It was, to Kethry's mind, stiflingly warm, but Tarma immediately threw off her coat with a sigh of pure bliss.
"Put yer bedrolls wherever, ladies," the old man said. "There's porridge as supper."
Kethry rummaged out a packet of some of their dried fruit and tossed it to the oldster, who caught it deftly, grinned his thanks, and added it to the pot just inside one of those iron doors.
"Directly supper's finished, we'll be gettin' visitors," their host told them, as they found places to spread their bedrolls on the clay-stained, rough board floor. "I be Egon Potter; rest of the folks out here be kin or craft-kin."
Kethry's curiosity had turned her attention to the half-finished pottery. It was more than simple pots and bowls, she realized as soon as she had a good look at it. It was really exquisite work, the equal or superior of anything she'd ever seen for sale in Mournedealth.
"Why—" she began.
"—are we way out here, back of the end of the world?" Egon interrupted her. "The clay, lady. No match for it anywhere else. Got three kinds of clay right here; got fuel for the kilns; got all winter t' work on the fancy stuff an' all summer t' trade. What else we need?"
Tarma laughed. "Not a damned thing else, Guildmaster." At his raised eyebrow and quirky, half-toothless grin she laughed again. "I've always wondered where the best of the Wrightguild porcelain and stoneware came from—it certainly wasn't being made in Kata'shin'a'in. You think I can't recognize the work of the Master when I see it?"
"Then there be more about you than shows on th' surface, swordlady. But you tol' me that, didn' ye?"
"Oh, aye, that I did." They matched grins in some kind of wordless exchange that baffled Kethry, then the Shin'a'in edged her way past the crowded work-table to the oldster's side. "Here. Let me give you a hand with that porridge."
As darkness fell, Kethry came to appreciate old Egon's craftsmanship even more, for he lit oil lamps around the room with shades of porcelain so thin that the light glowed through it easily. And when the first of the lamps was alight, the rest of the inhabitants of the little settlement began to arrive.
They crowded about the newcomers, treating them with friendly reserve, asking questions, but free enough with their own answers. Fairly soon everyone had found space on the hearth, and Kethry was able to examine them at her leisure. They seemed amiable enough. None of the women seemed to be in any distress. In fact, it didn't look to Kethry as if there were anything at all wrong here—and this despite Need's unvarying pressure on the back of her mind.
Finally, while Tarma entertained the company with some Shin'a'in tale or other, the sorceress edged over to where old Egon was sitting alone a little off to one side.
He nodded to her, but waited for her to speak. She cleared her throat a little, then said, trying not to sound awkward, "Egon, is everyone in your settlement here?"
He seemed surprised by her question. "Oh, aye; all but the little ones. Well—barring one."
This sounded a little more promising. "One?" she prompted.
His eyes went wary. "Well—she ain't a guildsman. Stranger. Settled here, oh, three or four winters ago. She don't have much t' do with us, we don't have much t' do with her. Unchancy sort." Egon blinked, slowly. "Trades with us, betimes. I think she be grubbin' about in the ruins, yonder. Bits of metal she trades, old stuff, gone t' powder mostly, but good for makin' glazes."
Something about this "stranger" evidently made Egon more than a little uneasy. Kethry could read that in his shuttered expression, and the careful choice he made of his words.
"Are the ruins forbidden, or something?" she asked, trying to pinpoint his uneasiness.
"Forbidden?" He flashed her a startled glance, and chuckled. "Great Kemos, no! It's just—she seems witchy, like, but she ain't never done nothin' witchy." He gave her a sidelong glance, as if gauging her response to that. "It's like she was looking for something out there and mad as hops 'cause she ain't finding it. 'Cept lately she been acting like she had. Her name's—"
The door opened, and a bundled figure half-stepped, and was half-windblown, into the circle of light. She blinked for a moment, her eyes sunken into pale, pudgy cheeks, her flabby arms hugging her fur cloak tightly about her.
She'd put on so much weight since Kethry had last seen her that at first she didn't recognize her former schoolmate.
Then— "Mara?" she said into the silence the woman's abrupt arrival had imposed on the group.
The woman whirled; peered past the heads of those nearest her at Kethry. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment; one plump, pasty hand flew to her throat—then she turned and bolted back the way she had come in a clumsy run.
The door slammed behind her. The rest of those gathered sat in embarrassed silence.
Finally Egon self-consciously cleared his throat. "'Tis a bit late, and we all have work, come the morning light…"
His kin and fellow guildsmen were not slow at taking the hint. Before too very long the house was silent, and empty of all but Egon and the two women.
There seemed no way to break that silence, and after a few halfhearted attempts at conversation, Egon excused himself and went to bed.
Kethry took a long while falling asleep, and not because of the unfamiliar surroundings. Mara Yveda was the last person she expected to see out here.
I wondered where she went, after she'd disappeared from White Winds. Poor Mara. She was so certain that we were hiding something from her—that control of magic was just a matter of knowing the right words, having the right talisman…
I'll never forget the night she ran off. Right after she stole Master Loren's staff—then found out the only thing that was unusual about it was that it was cut to exactly the right height to most comfortably help him with his lame leg.
She broke it in two when it wouldn't magic anything up for her. And then—she ran away.
She would never believe that power isn't a matter of "magic," it's a matter of discipline…
She's the one that's in trouble. She's found something, I know she has, and she's gotten into trouble over it. What's more, Egon knows it, too.
So what do I do about it?
She fell asleep finally, without being able to come to any conclusion.
Kethry watched her partner dress the next morning, still in a decidedly unsettled state of mind.
"Swordlady," Egon said hesitantly, as Tarma prepared to set off at dawn to make good her side of the bargain, "there's something I need to tell you. About the game."
Tarma didn't even stop lacing up her boots. "Go ahead," she said. "I'm listening."
"There's a bear about."
Now she left her lacing, to raise her head and stare at him. "A what? Are you sure? That—that's hardly usual."
"Aye," the old man replied, shifting from one foot to the other. "But we've seen it about, not more than a day or two ago."
Tarma took a moment to secure the lacings, and straightened up, her face dead sober. "Do you have any notion what that means, that there's a bear, awake and walking this deep into winter?"
Egon shook his head.
"That is a very sick bear, Egon. Either it didn't eat enough to keep it going through winter-sleep, or something woke it far too early, and only illness can do that. In either case, its body is trying to make it go down for sleeping, and it's going completely against those instincts. It's going to die, Egon—but before it does, it'll be half mad with starvation. It could be very dangerous to you and yours."
The old man shook his head. "It's left us alone; we're minded to leave it alone. Don't kill it, sword-lady. Leave it bide. Deer, boar, even a mess of rabbit or bird—just—not the bear."
Tarma checked the condition of every arrow in her quiver before attaching it to her belt. Then she looked at Egon and frowned. "You're not doing that beast any favor, old man."
Egon's face set stubbornly. "Not the bear."
She shrugged. "On your head. By the time it's trouble, we'll be gone past calling us back." She half-turn
ed to face her partner. "I should be back by afternoon. One more night here, then we'll be off in the morning, if that's all right with you."
Kethry smiled. "Who am I to complain about another night under shelter? Good hunting."
"Thanks, Greeneyes." The Shin'a'in slipped out the door, leaving Kethry and the Guildmaster alone, sitting across the worktable from one another. The silence between them deepened and grew heavier by the minute. The sorceress stared at her hands, trying to decide what to say—and whether now was the right time to say it.
Finally, when Kethry couldn't stand it any longer, she opened her mouth.
"About that bear—" she began.
Egon spoke at exactly the same moment. "Lady, be you—"
They looked at each other and laughed shakily. Kethry nodded, gesturing to Egon that he should speak first.
"Lady, I wasn't sure, you wearin' steel and all, but then seemed you know Mara—be you witchy? A sorceress, belike?"
"Yes," Kethry said slowly, wondering if he was going to be angry at the idea of having sheltered a mage without knowing it. There were some who would be. Mages were not universally welcomed.
"Thank the God," Egon breathed fervently—
Oh, terrific. He isn't going to throw me out, but—
"It's that Mara, lady. I tol' you she been pokin' about in them ruins? Seemed like maybe she found somethin'. Them ruins, there's stories that the people there was witchy, too. Shape-changers." Egon swallowed. "We—we think maybe Mara found something of theirs."
Kethry put fact on top of surmise, and made a guess. "You think Mara's the bear."
He looked relieved, and nodded. "Aye. Exactly that. We figure maybe she found some kind of witchy thing of theirs, what let her shape-change, too. Now she's strange, but she hain't bad, or hain't been before. But she's got stranger since we started seein' the bear. There be bear tracks about her house—she says 'tis 'cause the bear comes to her feedin', that it's harmless if it's left be—but we don' think so. So—I dunno lady, I dunno what t' ask, like."
"You want to know if she's dangerous?" Kethry asked. She got up from her seat and began pacing, her hands clasped behind her. "Yes, dammit, she's dangerous all right. The more so because I don't think she ever really listened to a single word anyone ever told her at mage-school. Do you know why most mages don't shapechange? Why they use illusions instead?"
Egon shook, his head dumbly, his wrinkled face twisted into a knot of concern.
"Because when you shapechange, you become the thing you've changed to. You're subject to its instincts, its limitations. Including the fact that there's not enough room in a beast's head for a human mind. That usually doesn't matter, much. Not so long as you don't spend more than an hour or two as a beast. You don't lose much of your humanity, and you can probably get it back when you revert. But it's not guaranteed that you will, and the stronger the animal's instincts, the more of yourself you'll lose."
"She been spendin' whole days as bear, we think. She don' come t' door when a body calls till after sundown," Egon whispered hoarsely.
"And at a time of the year when bear instincts are strongest." Kethry twisted the Shin'a'in oath-ring on her left hand. "No wonder she put on weight. Bears go into a feeding frenzy in the fall—and she can't have gained as much as a bear needs to winter-sleep. No wonder she looked like hell." Abruptly she stopped pacing, and went to her bedroll, picking up the sword-belt that held Need and strapping the blade over her breeches and tunic.
"Lady? What be you—"
"Oh, don't worry, Egon." Kethry turned to smile at him wanly. "I'm not going to use this on her."
For one thing, I don't think it would let me.
"I'm going to go talk to her," the sorceress continued. "Maybe, just maybe, I can help her."
She must be being torn nearly in two by now, Kethry thought unhappily, as she, in turn, slipped out into the dawn-gilded, frozen air. Caught between the bear and the woman—if I can get her to take Need, I think the blade can rebalance her body for her. I hope. I'm no Healer, and that's what she needs most right now. That assumes she'll let me, of course.
She picked her way across the lumps of frozen snow to the farthest house of the cluster—a cabin, really. It had never been intended to be used for anything more than living quarters, unlike the rest of the dwellings in the settlement. That cabin was Mara's, so Egon had said. It looked deserted.
Kethry pounded on the door for several moments, and got no answer.
With my luck—
She circled around to the back and found what she'd been dreading. The back entrance was unlatched; the cabin was empty. And among the many tracks leaving and entering the cabin from the rear, there were no human footprints among them. Only the half-melted and near-shapeless tracks of a small bear.
Damn!
So many tracks suggested that Mara had fallen into a pattern. And that was bad; it meant she wasn't thinking in her bear-form, she was just acting. Then again, that she was following a pattern meant that if Kethry followed the old tracks, she'd probably be able to find Mara along the trail she'd established.
Whether or not she'd be able to reason with her—
I don't have a choice, Kethry decided. That's why Need's been after me. Mara's going to get trapped in her bear-shape—and she's going to die.
The trail took her deeply into the woods; without the trail, Kethry knew she'd have been lost. There were no signs of any habitation, no traces of the hand of man in this direction—except for certain rock out-croppings that didn't quite look natural. Gradually, as the sun rose higher and crept toward the zenith, it dawned on Kethry that these outcroppings were becoming more frequent, as if they marked some kind of long-vanished roadway.
She's going out to these "ruins." She must be going there every day. But why? And why in bear-form?
She was never to have an answer to that question, because as she rounded the torn-up, snow-covered roots of a fallen tree, something stepped out of the shelter of a duster of pines to block her progress.
"You!" Mara spat. "You've come to steal it, haven't you?"
Her eyes were dull and deeply sunken; her hair was lank and unwashed. As she lumbered clumsily toward Kethry, the sorceress got a whiff of an unpleasant reek—half unwashed clothing and stale sweat, half an animallike musk.
"Mara, I—" Kethry swallowed. I'll say I haven't got the vaguest notion what she's talking about, she'll know I'm lying. "—my partner and I are here by merest chance. We're on our way down to the Dhorisha Plains. Mara, I'll be blunt; you look awful. That's why Egon asked me to follow you. He's worried about you. Are you ill? Can I help?"
Mara's hands came up to her throat. "Liar! He wants it, too! He sent you to take it away from me!"
Kethry raised her chin and looked squarely into those mad, glazed eyes. "Mara, Egon is a Master craftsman. He doesn't need magic. And I don't need some stupid trinket to shape-change; I can do it myself. I don't because it's dangerous—"
"Oh, yes, I remember you! Dear, bright, pretty Kethry! You never needed anything, did you? They gave you everything you ever wanted—power, magic, secrets—all those old men just fell over themselves to give you what they kept from me, didn't they? And the young men gave you—other things—didn't they?" Mara's face contorted into a snarling mask of hate. "Well, I've got secrets now, secrets they tell me. They made me their lover, just like those old men made you—they come to me when I change, and they make love to me, and they whisper their secrets—"
As she babbled on about her "secrets" and her "lovers," Kethry realized with a sense of growing horror what must have happened. She'd changed, possibly for the first time, during mating season. And now she had convinced herself that the male bears that had mated with her were the long-gone shape-changing builders of the ruins—
Never particularly stable, perhaps it had been the shock of mating as an animal—and being unable to cope with it—that had pushed her over the edge.
"—well, you can't have it!" Mara shrieked at t
he top of her lungs. "It's mine, it's mine, it's—"
The words blurred, the voice deepened, the shapeless bundle of fur took on a shape. The words were lost in the roar of the enraged bear that balanced manlike on hindlegs, and advanced—no longer clumsy—on Kethry.
"Mara—Mara!"
There was an oddly shaped metal pendant slung about the bear's neck on a blackened thong. Kethry reached for it with her own magic, to try and nullify it—and met nothing.
This "talisman" was not magic at all! Mara's shape-changing was not the result of some ancient sorcery; it was only that she believed the medallion could work the change.
And in magic, as Kethry had often told her partner, belief is the most important component.
"Mara, I don't want your talisman! It's worthless—"
The bear ignored the words, dropping to all fours and continuing to advance, saliva dripping from her snarling jaws.
Kethry flung a sleeping-spell at the shape-changer. It was the most powerful spell she had in her depleted arsenal at the moment. She'd used so much trying to escape Wethes' makeshift prison—
The bear ignored the spell; ignored the mage-barrier she had to erect to hold it off.
She convinced herself she can change shape—she probably convinced herself she can defend against spells, too—
So she really can.
Kethry stumbled backward, stumbled and fell over the blade strapped to her side.
Need!
She tried to draw the sword—
—and discovered that she couldn't. It would not clear the sheath. It wouldn't allow itself to be used against a woman.
The bear reared up on hind legs again, as Kethry backed into the tangle of roots and frozen earth and found herself trapped. She drew her belt knife; a futile enough gesture, but she was not going to go down without a fight.
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