again, heaved up, banged upon another to reveal a cavity below out of which a pair of luminous eyes stared at the walls of Fangel. What came out of the hole did look childlike. Short. Slender. Large headed. Arms and legs nicely proportioned. There were not children anywhere with such teeth as those the dweller had, however. When the thing smiled, the grin split its head in two and both halves of the grin were fang-fringed and eager.

 Now, quickly, protection from these specific creatures for the baby and Sylbie. That was a simple distraint, done in a moment. It wouldn’t keep the dwellers away from the girl, but it would keep them from harming her. And they would find her. I was certain of that.

 Up and over the wall once more. Follow the trail of forms pouring out of the earth where they went sniffing, seeking, like hounds upon the trail. They called to one another, chuckling, a pleasant chuckle, not like Valearn’s. I remembered hearing them, long ago, when Murzy first did bridge magic over Stonybrook. Almost, one would like to pat them on the head. One did not, wary of those teeth.

 A calling from this one to that one, running feet, taloned toes scraping upon the stones. I looked back.

 They were still coming up out of the hole. I frowned, reviewing what I’d done. It had been a rather unlimited summons.

 Chatter of voices; baby cry again, fretful. I went toward it, through the crowded dweller forms to find Sylbie crouched against a wall, baby tight held against her, just getting ready to scream. They weren’t menacing her, just looking at her, but she was ready to scream anyhow.

 “Don’t,” I said. “Get up from there and follow me.” I turned on the dwellers. “Valearn,” I hissed. “By the stone, by the hair, by the bell, by the flame, by the scent of the herb, find Valearn.” They chittered at me, mockingly, knowing well enough what they were here to do and that it suited them marvelously, but still taking time to make a bit of deviltry over it.

 Pesky, as Queynt had said.

 “What are they?” shrilled Sylbie, barely able to stand.

 “Never mind what they are. You and I have to get out of this city. Away.”

 “They’re hunting me. With horses, the Duke said. And with strange creatures he wakened up, like people only not. Like lizards. Like frogs. And when they catch me, they’ll kill me.”

 “Very probably. Which they will do if you insist on standing here talking. There’s worse than the Duke abroad. The Ogress is looking for Bryan, there. She wants to eat him.” This was perhaps the only thing I could have said to get her moving. Threats to herself paralyzed her. Threats to Bryan mobilized her. Ah, motherhood.

 Nature is quite wonderful.

 We went back the way I had come, back to the grilled courtyard. I found it by following the line of dwellers, who were still coming out of the hole in the cobbles, single file, seemingly in endless numbers.

 One or two of them said “boo” at me as we went past, but I spat a spark at them and they let us be. I went over the wall, unbarred the gate, and let Sylbie in, barring the gate behind her. With any luck at all, the hunt would go by us. Sylbie sank to the floor, sagging there like a bundle of laundry. The baby seemed to have gone to sleep, and I fervently hoped he stayed that way.

 I hung in the grill, watching the dwellers pop out of the hole, one after another like so many corks. Far off something screamed. Pombi, I think. There was an avalanche of laughter, dweller laughter, so they’d found some mischief to get up to.

 Horns again. Hooves at the end of the street I was watching. I pulled a scarf to hide my face, leaving one eye to peer with.

 There at the end of the street came a mounted man, the Duke of Betand, perhaps, or even the Merchant himself. And to either side walked big men in remnants of Gamesmen garb, Tragamors without their helms, with only arms telling what they were.

 Elators. Armigers. Blind-eyed, marching as in sleep.

 And scaly creatures out of nightmare, armed with whips. The whips were being dragged, slithering on the stones. It sounded like a convention of serpents. I dropped to the floor, crawled over beside Sylbie, and put my arms around her. Whatever else happened, I didn’t want her to yell.

 I needn’t have worried. No one could have heard her if she had screamed her head off. The dwellers had discovered the hunter. The scaly creatures had discovered the dwellers. What had begun in black, mysterious silence under the swimming moon went on in a tumult of sound such as I had never heard and do not wish to hear again.

 Laughter, screams, curses, whip cracks, snarls, shouts, horses neighing and screaming, hooves clattering on stone, growling, more mocking laughter, shrieks, howls, and all the time more dwellers popping out of the hole in the ground. Queynt had said they were not common. I think Queynt must have been mistaken.

 None of which was helping us escape from Fangel.

 I had hoped the dwellers would keep Valearn busy and the hunt would pass by. Neither had happened.

 They all met in a general confusion, much of it outside the grill, and there was no possibility of getting through that mess. Moreover, the noise had wakened the baby.

 So, I said to myself, on the verge of hysteria, why don’t we make it a really good mess? I fixed Sylbie with a hard, hypnotic eye and said, “Can I depend upon you to stay right here until I return for you?” She nodded fearfully and I took it (the more fool I) for agreement. “Don’t move,” I said. “I’ll be back shortly.” Up the wall once more, this time to perch upon the top, well above the melee below. The wall stretched for a long block toward the residence, and I ran along its top, unnoticed by any of the participants in the brouhaha. At the corner, two dwellers were strangling a lizard man, and I thanked them for the courtesy as I jumped off the wall and went past. The next street was fairly empty. A pombi was trying to play bakklewheep with two dwellers in the middle of the block, they evading him and he getting angrier about it by the minute. He was too busy to notice me.

 Next block was the residence itself, still dark and silent. The great gong hung in its usual place, the striker beside it, and I put every measure of strength I had ever possessed into hitting it, not once or twice but three horrendous times.

 Lights came on. Doors opened. People poured out, just as they had done on that morning we had arrived in Fangel. Food carts, guardsmen, populace, more of the lizard warriors, more of other kinds of things, too.

 Though their responses were fairly limited by the crystals they had been given, the populace had not been prepared for lizard men or any of the other creatures that swarmed from the Merchant’s warehouses. They ran screaming through the streets, their voices betraying terror even as their words did honors to Betand, to Huldra, to Dedrina Dreadeye. They had no other words to scream with and were forbidden the safety of their houses by the tyranny of the gong.

 Better than I had hoped, great mobs of them made for the gates. Of course. When the gong rang, the gates were always open. Good. Now back to Sylbie.

 I ran openly in the street. There were so many creatures running, people and monsters both, that I was merely one of a throng that spread in every direction, like an anthill that had been overturned.

 One block, two, down toward the grilled window ...

 To stop, horrified. No. Furious. The gate into the little courtyard was open. Sylbie had unbarred the gate and left.

 I found her two streets down, toward the gates.

 Unfortunately, Valearn had found her first.

 Valearn had the baby. Sylbie had Valearn by one leg. There were a dozen deep dwellers fastened onto Valearn at various points. Valearn was paying no attention. Her fangs were bared and she lowered them to Bryan’s throat. . .

 And all that had gone before became as nothing.

 There was no baby in her hands. There was a boiling, formless, gorbling cloud, a keening scream of rage and hatred battering her with its sound, its horrible sound, driving her before it like some farm zeller while she screamed in genuine horror, Valearn the Ogress, victim of what she had sought.

 I sagged on the stones beside Sylbie, trying to hold my splitting head together against that sound, mouthing, “What in the name of all old gods? ...” There was a break in the howling.

 The unborn,” she whimpered. “It’s the unborn. It’s Bryan. He went back to being what he was before. He was frightened. I told her not to frighten him.”

 “You knew he would do that?”

 “He does that. Whenever he gets angry. Or doesn’t get fed on time. Or gets too wet.”

 “You hadn’t seen fit to mention it.”

 She arranged her dress and looked at me with honest-seeming eyes. “I didn’t think it was important.” Little liar.

 “How long will he stay that way?”

 “I imagine until he kills Valearn. She bit him.”

 “And then?”

 “And then he’ll find me, wherever I am.” Was there a note of satisfaction in that?

 “Outside the walls?”

 “Of course. He may be very temperamental, as my mother would say, but he’s quite bright. He’ll find me.”

 “Then let’s go, Sylbie. Let’s leave Fangel to its own mighty troubles.” Which we did. On the south side of the city there were wagons parked that had been waiting to enter Fangel on the morrow. I made arrangements with a wagoner and his wife to take Sylbie south, all the way to Zinter. “From there,” I told her, no longer worrying about her safety. “From there, keep going south. Here are enough coins to pay your way. Don’t waste them. Get to the Bright Demesne, south of Schooltown, on Lake Yost. Once there, ask for Mavin. That’s Peter’s mother. I think she’ll want to meet her grandson.” Two of a kind, I thought.

 “I was waiting for Peter.” Shyness personified, sweet little look out of the corner of her eye.

 “Don’t, Sylbie. Peter’s a Shifter. I think it probable that Byran is, too. This manifestation of his is strange, but it fits with being Shifter. Shifter young need to be reared by their own. I know Bryan comes back to you now, but when he begins to change into snakey things”—why did I enjoy seeing her shudder at the thought?—”he’ll need some older Shifter to control him and teach him. I’m sure if we put our heads together, we can come up with a better plan for you than just waiting for Peter. I hope that doesn’t make you too unhappy.”

 “He was different once,” she said, a dreamy look in those violet eyes. “In Betand, he was wonderful.”

 “That wasn’t really Peter,” I said brutally, telling her who it really was.

 “Trandilar! But she’s ... she’s ...”

 “Trandilar is the great Queen of Beguilement. She’s female, and who would understand better what some young female would enjoy? It wasn’t Peter. Now, can I rely on you to go with these people, or will you do something stupid again?”

 She nodded. It was a real nod, I think. “I’ll do what you say, Jinian. Tell Peter ... tell him I decided it wouldn’t work.”

 “I’ll do that.” I trusted that little nod not at all. I watched from the forest until the wagon left in the morning. Both Bryan and Sylbie were aboard.

 CHAPTER TEN

 There were many dead in Fangel. The Merchant was one, the Duke of Betand another. The pombis and the gnarlibar had been less successfully hunted than they had planned. I found Valearn’s body just down the street from the place she had bitten the baby. Her neck was broken, it appeared. There was no sign of Huldra.

 Nor of Dedrina Dreadeye. On reflection, I thought it likely they had left Fangel before the confusion started and were on their way south with the crystals they had been told to distribute. Of all in that group, those two were the most dangerous, and I regretted that they still lived.

 There was great disorder in Fangel. The dwellers had gone back to their depths, but there were bodies everywhere, and roaming beasts, and those strange creatures that had come out of the Merchant’s warehouses. The city was not likely to survive. It had no real reason for being. Already the wagons that had been assembled to enter the gates were turning away. They would find other customers.

 I went to the residence. It was luxurious and spacious and empty. I knew which room Huldra had occupied by seeing how it was littered with bits and pieces from her spell casting and from the great flood of mixed blood and water on the floors. Her sending had returned, but Huldra had been gone. She did not know, then, that the giants were dead.

 Looking the rooms over, I shuddered. I knew what some of the litter was for, and it was the kind of stuff that the seven would repudiate, always. Still, it was best to know how deeply into the art she was. The answer: deeply indeed. She knew things I did not. Of that I was sure. I picked up what food was available in the place and went out the northern gate. It stood open and unguarded.

 A day traveling once again the same old way. Around ever-deepening masses of shadow, down toward Bleem. I didn’t go into the village, though I did speak to a herdsman on the road to tell him Storm Grower was dead. If there were any left there or any who had returned, let them enjoy that news. The next day I got to the red pillar of stone. I had seen it from the valley before. Up close it was even more imposing, an obelisk that pointed a long black finger of shadow down into a little valley, much damaged by storm but with a small lake sparkling at its bottom.

 The evening was spent thinking before the fire, pulling the shreds of evidence together. I stared for a long time at the blue crystal. I didn’t taste it, just stared at it. There was no one near to make demands upon me. No rescuing to be done, no sneaking or slying. No great white roads to be repaired. Merely quiet in the evening with the fire making small scrolls of smoke, ephemeral writing upon the slate of the sky, meaning flowing into meaning and mystery into mystery.

 And, on thinking it over, I decided I had been right.

 Right all along. Everything I had told Peter was true. All the evidence pointed in one way and one way only. I felt as I had felt so long ago, traveling toward Bleer with Peter, when he put the clues to a mystery in my hands and asked me to make sense of it. Now, as then, all the pieces were in my hands, or in my head. The great flitchhawk who had granted me a boon in Chimmerdong, and the d/bor wife, and the gobblemole. The story of Little Star and the Daylight Bell. The Oracle.

 The Eesties. Yellow crystals and blue, separated by a thousand years of time, more or less. What was a thousand years, after all? Even to Vitior Vulpas Queynt it was a mere lifetime. My illness in Chimmerdong. The diagnoses of Bartelmy of the Ban, the Dervish, my mother. All these. And they did make a kind of horrible sense. No matter how I turned them, there was no other explanation. Only this one.

 So. Could anything be done?

 If anything could be done, who would do it? Not one young Wize-ard alone, surely. It was all very well for Bartelmy of the Ban, my mother, to set me a gigantic task in Chimmerdong, saying it was mine and none other’s. No one’s life had hung on that. Had seemed to hang on that, I amended. If I had failed, things were no worse. Though I had succeeded, were they any better?

 But this. This meant an ending. For all of us. For everything. Tree and flower, hill and road, sea and shore, man, woman, child, all beasts, all birds, all fishes.

 And though I might do what I could alone, surely it would be better if a disciplined body of persons were to work at it as well.

 So. I thought about that for some time. Finally, I resolved upon a sending. Not an eater of blood, like Huldra’s, but a seeker of persons. It did not take a blood sacrifice, at least not much of one. A few drops of my own, was all. I sent it out into the world to seek Bartelmy of the Ban. She had said we would meet again. Why not now? Now, when I needed her. The sending pulled at me. I was like the reel on a fishing pole; it was the line with the hook; and it pulled at me, reeling out and out and out until there was nothing left of me at all. Only the line, spun into the world, far, far beyond any place I could see. I lay upon the ground, close-wrapped in my cloak, and let the line spin out.

 For a very long time, I knew nothing. Then the line reeled in, restoring me to myself. The hook had caught something. I lay on a long bank above a length of flat that could only be a buried stretch of road. Down this flat the Dervish came, a whirling silver cone balanced on its tip, blurring with motion, settling before me into a still column of fringed quiet.

 “Jinian, Dervish daughter,” it said.

 “Bartelmy?” I replied from the ground. It had not sounded exactly like Bartelmy and yet almost like.

 “No. She is not far from here. I was closer, however. I am one of her near kindred, alerted to expect your coming.”

 “Even I did not know I would be coming this way.”

 “Still, Bartelmy had thought it likely. When your sending came, we were not surprised. A Seer’s vision, perhaps.” Murzemire Hornless, I thought. Who had not been distressed at my going into the north. Was it because she had known what would happen? Had she known why I would leave the others?

 “You say you expected my coming. Have you plans concerning me?”

 “Not plans precisely, since we do not know why you have come. Provisions, certainly, for one not exactly a Dervish. A rare thing among us to provide for one outside our company.” The Dervish gestured off down the flat stretch. “If you are strong enough to rise and walk?” I struggled to my feet. The line had been reeled in, but I was still weak enough to stagger.

 “Heat food for yourself. I can wait.” The Dervish not only waited, but helped me by gathering sticks for the fire and talking gently about trees and clouds while I ate. Much refreshed, I buried the fire and stood ready to walk beside the Dervish, who surprised me by walking beside me, stride on stride. It noticed my surprise. “We walk, sometimes. Sometimes we eat, drink. Rarely, we sleep.” It made a sound, almost like a chuckle.

 “You astonish me,” I murmured. “That sounded almost like laughter.”

 “We even laugh, sometimes. Bartelmy is among the most serious of us. She finds little to laugh about. I can find it amusing to walk beside a Dervish daughter who is no Dervish, who is a Beast-talker, so I am told. Speak to that owl yonder and tell me what it says.” The Dervish gestured and I saw a tiny dot upon a branch, so far at the limit of vision it could scarcely be seen at all.

 It was too far to speak in its language, so I spoke to it silently and it replied in muted tones which floated toward us on the wind. “It says, “Good day,”“ I said. “As would any polite and sensible beast.” The Dervish laughed again, a very small sound, but unmistakably amusement.

 “Where are we going?”

 “The pervasion of the Dervishes is nearby.”

 “What is your name?”

 “Cernaby of the Soul.”

 “What do they mean, your names? Bartelmy of the Ban? What is that? Of the Soul? What sense does it make?”

 “If you have ever lain beneath Bartelmy’s Ban, you would know. As for me, I can see souls, Dervish daughter. As you would see a flame burning. I see yours now, hot and red with angry pity. It must itch you, burning like that.”

 This surprised me, sure as I was I had achieved a kind of balance. “I suppose yours are never like that.”

 Cernaby did not answer, merely turned to lay her hands upon my eyes, like a mask. I could see through them to the flames that surrounded her, blue as the noon sky, cool and limpid as water. I looked down at myself to see my hands and arms, blossoming with heat.

 “You can dim it,” the Dervish whispered. “Watch it, concentrate upon it, think of it turning orange, then yellow, then green. Finally blue, blue as water.” She laughed a little. “As your dams of the seven would say, ‘Consider water.’“

 With Cernaby’s hands across my eyes, I could do nothing else. The flames upon me leapt and danced as I watched them, thinking them faded, thinking them cooled. At last they were green as grass upon me, only an occasional flicker of yellow lighting the edges of the flames. I could cool them no further than that. Cernaby took her hands away and I blinked up at the evening stars. I had not been conscious of the time passing. “It will come easier next time,” said Cernaby. I felt a little calmer, that was all, together with a little core of anger at her having wasted so much time.

 We walked farther then, along the winding flat among the jungle trees, then up a rising trail that wound above the trees toward two pillars of stone high upon the ridge. We looked down to our left to see mighty hedges, solid as walls, twisting, turning, winding upon themselves as far as I could see.

 “The Great Maze lies below us,” said Cernaby, “league upon league of it, from the mountains to the sea. When last the band marched here, it spent ten years marching through the edges of the Maze. It is said there are cities in the Maze lost from all outside contact for millennia. It is said no man knows the extent of it or the way to its center.” She pointed to this impenetrable wall of foliage below the trail we were on. “That is the edge of it.”

 “What is it, exactly? I had always thought it was roads with walls or hedges, full of misleading turnings.”

 Cernaby again made the sound of quiet amusement.

 “More than that, Jinian. Men can climb walls, cut through hedges. We will go a little way in and I will show you.” Along our trail several little paths went down the slope into openings in the hedges. She spun down one of these. I followed.

 A narrow door was cut into the solid green. A narrow path stretched inward. Cernaby stood upon it at some small distance, where it made a turning. “Here,” she called. “Come to me here.” I took a step.

 Onto the rim rock of a high cliff, so near the edge I staggered back in fear. Below me lay a shadowed bowl of green. The dawn, or sunset, was on my face and on the rock at my feet. From above came a shrieking, a banshee howl, mightier than any number of voices. I looked up to see a dart of silver falling, bellowing as it came, downward and downward, the sound shivering the rocks on which I stood so that I fell to my knees, hands over ears, watching in amazement as the thing landed in the bowl, as a door opened in it and something strange came out. Strange? So I felt, and yet it was obviously human. Nothing strange about it? Why this feeling of intense curiosity, this thought of weirdness?

 “Jinian,” I heard the voice. “Turn to your left and walk toward that midnight tree, the first one. Go behind it.” Cernaby’s voice. “Jinian!” Commanding now. Obediently, I turned and made my way to the midnight tree, outpost of a grove. I moved behind it...

 Onto the Wastes of Bleer. It was as I had seen it last, barren and cold and dry. Full of thorn and devil’s spear. Heaped with wind’s bones, which were not wind’s bones at all but the bones of the ancient creatures of this place. Coming toward me out of the eastern sky was a glowing ball of flame. No sound, only this ball, hurtling toward me. “Jinian. Quickly, to your right, and down into that little empty crevasse.” I did not like the look of the doom approaching so made quick work of the directions; half a dozen steps to my right and down ...

 Into a hall, vast and gray, where my footsteps echoed whispering down corridors of pillars. From a high window came a crowd roar so threatening I turned instinctively to flee.

 “No!” cried the voice in warning. “Turn again. The other way! Beside the pool.” Resolutely I turned back, stumbling across a fallen pedestal, kicking a silvery lamp that lay there in my path. I caught myself. Another pedestal lay across the way, the book it had held flung against the far wall. I walked beside the low coping of a pool, coughing as a fitful draft blew smoke into my eyes, so that I stepped blindly...

 Onto a road. Cernaby was beside me. “Here,” Cernaby said, stepping in a certain direction. I followed. We stood outside the Maze on the path we had left only moments before. High on the ridge the tall stones brooded above us.

 “What is it?” I asked. “I can’t believe it!”

 “Who can? One time long since, Mind Healer Talley came here to confer with the Dervish paramounts. She spent long hours within the edge of the Great Maze and left at last, saying the places within it were memories.”

 “Memories?”

 “She did not explain. We did not ask, for at that time we were greatly concerned with another thing. The Maze, we then felt, was not the greatest mystery of Lom. There are many things about Lom we do not understand.”

 “Lom, Cernaby? Is that what this district is called?”

 “Lom. The world. This world. We took it from the language of the Shadowpeople, whose word for the soil is “lom”.”

 I realized suddenly it was so. What had the little people called to me when I’d released them in Fangel?

 “Lolly duro balta lus lorn.” Walk well upon the lovely land. I turned to examine the leafy walls of the Maze behind me. “You say the band marched through that? How could they?”

 “They hired a guide. The only guide. They put on blindfolds and marched to the music. They didn’t turn. At night, the guide would stop them in some relatively safe place until the morning, when they were blindfolded again. It’s the only way.”

 “But you …”

 “But I know a few short ways in and out. Not to the center. No one does, except the guide. Perhaps not even the guide. No, I know only a few short ways.”

 “How did you learn them?”

 “Oh, step on step. One step in, turn and take one step, take that step back. Turn and take another. Take that step back. And again. Each time returning to the same place, building the chain longer with each try. In that first short chain you walked, there are many other ways out to other places.” Cernaby made the amused sound once again. “I don’t know what good it does to know that. Except to show a Dervish daughter what to be wary of.”

 “Who is the guide?” I already knew but wanted it verified. Who else could it be?

 “Bartelmy tells me you have met it. It calls itself the Oracle.”

 “The Oracle!” I spat. “It has probably had no time for guiding recently. It is too busy giving comfort to giants and distributing death crystals to the unwary!”

 “We know of the death crystals. One more reason why we are gathered in the pervasion now, to talk of this.” We went up the last little way to the ridge. At either side the great stones peered down at us, an electric tingle between them. Had I been alone, I don’t think they would have let me pass. Cernaby stopped, looking downward. “And we have arrived at the pervasion.” We looked down on a long clearing through which the road ran, bulging at the center into a wide oval, then narrowing once more to continue over the next rise. To either side were small houses. No, I thought after a moment, not really large enough to be houses.

 Small, one-room places perhaps two manheights square, neatly made, but little more than sheds. They reminded me of the small outbuildings in which domestic zeller are shut at night to protect them from prowlers.

 Outside each of these stood a Dervish, still as a tree.

 “What are they doing?” I asked.

 “Thinking. Practicing. Becoming.”

 “How long will they stand like that?”

 “Some days, perhaps. Some for a season. Or until the next obligatory takes place in which they must join. There is an obligatory going on now in the next node.” The Dervish led on, between the rows of silent figures.

 I sensed that the very air around her was under tension. It vibrated like the string of an instrument, full of silent harmonics. I could hear them, could have sung them had I the voice for it, and it seemed that the soil sang in this same way. Soil. Trees. Air. We moved over the next small rise.

 Again the road bulged into an oval, paved space, this time occupied with silent ranks of Dervishes, all moving together like a wind-waved field of grain.

 “An obligatory,” whispered Cernaby.

 Below us the Dervishes spun and stilled, advanced, retreated, twisted with outstretched arms, then fell into pillar quiet. From somewhere music came, at times insistent, at others almost lost among the sounds of the trees. It was the previous music made manifest, and it was some time before I realized it came from the Dervishes themselves.

 “They dance their dedication,” whispered Cernaby.

 She laid her hands over my eyes, revealing the pure blue flames in which the Dervishes moved. It reminded me of something, an elusive thought that came and slipped away.

 “Shhh,” whispered Cernaby. “They are almost at an end. We will wait until they finish.” The dance went on for some time, making me wonder when it had begun that so long a time was considered “almost at an end”. Still, my impatience faded as I watched. The surging movement was hypnotic, relaxing, like watching waves move around rocks on a quiet shore. This relaxation troubled me.

 Deep inside, I chafed against it.

 At last the music faded into silence, the dance into immobility. This, too, was part of the obligatory, for they stood still in silence for some time before the Dervishes moved away toward their huts.

 “It is likely Bartelmy has arrived,” said Cernaby. “We will go to her cell. We have arranged it so that you may stay there as well, though this is never done once a child is past babyhood.” That sound of amusement. “We are a solitary people. Perhaps we have carried our reclusion too far.”

 Bartelmy was waiting for us beside one of the whitepainted huts, a silver pillar beside the weathered gray of the door. She said, “I said I would come to you, and you to me. So we have come. Welcome, Jinian Footseer.”

 “Call her rather Dervish daughter,” said Cernaby, a note of admonition in her voice. “She calmed herself into the green, Bartelmy, and stood for half a day of the obligatory.”

 “Would we have expected less?”

 “Yes, considering how she was reared. I was doubtful, Bartelmy.”

 “I was not.” The pillar turned a little, as though to examine me more closely. I heated a bit at this, at their talking of me as though I could not hear them.

 I smiled nonetheless. “Is this to be another game without a name, Bartelmy? Like the one in Chimmerdong?”

 The pillar shook itself, a negation. “No, Jinian. Except that you are one always eager for answers, and there are not always answers. If we have an answer, we will give it to you. If we do not give it, you will know we do not have it to give.”

 They did not know I had come to give them answers. Not yet, though. “You expected me!” It was half a challenge.

 “Murzemire Homloss told me long since you would come here at this time. Yes. We expected you.”

 “But you do not know why I came?”

 “No. Murzemire saw you. She saw Storm Grower. She saw Dream Miner. She saw shadow. She saw the Daylight Bell, broken. And when she had seen all this, she told us it might mean nothing much.” Cernaby laughed. “Nothing much.”

 I realized the laughter had grief in it. Perhaps they had seen something of the truth. “Nothing much.” The words spun among us in the quiet clearing, without reverberation, without echo, and yet without end. “Nothing much.” Said humorously. Said without consequence. Said without anger. Said in the blue, my heart said; said in the blue they so much cultivated. In me fury bloomed like red flowers. “Nothing much.” This calm interchange had the very flavor of Dervishes in it. I shook away the spell the dance had put me under, demanding concentration from myself. It would not do to fall under their sway, their patience, their strangeness. There was too much patience among Dervishes. The time for patience had passed.

 I had not planned what I did next. I had never done it before. It came out of my belly, out of my lungs, my heart, all at once full blown. Before I knew what I was doing, my hands were out and I was making that gesture which the seven called “Eye of the Star”. It was an Imperative. It allowed no choice. Though I did not know its meaning—might never, so the seven had said—I put all my fury behind it, all my red flame. I felt it going out of me like a shout, a summons, a demand.

 They stared at me from behind their fringes. Had anyone ever evoked the Eye of the Star upon them before? There was only one spell stronger than this; one I would probably never know enough to use.

 “Nothing much?” I said. “A little more than that, I think. Storm Grower sat in a cavern making moonlets fall upon this world, destroying cities. Dream Miner sat there as well, corrupting the messages of the world into filthy intent and evil consequence. Hell’s Maw was his doing, and the corruption of Pfarb Durim, and they only a few among many. Even now his will speeds south to be spread among our kindred there. The giants are dead, but their evil lives.

 “Knowing nothing of this, I came north. I came, to be with Peter. Nothing seemed as important as that. As we traveled, we began to find dead people, men, women, children, even babies, all along the roads, all with yellow crystals hung upon them or sucked away to shards. Peter saw it, but it did not seem to tell him anything. Queynt saw it. Him, it troubled, but he did not see in it what I did.

 “We came to Bloome, and Bloome led us to Fangel, where the Dream Merchant was—with guests. Huldra. Valearn. Dedrina Dreadeye. And with captives. Sylbie, a girl Peter had known in Betand, and Sylbie’s baby, Peter’s baby. And two people from far over the Western Sea, people Mavin Manyshaped had known years ago. Beedie. Roges. And with them a creature so strange I can scarcely believe it...”

 “Come inside,” said Bartelmy with enormous effort. It took much for her to break the Eye, but she did it. “Cernaby also. We will forget the eremitic laws. We will sit together, drink together, talk together...”

 The pillar that was Bartelmy was shivering in the effort of control. I knew why. Dervishes were not constrained by others. I had evoked the star-eye upon her. I was being allowed this presumption only because I was Bartelmy’s daughter, but if we went inside, all urgency would be set aside. Oh, I longed to be patient, quiet, to put decision aside, to take time ...

 I made the gesture again, even stronger. “There is no time,” I said in my Dervish voice, cold and demanding.

 From the edges of my eyes I saw a multitude gathering about us, a thousand silver pillars upon the hillside, turned toward me. There was fury there, barely withheld. They had felt my summons. Their resentment was a palpable menace. Bartelmy wanted to save me.

 Too late. I could not be saved.

 I said, “All the time we might have spent talking has been wasted away. Listen to me, Dervishes! The pissyellow crystals come out of this world—this Lom, as you call it. A kind of milk secreted in pockets of stone, and out of this milk a crystal grows. Little tubes run from the crystal pockets down into the earth, deep into the rock. The giants beneath the earth sent their messengers out to find who made these things. We have traveled league upon league wondering who made these things. You nave gathered here to discuss who it is who makes these things.

 “They are not made!

 “They are not made by man or by any other creature. They come from the world itself. The woman from over the sea calls them message crystals. The little old man at the crystal mine says there are no more blue ones, no more green ones, only these yellow ones, only these death ones.”

 “We know.” Bartelmy’s voice, hushed hesitant, plaintive, beating my will away. Was she begging for my life from her kin? “We would talk of this matter, Jinian. Consider it.”

 “There is no time to consider it! When Beedie told me what the crystals are called over the sea, I knew then. These are not dreams which the world dreams. These are messages which the world sends. To itself. To all parts of itself. To bunwit and tree rat, to gobblemole and d’bor wife. To Shadowman and gnarlibar, krylobos and pombi. To Eesties. To mankind. And there is only one message now. Death. Peace and a final contentment and death.”

 She cried at me with the last of her strength. “Why does the world want its creatures dead? We have known this for some time. But we do not know why.”

 “Listen to me!” I stamped my foot in my frenzy then, knowing I must be blazing red to their perception, seeing them shiver in an agony of what? Anger? “Listen. You’re not understanding me. The messages are not to the creatures. The messages are to all parts of itself.

 “Do not ask me why the world wants its creatures dead! Ask why it wants itself dead!” Stillness then. A thousand Dervish pillars standing around me, not moving. The fringes did not shiver but merely hung, still, as though extruded of some hard metal. The anger was gone as suddenly as it had come.

 Nothing moved, and yet I felt something go out from them, a hard blow, a wave of... something. Pain? No. More a question. I looked up to see them there in their thousands. I stood at the center of an ominous circle, so silent, so utterly silent.

 I made the gesture of release.

 “Itself,” said Bartelmy at last. “Sisters. Dervishes. Could we have been mistaken?”

 “Mistaken?” A breath. A sigh.

 “Mistaken?” I demanded. “Mistaken in what? What have you done?”

 “Not done,” breathed Cernaby. “Been.”

 “Long ago,” said Bartelmy, “far in the past, there were creatures who ran the roads of Lom. Looking deep into the past, we have seen them.”

 “I saw them, too,” I said impatiently. “When I looked into the past in Chimmerdong.”

 “But those creatures run the roads no longer. Not since we came. Lom cries for this journey to be made, this endless journey.”

 “The blind runners do it,” I said. “All the time. Every year.”

 “Not correctly. Not as it should be done. They cannot. The roads are broken. And they are still too near to ... to humanity.”

 “And you are not?”

 “We have bred ourselves for centuries to run the roads of Lom as we believed another creature did before us. We have believed this to be Lom’s will. But if this is Lom’s will, then Lom would not will to die. If Lom wills to die, then what does Lom will for us?”

 “To die also,” I said flatly. “I don’t know what you Dervishes have been up to all these centuries, Bartelmy of the Ban. I don’t know what Barish thought he was doing fooling around with that hundred thousand Gamesmen under the mountain. I don’t know what any of us thought we were doing. All I know is that every sign points to this world wishingitself dead.”

 “But this must be recent...”

 “Not all that recent, no. Within old Buttufor’s lifetime, certainly. He can remember the crystals coming out blue and green when he was young. He is over a hundred now. But it has not been long.”

 “Why? Why?”

 “Listen to me,” I said again. “I’m not going to waste my time asking why. I’ve been thinking about this for days now. In Bloome I thought about it. Outside Fangel, it seemed sure. After leaving the others, I did nothing but think about it. If a person wished himself dead, we would assume he was sick. Injured, perhaps. Well, we know well enough this world is injured. You told me that, Bartelmy. It was you told me to fix the roads in Chimmerdong. Was that only an exercise? Some kind of lesson you wished me to learn? Or did it mean something?

 “And if it meant something, then why are you here? Why are you doing your dances when there are roads broken everywhere? Why are we wondering why the world wishes itself dead when we are doing nothing to heal it?”

 “How do you know this?” A sigh again. Was there a hint of anguish in it? Of injured pride?

 “I know it because I am Dervish born, Gamesman reared, wize-art trained. I know it because I am Jinian Footseer and have run those roads while you all were studying to do so. I know it because I have seen all its signs and portents across all the lands, seen the clues to it where I have walked and ridden, heard its voice in the quiet reaches of the night. I know it because I know it.

 “I know it because logic tells me it must have happened. A world, this one, Lom, which has existed for untold time, which is in balance with itself, which is healthy, which sends messages to all parts of itself in order to stay in balance, to stay healthy. Messages to groles and Shadowmen and Eesties. And into this world comes man, the destroyer, for whom no message has been made.

 “What then? What does logic say must have happened? It says that Lom must have made a message for men and about men. A blue crystal, telling men their place in this world. Showing them the balance. And the message was sent.

 “But evil walked upon the roads of the world, evil and envy and pride. Evil which did not want man in this world at all. Evil which believed man would die if deprived of the message meant for him. Not knowing Lom would die, instead. So the message meant for man was stolen away, taken into deep caverns and hidden there, where no creature might receive it.

 “Except Queynt, who was given the message by the Shadowpeople in the long ago.

 “Except a few, here and there, who found it without knowing what they found.

 “Except the people of a chasm far over the sea, who found it, knew what they had found, and brought it to Mavin Manyshaped, their friend.

 “Except for Jinian, who took that message and carried it with her and carries it now!” I staggered. Suddenly my legs wouldn’t hold me and I plopped to my knees, shaking. “A message meant for me. And you. And every human person here. And for all other creatures as well.” I had given almost all of them to Peter, retaining only eight or ten. I took one of the small blue crystals out of my pouch, almost dropping it from trembling fingers. I passed it first to Bartelmy. “There isn’t much of it. Make it go as far as you can ...”

 “Hold!” The voice hummed from the back of the throng, a reverberating, gonglike sound. “Hold, Bartelmy of the Ban! I, Marno of the Morning, speak. You hold a crystal in your hand. Has Jinian Footseer tasted it?”

 “I have not.”

 “Then why should we?” The voice was cold and scornful. My heart sank beneath the weight of it.

 “I will if you wish. I have not.”

 “Why have you not?”

 “Because I know what it says. And I am vain and proud and would do the message’s will of my own will, knowing I do it of my own sense and intelligence, without compulsion. But if I cannot gain your understanding in any other way, I will taste it.”

 “Taste it, then!”

 “No!” This was Bartelmy, in a voice that ached. “This is a Dervish daughter. My daughter. If she would do a thing of her own will, is there any Dervish would say her nay? And if I would do a thing of my will, is there any Dervish who will deny me? So, what I do, I do of my own will.” The crystal disappeared beneath the fringes of her veil and in a moment reappeared to be thrust into Cernaby’s hand.

 It passed from there beneath the concealing fringes, here and there, mouth to hand to hand to mouth, from one silver pillar to another. Some refused it. Most tasted it. I gave them all the others but three. Fringes shook, quivered, bodies turned. One reeled into another. Some cried out. Then stillness. The Dervishes were there in their thousands, assembled rank on rank, and the rear ranks quivered now as the remnant of the crystal passed.

 “How long?” asked Bartelmy. “How long, Jinian?”

 “How long? How long ago did this world send us that message? You guess, Bartelmy. Soon after we came here, I would suppose. If we came here a thousand years ago, perhaps a few hundred less than that. More or less.”

 “And who robbed us of it?”

 “I don’t know. I suspect, but I don’t know. A race of creatures, ambitious, proud, who did not want this man on this world. A race of beings who sought to drive me away, who gathered the message crystals up, every one, and who took them to the cavern where the giants dwelt. Some creature which hated man.” I could not identify that creature. I suspected. Only suspected.

 “Is it too late?”

 “It may be. I suppose we could give up with good grace. Lie down and die. Disport ourselves for a time, like lice on a corpse. Or go on dancing while the shadow comes. The shadow is part of this, I’m sure. You’ve seen it Bartelmy. I’ve seen it. Perhaps all you Dervishes have seen it. It flows now, from somewhere, like a flood. Where is it coming from?” Silence greeted this, but they did not disagree. “Of one thing I am very sure. If this world dies, we will not survive it long, but we might play while there is time.

 “Or we might try, whether it is too late or not. Try to get the roads fixed. Try to get some runners on them. Yourselves, since that’s what you’ve been breeding for. What race ran these roads before we came?”

 “Eesties. We have seen so with the deep look.”

 “Eesties? Really?” This did surprise me. “I thought it might be Shadowpeople.”

 “No. Eesties. We look into the past and see them spinning upon the roads, spinning into the ancient cites. They spin. As we do. Those odd doors in Pfarb Durim? Larger at the top? They are Eesty doors. It was an Eesty city. All across the world there are ruins with those doors.”

 “That’s why you’re Dervishes. You copied them.”

 “We tried. It is said one of them helped us originally.”

 “You copied them, but then just sat about waiting?”

 “We thought ... we thought the day would come. We were holding ourselves in readiness for the day.”

 “The day when someone else would fix things?”

 “The day things would be fixed, somehow. Yes.” A collective sigh. Then, “Jinian, why was it you who saw this?”

 I considered this. How had I known it? How did anyone know things? “I don’t know, Bartelmy. There always has to be someone to see things first. By the time Queynt gets to Himaggery in the south, others may have seen. Surely—oh, surely you will not merely stay here in your pervasion and let it happen.”

 “What can we do?”

 “Mavin told me you have powers. You changed Himaggery into a beast one time.”

 “We made him think he was.”

 “Then you can make Tragamors and Sorcerers think they are road builders. You can make Demons think they are hunting fustigars to seek out whoever robbed us of the message. You can make Healers think they are Lom fixers. I don’t know. You can do something!”

 “If there are more of these crystals across the sea,” said Cernaby, “they must be brought here. Shared out.”

 “Better late than not at all,” came a voice from the ranked multitude. “Better a tardy lover than a lonely bed.” A quiver of what could have been laughter ran through the ranks. Laughter? I was shocked at this, realizing only later that it was the laughter of despair.

 “You can help Himaggery decide how to get west over the sea and back again. It took Beedie and Roges three years, and we don’t have three years to spend. Mavin flew there, Beedie said. Which means Shifters can fly there and bring crystals back. Oh, Dervishes, I beg you ...”

 “You need not beg,” said Bartelmy. “I told you once to stop crying and get to work. I will not wait for you to say the same to me ...”

 “Mother,” I said, shivering at the sound of the word in my mouth. “Mother. Do not take time to confer. Can you truly set your patience aside?”

 “When we must. Yes, Jinian. When we must.” They went. I was not sure which way they went, except that in a few moments all were gone. Beside me the door to the hut stood open. Within were two narrow beds, a table with two chairs. A cupboard. They had indeed set their laws aside and prepared for my visit. I sat at the table, laid my head upon my arms, and wept as I had not wept since Chimmerdong, weariness mostly. Sadness, perhaps. And after weeping I lay upon the narrow cot and slept.

 When I woke Cernaby was standing in the doorway.

 “I waited,” said the Dervish. “We wanted to know what you were going to do next, and Bartelmy thought you might need one of us to carry a message somewhere, to someone.”

 “Where are the others?”

 “Some have gone south to others of our race. Some to find Queynt and the rest and be sure they reach the south safely. Some into the Shadowmarches in search of the Shadowpeople, though it may be we will need Mavin to help in that search. Some to the caves where the hundred thousand lie. A few to the giants’ cavern to see whether any of the blue crystals remain there when the waters drain away. Some to carry messages among those others, to keep us all informed.”

 I stared at her incredulously. “So quickly! I did not think it possible.”

 “We are not benighted, Jinian. If we have had any fault, it has been too much pride. We had a revelation from our founder. We had Seers’ visions which we misinterpreted. We had what we thought was the answer and we troubled to look no further. Who ever believes that time will end before one’s solution can be put into place?”

 I laughed, coughing. “Give me a moment, Cernaby. You have moved faster than I can.” I rose, walked around the room, found bread in the cupboard, ate some of it with a cup of water from the pitcher on the table. “It seems I am part of this matter. Not of my own doing, but merely because Murzemire Hornloss saw me involved in it. If for no other reason than that, I must play out that part.” I thought long on this. Then, “Cernaby, my thanks. No. This is one of those games without a name and which I keep getting involved in. Let me play it out, I do not think your presence will matter. Though I would welcome your company, perhaps your company is not what is most needed. I would rather you carry a message for me. To Murzy—Murzemire Hornloss. Tell her what we found. Tell her to raise the sevens. In all my dreams I can think of only three forces in this land unified enough to do anything sensible: the sevens, the Immutables, and the Dervishes. Himaggery and Barish will argue. Mavin will go kiting off on her own wild way. The pawns? Well, what powers have we left them that would make them useful now? Peter has destroyed the Magicians. Beedie’s people are far away. So. Go to the Immutables, and carry the word to Murzemire with my love.”

 Cernaby did not linger. There was no sentimentality among the Dervishes, there was little enough sentiment. When she was gone, I was alone in the pervasion with only my thoughts for company. I went through a number of the huts, packing what food I found. There was not much. Evidently the Dervishes lived on air, or sunlight. It would not have surprised me much to learn this was true. When I had repacked everything, as tightly and neatly as possible, I went back the way I had come. Wherever I was going next, I wanted Peter with me.

 CHAPTER ELEVEN

 I arrived at the pillar of red stone. Peter wasn’t there. I didn’t really expect him. It would have taken some time for him to get to the Bright Demesne—assuming that’s where everyone was, which might not be the case—and convincing them of anything might take longer. Unless he’d simply put the crystals in their soup. Which I abhorred philosophically but thought might be pragmatically justified. As long as it wasn’t me it was done to.

 Since it was possible I might have a long wait, I made a good camp, summoning up a few flood-chucks to help me with it. They explained they were very busy cleaning up the storm damage, and I explained that I understood all that, but I needed a camp nonetheless.

 We bowed to one another and said it all once again.

 Finally we compromised on a tightly woven hut thatched with reeds on the shore of a nearby lake. They threw in a latrine as lagniappe. We bowed again, satisfying one another with our mutual respect, and then I gave them one of the blue crystals, which they shared before moving away very thoughtfully into the woods. I had not even taken time to consider before giving them the crystal. It seemed right they should have it.

 I needed the hut to keep the shadow out as I had needed a house long ago in Chimmerdong. Shadow had lain deep on Chimmerdong, and I’d learned of its evil ways at first hand, getting myself shadow bit in the process. It lay thickly now in these northlands, flowing from somewhere in an unending flood.

 Even if there had been no shadow, a hut would have been a comfortable thing to have. Though Storm Grower was dead, it might rain. There were pombis rambling about in the wood. I might have to wait a very long time. Forever, if necessary, I think we had said. So.

 I would wait. And watch.

 Each day was spent wandering, looking, finding different lookouts from which one might spy upon the world. Each vantage point was more depressing than the last, for there were great swatches of forest dying, strange stinking smokes rising from far valleys. One day I thought of going back to the cavern of the giants but did not. Funk, I think. I couldn’t face it. My imagination told me too vividly what I would find there.

 Having rejected that idea, I decided to visit the ridge above the Great Maze. Since it was a high point, I could see a long way from there. It occurred to me I might see Peter returning.

 It wasn’t far, actually. Less than a half day’s scramble.

 It was saddening to look down into the empty pervasion, and the hill wasn’t as lofty as I remembered it.

 Still, it gave a good view out over the Great Maze and the lands sloping down to the sea. I scouted around in the pervasion, robbing a few huts of their stale bread it wasn’t bad dipped in tea—and a pot to boil water in. Somewhere between Storm Grower and Fangel, I’d lost mine.

 I built a small fire at the foot of one of the stone pillars, brewed some tea, and set myself to watch the southern sky.

 Birds. Clouds. Nice white ones, for a change. Sitting there with the fragrant breeze in my face, it was hard to believe that the world was dying beneath me. Grasses nodded; small things crept about making nests. It didn’t feel dead or dying, and yet I knew it was. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted Peter, and the less likely it seemed he was going to come. The sky was empty.

 I looked down for a while, to rest my eyes.

 I saw it coming out of the Great Maze.

 It came from the Maze itself. There was a movement at the edge of the Maze, a puzzling kind of change. I stared at it. The hedge of the Maze was no different.

 Nothing was entering or leaving it. And yet...

 Something had changed. There was a new configuration of light. Something shifted. For a time I gazed at it, uncertain, and then it moved. The shadow. Flooding out of the Maze and flowing downward, along the trail.

 An endless gray tide, covering the world.

 From the Maze? Why from the Maze?

 I spent a few minutes in futile cursing, then headed back for my camp. I’d have to find out as much as possible, before Peter came. He might drop directly into it. Be frozen, as Himaggery had been before Bartelmy had rescued him. Oh, by the Hundred Rotten Devils, I sighed, why now?

 Finding out anything would be like playing with an avalanche, rather. Toying with an angry dragon. I had talked long with Mavin. I knew what the shadow could do. Still, one had to know, as Queynt would say. One had to know.

 Back at the hut I considered the matter. What was there around me that still retained some integrity? The forest was smashed, riven, and storm-wrecked. The very mountains were torn. About the only thing around that looked whole was the lake we had built the hut beside, a charming little oval of shallow water, set in reeds, decked with lilies, full of fish and small plopping things. Though the forested banks were reduced to rubbish and the lake itself muddied from landslides upstream, still it had a certain immaculate charm left about it.

 The hut had one window, which I used for the window magic. As in Chimmerdong, I hung my blanket before it to serve as a curtain. Then I called up the lake.

 I don’t know quite what I expected. Some bubbly shape, perhaps, with fish for eyes. Some reedy thing with lilies in its hair. What came was a rounded silver dart, not unfishlike in shape, curved on every side and reflecting the interior of the hut like a mirror so that I saw a hundred Jinians in its sides. It did not bubble; it did not splash. It spoke as running water speaks, a quiet burble, a ruminative sibilance. “What would you, Jinian Star-eye?” it asked me as I was shutting the curtain.

 “The giants are dead,” I told it. “I expect you already knew that.”

 “We did. Yes.” Expressionless. That fact meant little to it, I thought.

 It made me dizzy to look at it. I stared into the fire, instead. It kept shifting, never alike for two instants. “I have seen the shadow flowing from the Maze. I thought it might come from there for some reason.”

 “You thought your being here might evoke it? That your summons might interest it?” It still seemed very little concerned. Instead it was detached, remote. “No. It does not concern itself with you now, Jinian Star-eye. It grows as the algae grows when lakes and rivers have died. It grows without thought, without care, and will die in its time without grief. When everything dies, so then will the shadow die as well.”

 “I am told,” I said carefully, “that the shadow can seek a certain person.”

 “It can be sent to do so,” sighed the lake. “Of itself, it does not seek. It grows in the Maze and flows from there. Whenever the destruction is remembered, more shadow flows ....”

 “Destruction?”

 “Of the Daylight Bell.” I thought about that. At the moment it didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t pursue it. “Then the only reason it’s flowing out of the Maze now is that the Maze is full of it? No other reason?”

 “No other reason. We are too near, too small, to concern those who sometimes send it.”

 “Chimmerdong concerned it.”

 “Chimmerdong was mighty, once. Boughbound was mighty, once. And the Glistening Sea and the Southern Sea and the River Ramberlon, which you call Stonybrook. If we live, call us up again, Jinian Footseer, and we will tell you the names of all the mighty who once gloried in the world.”

 “If we live. If the shadow does not catch me.”

 “You know,” it whispered to me. “You know. They may send it after you, human-girl, but they have not done so. Yet.” It left me then. I had not had the foresight to realize the hut would be very wet when it left. That night I slept beneath the stars, nervously.” Peter returned in the morning. He woke me where I slept, rolled in my cloak.

 “There was a flood in your hut?” he asked in a despondent voice. “I thought maybe you’d drowned.”

 “Peter, what’s the matter?” He hugged me sadly, almost absentmindedly. “Oh, Jinian, from worse to worse yet. Himaggery and Barish were arguing when we left there two years ago. While we’ve been away it went from argument to open animosity, and from that to a split at the Bright Demesne. Barish is for raising all the hundred thousand at once to make what he calls ‘massive changes’, not that he’s raised even one of them yet. Himaggery wants them raised a few at a time to make what he calls, “balanced programs’. Mavin got disgusted with them both and left. No one knows where she is. Mertyn went back to Schooltown.” He seemed about to weep.

 “Shh, shh,” I hushed him. “Bad enough, my love. But I know you. I know my sly, snakey Peter. What did you get done?”

 “I talked to Barish and demanded that the old Windlow part of him listen to me. He heard the warning. I said it over and over until he really seemed to have heard it. Then I put a blue crystal in his tea.”

 “I thought you would.” I wanted him to know I did not disapprove. Himaggery and Barish were stubborn, pombi-proud idiots. Heaven save me from male Wizeards who want to play politics. “And then?”

 “Then I told Himaggery he owed it to me as his son to listen to me. Which he agreed to. I warned him. Then I put a blue crystal in his wine.”

 “Ah.”

 “Then I left. I made a stop in Schooltown. Mertyn did believe me and he will send word to Mavin—somewhere, somehow, if he ever figures out where she is and though no one knows how long it will be before she gets the message, if she gets it at all. The two of us together went to see Riddle and Quench in the land of the Immutables. I gave crystals to each of them. I was sure the Immutables would be immune, just as they are to Talent, but they weren’t. None of them doubted me.”

 I cursed. “Doesn’t it prove what I said, Peter? Only three disciplined forces in the world. The Immutables; the Dervishes; the sevens.”

 “Well, we’ve got three alerted. A Dervish arrived about the time I left Schooltown. Don’t ask me how she got there that fast, because I flew the whole way. She said her name was Cernaby and to tell you your message had gone to the sevens.” He sighed, stretched out beside me, and pulled half my blanket over him. I didn’t even worry about his closeness. Oath or no oath. It just wasn’t that important anymore.

 “What did you do with the other crystals? You had several dozens of them?”

 “Gave them to Riddle and Quench and Mertyn. One for Mavin, when they find her. Six to be sent by trusted messenger to the others of your seven in Xammer—if they are still there ...”

 This astonished me. I had not thought of it myself, but Peter had. He continually surprised me by being more thoughtful and intelligent than I expected him to be. He didn’t notice my surprise but went on.

 “The others they will use as they see fit. I told them what you said about the hundred thousand good Gamesmen who are still frozen under the mountain. When I left them, Quench was talking with Cernaby about starting the resurrection, Barish or no Barish. Quench has the resurrection machine, you know. It’s his people who fixed it, and they were the ones who were going to do the work anyhow, if Barish ever got around to it. The problem is, of course, that Quench hasn’t enough of the crystals to be sure all of the resurrectees are given them, and you said that was important.”

 “I think it’s important. Why bring them back at all if not to help? Otherwise, they only return to die with the rest of us. I would have thought Barish would have started bringing them back to life by now, Himaggery or no Himaggery.”

 He turned toward me, laying an arm across me, tugging me close. “He’d rather argue than do. I think the mixture of Windlow into him has immobilized him. He still remembers what he planned to do once, but with Windlow inside his head he sees all the flaws in his original plan. I felt sorry for him.” He breathed very deeply in my ear. I lay very quietly, not discouraging him. If something was going to happen between us, I was not going to talk about my oath. What did happen between us was a gentle snore. So much for breaking my oath to make love beside the limpid waters. I laughed at myself and fell asleep.

 When he wakened, I told him what I had learned about the shadow. Peter had heard Mavin’s story of the shadow. “It lives in the Great Maze?”

 “So the lake creature said. It lives in the Great Maze, among the memories of the world.” I did not realize what I had said until I had said it. Cernaby had told me that.

 “Among the memories of the world? Jinian. We store our memories in our minds.”

 “In our brains,” I corrected him. “The mind is something else. It, too, lives in the brain, but it is something else. So I was told long ago by a Healer who saved my life. Peter, if the shadow lives in the brain of Lom, of the world, then is the shadow part of this world, or is it something else? Something from outside? As we were from outside? As mankind was from outside? Did we really bring some plague with us? Queynt talked with Eesties who alleged so. Were they right?”

 “We could go in the Maze and find out,” he offered.

 I laughed, then told him only a little about my short journey through a shallow edge of the Maze. He gave me disbelieving looks. “Wasn’t there a guide?”

 “The Oracle. The Oracle who almost got me killed at Daggerhawk. The Oracle who trapped me and gave me to the giants. That Oracle?”

 “We could tie it up. You could put distraints on it.”

 “We could tie it up. I don’t think that would work, but we could try. Distraints, however? I don’t think so, Peter. I think anything I know, the Oracle knows something stronger. It’s a kind of evil Devil. A kind of dancing mischief maker. All full of—puffed-up anger and pride and envy. Some kind of trouble-god. And there isn’t only one of it. I thought I was dreaming in the cavern, but the more I think about it, the more sure I become that it was all true. I saw many of them in there. Oracles and Oracles. One, perhaps, as the leader, but followers without number. And oh, Peter, but I am afraid of them.”

 He was listening to me, concentrated upon me, looking deep into my eyes. “You know what you’re implying, Jinian. You don’t say it, but you must know it.”

 “That they’re the ones who hid the blue crystals. The ones who took them all instead of seeing they were distributed all around the world. Yes, I’m sure they did it. The Oracles.” It was out. Said. It rang true. Who else would have assembled them in the cavern of the giants? Who else would have taken them? Who else would have displayed such warped hatred for mankind? Oracles. Who never told the whole truth. “Oracles The very father and mother of liars,” I said. “Not trustworthy as guides, Peter. Truly not.”

 “I can see you thinking, Jinian Footseer. You’re thinking about going into that Maze, guide or no guide. No matter what it’s like.”

 I couldn’t deny it. I’d been thinking about it for days.

 How to get in. How to find my way in. How to test whether my art worked there, and if so, how. How to use it, then. How to find the place the shadow lived. If Lom was dying, wasn’t it possible the shadow was killing it, no matter what the lake had told me? Oh, I thought about it. At various times I had thought about a whole seven going in. Or maybe a group of Dervishes.

 Each time, something within me said, No. Not great armies, just one or two people. That’s all.

 “Yes,” I admitted. “It seems someone will have to. Everything that can be done on the outside is being done, except one thing.”

 “And that is?”

 “Going to Beedie’s land and getting the crystals that are there. Mercald-Mirtylon said there were many. They only brought out a few. Since I made that mistake at the cavern, calling up the boon too quickly, the ones in Beedie’s chasm may be the only ones left. I was depending on Mavin to do that.”

 “Mavin will, when they find her.”

 “Ifthey find her. If they find her in time. If she agrees to go. If she gets there. If she gets back.”

 “I see. You want me to go.”

 “Someone has to. I can’t. I’m no Shifter.”

 “Jinian. Oh, Jinian, I’m not nearly the Shifter Mavin is, either. You may not know that, but in Shiftery, experience counts. Mavin was much older than I when she flew the Western Sea. Stronger. She had more experience with the forms, with the quick changes. My pride suffers to have me say it, Jinian, love. But I’m not sure I’d make it, Jinian Footseer.” I hadn’t known. He always seemed so confident.

 Then I remembered that clumsily staggering form that had left me a few days before, wobbling across the sky, and I wanted to cry. Wings, I suppose it took years to really get accustomed to wings.

 And it dropped into my head like a stone into a pool.

 Wings. The great flitchhawk of Chimmerdong owed me a boon. The last one of the three great boons I had earned in Chimmerdong. And if any creature alive in this world had wings, it was he.

 There was no reason to wait, so I didn’t. Peter and I sat beside the fire, and I called him. I let Peter see me do it; that was against the rules, but I did it anyway.

 “The ways of the sky are yours, treetop and cloud, sunlight and starlight, wind and rain. I have need of these and call for a boon.” We sat quietly for a time until he arrived. On all previous arrivals, I had been buffeted by the huge feathers. This time Peter was in the way. He stood up to it no better than I ever had. It sent him sprawling.

 “Your eyes are like moons, flitchhawk,” I said. “Have you seen much of the world in the last two years?” He perched on the ground, a monumental thing, his beak like the curved roof of a tower, his legs like obelisks, wings out like the boughs of mighty trees, shading us against the sun. When he looked down at me, I felt very small, and yet that gaze was no less friendly than it had ever been. He answered me.

 “Destruction and wrack, Jinian Dervish daughter. High winds and low. Chimmerdong lives yet a while, but elsewhere the green of life dims to gray. I have swum in clouds, waiting for your call.”

 “I want you to take my love over the sea, flitchhawk. Far over the sea to a great chasm, where he must gather crystals as blue as your skies and bring them to Mertyn and Riddle and Quench.”

 “Is this the boon you would ask?”

 “It is,” I said.

 “No,” said Peter. He strode from beneath the great wing to stand facing the flitchhawk, unafraid of it, his face quite calm and adamantly strong.

 “No?” The great bird flexed its feathers, letting the light shine through them. We stood in its dappled shade.

 “When I said no, I meant that it wasn’t quite right,” Peter said. “Not quite what was wanted. You see, I must stay here. Otherwise Jinian will go into the Great Maze without me, and if I cannot be with her to help her and protect her, then I do not care if Lom dies. If I do not care, I could not do the job well over the Western Sea.”

 “So you don’t want me to take you,” the flitchhawk murmured, raising those wings.

 “No. We want you to go instead. The crystals are blue. They lie at the bottom of the great chasm. The Stickies will bring them to you if you ask. Beedie’s people will help you if you ask. Birds are holy to that people. Messengers, so they say, of the Boundless. If you will go now to the south where Beedie and Roges are, they will direct you.” He said this all in a rush, never taking his eyes off the flitchhawk, and I could not stop him.

 “And is this your wish, Jinian Star-eye?” The wings were fully raised, high.

 I didn’t even take time to think. “Yes,” I cried.

 The wings came down, a huge buffet of air knocked us to the ground, the flitchhawk lifted away, circled, higher and higher, and we saw him turn away south, in the direction Beedie and Roges and Queynt and Chance had gone.

 I was crying. Not sadly. Not happily, either, come to that, but out of a certain fullness inside me. “We may never come out of the Maze, you know,” I said to him.

 “I know,” he said. “That’s why I couldn’t let you go alone.” We stayed there that day. Resting a little. Talking of things long gone. Not that we had lived so long as to have many such things, but those we had were precious. I talked about the girl in the window of Schooltown who called up her love and gave him a slice of hot nut pie. He told me of seeing a girl at a banquet in Xammer and never being able to forget her after that. We were not even tempted to make love. Something sadder and higher had us by the throats, and we slept in one another’s arms, needing nothing more than that.

 And in the morning we left the little hut by the lake and went up the trail to the Great Maze. Somewhere inside it lay all the answers to all the questions we had ever asked. We stood a long time hand in hand above it, readying ourselves. I knew what we must look for in that Maze. A book. A light. A bell. Twice now, Seers had Seen those things as having meaning for me, for us, and if they existed in this world, then Lom should remember them.

 The little path Cernaby had shown me lay below us.

 Beyond those first few rooms? Cells? I did not know what we would find.

 And there were no answers where we were. Peter kissed me. I heard him sigh, two sighs, both of us.

 Then we went in.

 Jinian Star-eye

 1
THE GREAT MAZE

 So far as one could see from the outside, the Great Maze was merely a jungle of paths and hedges, trees and bushes, a mighty entanglement lying to the south of the Pervasion of the Dervishes, stretching from there away to the distant sea. Standing on the hill above the Maze, I had looked down into it to see winding trails, clearings, pathways, even quite large open spaces with impenetrable edges of luxuriant green, and in some of these spaces the easily recognized outline of well-known plants: rainhat bush, thrilps, giant wheat. Only natural things.

 I suppose if you took the top of my skull off and looked at the quivering stuff inside, you would see only flesh, only natural things. Looking at that quaking jelly, one wouldn’t see ideas or fears; no dreams would leap from the pinky-gray convolutions to dance on the brain top.

 So, when Peter and t stood beside the Great Maze of Lom—which is the name the Shadowpeople give to this world—we saw no memories rising from the clearings or insinuating their way through the underbrush. And yet, according to Mind Healer Talley, who had told the Dervishes long before, the Maze holds the memories of our world.

 Each time I thought of this, my mind chased about for a moment and then stopped working. It was not easy to believe, a whole world, remembering. A world actually thinking, planning. A world dreaming, perhaps. A world regretting. A world dying.

 No. Not merely dying. Killing itself.

 Outside the Maze were boiling fumaroles casting acid palls onto age-less forests; chasms opening to swallow mighty rivers; mountains bursting into flame and ash. Outside the Maze was a world sick unto death and with no desire for healing. And we were on it, with nowhere else to go.

 Oh, yes, part of our fear and pain was for ourselves. Why deny it? And part for those we loved. I fretted, thinking of Murzy and the rest of my seven away south. Peter groaned, thinking of Mavin, his mother, and Himaggery the Wizard, his father, and other kin dear to him. And both of us together thought of` Queynt and Chance, fondly and with foreboding. At one point I even found myself regretting Queen Vorbold, back in Xammer, for all her unsympathetic pride. But if we went to them, there was nothing we could do to help any of them. If anything could be done, it would be done here, now.

 The reason for Lom’s death would be found among those memories. The reason had to be there, somewhere in the past.

 Perhaps if the reason were known, something could be done to reverse this final agony.

 There seemed to be no one else to make the attempt.

 We might be able to do something. If we were very lucky, it might even be the right thing.

 Peter said all this to me, and then I repeated it to him with all the tone and frenzy of conviction. So we encouraged ourselves. Both of us knew that each of us was sick with anxiety and apprehension, and each of us was very busy concealing it from the other. “Oh, yes,” we seemed to say, “this is perfectly possible. Of course we will get on with it at once,” while our stomachs hurt and a smelly sweat oozed on skins already damp. Even I could smell us. A fustigar could have followed us for leagues. We stank of fear, and everything we saw and heard made it clear how late it was to attempt anything at all. If we failed, we died with the world. And even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee we would survive the effort.

 I had been inside the Maze once before, only just inside a shallow edge. Cernaby of the Soul had showed me one way in and one way out, and now that Peter and I were going in together, it seemed wise to start by retracing those earlier steps. To get the flavor, so to speak. Or rather, to let Peter get the flavor, since I was afraid I already had it. A flavor of confusion, mostly. Of connections just out of reach. At any rate, after an affectionate and—if we’re honest about it—bravely-hiding-our-true-feelings-for-fear-of-frightening-ourselves embrace, we went in hand in hand by the same path I had tried before, an easy path making a shortloop into the Maze and out again, the entrance and exit only a few paces apart along the road.

 We took one step . . .

 . . . To find ourselves upon a height, sharp with wind. Below lay a cliff-edged bowl carpeted in spring green, sun glinting on the western rim of stone, the depths still in shadow. From above came an enormous screaming, mightier than any fleshy voice, metal on air, burning gasses, hot shrieking wind.

 Down from above a silver spearhead, falling butt end first, buoyed on its bellowing, gas-farting rear, down into the green. I smelled the burning; trees burst into flame; the grass crisped into ash; smoke billowed into the morning. Then quiet. A feeling of dread; dread and excitement, curiosity and pain. Mixed.

 A door opened high on the silver spearhead, and a strange creature came out. It was too thick through to be normal. Too thin from side to side and too thick from back to front. Not star-shaped, as would have been normal. Limbs oddly jointed. Naked-faced. Not attractive. Ugly, rather. It called with a weak little voice into the shadowed bowl. Um, um, blah, um. Uttering nonsense. Um, um, blah. I knew what it was saying but could not understand a word. A nasty little human creature, an invader, and I could not understand a word.

 I shook myself, frightened, grasping Peter’s arm and hanging on as though I were drowning. I had not seen that creature through my own eyes but through the eyes of the world. Through Lom’s eyes. I gasped, blinked, tried to find myself in all this.

 “Jinian . . . Jinian?” He was shaking me gently, looking at me with that tender concern he showed sometimes, the kind that made my heart turn over and stop beating.

 “It’s all right,” I breathed. “It’s all right. Let’s get out of here.” I tugged him to our left along the rim of the cliff, toward the grove of midnight trees. He followed me reluctantly, eyes turned back to watch that silvery vehicle in its patch of burned grass. Just before we reached the tree, the silver vessel disappeared from the green bowl below and we heard the howling begin high above us. As we stepped into the shadow, I looked up. It was coming down again. Below us in the valley the green meadow was untouched; the blackened scar had vanished. “What?” Peter started to say.

 “Shh,” I said. “Just come on a few more steps, then we’ll figure it out.” I was shaken. When I had been here before, I had merely observed, not been battered about by these waves of feeling.

 We stepped out from the shadow of the tree onto the Wastes of Bleer. The place was unmistakable; a high plateau, barren and drear, with the contorted shapes of the Wind’s Bones all around. `Thorn bush and devil’s spear and great Wind’s Bones. There was no feeling here, only a waiting numbness.

 “Quick,” I said to Peter, moving toward the crevasse I remembered from the time before. “Before it comes down on our heads.” Above us, out of a clear sky, a moon was falling at us, burning bright, soundlessly, hideously plunging out of the east. He looked up, gasped, almost fell as I pulled him down into the hole . . .

 . . . Into the great, gray temple I remembered from last time. Outside the walls, the menacing roar of many voices. Above us, a great- vacancy, an enormous height. Smoke rising. Somewhere doors opening and closing, the sound far away and vague, as though heard inatten­tively. Shadowy forms moving around us, back and forth across the immense nave. Two pedestals were toppled against the wall, the lamp that had evidently rested on one of them lay at my feet. Beside the other fallen pedestal was a great book, its leaves crumpled.

 Before I could stop him, Peter broke from my side and ran to a carved stone monument that loomed beneath one of the high windows. He was up in it in a moment, neck craned to peer through the opening. I remember being surprised that he Shifted a little as he went, making spidery arms and legs for himself. Somehow I had felt our Talents would not work in the Maze. There was no time to consider it. I cried out, “Peter, don’t. . . .” afraid he would gothrough into some other place. He heard the tone of panic in my voice, if not the words, came scurrying back. My heart was pounding; every muscle was tight. I could barely breathe among the feelings of apprehension and horror. We fled around the low curbing of an empty pool toward the stairs and the altar. From high above came the dreadful breaking sound that I remembered half hearing the time before, a sound like a great tree breaking, tearing apart in an agony of ripped fibers. . . .

 We stepped behind the altar and out onto the path in the Maze. It opened to our right onto the same road we had left.

 “Wall,” Peter gasped, breathless. “Gah. Oh. That wasn’t what I expected.”

 I tried to take a deep breath, choking myself in the effort. Horror. Sheer horror. After a time the feeling diminished. I managed to ask, “What did you see out the window?”

 “Eesties. I mean, I guess they were Eesties. I’ve never seen them, but Mavin has. And Queynt saw them, of course. I don’t know what else they could have been. Star-shaped. Hundreds, maybe thousands of

 them, all roaring at the building we were in. Why did you yell at me like that?”

 “I was afraid you’d slipthrough. Cernaby said each ‘place’ has many ways out. That’s what makes it a maze. If you’d gone somewhere else, I’m not sure I could have found you.”

 “Is it all like that?”

 “I think so. Places. No, not exactly places. More like events. Did you notice that first one we were in? . . .”

 “It was the Base. The place the Magicians called the Base. I’ve seen that ship before. I’ve been there.”

 “Have you really!” Somehow this was astonishing to me. Even though I knew Peter had had a life before we met—or met again—evidence of it always had the power to surprise me, to shame me, as though I felt he could not have survived without me. “Then you know what was hap­pening?”

 “It was the human ship arriving. The ship with all the Magicians on it. Barish was on that ship, and Didir, and Queynt himself. It landed a thousand years ago. Didn’t you see Barish come out the door on the side of it? I wanted to get closer and see what Barish was like before—when he was just Barish.”

 Barish was no longer just Barish. I knew Peter blamed himself some­times for putting old Windlow’s mind into Barish’s body, but then at the time we all thought Barish had no mind of his own. Since then, the two of them had lived an uneasy joint tenancy, two sets of memories, two sets of opinions on everything, all in one head, and it would have been interesting to see what Barish was like, just as himself. Nonetheless, we hadn’t time to think of it now.

 “All I could see was something that didn’t look natural,” I confessed. “Even though I knew it was human, I thought it was very strange. I couldn’t understand it.”

 “That’s odd.” He thought about this, peering at me intently, then nodding. “Well, no, not really odd. If these are the memories of the world, as your Dervish friend told you, then you’re probably picking up how the world feels about it. Felt about it. To this world, men would have been strange. Very strange. Come from some far place, not of `itself,’ so to speak.”

 This made sense. At least it was no stranger than the rest of it, and it would explain the horrifying feelings I had been having.

 “The second place we got into was the Wastes of Bleer,” mused Peter. “At the time the moon fell. You said Storm Grower brought the moon down, just to prove she could. Lom must have found that traumatic, too.” He thought for a time longer. “And I have no idea what the third place was.”

 “I don’t, either,” I confessed. “But I do know how it’s connected to the other two things.” It had taken me a while to figure it out, but I had come up with an answer. “Just as we came out, there was this sound from above, the sound of something breaking. Like a great beam of wood.”

 “I heard it.”

 “Well, after it broke, I think something fell. Something huge.”

 “So each event was about something falling?” He sounded doubtful. “I think so. Each event was part of a category labeled `Something falling.’ Or, more specifically, not merely ‘something,’ but ‘something very big.’ I’m not really sure about that last one, because we didn’t stay to see.”

 “Could we step back in and find out?”

 “I’m afraid to.”

 “Can it hurt us?”

 “Quite frankly, Peter, I haven’t any idea. Reason says no. My skin savs yes. I barely made it out of there this time.”

 You stay here,” he said, patting me fondly on my head as he might have petted a tame fustigar. He stepped back the way we had come, leaving me with my mouth open. I swallowed, choked, started to go screaming after him, then thought better of it. Peter often did things I was afraid to do. Then my fear for him overcame my fear for myself, and I went roaring after him, usually quite unnecessarily. Just now there was something I had wanted to do that would take a few moments alone. There might be no better time later.

 Peter had Shifted inside the maze. If his Talent worked there, then mine would probably work close by. Not my Talent of understanding languages, but my Wize-ardlv one. There was a spell I’d been saving, a multiple one Murzy had taught me early on, telling me not to use it save in times of great need. It was a combination spell used to find appropri­ate destinations. Not particular ones, you understand, but appropriate ones. Murzy called it a blood, dust, and total trust spell. Nothing needed but a drop of my own blood on a roadway and total faith that what I would ask lay in the will and purpose of the art. The problem with it would be, she had said, its tendency to pull other creatures into it with me. Just as the road would be connected to many other roads, so the spell would connect me to many other things. Considering the puzzle the Maze presented, I thought it worth the risk. Our chances of finding what we needed on our own seemed very remote. So, I plopped myself down on the green edge of the path and made myself concentrate. It was hard. Something about the place made concentration difficult, words hard to remember.

 “Day or night, dark or light,” I prayed, gulping a little, shutting everything out except those words, “lead me to the place I need to be. Bright the Sun Burning, Night Will Come Turning, Road’s Dust to Find It, Heart’s Blood to Bind It.” I used the edge of my star-eye to cut a finger, dropped the blood on a thirsty patch of bare road, then sat very quietly, letting the words flow through me until all my parts understood them.

 It always seems to take a long time. Actually, it doesn’t. Within moments, I was worrying about Peter again. There was only time for a modest fret before he emerged from the Maze, somewhat untidily. “I Shifted,” he announced. “To stay out of the way. Something enormous fell. It made a noise like some huge being screaming in agony, a great metallic clamor. It killed several whats-its, then after a little while it was gone and everything was just the way it had been originally. It goes on over and over, like some one-act play at a festival. Performances every few minutes.”

 “Did it hurt you?” I wrapped my punctured finger in a leaf and tucked the star-eye back in my shirt.

 “Oh. No. No, I couldn’t even feel it.”

 “Well, if you can hear it and smell it, how come you can’t feel it?” “Probably because the world . . ,”

 “Lom.

 “Probably because Lom hears it and smells it but doesn’t feel it. I mean, if they’re memories, then they act like memories, don’t you think? If I set myself to remember—oh, that time I tried to rescue you and Silkhands from the Ghoul. Remember that?—I remember the stink, and the heat of the flames, and I can still hear my own voice yelling stupid things, but I don’t burn. I don’t singe. Iwince at the memory, but I don’t end up half-asphyxiated from smoke. I remember the firehaving happened, but I don’t reevoke it, so to speak. The stink, though, that always comes back.”

 This, too, made sense. Smell, sight, and hearing happen inside one’s head, but assault comes from the outside world. So the memory of smell could be the smell itself, but the memory of pain . . . Well, creatures probably survive better if they can’t remember pain too well.

 He nodded. “Of course some memories are very hurtful. It would probably be prudent for us to be careful.”

 Now he was talking about prudence. Peter! I didn’t believe it. Agreed with it, yes; believed it, no. Peter had never been prudent in his entire life. He nodded his head a couple of times, as though he were setting that firmly in mind, then asked, “Now. Where do we go, and what do we do?”

 During the night we’d just spent together, tight-wrapped in each other’s arms and chaste as two baby bunwits, both trying not to say the things that would frighten us to death or make us cry, sometimes he’d dozed off with his lips next to my throat, his breath tickling me like an owl’s feather. It had been necessary then, since I couldn’t sleep, to think of something unemotional, so I’d spent the time thinking about the Maze. Now I trotted out my conclusions, hoping they were correct. “If these three events are linked, so to speak, by a single line of thought or category or index heading, then we’ll have to suppose other things are linked in the same way. So. We try to find some line of thought that might logically take us where we want to go.’

 “Which is?”

 “Wherever Lom is thinking about dying.”

 He looked depressed. There was nothing I could say to make the task seem either easier or more pleasant. I knew exactly how he felt. It’s how l felt in the Forest of Chimmerdong when something vague and impossible needed doing and I seemed to be the only one around to do it. “I know,” I commiserated. “It’s terrible sounding.”

 “It’s not that. You’ve said these events are memories. If Lom is actively thinking about dying, it won’t be in memories, will it? Won’t it be somewhere else? Some other part of its mind?”

 I didn’t know. Probably no one did. And if it were so, it was not helpful. “They have to be linked together somewhere, Peter.”

 He sighed a put-upon sigh, not offering any better suggestion. “All right. So they must be linked. Now, what shall we look for?”

 “That last place? The temple? There were creatures in it. When the thing fell in, whatever it was, you say something got killed. If I’m right, that means there’s a link out of that place to the idea of things dying. We find that link if we can, and we follow it. Event by event.”

 “And if nothing got killed?”

 “Then we look around until we find an event where somebody did get killed.”

 “Makes me feel like a Ghoul,” he said.

 So did I, to tell the truth, and only the knowledge that whatever we would see had already happened and could not be changed made me feel any better about it. We took a deep breath, held hands once more, and stepped back into the temple.

 Gray and huge and the roar of angry voices. This time I paid moreattention. I looked straight up, trying to see what was above us, but there was only a receding immensity of stone and smoke. There was no roof. We were below a tower. Huge doors on all sides of the room opened to admit hurrying figures, misty, dim, not fully remembered, I guessed. They might have been Eesties. I got the impression of fluttering robes or ribbons around a low curbing at the center of the place. Peter pressed me tightly against the stones, becoming a kind of wall between me and whatever was coming. The roar was louder, a furious chanting. Then a cracking noise. High above us. Huge. Like a tree coming down in a forest. That creaking again, as when something tries to remain whole but is destroyed fiber by fiber. And then it let go.

 I heard it coming. An agonized scream of metal. A tumbling clangor, banging down the tower with thunderous crashes. It was only a few instants before it hit. Shattering. Shards of metal flying in all directions. One buried itself in the wall beside me. Voices crying out, weeping. The furious roaring outside suddenly stilled, as though in horror at what had happened. Then one voice raised, then another, rebelliously cheering.

 Struggling gray forms on the floor, one or two. I went toward them, trying to feel where one might go out. No door. No exit. Even close beside the writhing figures, I couldn’t see them clearly, and the revelation almost stopped me in my tracks. The sound was as clear as my own voice, but these figures were misty, which meant that Lom didn’t remember them very well. It remembered the sound and those outside, but not these. Just something, something dying. There was a rush of unfocused anguish, a kind of thinning in the atmosphere of the place. I grabbed Peter’s hand and moved toward it, trying to find it. It was stronger beside the monument he had climbed upon earlier, shattered now. The anguish I felt was anguish at the destruction of this! Not at the death of the creature, but at this shattering. . . .

 I moved in the direction of the feeling, pulling Peter along by one hand, not certain where.

 And came out.

 We were standing in a desert. Nothing was happening. A chilly wind blew a few grains of sand restlessly across the parched soil. Bristly growths spiked here and there on the limitless flat around a jagged line of broken statues.

 “Don’t move,” I said, frustrated. “I think we came in the wrong direction.” I tried to breathe, gasping, as though I had been crying. What was it?

 “What were you after?”

 “There was this feeling of anguish. Grief.” I stopped, unable to go on. The feeling was still there, all around me, a sadness so palpable it stopped my breath. I gritted my teeth, did a small concentration spell, and was able to breathe once more. I went on, “At first I thought it was grief over something dying, but Lom didn’t even remember the things that were dying, so it had to be the grief over something else. Maybe grief over the destruction of’ the carving. Perhaps it was a work of art.”

 “Maybe not.” He mused over the unchanging scene. “It could have been a monument. A cenotaph, maybe. A memorial to someone or something dead which Lom did remember. And these may be more of the same.” He gestured toward the shattered statues.

 There was a funerary air to the place. Solemn. Still. No rush or fury of life. Only the barren soil, the keening wind, the stark bulk of the carved stone against a line of distant mountains. The statue nearest us looked away from me, to one side, staring into eternity. I couldn’t tell what it was from this distance, but I was afraid to go closer. I didn’t want to leave the place we had come in without marking it. And how did you mark something in a place like this? I tried scraping away at the sand beneath me. It scraped very,nicely, then slowly filled itself up like oozy mud. Evidently I could have only a temporary influence here. I tried breaking a branch off a thorny bush. It broke, nipped my finger with a thorn, quietly dissolved in my hand, and reappeared on the bush. The hole in my finger was still there. “We can’t make any lasting changes, Peter. [t restructures itself.”

 “If we can’t make any changes . . .” His voice trailed away as he stared at me. I knew what he was thinking. If we couldn’t make any lasting changes, then how were we to have any effect on Lom’s mind? He broke off the thorn branch I had broken. It dissolved in his hand and reappeared on the bush. He broke it again, stubbornly, and went on doing it while I watched, wondering what he thought he was doing.

 At about the dozenth break, the branch did not dissolve right away. At about the twentieth, it stopped dissolving altogether. He stood there, holding the branch, watching it, scratches all over his fingers. “It seems to respond to persistence,” he said, sucking his thumb.

 I ventured, “I’d like to take a look at that statue, the closest one, but I’m afraid to lose the place we came in.”

 “I’ll stay here,” he offered. “Perhaps I can get some bearings.” It was true there were mountains around the edge of’ the place, and other monuments scattered out in several directions. One should be able to take sightings on several things and locate the spot. I left him at it and trudged away to the nearest monument.

 Sad. Oh, my, sadness doesn’t half say it. The broken stone was awash with grief. It was that same unfocused grief I had felt before. Lom’s grief, not mine. I could not understand it. I could only feel it, and feeling it was more than enough. I leaned against the plinth on which the monument sat, making my lungs behave.

 Chunks of the pedestal had been broken away. Great riven stones lay about, and the edges of the breaks showed no signs of weathering. When it was new it must have been an imposing thing. I’m not sure what kind of thing. Not a d’bor, but something rather like that. Something huge and majestic, solemn and marvelous. Not merely a creature, but a Creature of creatures. As the D’bor Wife had been. As Gobblemole and Flitchhawk had been. Looking on that carved face, I was quite sure it had been a wonderful being. It had the same feel to it as the Wind’s Bones on Bleer. It might have been one of those mighty, ancient creatures as it had appeared when alive. And the statue wasn’t a grave marker. Nothing was buried under the monument. A creature like that may be killed, but it doesn’t just die and it can’t be buried. No, this was a memorial to some mighty and wonderful creature that had reached its end, elsewhere, perhaps far away. I leaned against the monument to feel it pressing into my thighs, solid, like real stone. I scraped a hand across a crumbled place and stared at the palmful of gravel. It didn’t dissolve. I trudged back to where Peter was waiting, notebook in hand, busy with his pen.

 “I’ve taken sightings,” he said. “I think we could get out again.” “I’ve been taking bits of things.” I showed him my specimens. “This place is variable. Those monuments are as real as I am. They break and stay broken.”

 He shook his head over this anomaly, but there was no point in discussing it. I think we both felt it was wisest just to go on, gathering experience, learning what we could. So we tried the exit to the temple to be sure it still worked, one step back into the roaring gray space, then one step back into the desert. Both were unchanged. Each time we entered the temple, no matter where we entered from, we got there before the thing fell down.

 Back in the desert, we went to the monument. “It feels very sad around here,” I said. “So this is the direction we want to go.” Mutter mutter. He sounded disgusted.

 “What?” I asked him. “I didn’t hear you.”

 “I was just saying it was an odd direction. Go five paces angry, turn grief-stricken, and take ten paces in a generally sad direction.”

 “It may come to that.” He meant it to be funny, but it wasn’t. “Can’t you feel it?”

 “Not really. I’ll take your word for it.”

 “How come I can feel it and you can’t?”

 “Because that’s your Talent. Empathy. That’s how you talk all those beast languages. You empathize and just naturally understand them. This is just another kind of language.” He was feeling around the base of the monument, walking to and away from it, circling away from me to the left. “You understand these things on a nonverbal level. . . .”

 He didn’t come around the other side. I waited, carefully not moving. Silence. No Peter. Only the wind. My teeth were clenched so tightly that my jaw ached. I kept telling myself he was all right, had always been all right, would always be all right. There was a small sighing, as of a door swinging open or closed, and in a moment he backed into me. “Found it,” he said, taking me by the hand and tugging me forward once more.

 And we came out in the village of Betand as it had been a thousand years before.

 Not that I knew that right away. What we saw was so raw and strange that neither of us tried to identify it. We did, however, catalog it as we stared. One street, dirt—mud, rather—deeply rutted and hideously ugly. Two stark wooden buildings with signs saying they sold farm stock. Other wooden stores, some a little grayer, which sold equipment. Small groups of people in the street, families with children, some with a few horses or zeller, most with carts piled high with household goods. A tavern; The Blue Fustigar. Even then I didn’t identify the place.

 It wasn’t until I turned to see Vitior Vulpas Queynt emerging from the tavern that I knew where I was. It was Queynt, not one whit different in height and size than when I had seen him last, and yet in some way much younger looking. It was the expression on his face. Dissatisfaction. Annoyance. His expression was less like the Queynt I knew and more like Peter, full of jittery impatience. A much less poised expression than he wore now. “Queynt,” I said.

 He did not see us. Did not hear me. He went past us as though we had been smoke. Behind him came a depressed-looking couple with a child, the woman calling, “Sir, sir.”

 That’s when I knew where we were. Betand. The beginning of the city of Betand. When man was young upon Lom, scarcely come, and the rolling stars were driving him from the Shadowmarches.

 Peter had already figured it out. He was busy stripping leaves from a bush, seeing whether he could make them stay off. He couldn’t. “Newer,” he breathed at me, his eyes unfocused. “This memory is newer. The newer the memory, the less effect we can have on it. What does it have to do with grief?”

 “Not grief. Destruction.” I waved at the forests that stretched up the northern hills toward the marches. Everywhere were the stumps of trees in cleared fields. “That’s the common thread, Peter. You said it yourself. You used the word ‘traumatic.’ The world was injured during each of those episodes. Destruction in the temple. Destruction of the monuments on the desert. Destruction of the forests here.” I was right. None of it had really been about dying at all, and I wanted to cry. This wouldn’t lead us where we needed to go.

 He must have seen my face. He pulled me close and we stood there for a long, wordless minute, me with my head on his chest, both of us watching Queynt talk to the couple. Then they went away. Queynt went back into the tavern. After a while he came out. We followed him around for a while, and after what seemed to be the better part of a day, he started out of town to the north. All this time we’d been waiting for the story to start over, and it hadn’t started over yet.

 “If this is an ‘event,’ it’s a very long one,” Peter said. “Does that mean it’s important?”

 “Who’s to say? I remember some things from my childhood in complete, exquisite detail, and so far as I know, they don’t mean anything. Except to me, of course. And you, maybe. Someday I’ll tell you.” He smiled at me, teasingly, and I knew he did it just to cheer me. “Do you want to go after him?”

 “Peter, I’m not sure we have enough to eat. Somehow I thought there’d be food in here. You know. Roots. Berries. I didn’t expect it all to be shadows and pictures.”

 He shook his head at me, being practical as he sometimes was, most surprisingly. “It can’t be all shadows, Jinian. It’s substantial. The Maze is substantial. You can see things growing in it from outside. Some of it has to be real. Like your brain. If’ you could walk around inside your own brain, you might be able to see the ideas, but you’d still be walking on something real. Cells. Flesh. Something.” He reached out and stripped leaves and fruit from a thrilp bush beside the path, moodily waiting for it to dissolve.

 And it didn’t. It lay there in his hand, dripping juice, smelling very ripe and real. I laughed. Couldn’t help it, I guess, he looked so discomfited. Mouth open. He had just told me some of it had to be real, but he hadn’t expected it to be the tree he was working at. My strained laughter made him laugh in turn, somewhat ruefully. He picked a hatful of thrilps, stowed them in his pack, and started after Queynt’s receding form, far in the northern distance.

 “Don’t know about you, Jinian, but I’m going to see whether he told us the truth or not.”

 I ran to catch up. It seemed an insane, completely random thing to do, unlikely to lead us anywhere helpful. And yet—I had done the guidance spell, Heart’s Blood, Road Dust, lead-me-where-it-would. There had been those ripe thrilps, almost like an answer to a prayer. And there had been grief in Lom’s mind, grief about something. Perhaps this road was not as unlikely as it seemed.

 2
MEMORY

  

 I have in recent years often reflected upon memory. One takes it so for granted. One remembers with such facile infallibility. And one finds with such shock—at least it was a shock to me—that memory isn’t truth.

 This occurred to me first when I read Peter’s account of our meeting and the events around that time. The big things that happened were there, seen from a slightly different angle, perhaps, but intact. I remembered the Wind’s Eve and so did he. I remembered the Battle of the Bones, and in general he remembered it as I did. But many of the small things were totally different. I did not hear things he heard, even though we stood side by side when they were said. I did not see things he saw. And conversely, of course, I saw and heard things he did not. It struck me then, an interesting reflection without particular import, and I resolved in future not to be too insistent upon the truth of my own memories. I thought of the way Murzy had recalled old events. “I remember it this way,” she said. “I remember it this way, but on reflection, I think so and so must have happened, and even that may not be true.”

 I thought of the subject again as we followed the memory of Vitior Vulpas Queynt into the Shadowmarches. It wasn’t very long since he had told us the story of that journey—what had it been? A handful of days, no more, since we had been cozy in the tower room at Bloome, listening to his reminiscences. And now we followed him upon that same journey as remembered by another mind, as remembered by the world that held him and that, for some reason, dignified this event with absolute clarity in every detail. The farther we went, the more convinced I was that we had come upon the right trail all unwittingly.

 Peter kept experimenting as we went, testing which parts of our environment were real and which mere images. I gave him one clue to the nature of our surroundings when I told him somewhat impatiently to stop picking rainhat berries because I was stuffed.


 “It’s been hours since I gave you the last one,” he complained. He had generously given me most of them, over my objections.

 “It can’t have been,” I muttered. “I can still taste them. Really, Peter. It was only a moment ago.”

 “No. It was when we crossed that last stream. All the way down this slope and through that forest at the foot ofit . . . .”

 It struck us both, simultaneously. Memory time, subjective time, might not be the same as “real” time, stomach time. I put a finger on my pulse and counted as we followed Queynt across several leagues of forest. A few hundred pulses, more or less, for a lengthy journey that should have taken thousands of heartbeats. Peter was counting his breaths. We shook our heads at each other in disbelief, but Peter did stop picking berries. “Space,” he muttered at me. “We’re probably not walking as far as we think we are.”

 “It certainly hasn’t tired me any,” I admitted. “All of this is probably happening in quite a small place in the Maze.”

 “One would think large memories would take larger spaces,” he objected, but he didn’t go on to say why. I thought privately that large memories might simply be more dense than others. Or perhaps they thin out with time. Probably a thousand years is no time at all for Lom. Which for a human being is a fairly discouraging thought in some respects and a very encouraging one in others. One hates to think that all of existence is trivial. It is better to be even a small part of something very large than a sizable part of nothing much.

 We went along, Queynt stopping from time to time to talk with settlers, giving some of them money, waving his arms, talking persuasively. All of this was much as he had remembered it, except for the sadness. He hadn’t remembered the sadness, and Peter didn’t feel it. I seemed to be the only beneficiary, and I could have done well without it. When the tears started flowing down my face like a river, Peter took time to dry my face and make tender sounds, which helped a little. After that, I held on to his hand. The fact he couldn’t feel the pervasive emotion seemed to ameliorate it somewhat. There was a certain hard pragmatism about Peter—probably inherited from his mother, Mavin, since I hadn’t noticed it in his father, Himaggery, very much—that cut through sentimentality like a knife. Sometimes I hated it, but now I blessed him for it.

 Lom remembered night, and night came. Lom remembered morning, and morning came. Lom remembered the rocky height Queynt had described. There were more trees than he had mentioned, more and closer. His rendition on the wood instrument was less expert and more plaintive than he had told us, and the tears flowed down my face again. By the time three days had passed and the Shadowperson moved out of the trees to stand singing upon the moor, I was in full flood. The beauty of what ensued evidently had captured the world’s attention as it did mine, enough at least to distract it from its sadness. There was no sadness in that singing, and it was more glorious in Lom’s memory than it could possibly have been in reality.

 We sat upon the moor for several days, which was probably not really more than an hour or two. We saw the gift of the blue crystals from Shadowperson to Queynt. Queynt had said they were small; he had showed them to us, and they were quite small, no larger around than the nail of my littlest finger. Lom remembered them as large, glowing, a sapphire radiance that the Shadowman could barely hold in his two cupped hands.

 “You were right, Jinian,” Peter told me, awe-stricken. “The world considered those blue crystals to be important. Terribly important.” We followed Queynt and the Shadowman as they went north to meet the Eesties.

 We saw the Eesties.

 And Peter had to hold me to keep me from running.

 Ever since my recent captivity in the cavern of the giants, I’d had this horror of the Oracle—Oracles, one or many. Every time I thought of the creature or his minions, my mouth went dry and the Dagger of Daggerhawk burned on my thigh as though it were made of hot coals. I thought of trickery and evil. I thought of pain and malice. Long ago in Chimmerdong I’d taken food from the creature’s hands, and it had pretended a mocking friendship while it toyed with me. More recently it had plotted my death. In Chimmerdong it had put a dreadful weapon in my hands; in the cavern of the giants, it had set that weapon outside my reach. In short, it had played with me, trifled with me, amused itself with me, and I hated it.

 So now, deep in the remembered dark of the Shadowmarches, two Eesties came out of the shade to stand before Vitior Vulpas Queynt, and I shuddered at the sight. They wore ribbons and precursive suggestions of that fanciful cloak the Oracle had worn, and they, too, had faces painted upon their upper ends. They were as like the Oracle as one thrilp is like another, each unique, perhaps, but still instantly recognizable as what it was.

 They didn’t see me fall apart in incipient hysterics. Peter did, catching me as I was about to flee, holding me while the shivering stopped. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “They—they look like the Oracle.”

 “They can’t both be the Oracle,” he said in a reasonable voice. “And unless they live forever—which I suppose is remotely possible—then it’s likely neither of them is.”

 “You—you don’t understand,” I stammered irrationally. “I don’t think it matters which individual was the Oracle. I think they all are, so to speak. All. Each. Like a hive of warnets. If one knows me, then all of them do.”

 “Perfectly possible,” he said calmly, “but notthen. ”

 Which was true. They might all know me now, whenever now was, but they had not known me then, a thousand years ago, when Queynt had walked upon the marches. For which, in that moment, I was extremely thankful.

 Queynt, on the other hand, had nothing to be thankful for. He had not told us they had trussed him up, which they had. And he had not told us what they had said to one another in their own language, because he hadn’t known. I, on the other hand, looking on, could understand every word, both when they talked to him and when they talked to one another. Which meant Lom had understood it, too.

 They began by accusing him of being of a filthy race that carried destruction with it. Queynt apologized for this but said many humans were trying to rise above their destructive natures. The Eesties twitted him then, comparing him to the Shadowpeople, whom they seemed to hold in contempt. Shadowpeople, who were no more than beasts, no more than animals, who aspired to “elevation,” who were “above themselves.”

 They wanted him to leave the world and take all mankind with him. So much was obvious. Through it all, Queynt was calm, fairly reasonable, polite. He kept trying to understand them. He didn’t hear what they said to one another, however.

 “How could Lom claim to find bao in this filth?”

 “How could we be so little thought of thatthese would be set beside us?”

 “This stinking thing.”

 “This animal.”

 “No better than a pombi.” “No more bao than a thrilpat.” “We should loose the shadow on them. . . .”

 The meaning conveyed bybao wouldn’t translate for me. It meant something like allness or wholeness or completion, used as a noun. Bao was both a thing and a quality. Something Lom had. Something they, the Eesties, had and we, humans, did not. Presumably. At least so they shouted as they tore at Queynt with insulting words.

 Back among the trees there was a great, curved shell, bright red, like the egg of some monstrous bird. Every now and then the Eesties would look nervously in that direction, as though something slept inside it. After a time, another one came out of the trees, larger than the first two, and then the three of them began to touch Queynt, fumble at him, look through his pouch and pack.

 When they found the blue crystals in his pouch, they went mad. For a moment I forgot they had not killed him in reality, they seemed so likely to do so here in memory. I started looking for a rock, reaching for the Dagger, anything at all to protect Queynt from their wrath.

 “How could he have this? We had themall! ” they screamed.

 “How did it come by this? They were stored in the monsters’ cavern.” A wrathful bellow.

 “Traitors! One of the Brotherhood [Fraternity? Society? Conspiracy?] has betrayed ....

 All the time they were striking him, working themselves up into a fury. Though I knew they had not killed him, still I began to worry that history might be playing itself wrongly. I reached for the Dagger.

 Then the cry came, enormous and aching. I understood it clearly. “Halt. Stop. Hold it right there.”

 The Eesties froze. Queynt was rolled into a ball on the ground, still tied, hands covering his neck. The cry came again. One of the three said, “Ganver,” in a strangled voice. They left Queynt, rolled away from him like naughty boys caught at mischief, running away, afraid to own what they had done, what they had almost done.

 And another Eesty came from the direction of the great egg. Much larger, this one, and with no paint or ribbons. Merely a great, star­shaped thing with a suggestion of face at its center. No expression. I could not tell whether it was sad or angry. It leaned toward Queynt, moved about him, untied him. It cried again, a great, accusing cry with all the woes of the world laden in it, turned and looked directly into my eyes, itself eyeless, then rolled away toward the scarlet egg again.

 And Queynt, patted into consciousness by several of the Shadowpeople who had come from the trees, was on his feet, brushing himself off, looking pale and bruised but somehow indomitable.

 “It saw me,” I said to Peter. “That last Eesty, the one that yelled. It saw me.”

 “Jinian!” He was sympathetic, pat-patting my shoulder, thinking I was losing my control once more.

 “Really, Peter. Honestly. It saw me! Let’s follow it.” This was unlike me, but I was having a very strong hunch.

 “If we lose Queynt, we may not be able to find our way back to Betand, and from there to the desert, and from there-”

 “We’ll be able to find Betand. And if we didn’t, all we’d have to do is come back here and Queynt would show up here eventually. Again.” I wasn’t sure of this at all. This particular “event” didn’t feel like the others. It wasn’t nearly as discrete and repetitive. None of which mattered at the moment. “Please, Peter. Let’s follow it.”

 “Ganver,” he said. “Mavin told me about Ganver. Or wrote about it, rather. She could never talk about it.”

 “I know. She showed me what she’d written. It was Ganver’s bone that stopped the Ghoul plague in Pfarb Durim. And Mavin found him in a scarlet egg, so she said. Peter, we have to try.”

 “I thought you didn’t like Eesties!”

 “I don’t like the Oracle kind. The maskers. The dressed-up ones, all full of false flourishes. One of them called themselves a—a . . .” I tried to find a human word for it. All I could come up with was “Brotherhood,” which wasn’t very close to the actual meaning. “They called themselves a ‘Brotherhood,’ Peter. But Ganver isn’t part of that. Couldn’t you feel it?”

 “No,” he said as he always did to such questions about what he could feel or not feel. “I’ll take your word for it.”

 Guiding ourselves by that flash of brilliant color, we set off through the trees. When we came to the curving wall, both of us stood there, mouths open. It was huge. Bright. Scarlet as blood. Smooth as stone. Crystalline. Very much like the monuments outside Pfarb Durim, so Mavin had written. We circled it, warily, finding no opening at all. “Damn,” I whined. “We can’t get in!”

 “I don’t know why not,” said Peter, leaning himself against the egg and pushing. “It’s only a memory.” He went on pushing, whistling between his teeth. I stared at him for a moment, then leaned beside him, pushing along with him. At first it was hard, stony. Gradually it changed. It felt like pushing the side of a monstrous d’bor. Rubbery.

 Not immovable, not impenetrable, merely very, very resistant. When we were half-buried in the wall, I began to fear we might end up smothered inside it. Peter went on whistling. Then we fell through. “See,” he said in a cheerful voice as he picked himself up. “It yields to persistence.”

 I had a feeling I would learn to hate that phrase.

 The inside of the egg was as Mavin had described it. Many star­shaped maintainers bustling about, polishing pedestals, faceting gravel in the walk, doing other things that I found mysterious and totally unfamiliar. The whirling flowers were there; the grass that cried; the gravel that repeated, “What, what,” just as Mavin had said. Even the tall pedestals were there at the end of the walk, but the first one, on which Ganver should have rested in an enigmatic red globe, was empty.

 We were not totally surprised when the voice addressed us from behind. “You followed me,” it said accusingly. We turned, stepping back involuntarily. This Eesty was very large, larger than it had seemed when assisting Queynt. It was also very troubled. The trouble was in the tone of its voice, in the way it stood before us, almost trembling. The vague facelike structure at its center showed nothing. Its voice did not come from there. It came from the creature itself, needing no lung, no mouth, no tongue.

 “Yes,” I replied, keeping it simple. “We followed you. We need you.”

 “How could you come here, into our dreams, our memories? Into our timeless place from which all times are spun? Is there no place you cannot come, you intruders, vandals, you who usurped our children’s heritage? Oh, humans, go away from here.”

 I would have sworn it was crying, such a tragic weeping it put me off and I could not answer.

 I heard the misery, but Peter didn’t. “We can’t,” he said. “My mother came to you. You helped her. Now I have come to you and you must help me. You must help me help the world you live in.”

 “Why must I?” it cried. “We have put that all away. We have let it go. Let come what will come!”

 For some reason this made me furiously angry. “Oh, very nice,” I snarled. “Cause this great tragedy, this death of a world, the world which bore you and nurtured you, and then simply turn your back. Go off into some dream dimension of your own. Selfish. Horrid. You’re responsible for this, Ganver. Your people did it. Your people, those Oracles, those beribboned mischief makers. They’re killing Lom.They are the ones who are killing Lom’s bao!” I still didn’t know what the word meant, but it was the right word to use. Before us the Eesty stiffened, became rigid, began to shake, shook for a time that seemed endless before crying out asound.

 Around us the world trembled. The great egg quivered. I felt it roll. The sky cracked, broke, and blue distance showed through rents in the scarlet shell. Black lightning struck from the blue sky. A feeling like hard smoke went through me. A sound that tasted of` rotten flesh startled the air, and my skin felt sour, acid.

 We were standing in the forest. The egg was gone, all its parts and contents gone, there was only the giant Easty there, still as the light of a distant lamp, cold and far.

 “You have accused me of complicity,” it said in a chill, tiny voice. “You have accused Ganver.” There was a threat in that voice, a threat and a wounded pride so deep and massive it made me tremble, and I felt Peter’s hand shake a little in mine.That he had felt.

 Never mind. We had to go on. We had come too far not to.

 “We have accused you of betraying this world,” I said, struggling to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Of killing your parent.”

 Silence. Silence full of danger. In my hand, Peter’s fingers changed, became covered with horn. He was preparing to Shift, to defend himself and me if need be. The moment stretched into an endless, breathless age.

 “You need not think of weapons,” it said at last, contemptuously. “Ganver does not retaliate against infants, against children, against silly­beings.” It was thinking of small chattering birds, of tree rats in their nests. All of that was implicit in its voice.

 “Silly-beings may have more good sense in their simplicity than great minds in their pride.” I don’t know where the words came from. Out of something Murzy had said, I think. Or perhaps one of Cat Candleshy’s scholarly epigrams. Whatever their source, these words were the key. The word “pride” was the key.

 “You have accused. Among our people, we treat accusation seriously. We are accused seldom. Never by . . . others.” It meant inferiors. I was depressed. Mavin’s account of her meeting with Ganver had led me to expect something more understanding and godlike than this. It went on, “If you accuse, then you must judge.”

 “You let your accusers be your judges?” Peter, astounded.

 “Who else should be satisfied?” it asked. “If one’s accusers cannot be satisfied, what is justice?”

 “One’s accuser might be mad,” Peter suggested, very unwisely I thought, considering where we were. “Mad, and incapable of being satisfied.”

 This stopped it, but only for a moment. “We would deal otherwise with defective creatures,” it said very softly. “Are you defective?”

 “I believe we are not,” said Peter.”As a matter of fact, we may be far less defective than many.”

 “Of your kind,” it said. There was no sneer in its voice, but the words carried enough to shut Peter up.

 “How must we judge?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

 “You must see, experience, be one with the events which occurred. You must know. Feel. Only then can you judge.”

 “And how do we do that?”

 “Thuswise,” it said.

 It began to spin, spin and sing, words I could not afterward remember. It spun, and as it did, so did I, and Peter, both, up on our toes, spinning like Dervishes.

 “How?” I cried. “How?”

 “Can a human Dervish do anything which an Eesty cannot? They who were taught by us and then sought to usurp our functions? Can they do what we cannot?” There was anger there, and hurt. Even if I’d been able, I would not have pursued the subject, and I was not able. Dervishes could change the shapes and natures of other beings. I knew that. Mavin had said so. Evidently Eesties could do the same, for we were being spun, Peter and I, into Eesties, small copies of the great Eesty before us, small creatures otherwise identical to Great Ganver, who whirled and sang.

 “We go,” it cried, and we rolled away, spun away, sometimes one and sometimes the other, upon a road that only Ganver could see. Scenes and events flickered by. I saw mountains in flame, heard seas in retreat, tasted monstrous creatures engaged in battle. Or was it a game? A dance? They fled at the corner of my—eyes? At the edge of my perception, rather. I still don’t know how Eesties see or hear or speak. Peter says the organs are spread all across the skin, that the creature senses the world with all of itself. So be it, however it was, that is the way it was for me. Time sped by, space sped by, I knew we were still in the Maze, still in the memory of Lom, and still in that place when we stopped at last.

 At the edge of a city.

 We stood upon our points at the top of a little hill, green with grass and decorated with flowers. Each group of blossoms had arranged itself, pink against deeper rose, blue against white, lower blooms at the outer edges, higher blooms to the center, all against a bush of glowing green. A perfection that made one’s breath stick in the throat. I had no throat, but the feeling was the same. A kind of hesitation in the pulse; an inner voice crying, “Look at me.”

 The white road beneath us went down into the city, became a spider’s web of roads running out in every direction. The city itself—I thought for a moment it was Pfarb Durim. Then I realized it couldn’t be. There was no cliff edge to the west of it. There were no walls. Only the shape of the doors and the style of the buildings had made me think of Pfarb Durim. That and the feeling of it, the feeling of elder times, of eternal stones, of history going back and back beyond any individual memory. Old, this city. Old, and as beautiful as the flowers upon the hill.

 “Look at me,” said the garden walls, carved and decorated with tiles, topped with graceful crenellations. “Look at me,” the towers calling, slender and tall as trees, girdled with mosaic brilliance. “Here,” the buildings directed, rising on colonnades of arches, making a welcoming shade at their edges. “Here.”

 And at the center of the city one tower higher than all the rest. It made me hurt to look at it, so tall it was and so perfect. White as milk, pure, undecorated except by its own perfect lines. At the top it rounded softly above a row of pointed arches opening into some high, secret room.

 It was dawn in this place. A brightness lay beneath the eastern rim of the world.

 “Listen, “ whispered Ganver. A bell in the tower rang.

 No. No. This was nota bell.The Bell in the Tower rang.

 The sound came from it like a color, not loudly, not vividly, softly as a flute sound, pure, pervasive, running out like a hue to stain the city and the hill on which we stood, out beyond us to the forests and the mountains, and beyond, to the edges of the world, until all within the world heard the sound, bathed in the color of the Bell. The Daylight Bell, painting the world. Within me something woke, stirred, looked around at the world with a feeling of enormous recognition, something there, within, which I had never recognized before. Beside me, Peter sighed, and I knew that within him, too, the wakening had come. From a door low in the beautiful Tower flew ambient flakes of light, settling onto every surface, every creature, on me, on all of us, and we glowed in that instant like angels.

 “Listen,” whispered Ganver.

 From the far northern reaches a sound came back, an echo, a resonance, soft as the first and as pure, slightly dissonant, pushing the color back from the north, past us upon the hill, into the city once more to leave it as it had been, and with it went the flakes of light to enter the tower once more. And at that instant, the first ray of the sun struck the Tower to shine, ivory gleaming, pure and trembling.

 “The Shadowbell,” I sighed, peering into the north, from which that second sound had come. “Shadowbell rings in the dark, Daylight Bell the dawn. In the towers hang the bells, now the Tower’s gone. . . .” But it was not gone in this time, not in this memory. Here, in the mind of Lom, the Tower still stood and the bells still rang. . . .

 And I stopped, distracted by a flood of recognition. I knew where I was! The line of hills was totally familiar. The way the land folded, the way the forest ran down into the valleys, the buildings before me in the city. I had seen them before; not as they were here, tall and beautiful, but as they had become: tumbled; broken.

 I had seen them not far from Stoneflight Demesne in the ruined city of the Old South Road, the city of the blind runners. It was here the Daylight Tower had stood, here the Daylight Bell had rung. Here. There. Here in memory. There in reality. I wanted to cry.

 “Come,” said Ganver.

 We went down into the city.

 I have had trouble describing that city. Among the skilled pawns there are musicians, singers, writers of tales. Some among them are called poets, and it is they who write lyrics for the singers, epics for chanting at banquets, or merely beautiful words to express things for which ordinary language is insufficient. I am no poet. I longed then for a poet, for someone to put words to what we saw. I have written these words over and over, trying to say what it was like. Any I write are not good enough. You must stretch beyond them. You must bring poet’s feeling to them, knowing the words are not enough in themselves.

 I had been in cities. Not many, true, but some. I was in Schooltown when I was young. And in Xammer, of course. And in our travels we had seen other cities and towns, all of them full of people and commerce of one kind or another. And in every city there is a feeling of—you see, here is where the words are hard for me—a feeling of irritation. Oh, it may not be great. But there is the need to step aside from another’s way and the need to avoid being bumped by or bumping others. People move without regard for one another sometimes, or even mistakenly in the belief they are regarding others. There are bruises and confrontations, and small itches of annoyance.

 There are hard places in cities. Places where cold winds flick past hard stone to catch one’s clothing and blow gritty dust into one’s eyes. Places where sound hits stone and reverberates more loudly than is comfortable. There are other noises, too, calls of vendors and shrieks of children, the scream of ungreased wheels, the rattle of wagons and pound of hooves. Cacophony, one might say. Not altogether unpleasant, most times. Sometimes unbearable.

 There is nastiness underfoot sometimes as well. Things spilled or fallen and left to rot. There is often a smell of decay. Of drains. Sometimes there is such crowding that there is irritation, and this makes fear or anger; and following fear comes meetings of councils to make regulations; and following regulations is further irritation at the laws that are made.

 Or dwellings. Consider dwellings. They become dirty and cluttered and hard to clean. There are animals that nest in corners and walls, and the animals harbor vermin that bite. And buildings make an interior darkness, a loss of sun and light. Stairs twist upon themselves in tangled steep ascents.

 Now imagine a city in which none of these things happens. A city in which the wind funnels away from the street, leaving only pleasant warmth behind. A city in which every room is light and airy, in which no vermin dwell. A city in which movement flows like water, with no eddies except purposeful ones, in which hard sounds are muted and pleasant sounds transmitted, in which the stones are as clean as grass and every wall sparkles with reflected light.

 Imagine a city in which one might hear either laughter and joy or tears of grief, but never the disquiet of anger. A city in which one might find music or quiet, as one chose, in which one might rejoice or sorrow at remembrance of friends lost, but in which even the sorrow had a sweetness.

 Imagine a city of angels. Imagine the city of the Daylight Tower. You will have to imagine it. I cannot describe it, even though we were in

 We lived there for some time, Ganver, Peter, and I. We ate there, getting fruits and edible plants from the vendors, drinking from the fountains. We went to concerts. We went to exhibitions of art and dance. The various creatures of Lom do dance, beautifully, and we saw some of those dances. Shadowpeople perched on the walls and sang. Eesties were everywhere. Other creatures came into the city sometimes, sat upon their hind legs and asked the vendors for fruit, and were given fruit or nuts or whatever they liked. There was no medium of exchange. All seemed to be carefully balanced, enough of everything but not too much. And each morning, just before dawn, the Daylight Bell rang in the Tower and everyone listened while the far, plangent sound of the Shadowbell returned. And each evening from the far north came the sound of the Shadowbell again, and a flight of shadows coming over the city like black birds, wanting to fall upon us. Then the Daylight Bell resonated to that distant sound with a pure tone of its own, and the shadows fled. Every morning light and dark. Every evening dark and light. A rhythm, a balance. “Tha one bell, tha two bell, that cannot ring alone.” So Murzy had said, long and long ago.

 And after a time in the city, we went one morning to the Temple at the base of the Daylight Tower, through the open portals of that place, into the shadowed solemnity within. A silver lamp stood on a high pedestal, lighting the place, and I knew it was from this lamp that the light came each morning at dawn and to this lamp the light returned when the Shadowbell rang. On another pedestal lay an open book, and from this book a choir of Shadowpeople sang, their voices as clear as the Bell itself. On the tessellated pave was a pool—oh, so familiar to me. A pool like the one where I had been initiated in the Citadel of the Sevens, glowing, running with light and shadow. It was surrounded by a low curb. Around the pool were joyfully solemn Eesties, who dipped long silver spoons into the ambient liquid and drew forth gleaming crystals to lay them upon the curb. Each of us Eesties gathered there ate one of the crystals and then spun our way out upon the northern road to carry the will of Lom, which the crystals had conveyed.

 We were not compelled to do so. Even as we were whirling along the northern road, busy as flood-chucks with our messages to every creature in the world, I realized that we were not compelled to carry those messages. We did it because we wanted to. It was good to do, and pleasurable, and right. We had felt that way before ever taking the crystals from the curb of the pool. We went on feeling that way. It was the Eesty feeling, the Lom feeling, the feeling of oneness. Bao.

 So, Peter and Ganver and I buzzed along the white roadways of Lom, carrying messages to Shadowpeople and trees, to flowers and rivers. Some of our messages were delivered to very large creatures: to a flitchhawk, to a D’bor wife, to a gobblemole. I knew these were the spirits of very large things; the spirits of forests or rivers or seas—parts of the whole with minds and wills of their own. They touched us, and we told them of the will of Lom. There was no difficulty in translation. The message was a—I suppose it was a chemical one. Transmitted through our skins. From crystal to our bloodstreams; from our bloodstreams to the equivalent in others. Simple. Easy. Without possibility of misunderstanding.

 I don’t know how long this went on. Long enough to learn about it, see it, understand it. Ganver left us in no doubt as to the purpose of the exercise. “This is how things were,” he said to us over and over. “Before man came.”

 We left the world of the Daylight Bell. I couldn’t tell how we got out. At one moment we were spinning along the road, the next we were in the flickering travel that told us we were traveling among the memories. Forests, oceans, other cities. Something that looked like a huge stadium full of peculiarly shaped revelers. When we moved among the memories, time slowed. I knew we were traversing actual distance. The Maze was very large, and we were moving across it, from side to side, end to end.

 Then we stopped again. Peter recognized the place.

 “The Blot,” he said. We were looking down on it from a height. It lay beneath us like a clot of filth, full of noise and stinks. Iron railways with cars that ran upon them. On every side the forest had been cleared; the stumps protruded from the earth like severed fingers. We spun down the road, down—onto nothing.

 The road had been broken. Torn up. Great chunks of it lay here and there. I could see no purpose to the destruction at first. Then I saw the stone of the road had been quarried to build a squat, ugly building against the mountain side. People went in and out of it, hurrying, bumping into one another. At one side a group of men screamed at another group. A dispute over some detail of the construction. The sound was ugly. The emotion was ugly.

 “Come,” said Ganver.

 We went away from there, into memory again. In and out. Always to scenes of destruction. Roads torn up. Forests leveled. River plains ignored while slopes were cleared. Cliffs of easily quarried stone neglected while roads were torn up to build ugliness.


 And then we saw scenes of rebellion. Those great creatures, the spirits of the places, creatures like the Flitchhawk and the D’bor Wife, rose up. Ganver let us watch while they rose in wrath and fought against the intruder.

 And we watched the intruder, man, fight back. With chemicals and fire; with sonic beams and huge machines. The Magicians from the Base fought back. Far to the west, over the sea, the people of the Chasm were driven down into the depths by that rebellion. Here in the east the people were scattered, fleeing the wrath of the facets of Lom.

 But in the end the Magicians conquered. Those who had risen up were made captive in their own places. Chimmerdong was ringed with gray fire. Boughbound was dead. The spirits of Ramberlon dammed up and driven away. Only a few of the great ones roamed free still, and they roamed a saddened world.

 “Would you blame me, human?” asked Ganver. “Boughbound Forest was my friend. So was River Ramberlon. Great beings, those. Lost, now, for a thousand years. Would you blame me?”

 Peter answered. “I would not blame you if you had killed us, Ganver. We were stupid, heedless beasts, and Lom would have been better without humans. But you didn’t kill the humans. It’s Lom who’s dying.”

 “And with Lom dies the Flitchhawk,” I said. “Isn’t Flitchhawk your friend, too? D’bor Wife will die as well. And all the Shadowpeople. And likely you, too, Ganver, unless your scarlet egg can protect you, like some eternal womb. I agree with Peter. I could have forgiven you for killing all us humans, but why are you killing the world?” At that time it seemed the only thing to say. At that time in my Eesty shape I cared more about the world and all its glories than I cared about myself, the human, Jinian. I knew then why the Eesties made judges out of their accusers. Having seen what we had, I hated us, even myself, though I had never cut a tree and had done more to restore the roads than anyone else I knew.

 “Let us go back to the city of the Bell,” it said. So we returned.

 A shadow lay upon the city. There was pain in the city. The Eesties moved jerkily, there was an uncoordinated feel to things. Sound was not always pleasant. We ached with the feeling of the place.

 “Do not go to the pool,” someone called. “We are not going to the pool.”

 Ganver stopped. “What is this? What Eesty rejects the pool of bao?”

 “We,” said the voice. “We of the Brotherhood.”

 It came into view then. One star tip painted in the mockery of a human face. Ribbon-decked. One of those who had abused Queynt. One of the Oracle’s followers.

 “And how many of you are there, Riddler?” Ganver’s tone was indulgent, even fond, the voice of age to the silliness of youth. The Eesty that confronted us was not large, not old. Scarcely larger than Peter and I. “How many? A few fives? You children? Who have only carried the will of Lom for a season or two? And now you are a Brotherhood?”

 “We are those who protect Lom from the interlopers,” it asserted in a proud, impatient voice. “Seemingly, we are the only ones. The rest of you go on as though nothing were happening. Look around you, old star! Look what these filthies are doing to our world!” At the sound of its voice, several others had gathered around it, all with that painted caricature of a face, all with the fluttering ribbons. Suddenly I understood these painted faces, these ribbons. The faces were a symbol; a symbol of’ that which was to be destroyed. The flapping ribbons were Symbolic of the clothing men wore. They costumed themselves as the enemy, mocking him. Ganver’s attitude and voice did not change as he reasoned with them.

 “Do you not trust Lom to meet this challenge, Riddler? Lom has met others. Greater ones than this. Don’t you trust Lom?”

 “Lom is deluded. We waited, old one. We waited for wrath. For destruction. We waited for the mountains to flame and send these creatures into smoke, as happened in the time of the mud monsters. As in the time of the metal beasts from the farther star. Nothing. Only corrupt messages come from Lom, pitiful messages, messages which seek to bring thesemen into wholeness. The Brotherhood will not carry these messages.”

 “The Brotherhood may not,” said Ganver, and his voice was like thunder in the city. “But Ganver will, and all the Eesties of Lom who are not witless children.”

 We were in the Temple of the Bell once more. The lamp glowed with its glorious light; Shadowpeople sang from the book; dignified Eesties with solemn faces lifted crystals from the pool and laid them upon the curb. Green they were, glowing like drops of dew upon new leaves. We took them, absorbed them, then went out of that place.

 “Oh, by all the gods,” moaned Peter, reaching for me. We had no hands to hold with, but we touched. The human parts of us could not believe the message we carried.

 Lom had decided that man was destructive because he was weak. Man knew no way but destruction. He knew no way of quiet strength and slow building, no way of harmony and peace. He was weak and small and needed weapons and walls to protect himself. He did not believe in the kindness of others. He did not perceive the willingness of Lom to provide, even to these foster children from some other world.

 And Lom, in response to this weakness, had decided to give man Talents. The message we carried was the Talent message, to be touched to children yet unborn.

 All I could think of in a dazed way was that the Gamesmen would be much less proud if they knew. I—suddenly I was much less proud. My Talent of beast talking, it had been given. My Talent of Wize-ardry. Was that, too, a gift? Peter’s Talent of Shifting. And Mavin’s. Himaggery’s Wizardry. All the Seers, the Sentinels, the Armigers. All the Sorcerers. Nothing of our own. Only what we had been given? Tragamors and Elators, nothing of their own. In each of us, it was a Lom gift.

 We had stopped our travels in a space of gray nothing, a cloudy, peaceful place. Ganver confronted us here, looking into our hearts, knowing that we knew what message it was we carried. “How much do you need to see?” Ganver asked. “How much of what we did, we Eesties? We carried the gift which Lom gave; we carried it high and low, far and near. To every place men dwelt, we carried it. Not all received it. Of those who did, most misused it. Some few learned to control it. Those you call the Immutables, they learned to do so. But most, most simply accepted it. Shall we go into the later memories, shall we see what happened then?”

 I knew what had happened. More of what had already happened. Men began to use their strengths as they had used their weaknesses. To destroy.

 Ganver did not show us much. It did not need to. There were more broken forests, more broken roads. There were creatures killed who should never have been killed, whom it was a monstrous arrogance to have killed. There were Great Games played upon the plains of the world, leaving them deep in blood, bones, and cold. Seldom—oh, too seldom—were there places of beauty built. Too seldom were there things of beauty done.

 “Do you accuse me?” Ganver asked. “Do you still accuse me.”

 Peter was stubborn. “My question is still the same, Ganver. Why are you letting Lom die?”

 “Let us go back to the city of the Bell,” said Ganver.

 So, we went back for the third time. This time the city hummed with dissension, like a warnet hive, full of hostile rumor. The ribbon-decked young Eesties were everywhere, and those old ones of Ganver’s bulk seemed somehow diminished. “We go to the pool,” called a familiar voice. “But we do not carry this last message of Lom.”

 “Why, Riddler?” asked Ganver in a voice that already knew the answer. “Why?”

 “Lom is mad! It has chosen to set these monsters beside the Eesties. It has messaged them to become as we are. To run the roads of Lom!” They pushed us before them, thrusting us into the Temple. The pedestal where the lamp had rested was toppled. The lamp had rolled into a corner and lay there, lightless. There were no Shadowpeople singing. The book was closed. There were young Eesties at the pool, painted ones. They were fishing blue crystals from the silver surface as fast as they rose to the top. From the low curbing they were raking them into baskets, carrying them away. Before any of the young ones could move to stop him, Ganver had seized two of the brilliant blue stone gems and passed them to us, into us.

 After all that time of refusing, all that time of denying compulsion, I was compelled to know what the message had been that Lom had designed for men.

 Which was only to show mankind what we had just seen and call him to run the roads of Lom, to serve as the Eesties served and to live as the Eesties lived.

 Which was only to invite man to become like the angels.

 Across the pool, the one they called the Riddler danced along the curbing, taking up the crystals one by one. “We will not carry this message, old Ganver. This message goes into a deep cavern somewhere. Let the man-beasts die of their own destruction, as they will. And when they are gone, we will carry Lom’s messages once more. Until then, let Lom rest in peace, let Lom recover its senses. Until then, no messages will be carried.”

 “Are you teaching rebellion, Riddler?” Oh, but Ganver’s voice was weary and sad, carrying so much pain it made me want to weep. It did not make the Riddler weep. Instead, it posed, making a mockery of humankind of its Eesty shape.

 “Oh,my dear, but of course. What could wepossiblypreach but rebellion? We are the true Eesties! Not witless fools of old rolling stars who shouldknow better!”

 I knew him then. Of course. How could I not have known him even among all his fellows dressed as he was? The Riddler. Rebel angel. Not one of the Oracle’s followers, but the Oracle himself.

 And he looked aside from Ganver at me, at Peter, seeing us, sneering at us. He knew us. This was not only memory but a time-place in which actuality existed, and the Oracle saw me not as an Eesty shape but as who I was.

  

  

  

  

  

 3
THE DAYLIGHT BELL

  

 We went out of the time-place, leaving the Oracle behind us. “I have one more time-place to show you,” said Ganver.

 I could guess what place that was. Ganver intended to show us the place we had just left, only somewhat later in time.

 It had come to me as I stood there confronting the Oracle beside that pool with its low coping, feeling the echoes in the tower that lofted above us and the purposeful activity all around. The Temple of the Bell and the place we had seen at the edge of the Maze—the place with the roaring, angry crowd—were one and the same. I would have realized the connection sooner except that the Temple of the Bell was bright and joyful, full of purpose, while the place we had seen at the edge of the Maze had been colorless, dim, full of horrid shouting.

 “You want to show us the Bell being destroyed,” I said. “We have already seen it happen. Several times. We don’t want to see it again.”

 “That place where the metal thing fell down?” asked Peter. “The gray place where all the Eesties were yelling?”

 “That place. Yes.” Ganver still sounded sad, anguish in its voice. The poor old thing was grieving. I knew why it had retreated to the scarlet egg—what had Mavin called it? “Ganver’s Grave.” It had gone there to bury itself away from the destruction.

 “Why did they destroy the Bell, Ganver? I suppose it was the Oracle and his crew. The one you call Riddler.”

 “The Oracle, yes. The Brotherhood. The rebellious young Eesties.Only a few of that generation stayed with us, allied with us, with the elders. Come. You have not seen all that I have to show you. It is painful, but you must see it.”

 And we were off into the flickering twilight of’ memory travel once more, never a pause, light as blown leaves, until at last we came to the place. This time, however, we did not arriveinside the Temple. This time we were outside, watching the multitude gathered there.

 Dim that city. Gray and chill. Walls were dirty and buildings smoke­stained. There were no Shadowpeople there. While none of the huge old Eesties were there, there was a great mob of the Oracle’s Brotherhood, dancing in their ribbons, chanting and shouting in a zealot’s parody of purpose, a frantic anarchy that could see no farther than the next bit of inflammatory oratory being shouted on every corner. Ganver remained with us where we were, hidden behind a partly fallen wall near the Temple. “Watch,” it said sadly. “Watch and learn.”

 A flight of white stone stairs led to the Temple entrance, wide and gentle as the Eesties preferred them, like a shallow fall of frozen water in their polished perfection. The Oracle stood on the broad terrace at the top, speaking to its assembled minions. The painted face was more detailed, and it wore a garment that was more robelike than the mere ribbons it had worn before. Cressets burned beside it, stinking of grease-soaked wood, and I thought of Pfarb Durim. Pfarb Durim must once have been as beautiful as this city once had been; and yet in my lifetime it smelled as this one did now, of smoke and sick violence. The Oracle’s voice and the smoke rose upward, equally oily, equally black.

 “These man-animals have the luck of beasts and the weapons of devils. They wage Great Games upon one another, but still they breed faster than death can take them. They survive their own malice, their own stupidity. They do not fall to their own destruction, and they will not fall to those who hunt them. Still they bask in Lom’s favor, but the time of that favor is done. . . .”

 The Oracle’s voice rose in a brazen, monstrous shout: “Let loose the shadows!

 “Shut out the light. . . .

 “Let them die in the darkness. . . .

 “And when they are dead, we will build the Tower up again and cast the Bell once more. . . .

 “Let loose the shadows!”

 The assembled multitude screamed, howled, babbled. I looked around. There were no older Eesties, none like Ganver, none there to speak against what was being done by this mob.

 “Where were you?” I cried, horrified. “Why weren’t you here?”

 “We had tried,” it said wearily. “We had tried and been rebuffed. We could have destroyed them utterly, but we did not do so. Many of us had grown weary. Some of us . . . felt a kind of sympathy for them, for our pride had been hurt as well. Who can say? I was not here. I had gone away. I had told myself I could not bear it.”

 From high in the Tower came that sound of agonized breaking we had heard before. When the Bell came down, it was with a great shattering, as though the heart of the world broke in pieces. Stupefaction greeted this at first, then rebellious, impudent cheering, which built to a clamorous roar.

 Which faded almost at once into horrified silence. The sound of that roaring was still in our heads. Only very gradually did we perceive the other sound, the sound the mob had heard, reverberating, growing, a vibration loosed upon the city. From the north. The sound of the Shadowbell, going on, and on, and on, not dying but growing, louder with each moment, the dissonance keening in a knife-edge of noise, drowning the Eesties’ voices until it became the only sound, the only reality, driving the light before it as clean water is driven before the muddy flood. We watched as the light ran out of the city before the flood of shadow, as the white stairs crumbled, as the Tower shattered before that sound and fell.

 And those who had cheered were crushed under stones, sprawled onto rippling pavement suddenly full of chasms. Roofs cracked and swayed, crumbled into shards and dust. Walls tumbled. Shadow filled the streets, fluttering, deadly shadow. Many of the Brotherhood fled, stupidly shrieking, leaving behind one figure to stand at the top of the stairs, swaying as the city died, its painted clown’s face staring down at Ganver, at me. What was it thinking? What had it really thought would happen? Was it so misled by its own ambition it could not have known what would occur here? I did not have long to wonder about it.

 Some trick of the light made its painted face seem real, made the malice there seem to move. No matter whether the face was real or not, the thing itself was real enough, and it came for us, whirling down the shattering stairs like an avalanche of fury. It knew us. I clutched at Ganver and we went away, into the gray nothing.

 “It saw you,” said Ganver. “As it saw me.”

 “Were we there or not?” Peter asked in a breathless voice. “Sometimes we seem only to be watching history, sometimes we seem to be involved in it. How long ago was the Tower destroyed?”

 “The Daylight Bell was destroyed some centuries ago,” it said as though beginning a chronicle. “First was the arrival of your people; then destruction and pain followed by the Battle of the Great Ones against your people, in which many of the great ones were destroyed; then the giving of the Talents; all these in a narrow space of years. Within one lifetime of your people, from the time you came, all these things occurred. . . .

 “Much later came the blue crystals; then the destruction of the Tower. There were three irreplaceable treasures in the Tower of the Bell: the book from which the Shadowpeople sang; the lamp from which the light was spread; and the Bell itself. All destroyed when the Tower fell, as the great ones had been destroyed. Destruction and destruction. In my own memory, all these events were not long apart. In the eternal time of Lom, they were close indeed. . . .

 “And since that time, the shadow has gathered with each ringing of the Shadowbell. It gathers most deeply here in the recollection of Lom, gathers here and flows from here. As for your being part of what you saw, yes, you were there. There are eddies in time. We Eesties move among memories, along the lines of thought. Sometimes we observe, sometimes we are there. Sometimes we participate. It is our movement in the Maze which recalls memory to Lom. It was your movement into the mind of Lom which recalled those memories. Our dance is the dance of recollection.

 This seemed to me to be more poetry than practicality, but the sense of it was clear enough. The usual rules of cause and effect didn’t apply. This world we were in, this Maze, existed outside normal time. It had its own rules which even Ganver might not totally understand.

 “There is one thing I do not perceive,” Ganver was saving to me now. “The Riddler, the Oracle, it wants to destroy you particularly, Jinian. Why?”

 “I don’t know why! But I know you mustn’t let it happen, Ganver. If it wants to get me, it must have a reason connected with this evil thing it’s doing. And if you want to stop the evil, then you have to help me. That’s all there is to it.” I was as sure of that as I was of my own name.

 “Ah, ah,” it said. “So I must help you. I have been told this by another of you, by others of you. I helped the one called Queynt. I helped the one called Mavin. I helped the one called Bartelmy, though she did not know it.”

 “Bartelmy is my mother,” I said. “Mavin is Peter’s mother. Fate, Ganver. Do you believe in fate?”

 “I have believed only in Lom. Is there something other than Lom?”

 “I don’t know, Ganver. Truly I don’t. But at this moment, I think it would be wise for us to assume there is at least something else we can call upon. Call it fate or what-you-will, still we had better believe.”

 The big old Eesty was silent so long I thought we had offended it mortally and it might not speak to us again. Finally, however, it said, “You accused me of complicity. Before we go further, tell me if you accuse me still?”

 I couldn’t say anything. The old being was obviously so shattered by it all, it was hard for me to tell it what I really thought. Peter, however, seemed to have it well in hand. Of course, Peter was impervious to some of thefeelings that had been floating around, which had cushioned him somewhat. Now he stood very straight on a heap of gray vacancy. I could visualize him in his own shape, his thumbs hooked into his belt as he sometimes posed when he was being judicious.

 “I would not judge you wrong to have killed every man, woman, and child upon Lom for the destruction we did,” he said once more. “That would have been self-defense. Nor would I have blamed you if you had killed the Eesties who rebelled against you and against Lom and against all that was good in following the Oracle. But I judge that you have betrayed Lom also, for you retreated from the fray and did not move to assist and had to be winkled out by me and Jinian. If you had done nothing else, you could have struck at them when the Bell fell in. All the beribboned ones were frightened then and in disarray. But you didn’t. So you are culpable, and so are we, and that’s my judgment.”

 I thought of Mavin’s story in which she had said, “Once you’ve interfered, you simply have to go on. You can’t say it isn’t your responsibility.” I wanted to laugh, somehow, even though there was nothing at all to laugh about and Ganver would probably get angry and do something drastic to us at any moment for what we’d said already.

 But that didn’t happen. It simply stood there, looking inward at something we would never see, in a sadness too deep to measure. And at last it said, “Then I must atone. If it is not too late for atonement. And your safety must come first because the Oracle threatens you, Jinian Star-eye.”

 “Why do you call me that?” I asked, curious.

 “Because of the Eesty sign you wear upon your body. The sign of the eye. The sign we taught to some of your people early in their lives upon Lom, trying to teach them other ways than the way of destruction.”

 “It was you who taught the sevens?”

 “It was we who taught them some things. And we who taught the Dervishes some things. And I who laid myself upon Queynt to teach him some things also, after he had been abused by those. . . .”

 “The Dervishes believe you are one of the old gods, Ganver. Is that true?”

 The being before us was silent. Perhaps stunned? Perhaps offended. “I am to the old gods as you are to me, Jinian,” it said at last in a voice that shook a little. “We are not unlike, and yet we are not equal in what we are.”

 Ah, so it would at least allow we were not unlike. “I thought you hated us.”

 “We hated what you did. In some of you we could find no bao at all. Some of you did not have it. Would never have it. You have a type of person who assists at birthing. . . .”

 “Midwives.”

 “Your midwives. One of the “Talents given by Lom allowed them to seek bao in your children, to let only those young live who had it. Perhaps, if the midwives had been more respected . . .”

 I took the pendant out of the neck of my shirt, staring at it. I had worn it ever since Tess-Tinder-my-hand had given it to me when I was a child. Tess the midwife. Who had, evidently, found some bao in me. Something about the shape tickled at my memory. Someone had said something about it. Someone else had called me Star-eye recently. The memory fled away, refusing to be caught, leaving a trail I sniffed at. The memory was important. Why couldn’t I hold it? “What does the star­eye mean?” I asked.

 “It is a lesson which must be learned from observation,” it said. “We say, `Watch and learn.’ It is a knowledge with five parts. Though we have no midwives, it is a knowledge we have always believed all Eesties have at birth, as the warnet knows the meaning of his hive and the gnarlibar the meaning of his teeth.” Ganver spoke in a grieving voice, and yet there seemed no reason for sadness in what it had said.

 We hung there in the haze, nowhere. At the edges of vision were roiling movements as though something struggled to shape itself. Inside my head—or what passed for my head in the Eesty shape—there was similar roiling. It was Peter who broke the lengthy silence.

 “It is profitless to discuss this now,” Peter said. “We must do something, Ganver. The Oracle is hunting Jinian. Is she safe here?”

 “We are between forevers here,” the star replied. “The gray land in which nothing changes. Though the Oracle cannot find us, we can do nothing here. Of such a space was Ganver’s Grave created. It is a space in which nothing may occur.”

 We hung there a time longer, saying nothing, meditating, I suppose, on all we had seen and heard. It would do no good to stay where we were. At last I sighed.

 “Take us out of here, Ganver. If we can do nothing here, we must leave the place.”

 It nodded. We spun once more, out through the flickering lights of memory travel. Ganver gasped, and I glimpsed a pursuing shape, wildly flapping. In an instant we were in the gray once more.

 “The Oracle?” I asked hopelessly. “Did it find us?”

 “It caught sight of us.” A pause, the silence of thought. I perceived in Ganver a slight red flush, as of the merest hint of anger. “The Oracle seeks these shapes we wear. So, we will shape ourselves differently.” Ganver turned to Peter. “You, I will take to the edge of the Maze, where you may go away before it knows you are gone. The Oracle seeks three, not two.” Ganver turned to me. ‘`I will return to hide you away where it will not find you, then I will trick the Oracle away, far away, to a place from which it cannot return quickly.”

 “But . . . but,” said Peter.

 “It’s all right,” I murmured at him, feeling something inside me melt like hot sugar, a flood of bittersweet anguish. “It’s all right, Peter. Go, get out of here. One of us has to get back to Himaggery and Mavin and the rest. They have to know about the Daylight Bell. About the Tower in Old South Road City. About the Oracle and the blue crystals and how all this started. See if you can find Murzy. Tell her I need her.”

 “But, but,” he said again, his body slumped into a tragic pose, like a clown’s. “Where will I find you? I can’t leave you. Jinian, I just can’t!”

 “Meet me in Old South Road City, Peter. Where the fragments of the Bell will still be, buried there under the ruins. Oh, they must be there. We must see to recasting the Bell, Peter. Meet me there. With all the help you can bring, and as soon as you can.” Privately I thought I might not live to meet him. If the Oracle was after me, it would find me eventually. As though I were a Seer, I knew we would fight, the Oracle and I, and I had no hope of the battle between us coming out in my favor. Even if I were defeated, we might not lose everything if Peter had a chance to get away. So I thought, glad of the Eesty shape which did not show my emotions. The shape was calm. Inside was a whirling pool of fear and love, loathing and longing.

 I had the feeling that Ganver was looking at me closely, though nothing in that enigmatic Eesty shape actually seemed to peer. Never mind. I leaned against Peter, star to star, every part of my body pressed against him. For a moment there was this ecstaticflow, then he was pulled away.

 “We have no time for mating now,” said Ganver in a tone of prissy concern. “And you are only two.”

 I laughed to keep from weeping. “We were not mating, Ganver. And among our kind, it only takes two. Take him away. And keep him safe.” I turned away so Peter could not see me crying, forgetting for a moment that this shape didn’t cry. And in a moment I was alone in the gray, watching the roiling shapes at the edge of my sight, trying not to feel utterly alone.

  

  

 4
PETER’S STORY: THE FLITCHHAWK

 At sunset, Ganver brought me out of the Maze at its southern edge, which would be to the north of the Shadowmarches, somewhere west of the River Haws in its upper reaches. The creature took pains to tell me where I was and point the best direction of travel before releasing me from its enchantment to my own Peter-shape once more.

 I stood back from it and bowed in as courtly a manner as I could manage, considering the sudden acquisition of arms and legs which felt quite foreign to me. It stood there looking at me. I suppose one may say “looking,” though when I had been inside that shape it had been rather more like tasting. Can one taste a shape? A color? Certainly I had done so as an Eesty. “My thanks,” I said at last, realizing it expected some­thing from me. “Will you try to protect her? Please.”

 It nodded. I knew enough of Eestiness to realize there was no promise more binding than this nod. It agreed to do what it could, and no documents or oaths were necessary.

 “I’m going to fly,” I said. “As fast as possible. Tell her I’ll be waiting.”

 It sighed. When it spoke, the voice was breathy and sad once more, without any of that anger it had displayed recently. “Your Talent is of Lom,” said Ganver. Then it pointed down the hill we were standing on. I looked, at first not seeing what was indicated, then realizing that great stretches of the forest were dead. “Your Talent is of Lom,” it repeated. “And Lom dies.”

 Experimentally, I Shifted an arm. It went into the shape I wanted for it, feeling about the same as usual. “I’ll be careful,” I said.

 “Husband your power,” Ganver directed. “Use it carefully. Go in the day, where there are sun-warmed places. Remember the Shadowbell has rung.”

 I considered this. Power from the sun wouldn’t be influenced by Lom’s weakness, though my Talent might. If there were dangerous shadows about, they could only be seen in daylight. Ganver had given me good advice, for which I was grateful. I bowed again before turning to make my way down the hill. It was evening, and I needed to find somewhere safe to hole up until morning.

 There were shadows, not many. Until I came out of the Maze, there had been nothing much to attract them. They seemed undisturbed by my passing, rising in my wake to flutter gently in the air before settling again. I wondered, as Himaggery must have wondered in his time, as I know Mavin had wondered, what it was the shadows wanted, what it was that shadows felt.

 There was a rocky wall above a small stream halfway down the slope of the forest. The wall had a hole in it large enough to sleep in. We might have been in the Maze for days or for a season. However long it had been, we had not slept in that time. Now I felt the need for sleep, and something about the place reminded me of my travels in Schlaizy Noithn. As a wanderer in that strange place, needing rest and peace, I had found both in pombi shape in a hollow tree. I found both again in similar shape on this evening. A pombi with weapons on his paws and fangs in his jaws, a pombi who could fit into a hole, leaving no room for shadows.

 It was warm in the hollow. The air breathed coolly upon my face. The agonies of the world slipped away in the comfort of the moment. Sleep tugged at me, but so did thoughts of Jinian. I did not want to sleep for fear I would dream of something else.

 When I was young, in Schooltown, I had not much considered love. The first love I’d believed in had been Mandor’s for me, and that had proved false. The first true love I’d seen had been Mertyn’s for me, and I had not thought of it as love at all. Mertyn was my thalan, of course, Mavin’s full brother, but I hadn’t known of the relationship until after leaving Schooltown so did not much regard it when I found out. The next love I saw was the love of Yarrel for his long-lost sister, Izia, taken by a Shifter, so it was said. That I believed in well enough, for when he learned I was Shifter, too, it had cost me his friendship. In the mean­time, I had lusted after the Immutable girl, Tossa, the one who had died. And after Silkhands, in a sort of brotherly way. And after Izia herself, though I think it was really Yarrel I longed for.

 At last I had taken up with Jinian, without any intention of loving her at all. And yet I had dreamed about her sometimes. I dreamed she was sitting in a window, leaning down to hand me something marvelous. I dreamed she was in danger and needed me. I could not escape thinking of her. Oh, yes, she irritated me. From the first times we were together, she chivied me this way and that. But it got so I could not think of myself without thinking also of Jinian. I wanted her near. Wanted to argue with her. Wanted to touch her. Wanted to tease her. Wanted to make love to her—wanted to.

 And couldn’t, of course, because of that damn oath of hers. I had come close to breaking that oath, telling myself I’d do it by force if necessary, but good sense prevailed. Mavin had said it often enough. A man who forces a woman is no true man. He is only a thing. Without soul, said Mavin. “Without bao,” I said to myself. Jinian would not love one without bao, I supposed. Better wait than woe.

 So I thought, half-dreaming, letting the dream come at last. I slept, and when I woke I could not remember what the dream had been.

 I came down to sit upon sun-warmed rock thinking of Jinian once more with an accustomed degree of frustration. I would go south because it needed doing, but also because Jinian said go south. I would wait in the Old South Road City because there would be work there to do, but also because Jinian had said she would meet me there. My body did not move, however, and I did not Shift wings, for I was closest to her where I was and did not want to leave her. If this is love, then love is what it is. If love is something worse than this, I do not care to know about it.

 The rock wall faced east. It heated quickly under the morning sun. Shaking myself back into a sense of duty, I took that heat to change myself into a flying thing, sleek and shapely, blue below and dark above, like a fish with wings. I had a quick, unreasonable longing for Chance. “Brother Chance,” I would have said, “get yourself on my back and we’ll go find that sportive widow of yours in Mip.” Or had it been Pouws or some other place? “Brother Chance, get yourself on my back and clutch tight with your legs, because I’m scared to death.” Fine thing for a Gamesman, a Shifter, fine thing for the son of a Wizard. I was scared, and it took a bit of time before I realized it wasn’t me—or certainly not only me—I was frightened for.

 At last it was the shadows that moved me. I saw them trembling beneath the trees, fluttering as though about to fly. I did not want to encounter them in the air so thrust downward with wings long warmed in the morning sun and launched myself to spiral above the stone, where an updraft lifted me higher and higher.

 From above, I could see how the world died. Throughout the Shadowmarches were leprous patches of dead forest. All down the River Haws were mud slides and eruptions of red and yellow smoke, as though great pustules had broken from beneath the skin of the world. So suddenly. So long hidden, and now so suddenly the illness broke forth. And yet it is the way of some sicknesses, so Healer Silkhands used to say, to give no sign while they eat away inside, then break through when it is almost too late to do anything about them.

 It was the filthy smokes that had killed the trees. Looking down from my height, I could see creatures fleeing from shadow to light, from dead to living. Tree rats in little bunches, darting like bats across clearings. Bunwits, large and small. A follow of wild fustigars and a prowl of pombis moved into my sight and away again as I circled, and even from the height I could hear the cries of birds driven from their nests by shadows.

 “Brother Chance,” I said to my absent friend, “this is a rotten bad place we’ve come to.”

 “Then best get out of it, boy,” he absently replied.

 Which I did, winging away to the south over the blotched forests and the rising humors of decay. I’d had some practice with wings in that last trip, and a Dragon at the Bright Demesne had given me a few pointers. In my whole life, I’d done wings only briefly once or twice before. I hadn’t really understood the proper proportion of wing to body, the way wings could lift almost by themselves, the length-to-width ratio necessary for endless soaring flight. On the way back from visiting Mertyn, I’d experimented as the Dragon had suggested. This shape was a good one, one that could well have carried me over the Western Sea. Since I was not permitted to be with Jinian anyhow, I might as well have gone over the Western Sea. This thought upset me; I lost the proper structure at the ends of my wings and dropped a good part of a league before I got it right again.

 I did have sense enough to stick to the places where warm updrafts gave me the lift I needed. Far ahead, jagged against the southern sky, lay the southern mountain rim of the Shadowmarches. From above those peaks I could look down on Cagihiggy Creek, upon what little was left of the Blot, on Schlaizy Noithn.

 Upon the ice caverns, where lay one hundred thousand frozen men and women.

 I tilted a wing to steer a little west. The cavern was the closest place where I might find someone, and whether anyone was there or not, it would make good sense to check the caverns before I went farther.

 Below me the land was in ferment. Shadow bulks rose upon it, bubbling upward, subsiding once more. I circled, looking behind me. The air held roiling wings of shadow. Not near me, particularly, simply there, both high and low. I could see places that looked as though the air trembled, quivered, where a kind of grayness was. Once having seen them, I made a circle every few leagues, being sure that none of the patches was near me.

 Noon came above the Shadowmarch mountains. Below, the land sloped down in a long basin, east to where Hell’s Maw had been, where Pfarb Durim still stood—unless it had vanished in the years I had been gone. I had not flown above it on my return to Jinian. West the basin bent to run both north and south; north into a cul-de-sac rumored to be the site of a Bamfug Demesne, southward to the Blot. The cavern lay north of the Blot, hidden in a curl of broken mountain, the way to it blocked by falls from the time the mountain had exploded, when the Magicians were destroyed. My doing, at least partly. And mother Mavin’s. I found myself glad that Quench and some of the other techs had escaped, but I was not generally sorry the place was gone. An evil place; based on an evil custom.

 Ahead and to my right a swimming dot plunged about the sky in erratic flight. I Shifted eyes to see it, making telescopic lenses, wondering what would make any flier dodge about so.

 It was the Flitchhawk! Jinian’s Flitchhawk, coming from the west, carrying something large, pursued by shadow!

 It dropped and darted, dived and soared, mighty wings pumping hard as it fought to gain altitude. Behind it the shadow came, effortlessly, fluttering, dropping as the Flitchhawk dropped, soaring as the Flitchhawk soared. I beat my way toward it, hurrying, wondering even as I did so what possible help I might be, answering myself immediately that I might carry part of the Flitchhawk’s burden, for it was very heavily laden.

 I came beneath it, calling to it as I came. “Flitchhawk! I will carry one of your baskets!” It had two, one in each mighty set of talons. I beat upward, slipping sideways to avoid a flicker of shadow at my side, then the other way as it closed on me. Gamelords, but this shadow was persistent, and fast.

 I came just beneath the mighty bird, heard its heaving breath, heard the thunder of its heart. There was something almost like panic in its eyes.

 I don’t know what made me do it. It wasn’t reasoned out at all. Just memory and instinct working together. I saw the shadow. I remembered how the Daylight Bell had driven it away, how at dusk the Daylight Bell’s sweet resonance had cleared the city. I changed the chords of my throat and cried out, cried with the voice of the Bell. .

 Once, twice, and the shadows fled.

 We dropped from the sky, Flitchhawk losing one of his baskets as he fell. It tumbled down and down, breaking upon the earth to shed a sapphire radiance far upon the dusty ground. When we landed, I stood near him, panting. I heard the thunder of my own heart. I had never flown so high.

 “Where did you hear the Bell?” cried the Flitchhawk in a voice of heartbreaking woe.

 “In the Maze,” I mumbled. “In the Great Maze, from a time very long ago.”

 “I had never thought to hear it again.”

 “You will hear it again,” I promised. “We will recast it in the Old South Road City. We will build the Tower once more.” I was not at all certain of this, but it seemed a comforting thing to say.

 “We will build little unless we can gather up again what I have spilled,” it cried. I remembered the crystals then and began wandering aimlessly about, looking for them. There must have been thousands of them in the basket.

 And as we were wandering all futile in the underbrush, trying to pick up the crystals, we heard voices coming through the trees. I faded into the shrubbery. Flitchhawk somehow vanished. I crouched.

 “I heard your voice, Peter, Mavin’s son,” cried the voice. “Come out of there.”

 Someone else was mumbling, a rhythmic kind of chant. It ended with four words spoken loudly, clearly. “Where Old Gods Are.” Abruptly the Flitchhawk stood forth, looking surprised, as though unable to help himself. The bushes shook at the edge of the clearing, and six women came through. Two old ones. Two middle-aged. One not much older than I, one younger. They did not need to introduce themselves. I knew at once who they were. The other members of Jinian’s seven.

 “Well,” said one of the middle-aged ones with some asperity in a clear, demanding voice. “What were you hiding from? Ghosts?”

 I bowed. This could only have been Cat Candleshy. “We have just escaped the shadow, ma’am. And dropped a valuable cargo in doing so.

 Now we are faced with gathering up thousands of the blue crystals, scattered over leagues of earth, no doubt.”

 “A well-spoken thing,” said the beautiful one, who was little older than I. Margaret Foxmitten. It had to be. “Is this flying thing really Jinian’s Peter?”

 “Should you call him a thing?” This was the shy one, Sarah Shadowsox.

 “Why not? It looks like a thing.” The other older one, Bets Battereye, with the no-nonsense braids across her head. Indeed I was a winged thing, so I did not take offense.

 The white-haired one had said nothing as yet. When she did, I knew it was Murzemire Hornloss. Murzy. “Where’s Jinian, Peter? Is she all right?”

 I nodded. “Ganver’s looking after her. She’s still in the Maze, trying to stay clear of the Oracle.”

 “What was that ringing sound we heard?” This was the youngest, scarcely more than a child, still with baby fat on her arms. Dodie.

 It was the Flitchhawk who answered. “That was Peter, pretending to be the Daylight Bell. For which I owe him a boon.”

 “Did you really do that, Peter? How clever.” This was Murzy. “I suppose you heard it in the Maze? Is it true, as Mind Healer Talley says, that the Maze is the memory of Lom?”

 “Is it true that there are guides?”

 “Is it true that space and time are changed inside?”

 “Is it true . . .”

 I waved them silent. “Murzy. Madam Hornloss. We have a precious load scattered wide. I am no Wizard, but it seems we need help. . . .”

 “Surely not,” said Murzy. “Not with a lord of the birds at your side.” She bowed deeply. “I have long known your name, but only recently your identity, great Favian.”

 The Flitchhawk inclined its mighty head. “Perhaps Favian is still great lord of the birds, ma’am. If the sickness is not too close. If the shadow is not nigh.” It called into the sky and was answered in a moment by a twittering from every side. Small birds began to gather by dozens, then hundreds, hopping about, darting here and there, their bright eyes seeking, their beaks opening to pick up crystals as though they were grains of giant wheat. It was not long before the contents of the broken basket were heaped before us. Murzy shook out a tablecloth, and we piled the crystals upon it, knotting the corners, while I answered the questions they had asked about the Great Maze. They asked a great many, and it was some time before they were satisfied.

 “Where are you going, Mavin’s son?” Murzy asked. “Up to the ice caverns where the Gamesmen sleep?”

 I nodded, wondering how she had known about that. Mavin, Himaggery, and I had not broadcast knowledge about the caverns, though there were a number who knew of it. “I thought I would stop there, yes. Then I would have come hunting you. Jinian asked me to find you, to tell you she needs you.”

 “Ah, well, we thought perhaps that was the case,” said Cat Candleshy. “Some time ago Murzy suspected it might be true. And Bartelmy said something of the sort, also. Your confirmation of it now makes us glad we left Xammer when we did.” Until that moment I had forgotten that Murzemire Hornloss was a Seer.

 “We’ll go on north to her, boy. You get on your way. Don’t try that bell sound again unless you must. It will only work when it comes as a surprise. It could not have been the sound of the Daylight Bell alone which kept the shadow at bay, but then you probably know that.”

 They nodded at me then and went on toward the north, across the Shadowmarches, as though they were out for an afternoon stroll. “So that’s a seven,” I said. There had been no opportunity for me to meet them before Jinian and I had set out two years before, but I had heard much about them since, of course. “So that’s a seven.”

 “Only part of one,” murmured the Flitchhawk. “They are more impressive when they are complete.

 I don’t know that “impressive” was quite the word I would have used. “Indomitable,” perhaps. I did not worry about them further; they needed none of my concern. Instead, I faced south and asked, “Are you strong enough to go on? We can get to the cavern before dark. I will watch if you will carry. Or I’ll carry and you can watch.”

 The Flitchhawk said something about meeting the terms of the boon, which meant it had to carry. I watched, therefore, from above him, or under him, or off to one side or the other. Several times I saw roiling air away in the distance, but nothing approached us. Evidently the surprise of the Bell sound had been enough for a temporary surcease.

 We came to the cavern before dusk, slipping in along the fold of hills to find it, spotting it at last by the firelight gleam in the cavern’s mouth. I started to lose my shape and knew that one of the Immutables must be present, so I turned and landed some distance away, coming the remaining distance on my own two feet, naked as a fish.

 The governor of the Immutables, Riddle, was there with Mertvn and Quench and a smallish crowd of men and women who could have been techs or pawns or Immutables. When they saw the Flitchhawk slantingdown out of the evening sky, there was a great hoorah, and Mertyn came running to the rock shelf, where he landed just about the time I arrived, puffing. He hugged me, and I him, and someone fetched me some clothing. Then we stood merely looking at one another until an outcry aroused our attention.

 The Flitchhawk had set down its burdens, knocked several dozen of the workmen down with its wings, then taken off again. I saw it circling high above me, moving off to the south while the workmen exclaimed and shouted. It was going toward Chimmerdong, I supposed. Jinian had said it preferred to live in Chimmerdong. I waved, not knowing whether it saw the gesture or not. Then they were all around me, pulling me along toward the tents and barracks they had set up just inside the cavern, invisible from above.

 “We’ve been waiting for you, boy,” said Quench. “Waiting for those crystals, rather. Didn’t want to start until we had them. Important things, those.”

 “Very,” affirmed Riddle, punching me lightly on one arm. “Good to see you, Peter. We didn’t really expect you just yet, but we’re glad to have you here. A matter has come up. . . .”

 “It’s the resurrection machine,” said Mertyn. “It’s in good repair, and they can start using it anytime, but the best they can do is bring back twenty-five or thirty a day. At that rate, it will take twelve years to get all the frozen Gamesmen awake, and yet the crystals you gave us urge haste.”

 “It’s more than mere urging, Mertyn,” I said, trying not to sound too panicky about it. “We don’t have twelve years. It is questionable if we have even a season left.” And I told them about the deadly yellow crystals and the tragedy of the Maze while they exclaimed and sighed and shook their heads. “We’ll have to do something faster,” I concluded.

 “It seems to me that something was mentioned about using Demons? Demons and Healers, wasn’t that what you did on the Wastes of Bleer? I couldn’t quite remember.” This was Mertyn.

 Of course they could use Demons and Healers. Silkhands the Healer and Didir the Demon had wakened Thandbar. After which Didir and Dealpas—also a Healer—had wakened others. “Didir should have remembered,” I said half-angrily. “She did it, and it wasn’t that long ago.”

 “I’m sure she would have remembered, Peter, but she’s down at the High Demesne. It’s something any Demon and any Healer could do, do you think?” This was Riddle, sounding very uncomfortable about some­thing.

 “I should think so.”

 “Then I think our strategy is obvious,” said Quench. “Sort out the bodies in there, use the machine to wake the Healers and Demons first —Gamelords, what a job it will be to sort out both bodies and blues and be sure they match—then get teams of them resurrecting the others.”

 “lI would have thought Didir would have been here to help you. She and Dealpas.” The last time I had seen her, she had been at the Bright Demesne, with Barish-Windlow.

 They looked at one another, shifting from foot to foot very uncomfortably. It was Mertyn who sighed at last and invited me into his tent. “Come in, my boy. I’m afraid we have bad news.”

 He hummed and hawed until I was half-crazy with it. I don’t know what it was about Mertyn that made him so irritating; perhaps because he was so cautious not to use Beguilement (which was the Talent of Rulers) on me that he went the other way. He could not even be normally sympathetic without worrying whether he was being manipulative.” After a time I grew weary of it and said, “Mertyn, quit being diplomatic and tell me. Something’s happened to Mavin?”

 “No. No, not Mavin.”

 “Himaggery then. He’s dead.”

 “Gamelords, boy! What would make you think that?”

 “You would! You’re dodging all over the place, not telling me what’s happened. What has happened?”

 “It’s the Bright Demesne. It seems to be under siege.”

 I sagged. Bad enough, but not as bad as I’d feared. “How did you find out? Who’s doing it? Is it a Game?”

 “In a manner of speaking, yes. We sent an Elator with a message for Himaggery, and he came back saying he couldn’t deliver it. Game has been declared, and the place is shut off. The two main players seem to be a Witch named Huldra and a Basilisk named Dedrina Dreadeye. Ah. I see you know them.”

 “I do, yes. Yes, Mertyn. Indeed I do.” As I did. Huldra was, I hoped, the last of her family. I had done away with all the others, one way or another. As for Dedrina Dreadeye, she was Jinian’s enemy, which made her mine also. “Who’s in the Bright Demesne?”

 “Himaggery. Barish. I think all the Gamesmen of Barish as well, though some of them could have left before the siege was laid. Oh, that girl, the one Jinian sent from a place called Fangel. The Elator did manage a few shouted messages before the besiegers came too close.”

 “Sylbie? And the baby?”

 Mertyn blushed. “According to the Elator who saw her on the walls with the child. Do I understand the baby is yours?”

 “It is, and honorably got, Mertyn, so don’t make faces. Jinian fully understands the situation. So who else is there? How about Mavin?”

 “Mavin had gone before the siege, I think. I still haven’t heard from Mavin. She left another of those enigmatic clues of hers, and there’s been no time to figure it out. Something about the best apples to bake upon the hearth are those from one’s own orchard. She’s really quite maddening at times.”

 “No reason given for the siege?”

 “We have no idea why the siege, but the Gamesmen have turned up in overwhelming numbers and with an unfair advantage as well. They’re using shadows. Which is why my Elator couldn’t get in and none of the people in the Demesne can get out.”

 I smiled. The three who were watching me looked at one another, wondering if I’d lost my mind. “My expression isn’t one of joy,” I said. “It’s just that you seem at a loss for an explanation, and I can give you one. Huldra and Dedrina were sent south to dose us all with poisonous purple crystals. You, Mertyn, and Quench and Riddle. Everyone at the Bright Demesne. However, that could be done easily enough through spies and Elators without need for a siege. So, it’s obvious the siege is for some other reason, probably to do precisely what it is doing, which is to keep Himaggery and Barish bottled up. To keep them from coming here.” I laughed. “Huldra was instructed to come here and destroy everything, but she doesn’t know about you, Riddle. With you here, no Seer can peer into the cavern. So, they don’t know the resurrection is already beginning. Make sure they don’t find out!”

 The Immutable frowned. It was his Talent to form a barrier against the use of any other Talent. Barish and Queynt were said to have bred his people long ago in the early years of the millennium as a kind of defense against the unlimited Talents of the Gamesmen. Now he objected, “If Demons and Healers are to be used to raise the frozen Gamesmen, we Immutables must withdraw. Else their Talents will not work.”

 “Withdraw, Riddle, but only so far as you must, and let a good rank of you camp between the cavern and Lake Yost, where the Bright De­mesne is. Let Huldra’s Seers struggle to get a vision through your people. Let them try to get an Elator through. They won’t be able to penetrate the barrier you’ll make. They’ll continue to try, however, so be on your guard. Sooner or later they’ll send a force to try and destroy the place.”

 “Why does this Witch want the resurrection stopped?” Mertyn was puzzled by this, as he should have been.

 I had thought about this for many hours during the flight from the Maze. “She cares nothing for the resurrection, thalan. Butthe one who gives her orders,that onecares that the resurrection should not take place. Huldra thinks she is doing this for the giants in the northlands, giants who are dead, though Huldra probably doesn’t know it. Dead or not, I do not think it was ever the giants who decided upon this. They were huge and powerful, but they were not subtle. They were cruel but not amused at their cruelty. No, they were guided by another mind, a mind more subtle and more depraved, though they never knew it.”

 I told them about the Oracle.

 There were expressions of consternation, vows of retaliation, loud expostulations from Quench, mutterings from Riddle. When all their exclamations and posturing were done, however, the truth was still there before us. Lom was dying, and avenging ourselves against the Oracle had to take second place to that. When that understanding finally came, also came silence.

 “You must get the frozen Gamesmen moving,” I said gently. “The Demons and Healers to raise the others. To raise Tragamors to move the stones of the Ancient Roads and set them in place again. To raise Sorcerers to hold power for them. Sentinels to keep watch against the shadows. Armigers and Elators to carry word across the breadth of Lom. Even the Necromancers, Seers, and the Gamesmen of mixed Talents. All who can must go south, to the site of the Old South Road City,” and I told them where it could be located, using Stoneflight Demesne as a guide. “The city must be raised up again. The Tower must be rebuilt. Itmust be done as soon as possible, and even that may be too late.

 “All beneath the mountain were chosen because they weregood, ” I said. “By which is meant, I suppose, that they were unselfish persons of perception. And the lords of fate know we need those qualities now.”

 “I have not heard that oath,” said Mertyn. “What lords are those?”

 I laughed, perhaps a little shrilly, for I was very tired. “The lords of fate? Those we pray are larger than Lom. If nothing is larger than Lom, then whom shall we swear by if Lom dies?” They smiled at this, as I had intended, though not much.

 “That is all we have to do, then?” asked Riddle.

 Mertyn answered, shaking his head. “Yes, that’s all. To undo every wrong man has done. Rebuild every road. Replant every forest. Clean every river. Send the message that is in these crystals to every being who walks, swims, flies upon the world. . . .”

 “Stretch the crystals as far as they will go,” I advised them. “Have Healers try laving their hands upon other creatures. The Eesties convey messages in this way, and Healers may be able to do it also.’

 I sighed. The sleep that my pombi self had had the night before seemed very long ago. And I was worried about Jinian. I seemed to see her face before me, that troubled, slightly concentrated expression she so often wore. “Danger,” her vision face said. “Danger, Peter.” I took a handful of the blue crystals from the basket and secreted them in a pocket. Something told me I would need them.

 “Well, then, we’ll be at it,” said Riddle. “And what about you, boy?” “Why,” I said, “I have noc hoice, really. Someone must carry this word to the Bright Demesne.”

 5
JINIAN’S STORY: THE FIRST LESSON

 Time in the gray spaces between memories was not an easy thing to judge. I might have been there for a season, or perhaps for a few breaths. However long it may have been, there seemed to be a good amount of thinking time. About the time I had decided to count my pulse as a way of measuring—realizing with a panicky sense of loss that the Eesty shape had no pulse I could detect—Ganver came back, sliding through the gray walls of the place like a fish into a shallow.

 “Is Peter out?” I asked.

 “Out of the Maze, yes. It is evening in the world. He will fly in the morning, south to the lands of your people.”

 I must have shown some emotion at that, though how it could be perceived in that Eesty shape I don’t know.

 “He is in your bao?” Ganver asked. “Your wholeness, your ubiety?” Wholeness and whereness. I had not thought of it in those terms, but it was true.

 “Yes,” I said. “Peter is my . . .”

 “Bao-lus,” said Ganver, giving me the right Eesty word for it. “I, too, have experienced this. Once. Among our kind, it takes five to become bao-lus. And only from the perfection of bao-lus does a new form come. You have no child as yet? No. There is an oath among the sevens. I had forgotten. Well, we five had a child. Among our people we say `a following of perfection.’ “

 It was silent, then, for a very long time. I did not want to interrupt its thoughts. Finally, Ganver shivered and turned to and fro, as though shaking its head. “I will take you now where you may be safely hidden while I lead the Oracle away .”

 I shook my top end. “Before we do that, Ganver, there’s something else we can do.”

 “Do?” it asked, as though “doing” anything were foreign to its ability. Well, in a sense, I suppose that was true of Eesties. They had never really “done” much except buzz about carrying messages. At least those of Ganver’s generation hadn’t.

 “There are a great many things which might be done,” I said, not wanting to give it any time to think the matter over. “The first one that comes to mind concerns how memory works. From what you’ve said, I don’t suppose Lom is remembering everything all the time, simultaneously. At least my mind doesn’t work that way.”

 “No,” said Ganver stiffly, not unbending but condescending to explain. “As we messengers move through memory, Lom remembers. Part of the duty of the Eesties is to move through memory, wandering, dancing through every part, recalling all past time to Lom’s consciousness.

 “Well, since you’ve been holed up in your grave there, Ganver, who’s been doing the remembering? Don’t tell me. I already know. The Oracle and his friends, right?”

 It nodded. If an inclination of the top three points can be considered a nod, that’s what it did, and it did it in that superior manner that made me very angry.

 I stamped one point of me. “You know,” I said in a conversational tone, “mankind is no great shakes in the holiness department. I think the Shadowpeople have it all over us, quite frankly. But I’ll stack us against your people any day, great Ganver. Half of you are fanatics and the other half are quitters.”

 This was not really a very diplomatic thing to say, nor was it at all kind. I repented of it immediately but was angry enough to go on in dogged fashion, “If the Oracle is in the Maze with its brethren, Ganver, we can take it for granted it is circulating repeatedly among the worst possible memories. It is undoubtedly recalling everything it can of destruction. Of pain. Of the fall of the Bell. All that. And while that is going on, how many of you elder Eesties are sequestered away, not doing anything?”

 “Too many,” the Eesty said. It was said so humbly I was ashamed of myself for the outburst. “It seems even one is too many.”

 “Well, the point is, of course, that if there are enough of your generation—enough who aren’t ‘Brotherhood’—I’d suggest a thing you might do immediately is to start circulating among the pleasanter events of history. Recall to Lom’s memory some pleasanter times. Cheer it up a bit.”

 Ganver did not reply. Even I had to admit to myself that when talking about an entire world, “cheering up a bit” did sound undignified. “And another thing,” I went on stubbornly, “is to figure out whether any particular memory can be destroyed.”

 “Destroyed!” The Eesty was aghast. You’d think I’d suggested murdering its entire race.

 “Yes, damn it, Ganver. The memory in which the Bell is destroyed. If we could just get rid of that one! If Lom didn’t remember it was gone—don’t you see, if it didn’t know the Bell was gone, it might act as though it weren’t.”

 “But the Bell is gone!”

 “Where did it come from in the first place? Lom made it, didn’t it? Constructed it,Eesties didn’t make it, did they? I thought not. I think it’s like newts, I really do.”

 “Newts?” Ganver evidently didn’t know the word. Well, why should the Eesty know about newts? Nevvts aren’t exactly prepossessing, and they certainly aren’t native to this world because they have tails.

 “Newts. If you cut off a newt’s foot, it grows another one. I think it’s because a newt is so stupid it doesn’t know the foot is gone, so another one just pops out. Somewhere inside the newt is the idea of footness, and footness takes over when it is needed. You cut off my foot, on the other hand, and I know very well it’s gone, so another one just doesn’t grow. Well, if Lom didn’t know the Bell was gone . . .”

 “You think another one might pop out?” Ganver sounded exactly like Murzy, that same tone of slightly outraged elder dignity.

 “I think it’s worth the chance, whether it does or not. Even if another Bell didn’t pop out, it would make Lom feel better not to remember the actual act of destruction.”

 The thing I was remembering really had nothing to do with newts. It had to do with that time in Chimmerdong when I had grodgeled with the D’Bor Wife, pretending to find the Daylight Bell, only to see the Bell itself, golden and glorious, sinking beneath the waves of the lake. That was the idea of the Daylight Bell, I knew it. The idea, the model, whatever. If I had seen a Daylight Bell in that distant lake, there might be more or could be more than one. If I had seen another, it must mean that Lom could make another, several, many, If it felt like it. If it felt better!

 “And if Lom felt better, maybe it would stop making those yellow crystals that are killing everyone,” I finished, knowing I had not been particularly persuasive. Ah, well, it was mostly hunch, intuition, not reason. Still, to do that would be better than doing nothing.

 “How?” asked Ganver, much to the point.

 “I’m not sure whether it would work or not, but I’d start by getting some flood-chucks in, and we’d cut all the hedge away from the outside until we got to the place the memory is, then we’d tunnel underneath and collapse it and dig it all out and carry it away. I mean, Ganver, I don’t know how Lom’s mind works, but I do know that part of it is material. Real. Lom-flesh, so to speak. So if we take the real flesh part away, then the memory will have to go with it, won’t it?”

 Ganver did not indicate comprehension. I decided to try again. “Look, sometimes a Gamesman will get whacked on the head. After which, at least once in a while, that Gamesman forgets things because part of its brain has been injured or destroyed. So if Lom’s memory is at all like other creatures’ memories, and if we’re very careful about it, why couldn’t we remove just this one memory?”

 Ganver breathed a word that I could only translate as “Sacrilege,” though what it said was, “Corruption of the holy reality greatly to the discomfiture of those whose job it is to maintain the status quo.”

 Really, this old Eesty did make me peevish. “Well, the real sacrilege was when young Oracle and his friends brought the Bell down, Ganver. After that, anything else that is done can’t be called anything but helpful. If we could find Mind Healer Talley, she might have a better idea, but short of that, I don’t know what else to do.”

 “We could go to that place, to that time,” it said with a certain chill reserve. “The Oracle would not expect to find us there soon again.”

 “Yes, let’s go there. Let’s go outside the Maze, onto the road. I’d like to have my own shape back and eat humanish food.”

 It took me to the road below the Dervishes’ Pervasion, standing silent at the edge of the trees while I in my Jinian shape built a fire and made myself tea. I was fully clothed, as though I had never changed, with my pack still on my back. While I drank, it stood. While I toasted bread, it stood. Finally, it said, “This thought of yours. This destroying of memory. It could do great damage.”

 “It could. Yes. But quite frankly, I can’t think of anything which would make things much worse. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s shadow all over the hillside behind us.”

 “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” it replied, “but the forest on the mountain to the east is dead. It would have been alive when you entered the Maze.”

 Ganver was right, and so was I. I wondered how much time we had actually spent in the Maze. I remembered there had been widow’s bush in bloom back at the little lake when I called up its dweller. If I wanted to hike back there, I could see how far it had come toward setting seed, which would give a measure of the time. If it hadn’t merely died. Hardly worth it. It didn’t matter how much time; the fact was sufficient unto itself. There had been enough time for a forest to die. Enough time for shadow to come flowing along in a gray carpet.

 “I can’t think of any good reason not to,” Ganver said at last, sounding almost personlike.

 I got out my things. A summons. An easy, any-first-year-Wize-ard-can-do-it summons. I couldn’t. It took me three tries before I could even remember the words. “Gamelords,” I whispered. “Something terrible is happening.”

 “Of course,” Ganver said gently. “As Lom dies, so all our senses and skills die. Both yours and ours. Remember.”

 Well, of course then I remembered. Remembered, gritted my teeth, and did the summons. Did it right, too, even though it was like wading through deep mud. Every word was an effort. This close to the bad memories, this close to the shadow, the life-force had to be at an absolute minimum.

 In a few minutes, however, I heard a chirruping call from the top of the hill and saw three worried-looking chucks threading their way down the path, staying well clear of the shadow. We bowed halfheartedly. I began talking. They were the ones who had been given the blue crystal before, so they understood at once what I was talking about. Still, they conferred for a long time before agreeing. One of them went back up the trail, even more carefully, for the shadows were thicker than ever, and returned after a long while with six or seven more of them. Meantime, I’d gone back into the Maze and found the edge of the memory place.

 The chucks and I decided to clear all the growth between the road and the path so we could get at the edge of the memory place. I explained carefully that they must not get onto the path itself, and if that accidentally happened, they were to stay very still in one place and I would come in after them.

 They set to work. I would have liked to help, but I had brought no tools at all, and my teeth were not up to the job. By nightfall, they had all the brush cleared along the edge of the path, cleared and carried away. I asked if they could bring gobblemoles on the morrow, and they said yes, After which they went carefully away while Ganver took me somewhere else for the night. I don’t know where, and it didn’t matter. I was asleep by the time we got there.

 The next day we dug out the memory. That is, I think we dug it out. The gobblemoles went under the path from the cleared space, tunneled it all out underneath, then let it collapse. After which Ganver and I went in at the other end of the path, watched the ship arrive, watched the moon fall, and then ducked into the crevasse, which should have brought us out into the Temple of the Bell just in time for the destruction. Instead, we came out in the bottom of the gobblemoles’ pit. No destruction of the Bell.


 Which might have meant it was gone. Which might have meant it had moved. Which might have meant nothing except thatwe had no access to it anymore. I thanked the creatures, explaining as much as I could, and they departed.

 Coincident with their departure, we heard a threatening sound, rumbling, like a mutter of thunder. “The Oracle knows we’re here,” breathed Ganver, scooping me up. I heard the sound again. A fluttering roar. Above Ganver’s shoulder I could see the slope behind it. The shadows rose from it like a flock of monstrous birds. It was their fluttering we heard. “They arecontrolling the shadow,” Ganver said, horrified. “No one has controlled the shadow before. . . .”

 They were around us before Ganver could move. It did something, a kind of shifting of space. The gray, formless place was all around us, but some of the shadows had come through as well. Ganver dropped me, spun, roared, picked me up, and did the thing—whatever it was—again. We were somewhere else, only a few shadows now, fluttering madly. One of them brushed by me, so closely I felt it and shuddered, remembering being shadow bit from that time in Chimmerdong.

 “Pfowgrowl,” snarled Ganver. “Would that I had a dozen of the Gardener’s shadow-eaters and I would teach these shades to leave Eesties alone.” We fled once more, Ganver muttering as we went. “I’m going to leave you, Jinian, Dervish Daughter. Stay until I come for you. If you would know the meaning of the star-eye, watch and learn.”

 The Eesty dropped me again; I felt it go, the shadows in close pursuit. Anger burned behind them like a lightning track through the gray. I was alone in a place, making a great crackle of broken shrubbery as I picked myself up.

 A quiet glade. No sign of anything dying, not here. Dark stone buildings half-sheltered by the trees. Zellers grazing on the sward. Evening? Dawn? Lamplight in the windows of the place. A door opened and someone, evidently attracted by the noise I was making, called into the half-light, “Hello? Hello? Can we help you?”

 I stepped out onto the meadow, adjusting my pack and keeping a pleasantly neutral expression on my face as I approached. “Hello. Yes. I seem to have lost my way.” It was a young woman in a smock, hair drawn back in a sensible braid. Something about her reminded me of Silkhands.

 I said, “My name is Jinian.”

 “Jinny. Do come in. I was just about to put the kettles on for the children’s wash-up, and for our tea, of course. Come into the kitchen.” She bustled off ahead of me, down a stone-floored corridor. The ceilings of the place were low, no more than a foot or so over her head. A tall man would have had to stoop. Perhaps there were no tall men here. The place looked clean enough, and yet there was a smell . . . like a latrine. A urine smell. I twitched my nose and tried to ignore it.

 She opened a heavy door, closed it behind me, and gestured me to a chair as she began filling heavy kettles with water and hanging them on hooks above the fire. There were dozens of them, great iron things that looked heavy. She grunted when she heaved them, and I went to help her, curious. “Are you doing this all alone?”

 She smiled at me, a tired smile. “Well, it’s all part of the dedication, isn’t it. Part of the saintly work. Thank you for your help, though. Since I’ve had this flux, it’s been hard to lift them.” Her hands on the kettle handle were raw, with chapped, bleeding places.

 There was a smaller kettle hung closer to the flames. I laid more wood upon the fire as she filled it, wondering who it was who cut all that wood. If she heated so much water every morning, it would take a forest full of trees to provide the heat. Before long the small kettle began to steam, and she poured water into a teapot, setting a cup before me. “We’ve time for a cup before wash-up.” She sighed. “Now, what brings you to the Sanctuary?”

 “That’s what this place is called? The Sanctuary?”

 “Oh, yes. The Sanctuary and Church of St. Phallus. The monastery of those in service to the Sacred Seed.” She smiled as though these words had some particular meaning to her, face glowing briefly as in firelight. “I’m Sister Servant Rejoice.”

 “Rejoice,” I murmured.

 “Just call me Sister Servant,” she corrected me. “We don’t use individual designations much. Father says we don’t need them.”

 “Father says that, does he,” I murmured again, sipping at my tea. I was all adrift. I understood the words she had said, but the sense of them escaped me. “Ah, Sister Servant, can you tell me how long the . . . Sanctuary and church have been here? Historically speaking?”

 She was confused by this. “Always, Jinny. Always, since arrival. Since our Holy Founders broke with the evil under the mountain and brought away St. Phallus.”

 “Evil under the mountain?”

 “The monster makers. The triflers with the holy fruit. Some called them . . .” She looked at the closed door before whispering, “Magicians.”

 Well. That placed it somewhat. This was evidently some offshoot from early times. “How long ago was that, do you know?”

 She shook her head. The count of years evidently didn’t concern her, though the kettles did. She was watching them intently, waiting for steam to emerge from each one. As soon as the first was hot, she took it down from its hook and substituted another before tugging on a bell rope beside the door. Far off I could hear the jangle, insistent in the silence. Then voices. Approaching footsteps.

 Those who came in were much like Sister Servant—were Sister Servants. Smocks, braids, tired-looking faces, chapped and bleeding hands. They took the steaming kettles and went out, leaving the last to boil for Rejoice. “You can come with me,” she whispered. “To see the work.”

 I was too curious not to. We went down the echoing hallway to one of the rooms. In the room were half a dozen beds. On the beds were children.

 So I thought. Well. An orphanage. A foundling home. I had seen such before. There was one in Xammer. We students of Vorbold’s House had borrowed babies from it from time to time in order to learn child care. I knew about babies, and my heart cheered. “I’ll help you,” I said, turning to the first bed. “I’ve bathed babies before.”

 I started by trying to tickle it awake. It lay there, drool streaming in a gelatinous rope from the corner of its mouth, eyes open. It did not seem to see me. I turned its head toward me, and the body rolled, stiffly. This wasn’t a baby. It was a child, seven or eight years old, perhaps.

 I smelled it then. Dirty diapers. Making a face, I drew the covers back. “What’s the matter with . . . her, Is she sick?”

 Rejoice shook her head, an expression of disapproval on her face. “Of course not. She’s perfectly all right.”

 “If she isn’t sick, she seems a little old to be dirtying her pants.”

 “A little slow to be toilet-trained. That’s all. Otherwise, perfectly fine. See, she’s smiling at you.”I looked at the child. Its mouth was twisted in a grimace of pain. I started to say something, then stopped. The source of the pain was all too evident. Sores. Sores on its buttocks and between its legs. “It has sores,” I said, carefully neutral. “Do you have medicine or a Healer for those?”

 She shuddered, whispered, “Do not say ‘Healer.’ Father would not have a Healer here. As bad as midwives, Healers. There’s powder on the shelf. Clean linen on the shelf. Washcloths on the shelf.” She herself was busy with another, even older. It seemed to be a boy—man, really a man, with hair on his face. Lying in his own excrement, on a soaked bed, his face turned upward without expression.

 I went back to my work. I had done worse. Not often, but on occasion. Burying was cleaner. Corpses were cleaner, even those half-decayed. When we were through, the six bodies in the beds were clean, too, and the filthy linens were piled high in a basket by the door. I leaned against a sill and thrust a window wide.

 “What are you doing!”

 “Airing out, Sister Servant. Getting rid of a little of the smell.”

 “It’s the smell of service. Nothing to repudiate. Revel in it, Jinny, for it is a holy smell.”

 Holy shit, I thought to myself, wondering what madhouse Ganver had brought me to. Holy pee!

 “How old is he?” I asked, pointing at the man she had worked on first.

 “Bobby? Why, Bobby’s just a wee baby.”

 “He’s large for a baby.”

 “Oh, in years perhaps he is. Thirty or forty, I suppose. But he’s just a wee baby nonetheless. Slow. A tiny bit slow.”

 “When will he grow up, this Bobby?”

 “Oh, every day and every day. The therapist says he’s growing up all the time.”

 “The therapist says that?”

 “Oh, yes. You’ll have to meet Sister Servant Therapist. We’ll see her over breakfast. Now that the babies are all clean, we’ll feed them, then we can have our own breakfast.”

 We could have our breakfast. When we had carried out the dirty linens, rinsed them in a stream, put them in kettles to be boiled over the fire, and spent an endless time spooning gruel into mouths or into gaping tubes that led into stomachs, we could have our breakfast. We assembled in the kitchen, all the Sister Servants and me. The smell of the dirty linens in the kettles was overwhelming. I could not eat. They did. I was introduced. I nodded at them over my teacup, pretending I had eaten earlier. Well, I had, sometime earlier.

 “Sister Servant says you’re interested in Bobby.” This Sister was a little older, deep lines graven from nose to the corners of her lips, lips curved in a constant, meaningless smile. Habit held her face in that expression. She did not know how her face looked.

 I nodded, noncommittal. She took it for assent. “He’s making such progress.” She made enthusiastic noises. “We’re working on toilet training.

 “Ah,” I said.

 “Teaching him to make a noise when he needs to. I sit by him, and then when he does, I make a noise. Eventually, he will learn to mimic the noise, then he’ll associate it with doing it, don’t you know, and that will be a help. If we have a little warning, we can get a pan under him.”

 “How long have you been working at this?”

 “On, only about ten years—isn’t it about ten, Sister Servant Rejoice? Ten years. Bobby hasn’t quite got the hang of it, but he will.”

 “Do you really feel there is sufficient intelligence there? To . . . ah, get the hang of it?” I had seen only a shell, a body without a mind. I wondered if my eyes had tricked me.

 “He makes progress,” she said stiffly. “Every day. It doesn’t matter that he’s a little slow. He’s a unique, valuable fruit of St. Phallus. Father says it doesn’t matter whether it takes one year or a hundred. Every fruit of St. Phallus is sacred.”

 I smiled, nodded. They were all looking at me intently, too intently. Sister Servant Rejoice was holding a bread knife, turning it and turning it in her hands as she looked at me, something deep and violent in her eyes. “Of course,” I said. “That’s very true.” Sister Servant Rejoice laid down the knife. I breathed a silent sigh. “I’d love to hear Father talk. He sounds very eloquent.”

 This was the right thing to have said. They told me about Father, about the several Fathers. A few of whom were present in the priory. The rest of whom were out in the world, seeking out special fruits of St. Phallus to bring them to the Sanctuary. “And more Sister Servants,” sighed Rejoice. “We need more of us.”

 “Don’t presume,” said Sister Therapist. “Father says don’t presume. We don’t need any more of us than there are, Father says. ‘Sufficient unto the duty are the Sisters thereof.’ That’s what Father says.”

 “I suppose the Fathers could always help,” I said innocently.

 “That would not be fitting,” said Sister Therapist. “They have higher duties than ours.”

 I went again with Sister Rejoice, from room to room, place to place. I talked with Sister Therapist.

 “It is my duty to structure the children’s day,” she said, her voice wavering between pride and exhaustion. “Each of the holy fruits of St. Phallus has his own program. The children in this building are being toilet-trained.”

 “Can any of them walk? Crawl?”

 She shook her head, making a sour mouth at me. “Each thing in its time. After they learn one thing, then we will teach another. Those in the next building are learning to crawl.”

 “Ah. And when they have learned to crawl, what then?”

 She seemed doubtful. “We have one or two in the building by the stream. They learned to crawl long ago and now are learning to feed themselves with their hands. It would be easier if they were not so frail.”

 “Frail?”

 “Well . . .” She looked around herself, whispering, “There are only two. And one of them is over eighty years old. She has forgotten her toilet training now, but I have refused to bring her back here.” One evidently did not discuss the age of their charges; to do so required a whisper.

 I said nothing. I could say nothing. Back in Stoneflight Demesne I had had a neutered fustigar named Grompozzle. Grommy for short. It had taken me exactly six days to house-train him. He had known how to feed himself from birth. I looked at the beds around me, stinking again, the odor permeating the very stones of the place. I thought I very much wished to meet Father.

 The day went on. It went on in the same way. Sister Therapist sat by Bobby, grunting whenever she smelled him. Sister Rejoice cleaned shit and pee out of endless bedsheets. Sister Someone Else spooned gruel into mouths that would not open or would not shut, down throats that would not swallow. I watched as long as I could, then went out into the forest to hit trees. I waited for Ganver, but Ganver didn’t come.

 Nighttime did. Along toward dusk, a bell rang, and the Sisters left the buildings in procession, single file, winding through the woods toward a tall lamplit building with an arrangement of bell tower and chapel to one side. I followed them and filed in behind them, me being invisible as taught by the seven. To no avail, for one of the hawk-eyed men who sat in the tall chair at the front of the place saw me in the instant. His face was lean, very handsome, very stern. His eyes gleamed like a were­owl’s sighting prey when he sighted me.

 The Sisters sang, not very tunefully. I couldn’t blame them. They were tired, dispirited, and they smelled. No matter how clean they tried to be, the poor things couldn’t help it. They did smell.

 The tallest Father preached. He stood before us in robes of gleaming white, surrounded by the smoke of sweet incense, fondling his groin from time to time as he talked of St. Phallus. St. Phallus loomed behind the altar, erect, massive, as though ready to rape the world. It was not the first such monument I had seen. Wherever men were ignorant and hungry for power, I had seen these things, though never one as large as this. Father fondled his groin and preached.

 “Holy fruit of St. Phallus,” he said.

 “Clean seed planted in filthy ground,” he said.

 “Corrupted by dirty woman-wombs,” he said.

 “Sisters atone for being women by being Servants,” he said. The Sisters nodded, a few of them weeping. I wondered how old they had been when they were brought here. After the service, I asked Sister Servant Rejoice. She thought she had been around eight years old.

 “Why did you decide to come to the Sanctuary?” I asked, wondering why anyone would.

 “I didn’t decide,” she said, astonished. “Oh, no, I was only a filthy woman-child. Father decided. He took me from my people; he brought me here. He saved me. Oh, I fought him, too. Threatened to run away. Father had to tie me up for a long, long time. He had to whip me before I would settle to my duty. Bless Father.”

 “Oh, yes,” I agreed. “Bless Father indeed.”

 From behind us in the clean, sweet-smelling place, Father watched me walk away, his intention clear in his face. I went in the front door of the other building, down to the kitchen to get my pack, and out the back door. Jinian was young and strong. Jinian could be tied up and whipped until she, too, settled to her duty. Jinian had no intention of allowing that to happen.

 In the woods, from a high ridge of stone behind some bushes, I watched the place. Sure enough, it was not long before Father and two or three of his ilk came along, one of them carrying what looked very much like shackles. What was it Ganver had said, “Watch and learn”?

 Learn what? What question had I asked? Ah, yes. I had asked what the star-eye means.

 So I settled there upon the ridge, listening with some curiosity to the shouting going on below, the running about, the muffled scream of some Sister as she was slapped for letting me get away. I sat staring at the star pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me. A star. With an eve in the center.

  An eye. Looking out.

 A star shape. With an eye, looking out. Looking away.

 Away from its own shape. Toward . . . ?

 For a moment I thought I had it, but then it eluded me. I knew it was there, in the shape, in the lesson, but I couldn’t quite reach it. I struggled for a long time, chasing the thought as I might a fish in shallows, but each time it slipped through my fingers.

 Then, because I felt great sorrow for the Sister Servants and pity for the flesh they tended, which mercy would not have kept alive, I did Inward Is Quiet upon all the mindless creatures that lay in the beds in those buildings below. Inward Is Quiet in the imperative mode. Forever. They would not need to be cleaned or fed again. I wondered how the Fathers would react to that. Almost I wanted to stay to find out, but Ganver returned about that time. I looked up from my work to find the Eesty watching me.

 “Have you seen?” asked Ganver.

 “I’ve seen what’s down there, yes. I’m afraid it doesn’t explain the star-eye to me, Ganver. And I can tell you, I hate this memory.”

 “Oh,” said Ganver. “This place is not part of the Maze. This place is real. It has been thus for a thousand years. These genital worshipers live well, and they are not encumbered by too much work. They have their Servants.”

 “It need not be thus much longer,” I told the Eesty. “I can set a few spells upon it to try the philosophy of those who enslave these women.” Ganver looked at me very keenly. “You may punish these men, surely, for what it is they do, but they will not profit from it. Think what you do!”

 Without answering, I opened my pack, took out certain things I needed. I was not truly listening to Ganver. The evil of the place was too much with me. I could not bear it.

 I made a little image with a little phallus, dressed it in a bit of white fabric from my shirt, incensed it with sweet gum and resin. I named it. “Father,” I called it, bathing it in the sweet smoke. Then I melted its little phallus away in the fire. I did Dream Chains to Bind It to include all the Fathers, no matter where they were. “You must find another saint to worship, Fathers. You no longer have the symbol of St. Phallus to comfort you.” I wondered how they would handle that.

 I put things away in my pack, suddenly uncomfortably aware that Ganver still stood there, staring at me, saying nothing. It made me self-conscious, embarrassed, and for the first time I began to consider what I had done, casting about for an explanation.


 “Think, Jinian,” Ganver murmured at me. The voice was hypnotic, compelling. “Think what you do, how you feel, what you have just done. You have been angry. You sought something which was not there. Because it was not there, you punished certain creatures for its lack. Why, Jinian? Will you punish a gnat because it cannot sing? You will not have the power of the star-eye until you understand these things.”

 It came back to me then, all in a flash, standing there in that dark forest with the scent of the resins still in my nostrils. I remembered where I had heard the star-eye mentioned recently before. By the Oracle. In the cave of the giants. The Seer had looked at the star-eye on my chest and had suggested the Oracle take it from me. The Oracle had refused, saying it was only a symbol, that it had no real power. I mumbled something about this, trying to put that notion together with what had just happened. Ganver, hearing me, gave a high, keening sound, like weeping—or terrible laughter.

 I tried to comfort it. “Ganver, Ganver, do not grieve so. The Oracle is only a foolish thing. . . .” Which seemed only to make the matter worse. I could not tell what it was that grieved Ganver so. It was all part of that star-eye puzzle which it kept trying to teach me without telling me anything helpful at all.

 After a long time, we left the place and went elsewhere.

  

  

 6
PETER’S STORY: THE BRIGHT DEMESNE

 I used the flying shape—which had worked quite well previously—to get as far as the mountainous scarps south of Bannerwell, stopping for the night when dark, weariness, and the chill air of evening made it imperative. There were farms along the shelving mesa lands, and I bought my dinner at one of them with civil words and appropriate coin. The shape I took was a nothing-much minor functionary type; harmless, as I thought that would do best and be least threatening in this isolated place. They fed me middling well and offered me a bed, but the pawnish farmer had a glint to his eye that boded ill for a sleeper’s safety, so I smiled and made conversation and got myself off into the forest. I had been gone but a half league and was well hidden in the brush when he came sneaking along after with a bludgeon on his shoulder. I spent a little effort to Shift and gave him a pombi scare to last him some years. He may have stopped running in Bannerwell.

 Next day took me a little south of southeast down the range to the cliffs above Long Valley and a dinner hunted by me in fustigar shape and eaten raw. From there it was a mere skip of the wings over the hills to Lake Yost. A high scarp lay at the northwestern end of the lake, and from it I could see the Bright Demesne across the waters. It was a good vantage point, but not good enough to make out details. Also, I did not wish to make any decisions until full day, considering what Mertyn had said about shadows.

 When time came for the last lap, I flew slow and low and careful, among trees or down canyons, glad I had done so when I came out at last on the eastern edge of the hills. I thought at first a thunderstorm had gathered over the lake, so gray and dismal it was, then understood what I saw with some dismay. Before spying it out, I spent some time arranging myself to be unobserved: finding a rock nest set behind foliage and with a good overhang and camouflaging myself to discourage detection. Not that they were looking for me, but one could not be too careful. That was a Jinian thought. Three years ago I might not have considered it.

 The Bright Demesne lies on the shore of Lake Yost. Middle River flows into the lake slightly to the north of the Demesne, and there is a bridge there. East are forests and the meeting of the roads to Vestertown and Xammer. South are farmlands reaching away for leagues until the forests begin again, and other ranges of mountains.

 The Demesne is surrounded by hot springs. Even the hills behind me showed the remnants of old cones. This place had once been alive with fire pots and volcanoes, many thousand thousand years ago, so had said Windlow, the old Seer and teacher. Now only the hot springs remained, they and an occasional wisp of smoke or stream rising from a cone to the south of the High Demesne, where King Prionde and the Ogress had reigned.

 So, one expected the Bright Demesne to be surrounded by clouds of waving mist; it is one of the charms of the place. In the cold seasons it is more than charming, for then the great house and the dormitories are pleasantly warm while otherwhere people go shivering about their business. The steam is white, however, and the cloud that now seemed to cover the Demesne was gray as ash.

 Until recent years the Demesne had had no walls. It was Barish who had convinced Himaggery they were needed, and the Tragamors of the Demesne who had built them—together with a hundred or so skilled pawnish craftsmen recruited from the countryside around and well paid for their work. Now the walls stretched in a loop from the lake eastward, southward, and then west to the lake again, including all the hot springs except one small one that steamed away to itself in isolation quite far to the northeast. I had always called that one the “Porridge Pot,” for it plopped and mumbled away to itself as the morning grain did over the kitchen fire. (Forgive me for going on and on about the setting, but you will not understand the siege unless I tell you.)

 Along the lakefront a bastion of stone had been built, a kind of high quay with a crenellated wall, broken in several places by wooden gates above stairs that went down to the jetties. Thus the Demesne was surrounded on all sides by walls or heavy gates. As you will know, walls are no protection against Elators, who may flick in or out where they will. Himaggery had met this threat by channeling the power of the hot springs into a network of glowing fire which hung above the Demesne like a great inverted colander. He had used this power first at the Battle of Bannerwell, as I had good reason to remember. It was kept in place by the concentration of linked Sorcerers and Tragamors, working in shifts, or it may be by some Wizardry Himaggery and Barish had worked up between them. That is, if they were speaking to one another. They had not been when I had come to the Demesne last.

 Outside these walls, above this net of fire, the shadow lay on everything, including the surface of the lake. Even in the sky there were shadows, rippling masses of gray, like wind-torn storm clouds. There were shadows everywhere except along the level lands to the southeast, where stood the tents of the besieging army.

 I Shifted vision, creating telescopic eyes to spy out Huldra’s tent; she was flying her dead brother’s banner. I recognized the colors and ensign from my captivity in Bannerwell. At some distance was another high pavilion; this one belonging to Dedrina Dreadeye. I did not recognize the ensign of Daggerhawk Demesne—now vacant and home for were-owls, according to Jinian—but I recognized the Basilisk herself. She had not improved in appearance during the seasons since we had encountered her in Fangel. Along with these two were a great horde of Durables and Ephemera, major and minor Gamesmen. I recognized a few banners; players all, whom Himaggery had not much respected, and there was one tall tent with no device or banners at all.

 So, it appeared the Demesne was safe enough. Those outside could not get in. However, neither could those inside get out, and in time food would run short, even though there were stores in the cellars below the great house and fertile gardens inside the wall. They produced crops in all seasons beneath the gentle benison of the steams. I wanted to get in, mostly to tell those inside that others were aware of the difficulty and ready to assist. However, the fact that Himaggery had not struck at those camped at his gates when he had the power to do so troubled me and gave me another reason for the attempt.

 I lay there the better part of the day. There was no activity in either camp. When night came, I decided to try to get in. If shadows could not exist underwater, my maneuver would probably work. If they did—well, if they did, I would be in considerable difficulty.

 Dark came. I slipped down to the lakeshore under cover of the night and into the water. Snake shapes were easy to take. Eel shapes were no more difficult. A fish might have been easier yet, but the water gates that let the water of the hot springs run out through the base of the bastion were covered with grills too small for a large fish to enter.

 It was a long cold slither from the western shore, warming as I went farther, becoming quite warm, rather too warm, near the jetties. I thickened the eel’s skin, building in a layer of insulation below it. I hadn’t thought about the heat, which made me divert my path from the northern-most water gate to the one farther south. The water there was cooler since it had been used to warm the buildings before flowing out into its own drainage ditches.

 No shadows could be seen on the surface of the lake, but they could be felt. There was a tingling discomfort on my eelskin, that same feeling one gets sometimes when being watched, not palpable but discernible. I slithered and was silent, wriggling among the water weeds and ooze, up current, finding my way to the gate.

 It was hotter than any human could have withstood. As it was, there was a good deal of discomfort when I snaked through the grill and plunged madly upward into the familiar tunnel, seizing its rough rock roof with spider claws to pull myself out of the hot water and hang panting from that slimy vault, gasping, putting out feathery gills to shed heat, waving them madly. I suppose it was a fairly noisy process.

 “Who goes there?” came the bellow, then the lantern light peering down the tunnel at me like some huge eye. “Who goes there?”

 For a moment it was so surprising, I couldn’t remember how to Shift vocal organs, and it was only in the nick of time I managed to gargle, “Himaggery’s son, Peter,” before someone decided to launch a flaming spear at me.

 Mumble, mumble. “Didn’t look like a person at all.”

 Mumble, mumble. “Heard he was a Shifter!”

 “Shifter? That’s right. Child to that Mavin.”

 Mumble, mumble. “Best thing would be to kill’m.”

 Mumble, mumble. “Not if he’s who he says. Come out slowly.”

 “I’m not in man-shape,” I called.

 Mumble, mumble, in which “Get rid of’m,” and “Come out slowly” were equally voiced.

 So I came out, pincer foot by pincer foot, then Shifted very slowly while they watched. They made faces. I don’t know why other Gamesmen always make faces, but most of them don’t like Shifters, and that’s all there is to it. So far as I can tell—and I’ve watched in a mirror—there’s nothing particularly repulsive about it. Oh, an occasional inside-outness, perhaps, but guts are guts, after all. We all have them.

 I stood there, decently dressed though dripping. “If one of you will be kind enough to inform Himaggery I am here, he can identify me,” I said. All the guardsmen were strangers, and they looked nervous. Being under siege had done nothing to improve their equanimity. “Or, if Barish is available, he can identify me.” Some of their faces smoothed somewhat. Uh-oh, I said to myself. There’s factionalism here. It occurred to me an excellent time to try the Eesty way of message transmission. I stepped forward and laid my bare hand on the hand of one of the guardsmen. “I would appreciate your bringing word to either one of them,” I said, concentrating on my skin, “pushing” the blue crystal message through. It had worked when I was an Eesty.

 It worked here, also. The man’s face was slightly hostile when I approached him and touched him. Then less so. Then conciliatory. “Brog,” he said to one of his fellows. “Go tell the boy’s father he’s here.”

 Ah. So it did work. I offered my hand to another of the guardsmen, and then the others, one by one. “Cooperation,” that was the message. All of them got it but one. Him, I had no initial success with, a blank-faced, squint-eyed fellow who nodded at me but would not take my hand. “My name is Peter,” I said to him, smiling. “And yours is?” This was the one who had wanted to kill me. I was sure of it.

 He would not answer me. An officer told him sharply to mend his manners. “This’s Shaggan, sir. Joined us just recently. Came down from the north. About the time the Lady Sylbie came.”

 I smiled at Shaggan once more. “A difficult time to come to the Bright Demesne. Was it a pleasant journey?”

 He looked around him, shifty-eyed, trapped into talking though he obviously didn’t want to. I reached out and brushed at his face. “Spiderweb,” I said, pushing the blue crystal message for all I was worth. “It badly needs cleaning down here.”

 He stepped back, mouth open, confused looking. He had received the message I was carrying. But then, I had received a jolt of what he was carrying as well. I covered up as well as I could. “He’s been spider bit. Look at his face, pale as ice.” Which was better than saying, “He’s a spy sent here by the Witch, Huldra.” The picture had come through my skin, clear as though an artist had drawn it. The man had been dosed with a crystal and was no more aware of what he was doing than the citizens of Fangel had known what they were doing, day by day. I wondered how many more spies the Witch had sent, and then I remembered what the officer had said. This fellow had come down from the north. Where he had been recruited, undoubtedly. And he had come at about the same time as “the Lady Sylbie”? Interesting. How had Sylbie come to arrive near the same time as a man like this?

 I murmured something soothing and told them to take the man to the Healer. He was struggling in the grip of half a dozen of them at the same time he was trying to remember why he was here. I left him to it. If the blue crystal I’d pushed at him didn’t make him forget why he’d come, Himaggery’s Demons might find out something interesting by Reading it out of his head.

 We went out into the cellars; Himaggery came and embraced me. As soon as we were private, I told him about the spy, and he shook his head angrily. He knew as well as I that if there were one, there might be more, and it would be no easy job to find them. There were thousands of men within the Demesne, many of them recently recruited, and though I could go about touching them all, it could not be done quickly. He would have to set his Demons to Reading the men, and that couldn’t be done quickly, either.

 I told him once more about message crystals and for the first time about the shadow and the Shadowbell and my having to leave Jinian behind. I did not mention the fact that Mertyn, Quench, and Riddle were busy raising the hundred thousand. There was at least one spy in the Demesne; I could not know who might be listening; and this was something that should not be widely known. At any rate, without mentioning that particular stop on my journey, I told him everything else. He was open, sympathetic, and warm, which was both surprising and gratifying. When I had been here before, neither he nor Barish had been able to talk except in peevish monosyllables and not at all to each other, which was the reason I’d slipped blue crystals into their food. It had had a salutary effect as far as his relationship with me went. I wondered if it had solved the other problem.

 “How are you and Barish getting along?” I asked.

 He had the grace to blush. “You got the message to us one way or another, didn’t you, my boy? Well, so far as that goes, we’ve made up our difference. Trouble is, we made them up just before the siege set in, so it’s been little noticeable good to us.”

 “There’s a good deal of factionalism among the men,” I said.

 “Well, Peter, you know how it’s been. We hadn’t been able to agree on anything, and though most of our disagreement was in private, word got out and sides were taken. It was simply a case of my men championing me and Barish’s men championing him, and who cared what the truth was? Now it all seems foolish. Still, it’s hard to undo several years of conflict all in one strike. That’s why we’ve thought it unwise to try countermeasures against Huldra until we’ve had time to sell the men on one plan. At the moment, we’re not sure they’d act as a unified army. Quite frankly, Barish’s men might sell me to Huldra, or vice versa. I wish we had more of those message crystals.”

 “We do,” I said, showing him the contents of my pocket. “But I can push some cooperation into them without using these up if I have enough time.” I told him then about the Eesty method of message transmission, which he then tried on one of his servitors with no success at all. I sighed. I had known it wouldn’t work for him. I was pretty sure a Healer could do it. Otherwise, it would have to be someone who had had the experience of being an Eesty. Probably no one but me could do it at all.

 About that time Barish came in. Or, I should say, Barish-Windlow or Windlow-Barish. Last time I’d seen him, it had been Barish-Windlow, with poor old Windlow very much eclipsed, and I had been quite saddened thereby. I blamed myself often for having put them both in one body, though it had been all unwitting and with the best intentions. At any rate, he came in, embraced me, looked me squarely in the face, and said, “I want to thank you, Peter. I know you tricked me, but it was wisely done. The message you brought may have been a good thing to others, to me it was salvation.” He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t need to. I understood in the instant. The two warring halves of himself were now at peace, brought into alignment by the same message meant to align mankind to Lom. It was the best thing that had happened in quite a long time, and I was pathetically grateful for anything good.

 We talked a long time, sitting in the comfortable firelight as the evening wore on while I told them about leaving Jinian in the Maze. Small scuttling noises spoke of creatures in the walls, a sound I always associated with the Bright Demesne, though once Barish went to the door and looked sharply outside as though he had heard someone lurking there. If anyone had been there, they had fled at his approach. All our nerves were a bit on edge from the siege and the discovery of the spy and the possibility of conflict among the men. I told them about the giants then, and they exclaimed at Jinian’s luck and level-headedness in getting free of the monsters. When it was very late, I went off to bed, knowing I’d see the others in the morning.

 Queynt and Chance and the rest had been at the Bright Demesne for about fifty days, almost half a season. Roges and Beedie were still with them, though the giant Flitchhawk had shown up a day or two after they had arrived and carried the strange, dual-minded Sticky creature in the basket away over the sea.

 “It said it owed a boon to Jinian,” Queynt explained, “that it needed the Sticky in order to complete the mission.”

 “The Mirtylon part of the Sticky was a bit apprehensive,” Beedie confided, “but the Mercald part was in ecstasy. To have been a bird worshiper all his life and then to be going off with the very god of all the birds made him believe he was in heaven. I assume the Flitchhawk was going after more blue crystals?”

 “That’s the mission it was sent on,” I replied. “And given the fact that the Flitchhawk is probably one of the old gods, he will undoubtedly complete the mission with satisfaction. Though it is a very great distance, as I understand it, and he may not return for quite a long time.” That sounded incredibly pompous, even to me, but I’ve never been able to lie in a casual voice. I was still resolved not to tell Queynt or Chance or anyone that the Flitchhawk had already returned and that Mertyn and his crew were busy at the caverns. With spies about, it was better if no one knew.

 “Where’s Sylbie, then?” I asked, changing the subject. “She should have arrived only a few days after you did. Jinian said she sent Sylbie off not more than seven or eight days after the rest of you left.”

 “She didn’t arrive until twenty days ago,” drawled Chance. “And when I twitted her for being a slow-grole on the road, she flounced me.”

 “Her manner was odd,” agreed Beedie. “And it’s continued to be.”

 “Now, Beed,” said Roges.

 “Don’t now Beed me,” she said. “The girl was very pleasant on the way down from Fangel, after we all escaped from the Duke. Very well spoken. Excitable, but reasonable. Now she’s . . . well, she’s different.”

 I, too, thought it curious that it had taken Sylbie so long to arrive but did not pursue the matter just then. “Where have you put her?” I asked, wondering why I had not heard the baby.

 Himaggery made an embarrassed face. “We put her in the little gatehouse, Peter. Her and the baby. That baby—well, it’s got this habit of changing into a howling something-or-other, which it does whenever it’s peevish or doesn’t get fed on time. It happens less frequently if it’s kept quietly off to itself where Sylbie can devote her full time to it. Not that she’s fond of the isolation, but she does understand the problem. Being under siege from inside as well. Last time, we almost lost the gate guards and the Demesne. I must confess, I didn’t realize Shifter babies manifested Talent quite that early. Or so violently.”

 “They don’t,” I said. “This one is exceptional. There was some prenatal interference, you’ll remember.”

 “Ah,” he murmured. “Of course. It seems the little creature needs discipline, but none of us here are capable of arranging it. Thank heaven it always changes back to baby shape when it gets hungry enough, or the whole matter would be quite hopeless. I kept thinking Mavin would show up, or that Thandbar would come back from his trip—he went off just before the siege, he, Trandilar, and Dorn, to set a guard over the cavern where the frozen Gamesmen are, and don’t mention it, Peter. I don’t want anyone to know. At any rate, there’s no one here to provide guidance for the baby. Something he much needs.”

 “I’ll see what I can do,” I promised, privately thinking that it would take Mavin or Thandbar or more likely both to do what needed doing. Nonetheless, I did want to find out what Sylbie had been doing on the road for so long, so I trotted through the pear orchard and one of the smaller vineyards to the gatehouse, taking along some fresh fruit tarts from the kitchen, which I thought she and the baby might enjoy. High over the walls of the Demesne the sky showed blue and gray, a patchwork of shadow and clear air between the meshes of fire. It looked safe, but depressing. We couldn’t stay penned up here forever. I put it out of my mind for the moment and knocked on her door.

 She had Bryan in her arms, and he came to me in a moment, babbling on about something or other, getting his face all covered with berry juice as he happily gobbled tarts. She smiled and smiled, exclaiming over the tarts, telling me they’d go so well with tea. While she went to get it, I jiggled the baby on my knee, commenting loudly at how much he’d grown since Fangel. He seemed happy enough, though if the tarts gave him bellyache, I supposed we might be in for a haunting. After a time Sylbie was back, bearing a steaming pot with various accouterments, and we sat comfortably on either side of the fire while Bryan finished his share of tarts on the rug.

 The little gatehouse is actually set into the wall of the Demesne, or rather into the bases of two great buttresses of those walls. There is a small gate that opens from the gatehouse—from the room in which I sat—through the wall itself, though it is always kept heavily barred from the inside. I noticed the heavy chains across it and nodded to myself, thinking that she and the baby were secure enough here while still being private. There were parapets upon the buttresses and Sentinels keeping watch not more than two or three manheights above that door.

 “However did you get through the siege, Peter?” she wanted to know, peering up at me from under her lashes. Since I didn’t want to talk about the spy just yet, I equivocated and said I’d come in on the lakeside, leaving her with the impression I’d done it in a boat. Though Sylbie knew I was a Shifter, I’d learned she didn’t like to think about it. She did not think of me in any shape but my own.

 She wanted to know if I had “seen anyone” on my way south. It seemed an odd question.

 “Who do you mean by anyone, Sylbie? There were lots of people about, as a matter of fact.  I had supper with a farmer and his wife just a night or two ago.”

 “Oh, Peter, that’s not what I mean. Anyone you know? Umm. Your thalan? Or your mother, for example? Have you seen Mavin?”

 I chose to answer only the last question, replying honestly enough that I had not.

 “Jinian told me Mavin would especially want to see her grandson.” Sylbie sighed. “But she isn’t here. No one seems to know where she is. Do you know, Peter?”

 I shook my head, distracted by Bryan’s antics. He had finished with the tarts and was now trying to share my tea. He was very strong for his size, which was fairly large for his age. I wasn’t paying too much attention to Sylbie, wondering rather if there were some progenitor back in my line or Sylbie’s who would account for the baby’s stalwart build. “Was your father large?” I asked, to her surprise.

 “Not very, no.”

 I mused on this. Himaggery was sizable, of course, though I would not have called him a really big man.

 “Do you know where Jinian is, Peter?” It was a sweet little voice uttering harmless words, not words to have drawn my close attention except for the repetition of the question.

 I looked at her, scrutinizing her for the first time, to surprise something sly in her expression, something covert. It was only a fleeting thing, and I didn’t let my perception of it show. “No,” I answered. “I really don’t. I left her in the northlands. She was going off somewhere at the time, and I honestly don’t know where.” Her questions were odd enough to remind me why I had come in the first place. “Sylbie, Himaggery says you didn’t arrive here until long after the others, though you left only a few days later. Did you have trouble on the road?” I watched her, waiting for any sign of confusion or embarrassment. Instead, I saw her stamp her foot in anger.

 “Trouble on the road? Indeed I did have trouble on the road, and no thanks to your Jinian, who sent me off alone in that way. I had to leave the farmer she sent me with, for good-enough reason. And then it took time to find another wagon coming this way. It’s a wonder I got here at all!” She turned away with a petulant moue, while I made sympathetic noises. It was all very likely, and she sounded genuinely angry about the whole thing.

 It took her a while to settle down. She was quiet for a time, thinking something over. “I wanted to meet that Trandilar. They say she’s gone away, however. I wonder where she went?”

 I knew well enough where she had gone. Himaggery had been quite clear about it and had asked me not to mention it. By now they were at the cavern of the hundred thousand, being welcomed by those working there. I didn’t say so. Instead, I lied. “Trandilar’s gone off south, Sylbie. With one or two others.”

 “Someone said they saw them headed west.” This in an annoyed voice.

 “Oh, only far enough to confuse any possible watchers,” I said off-handedly. “Then they turned south. There are settled areas along the Southern Sea they had never seen. A short journey of exploration. I’m sure they’ll be back.”

 I was beginning to suspect what it was that made Sylbie act in this odd manner. Jealousy. Here she was with the baby, off to herself, in a Demesne under siege, not having any fun at all—and as I recalled the Sylbie I had known so briefly in Betand, she had talked a good deal about her enjoyment of clothes and balls and splendid court events—while the rest of the world went on without her. She had no lover, no suitor, and so her thoughts had tended back to me. Which is why she wanted to know where Jinian was, and where Mavin was, and where others might be who might have some influence on me. So I thought, not without some degree of preening satisfaction. Oh, I knew well enough it was Trandilar’s skill at lovemaking that had confused Sylbie about me, Peter, but still I did not totally discount my own considerable charms.

 She nodded, not quite satisfied. “I suppose your thalan is still at Schooltown?”

 I nodded, playing with Bryan, not looking at her. “Where else would he be? He certainly can’t visit here with a siege on.” Another question about someone close to me. Was she making some kind of plans? Did she intend to try to woo me away from Jinian? Or try to get Mavin to do it? It was all most curious and quite uncomfortable.

 As soon as I could, I got away from there, giving Bryan a pat as I left. He was sleepily contented on the rug and didn’t mind my going. I got back to Himaggery and Barish as quickly as I might.

 We talked over plans for locating spies, plans for rebuilding morale among the men, plans for countermoves against Huldra. They had some plan for some Wizardly contrivance that might be used against the shadow. All the time I was wondering what Sylbie was really up to and how I would handle it when she finally came out with it. I wished for Mavin, or Jinian, knowing either of them would handle it—whatever it was—better than I.

 Eventually, I left the two Wizards, tired of’ it all. Jinian and I had been doing a great deal of sneaking and slying recently, fleeing from Oracles and dodging Sendings and generally creeping about like the bottom side of a mudsnake. Out of sheer frustration I was working myself up to a face-to-face battle with almost anyone, something trumpety and overt, even though that might be very unwise. I felt the same annoyance I had always felt at the Bright Demesne. Other people were making all the decisions, telling me to be patient when patience was the last thing I wanted. I wanted action. I wanted to know what was happening in the northlands, what was happening at the cavern. I wanted Jinian.

 There was a small, walled orchard high above the lake which had always been a special favorite of mine. I went there and lay down upon the grasses to smell the blossoms and pretend Jinian was beside me. Speaking to her made it seem more real.

 “I miss you,” I told her, my eyes shut, visualizing her as I had seen her last. “I miss the lines you get between your eyes, Jinian Footseer, when you are concentrating upon some problem. I miss your peevishness when we stumbling men say something particularly egregious. I miss the way you smile at me when you forget to keep me at a distance. Oh, Jinian, I wish the time of your oath were over and you here beside me.”

 “Very pretty,” said the tree I was under.

 I leapt to my feet, claws forming on both hands, fangs halfway to my chin. . . .

 “Very, very pretty,” said the tree, turning itself slowly into my mother. Mavin. Mavin Manyshaped.

 I retracted the fangs. “When did you get here?” I snarled. There was simply no privacy in this place. “No one knew where you were. Mertyn said he couldn’t find you.”

 “Actually,” she said, stretching, “I never left. I simply grew weary of the constant arguments and decided to take a rest. Trees are an excellent vacation. Birds are good, too, of course, but trees have an elemental quality which is restorative.” She chucked me under the chin with one hand, as I suppose she had done when I was an infant before turning me over to Mertyn’s to raise. “What’s going on, love? I take it Jinian’s not with you? Or have you had a lovers’ quarrel?”

 “We have not had a lovers’ quarrel,” I said impatiently, almost angrily. “She’s somewhere in the Great Maze, being shepherded by Ganver the Eesty, who’s trying to save her life. The Oracle is after her. And I’m here because she sent me here, and I don’t like being separated from her one bit. And, a little thing you wouldn’t know because you’ve been so occupied with treeishness, the Demesne is under siege.”

 “It is?” She sounded interested but not at all distressed. “Who? Let me see. It would be Huldra, wouldn’t it. It would have to be Huldra. Tosh. I should have done her in long, long ago when I was only a log she sat upon. Have I told you of that time, Peter?” She had, of course, more than once. It was long ago, when Mertyn was only a child. She went on. “I could have Shifted long, long teeth and eaten her, bottom first. Shame that I didn’t. An opportunity lost. Ah, well, I suppose we shall have to get out of it somehow.

 “And you haven’t had a lovers’ quarrel? Ah, Peter, Peter. I’m so sorry, child. I didn’t mean to tease. Come now. Sit back down and tell me all about it.” She plumped herself down on the grasses. “Have some fruit. I seem to have shed a good deal.”

 It was true. She had shed fruit widely over the orchard grass, and it smelled like all the honeycombs of the forest, rich as perfume. So we sat eating Mavin fruit while I told her everything, including all the things I had not mentioned to Himaggery—being careful to say I had not. “If we get out of here,” I told her, “we must head straight for the Old South Road City, not to the Ice Caverns. Things are already moving well there, and I don’t think they need help. But the Old South Road City must be rebuilt.” We talked about this for some time, she nodding and nodding, seeming to understand exactly what was needed. Well, she had seen the Shadow Tower, after all. When we had finished, she brushed off her skirt and told me to go along. “I want you to go fetch your son,” she said. “Tell his mama you are taking him for a walk. To get better acquainted. Then bring him straight to me. What nonsense, trying to rear a Shifter child somewhere other than behind a p’natti. Though, I must remember, you turned out well-enough reared elsewhere though you were.”

 “You didn’t like it behind the p’natti much yourself!” A p’natti, according to Mavin, was a kind of ritual obstacle course the Shifters used during their holidays.

 “I didn’t like Danderbat Keep, my boy. I didn’t like Danderbat of the Old Shuffle, that’s the truth. But Battlefox the Bright Day was a good place for Swolwys and Dolwys.” She was speaking of my cousins. “And there’s Bothercat the Rude Rock and Fretowl and Dark Wood, and Watchhawk Keep and Fustigar Mountain Keep as well as a half hundred others. But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was only going to look him over, for now. From what you tell me, we’ve no time to be running weanlings off to a Shifter keep. There’s too much else to do.”

 I went off to collect Bryan, finding Sylbie still full of questions about where people were but quite willing to have the baby gone for a while. I took him down to the orchard and left him there with Mavin for a time while I went back to see what Himaggery and Barish had decided. I didn’t tell them Mavin was back—or that she had never left. She preferred not, so she said. I have never understood my mother or her relationship with my father. I thought I was unlikely to understand it in my lifetime and would be wise to give up trying. Better to leave it alone, which I did.

  

  

 7
JINIAN’S STORY: FURTHER LESSONS

 We two came out on a hill overlooking a long, fertile valley, Ganver whirling as we came into the place, whirling us into other shapes, other sizes. When Ganver had done, we began to walk down the winding road, Ganver in the guise of a statuesque woman clad in an Elator’s dress and I a page, smaller than myself, with a face I knew was changed though I could not see it.

 “Do you think the Oracle will follow us here?”

 “I think not. The Oracle will cool, in time. It will stop this flapping pursuit and start to think. It will not consider this place. Why would it seek meaning in what it thinks merely symbolic?”

 The bitterness in Ganver’s voice was deep and harsh, but I knew it was not directed at me. “Watch and learn,” it said to me again, so I turned face forward and watched where I was going. Evidently there were more lessons in store. More lessons that would make no sense and from which I would draw no meaning. Who had said that? The Oracle. In the giants’ stronghold. The Oracle had looked at my unconscious body and mocked the meaning of star-eye. Remembering it infuriated me. I resolved to find meaning or die, then set that resolution aside as I saw what awaited us.

 Two fortresses stood on opposite sides of the road, tall and strong with mighty walls, facing one another like two Gamesmen in the lists during a contest of skill.

 “Watch,” said Ganver again. “And learn.”

 As we approached the two fortresses, Armigers detached themselves from the opposing walls and stalked toward us, one from each side like fighting birds in a pit, plumes high and spurs glittering, a yellow-clad one on the left, a black-dressed one from the right. Ganver stopped. “My name is—well, what should it be, Jinian, Dervish Daughter?”

 It—she looked very militant, and I bethought me of Gamemistress Joumerie at Vorbold’s House back in Xammer a time that seemed long ago indeed. `Joumerie,” I said, giving Ganver my old gamemistress’ name. “You are, ah—you are Gameswoman Elator Joumerie.”

 “Very well,” she said. “Now keep a modest face on you.”

 The Armigers stalked, pace on pace, posing and posturing, lifting their feet high, plumes nodding on their helms, keeping in step with one another until they came up on us at either side. The one from the left-hand fortress spoke first, leaving the other fuming a bit, red in the face.

 “What business have you here?”

 “None at all,” said Ganver. “We but pass through on our way north.”

 “Your names and station?” demanded the other.

 “I am Gameswoman Elator Joumerie,” it—she said. “Passing quietly with one servant, opposing none, asking no Game.”

 Left hand sneered. “We accept none such in this valley, Gameswoman. You must choose left or right, right or left, the fortress of Zyle or the fortress of Zale.”

 “I have heard of two brothers styled Zyle and Zale,” said Ganver in a mild voice. “Could these be they?”

 “Who or what they are is no business of yours. You have only to choose which you will follow.”

 “And if I choose to follow neither?”

 “Then you will go no farther on this road.”

 “Then we will return the way we came.”

 “You will neither go forward nor return.”

 I looked over my shoulder to see the Armigers ranked behind us, interspersed with Sorcerers to Hold Power for them and a few Tragamors for depth of attack. Half of them were in yellow and half in black, standing well apart, alike in intent though not in allegiance.

 “Well then,” said Ganver, “I will let my page choose, for it matters nothing to me.”

 I had had enough of blackness, blackness of shadows and grayness of spaces where nothing happened. The yellow reminded me of the Daylight Bell, so I moved a step to the left.

 “Zyle it is,” said Ganver. There was a low growl from the black-clad Armiger, and he stalked off toward his fortress with the others after him. We, surrounded by a yellow-clad escort, went toward the left-hand fortress. As we drew near, I saw they were much alike, these two bastions, both with high, crenellated walls and fangy portcullises, both decked with banners that hung slack in the quiet morning air. When we came through the barbican gate, we were confronted by a pale, slender man wearing the shabby cloak of a Prophet and walking with the aid of a cane.

 “Accept my apologies for delaying you Gameswomen. It is my way of saving travelers the inconvenience of serving Castle Zale. If you will accept a meal, rest perhaps a day, there are tunnels which will take you into the forests north and safe away. . . .

 Ganver mimed confusion, modest outrage. “And what if my page had chosen Castle Zale?”

 The Prophet dug into the paving with his cane, seeming unconcerned at the question. “Few do. They find the black garb of my . . . of the Dragon Zale forbidding. Also—I am able with some degree of certainty to See if that is a likelihood. . . .”

 I remembered then that Prophets have the Talents of Flying, Fire, and Seeing. If the Dragon of Zale was indeed this one’s brother, they shared family Talent. If I remembered the Index aright, both Prophets and Dragons were Armigerians; Zale would lack Seeing and have a limited power of Shifting instead.

 Ganver was asking in a cold voice, “And if you had Seen that likelihood?”

 “I . . . ah, I would much have regretted it. The Dragon of Zale does not treat travelers well. We do what we can to assure fairness.” He looked at us with dead eyes that did not seem to see us, glancing always away toward the other keep across the valley as though whatever he could feel was housed there, not in this place at all. As though, I told myself, his heart were there, with his enemy.

 Ganver did not press further; we accepted the hospitality of the place, I wondered all the time what this was about. Evening came. Ganver asked to see the Prophet Zyle, and we were escorted into his presence. As we went, Ganver whispered once more, “Watch and learn.”

 The Prophet was on the walls, and we went to him there. As we came up to him, I heard a sound, far and far to the north, like a reverberation from memory, quiet as evening and yet with a plangent hush that flooded the world. The Shadowbell. In a moment the echo returned from the south. The Daylight Bell, resonating softly to keep the shadow in check.

 Both Ganver and the Prophet stood facing me. In Ganver’s face I saw the brightening, the awakening, thehearing that I knew was on my own. On the Prophet’s face nothing, no consciousness. He turned from me impatiently, peering at the keep across the valley, and I thought again it was as though his being dwelt there and not here where we were.

 This one lacked something. If he did not lighten at the Daylight Bell, however soft and far its sound might be, it meant something within him was missing. My heart was sick within me, and I could not understand. He had treated us well, though coldly. He had not seemed a soulless wight. The Eesty caught my eye, shaking like a garment the Elator head it wore.

 “We came to express our thanks, Prophet. If it is convenient for you to show us the tunnels to the north, we will take our leave. We go on a matter of some urgency. “

 And we went, to come out far to the north under the early stars. “Now we will return,” said Ganver, “in yet another guise.” Ganver whirled, whirled, and it was afternoon. In new forms we were coming down the long hill to the valley from the north, seeing the castles of Zyle and Zale on our right hand and our left. Ganver was in the likeness of a crowned Sorcerer, and I at his back in the black frock and white collar of an Exorcist.

 This time we chose the black-garbed Armiger and were taken before the Dragon of Zale.

 He was charming. Full of humor and gaiety, sudden quips and outrageous jests. He invited us to eat with him, listened to Ganver’s fictitious tale of a Great Game to the north, and when the meal was done he invited us to walk with him upon the battlements.

 There were men there, Divulgers and other torturers, busy with braziers of hot coals and devices to rend and tear. There was a chuffing of a little bellows and the shrill cry of a wheel on which knives were sharpened. I stopped short. Ganver stopped also.

 And beside these horrors the Dragon of Zale turned toward us with a charming smile as he offered to cast lots with us to see which of the two of us would be tortured to death where we stood.

 I could not believe the words coming from that smiling mouth. As he spoke, the Bell rang as it had the evening before. And his eyes did not hear it, neither the Bell of the dusk nor the Bell of the day, and I knew that in this one, too, some necessary part was missing.

 “Why would you say such an outrageous thing?” asked Ganver. “We have no Game with you, nor was Game announced to us. You have treated us hospitably. Why would you now take one of our lives?”

 “Oh, I will take both,” said the Dragon of Zale offhandedly, with a twinkling smile and a charming shrug. “One today and one on the morrow. As to why, it is a Game I play with my brother. He dislikes it very much, to see me at my play. He does all that he can to forestall me, but in the end I always win.” And the Dragon laughed, a high-pitched wail of amusement, like a wind-soul lost in chasms of dark. My skin crawled as though slimy things moved there, testing their barbed feet. Ganver was looking at me, urging me to do something, and I caught my lip between my teeth, thinking furiously. This was a lesson, and I had no idea what it was I should learn.

 “I will die first, Master Sorcerer,” I said, surprising myself immensely.

 “Ah, faithful one,” said Ganver in an odd tone. “I call upon the Rules of the Game, Dragon. I claim the Victim’s Interrogation.”

 Well, I had forgotten. It isn’t often one is threatened with terminal torture—I should imagine once in a lifetime would be about the limit. However, the Rules of Play did allow the Victim’s Interrogation, the three questions that must be answered honestly. I wondered if the Dragon of Zale would allow it.

 He merely smiled, without objection, and we stood there in the dusk on the battlement as his Divulgers and Invigilators readied the irons and the knives and I tried not to look at them. I did Inward Is Quiet very softly to myself in the passive mode, hoping it would help me understand what was happening. I concentrated, not helped by the sizzling noises behind me as the Invigilators spat upon hot irons.

 “Dragon Zale,” intoned Ganver, “were there midwives at your brother’s birth?”

 The Dragon stared at us with empty eyes. “There were.”

 “And were there midwives at your birth?”

 “There were not. You have one question more.”

 Across the road, only a little way, I could see a knot of men assembled upon the battlements of Zyle Keep and knew the prophet of Zyle stood there, peering this way with his cold, empty face. Ganver was speaking again.

 “Dragon of Zale, have there been times when your brother might have killed you but did not?”

 He stared at us then with a bleak, unholy joy in his face. “Many times he might have killed me, traveler. And each time he withheld his hand. For love of me, he said. For hate of me, I think. And now to the rack, Exorcist, unless you would like to try to drive out the devil that dwells here.” He tapped himself upon the breast, smiling at me with lively malice.

 “No,” said Ganver in a great, Eesty voice, whirling and whirling. “There is no devil there, Dragon. There is only yourself.” The world went still; I saw the Dragon’s face fall apart like shards of glass, the fortress crumble beneath him like a sand castle, built in an hour, washed away in moments. Ganver whirled while the world remained motionless and the castle melted beneath Ganver’s tide, finer and finer, to flow away in silver dust. Rain came to pock the dust with the world’s tears, and it was gone.

 Across the way Zyle Keep still stood. “Look,” said Ganver, turning my head so that I saw the face of the Prophet. It stared at the place where Zale had been with hopeless intensity and a longing so great I had no name for it. “Come,” beckoned the Eesty, and we were gone.

 “That was long ago,” I said when I was able to breathe once more. “Long ago, Ganver. Before the Daylight Bell was broken. Perhaps it was not even real.”

 “I remember it,” Ganver said. “Lom remembers it. Now you remember it. Which makes it real enough.”

 “Was it you destroyed the Dragon then, Ganver? Or did he go on and on?”

 “He went on,” breathed the Eesty without expression, “for many years. Until the Prophet of Zyle died, and there was no reason to go on after that.”

 “I am trying to understand the lesson,” I mused.

 “Ah.”

 “There were midwives at the Prophet Zyle’s birth, and they would not have let him live if his future had not shown him to have a soul. There were no midwives at the birth of the Dragon of Zale, and he may have been soulless. I think perhaps he was.”

 “And?”

 “And they hated one another. The one for what the other had; the other for what his brother had not. And in the hate, the one lost what he had had while the other gained nothing. At the end was only emptiness.”

 “And so?”

 “And so, Ganver, I will think on it. Perhaps the lesson will mean something to me as I consider it.” Privately, I thought I might never perceive it. So far, it was only a tangle of Sanctuary, Dragons, Prophets.

 “Perhaps.” Ganver mused in the gray place where we were. “Come, we will go elsewhere.”

 We came out of the grayness this time on a shore where a silver river ran laughing into the sea, Ganver in his own shape and I in mine. My shape, my own Jinian shape, was ravenously hungry and thirsty, as though it had not eaten for many days—and indeed, perhaps that was true. Who knew what time was like in the gray spaces between memories, or whether meals eaten there were real or only remembered? Ganver, perhaps, but it did not tell me. I ran across the sands to drape myself across a stone and suck water into me like a great empty jug. After a time I was sloshingly restored but as hungry as ever. There were silver fishes playing in the pool beneath me, delicious-looking fishes, and I knew I could catch them with my hands if I drove a few of them into one of the shallow pools along the stream.

 “Look, Ganver,” I called. “Fish. I’ll catch a few for my supper!” The Eesty strolled over to me, stood peering down into the water. “Jewel fish,” it said at last. “The only breeding population of jewel fish on Lom. Rare and few.”

 I was hardly listening, full of plans for filling my belly. Still, there was something in the tone in which Ganver had said, “Rare and few. . . .” I tried speaking to the fishes. Nothing. Their language was a flip of the tail, the feel of a splash of water on the skin, four or five words, nomore. Food. Fight. Flee. Breed. Chemical words, running quick hormonal fingers along their spines and fins.

 “Ganver,” I said, “the fish have no souls.”

 “Ah,” said Ganver. I knew that “ah” and disliked it. “Is that so?” the Eesty asked.

 “They have no awareness even.”

 “True.”

 I sat there watching those damn fish, mouth watering until I thought I would die. There were some table roots near the stream. A sharp stick dug them out, and I sat looking at the fish while washing them clean and peeling them one by one before crunching their unsatisfying bland sweetness. They were not bad baked or boiled as an accompaniment to other things: roasts, stews, broiled fish. . . .

 A flower clump moved in the wind, and I thought of Chimmerdong. The Forest of Chimmerdong, where every flower seemed aware of itself. No. No, where the forest seemed aware of every flower.

 “What place is this?” I asked.

 “Boughbound Forest,” said Ganver. “Long ago.”

 “Tricky, Ganver,” I remarked in a conversational tone. “Very tricky. And undoubtedly the being which was Boughbound knew of these fish, as I know of my toenail or little finger or hair?”

 “Possibly.”

 “If I catch a few of them to eat, there won’t be enough of them to guarantee reproduction, is that it?”

 “Likely.”

 “They are—ah, how would we say this. They are part of the soul of something greater?”

 “Possibly.”

 “And while it wouldn’t be wrong for me to take nuts from a tree or roast a bunwit for my lunch—there are plenty of nuts and plenty of bunwits . . .”

 “True.”

 “It would be wrong to take these.”

 The implications of this were so provoking that I forgot to be hungry. “There are plenty of men,” I said at last. “If a man had a soul, it would be wrong to kill him. If he had awareness but no soul, it would be less wrong. If he had neither, it would not be wrong at all?”

 “What did you do at the Sanctuary?”

 “I let those pitiful creatures go to sleep forever.”

 “Why?”

 “Out of mercy, Ganver.”

 “But you did not do the same for the Fathers of the place.”

 I thought on this. “But they had awareness, Ganver. I did not want them to get off so easily. I wanted . . .”

 “You wanted to punish them.”

 It was true. I had wanted to punish them.

 “Why did you not let them go mercifully as well?”

 Why? Why, indeed. Why had I sought to punish, to hurt, rather than merely let them go? Did the Fathers of the Sanctuary have bao? I thought not. They had had no sense of fitness. They had shown no mercy. They had prolonged pain and caused it, to no purpose. Out of seed ego. Out of worship for St. Phallus.

 But I had been no more merciful than they! Out of shape ego. I had told myself the Fathers were aware, therefore—therefore they should have known better. They were aware, therefore they should have understood. They were aware. Shape ego. My own kind, therefore . . . therefore nothing.

 It slipped away from me. “Ganver, I’m too tired and too hungry to concentrate on this lesson. Are you finished with your teaching?”

 “There are five points on the star,” it said. “Five lessons to learn, five parts to understanding. I have given you what I can.”

 “Then feed me, Eesty, or take me somewhere there is something I can feed myself. And when I have eaten, perhaps it will all make sense. Are you sure you can’t explain it to me in simple language?”

 “There are certain lessons which are not difficult to explain but which are very difficult to live by,” said Ganver, moving away once more into the gray, the roiling, the smoke place between time. “And one who has not tried to live by the lesson of the star-eye cannot yet understand it. And one who thought it did live by that lesson may learn it did not do so. Come, Jinian, it is safe to let you leave the Maze now. The Oracle has gone elsewhere, and I must follow.”

 We slipped between places and came out at the edge of a forest, the sun high overhead, a dusty road stretching south before me. Far down that road, six little figures trudged along, coming in my direction. I knew them. Oh, yes, I knew them. A noise came from behind me, half a sigh, half the sound of a door closing. I knew without looking that Ganver had gone and suspected I would never see the Eesty again. In that moment I was so joyous to see Murzy and Cat and Bets and Sarah and Margaret and Dodie that I did not take time to care. Later, when I understood the lesson it had tried so hard to teach me, and the reason it had not lived by that lesson itself, I grieved for Ganver’s grief.

 8
PETER’S STORY: THE SPY

 Himaggery and Barish had decided that our first and most important problem was the one of spies. Huldra and Dedrina had set out from the north with quantities of the amethyst crystals, and we had to expect they would use the vile things. If there were a spy in the kitchen, any meal might contain an unpleasant surprise. If there were a spy in the wine cellar, the shock could be equally unexpected and even more wide­spread. So, we very methodically set about determining whether those employed in sensitive positions were trustworthy, using me for part of the task and well-trusted Demons for the rest.

 “It would be a good deal easier,” Barish fussed, “if we could do the whole thing openly, just line them all up against a wall and have at them, but the way the men are feeling just now, full of suspicion and ill will, it wouldn’t take much to have a rebellion on our hands. No. Better take a little longer and do it quietly.”

 So we took longer and did it quietly, with me pushing the idea of cooperation to everyone I encountered, remembering how the Eesty shape had done it. It was hard, tiring work, frustrating because we found nothing. It made no sense! Why put one not-very-clever spy into the Demesne when they could have planted a dozen?

 I went down to the dungeons to have a word with Shaggan, the one spy we knew of.

 “I don’t know,” he kept babbling in answer to my questions. “I haven’t any idea how I got here. The last thing I knew, I was on the road from Fangel, south to Betand, with a few friends, all of us making for Pfarb Durim for the Harvest Festival, and the next thing I knew I was here.”

 “He came shortly before the siege, Lord Peter,” said another of the guards. “I remember it well enough. He came knocking at the gates saying he was out of coin and out of patience and needed something to keep himself for the next season or so. Well, we’d been recruiting right along, so I saw no reason not to take him.”

 “No one else presented himself at that same time, or around that time?”

 “Nobody. Later on, the Lady Sylbie came, of course, but those who escorted her simply left her at the gates and went on south. And then only a few days after that, here came the besiegers with enough baggage to last them two seasons.”

 Shaggan wasn’t lying. He really didn’t know what he’d been supposed to do as a spy, so after a time he returned to duty—or, shall I say, enlisted for duty since he couldn’t remember having been on duty before. I took the time to search his cubby down in the guardsmen’s dormitory, and it had nothing in it but what one would expect. No amethyst crystals lurking in the bottom of his weapons chest or the hems of his tunics.

 It occurred to me then he might have been a decoy, someone for us to discover to keep our minds off some other, more important one. Yes. It really did occur to me. And I did little or nothing about it!

 Barish shared my suspicion, however, so the Demons kept doggedly at it, and so did I. Several days went by, and the feeling in the place grew noticeably better. Little cliques of men who had spent their time twitting one another a few days before, hands on knives and false smiles on lips, were now sitting side by side at their meals, talking over old battles and more recent conquests, laughing behind their hands. I followed one of the Demons into the bathhouse—I’d known him for several years, a good, reliable man—to ask him if he’d found anything at all, and he merely shrugged. “Nothing except what you’d expect, Peter. Many of them had bets riding on who would come out on top, Himaggery or Barish, but they’re starting to feel sheepish about it.”

 I went down to the orchard to roust Mavin out of her tree shape, which she had reassumed immediately after meeting and approving of Bryan. “Take him back now,” she’d said, “and come rouse me if anything significant happens. I’ll want to take the boy to Battlefox the Bright Day when it’s safe to do so, and I’ll wager that girl will be glad to see him go.” I wasn’t so sure of that. Sylbie seemed to dote on Bryan, though she never mentioned his Shifter Talent. It was almost as though if she didn’t admit it existed, it wouldn’t exist.

 “Himaggery’s getting ready for some countermove,” I told Mavin. “Don’t get too deep into your bark because I think they’re going to need you.” She promised to come out of tree shape each morning and evening, just to check on what was going on, and then went back to fruiting. These days, when I remember her doing that, I think it must have had some symbolic value for her. It certainly didn’t look very exciting to me, but it seemed to have some essential meaning for her.

 The next morning Barish said he felt secure enough about the men to tell them at least some of the truth. He addressed them, twenty or so at a time, in the practice yard, telling them to be on the lookout for poisonous crystals and report any suspicious activity. Aside from a little muttering, the men took it well enough. The blowup we’d been afraid of didn’t happen. No Barish follower began conniving against Himaggery; no Himaggery man started fulminating against Barish. We took a deep breath, figuratively speaking, and began to plan countermeasures.

 Himaggery had heard from me everything that Jinian or I knew about the shadow, and Mavin had undoubtedly told him long since what she knew. He did not tell me what he planned—as was probably wise. The fewer who knew the better—but I knew he and Barish had some plan to use against the shadow.

 Thus it was with a quite unwarranted feeling of security that I answered a knock at my door late that evening to find Sylbie in tears. “Oh, Peter, Bryan’s gone and I can’t find him anywhere.”

 I tisked and there-there’d, thinking the baby had turned into a gorbling haunt and would be back as soon as he got hungry enough, but Sylbie said no. “He wasn’t hungry, or tired, or wet. He just toddled off. I went in to get a hot cup of tea—we were sitting in the garden near the gatehouse enjoying the evening—and when I came out he was gone. Oh, Peter, do come help find him.”

 So I hemmed and hawed and put on a cloak against the evening chill and pulled my boots back on and went yawning off beside her, never for a moment thinking that the baby was into anything more serious than an infant’s exploration. We searched the garden, then Sylbie put her hand on my shoulder, saying, “What’s that?”

 At first I heard nothing, then a far-off whine, like a lost cat. I Shifted bat ears inconspicuously, glad of the darkness, and heard it again. It was coming from a drainage ditch that wound back under the wall to let the water from the distant Porridge Pot hot spring warm this end of the garden. It was a low, narrow ditch about Bryan’s size but certainly not Sylbie’s or mine. She started to cry, and I told her firmly to go inside.

 “I’ll get him,” I said. She said something strange about coming with me. “You can’t,” I said in a no-nonsense voice. “You won’t fit in there.”

 At which point her mouth pursed the way it did whenever she had to think of my being a Shifter, and she turned and walked off toward the gatehouse. I remember thinking at that moment that when I returned later with Bryan, I wanted to check the locks on the gate. There were parapets with watchmen on both the buttresses. Anyone approaching the gate would be seen long before he came close. Still, I remember thinking of it even as I slithered down into eel shape and entered the ditch.

 The thin whine came intermittently, strangely echoing. I wondered how the boy could have come this far. The water was uncomfortably warm, not really hot but not at all pleasant, and the ditch reeked of chemicals. Then I saw light ahead and realized he must have actually come out beneath the wall. Remarkable. Quite remarkable.

 Once out from under the wall, the ditch ran through a swale of low bushes, and I took my own shape to slog through this morass, following the sound, very close now.

 I had no idea where the smoke came from, or the chanting, or the strange lights that seemed to go off inside my head. I tried to Shift and couldn’t, tried to move and couldn’t, tried to speak and couldn’t. From behind me on the parapets I heard a guard shouting something that seemed senseless at the time: “Lady Sylbie, Lady Sylbie, do not leave the Demesne!” A sentinel’s horn went tara-tara-tara whoop-whoop-whoop, as it does to raise the alarm. A voice was chanting something about the dark betraying and the blood holding fast. The last thought I had before everything went very dark and quiet was that we had looked in all the wrong places for the real spy.

 I woke in a tent. The canvas flapped in a night wind, and little gusts of smoke came to my nose like warning signals. I lay quiet, not letting anyone know I was conscious, trying very hard to Shift the nails of my hand to claws. The hands were tied behind me. I didn’t need to see them to know that the Shift wasn’t happening. Some geas had been laid on me, some preventive enchantment or binding spell. There was a low, bubbling noise in the place, and it was some time before I realized it was Sylbie’s voice.

 “You’re sure he won’t ever Shift again,” she was saying. “You promised me he’d never be able to Shift again.”

 The voice that answered was amused, sinister. It was the Witch, Huldra. “Oh, I assure you, girl. He’ll not Shift again.”

 “And you promised he’d not see that Jinian anymore. Just me. Just me and Bryan.” Her voice was a little petulant, more than a little confused. “I’m sure he’ll not see Jinian ever again.” My heart almost stopped as the sense of the words came through. This was the Witch Huldra telling the absolute, literal truth. What had Jinian called the technique? Truth spelling! Twisting what the listener wanted to hear so that one could promise in words without promising in fact. Truth spelling. That was what had occupied Sylbie’s time on the road, why she had been so late in arriving at the Bright Demesne. She had been truth spelled into betraying me!

 Now a new voice, Dedrina, the Basilisk. “In return for our services in this matter, we asked you to find out where certain people are. You recall?”

 “Of course. I asked Peter and he told me. Mertyn is in Schooltown. No one knows where Mavin is. She went off somewhere, and no one knows how to find her.”

 Dedrina made a spitting noise.

 “It’s true,” said Sylbie. “Evidently she’s always done that. Sometimes she goes away for years. Who else? Oh, yes. Jinian is up north near the Maze. Peter doesn’t know exactly where she is now. That’s true, too. I listened outside the door when Peter was telling Himaggery all about it, and he really doesn’t know.”

 “How did she escape from Storm Grower?” asked the Witch.

 “Storm Grower? Oh, the giants. I don’t know. Perhaps Peter told them when he was here last, but he hasn’t spoken of it this time. At least not when I’ve been able to hear. Perhaps she and Peter have had a falling-out.” Sylbie seemed very satisfied at this thought.

 “I would think you might have more gratitude to one who saved you from the hunt in Fangel.” said the Witch. “You do not seem to care much for Jinian.”

 “It wasn’t her who saved me, it was Bryan,” Sylbie answered. “Bryan gorbled the Ogress when she tried to bite him.”

 Jinian had told me of that hunt. I thought Sylbie’s account of it was rather oversimplified. Though it was true that Bryan had dispatched the Ogress, the Ogress had been only one of a considerable hunting party. If it had not been for Jinian, both Sylbie and Bryan would likely have perished along with an assortment of other prey. I sweated, snarling internal reproaches at myself. There was a new voice, a chill voice with an icy sibilance in it.

 “You were supposed to plant the amethyst crystals in the wine stores. I suppose you did that?” Dedrina’s voice.

 “No. I’ll do that when I go back. I-”

 “When you goback! What makes you think they will let you in, stupid girl?”

 “They’ll let me in,” she said doubtfully. “I’ll have to be there or Bryan will have a fit. . . .”

 “Where’s the girl Jinian?” Dedrina asked.

 “No one knows where Jinian is,” said Sylbie. “And I for one don’t care.

 “Shut your mouth, girl. You’ve done your part and are finished. Comes our part now, to use that young buck Shifter in there as bait for the girl. Then Huldra gets him and I get her.”

 “No!” Sylbie, very sharp, frightened. “I get Peter. That’s what Huldra promised me.”

 “Stupid chit. She promised you he would never Shift again, never see Jinian again. Quite true. He will neither Shift nor see when he is dead.” The Basilisk laughed.

 Silence, a wail, a tantrum wail. Though I was nowhere near I could visualize it. Sylbie throwing herself at the Basilisk, nails scratching. So a kitten might launch at a gnarlibar, hissing and scratching, and like a kitten she was thrown across the enclosure to land against the main tent pole. The canvas shivered. There was a crack, as though something had broken, and then a breathless sobbing. The voices grew nearer. Eyelids half-shut over eyeballs rolled well back, shallowly breathing, I let them come. They looked at me, kicked my presumably unconscious body, and went away again.

 Sounds outside. Shouts, the crack of a whip, a quick tuppa, tuppa, tuppa on a drum calling some work party or other. Someone came in and got me, packing me in a wagon like so much luggage, me never quivering. Lords, but I wanted to open my eyes and look. Where was Sylbie? Where was Bryan? Evidently I had not really heard Bryan, there under the wall. That had been all mockery done by Huldra and her cronies. I tried for the Shifting—nothing. Tried again, tried—nothing. Still again. Gave up trying with my whole self wet with sweat and stinking from the effort. Lay quietly, quietly, trying to think while wheels creaked and the entourage began to move away. Then I risked half opening my eyes. I could peer out the back of the wagon to see a great part of the camp trailed out behind it in the predawn gray, all making a great dust with feet and wheels as we came away north on the Great Road. At least half the besiegers were in the train. So much the easier for Himaggery and Barish. So much the worse for me.

 So, we were going away. What was it Jinian had told me? Huldra and her companions had been instructed to distribute amethyst crystals in the southlands and then to go to the Ice Caverns and destroy all there. Which was undoubtedly where we were going. They were going. Moving on to the second part of the duty, leaving the first undone. I thanked all the old gods that Sylbie had been so eager to betray me she had delayed betrayal of the Demesne. Those at the Bright Demesne were safe, at least. For a time.

 As for me, I was being taken away like a sack of roots, like a stack of wood, like nothing living or thinking, like bait for a trap. If I could have wept, I would have done so. Beside me a lumpy sack was breathing in a harsh, irregular way, gasps with too long silences between. I tried to say “Sylbie?” but my voice wouldn’t work. Still, I knew it was Sylbie. The breathing was that of someone badly injured, and I thought of Bryan, wondering where he was. Likely sleeping peacefully back in the little gatehouse. It had all been a trick and a deceit.

 The reeking smoke of the spell casting had made my head hurt quite badly. I gave up pretending to be unconscious and actually became so for a protracted time.

 When I came to myself again, it was in the tent once more. The train had stopped along the road to make camp. From where I lay on a pile of packs and rolled rugs, I could see past the tent flap to an open space with a cookfire and another tent. Shadows lay close and tight at its base. Noontime. The smell of the food made my stomach clench, and I realized I could move, though only a little. My hands and feet were still tied and no amount of Shifting did me any good. It was as though I had never been able to do it, as though I had only dreamed the Talent and it had never actually existed.

 The ropes that tied me were deadly black, wound with a thread of silver fire that glittered and flowed like water along the cords. I thought of Shifting my feet and the silver flame blazed toward my feet. I thought of Shifting hip joints and the fire spun upward, surrounding my loins in a steely embrace. So. Fire was one of the attributes of Witches, along with Power Holding and Beguilement, though I had seen no Beguilement from Huldra. Her Talent had set this fire upon me, and her Talent held it there. I preferred it to be a matter of Talent rather than of enchantment. If she had enchanted it, many lives would have been spent on it. Jinian had spoken of Huldra’s willingness to spend lives upon Sendings and enchantments.

 I was thinking so deeply of this when I raised my head to look out through the tent flaps once more that the sight there seemed only a continuation of the thought. They had Sylbie trussed up like a zeller for the butcher, lying close beside the cookfire. Her eyes were open, rolled back into her head, the whites staring at me blindly. There was blood on her forehead, probably where she had hit the tent pole. A lock of hair lay across her face, and it moved slightly with her breath. She was alive, then, though barely. I wanted to cry out, “Get a Healer for her!” but I could not speak.

 Oh, Sylbie, Sylbie, foolish, silly girl. First rule of the Game, Sylbie. Put not yourself into another’s hands. First rule. And you put yourself in Huldra’s hands completely, holding nothing back, no motivation, no emotion, nothing you could use to fight with. And you put me in Huldra’s hands as well, making me impotent to help you. Because you didn’t like my being Shifter. You destroyed us both, Sylbie, because you did not like my being Shifter.

 The waves of smoky black still came over me from time to time. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, the hair across her face lay quiet and there was blood on her chest, soaking her shirt. Beside the fire Huldra chuckled as she dropped something into her cauldron.

 “Rise Gambelor, Rise Gundegor. Rise Gurnasham!” She shrieked at the cauldron, stirring it, steam coming out of it in a great rush as though it had been one of the hot springs. “Rise Boldam, Burwar, Bass!” The steam coalesced, began to roil and eddy, making faces and forms in an endless succession, mouths that opened and shut, teeth that gaped, eyes that stared through shadow holes at the Witch, Huldra. On the other side of the fire, Dedrina sat, smiling, watching.

 “Rise Sorfut, Sarbat, Shandypas!” screamed the witch. “Bring her whose heart I fed you to do my will!”

 The horror of it clutched me. When Dorn the Necromancer had been my companion, I had seen Mandor, many days dead, rise up from his grave to answer my questions, and I had seen the ghosts of Bannerwell march to war. But I had not seen the newly dead called forth before, still grieving over life, rising from the cauldron in which her heart’s blood boiled. Oh, Sylbie, Sylbie.

 She was there, weeping, shadow hands reaching out. I saw her mouth moving and could read the words on her lips. “Bryan! Bryan!” Calling for the baby she had left, her child and mine. Silently calling, “Bryan!”

 Helpless, hopeless, I swore vengeance against Huldra. “Mavin,” I pled, “if I am dead, venge me against this Witch. Himaggery, if I am gone and the world goes soon after, still requite me against this hag.” All this horror and pain while still unable to move more than a muscle, tied tight by enchanted bonds and knowing nothing of what the Witch intended.

 That was soon obvious. She beckoned the ghost, waving her hands in an endless dance, fingers making quick signs of fire, like letters in the air. Almost I thought I could read those signs. The ghost seemed able, also, for it wept and pled.

 “What are you doing?” growled the Basilisk.

 “Telling this unwilling Sending what it must do,” replied the Witch. “I tell it the child is forfeit if its mother does not do my bidding. It knows the man is forfeit if she does. So. It hangs there, quivering, in agony. Aha. Amusing, is it not, great lizard? So caught in their little feelings of goodness and badness, of love against love. Foolish, to care so much for any creature. . . .

 “Still, I remember the love of a child. I had a son once. Mandor, his name was, as beautiful as the sun itself. That one inside there, that Peter, killed him—or as good as, though Mandor took his own life in the end. My son declared Game against King Mertyn of Schooltown, using Peter as Talisman in the play. Perhaps he knew Mertyn was thalan to the boy, perhaps not. It no longer matters what he knew or did not know. There was a hidden Sorcerer in play, and Mandor was burned with Sorcerer’s fire. Even I could not bear to look at my son after that. He was hideous who had been so beautiful. Well, my vengeance has been slow in coming, but it will be all the better for that. Watch now. The Sending is ready to depart.”

 The Witch stood taller, reaching toward the sky as though to summon something hideous from beyond the clouds. “Find Jinian,” she cried. “Tell her I hold Peter the Shifter in my care. Soon he will begin to die if she does not come to me, and his dying will be long. If she will come to the caverns where the hundred thousand lie, if she will come there and submit to me, I will release him from his bondage.”

 Ah, so and so she would release me. At the point of a knife, perhaps, or in the new heart of a fire, or only to bind me again in some new and more stringent chains. I begged silently that Jinian would not listen to this Sending, this screaming ghost that fled upward now into the sky, a streak of bloody gray, leaving the two hags behind to stare after it.

 “I thank you for your cooperation,” the Basilisk was saying. “So we will be alike in vengeance. For your son, Mandor. For my daughter, Dedrina-Lucir. What avengement is in your mind?”

 “I had thought to freeze him yet alive in the ice of the caverns where we go. It can be done with an ensorcellment to leave him alive and thinking for every moment of a thousand years. We will leave him so and seal the caverns behind him. Let him lie there and think of Mandor, and of Huld, my brother-husband, whom he also killed. Let him think of them until he dies at last, after a millennium, in the lonely cold.”

 “This seems good to me.” The Basilisk stretched, talons forming at the ends of her fingers, scrabbling at the ground on which she sat to leave long furrows there. “As with him, so with Jinian also. Let them both lie a thousand years in the ice before they die,” and she began to laugh, choking herself with her mirth. “Except that I will scratch her first, only a little.”

 In a moment the Witch summoned someone to drag Sylbie’s body away.

 The day wore on. I heard the cries of carrion birds and knew they feasted upon Sylbie’s flesh. A servant came in to press bites of food into my mouth, food that I chewed and swallowed stubbornly, keeping my strength for the moment in which it might do me some good. Huldra did not come to gloat over my captivity, unusual for her family. Both Mandor and Huld had been gloaters.

 Late in the evening we began to move once more, leaving the road to wend our way north and west across the fertile valley toward the mountain wall to the west. If we kept on in this same direction, we would come to Bannerwell, and from Bannerwell we could drop westward to the River Haws. North along that river would bring us to Cagihiggy Creek, and upward along that creek would bring us eventually to the ruins of the Blot and the Ice Caverns. How many days? Ten or twelve at the least. With wagons, probably longer than many days? And Jinian, alone there in the north, traveling to that place. For she would. I knew she would. ‘Though she feared Huldra and Dedrina Dreadeye, still she would come for me.

 And for the first time in years, I gave way to slow, impotent tears, unable to hold them back.

 It was then Huldra came to punish me for the fact that Mandor had died.

 9
JINIAN’S STORY: THE SEVEN

 I greeted the seven with a good deal of grabbing and squeezing and exclamations of joy. Cat shook me, wagging her head from side to side. “You’re all bones, girl! What’ve you been up to?” Then hugged me when I tried to tell her.

 We went no farther than a few hundred paces to a grassy hollow among a dozen great trees, there to build a fire for the making of tea while the words poured out of me like wine from a cask, bubbling and frothing and spilling somewhat as I tried to make sense of it all. Ganver and the Great Maze and everything that had gone before.

 “And I have failed,” I cried. “Ganver tried to teach me the meaning of star-eye, but I have not learned it.”

 Five of them drew in their breath, in awe, their eyes wide. Dodie did not know enough to do it, but she watched them with her mouth open. “What does that mean?” she whispered to them, to me.

 “To have been taught by an Eesty!” Murzv marveled. “Why, if you could learn it,” she said, “you could do the final couplet. It is said no Wize-ard has done so since the time of Trindel the Marvelous.”

 “The final couplet?” Dodie asked.

 “Eye of the Star, Where Old Gods Are,” I told her. “To summon up the old gods, one and all. I have used Eye of the Star to fasten the Dervishes down while I spoke to them. They did not like it much. I wonder if the old gods would like it at all, being summoned up.”

 “That spell would be worth having, considering what we are facing,”said Cat. “Can you tell us of the lessons? Or did you take an oath of secrecy?”

 “Nooath, no nothing,” I told her. “And I’ll tell you everything. Perhaps you can make more sense of it than I. But let me tell you as we go. We must move ourselves. We must go to the Old South Road City and build it up again.”

 They looked at one another, like so many owls. “Build it up again?” asked Sarah Shadowsox at last. “That seems rather a large job for one seven, Jinian.”

 “Of course,” I cried. “Of course it’s too large for us alone. There must be more. Other sevens beside us. And Dervishes. The Immutables. All the Great Gamesmen from the Ice Caverns. The hundred thousand.”

 “There should be,” murmured Murzy, shaking her head. “Indeed there should be, Jinian. The question is, can there be? Can there be any at all?”

 “I don’t understand,” I faltered, afraid that I understood all too well.

 “Shadow,” said Bets. “Murzemire Hornloss, Seer that she is, has done a bit of peering and prying. She Sees shadow and more shadow. Everywhere. The Bright Demesne under siege by shadow. Great drifts of it cutting the road south of Lake Yost. Xammer cut off. Schooltown cut off. Betand surrounded—at some distance, true, and there is still travel in and out—but Pfarb Durim is completely isolated. Most of the cities and Demesnes had some warning; most of them brought in stores and prepared for siege; but still, travel is becoming very difficult, Jinian. The question is whether anyone can get to the Old South Road City at all.”

 “Gamelords,” I whispered. “Ganver said the Oracle had learned to control the shadow, but I had not thought of this. Are you sure that what you saw isnow? ”

 They shook their heads. No, they weren’t sure it had happened yet, but it would be soon if not now.

 “Nomatter,” I said. “We must get there. There is no other way. Somehow we must reach Old South Road City; we and all the others needed there. Tragamors to rebuild the city and the towers. Sorcerers to Hold Power for them. Elators to carry messages; Armigers to Fly aloft and see where ancient walls and roadways ran. Perhaps even Necromancers to Raise up the ghosts of that place to learn how the Bell was cast in the first place.”

 “We have spread the word as widely as we could, Jinian. And the Dervishes tell us they have carried word to the seven as well as the other Wize-ards everywhere. If we can get to Old South Road City, there will be others come to help—such as can.”

 “What are the Dervishes doing?” I cried, thinking mostly of Bartelmy of the Ban, my mother.

 “Running the roads of the world,” said Cat. “In their hundreds and thousands. They seem proof enough against shadows, at least when they are moving, and have taken up this work as though it were some kind of penance for an old guilt. Do you know why?”

 I shivered and mumbled something about it being better late than not at all, which was enough for them to guess the rest. I really didn’t want to talk about Bartelmy. “So, shouldn’t we start south?”

 “Yes, we will go south,” said Murzy firmly. “Dealing with what comes as it comes.”

 Which we did, me in new clothes they had brought for me and a new pair of boots. The old ones had holes through the soles, and I’d been slipping pieces of bark into them for days. “Did you See my boots had holes in them?” I demanded of Murzy, half-exasperated at the lack of privacy her Seeing seemed to grant me. “Did you actually See my trousers were ripped in the seat?”

 “Common sense,” barked Bets Battereye. “Your boots have always had holes since you were three. And if you ever had trousers which weren’t ripped in the seat, none of us can remember when.”

 Which was somewhat comforting. It’s preferable, I think, merely to be known for one’s peculiarities than to have them constantly peered at. More familial, somehow. I put on the new clothes without further comment, and we headed south.

 The Great Maze lay north of the Shadowmarches. Peter and I had approached the Maze from the east, having come there by a long, torturous route that had taken us far to the east and north before coming to Bloome and Fangel. From the Maze, the land sloped generally southward, ending at the widely separated peaks that marked the edge of the marches and fell away on the other side to the wide valley of Cagihiggy Creek. By following the creek west and south to its source and then striking west into the tumbled mountains, one could come to the Ice Caverns, where Peter had been headed. This was not the most direct route to the Old South Road City, but we discussed going there nonetheless. If Shifters or Dragons had been awakened from among the hundred thousand, we might find someone willing to carry us to our destination, thus saving much time.

 If, on the other hand, we were to attempt to go straight to Old South Road City—which I knew well from my childhood, as it was not far from Stoneflight Demesne—then the shortest route would lie down the River Haws to Zebit, then up into the hills to the Willowater, a smallish river that ran from among the mountains into River Banner, south along Willowater to its source, then southwest along the curve of the mountain to the canyon lands north of Stoneflight. I wondered if Stoneflight was still there. And this made me wonder if my un-mother, Eller, and her son, Mendost, were still alive. I didn’t ask if anyone knew, telling myself I didn’t care whether they were or not.

 At this point it didn’t matter which route we might eventually choose. We were still high north in the Shadowmarches with a long way to go before we decided east or west.

 So we trudged south, me unable to put shadow out of my mind. I was simply scared to death of the stuff. Mavin had said it made people eat themselves sometimes. Or freeze themselves into a kind of black haze. Or it could make people chew themselves up from inside, as it had done with me. Whichever or whatever, I hated the idea of shadow. Even Ganver had hated shadow. I remembered the Eesty flailing about inside the Maze, trying to get away from the flapping flakes. “Would I had a dozen of the Gardener’s shadow-eaters. . . .” I repeated, remembering Ganver’s growl.

 “What was that?” asked Cat, quick as a flitchhawk stoop.

 I repeated it, shaking my head. “Something Ganver said when the shadows pursued us into the Maze.”

 Cat looked at Murzy, then both of them at Sarah, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I never heard of it.”

 Bets denied any knowledge of shadow-eaters, as did Margaret Foxmitten, but Dodie spoke up—she who had said little or nothing until now, youngest of the seven as she was—”The Gardener? Oh, I’ve heard of the Gardener.”

 “Well, tell, child. Don’t be mysterious!” Bets was as impatient as ever. The two years or so I’d been gone hadn’t changed her.

 “I’m n-not being mysterious,” Dodie stuttered. “It’s just I don’t know what to say. My grandda, that’s my mum’s da, he used to tell tales of the Gardener. Tales he had from his grandda and he from his, way back, before all the people left the marches.”

 “Well? Well?”

 “Do you want me to tell you all the tales? There’s dozens.”

 “Why don’t you start with one exemplary one.” This was Cat, being academic. “Start with one you heard frequently.”

 “Well, let’s see.” Dodie thought for a moment. “There’s the one about the three bunwits trying to steal the Gardener’s greens and losing their fur on the fence, so the Gardener turned them into fish. And there was the one about the Gardener fooling the tree rats into eating webwillow instead of table roots and how they got so sick they never came near the garden again. And the one about the Gardener feeding shadow to his turnips. . . .”

 “The one about what?” Murzy, amazed.

 “The one about the Gardener feeding shadow to his turnips?”

 “Tell us that one,” said Murzy, moving toward a circle of stones, where we all sat down like a coven of crows, looking expectantly at Dodie. She cleared her throat nervously, smoothed her shirt down over her trews, folded her hands as though about to sing, and told us.

 “The Gardener, he had a fine crop of turnips growing along in the hot time, burgeoning big and getting somewhat ahead of themselves in the growth department, beginning to push at each other in the rows and get argumentative over root space. Every morning the Gardener would come down to the garden to look them over, and every morning what did he see but more of them limping about with their roots all twisted and bruises on their cheeks.

 “‘Enough is enough,’ said the Gardener. ‘What’s the matter with all you turnips, you can’t get along?’

 “ `It’s crowded we are,’ said the turnips, `so crowded there’s no air to breathe or sun to gollop up or dark, fertile wet dirt to suck. Time we was thinned out, I say.’

 “But there was an uproar over that, you may be sure, for none of the turnips planned to be the ones thinned. And sure as sure, the Gardener hadn’t planned to thin them, either, for he wasn’t one to eat his garden stuff. He was more in the nature of an experimenter, trying this thing and then that thing, and some he’d turn loose in the world and some he’d root out entirely, because that was his job to do for the whole world. So far he’d been very satisfied with the turnips and wasn’t inclined to thin them at all, but he had to admit the space was running short to put them. There was dark wet dirt in the forest, but no sun, and good sun on the mountain, but no dirt. Air was no particular problem, but finding all three together, that was something else.

 “ `You could clear some of these trees,’ said the turnips, `to make space.’

 “‘No,’ said the Gardener. `The trees are some I’ve been growing since they were seeds, a new kind I’m mighty fond of.’

 “ `Well, you could knock down that rocky mountain there to the north with the three poky peaks on top. It’s an ugly thing and it would make good gardening there.’

 “‘No,’ said the Gardener. ‘That mountain has seven whole tribes of mushrooms growing on it I’ve been working on for a hundred or so years. There’s just no space to be had unless I move out of the marches and start another garden down in a valley somewhere.’ Everyone in the garden knew the Gardener wouldn’t want to do that. He was a mighty secretive fellow and didn’t have much truck with other beings, except for my great-great-great- a hundred times great-grandda, who showed him a new way to prune fruit trees flat against a sunny wall.

 “So he thought and he thought. There wasn’t any space in the forest, and no space on the roads, but there was the Shadow Tower back in the marches, and there was space around that. So the Gardener said to the turnips, Whyn’t we go off through the trees here to the space around the Shadow Tower? Every evening the Bell rings the shadows out, and they’re dark as any dirt and full of whatever they’ve sucked up around the world. They’ll be lying thick on the ground, there, and maybe you can catch a few.

 “So that’s what the turnips did. They walked themselves a little way through the woods to the place near the Shadow Tower where all the trees stood back away from it. And they plunked themselves down around the Tower, their leaves spread out, and when the Shadowbell rang and all the shadows came out thick as leaves falling in the cold time, well, those turnips moved all their little hairy roots into the shadow and sucked all the dark, moist stuff in them up.

 “And that’s how the Gardener’s turnips grew and grew, but he didn’t let them out into the world for fear they’d eat all the shadow that was, so he kept them there in his garden except for every dusktime when the Shadowbell rang.”

 Dodie unfolded her hands, wiped a few beads of perspiration from her forehead, and plumped herself down, grinning.

 “Well,” said Murzy. “Isn’t that interesting.”

 “Myth survival?” asked Cat in her usual teacherish voice. “Or something real turned legend, do you think?”

 “Whichever! It is worth our time to find out!”

 I gathered from this they perceived a kernel of truth in the story Dodie had told. “How . . .” I started to ask, only to shut my mouth, for the others were already digging into their lockets or boots for the pool fragments each had been given at oath-taking time. I hadn’t had mine out of my locket in the last two years, and the locket was in my pouch. By the time I had my pie-shaped fragment ready, the others had laid theirs upon a flat stone, and only mine was needed to make a circle. “Do you know what the pool stuff is?” I asked pedantically, ready to lecture on the subject. “I found out. . . .”

 “Yes, dear. Of course,” said Sarah in her soft voice. “Of course we know. Now do put your piece in so we can look.”

 Abashed, I pushed my piece into the circle and sat down with the others, peering into the silvery circle that began to shimmer once the pool was completed.

 “A mountain,” said Murzy in a firm voice. “A mountain with three peaks. In the Shadowmarches.”

 Darkness swam across the pool, then light, then darkness once again. Something flapped horribly within the pool, seemed to look out at us, then fled. We seven reached out to take hands, making a circle around the pool, bending our will to Murzy’s in order that she might See.

 “A three-peaked mountain,” she repeated insistently. “A mountain in the Shadowmarches, with three peaks. . . .”

 Something floated up at us; not a mountain. A Tower. Black and tall. Except for the color, I knew it. It was the Tower of the Daylight Bell in reverse image. Dark as coal. Shadow swarmed at its base, around its walls, poured from the arched openings at its top. Something seemed to peer out at us from those openings.

 Patiently, Murzy repeated, “A mountain with three peaks.”

 The Tower dwindled. We were looking down on it from above. It dwindled still further, and I could see the fold of valley that held it, the road spur that ran to it, the road that ran past it farther down the hill. Against the sky was the mountain with three peaks. This, too, diminished until we were looking down on it. There was the sea, to the west, and the line of road east and west through the marches, and to the north of the road a faint glimmering, as though a star burned there. “Enough,” said Murzy in a weak voice. “Enough for now. We have the general direction. Let’s get closer before we try to see in greater detail.”

 As it was, it was morning before we set out. Murzy was in no condition to travel until then. Seeing takes a great deal out of one, particularly when it is done purposefully in this way, not merely allowing any random vision to happen into one’s head. One does it at cost, and one weighs the risk first, as Murzy had done.

 The starlight glimmering on the envisioned map had marked our own position relative to the three-peaked mountain. We needed to go on south until we encountered the remains of an Old Road. Cat estimated two days’ travel, and about noon the second day I took off my shoes. It had been some time since I’d done any footseeing—and longer since I’d gone barefoot for any period of time, so my feet were sore by evening.

 We struck Old Road early the next morning and turned west upon it, me leading, for it was virtually invisible under drifted soil and leaves and the growth of centuries. We would need to go a day’s travel west, Cat said, rubbing salve into my feet, which made them look even dirtier. If Footseer had not already been my proper Wize-ard nickname, I would have been called Jinian Dustboots by the end of that day. As it was, Dodie found she, too, could feel the road in her toes, so she was given the sobriquet. Dodie Dustboots. She seemed very proud of it.

 In midafternoon we stopped to use the fragments again. The glimmer that was us was almost due south of the three-peaked mountain, and when the clouds lifted along about evening, we could see it. “Show us the garden of the Gardener,” Murzy demanded, and the fragment flowed up and down the slopes, stopping at last on the southern slope, about halfway up. Sighing, she let the image go, and we wearily prepared a sensible meal before curling into our blankets for the night.

 “Do you think it’s really there?” Dodie asked me in a whisper, the firelight making a specter’s face of her, all black and orange.

 “Who knows. The fragment showed us something.” “Maybe it’s only ruins.”

 “Maybe.” Possible, I thought. If it were really there, why hadn’t the Gardener done something about the ever-encroaching shadow? Even as I thought the question, I knew the answer. Because whoever or whatever the Gardener was, it hadn’t been his job. Just as it hadn’t been the Eesties’ job. Just as it hadn’t been anyone’s. This started to make me angry and tense, so I set the thought aside and thought of Peter instead. “At the Old South Road City,” I said to him, wherever he might be. “My oath’s about run out, Peter Shifter. Please be at the Old South Road City.”

 Silence and the stars. No point in crying about it. I put Peter out of my mind—mocking laughter from certain parts of my body—and went off to sleep.

 We climbed north from the road the next morning. After a time we came upon a flattened, twisty trail through the trees, a place animals had walked for many years, zigzagging first east then west but always northward. We followed along it, noticing how it avoided the steep places and the rock outcroppings and how it made clever crossing use of narrow places in the streamlets. We had just stopped next to a fringe of tall trees to catch our breath when we all heard a tiny, shrill voice crying, “I tell you, the ground is shaking. There are feet coming, and not feet that belong here. No zeller trying to get through your fence, Gardener. People feet!”

 At least that’s what I heard. The others, so they told me, heard only a shrill piping, rather like a bird’s inconsequent whistle. When they started to move on, I stopped them, whispering what I had heard into their cupped ears.

 “Just behind this fringe of trees,” I said. “Shall I creep through to see what’s there?”

 They clasped hands, all at once, without even conferring, and began to do Egg in the Hollow for me, making me as invisible as they could on short notice. I took this for an affirmative answer to my question and began sneaking through the underbrush, wishing I were Peter so that I could slither without making a sound.

 As it was, things whipped about just a bit. I came out on the other side looking down into a small, flat-floored valley, trees all around and the three-peaked mountain staring down upon it from the north. Garden filled the entire valley, from rail fence on the north to rail fence on the south, fruit trees espaliered along a wall, great pots of flowers here and there, orderly rows of this and that. No.Mostlyorderly rows of this and that. On the near side of the garden was a perfect jumble of plants, some with only their tufty leaves showing and the others walking about on their roots complaining in high, shrill voices about the overcrowding.

 Now “turnip” is a word we use for any kind of bulbous-rooted edible plant. There’s no one plant called “turnip,” just as there’s no one tree called “willow.” It’s either webwillow or gray willow or grease willow or some other kind. So it’s either blood turnip or sour turnip or swamp turnip. These turnips weren’t any of those. They were big, fat, white with a blue belt and with great fluffy tufts of leaves coming out of their tops. At the bottom they were bifurcated, trifurcated, multifurcated into rooty legs or leggy roots on which they wandered about in a rather desultory way, sometimes tripping each other out of what seemed to be sheer ill nature.

 One of them stood at the feet of a very tall being wearing a green robe, shrilling out, “Feet, I tell you, Gardener. People feet.” A slit in one side of the turnip seemed to serve for a mouth, and there were several eyelike protuberances on its body.

 “Well, and so?” said a deep bass voice, rumbling like a distant roll of thunder. “People feet. So?”

 The Gardener was half again as tall as I, not so slender as to seem unnatural but still quite skinny. He had a gaunt, blank face which looked as though he did not often use it for anything. And when I stood up, brushing the leaves off my shirt and undoing the invisibility spell with one gesture, he did not seem at all surprised. “People feet,” he repeated as though it had been some kind of incantation. “Well.” His face had no expression at all.

 “I am one of the people,” I shrilled in close approximation of turnip talk, then lowering my voice and addressing the Gardener in common language. “Can you understand me?”

 He confronted me with no change in his face, not so much as a furrow between his eyes indicating he had heard me. “Can you understand me?” I asked again in the vegetable language.

 He nodded, rather distantly, as though acknowledging a stroke of wind. There, I heard that, he seemed to indicate, without giving any appearance of intending to continue the conversation.

 “People, people,” shrilled the turnip, rushing away among his fellows, shrieking as he went. “Come see, come see. It’s people.”

 Murzy came through the trees, the others following, and we all stood there in various states of amazement as the turnips gathered. I looked about curiously to see whether there were any other talking roots or ambulatory bushes, but these seemed to be the only ones. Which seemed a good-enough fact with which to start a conversation, I thought.

 “Can you tell me how these beings came by the power of speech?” I shrilled in turnip talk.

 The Gardener said not a word, but all the turnips began talking at once. They had always had it. No, they had not had it until after they started eating shadow. No, they had had it since the enchantress gave it to them, many centuries ago. The outcry was so great it was some time before I noticed that the Gardener was shaking his head, over and over. I gestured for silence, quelling the outcry by threatening to roast and eat several of them if they didn’t hush. They subsided with a grumpy babble.

 “I gave them speech,” said the Gardener in his tumbling voice. “I crossbred them with the Sensible plant.”

 “I don’t know the Sensible plant,” said Cat wonderingly. “Where may it be found?”

 “It cannot be found,” the Gardener replied. “It is extinct. Sensibly. It was parasitic upon other plants, and when it became conscious of its own nature, it chose to become extinct rather than continue to be what it was. A pity, I felt, though exemplary from an ethical point of view. So I preserved some of its qualities in these turnips, though their parasitism has been carefully controlled. They eat only soil and shadow. Not foreseen, precisely, but useful nonetheless. Actually, shadow makes quite good mulch. For them.”

 I considered that while shadow seemed lethal to animal life, it had not, in fact, seemed to have any effect upon plants.

 “Have you come to get us?” cried a turnip. “It was foretold that people would come to get us and when that time came, we could go to seed!” There were cheers, cries of encouragement, and three of the turnips began a dance that I could only interpret as frankly erotic.

 “I have forbidden them to seed,” said the Gardener. “As it would have upset the ecological balance between light and shadow to have them sucking up shadow at every turn. They’re greedy, as you can see. Despite the overcrowding, still they insist on overeating and becoming fat. If 1 were not who I am, I would be tempted to eat them myself.”

 “Who are you?” said Murzy, coming closer to him. “Who are you, Gardener? Are you creature of Lom? Son of mankind? What are you?”

 “Ah.” He drew a long, gnarly hand across his face, seeming to be in some confusion. “After all this time, who can say, person? Does it matter? I am here. The garden is my task. To grow and hybridize and combine. To seek out new things and try them. To set out into the world those things which seem advantageous. To destroy the others.”

 “And the turnips? Are they advantageous?”

 He was given no time to reply. A tumult broke out among the turnips as one called, “Shadow. Shadow by the fruit trees!”

 We looked up to see several questing flakes settling along the wall, around the roots of the trees there. A mob of turnips began to rush toward them. Once at the shadow’s edge, they dug themselves in, roots flipping soil like some digger-toads I have seen, squirming into the dirt like little corkscrews. Soon nothing was to be seen except the tufts of leaves, and every inch of the shadow perimeter had a turnip planted adjacent.

 “By Towering Tamor,” whispered Bets. “The shadow’s shrinking.” So itwas. Fading. Shrinking. Dwindling. Within moments it was gone and the turnips began to uproot themselves once more with an air of complete though somewhat petulant satisfaction.

 The Gardener had regarded this display with no change of expression. Now he reverted to Murzy’s earlier question. “Advantageous? I really don’t know. They are company, of a sort.”

 “Would you mind dreadfully if we borrowed some of them?” I asked. “We would find them most advantageous. There is rather more of the shadow about than is generally considered useful.”

 The Gardener seemed puzzled by this. “There has seemed to be more than usual. However, that may be only a local phenomenon. The Shadow Tower is close by. I had wondered if perhaps there were a leak.”

 Cat, with her usual passion for both getting and giving information, set about bringing the Gardener up to date while I wandered off among the turnips, recruiting several hundred of them with ridiculous ease. They tumbled over one another in their eagerness, and I had some trouble choosing the stoutest and strongest as those best suited to the trip. Since their power of locomotion was not of a protracted or speedy kind, we considered how to get them where we were going and decided on a kind of narrow-wheeled vehicle halfway between a barrow and a cart. The Gardener very kindly helped us build two of these—which I resolved to exchange for a well-built wagon and some wateroxen at the earliest opportunity—and helped load the volunteer turnips into these conveyances.

 “Would you mind,” he asked when we were ready to depart, “if I came with you? I haven’t beenoutsidefor some time. If there is indeed animbalance, as your teacher person suggests, I should be aware of it.”

 I thought “imbalance” was rather a slight word for the threat that hovered over us all but could see no reason why this strange being should not come with us. Soon we were returning the way we had come, with the turnips riding at ease in the barrows, exclaiming shrilly at every turn in the trail. When we rested for the night, it was in a circle of them with still others dotted among us, ready to suck up any shadow that came upon us in the night. And so our travels went, with us staying to the sunny valleys where we could for the turnips’ sake, stopping at every streamlet for a good drink, and making more progress than one might suppose, given the awkward nature of the barrows.

 Two nights later, the Sending came.

 We heard it casting about in the sky, crying my name like a lost child, high and far in the star-pierced dark, “Jinian, Jinian.” I knew it was Sylbie’s voice almost immediately, though the timbre was nothing like. Something in the intonation, perhaps. I told the others who it was, and their faces turned cold and stern. We gathered ourselves promptly, setting up Wize-ardly defenses and protections. The turnips were planted away from us, the Gardener set to stand among the trees. The rest of us set ourselves in a fire-centered circle with seven little fires burning around us, waiting what would come.

 `Jinian,” it called, still casting east and west, high above us in the northern air. It had gone far to the north in seeking me and was now on our trail of return. “Jinian.”

 “Only a girl, isn’t that what you said?” Margaret asked. “Little more than a child herself?”

 “A year younger than I,” I answered. “She bore Peter’s baby in Betand, a Shifter baby who had been haunting the town. Bryan is the baby’s name.”

 “Bryan is now a motherless child,” whispered Murzy. “No live creature casts about so among the clouds, riding the moonlight in that way. No, she is dead, poor Sylbie, sent by an evil creature to find you, Jinian.”

 “I know who is responsible for this Sending,” I told them. “Huldra, the witch. More than a Witch, however. One who has studied the art.” They shivered, as I had known they would. There are things the sevens hate, among them those who study the art for evil’s sake, spilling blood as if by right.

 “She is more Peter’s enemy than mine, but Dedrina Dreadeye is mine, and she stands beside Huldra,” I went on.

 At this there was general consternation, for it was the seven who had captured the daughter, Dedrina-Lucir, the one I killed with the Dagger of Daggerhawk. We had no further time to think about it. High above, the Sending called out triumphantly, ` Jinian,” and plummeted down upon us only to recoil from the circle of fire and land wearily outside it on the meadow grass.

 “Jinian Footseer,” it cried in a high, inhuman voice. “I bring word from Huldra, sister-wife of Huld, mother of Mandor. Peter is held fast and will shortly begin to die a long death if you come not to the Ice Caverns where the hundred thousand lie and submit you there to Huldra.” The specter drooped in the starlight, white as a peeled branch, its voice becoming human once more. “Bryan,” it wept. “Bryan.”

 Cat had already started Dream Chains to Bind It to hold the Sending where it was. Bets was busy with her book of charts, judging where we were and how long it might take us to come south. We had figured it several times before, but we had been farther north and east then. I simply stood there in a state of shock, unable to move or think or say anything. Peter. Did they really hold Peter? How could they? My loving, Shifterish Peter. Murzy put one hand on my shoulder and said three hard, sharp names. The world steadied and I became icy calm.

 I waited until Dream Chains to Bind It was finished, then asked the wraith, “Where is Bryan? Where did you leave him?”

 “Sleeping,” cried the wraith. “Sleeping in his crib in the gatehouse of the Bright Demesne. The crying we used to decoy Peter outside was only pretense. Bryan lies sleeping.”

 I found myself coldly hoping that either Mavin or Thandbar had been at the Bright Demesne and had been conveniently located when Bryan had wakened.

 “We’re going to have to use her to carry the message back,” said Murzy. “There’s no way to get around it.”

 “Can we limit it?” asked Sarah. “Dissolve her as soon as the return message is given?”

 “Limit it, and send her by a route north of here,” said Cat. “So that the Witch cannot find where we are.”

 “Why limit her suffering?” I asked. “She betrayed Peter.” Immediately there was a pain in my head and I gasped with it. “No. No, I didn’t mean that,” I said. There’d been a sharp, revelatory gleam in my mind, like a sword of light. Oh, Gamelords, I had been acting as though there were some bao here, something that could be taught. There was nothing, only a wraith. It could suffer, but it could not learn, and to impose suffering on something that could not learn was . . . was a bad thing, I told myself, wondering where I had learned it. Evil. The purest kind of evil. “Let us do as Cat suggests. Let’s limit it.”

 So they began to weave Dream Chains to Bind It into a complex thing, a fabric, a basket, a holding that would untie all knots as soon the return message was delivered. They ended the spell with Inward Is Quiet, the same one I had used on the creatures at the Sanctuary, and I felt ashamed to have felt anger toward the pathetic thing.

 “What message?” I asked. “Don’t let Huldra hurt him!”

 “I think it unlikely she’ll hurt him much, girl. Not until you arrive. Then, likely, she’ll try to kill you both, but we won’t allow that. Come now. Don’t fall apart like this. You’ve been endangered before and known him to be endangered without going to pieces. Stand yourself up her and deliver the message. It must be in your voice; you can trust Huldra to check whether you sent the reply yourself, and she must not know we are with you.”

 So I stood and delivered. “The Sending finds me fourteen or fifteen days’ travel from the Ice Caverns. Jinian will come as she is bid.” Actually, we felt the distance was something like ten to twelve days’ travel, but we had decided to overstate the time it would take, both to mislead the Witch and to allow for accidents on the way.

 Then we let the Sending go. It rose into the sky, still crying, this time, “Bryan, Bryan. . . .” to flee first toward the southeast, then turn sharply toward the north. It would go some distance that way before turning southeast once more. We had done all that we could to mislead the one who had sent it. However, we had first seen the direction it would go to meet Huldra.

 “Ah,” said Cat, who had tracked its southeastern flight against the stars. “Then Huldra is not yet at the caverns. Let me see your charts, Bets.” They bent over them, measuring and nodding. “That line of flight will intersect a line between the Bright Demesne and Bannerwell at about . . . here. It may be she is as far from her destination as we are. So. If we speed ourselves, we may come there two to five days before them.”

 We went as quick as we might along the rolling road, among live forests and dead ones, smelling the stinks of distant fumaroles as though they had been the stinks of a body decaying, waking sadly in the mornings and walking the day through no happier, urgently going, driven by our own need to do whatever it was needed doing without any real hope that it would do any good at all.

 As we went, I did as I had promised and told them about Ganver’s teaching, not once but many, many times. They tried, as I had tried, to unravel it, with as little success. Whatever the secret truth of the star­eye might be, thus far the Oracle had been right about it. Its power, if any, was beyond me. It might as well have been merely symbolic, as the creature had said. Only stubbornness and respect for Ganver’s pain made me continue to believe otherwise.

 10
PETER’S STORY: HULDRA

 While the Sending was away, Huldra had amused herself by making me acutely uncomfortable. This was mostly by way of mockery and jeering, companied by some rough cruelty without much subtlety to it. It was enough to make me sweat, nonetheless; sweat and fear for the future. After a day or so of it, she tired of her amusement and left me in the care of a warder, who sat beside me, took me out among the bushes from time to time, and fed me twice each day. They did not even loosen the cords that bound me, and the pain of muscles that could not move became torture enough after a time.

 It was evening of the second or third day—third. I had been in the warder’s care for a full day at that point—when Sylbie’s ghost returned. I heard it crying far off in the northwestern sky, “Bryan, Bryan.”

 The warder had me just inside an open tent flap, mostly because he liked seeing what was going on. I saw Huldra and Dedrina move toward the fire, Huldra’s hands making endless weaving motions as though knotting a net. The motions burned in the air, leaving a trace of fire behind. By the time the Sending came down, however, she was still, waiting.

 “Tell me the answer to my Sending and who gave it,” she called imperiously, beckoning the Sending to come nearer.

 ‘ Jinian is fourteen or fifteen days to the north. She comes to the Ice Caverns now, to meet you there.” So cried Sylbie’s ghost.

 Huldra made an impatient motion. “Tell me where she is, now, precisely!”

 But the ghost did not reply. Instead, it began to fade, raveling away like something knitted of smoke.

 “Hold!” Huldra cried, busy with her hands. “Hold, I say.”

 But there was no holding it. It moved on the wind like a column of smoke and was gone. I heard only the whisper of sound. “Bryan.” Huldra raged, burning and howling in her fury. “That bitch. That serpent. That Wize-ard filth. She has taken my own Sending and unknotted it against my will. It was to have told me where she was, but it told me nothing!”

 “She said she will meet you at the caverns. It is what you asked.” Dedrina gazed at the Witch slantwise from the corners of her eyes. “Why this fury?”

 “Because it was my will to come upon her while she was yet a distance away and unsuspecting. Now she will be prepared, and it may be more troublesome. That is all, snake, that is all. Mind your own business and I will mind mine.”

 “Who do you call sssnake?” hissed the Basilisk. “Careful, Huldra, Witch. Let usss continue as friendsss.”

 The Witch was in no mood to temporize. She snarled her way out of my sight, leaving the Basilisk beside the fire. I could see the lizard hands as they made long, scaled talons and scrabbled at the earth, a dangerous sound, one betokening great anger.

 Huldra returned shortly with two Elators to sit muttering with them. Though I tried, I could not hear what was said, and I did not really need to hear. She was sending them in search of Jinian. I saw her gesturing toward the sky, motioning the direction from which the Sending had come. Her voice rose. “Fourteen or fifteen days’ travel to the caverns.”

 One of them murmured to the other and flicked out of sight. In a moment the second one also disappeared, and Huldra returned to the fire. After a time she twisted her lips into a mockery of a smile and said, “Do not ever threaten me, Dreadeye. Do not ever grow so angry with me that you presume to threaten me. We are allies, but there is no question as to preeminence between us. You are a mere Talent of no particular distinction. It would be unwise to press your fortune.”

 Dedrina looked at her with a long, lizardlike stare, then rose and left the fireside. I did not see them together again in the days that followed, and I thought it unwise of Huldra to have so gratuitously made an unfriend on the eve of battle. It cheered me a little. Enmities among one’s enemies are always comforting.

 I was comforted, too, by the Sending’s vanishment. This spoke of an older mind than Jinian’s, one more subtle because more experienced. I thought it likely my love was part of her seven once more, and I had hope for her and therefore for myself.

 The Elators did not return. This made me more hopeful still. Days went by as we traveled toward the caverns, and they did not appear. Days went by, and Huldra grew more furious and violent with each one that passed. Whenever she looked in upon me, I pretended to be asleep or unconscious, offering no target for her frenzy. Withal, I was careful to eat everything the warder offered and to strain every muscle once each hour or so, pushing against the cords since I could have no other exercise. I knew something Huldra did not; if she kept on in the direction she was going, she would come within the range of the Immutables. Then—if the cords that bound me were Talent made—then might well be an opportunity for me, and I was determined to be in condition to take it if it arose.

 While my days wore wearily on, behind me in the Bright Demesne, things were happening that Huldra had not intended and did not yet suspect. I learned of them later, a few words from Mavin, mostly from Himaggery, and can tell of them here.

 The Sentinel had not seen me leaving the Demesne, but he did see Sylbie creeping away from the walls. She had opened the little door out of the gatehouse and was sneaking along the buttresses, making for Huldra’s camp, the shadows heaped at either side of her path, as though commanded to clear a way. He cried out to her, those cries I had heard during my enchantment, then he saw the smoke and fire rising from the besiegers’ camp, and this caused him to set up the alarm. In a moment the walls were swarming; men had secured the little gatehouse, and Himaggery was on the walls staring across at the besiegers, wondering what had set off the scare.

 It was only when a servant said she had seen me leaving the main house with Sylbie and when the Sentinel said he had seen Sylbie sneaking away to the camp, confirmed by their finding evidence of my passage through the ditch, that they realized what had happened. Barish was wise enough to realize I had been decoyed away; he even suspected they had used the baby to do it. The baby, however, was found sleeping in his crib, and with a total lack of foresight, they left him there, unattended except for a half-wit serving man, who promptly fell asleep and was still asleep when the baby later wakened.Barish and Himaggery immediately went into conference with all Barish’s Gamesmen who were present to plan an attack against the besiegers in order to rescue me. Barish and Himaggery had been working on a Wizardly stratagem against the shadow; they decided it must be tried immediately, did so with a minimum of fanfare and found it would not work. It had to do with sucking the shadows down with a great fan, chopping them up with the blade, and compressing them somehow. The shadow sucked up nicely but refused either to be chopped or compressed. It merely flowed up again, against the wind, as it were, and resumed its patrol. All this went on during the night, you understand, and then Bryan woke early.

 Bryan’s mother was not present. The serving man was asleep, possibly drunk, for he did not awaken even when Bryan turned into his most monstrous gorbling form and fled the tiny gatehouse to wreak havoc in the Demesne. According to Himaggery, people were fleeing every which way, the place was like a hive of warnets that had been overset, and there was serious danger of the inhabitants breaching the gates in their panic and falling straight into Huldra’s hands. Huldra, however, had departed before dawn, leaving only half her strength behind. Otherwise, the story of the Bright Demesne might have ended at that point.

 The noise brought Mavin out of the orchard, blossoms in her hair and apples growing from her ears. She did not wait to be told what had happened but went straight to the place Bryan was gorbling and boiling, howling like a monstrous siren. There she began to take bulk, screaming at Barish and Himaggery to bring her bread. Afterward, it became a kind of joke. “Twenty more loaves,” she cried. Only they two and some of the Gamesmen could withstand Bryan’s howling. All the others in the Demesne had fled as far away as possible, and only the loyalty and training of Himaggery’s men kept the walls manned.

 When Mavin had gobbled enough bread to give her the bulk she needed, she Shifted into the form of a giant basket, which snatched up the gorbling ghost. Then she closed, compressing what was within into smaller and smaller shapes, compressing even more, and more, until baby Bryan was uncomfortably pressed into his own shape, no other, and had learned he could not terrorize the Demesne with impunity any longer.

 “It was quite a horrid sight,” said Himaggery thoughtfully. “In some respects, it is not easy to love a Shifter.”

 “I quite frankly thought I would be ill,” said Barish. “Thandbar never did anything like that in all the time I knew him.”

 “I found it interesting to watch,” said Dealpas the Healer. “I thought she’d squash the baby, but she didn’t. Bryan was perfectly all right, though less temperamental subsequently.”

 “The part that interests me is that taking on of bulk,” said Shattnir the Sorceress. “Theoretically, at least, it should provide additional power to . . .”

 Well, you get the idea. Other Gamesmen find Shifters either repulsive or odd, for the most part. Himaggery told me all this much later, including the comments of those present, laughing over it in genuine amusement, and I suppose I laughed as well. Mavin would not have been offended. She had come past the time of being hurt over what others think of us Shifters. One thing Jinian never said to me was that it was difficult to love a Shifter. Perhaps that is why I loved her so much when I finally decided that I loved her at all.

 Which is beside the point. All of this happened by midmorning of the day I had been carted away.

 Not content, then, with merely having squelched the baby and restored general order, Mavin decided to get into the besiegers’ camp and see to my rescue herself. She did this just as I had, eeling herself along the drainage ditch from the Porridge Pot, slything out onto the bank among some bushes, then creeping silently as any wraith—avoiding the shadow meantime—into the camp. While there was shadow plastered over every possible exit from the Demesne, there was none at the drainage ditch. I was known to be the only Shifter present; everyone thought Mavin was far away. It’s a mistake ordinary Gamesmen often make: assuming we’re far away when we’re not.

 In the camp there were scattered tents for the Gamesmen, a rather large contingent of Armigers and Armigerian types, along with any number of Tragamorians. No Elators. Huldra had taken them all with her. No Seers or Demonics or Healers. No Rulers, of course. Huldra would not have wanted her own sway threatened by any other’s Beguilement. There were, however, several Sorcerers and Sentinels, ready to assist an assault on the Demesne if and whenever its defenses failed.

 Mavin noticed all these and ticked them off as of no importance once she knew I was no longer there. Her interest focused on that other tall tent at the midst of the camp, a tent with closed flaps and guards set close around it. Though I had never seen her do it, Mavin had told me of her practice at moling and weaseling, a skill that took her underground, beneath the guarded tent, and allowed an extruded eye to protrude inside at the canvas edge.

 There were two beribboned forms within the tent, forms with painted faces and a strange way of moving. “Like Eesties,” she said, “trying to move like humans, waving their points first here, then there.” She watched for a time, not betraying her presence, and was horrified to realize that the creatures were controlling the shadow.

 “It made me peevish,” she said with her typically Mavinish under-statement. “They were so silly looking; so much a travesty of humanity. Making a parody of us in order to mock us; waving and weaving their points to make the shadows flow first here, then there. Well, those two will not mock again.”

 She told us later what she did to the Eesties, leaving the tent empty. “For the mystification of the guardsmen. Mystification is always good for guardsmen,” she remarked. “It makes them watchful.”

 She returned to the Demesne in time to supervise Bryan’s supper and bedtime. She did not bother to tell Himaggery what she had done until afterward, by which time he had already noticed great rents and vacancies in the shadow. The fluttering menace seemed no longer organized by malicious will; though dangerous still, it was patchy rather than ubiquitous. Waiting for a propitious conformation, Himaggery and Barish made a sortie in force from the main gates, shadow or no shadow. Good fortune may have had something to do with it. They were not shadow eaten, and they left very little of the besiegers for the were-owls.

 “We will go after Peter,” Himaggery announced, furiously ordering horses and wagons and equipage fir the road while the Gamesmen ran hither and thither and Barish gave similar orders to his own men.

 “No,” said Mavin. “You must go to the Old South Road City,” and she told them why. She says they were very stubborn about it, almost disbelieving. It was only when she threatened to turn Bryan loose on them that they began to listen seriously to her. And, at last, she had her way—and mine. Himaggery, Barish, and all but a small garrison of the inhabitants of the Bright Demesne set out for Old South Road City, while Mavin, somewhat slowed by being burdened by Bryan, came after me. Often I wonder what might have happened had she gone with Himaggery instead. Often now I wish she had done so.

  

  

 11
JINIAN’S STORY: THE CAVERNS

 Murzy had been right. By moving swiftly, calmly—and by trading the barrows for a farm wagon on the third day of our trek—we managed to reach the Ice Caverns before Huldra did. The old codger living at the edge of the marches had not been at all willing to let his only wagon go, but between Cat’s talking and Margaret’s Beguiling, he couldn’t hold out against us. He was well paid for the wagon, and we left half a dozen of the shadow-eaters with him as lagniappe. When we left him, he had begun telling them the story of his life, and one of the turnips had a sprout out its top that looked suspiciously like a flower head to me.

 “They’ll seed, you know,” said the Gardener in his gloomy, uninflected voice. “Soon they’ll be all over everything.”

 “I can think of worse things,” said Sarah. “Wildthorns, for example. Or purple briar. Or shadow.”

 “True,” murmured the Gardener. “Except that wildthorn extract cures heaves in wateroxen. And split purple briar makes the best sieves in the world.”

 “I didn’t know that,” said Cat, showing immediate interest. “What else are they good for?”

 He told her, for the better part of a day. Everyone else walked away from the wagon, tiring of his voice, but Cat sat up there on the seat, taking it all in, and the turnips babbled to one another about every cloud in the sky and every new flower or stone along the way. I was beginning to see differences among them, differences in their markings and the locations of their eyes. I named them to myself; Bulgy and Flop-top and Big-blue, who had the widest, bluest belt. Pasty, all white with yellowish leaves; Fringes, who had at least ten or twelve root legs; Molly-my-dear, slender—relatively speaking—and coy, with an almost supersonic giggle. They had no names for themselves and were delighted when I began to name them, after a time beginning to think up titles for themselves, some of which made them collapse into the bottom of the wagon, full of mysterious, vegetable mirth. I could understand the words well enough, but not what they really meant. It was not a humor I could share, though that fact seemed to frustrate no one but me.

 The Gardener had been right. More than a few of them were sending up flower stalks and casting meaningful looks at one another. I had not thought of pollination as an erotic exercise before, but these hybrid creatures did not regard it as routine, so much was obvious. They were full of devious, volatile pranks, reminding me rather of the deep dwell-ers I had summoned up in Fangel. Devious or not, they were more interesting than the Gardener. I had yet to see him display any interest in anything whatsoever.

 All of which was a mere distraction, to keep my mind off Peter. When I thought of him, I thought of him being tortured, maimed, savaged by Huldra’s wanton evil or Dedrina’s casual brutality. Once or twice I had fallen into shivering fits, and Cat or Murzy had had to recall me to myself with an utterance of names. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering whose names we uttered and why they made any difference. Who, or what, was Eutras? Who, or what, was Favian?

 At any rate, we came down Cagihiggy Creek at some speed. The way is level along there, not precisely a road but without major impediments to travel. As we neared the place where we thought the caverns were, we made camp while Murzy, Cat, and Bets sent up some kind of Wize-ardly signal, a tall, blue smoke with sparkly bits in it. They went on making it for some hours. Along about dusk, it was answered by a cautious call from behind some rocks, then by a tall, serious-faced man, who stepped out and approached us with visible trepidation.

 I went to him, showing my empty hands. “I’m Jinian Footseer,” I told him. “A friend of Peter, Mavin’s son. He may have stopped by here fairly recently? I’m also known to Mertyn and a man named Quench, and I know the name Riddle, Governor of the Immutables, though we have not met.”

 He gestured vaguely at the others of us. “And these?” He was staring at the turnips, frankly staring, as though he could not believe what he saw.

 Sometime deep in the night we heard a yelping scream from the sky, followed by a dull, squishing thud. Torchlight found the source, an Armiger, dead as a Ghoul fetch. He had been Flying some fifty or a hundred manheights up and run abruptly into the Immutable’s screen. We moved the body behind some rocks, heaping some others over it. He had been a scout. Huldra wouldn’t be far behind.

 Before dawn, Murzy and the others joined me, together with Mertyn and his men. When the sun rose, we saw them, all drawn up in battle array from wall to wall of the valley, with some Armigers floating high in the air and others just above the creekbed to keep the lines straight. They had a Herald out front, floating importantly along. He stopped just short of the place the Immutable screen would have touched him and gave voice.

 “All within sound of my voice, give ear; Huldra, Witch, Student of the High Arts, having taken the person of the Shifter, Peter, offers him now in exchange for the insignificant person of one Jinian, so-called Wize-ard, named Footseer. Let her come forward and the exchange be made.”

 Huldra was standing at some distance behind the Herald. The person next to her did look like Peter. Murzy sighed and did Bright the Sun Burning in the affirmative mode, a disclosing spell. The person next to Huldra no longer looked like Peter. Shit. Huldra wasn’t going to let Peter go. Even from this distance I could see the creature was a mere semblance, not unlike a Sending or a wraith. She’d spent some poor fool’s blood on it, but it wasn’t worth the trouble. We had a quick conference, and our Herald jumped up on the rock.

 “All within sound of my voice, give ear. Mertyn, King, most Powerful, most Puissant, calls the Witch Huldra to account for her un-Gamely abduction of Mertyn’s thalan, Peter, Shifter, friend of Wizards. Let Huldra make her camp where she stands, and then between the lines will her accounting be heard.”

 Where was Peter? Back at the rear of the battle, no doubt. In one of those tents pitched far back along the flat. I hiked back to the Immutable lines and found one of Riddle’s men, then pointed out the tents. “Could you get close?” I asked him. “Not close enough to be noticed, just close enough to damp any Talent in those tents?”

 The man nodded, grinning at me. I rather like Immutables. They are so very secure in everything they do, knowing we Gamesmen are utterly harmless when they are around. “Any price you ask, Sir Immutable,” I said. “My love is in one of those tents, and your presence may help him escape.”

 “No price, lady,” he whispered, putting down his banner and preparing to slip away along the mountainside among the trees. “Your love is Peter, and it was Peter who broke the evil at Bannerwell, and Peter who destroyed the evil of the Magicians. Any small assistance I can give, I am only too willing to provide.” And he took himself off, still grinning, at what, I had no idea.

 Behind the ledge of rock, other Immutables were marching to and fro with banners in their hands, first one banner, then another, giving the appearance of an army. From the canyons above the knoll I heard shrill cheering. The turnips had half planted themselves along a ridge to watch the battle. I thought of Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, wondering where they were. The last I had seen of them, they had been squirming into the earth outside the cavern entrance, and I had not thought of them since. There was no time now, for Huldra’s ranks surged forward. She had no intention of camping and negotiating anything. The Peter semblance at her side stood in idiot confusion. She had forgotten to tell it what to do.

 No time to think about that. Armigers darted forward through the air, arching high to get a sight behind our rock parapet before releasing their arrows. Elators flicked out of existence at Huldra’s side. A line of Tragamors stepped forward, Sorcerers just behind, their eyes fixed on the rock wall that protected us and on which the other six members of the seven leaned, casually, as though watching a display of horsemanship or a class in cooking.

 Armigers screamed, fell, thrashing about like wing-clipped birds. They had encountered the Immutable barrier. Elators appeared halfway to the wall, their faces bloody, battered. Most of them fell at once, one or two staggered about, shrieking. The Tragamors were holding their heads, and a Sorcerer blew up all at once in a flash of violet flame.

 “Snakes,” said Murzy to Dodie casually, and Dodie nodded, beginning to make a complex set of gestures, her face set in concentration. From the rocky slopes of the mountain to the left of the approaching army, snakes appeared, as big around as two men, heads reared high and eves fixed on the approaching men. Some hundreds of Huldra’s minions dropped their weapons and fled as the snakes reared even higher and hissed with a harsh, venomous breath that seemed to choke all those before it.

 Huldra’s voice was raised in fury,screaming words I had not heard before. The snakes vanished, all at once.

 “Oh, quite good,” said Murzy to Cat, “She did that very quickly.”

 “They were designed to be easy to disperse,” said Cat. “We want her lulled into a false sense of security.”

 “Still,” Murzy murmured, “she was quick. I think deep dwellers next, Dodie, if you don’t mind.”

 This was only one word. Everything else had been done ahead of time. Dodie spoke the word, and the stones before the approaching army lifted from the ground to disclose endless lines of deep dwellers, popping out like corks, just as they had in Fangel. Fangy monsters, virtually impossible to kill, they launched themselves at Huldra’s myrmidons, jaws gaping and claws fully extended, dancing, leaping, among the ranks before Huldra could react.

 She was close enough now that I could see her turn pale with fury. Thinking, thinking. Twice she reached out to make a gesture, aborted it each time. I could almost read her mind. She thought we had rigged a wall of enchantment across the valley. She knew she would encounter it in a moment. If she stopped to deal with the deep dwellers, the army might encounter the wall. If she dealt with the wall, the dwellers would make chopped meat of her men. She did the only thing she could do, signaled abruptly to a Sentinel at her left, who struck his drum three great whacks while a trumpeter blew taratta taratta tara tara. Retreat.

 “She hasn’t thought of Immutables yet,” muttered Murzy in my ear. “Why are you carrying those turnips about with you?”

 I turned my head, catching only a glimpse of a floppy leaf at the edge of vision. Growling, I took off my pack. Big-blue and Molly-my-dear had hidden in it and accompanied me to battle, peering over either shoulder. Shrill cheering came from the ridge behind me. It had not been us they had been cheering for. No wonder the Immutable had been grinning.

 12
PETER’S STORY: A SHIFT IN TIME

 I heard the Herald. I’m sure Huldra wanted me to hear the Herald. I’d seen the semblance of me she intended to trade for Jinian, and I knew it wouldn’t fool Jinian for a moment. From what glimpses I could get of the country outside the wagon and then outside the tent, I thought we were in the Cagihiggy valley north of the Blot. Not that the Blot was there anymore, but north of where it once had been. I drifted into that unpleasant dreamy state that was the best I could manage in the way of sleep and gave myself a few nasty minutes’ dreaming about the Blot. Izia. I had rescued Izia at the Blot. Yarrel’s sister. My friend Yarrel. Something terrible was to happen to Izia, and I woke up choking back a scream.

 “Wozzer rampin?” the warder demanded with his usual elegant articulation. “Wozzer imperashun.”

 “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.” There were screams from outside; running feet fled past the tent.

 “Wozzer rampin?” demanded the warder from those who fled past. “Somin atterus?”

 He received no answer, which seemed to make him nervous. He went outside and stood there, scratching his groin and rubbing the back of one leg with a boot. He was one of the itchiest men I had ever had the misfortune to meet, and the fact that he itched and I could not scratch was one of the most refined tortures of which mankind is capable. I wanted to scream.

 More running feet. He took one quick look at me, then went around the tent and away, after the runners. Now I could not even ask him to scratch my nose. Not that he would have done. I thought of scratching my nose, thought deeply and lovingly of it, and found one hand doing exactly that. The cords that had bound me were sliding toward my ankles. I knew at once what had happened. The cords had been made at least partly through Talent, and there was an Immutable near. I prayed he was going or gone, as quickly as may be. I needed my own Talent to escape.

 “Taratta taratta tara tara!” Retreat screamed through the air, sounded by a Sentinel. No time to worry about how or why. I Shifted, frantically, gasping as waves of pain punished every part of me. Nothing worked right. I tried a claw and achieved a feathery thing that looked vaguely like a duster. Memory. Gamelords, I couldn’t remember how!

 Voices. Huldra approaching the tent. No time, no time to do anything. Panic lent strength, and I flowed up the tent pole, coating it with a round smooth layer of Peter, hard and brown as itself, appearing no different at all, not at all. Where I came through the tent top, an extruded eye peered forth at the world, an ear listened, invisible from below.

 “Warder?” she screamed. “Warder!”

 Then she found the cords. Fury. Rage. Summoning of this one and that. Dedrina summoned. Could not be found. The warder searched for. Could not be found.

 “He’s a Shifter!” she screamed. “He could still be here. Bring every­thing out and throw it on the fire.”

 They built up the fire and began to haul stuff out of the tent. Pillows, chests, rugs, mattresses, costumes and paraphernalia. All fed to the fire until it was put out by the sheer volume of fuel. More screaming, other fires started and fed more gingerly. Everything Huldra owned fed into the flames to make a stinking smoke that swirled around my top, making me want to sneeze. All. Everything that had been in that tent. But not the tent itself, and not the tent pole. Thank all the gods.

 After a very long time, they went away. Huldra went flouncing off to some other tent, still screaming; the men seemed to be gathering for some kind of assault. It was getting dark. The fires glimmered into coals and went out. At which point I slid down the pole and crept away, flat as a leaf upon the ground, flowing like a tide of melted sugar out of the camp and up toward the hills.

 Abruptly losing my Shifted shape and finding myself nakedly in my own.

 “Ah, there he is,” said Mavin.

 She was seated comfortably beneath a tree, dandling Bryan on one knee and talking contentedly to an Immutable, one who tugged his forelock, grinned at me, and unceremoniously took his leave. When he was far enough away for Talent to work once more, I Shifted some clothing.

 “Worked, did it?” asked my mother. “I told him to go close to the tent for just a brief time, then withdraw. Close, to get you loose—assuming it was Talent which held you, which it seems to have been—and then far enough away to let you use your own Talent to escape. Clever, wasn’t it. Not my idea, actually. Jinian sent him.”

 “Where is she?” I begged.

 “Just up the hill, boy. Don’t fume so. She’s quite all right, but she’s surrounded by Immutables, so your clothes won’t last.” She put Bryan down to burrow in her pack. “I have a sort of robe kind of thing here. You might like to have it before you go haring off. . . .”

 I had it in a moment and tarried only long enough for her to hug me. Only that long. She let go of me reluctantly; there was a tear in her eye. I knew she wanted to hold me for a time, knew she had longed for my escape as a thirsty man for water, that she had ached and agonized over me—I knew that, but I was telling myself there was plenty of time later, and I was halfway up the hill before she could say anything more.

 I found Jinian behind a rock on a knoll kind of place. Surrounded, as Mavin had said, by Immutables. Mertyn was there as well, and some men I recognized from Schooltown. I saw none of them until later. Jinian was all I saw. She caught sight of me then, and a kind of light came over her face. I forget what happened next; there were some things said as I recall—and I do, really recall. When we had done hanging on to each other for all our lives were worth, I settled down a little. Mertyn was shaking his head at me. Mavin was standing there smiling that outrageous smile of hers, her face quite clear of the longing that had been in it down the hill—almost as though she had set that need aside for the time. I remember feeling grateful to her and resolving to do something exceptionally nice for her soon. One of Mertyn’s serving men was waiting patiently with some trousers over his arm. Jinian’s and my greeting had evidently taken some time.

 “How did you get out of the Bright Demesne?” I demanded of Mavin, hugging Jinian to me. “Huldra left half her army there, and all the shadows.”

 Mavin shook her head, making a face. “The shadows were not following Huldra. No. There were Oracles there. At least I suppose they were Oracles, for they looked as Jinian described.”

 Jinian gaped. “What did you do?”

 Mavin laughed uncomfortably and described the technique she had developed to control Bryan. “A kind of basket,” she said, making a face. “Baskets were used for discipline back in the place I grew up. The only way to control a Shifter, really, though I never appreciated that fact until your son came along, Peter. At any rate, when Bryan misbehaves, I make a basket of myself, scoop him up, squeeze him into his own shape, and then hold him till he settles down.” She jiggled the baby, he crowing at her. Evidently he bore no ill will for having been basketed.

 “And that’s what you did to the . . . Oracles?”

 “Basketed and squeezed, yes. Only this time rather smaller than their natural shape. I’m afraid they were quite squashed. I buried everything under the tent to cause mystery and confusion among the troops. Evidently it worked.” She told us a few more details of what had happened at the Bright Demesne, concluding, “The shadows fell into disarray, and Himaggery managed the rest.” She spoke with a kind of weary pride, and I knew that despite everything, she continued to love Himaggery. Those two! I had never understood them.

 “I wish it had been the real Oracle,” whispered Jinian. “Though I’m afraid they were only followers.”

 “Well, there are two fewer followers now,” Mavin said, hugging her. I was struck, not for the first time, by how well these two seemed to get along.

 Evidently there had been enough time for Huldra to regroup, for we heard trumpet and drum sounds from her lines, and everyone behind the stone became suddenly very busy.

 The oldest member of the seven, Murzemire, materialized at my elbow and suggested in a kindly voice that I go with Jinian up to the caverns. “We’ve put everything in place already, everything a seven can do, Peter. Jinian’ll not be needed here for a while, at least. Your mother, too. I’m sure she’s tired from the journey”-not seeing or perhaps purposely not noticing Mavin’s outraged face at this presumption—”and there are more comfortable quarters up there.”

 We were rather a cynosure at the moment, and I could understand her wanting us out of the way. Mertyn was shouting commands. Great pillars of flame had erupted from Huldra’s lines, fire elementals, as Murzy said in a horrified voice. “I really didn’t think she’d dare.”

 “It’s all right,” said the one with braids, Cat. “We’ve prepared for it with water elementals of our own. Do get out of the way, Jinian.”

 So we went up the hill, hand in hand, through the Immutable lines, on to the caverns.

  

  

 13
JINIAN’S STORY: WITCH AND BASILISK

 After all my longing and agony, Peter’s escape was almost anticlimactic. He simply showed up, wearing some kind of lounging robe, having escaped when the Immutable came near the tent, then hidden when the Immutable left again. Mavin, it seemed, had suggested that refinement of my original plan, and she told us about it in a chuckling voice as she followed us up to the Ice Caverns.

 “Immutables,” she mused while Bryan burbled and chortled at her. “Now that’s the answer for you, grandson. You may try to gorble all you like, but with Immutables around, it won’t work. I think a few days spent among the Immutables would train you very nicely, and all the Gamelords know I’m tired of basketing you.” She sounded lively and jolly, rather more contented than I had ever thought of Mavin as being. Seeing her face as she played with Bryan, I realized she must have enjoyed Peter when he was a babe. And I thought I knew why, too. That time must have been the only time in her life when she did not Shift, was not Shifter, did not think about Shifterish things, but merely was, womanlike, rejoicing in the flow of life through her and on. Seeing her, my eyes teared up, and I thought again of bearing Peter’s children. If there should ever be time.

 There was a jostling on my shoulders. The turnips had tired of my pack and were trying to get out, so I let them loose at the entrance to the caverns, introducing them to both Peter and Mavin. Both these Shifters had seen many strange things in their lives, but they stood there with their mouths open when they were introduced to Big-blue and Molly-my-dear. Both turnips were in full flower, much given to nodding their tops at one another in an obviously lubricious way. I was a little embarrassed, frankly, but Peter and Mavin seemed to pay no attention to that.

 “Shadow-eaters?” Mavin asked. “Really, Jinian? Have you seen them do it?”

 I told her that I had.

 “By all the old gods. How marvelous. Oh, how I wish I’d had some of these that time long ago when I brought Himaggery down from the north in the shape of a singlehorn and the shadows tracked us, league on league. What a wonder. I’d been wondering how we’d—well, from what Peter has said, it seems likely there will be a force to oppose us when we reach Old South Road City. A shadow force, likely. It’s not something I was eager to face.” And I saw in her expression again that woman longing, that desire to be at peace, playing with the baby, if only for a time, rather than risking her life as we all risked ours in some great endeavor. She shook her head, repeating firmly, “From my prior experi­ence . . .

 I shuddered. From my own prior experience, a shadow force would be unopposable. The best one could do was hide from it, and little construction got done while builders cowered in caves or huts. “I know,” I said. “That’s why we brought them. There are more on the ridge out there, watching the battle.”

 At the word “battle,” Big-blue cried in an excited voice, “Snakes. Snakes and fire and trumpets. Tara tara.”

 “Taratta tara,” echoed Molly-my-dear, waving her root-legs. “And people feet.”

 “Settle down,” I said. “If you’ll plant yourselves here by the door, I’ll take you back down when I leave.”

 The Gardener was already by the cavern entrance, peering out in his dispirited way at the fireworks in the valley. “How goes the battle?” he asked as though it did not matter.

 “As well as can be expected,” I said, and he nodded gloomily as we went on into the hum and babble inside and through that to the distant, twisty little room off the tunnel where we had slept.

 “I remember this place,” said Mavin, staring about with eves full of recollection. “You and I were here, Peter. In this very place. Gamelords, that seems long and long ago. . . .

 “We had just saved Himaggery, remember? We came into the cavern through that tunnel, there. It goes back and back into the mountain and out to that Base place.” She touched Peter’s face with a tender gesture, patting him, flushing a little, then wandering off to disappear with Bryan behind a pillar, obviously intent upon reminiscences she did not intend to share.

 Peter looked after her, his face sober. “She’s right. We were here. I remember all too well. The fool Magicians, without any idea what they were doing, had set off some kind of infernal device which was going to blow the mountains up. Mavin and I were trying to escape, with Himaggery. The resurrection machine had failed when we tried to put Windlow back together. I had his blue in my pocket with the other blues, the Gamesmen of Barish. We came on the railway, through that tunnel.” He pointed down the twisty way, shaking his head at the memory, musing for a time as we moved deeper into the room. “Huld was out there in the cavern. He had some kind of firebolt shooter. If it hadn’t been for the Gamesmen of Barish, I’d have been cooked.” He stared at nothing, remembering. I came close and took his hand as he went on, “The entrances were all sealed. I used Shattnir the Sorcerer to clear a way to the sky. Tamor the Armiger helped me fly out, carrying Himaggery. Then the mountain fell in. We thought Huld was dead.” There was a long, long pause.

 “But Huld wasn’t dead,” I said, prompting him.

 “No, he wasn’t,” said a deadly voice. “Not then.”

 We spun around, disbelieving, all our safety, all our peace riven by that voice. She stood blocking the entrance to the little room with Dedrina close beside her and a scatter of Elators behind them. Huldra. She had figured it out, then. She knew about the Immutables, and while the seven were kept busy down below, believing they were fighting her, she had come into our stronghold to take us.

 “Destruction of the caverns can wait,” she whispered, pointing one bony finger at Peter. It was a foul, slimy whisper that clung in the ears like swamp muck. “You I will have, and then we will see to the caverns.”

 “Those who sent you to destroy the caverns are dead,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and indifferent and get her attention off Peter. Mavin was behind the rock pillar. They might not know she was there. “Storm Grower is dead. Eaten out by your Sending, Huldra, which she swallowed down like a thrilp seed. Dream Miner is dead, poisoned by a yellow crystal. They are dead, Huldra.”

 “They were only the Oracle’s dupes,” sneered Huldra. “The one who wanted you dead is still alive, Wizard. The Oracle is still alive and kicking about the world. Storm Grower is no more, but enmity remains.”

 “Mine, Wizard,” hissed Dedrina. She was already half-transformed into her Basilisk shape, her dirty yellow claws scraping the tunnel floor. “Storm Grower may have ruled the caverns, but you are my meat, Jinian Dangle-wit, murderer of my child. Perhaps my daughter was too young and impressionable when she faced you. Perhaps you played un­Gamely, Dangle-wit. Perhaps she did not have her wits about her. But I have mine, Eller’s daughter. It was I who found the old tunnel down into these caverns; I who told the Witch where you might be found.”

 The words hit me as though I had been struck with a hand, moving me to fury. Peter squeezed my hand, bringing me to myself. Of course the creature wanted me angry. Angry and unthinking. “Lizard,” snarled Peter. “Foul words are all the dirtier when they come from a filthy mouth.” His voice was full of fury, and his neck flushed. So much for self-control.

 Still, it had given me a split moment in which to think. Huldra had spoken of the Oracle. I remembered my first meeting with the Oracle. It had been angry at the Basilisks. Angry enough to steal the Dagger from them. The Dagger the Oracle itself had created and given them long before. And the Oracle had set that Dagger in my hands. Playing with me. Well, let the play go on!

 I was standing behind Peter, slightly to his left, holding his left hand in my right. Keeping his hand fast between our bodies, I slipped my hand into the slit in my pocket and pulled the Dagger of Daggerhawk from its scabbard strapped to my thigh. He knew what it was when I pressed it into his palm. I hoped he understood why I gave it to him. He had no art with which to fight Huldra. I could not fight Dedrina and use the art at the same time. He would have to do it for me. His anger would make the Dagger lethal.

 Huldra made an imperious gesture, turning our faces toward hers as she stared at us with voracious eyes. “Let me tell you what is in store for you. For you, Jinian, the Basilisk’s claws and the long, slow dying they bring while the flesh falls away from filthy wounds that no Healer can help,” she sneered, mocking, drawing her hands up and down in a pantomime of raking claws. “And for Peter, a thousand years or so of sleep, to lie paralyzed, motionless, like ice in these caverns among those of the hundred thousand who remain here today, For when we have done with you, we will do with the caverns, not for the sake of the giants, but for our own amusement. . . .”

 I heard her. I knew she would have that paralysis spell ready for immediate use. I would have had, in her shoes. Just as I had The Net of Enlees, which the other six Wize-ards had insisted be set upon me, invocable with one word. And the paralysis spell might not be the only one!

 It was well I was thinking of preset spells. Dedrina was scratching at the floor, and my eyes wanted to watch her, but Murzy’s words of warning rang in my head. Peter would have to take care of Dedrina. I stared hard at Huldra, catching the gesture of binding before it was half-made. No, the paralysis spell hadn’t been the only one.

 “———” I shouted, seeing for an instant a green net of fire fall around me. I wasn’t even sure it had worked, but Huldra was. She screamed in fury, then turned to make the same gesture at Peter. If she couldn’t bind me, she would paralyze him, eliminating at least one possible opponent. I couldn’t let her do that. Peter was backed against a wall, the Dagger in one hand. The sleeves of that stupid robe were too long for him. They covered the hilt of the Dagger. Ridiculously, I wanted to laugh. The Basilisk literally did not know what weapon she faced, but I had no time to gloat over that.

 Instead, I bowled a ball of Witch fire at Huldra’s head. She threw up a hand to ward it away, breaking the gesture she had aimed at Peter, twisting it to send a knot of boiling black cloud at my face, spitting lightning. I ducked and came up with a water spell half-done, completing it with a quick whirl to my left. As I came around, I saw Peter lunge at Dedrina, missing her by a finger width, then saw Huldra again, soaking wet. It hadn’t been a very good water spell. I’d really wanted to drown her.

 There weren’t all that many things that could be done without paraphernalia! Missiles of various kinds. Fire, water, earth. Earth. I muttered a quick buried-in-earth spell, then changed it to water halfway. I was hoping for quicksand, but the best I got was a mud puddle. Still, she was in it up to her neck.

 And out of it just as quickly, both hands weaving, weaving. What was she up to? I muttered ice at her, under her feet, and saw the weaving change frantically to a grope for the wall as she slipped and lost her balance. Screams from my right. Don’t look. If Peter’s dead, he’s dead, but don’t look!

 I couldn’t help myself. One quick glance. Peter was still on his feet. I couldn’t tell about Dedrina. Back to Huldra, too late. Something slimy plastered itself over my eyes.

 I gargled out the water spell once again, receiving a deluge. That washed the sliminess away but left me floundering. Something was happening at the top of the cave. I couldn’t look up. Dedrina screamed. I remembered the sound of that kind of scream, that kind of breathless agony with a note of terrible surprise in it. So Dedrina-Lucir had sounded when she had been touched by the Dagger. If Peter had touched Dreadeve, if he had been angry when he touched her, then she was dead. Dead and gone. And he had been angry enough, I knew.

 Huldra turned, confused only for a moment by what she saw, then those hands came out toward Peter and I saw her mouth open, knowing verv well she would cry one word and one word only. The thousand-year spell, aimed at Peter. A thousand-year death. Aimed at Peter. I lunged forward, to be between her and him when the word was spoken, slipped fell, rolled . . .

 . . . To look up and see the ceiling fall around her, a great basket of rock, what looked like rock.

 “——-” Huldra cried.

 I heard Peter calling, “No, oh, no, oh,no . . . .”

 Then I smashed into the wall with my head.

 When I came to myself, the others of the seven were there. Way off, somewhere, I could hear weeping. Peter. So he was alive.

 Hands tried to hold me down, but I fought my way up from the place they’d put me and followed the sound of weeping.

 He was there. Knelt down, bowed down, his head on his hands, crying. Before him on the cavern floor lay Mavin, young looking, as though she were asleep, her mouth slightly tilted in surprise. Mavin. Pale and hard as stone.

 She had dropped upon Huldra just as the word of enchantment had been uttered. She had contained the word, received it, been ensorcelled by it.

 All I could do was sit there beside Peter and hold his hand. The tears ran as though they would never stop, as though they came from some inexhaustible store. After many hours, someone went away and came back with someone else. A tall woman, taller than any woman I had ever seen, with a cloud of black, black hair and eyes like jet. She placed her hand on Peter’s shoulder, closed her eves for a time, then shook her head.

 “He is only grieving,” she said. “And I cannot cure grief.” I knew then it was Mind Healer Tallev, that they had found her and raised her up at last. She gave me a long, strange look, then went away. Later they told me she had gone north, toward the Great Maze.

 While I sat there, Mertyn led the Immutables into Huldra’s camp in a fury of revenge and anger. Her Gamesmen, bereft of their Talents, he placed under Game bond and then released. A few he even recruited and sent southwest, toward the ruins of the Old South Road City. More than a few he killed for reasons of his own, which may have had something to do with several of them calling him “Shifter kin” in a certain tone of voice.

 Riddle had found an Immutable woman to care for Bryan.

 And the work of resurrection went on in the caverns while Peter wept and I sat there urging him to have a little tea, or broth, or a bit of bread, to all of which he shook his head while the tears flowed endlessly down.

 I didn’t cry then. Later, I cried. But not then.

 When Mertyn and the seven had done everything they could at the caverns, we set out ourselves, down past the Blot toward the south, then following the coast to Hawsport, then up the Haws to Zebit, into the hills, and to the Willowater, almost the route we seven had thought of long and long ago.

 We had wagons, now—enough to hold the turnips without crowding. And we had horses. Huldra had been well supplied, and we had all her beasts and equipage. She, the Witch, had been crushed beneath Mavin’s huge body, that body which had taken the full brunt of the enchantment. There was little enough of Huldra left to bury, but we put what there was into a pit with the Basilisk. I had been too late to save Peter; but Mavin had been in time. I knew she would have done the same even if she had known what would happen. This did not comfort me. I did not mention it to Peter. It would not have comforted him.

 It did comfort me, perhaps foolishly, that Mavin was in her own shape. Peter said her own shape had come upon her when Riddle arrived. I would have hated to think of her lying for some thousand years as a twisted, stony thing. Her body was in one of the wagons, close-wrapped in linen clothes. It was not possible to bury it, her. She looked too much alive, as though she might waken at any moment. I went to Murzy and Cat, begging them to undo Huldra’s spell, but they shook their heads at me.

 “We have already laid Sleep Brings a Darkening upon her, Jinian. She does not know what is happening. She is not condemned to be conscious for the thousand years which was the fate Huldra planned. She truly sleeps, without dreams. But the paralysis—that was a spell bought with lifeblood, Jinian. As was most everything Huldra did. To undo it would take the same, and not by any willing sacrifice, either, for part of the power would be lost if life were freely given. And it is the law of the art, as you know well, that causes beget causes. A thing ill done to waken Mavin would follow her like a curse afterward. As all the things Huldra did followed her to her end. It was Huldra’s fate to be killed by her own enchantments. No, child. There’s nothing we can do.”

 There was nothing we could do. Peter went several times each day to the wagon in which her body lay. As did Mertyn, weeping. As did I. As did most of us. And there was nothing we could do.

 14
OLD SOUTH ROAD CITY

 We came to the southern height above the Old South Road City at the end of a journey full of threats and hesitations, much of it through dead forests and across bare, ashen slopes that looked like lands long abandoned by life. Just finding food for ourselves had been a great problem. There were other groups than ours traveling the desolation. Refugees from one place or another clotted the roads and got in one another’s way, some moving west toward the sea, others moving inland away from the sea’s threat. There was talk of monsters from the deep; there were many dead from the yellow crystals; we were attacked several times and had to use the art.

 Sometimes we had surprised great globs of shadow lying in hollows. Sometimes we found a way around; sometimes the shadows rose like a monstrous flight of vicious birds to hover above us while we cowered in the wagons. Once there was no other way for the wagons to go, and the shadow-eaters jigged on their root hairs to the edges of the patch, sucking the dark monsters up with their roots, moving inward as they went, until at last the high-piled central shadows lifted and went away, a sinuous dark line upon the sky, as though going off to report what had happened.

 We lost two watchmen. Though we heard nothing in the night, we woke to one gone the first night, one gone the second. The third night we began to sleep close together, a thick line of the shadow-eaters outside the watchmen’s posts, and after that we lost no more.

 Despite all this, we lost very little time, coming to the heights north of Old South Road City in a season that should have been bright and pleasant but was, in fact, chill and dismal beneath a leaden sky. I looked down into the city itself with a cry of dismay. Only after staring at it for some time could I see it had not actually suffered since I had visited it as a child. Then it had been tumbled but almost covered with a greenery that made it appear relatively whole. Now it was uncovered, all its shattered parts, its fractures and splinters, laid bare. Gamesmen sent from the caverns swarmed along its streets and among the piled stone, working beside pawns as though there were no difference between them.

 Actually, much work had been done. I began to see it as we rode down the hill. Stones had been assembled in orderly stacks near the buildings they were to go into. Walls were being rebuilt. Pawns heaved at pulleys while Tragamors heaved with Talent, and the stones slid home. The street we reached at the bottom of the hill was virtually clear for much of its length, and the facades of the buildings on either side looked largely finished. A weary-looking Tragamor came toward us, holding out a hand to Mertyn.

 “Dodir, Tragamor,” he said. “Called Dodir of the Seven Hands. And I wish it were true!”

 “Mertyn, King,” Peter’s thalan said, introducing all the rest of us in our turn. “There is a large troop behind us to bring you assistance, Dodir. And we bring something more valuable even than that—shadow-eaters.” He pointed to the turnips, thronging in their wagons. “Can we have a council to tell us your situation?”

 “Well, as to that,” replied Dodir, staring curiously at the turnips, “I can tell you our situation in few words. We’ve made some progress, as you can see, but the heart has gone out of the Gamesmen. Often the Talent fails. There are times even the power fails. The Wizard Himaggery arrived. . . .”

 “Himaggery! Here already,” exclaimed Peter in a voice of hurt urgency. I knew what he was thinking. Himaggery didn’t know about Mavin yet, and it would be Peter’s place to tell him.

 “He arrived two days ago, and he is attempting to set up a relay of power from the Bright Demesne, which he says may help our situation.”

 “He did that at least once before,” said Peter. “Long ago. At Bannerwell.”

 “Well, we wish good luck to him. Unless he succeeds, I don’t know what will put heart into the workers. We start each day with a plan in mind, but by noon we have drifted into despair once more. It’s the shadows. Everyone says so. They lie around us like leeches, sucking up our hope.”

 I thought of Mind Healer Talley, wondering if she had found some key to the Maze, some clue to Lom’s mind, anything that would relieve this depression. Seemingly not. I could feel it trying to swallow me, and Dodir was obviously fighting it, for he breathed heavily as he went on.

 “Additionally, we’ve had some trouble with the blind runners. They didn’t want to give up their city, and we’ve had to run them off by force. They keep coming back. We’re trying not to hurt any of them, but it’s getting difficult as they’re getting more frantic with each passing day.

 “And as for what’s been done, well, look around you. We’ve found almost all the Bell. The pieces were more or less in one place, under the ruined Tower. Most of the stones are sorted out—many of them by plain muscle when Talent wouldn’t work—and as soon as we can get the power situation worked out, we should move very rapidly.”

 “The Tower,” I breathed. “The stones for the Tower of the Daylight Bell? You found them?”

 Dodir nodded. “Found them. Yes. Broken, many of them. We’ll need stone cutters to replace them.”

 “They fell from a great height,” said Peter in a dull voice. It was unlike him. He had been unlike himself since the thing had happened to Mavin. He had not even looked at me, not touched me. It was as though he had shut me away, and it had gone on far too long. I had let him alone, respecting his grief, but this was too much.

 “Did you find a lamp?” I asked. “It would have been under the ruined Tower. A silver lamp? And a book?” I was, quite frankly, thinking of the prophecy I had heard long since. “The Wizard holds the book, the Bell, the light. . . .” Which Wizard it might be, I couldn’t guess. I wasn’t even sure it was the right book and light, though the Bell part seemed self-evident.

 Dodir shook his head. “Such things would have been crushed flat. However, we’ve not entirely cleared the place, and it may yet turn up.”

 “Where would we find Himaggery?” I asked. If telling Himaggery what had happened was part of what was eating at Peter, better have it over with.

 Dodir pointed the way, through the city and up the slope at the other side toward what had been a grassy hill. “There’s a stream there, lady, and Himaggery’s made camp, but he may be off to the east somewhere, overseeing that power system of his. He says the area around Lake Yost is yet untouched by the world’s malady. I hope he is right.”

 We started to ride away, and he called after us, “And if these things of yours do indeed eat shadows, we will need them tonight.”

 “You have shadow down in the city here?”

 “From dusk to dawn. As though scouting for someone. Shadow, and strange shapes upon the hills, like nothing I have seen before. Things with painted faces and ribbons.”

 I’m sure he could read in our faces that this was evil news. Somehow we had hoped, senselessly perhaps, that the Oracle and all its followers were back in the Maze, kept busy by Ganver and its kin, and that we would not have to confront them. Now it seemed that hope was false, and it was with a sense of fatalistic despair that I nodded at Dodir and took the reins from Peter’s hands.

 “I’ll send someone to show you where the shadows come,” he called behind us. I waved but did not answer.

 As for Peter, he was slumped beside me as though he did not hear or see, looking into his folded hands as though he held everything there, everything that mattered. Or perhaps he looked on an emptiness in which nothing mattered. We went on through the ruined city, the other wagons following behind, Mertyn standing tall on the wagon seat to see that all of them were there. Behind us we heard Dodir call out, “All right. Enough of this lying about. Let’s have the first crew over here!” Then a crash of rock, an aching screech, as heavy stones shifted into place.

 The farther we went, the more obvious the progress. They had started at the south side of the city. They had not even begun on the Tower, however. I looked down the avenue where it should have stood to see only piles of crumbled stone. Peter was right; it had fallen from a great height.

 We came up to Himaggery’s camp. Someone had called him. He came rushing out, full of wide smiles, grasping me by the hand, Peter by the hand, rushing on to meet Mertyn, not stopping to look, to see. I saw Peter’s fingers, wet with tears again.

 Enough of it. I had had enough of it. Chimmerdong had taught me that one cannot lie about in these moods, not even in grief. One must go on. I went to Himaggery and demanded he come with me into his tent, telling him I must speak to him privately. Mertyn shook his head at me warningly, but I ignored him, tugging Himaggery back as he had come, he half-irritated, half jocular. When I had him inside, I said baldly, without any attempt at tact, “Mavin saved Peter’s life, Himaggery. She died. I’m sorry. . . .” And all the old gods knew I was.

 He was angry. He accused me of making a bad joke. He accused me of pretending for some Wizardly purpose of my own. When he had said all the unforgettably forgivable things people do say in these circumstances, when he had said them several times over, he apologized to me, came down to his own feelings, and cried out her name very loudly two or three times as though his heart were broken.

 I told him while he wept. “Huldra had the spell ready, Himaggery. She had to utter only one word. She turned on Peter. I doubt that Mavin even knew what was about to happen. She had gained bulk from somewhere—there were some stores in the room, back behind the pillars—and then climbed across the ceiling of the room to get above the Witch. Huldra had taken time to mock us. She had taken too long at it, enjoying it. Mavin simply dropped over Huldra like some great basket. Mavin had been doing that a lot lately, basketing Bryan, basketing the Oracles outside the Bright Demesne. She caught the spell as it was uttered. It turned her to stone. The stone crushed Huldra. Then, when Riddle came, the stony form fell away and she lay there in her own shape, still as ice. . . .”

 Sometime during this tale, Peter came in. They hugged each other awkwardly, the way men do who have not been accustomed to showing affection. Then they went out to see her, leaving me there. Murzy came in with a glass of something very warming, which half untied the cold knots of my heart. “What is it?” I asked, pointing at the cup.

 “Bitter Tears Falling,” she said. “We cannot cure grief, but we can postpone it and must. There is too much to do.”

 When I had drunk the wize-art brew, I let her lead me away to the place our own tents were being pitched.

 “They’ll not be thinking of anything tonight, child, and someone must. I’ve been asking about, and the shadows are coming through here and there, picking off a Gamesman or two every night. It’s not contributing to morale.”

 I sighed from weariness. “Dodir said he’d send someone who knows where they come from. Has he done so, Murzy?”

 She pointed over her shoulder at a meek-looking little Elator, all neat thin bones and slim small feet with a narrow bird face at the top of it all. “They call me Little Flitch, ma’am.” He bowed. “Dodir put me to scouting out the shadow routes, and I’ll venture I’ve spotted most of them.”

 Which I think he had. I got three or four of the men to drive the wagon with me, and we went around the city sunwise, left to right, up and over, while he showed us every pass over the surrounding hills and hole through the stone escarpments while the turnips became almost hysterical with anticipation. The last two we had left were Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, and these two planted themselves at a saddle of the hills after several sexy little minuets and suggestive remarks. Little Flitch was very taken with the whole group; he said he’d flick among them in the dark hours, keeping them apprised of what happened.

 And after that, I really couldn’t stay awake. I thought of Peter and Himaggery, probably drinking themselves silly beside the fire, and couldn’t find it in me to go to them or try to help them. I couldn’t. I had hardly known Mavin, and yet every time I thought of it, it made me want to die from sorrow and shame.

 Why? Because . . . because if anyone understood the true meaning of the star-eye, it had probably been Mavin. How did I know? I simply knew. It was in her face. If anyone had been free, it had been she. If anyone had followed their own unerring choice as to the reality of what was good, it had been Mavin. She had had her sorrows, too, and her joys, but she had never blamed anyone else for either. She had not been sentimental. I had envied her. I thought of me drudging away there in Chimmerdong, doing my blasted duty for all I was worth, and I envied Mavin. I was still doing my duty and still envying her. She shouldn’t have done it.

 But then, if she hadn’t, Peter would be lying in her place now. And perhaps that was most grievous of all, that tiny chill of joy that it had not been Peter.

 And perhaps that is what was bothering him, too. Perhaps he, too, had that tiny joyful pulse that it had not been he. Oh, grievous indeed. Sighing, I left my bed and went to find them. They were drunkenly telling Mavin stories beside the fire. I sat and drank with them until the fire went out, then wrapped Himaggery and Peter warmly in blankets against the cold and staggered back to my own bed. “Mavin,” I whispered to the night. “I’m still doing my duty, lady. And those you loved are safe. At least for now.”

 Morning came. Little Flitch made the rounds of the turnips and came back to say they had grown during the night. I went to see for myself. When I had first met Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, they had been about the size of my head. They had grown some on the trip, not a lot, for we were constantly moving and there was little time to root and feed. This morning they looked doubled in size, quirkier than ever, full of volatile good humor that could turn in a moment into malicious games.

 “Oh, Jinian, lots of shadows. Lots of thick ones, all full of juices.” So Molly-my-dear addressed me, jigging heavily upon her root hairs. “Fat, so fat, like a moon, like the sun, I am glorious, so glorious.” She began to swing on my trouser bottom, laughing like a maniac.

 “Isn’t she beautiful,” giggled Big-blue. “Like a great waterox cow, she is, bigger than big. And the seeds, you know”—giggle, nudge—”they’reready! “

 I didn’t know what to make of this. No such slowness on the part of Little Flitch, however, who begged them with every show of sincerity to give him their seeds, all of them, to be planted at once.

 “That’s good,” said Big-blue. “If there had been many more shadows, we couldn’t have eaten them all. We need more of us, Jinian. Little Flitch can have the seed.”

 “But surely,” I said, “they won’t grow in time to-” I didn’t finish, ashamed of myself. I had forgotten I was a Wize-ard. There was a spell. Of course. Hatching to Follow. A spell to make things come to fruition very quickly. They rolled about, laughing, seeming to read my mind.

 “Oh, You Wizardly ones, so silly,” said Molly-my-dear. “Gardener knows how to do that. He does it all the time. You or him, makes no never mind.”

 And so was our morning spent, Little Flitch’s and mine, in planting turnip seed. These two had not been the only onesready, and by noon there were vast tracts of fertile soil scratched and sewn and spells muttered over. Fronds of green were showing by afternoon.

 And at noon Peter and Himaggery emerged from their tent, physically somewhat the worse for the late and spirituous vigil they had held, but otherwise the better for it. And Peter came to me.

 “We’re taking Mavin down to the Tower. When the Tower is raised again, we will build a catafalque for her there. Until then, it is a good place for her to lie.” He was silent then awhile, staring out with bleak eyes at the ruined city. “During the trip here, I thought it might be better to give it up. Better not to love anyone than to feel like that when they go. Better just shut all the feeling down. I really did think that, Jinian. I was even trying to do it. And I felt so guilty. She had wanted just to hold me for a time when I escaped, just for a moment or two, but I was in such a fever to get to you. I felt I didn’t deserve to live.”

 So that had been it. Guilt, simple guilt, over a boyish—no, a human failing. I leaned against him, put my arms tight around him as he went on.

 “I told Himaggery. He said it was a natural feeling, but silly. He wouldn’t trade his pain now for his joy then—back when he and Mavin were lovers—so he says. And I mustn’t, either. So. I won’t. And I think—well, I think we must take whatever time for love we have, and the time of your oath must be about done.”

 “It will be soon,” I said, wiping several tears away surreptitiously. “Murzy says the time is probably already past.” Then I made myself get busy with something else or I would not have done anything all that day but cry.

 We made a ceremony for Mavin. There had been no time back at the caverns. We lit candles. We placed her upon a temporary catafalque, one great stone that Dodir and several of the other Tragamors had moved beside the empty pool in the ruined Tower. I longed for music, but there was none. Most of the Gamesmen of Barish were there. Barish-Windlow, Hafnor, Wafnor, and Shattnir were away east, setting up the power transmission from the Bright Demesne. Trandilar was there. She wept. I kept my eves away from Dorn the Necromancer, knowing Peter was struggling in the same way. Dorn could Raise up the dead. But Mavin was not dead. And yet she was. For a thousand years dead.

 Beedie and Roges were there. When the ceremony was done, they bid me good-bye before setting out to return over the sea. “It may be we will never come to the chasm alive again,” Beedie said. “Never see the children again. If you fail in what you are doing here, then all will fail. I know that. Sometimes I wish we had not come. . . .”

 “Beed,” said Roges. “You don’t mean that.”

 “Well, and no, I don’t,” she confessed. “Mavin was my friend. She saved my life and the lives of many in the chasm. It was she brought Roges and me together. No. I would have come. But it is a sad thing, nonetheless.”

 I agreed with her it was a sad thing, then let them go, setting such spells of protection on them as I could, and thinking it was wise of them to get out of the city while they still could.

 Vitior Vulpas Queynt was there. When I had told him about the Oracle and its followers, about Ganver and the other Eesties, he had flushed with anger.“Evil,” he muttered at me. “What we did, what men did, was heedless and stupid, but what they do is purposefully evil.” At the ceremony he was grim-faced and said nothing.

 Chance was there, of course, close beside Peter, offering his shoulder and his strong arm. Mertyn and Himaggery were both good, strong men, but I loved Chance.

 When it was over, I stood looking around at the shattered stones of the floor and remembering the lamp. I had fallen over it in memory, kicking it into that corner. A large stone lay there. Finding me tugging at it, Dodir asked if he could help me, and when he moved it away the lamp was there, flattened but whole.

 “Ganver said the Tower was a gift from Lom which contained three treasures,” I told him. “The Bell, the book—by which he meant the music—and the lamp. Here is the lamp. Can it be repaired?”

 He looked at it doubtfully. I knew they had recruited smiths among the laborers and said something to that effect. Shaking his head over it, he took it away. When I went to see Mavin the next day, the lamp stood upon its pedestal, and I could not even see where it had been mended. It glowed dimly from a candle burning within it. I wondered how the lambent light that had come from it in times past might be restored.

 The metalworkers had set up their foundry just outside the Tower walls. There an artist had labored over the fragments of the Bell, piecing them together. Now it was complete, he told me, he was making a mold from it. Then he would smooth all the broken places in the mold itself so the Bell, when melted and recast, would be as perfect as it once had been.

 “You were lucky to find it all,” I murmured, lost in admiration for what would have seemed to me a hopeless task.

 “Not quite all of it,” he complained. “Here on the rim is a line of writing, or symbols, perhaps. There is a nick. One small piece we cannot find. Perhaps one symbol or letter upon it, and no way of knowing what it was.”

 I stared at the line of symbols, strangely evocative, as though I might once have known their meaning. As an Eesty I would have known what they meant, but my Talent for understanding speech did not extend to writing. “Perhaps the piece will turn up. The Tower floor isn’t completely cleared yet.”

 He nodded gravely, going on with his work. “We can’t wait,” he said. “We must try to cast it soon, while there is still enough life in us to do so.”

 And it was true. Life burned low in all of us. There were no smiles, no laughter. If it had not been for the turnips, we would have wept our way into silence. We were calm, too calm. Only the antics of the shadow-eaters kept us moving, irritated but alive.

 We had three laborious days after that during which no attacks came. On the fourth day came an Elator to tell us of an assault of the blind runners, those who had lived in the city before we came. We seven went to the outskirts and waited for them. They had befriended me when I was a child. I thought it might be possible to talk to them. Which it might have been, had they not come hooded and blind and unhearing, running on the road itself, naked as eggs. We did the only thing we could; both Night Will Come Turning and Silence and Shadow, the two spells reinforcing one another and both invoked on all of them, leaving them sleeping in heaps by the roadside.

 “How long?” I asked Murzy, for it had seemed the night spell had been done with a twist to put a very long sleep upon them.

 “Until someone wins this battle,” she said flatly. “Us or the shadow. Until Lom lives or dies. If Lom dies, they are better off asleep.”

 It was the first time anyone had said we were near that time. We had all known it, but it was the first time anyone had said it.

 Back at the camp we met Barish-Windlow and the Gamesmen who had been with him. The linkage to the Bright Demesne was complete. “Though how it will stand up under assault, I cannot say,” Barish-Windlow commented wearily. Then he looked at me, and I knew it was Windlow seeing me, for he said in a quiet, old-sounding voice, “You know, Jinian, long ago I saw a happy future for Peter. I knew that was a true vision.” And I knew he was trying to cheer me.

 That day the eye of the storm moved over us and was the last of our calm.

 Toward evening two Elators arrived almost simultaneously at Dodir’s tent. Peter and I happened to be there.

 “There are forms massing in the hills,” they told us. This was more ominous, in that they had come from opposite sides of the city. We were surrounded. When I questioned them, they identified what they had seen. Shadow forms, and more shadow forms. Shadows taking the forms of beasts and monsters. Shadows building themselves into siege towers. And with the shadows, those of the Oracle’s Brotherhood, hundreds of them, flapping among them in their ribbons and painted faces like great bats.

 Peter and I went among the turnips. Each large one now had a train of fifty or so tiny ones at its—I was going to say heels. At its roots, I suppose one should say. The tiny ones spoke in sparrow voices, shrill and twittering, and were no less mischievous than the big ones. We surrounded the city with a thin line of them, wishing there had been more seed. They called to one another, mocking the shadow, burying themselves, then digging themselves up again to wander about and find neighbors more to their liking. Five or six times Peter and I and Little Flitch went around the lines, straightening them out, begging them to fill holes, at which they jeered and mocked, coming out of the soil to hang on my trouser bottoms and the ends of my sash, swinging madly and screaming at one another.

 Then, when we had done with the turnips what we could, the seven began its work together with Himaggery and Queynt. Nine of us Wize-ards—Wizards, trying to dam a flood or block a hurricane. We set spells and protections and traps, trying to feel they would apply to shadows, though we had no idea whether shadows were subject to the art or not. We were not sanguine about our future.

 Down in the city, however, Sorcerers were storing power from the Demesne linkage. It was as though new blood had run into the city. The depression lifted somewhat. The workers felt more energetic. If the city was a focus of infection (as one of the Healers said), then the Bright Demesne was a healthy body that fought that infection.

 At evening we went up to the hills, all of us Wize-ards, and Peter, and all the Great Gamesmen who could take time from their tasks in the city. As darkness began to fall, came the first assault.

 We saw it as a low, breaking wave upon the hills, flowing toward us, dark under the emerging stars and the light of the half-made moon overhead. Upon the wave, the Oracle’s brethren danced, ribbons fluttering, fantastic silhouettes against the sky. They howled as they came, not loudly, so that first we thought it was only our blood singing in our ears. Even the howling was mockery, war cries but in treble—ironical tones, odd words stressed. We were to have no dignity in this battle. They would mock us into the jaws of hell, and I wondered, not for the first time, what they would do with themselves when Lom was dead. I wondered if they were all as insane as the Oracle itself, busy feasting upon our deaths when our deaths meant their own, mad for destruction, avid with hate.

 We had set fire spells upon the closest rim of hills, fires that blazed forth in fountains of white sparks when the shadows came near. Their structures broke before these jets of flame, broke and flowed around and reassembled again. We had set traps within the valley, triggered when the shadow came near, and these, too, were tripped when the shadow neared, broke, flowed out and around and on.

 “So much for that,” murmured Murzy. “I hadn’t thought it would work, but it was worth a try.”

 “Where do you think Ganver is?” Peter asked me. “Why isn’t Ganver here?”

 “Because,” I said, counting the possibilities off on my fingers, “Ganver is in the Maze, recalling better times to Lom. Or Ganver has gone back to the grave, to die there. Or Ganver is meeting with others of his kind and they have reached no agreement. Or Ganver has been found by Mind Healer Talley and is being used as a guide. I am as perplexed as you are about Ganver, Peter, and oh, I wish Ganver had acted against the Oracle long and long ago.” I knew in my heart why it had not. I could not find it in me to blame the old Eesty too much, even now.

 The shadow came on, tickling at us, advancing a little, then retreating, the Oracle’s followers dancing along, watching every movement, continuing their whooping and calling, yip-yip-yip, a high, teasing call.

 “I wonder if I could Beguile them,” said Trandilar from my side. “Beguile the shadow?”

 Cat shook her head. “No. There is nothing there to be Beguiled, great Queen. Can one Beguile nothingness?”

 Then they reached the line of turnips. Now, for the first time, they were slowed by something. The shadow-eaters began to suck them up, making a keening noise as they did so. The Oracles leaped and danced, calling words of encouragement to the shadow, piling it higher, higher and higher. . . .

 “By the old gods,” Murzv gasped, “the shadow’s burying the creatures.”

 It was true. The shadow piled around them, over them, making great lumps and protrusions of black over which the further shadow flowed as over some hilly road. We stood below them now, and nothing stood between them and us.

 Then the bell sound.

 For a moment I thought it truly was the Bell. For a moment I forgot we had not cast the Daylight Bell. For a moment I believed in miracles. Then I saw it was Peter, Peter Shifted into a great, brazen shape and donging out the sound, so near to the real sound I could not tell the difference.

 And the shadow fled, fled away from the shadow-eaters, away from the dancing Oracles, leaving them upon the hillside still prancing, still leaping, under the pale cold light of the growing moon. And another sound under the bell sound.

 Laughter.

 The Oracle, high upon the hillside, laughing.

 “Oh, verypretty, “ it called to us in a voice of whetted steel. “Veryclever, little Shifter man. And it will work, once. Perhaps even twice. But not more than that.

 “And we will be back, loves. Wewill be back!”

 * * * *

 We stumbled down into the camp, exhausted. Behind us the line of shadow-eaters lifted a shrill complaint into the dark.

 “We can’t hold them away from the city,” said Dodir.

 “No,” Murzy agreed. “We can’t hold them. The shadows left when Peter made the bell sound, but only because it suited the Oracles to let them leave. The Oracles are playing with us.”

 In the foundry the furnace glowed red, a strong, ruddy glow that brought us toward it like bait, as though we hungered for honest fire. “How long?” asked Himaggery.

 “We’ll pour at dawn,” said the foundryman, his eyes distant and possessed of some vision. I knew at once he was right. The Daylight Bell must be cast at dawn. Beside him the great cauldron seethed, ruddy now, lightening as it grew hotter. “We found all but the one piece, but some of the metal will stick to the sides of the crucible. There won’t be enough to fill the mold. We have to have more metal.”

 Trandilar took off her bracelets, dropping them into the crucible. Murzy looked long upon the glowing metal, then she took the pool fragment from her locket and dropped it in. The others did the same. Except for me.

 I stood there, hypnotized, drawn into the glowing surface of the metal. It wanted something else, more. Pool fragments, yes. Bracelets, yes.

 I reached into the neck of my blouse and drew out the star-eye pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me all those years ago. The most precious thing I had, really. Next to life and Peter. With death so close, precious things could not be kept. I dropped it onto the surface of the molten metal and it lay there, shining with a light brighter than the sun. I had to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, it had vanished, melted.

 “For luck,” I said, and the foundryman smiled, taking note of the level of the metal.

 “Enough,” he whispered. “Barely enough.”

 “The star-eye held a power you might have used,” said Cat, not belligerently but matter-of-fact.

 I shook my head at her. “I have not understood the lessons Ganver tried to teach me, Cat. If I had understood those lessons, I could have used their power without the amulet. In the cavern of the giants, the Oracle mocked me, saying the star-eye was only a sign, a symbol. In saying that about the pendant, it was right. The true meaning of it is more than that, but I do not understand it any more than the Oracle did.”

 It was warm there. The others wandered away. Peter still stood by me in the light of the furnace. After a time he led me back into the ruined Tower, against the wall which the furnace had warmed from the other side. There was no one else there. From beyond the wall we could hear the muffled voices of the workers pumping the bellows and putting fuel onto the fire. Across the pool, Mavin’s profile stared upward at the moon. In that strange light, she appeared to be smiling. Peter was wearing a great, heavy cloak, and he spread it on the smooth floor against the warm wall near the pedestal with the lamp. We lay down upon it, covering ourselves with my own cloak, and he turned my face toward him for a kiss.

 Before he kissed me I would have said we were too weary for feeling. After he kissed me there was nothing else but feeling.

 Peter came to his skin much more easily than I. He merely Shifted the clothing away. I, bound about by laces and thongs and ties and belts, came to it more gradually. Still, it was not long until we lay skin to skin between the warm cloaks, forgetting where we were, not hearing the workmen from behind the wall, not seeing the cold moon staring from the sky top. My oath was over, that day or some previous day, but over.

 But I did not think of that. Nor of the shadows. Those thoughts teased at the edges of my mind, but Peter drove them away. There were his hands upon me, gentle and inexorable. His strong, velvet-skinned legs moving against mine. A sweetness between us, down the whole length of us, like a pouring of honey, and him sliding into me as though a hand into a glove. . . .

 A Shifter. Until that moment I had not understood the lovemaking implications of that. Human bodies are designed for many things, love-making among them, but there are elbows and knees and awkwardnesses.

 But with a Shifter there is—there is nothing left undone. There can be no awkwardness. When a Shifter loves, he . . . he Shifts to a shape for that alone. There is no part left uninvolved. There is—

 There is what we had.

 When I opened my eyes, the moon had moved from the top of the sky. Beside us on the pedestal the lamp glowed with its own light, softly lambent, and I knew it had drawn from us a light that could not be dimmed, as it had drawn a light from the city in times long past. Dawn crept into the east. On the far side of the wall the men called encouragement to one another, and we heard the long, falling hiss of molten metal flowing into the Bell mold.

 And as I lay there looking into Peter’s eyes, I understood what it was Ganver had been trying to teach me. It did, yes, have something to do with lovemaking. What was it Ganver had called it,“A following of perfection.”

 “How long before we can use the Bell?” I asked.

 He shook his head, stroking my hair back from my forehead. “A day or more, I think, Jinian love. It must cool.” And then he laughed. “As I think I must.”

 “Not for a day or more, surely.” I pressed mymouth into the hollow of his throat.

 “Not that long, no.”

 I did not explain. The night would come soon enough. I would have to use what I thought I understood then, but I said nothing about it, merely smiling up at Peter in anticipation of what he might do next.

 Which was a surprise, for he suggested breakfast.

 Along about midmorning, I left him and went with the rest of the seven to the hills. Everyone in the city and outside it had been wandering about, brave smiles on their faces, making kind speech to this one and that one, just as I had done. We knew general Wize-ardrv wouldn’t work. We knew the shadow-eaters couldn’t stay the monstrous flow that would come at us. And those who had been shadow bit, like Himaggery and me, had been at some pains to tell others what it was like, leaving it to them whether to face the shadow or take their own lives. Not one of those in the city had suggested flight. Not one Armiger. Not one Elator. Whoever had selected the hundred thousand in that long-ago time had done well.

 “You’ve learned something,” said Cat to me, observing me closely, perhaps noting the little smile I wore.

 “Yes,” I said. “But I won’t talk of it, Cat. It’s too tenuous yet. Too uncertain. It has to do with love and children and parts contained in the whole. It has to do with weeding a garden without destroying the good plants in it. It’s coming, slowly. I’m letting it come.”

 She nodded, not badgering me. Evidently they understood very well what this kind of feeling was, the notion that one knows something but cannot yet put it into words. “I’ll need your help, though. Come night and the Oracle again, I’m going to try the final couplet.”

 “Jinian,” Murzy breathed while Dodie looked white-eyed at me. “Dangerous.”

 “And fatal not to,” I said, still smiling at them all.

 “It can only be used once in a generation,” said Cat in her most pedantic voice.

 “Has it been used in mine?”

 She shook her head at me, pursing her lips. “No. No, Jinian. So far as I know, it hasn’t been used in centuries.”

 I laughed at her, at Murzy. “Then there are many uses stored up to use now. Don’t fret, Murzemire Hornloss, nor you, Cat Candleshy. We will or we won’t, and fretting won’t help either outcome.”

 The things needed to invoke the final couplet were many, varied, involving all of us in a daylong search for this and that. It would have been easier if the land had been alive and verdant. To find certain herbs among the ash and choking smokes, amid the dead trees and fallen branches—that was more difficult than we liked. It was not until after dusk we came back to the city to find the shadow-eaters spread into their circle, not shrilling now, not making any sound, as frightened as the rest of us. It had occurred to them perhaps for the first time that we were all mortal, they and we, that they, too, could be eaten into nothingness. Thus I was not surprised when I crossed their line to hear a soft sound like a tiny growl coming from the ground.

 “Courage,” I whispered. “Perhaps you will have help tonight.”

 We mounted to the hilltop above Himaggery’s camp and began our preparations in a glade beside a fall that came down from the higher mountains beyond. Peter came and sat on the grass behind me.

 “You’ll be more comfortable below,” I told him. “With the others.”

 “I am more comfortable here,” he said. “With you. No matter what comes.

 I shut my mouth, remembering what I had asked him to do for me if the Oracle came too close. Of course he must be here. By me. I went to him and knelt there, my cheek against his. “Is the mold of the Bell cooling?”

 “Not noticeably.” He made a grimace. “The foundrymen say it takes days sometimes. They dare not crack the mold until it is cool.” Then, pulling me close, “Have you seen the lamp?”

 I stood tall to gaze down into the valley. The lamp in the ruined Tower glowed, shone, setting all the broken stones into silver and shade. “Did we do that?”

 “Seemingly. We. Or perhaps Mind Healer Talley. Someone did.”

 “There’s still the Bell and the book,” I said. “The book was long ago eaten by mice, I’m sure. Used by bunwits to line their nests.”

 “It wasn’t really the book,” he said, holding me even closer. “It was the music from the book. The Shadowpeople’s singing.”

 “Jinian,” whispered Sarah Shadowsox.

 “Jinian,” called Margaret Foxmitten from the other side. “Shadow!” He let me go, all at once, knowing he must not detain me. I touched him once more, quickly, then turned to the work. He shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have watched, but it was dark and what difference did it make?

 The shadow was piled higher than before. On its fringes the Oracles danced, their mockery less treble, more angry. They tired of the game. Tonight they would come to finish us, if they could. The thought made me tremble. Peter had a sharp dagger. I had made him promise I would not come into the grip of the Oracle.

 Enough. The things were laid out before me on a rough stone altar. As the shadows drove nearer, lunging upward into towers of dark across the last of the sunset glow, I wove.

 I wove by forest and meadow, branch and leaf. I wove by stream and pool, by river and fall. I wove by cloud and air, by thunder and sunset glow. I wove by depths of the earth, rock and gem, glittering ores and crystals blooming in the dark, old bone and new. Beside me the others wove as well.

 “Forest,” I called. “Chimmerdong. Eutras.”

 “Eutras,” sang Sarah and Bets Battereye.

 “Earthways,” I called. “Gobblemole, Bintomar.”

 “Bintomar,” caroled Dodie, swaying.

 “Wingways,” I called. “Flitchhawk, Favian.”

 “Favian,” intoned Murzy and Cat in antiphony.

 “Waterways,” I called. “D’bor Wife. Shielsas.”

 “Shielsas,” sang Margaret, her voice soaring, reverberating in the cloud-strewn sky, making rings of color that spread outward from her voice, outward from her call, to the farther horizons.

 “And all within sound of my voice or reach of the wind,” I cried, thrusting my voice after hers, like a Sending, like a magic spear, driving it upward. “And all within sound of my voice or lick of the wave, or all within sound of my voice or stretch of the soil, or all within sound of my voice or where green grows and leaf springs up. Named or unnamed, silent or speaking. Let this message be brought,

 “By the Eye of the Star,

 Where Old Gods Are!”

 On the altar stone something blazed up, a quick blue flame, sputtering into silence. Above us our words gathered like a flock of birds, circling, making rings of color on the sky. In the center of that widening gyre something spread great wings.

 “Jinian,” it called down from the height. “Jinian.”

 “I am here,” I cried.

 The earth shuddered beneath us, cracked, opened to admit the gigantic form of the Gobblemole. The fall opened like a curtain and D’bor Wife came forth. Around us the greenery rustled, began to burgeon upward, swallowing us in its depths. Forest. Come again.

 And not only that. It would have been enough, those four. Quite enough. But I had called others as well, the named and unnamed. Those, too, came to the final couplet.

 A thing of great bones. A thing of rock. A thing of gems. A thing of wind. A thing of cloud.

 A quintessence of deserts, hot as molten brass and glowing with sun. A distillation of great groles, monstrous and hungry.

 A songster, multivoiced, crying in the language of the Shadowpeople with a silver flute in its hands.

 These—all these.

 I looked at them, mouth open, forgetting why they had been summoned. Murzy jostled me with her elbow, bringing my attention back to the rough altar before us.

 “Those surrounding us are your enemies,” I said. “The shadow. The Oracles. They come to harm us, but they will also kill you all. I beg help from all the old gods. By the Eye of the Star.”

 “By the Eye of the Star,” they whispered at me, a torrent of sound, like a river in spate. There was one of them—oh, I don’t remember which one. An immensity. Something so huge my senses could not encompass it. It was simply there, before me, around me, asking a simple question in a voice that could no more have been ignored than a lightning stroke could be ignored.

 “Look at me, Star-eye! What do you see?”

 “Bao,” I said, holding on to Murzy’s hand for all I was worth.

 It was replaced by another thing, asking the same question. I made the same reply out of a dry throat, wondering if this was right, if I had guessed aright, or if we would all be swept away. The threatening shadows, the Oracles, they were out there somewhere. I wondered if they saw, if they knew what was happening, then could not wonder any longer, for a third being was around us.

 “What do you see, Star-eye?”

 “Bao.” Bao, yes, to them all. I felt Cat at my shoulder, trembling, proud Cat, trembling like a sapling in storm.

 Then something new. A being there, before us, and with it a smaller version of itself.

 “Look at my child, Star-eye. What do you see?”

 Oh, what could I say? What should I say? I knew, knew the answer I had was right, but to say it. To say it . . .

 “I see love, Great One. I see a following of perfection.”

 “And do you see bao?”

 “No, Great One, neither bao nor its lack. Until time shall show. Watch and learn.”

 Storm then, a wildness of cloud. Dodie crept close to us. We were all seven gathered tight. Somewhere behind us, I could feel Peter’s presence, firm as stone, holding to the earth and waiting. Before us the sky broke and roiled, a being half-seen vanished in its depths to reappear beside us.

 Something green, then. Forest, I think. Chimmerdong. That great being, that old god we had so long invoked under the name of Eutras. It held out its hand—hand. It held out a great promontory of branch and twig and leafy swag, within which rested a flock of silly birds, twittering and hopping about. They did not see me or know me. “What do you see, Star-eye?” it asked.

 “I see bao,” I croaked from a dry throat. “Part of your own, Great One.”

 “In all, or each?” it asked in a great, windy whisper. “In all or each?”

 “In all, Great One.”

 “Will you take one for your supper?” it asked me gently.

 Murzy’s hand tightened on mine. Oh, Murzy. “I will, perhaps, if there are plenty, if you will allow, sometime, though not now.”

 “And if there were not plenty?”

 “I would not, Chimmerdong,” I cried. “I would not. None of us would.”

 And Eutras was gone and all the others, and there was only the mighty Flitchhawk there before us. “Well, Jinian,” it said. “Well, Star-eye.”

 “Well, Flitchhawk,” I said, trying to get enough spit in my mouth to make a sound. “We meet again.”

 “What is your wish, Star-eye? Shall we punish these shadows for you? These Oracles?”

 Oh, tricky Flitchhawk. I heard Peter moving behind me, held up a hand quickly to keep him from speaking, to keep any of them from speaking.

 “The star-eye knows you may not, great Favian. For they have not bao of their own, and punishment would be vicious. We do not punish what cannot learn.”

 “Shall I kill them for you then, Star-eye?”

 “The star-eye knows you may not, Flitchhawk. For the shadows are of the bao of Lom, and the Oracles are of the bao of the Eesties.”

 “Then what may I do for you, Star-eye?”

 “Drive them away for a time, Flitchhawk. If you will. We need time.” Wings then. A thunder of wings, beating down, raising a cloud of choking dust and a heart of storm.

 As usual, we all ended up flattened. Whenever the Flitchhawk flew, everything around it ended up flattened. There was wind, a monstrous, howling wind that moved out from us and away. I saw it thrust the shadows before it like a mighty broom, saw the banks of darkness fade into distance. Most of the Oracle’s followers, as well, tumbled away. Behind them the Oracle stood, untouched, ribbons slapping wildly on the gale. Alone, it could not really harm us all.

 It became very quiet. I heard the Oracle calling, almost laughing at me.

 “Oh, very good, very good. Didn’t we say she is the heroine type? One time, Jinian Footseer. Two times, Jinian Dervish Daughter. Three times, Jinian Star-eve. And the third shall be the last! The old gods will not come to your aid again.”

 I sagged, feeling Peter’s arms around me. Murzy and the others were whispering among themselves.

 “They’ll be back?” Murzy said. It was only half a question. “Oh, yes,” I sobbed. “They’ll be back.”

 15
THE DAGGER OF DAGGERHAWK

 We went down into the windswept morning to find the city swarming with workers. There were sevens scattered among the Gamesmen; there were Gamesmen I had not seen before. Even as we watched, a new troop of them came down the hill into the city, the very last, so they said, from the caverns. So, stones screamed their way into walls; high above the street a crew was lifting rafters into place. For a moment, just a fraction of a breath, I could believe the city was as it had appeared in memory.

 “An Elator came to tell me what happened,” said Dodir. “You’ve driven them away, is that it?”

 “Temporarily,” I said. “Until tonight, perhaps. Not for long.”

 We went on toward the Tower. I noticed the lamp was burning more brightly than it had before. Himaggery was there, sitting by Mavin, stroking her arm. Any honest feeling, it seemed, made it glow the brighter. Though Peter and I had started it glowing, it went on gathering light from everywhere it could. That is the way of the light, to gather, as it is the way of shadow.

 Himaggery rose when we came in. “So, we have yet a little time?” He didn’t sound hopeful, but he wasn’t depressed about it, either. A kind of fatalistic cheer, that was it. A sense that pervaded the city and all of us who were in it.

 “We have yet a little time,” I said. Privately I believed it was our last day to live, but I didn’t say so. It might just have been weariness. There had been little-enough sleep for any of us lately, and there was no point in dispiriting the others.

 We went through the broken walls to the foundry. The foundryman was moving around the mold, looking at it doubtfully. “I thought perhaps it would have cooled,” he said. “An ordinary bell that size would have cooled by now. It’s still hot. Too hot to take out of the mold. I don’t understand it.”

 I shared a glance with Murzy. The Bell had melted into it my star-eye and all our pool fragments dipped in the milky stuff with which crystals came. I mentioned this to the metalworker, seeing his face crease with concentration as Peter’s often did.

 “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know. The quantity was very small, but strange alloys can be made with very small quantities of additives. . . .”

 I put out a hand toward the mold. It was too hot to touch. Far too hot to break open yet. “Perhaps by night,” I said, not believing it. “Undoubtedly by the time the Oracle returns.”

 Peter and I went into the woods together. There was a glade above the camp that was untouched by the sickness of the world, a place where flowers bloomed and trees were still green. We went to have the privacy to say and do what all lovers say and do. I learned again what it is like to be loved by a Shifter. He learned again, so he said, that he loved me. I had had all the best of it and told him so. We argued about that. The day wore on. We ate meat and bread and drank wine. We laughed, even, at some silliness or other. Sun sparkled through the leaves, dappling our bare skins with coins of gold, and we spent them prodigiously on our pleasure. And night came, as we had known it would.

 “I have to go,” I said.

 “Where are you going, Jinian love?”

 “Up there.” I pointed. “The Oracle will come up there.”

 “I’ll come with you.”

 “No.” I pushed him down, fixing him with my fiercest glance. “No, Peter. I have the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne. Though I may not call on the old gods again, there are other beings I may call. If necessary, I will use the Dagger on myself. No. Don’t say anything. It will be easier for me this way.

 “I’ve told Murzy and the others to stay at the Tower. I’m going to call Shadowpeople and send them there. I want you to go to the foundry. The Bell must be cooled by now. It must be! Remember the words of the Seer, Peter? Sorah, so long ago? Upon the Wastes of Bleer. She told us the Wizard had the Bell, the book, the light. There are Wize-ards here in plenty, and we must have all three. The Bell. The light. The singing.”

 “There is no book,” he said stupidly, staring at me as though to memorize me. “No book to sing from.”

 “They have Mavin,” I retorted. “Ask them to sing Mavin’s song. She will be their book.”

 I think he knew it would hurt me if he argued, so he didn’t. I saw him holding on to his self-control as though with both hands. He left me there. Halfway down the hill he turned and stared, remembering to wave, trying not to weep, remembering at last to Shift some clothing for himself, and then he was gone.

 My own clothes lay on the grasses. For this occasion I had decked myself. My gown was blue, girdled and cloaked in green and violet. They were colors Peter liked. I had worn them for him, and for myself. If I must meet death, then it would be well clad, not as some scruffy wanderer. So, these silken, lovely things. I put them on, drawing my hair high and pinning it there with jeweled combs. They had been among Mavin’s things, and Himaggery had wept when he saw them. He had given them to her long ago, before Peter was born. He had told me to take them and wear them in her memory. So I did, saying her name as I slipped them into my hair.

 Then, only then, I laid out the materials for a summons. It was a simple thing. I had barely finished when I heard a trill from among the trees.

 Jinian, “it said.“Here is Proom and Proom’s people for the singing. “ So much for the art. Why had I assumed Proom would not be perfectly aware of what was going on? He had always turned up fortuitously in the past. Why not this time?

 “Will you sing Mavin’s song in the ruined Tower, Proom?”

 “That one. Yes. And another we have, also of Mavin, and of Jinian and Peter, and of Ganver, too. “

 “There is no book in the tower. “

 “I have brought the book, “he said, stepping forward into the glade where I stood with my shoes in the grass beside me and all the Wize-ardly stuff spread around. He held it, a book almost too big for him, clutched to his chest.“We took it when the Tower fell. We have had it always.“

 He started away down the hillside, others emerging from the trees to follow him. He turned.“Where are you going in your ceremonial dress, Jinian Star-eye?”

 I gestured behind me. He shook his head sadly.“We will sing your song, too, Jinian. We will sing your song. “

 Then they were gone, light as leafy shade on the grass, and I was alone with my shoes lying in the grass and my Wize-ard’s pouch and the Dagger on my thigh and Murzemire’s words in my heart.

 “I have Seen,” she had said brokenly. “The Oracle and all his followers. They will come there!” And she had pointed to a low saddle of the mountain where the rocks lay bare and the soil ashen as though burned by an acid flame.

  I put on my shoes and went to that place.

 It was dusk when I arrived there. The place was littered with stones, great skull-shaped boulders on which the lichen had died, leaving gray scrofulous patches, like dead skin. Soon after I arrived, I saw the Oracle emerge far down the opposite slope. It stood quietly as I mounted one of the great stones. This time there was no mockery. Their ribbons were black and indigo, death colors. The shadows lay behind them in drifts, unmoving. There would be no play tonight. Nor would I have time to prepare or worry, or grieve. It saw me standing on the boulder and moved upward, toward me, its many followers behind it in a fluttering tide. Tonight they led the shadow.

 I had the Dagger in my hand, the Daggerhawk blade, the wings of it curving beneath my fingers, the jewels of it glittering. Cold, so cold that blade, and coming toward me the great, gross bulk of the Oracle. Its original Eesty shape had long been overlaid with pretense and guile. The ribbons it had worn as mimicry were a part of it now. The hands it had imaged were now real; the face it had painted had become its own face. It had begun out of mockery at us pathetic human shapes; it had gone on out of stubborn, relentless anger; it had ended by losing everything it could ever have cared about, and even now it would not make an end.

 “Jinian,” it called to me. “JinianFootseer. Dervish Daughter. Does it still wear thestar-eye on its little bosom? My sign, human. Mine. The sign of me.”

 “No,” I said, so softly it might not have heard. “No, Oracle. It is my sign. I’ve earned it.”

 “You?” It laughed. I had heard a laugh like that once before in the fortress of Zale, a high chirp of mirthless sound, like a dreaming bird. Birds, who have no bao, may dream of souls? Why not. So the Oracle might dream now of what it had lost—or never had.

 “I, Oracle.”

 “You pity me, girl?”

 “I pity you, Oracle.” I didn’t know what I said. It was too late for anything but truth, and truth is what I told.

 Then came light in those painted eyes. Oh, Gamelords and all the old gods. Light in those eyes. An evil joy. A monstrous peace. And I knew why, for the Dagger seemed to tremble in my hands. The Daggerhawk blade, which would kill by a touch only when used in anger. And I had no anger left against this thing. Only Pity. Impotent pity. Which could do nothing with the Dagger, nothing at all.

 It came toward me. Behind it the others, a shuffling multitude of them. Behind me, below me in the city, softened by distance, I heard the cries of the workmen struggling to hang the Bell. Hang it and ring it in order that all might be restored. I could hold these pathetic monsters off perhaps a minute or two, pretending an anger I did not feel, but my heart was lost in me. The light we had spun into the lamp of the Tower would be the world’s light, but not our own. Not Peter’s and mine. The effort we had put into the Bell would be the world’s cure, perhaps, but not ours.

 “Have you thought,” I called to the Oracle, “that even now it is not too late?”

 “Too late? Why, human girl, Dervish Daughter, it is not early enough. I should have killed you there in the Forest of Chimmerdong, long and long ago. I should have taken you myself and fed you to the monstrous Pig.”

 “Why didn’t you?”

 “Because we foresaw this end, Footseer. Foresaw the Dagger in your hand and you unable to use it. Because we thought it unnecessary. All your kind are so useless! We knew in the end it would come to this. More fun to play the Game out, you see. More fun to let it go on. . . .”

 “But didn’t you also see the world’s death? And the death of all? Of every one of you? Of all your Brotherhood?”

 Silence. As though I had uttered a curse upon them. Silence, with the Oracle dancing from side to side, laughing at me, the laugh a hollow one which the others did not echo, falling into silence as it became aware of their silence.

 “We will not die!” The cry came from behind the Oracle, from that close pack that shuffled toward me. “You lie, Footseer. We will not die.”

 I wanted to laugh, to laugh and cry all at the same time. “Oh, foolish children,” I called, forgetting they were not my children. “You will die. All the Brotherhood will die. I, too, perhaps, but you certainly. This, too, has been Seen!”

 A wailing, then, like an angered ghost. Among those who shuffled along after the Oracle an eddy moved, a circling, as though some within that throng chose to move another way. Looking down on them, I was reminded of water as it breaks over a submerged stone, whirling darkly and without visible purpose. The Oracle had been at the front of this mob, but now it seemed to be behind the foremost rank, pulled sideways as though caught by that strange undertow.

 “The Riddler told us the world died but that we would live, masters of all!” It was the same voice, complaining bitterly. “Our bao would conquer everything!”

 Pity again. So foolish, so childish, so damned. “What did you think you would do to live when the world died? When the world was only a sphere of cold stone? When there were no seas, no plants? How did you think you would live?” I called out to them, receiving no answer. “And since you have no bao, how would it conquer?” The mob was pushing against the stone I stood upon, and it rocked. I turned to leap to the safety of the hill behind me, only to find a tentacle of the throng had moved between me and that place. They pushed, and I rocked once more, staggering to keep my balance.

 “You did not say we would die!” the voice was crying. Somewhere in that mass of ribboned forms, the Oracle was moving. I could not tell where. “Riddler, you did not say we would die.”

 The stone heaved, twisted, and I dropped to all fours, frantically snatching at the stone, dropping the Dagger as I did it, heedless, unthinking. It flew from my hands like a spark from the fire, gems glittering upon its hilt and at the top of the blade. The silvery wings shone, sparkling, drawing eyes upward. It ricocheted from the stone I teetered on, flashing outward above the mob. A hand reached up to snatch it from the air.

 Ah, I said to myself. So it was you, Jinian, meant to die by the Dagger all along. You meant to die at the anger of these rebellious stars. And I crouched there, waiting, remembering how the Basilisks had died, some long ago, one only recently, almost it had seemed without pain, and I was thankful for that. Since that time upon the battlement at the fortress of Zale, I had wakened sometimes in the night, mouth dry, fearing pain. So I crouched, eyes not shut but not watching, mouth dry still, merely waiting. In a moment the Dagger would touch me, and that would be an end to it all. At the end, I would think of Peter. He might never know of it, but it would comfort me at least.

 So I waited, seeing without seeing how the Dagger spun into the mob, as though it lived, as though it flew by those carved wings.

 Within that throng came a clearing. A vacancy. A troubled space where the shifting bodies of the Brotherhood had twirled away. At the edge of this space the Dagger spun. I could see it in the hands of one of them. Which one? The Oracle itself? I thought at first yes, then no, for the creature spun, spun, screaming as it spun, “You did not tell us we would die!”

 It spun with the Dagger in one hand, a wheel of flame, and as it spun the beribboned Eesties fell before it like grain before the scythe. Was one of them the Oracle? Cautiously, as one who has just escaped the attack of some great, sly beast, I raised my head and shoulders to see what was there. Those who had been in the crevasse behind me had poured forth once more. The shallow ditch was empty. I stepped across it to the hilltop, sinking once more to a crouch, watching.

 And still they fell, by the tens, by the hundreds. Their forms littered the hillside, changing now, losing their mock-human forms, turning to Eesty shape once more, starlike upon the grass, fading as I watched, becoming mere shades of themselves which melted into the herbage and were gone. I stepped from the stones to the dried, brittle grass. Still the voice cried, or another voice like it; still the Dagger spun, and those who were left living began to flee. The Dagger did not remain behind. It pursued them yet in the hand of one of their own kind, mad with anger and frustrated purpose, furious at betrayal.

 And only two were left living in that place—Jinian and one other. The Oracle.

 It was shrunken. Eesty-like. The painted eyes were only painted and the bony hands mere sketches of light and shadow at the ends of its points. It had no face, and yet I knew it. I knew it no matter what guise it took, and I spoke to it at last.

 “You did not think oftheir anger, Oracle.”

 “No,” it replied. The voice was an Eesty voice, and yet it hurt me like a file across my bones in its horrid intensity. “I did not think of their anger. I made the Dagger. I set it where you found it. I foresaw much. I knew you could not use it against me. I never thought of them.”

 “They were betrayed, Oracle. Ganver tells me there is no anger greater than that of a zealot betrayed. Where is your strength now, Oracle?”

 “So it would seem.” It hummed, like a hive of warnets. “And yet, Dervish Daughter, I have strength enough to deal with you still.”

 My eves dropped. The Eesty was larger than I, and older by far. I had no weapon. Any magics the Wize-ards knew had been known to this older race. It was true. It could deal with me still. I stroked my breast where the star-eye had lain, wishing for it. I would say what the star-eye required, whether I would die or not, crying out in a voice unlike my own.

 “No. You have no strength at all, Oracle. Hear the message of the star-eye:

 “A soul does not dwell in your shape, Eesty! A soul does not live in your seed. Mercy will not allow you to live. And vet, you are part of the whole, Oracle, and I may not destroy you. “

 “What is my punishment?” It laughed at me, a final, bitter mockery. “What do you think you can do? Those like me will always prey on those like you, Footseer! Until you learn mercy toward us! Until you learn that not-being is more merciful than being for one like me! Where there is no belonging, no way, why do those like you always think it merciful to make us go on living?”

 I started to answer, but the answer did not come. I could have told it why it had been allowed to live so long, but I did not. Instead I cried with all my heart into the silence, “Ganver! I know why you did not act in the past! I know your love for that which you gave life. But bao demands that this creature die, Ganver, and I may not take your bao. This is your duty.This is your own child!”

 The Oracle heard me and was shocked to stillness. At least, so I thought later. Perhaps the Eesties do not know parents as we know them; perhaps they do not know who gives them life. Perhaps as the ages pass, they forget. So, perhaps, the Oracle had not known or did not remember. It had no time to remember then, for a great rolling wheel came out of the trees and the cloud, something more huge than could be imagined, more inexorable. It spun, and when it had spun away, the Oracle was gone. Ganver had found strength to do the merciful thing at last.

 Then, only then, the sound came. Below me, in the valley, they were ringing the Daylight Bell.

 The sound surged like a tide, washing over me, then retreating, coming forward once again, higher each time, touching the burned earth, the scabbed stone, upward into the air, into the tree branches that angled stark and graceless against the sky, upward still until tree and stone and earth lay beneath that tide, like creatures of a shore pool dried from the sun, now laved, soothed, lifted. . . .

 Where the shadow lay the light came, and the great bank of shadow raised itself and fled.

 I dropped to the earth, floated to the earth, sat there, hands drifting to and fro above the surface of it. My hair flowed before my face, then back, before my face again in the wind of that ringing. It was good to sit down, inexpressibly good. I gripped the grass where I sat, holding it as though to hold myself in place upon the world or the world in place beneath me.

 A shudder then, like distant thunder, felt rather than heard. As though something monstrously large had clapped its hands. I was buffeted by the silent blow, touched all over. Before me on the ash-gray soil a blade of green pushed upward, shivered, split itself into several leaves, and thrust outward at the world a cluster of buds that broke into silvery bloom.

 A tree rat came out onto a branch and chattered at me. I did not understand a word. Too tired, I told myself. To tired to listen, tree rat. Sorry. Sorry.

 It took enormous effort to get to my feet. The silent blow bruised me, not visibly, and yet I could feel it in my flesh. Something had struck me. It seemed a punishment after all I had been through, and weary tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. The tree rat chattered once more, but I could not take time to figure out what it was saying. Below, in the city, those I loved must be told their efforts had succeeded. The Oracle and all its followers were gone.

 I staggered down toward the city. Around me came small popping sounds, like pods of shatter-grass breaking open, as the gray trees burst into leaf all at once. The soil beneath me writhed with grass, coil after coil of fern sprang up like zeller, leaping into frond. Blossom happened. I walked on a meadow of bloom and green. The world rejoiced. The sound of the Bell fell away to silence.

 And from below me, in the city, came a wail, a cry, a heartbroken lament. I stopped, unable to believe it, thinking perhaps the Oracle had done some dreadful thing there in the city before its life had ended. The lament went on, flowing toward me, coming from a clot of people clustered at the nearest gate. I stopped, confused. There was something wrong with my head. A blurry feeling.

 Peter was there at the gate. I called out, a harsh, grating cry from a dry throat. He raised his head, saw me, didn’t move, just stood there, his face empty. Then he raised his hand and came up the hill toward me. I waited, unwilling to go closer, afraid.

 Even at the distance, I could see his face was wet and he walked as though crippled, haltingly. Behind him those at the city gate went into the city, their voices raised in sorrow, joining another lament by other voices. I began to run, stumbling, as halting as Peter. I was sore, hurt. He, too.

 He caught me in his arms.

 Always, always when Peter held me, the flesh of his armsShifted, only a little, becoming warmer and wider, as though to touch as much of me as he could. The first time he had ever really held me, long ago, oh—longer ago than seems possible and yet only a year or two, only that. He had held me then as he did now, and I had felt that Shifting, that softening, as though his arms would cushion me against all the threats and pains of the world. And always when he had held me, it had been like that.

 Yet now he held me in his arms and they were only arms. “Wiz-ardry?” he mumbled into my ear. “Some Wizardry, Jinian? Lost. All of us. Our Talents. All. Gone.”

 I stared at him stupidly, not hearing him. What idiocy was he talking? I couldn’t understand what he meant. His Talent gone due to some Wizardry? Whose? Who was left?

 Over his shoulder I could see a small figure behind him, toiling up the hill. Proom. The Shadowman, looking at me out of great, haunted eyes. He came close to me, stared into my face, took my hand into his own soft, long-fingered one, and spoke to me. I could not understand him.

 And it was then I knew.

 The Talents were gone. All. Everyone’s. Lom had given. Lom had judged.

 And Lom had taken away.

 Proom sang to me with tears in his eyes: Lolly ulla lum a lolly lom. Like a bird. All around me was the sound of mystery. A tree rat chattered. I did not know what it said. High on the hill, a flitchhawk called, and I knew it might be calling me, but I could not understand.

 I cried out then, something, I forget what. Peter reached out for me. We stood there on the hillside, tight in each other’s arms, weeping for what was lost, and gained.

 Lom was alive. Lom the glorious, field and forest, stream and meadow, flitchhawk on the air, bunwit in the copse, all alive. And thinking. And knowing.

 And all our Talents were gone. Healer and Necromancer, Sorcerer and King, Tragamor and Elator, gone. All our Talents gone. Taken away. As punishment?

 And in that I took hope, for if Lom thought we had no bao, it would not have punished us. It would have done the merciful thing.

 We walked down into the city. There was a body at the gate, Little Flitch, a knife between his ribs to the hilt.

 “He said it was all he had,” whispered Peter. “All he had.”

 “It is not all you had,” I said firmly, choking it out. “It is not all you had, Peter.”

 “I keep telling myself that,” he said, holding my hand so tightly it hurt. “I do, Jinian.”

 We came to a place where Dodir had been working. A great stone lay on the street, and he leaned against it, trembling, crying as though his life had broken before him. He looked up at me, through his tears, wiping them away as though ashamed. “Jinian?”

 I shook my head at him. “They were never our gifts to begin with, Dodir. Lom gave them. And Lom has decided we will be better creatures without them.”

 His face turned grayer. Dodir had used his gifts well, always. All those in the city had done. Here, more than any place in the world, might this great loss be justifiably resented.

 “I?” He was disbelieving. “I, too?” It was undeserved in Dodir’s case. He knew it.

 “All,” I said. “All of us.”

 At first nothing, then perhaps a flash in those brown eyes. Anger. Yes. I think so. A little anger. And his shoulders straightened as he stood tall beside the great stone, and I knew of the two things, Dodir or the stone, Dodir was the stronger, for he would not be broken.

 “Then we will build it without,” he said. “But build it we will.”

 Beside me I felt Peter straighten, sigh. “Yes.”

 And we three turned together to help others, even as the lament went on.

 16
END AND BEGINNING

 We live now, Peter and Bryan and I, in a pleasant glade above Old South Road City. We have a house there, one we are building with our own hands whenever we can find time away from the construction crew down in the city. Peter is becoming something of a stone mason. Though fancy carving is beyond him, so he says—and I think it is only that he lacks patience for it—he finds the laying of stones pleasant work, tiring work, work that exhausts him so he can sleep without remembering what used to be. Many Gamesmen these days would rather not remember what used to be.

 The change has been hard for us all. I went up a hill in my blue gown able to speak the language of any bird or beast. I came down knowing only my own tongue. As for me, so it was for everyone. There was no time to adjust. There was no prior announcement. One moment we had the gifts Lom had given us. The next moment they were gone. Peter never Shifted again, and there are still nights I lie beside him while the bed quivers with his unconscious, dreaming effort to change. I see his hands clench, his muscles knot. To no purpose. He is still my Shifterish Peter, but Peter, Shifter, no longer.

 For most of us it was as though we had lost our sight or our hearing. Though we rejoiced in a world that was healing and growing, still we mourned. Some, like Little Flitch, gave it no time but simply died. Some Gamesmen may mourn their lives away. Certainly many have not stopped grieving yet.

 Peter and I, alone among all Gamesmen, know that the Talents had been Lom’s gift. We, alone among all Gamesmen, are able to explain what has happened. Those who know us well believe what we tell them. Some others do as well, seeing it as the only explanation that makes sense. Across the world, however, there are those who seek some magical solution, some application of Wizardry, some religion, some prophecy. Temples are springing up, I am told. Prophets are gaining reputation. How strange that the Gamesmen should need any other explanation than the true one! And yet their sense of themselves—so says Barish-Windlow—will not allow them to believe they had all that power by gift, that it was not their own by birthright.

 Whatever one wishes to believe, we have all had to find other ways to live. Some of us are doing well, learning as quickly as any ordinary pawn might ever have done. We have Tragamors who are engineers; Elators who are messengers; Armigers who are guards. Trandilar has set up a school for weavers. It was her hobby in times long past, and she seems glad to take it up again. She is still beguiling, but it is only her natural self. There is no magic in it. Dorn, the Necromancer, says he is glad his Talent is gone. He has become a teacher of children, and his face is less lined than it was in the past. He rejoices to have done with the dead. The living need our attentions more, he says. Who can argue with that?

 Not all Gamesmen have fared so well. There have been incidents of pawns rising up to dispose of former Gamesmen Rulers. In most cases, the disposal was just. Many old Demesnes are vacant now. Stoneflight rose up against Bram Ironneck, and Eller, who pretended to be my mother, is now the kitchen maid of a merchant-prince. So I am told, by Murzy. She is not a Seer any longer, so I don’t know how she learned this. I have not asked.

 Those of us with the art fare a little differently—I will not say “better.” While the Talents were a gift from Lom, the art was largely our own learning, and it has stayed with us. The art was always a matter of respectfully invoking the power of beings larger than ourselves. If we have friends among those powers, it can be done. Peter is learning something of that, too, and bids fair to turn out a respectable hedge Wizard. This pleases Himaggery, and Himaggery says it would please Mavin as well. And Lom. We all suppose it must please Lom. Otherwise it would not be allowed. So, the sevens go on as they have in the past. Most of mine is here with me, though Cat Candleshy has gone traveling to see this new world and what it makes of itself.

 As for Himaggery, he has gone back to the Bright Demesne. He says the people there are no less his people because the world has changed.

 We will visit there, after the baby comes, to see him and Barish-Windlow. Barish suffered most, I think, from what happened. He had based his whole life upon a strategy that is suddenly useless. Now he is mostly Windlow, and Peter says he doesn’t know from day to day how to feel about that.

 When it happened, so suddenly, I believed Lom’s recovery was due to something Mind Healer Talley had done. She says, however, that though she did what she could, Lom began to wish to live at the ringing of the Daylight Bell. She tells me that the destruction of a certain memory may have had much to do with that, and perhaps also to the fact that the Eesties—the old Eesties—had assumed their proper role of recollection once more. Perhaps it was no one thing but all of these things together. If so, I can take pride in helping, as can Peter. When we get depressed sometimes, we try to remember that.

 When the Bell came from the mold, the little missing place on its rim was filled in with the sign of the star-eye, almost as though my own talisman had been reformed in that place. When it rang, it was with the same clear, unmistakable tone I remembered from our travels in Lom’s memory. Whatever the alloy was, it was correct. Foreordained? If so, by whom? Fortuitous? If so, why? Who knows? Even those I know among the Wize-ards are less likely to speculate about such things than once they were.

 Soon the Daylight Bell will hang where it belongs once more. The Tower is almost finished. Only the arched windows at the top and the gently curving roof remain to be completed. Peter spends endless hours with the ex-Tragamor architects—Dodir among them—who claim the work is harder now but more satisfying. Peter and I are the only humans now alive who ever saw the Tower and the city as it was before its destruction. Thank all the old gods we remember it well enough to direct its rebuilding. The city is far-enough along that there are various kinds of people moving into it, even now. Among these are the blind runners. They still run the roads, but only as ritual, for short distances. They have taken the maintenance of the city and the roads as their task. Looking down from my window, I can see some of them now, sweeping the stones and scrubbing them to an ivory glow. They who once ran the roads blindly now look at them very carefully. Strange how things turn out. Many things are turned about to show their faces where once their backs were. I find myself wondering sometimes if any of it was real then, or if we only dreamed it.

 The shadow is gone except when the Shadowbell rings, far away in the north, where the Shadow Tower stands. Almost all of the turnips have returned there with the Gardener. Big-blue and Molly-my-dear live in my garden. They still swing upon my sash ends and play wicked tricks and laugh uproariously at them, but I can no longer understand what they say. Their children bid fair to become impish reminders of times past. I can imagine ten thousand fireside stories beginning, “Long and long ago, when there were no turnips to swing upon our pant legs, the people of this world had strange powers. . . .”

 Forests are green again, and the roads are being repaired, some by us and the runners, some spontaneously. Eesties run those roads. The Dervishes are their apprentices. Evidently the skill of Dervishes was like the art of the wize, a thing they learned for themselves, for they have it still. I have not seen Bartelmy of the Ban. Perhaps someday I shall. The world is so changed, I do not know what I can say to her. She will be so changed, perhaps we will have nothing to say.

 Mavin lies asleep in her crystal coffin beside the pool in the Tower. The lamp glows ever more brightly upon its pedestal. The book is back where it belongs, and the Shadowpeople sing from it every day. The pool has begun to fill once more with the milk from which crystals grow. There are no crystals in it yet, but perhaps there will be, in time. Surely, Lom will have messages for its people once more. Surely, after what we have been through, we have learned to be people of Lom, people who will listen.

 When Peter and I make love, he always asks if it is the same as when he was Shifter. I always say yes. It is not the same, but that doesn’t matter. Himaggery said to me once that being loved by a Shifter spoiled one for any other lover. I can see how that would happen, but it is Peter I loved and summoned with nutpie and Lovers Come Calling, not merely a Shifter, so I do not dwell on that. I will admit to certain dreams from which I wake trembling, but I do not speak of those to him.

 He asks me sometimes about bao, and I explain that it is something some creatures have and others do not, and that no race of creatures always has it in every individual and that no shape guarantees it. “And when one does not have it, Peter, then it is pure evil to punish that creature for its lack. It must be destroyed, quickly, without causing it fear or pain, for it lacks the quality all things must have to live together, and lacking that, has no reason to live.”

 And he thinks about that. Though he would be quick enough to destroy a rogue waterox, one that preyed upon its fellows, still I am not sure he understands bao or the lack of it in humans. Mavin would have understood it, I’m sure of that.

 “We must not pretend to ourselves that something has bao because it shares our shape or our seed,” I tell him, trying to explain. “To do so prolongs cruelty needlessly.”

 “But the old gods didn’t destroy the shadow.”

 “The shadow is part of the bao of Lom.”

 “Or the Oracles . . .”

 “The Oracles were part of the bao of the Eesties. The Oracle was Ganver’s own child. Ganver had to take the final step—merciful destruction. Each of us must take responsibility for our own. No one else can do it for us, for that way lies the death of all that is good.”

 At the end, of course, Ganver had done it, though I have no doubt the Eesty grieves for it still.

 There is a new, strange song the Shadowpeople sing. They sing that when the sleep of Mavin is over, a thousand years more or less, Lom will repent once more and restore the Talents of man. Though I no longer have the Talent of tongues, I can learn. Proom is teaching me his language, and this is how I know what they are singing. I have asked Proom whether the song is true. He says all the songs the Shadowpeople sing are true.

 Sometimes I hope the Talents will return. Sometimes not. Life is better for most, now, without Gaming. But I think of Mavin and wonder if she will want to wake into a world in which she must remain one shape always, in which she cannot Shift, become whatever she wills to become. I think of her being forced to remain only herself and believe she might rather sleep.

 And, sometimes, I think of myself, having a Shifter lover. Well. Mothwings Go Spinning. End and Beginning.

 And I say, as Murzy has taught me, “Time does as time wills. Live today. Tomorrow is its own mystery.”

 We will be having our own children, Peter and I, starting rather sooner than I might have planned, it seems. I will have midwives at the birth, for the Talent of midwives to seek bao in the newly born was the single Talent that Lom left to man. It was merciful of Lom to do so, though we may not think so now.

  

 I must put the pen and paper away and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be busy. We are expecting visitors from the north, Peter’s old friend Yarrell, whom he has not seen in years, with his wife and child.

 It is full dark, and Ganver is standing upon the far hill, a great, star-shaped form silhouetted against the moon, keeping watch on us. Sometimes the old Eesty does that, and I send my love toward. And my promise to do what is right, as Ganver did, at long last, what was right.

 And this book I began upon the Wastes of Bleer is ended. I can put it away until the children are old enough to read from it. Perhaps they will not care enough about the way things were to bother. In which case Peter and I will read it to one another when we are old.

 I pray we may live a thousand years, Peter and I.

 I pray the midwives will find bao in all our children.

  

  




