“Go, then. Trust in me so far 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 fall 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 a 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?”
The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection Page 69
