The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  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 Wizardly 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 mannish 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 in 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 grain, 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 sizable 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 Fon 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. Wh
at 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.”