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 someo
ne 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.”
The End of the Game Page 52
