The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “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? Himaggery 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 Noithn 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 beggary, 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 h
as 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 Mont 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.”