The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

  Jackabib did not seem distressed by this thought. He only flushed a little and ran off into the trees where he peeked at them from among the leaves like a squirrel.

  “Well then, I would not have seen you,” agreed Mavin. “You have not been this way in my lifetime. I am mighty glad you came this way now, however, for it is a sight I will always remember.” And a sound, she thought, aware of the ache in her legs. The sound had carried them step on step, and never a sign of weariness or hurt until the music stopped. “This pombi is pretty good as a hunter, as am I. May we contribute meat for the pot?”

  This was agreed to with good cheer, so she led Arkhur-beast into the trees and set him on the trail. She poised, then, ready to Shift herself into hunting fustigar shape, only to stop, listening, for it seemed she heard a deep, solemn humming in the trees. The sound faded. She took a deep breath, began the Shift, then heard it once more. The voice came on the little wind like a sigh. “Do not Shift, Mavin. Stay as you are. You risk much if you Shift, the shadows not least.”

  When it had spoken, she was not sure she had heard it. When she readied herself once more, however, she knew she had heard it, for her flesh twinged away from the idea of Shift as though it had been burned.

  “Well then,” she said to herself, not ready yet to be worried at this. “I will do as the children of Danderbat keep were taught to do. I will set snares.”

  Arkhur-pombi returned to her from time to time with his prey, like a cat bringing marshmice to the door. Each time Mavin patted him and took the proffered bunwit with expressions of joy, as though he had indeed been some young hunting beast she sought to train. She laughed at herself, yet went on doing it. Her snares, set across burrow runways, were also useful; and they returned to the wagons some hours later, Mavin’s arms laden with furry forms, even after feeding two of them to Arkhur to assure the safety of the children.

  She found the people of the band occupied with a myriad orderly duties, cooking, cleaning their musician dresses, polishing boots and helmets, copying strange symbols by firelight on squares of parchment which they told her conveyed the music they played. Mavin had not seen written music before, and she marveled at it, as strange and exotic a thing as she could remember ever having seen. Others of them gathered food from the forest by torchlight, rainhat berries, fern fronds, fungus to be sliced and dried before the fires. “When we play in the cities,” she was told, “we are given coin, and we use that coin to fill the meal barrels and the meat safes. Between times, we must live upon the land.”

  The Fon-beast, tethered to a tree, was suffering himself to be petted and decked with flowers by a tribe of children. Mavin offered fruit and bread from her hand, only to be copied by all the young ones. So she could leave the Singlehorn without guilt in their tender hands and sit by other fires to hear what these people knew. She ended the evening telling stories of lands across the sea, of giant chasms and bridge-people who lived below the light, and stickies – one of whom, at least, probably remembered the days of disembarkation. “His name is Mercald-Myrtilon,” she said. “And he has memories in him of that time a thousand years long past.” There was much expression of interest and wonder at this, and the Bandmaster even began to talk of taking a ship to that farther shore to march there, until Mavin told him there were no roads at all.

  After which she slept beside her beasts along with half a dozen children who had fallen asleep while petting or feeding one or both. When they woke, it was a brighter world than on any recent morning.

  “Come, Arkhur-pombi,” she teased the beast up and into motion. “There are no shadows near this road, and I must risk us both to learn something sensible.” She took him off into the trees, not far, watching all the time for that telltale darkening of foliage or sky, seeing nothing but the honest shadows cast by the sun. There in a sweet clearing full of unrolling ferns she told him in the closest approximation of the Dervish’s voice, “Arkhur, come out!”

  It was some time before he did, rising on his hind legs, dropping again, circling uneasily, then at last seeming to set his mind on it. The figure which materialized out of the pombi’s shape was no more impressive than before. It still had that young-old expression of apologetic intransigence, a face which said, “I know you all think this a stupid idea, and perhaps I do also, but I must get on with it.” When he was fully before her, he seemed to have no idea what to do with his hands, but stood waving them aimlessly, as though brushing flies.

  “You are Arkhur?” she asked in a gentle voice, not wanting to startle him. “Younger brother of the High Wizard Chamferton?”

  She might as well have struck him with a whip. His eyes flashed; his back straightened; the hands came down before him in a gesture of firm negation.

  “I am Arkhur,” he said in a furious tenor. “I am the High Wizard Chamferton, younger brother of a foul Invigilator who despised his Talent and sought to usurp mine!”

  “Ahh,” she breathed. “So that was it. And how came you to this pass, Arkhur – or should I call you High Wizard, or sir? I called your brother by your name, I’m afraid, but it doesn’t surprise me to learn the truth. He had a slyness about him.”

  “I trusted him,” the pombi-man growled, so suddenly angry he was almost incoherent. Mavin had to struggle to understand him as he spat and gargled. “I trusted his pleas for understanding and rest. He told me he was an old man. Beyond scheming anymore, he said. Beyond treachery. Wanting only warm fires and warm food, cool wine and quiet surroundings. And so I took him in. And he stayed, learned, Read me when I least expected it, then drugged me deep and sent me to be Harpy-dropped where the shadows dance. Fool! Oh, much will I treasure vengeance against him, woman. But well will I repay the Gamesman who brought me away from the shadows and the tower.” He seemed to savor this for the moment then demanded:

  “Where is he?”

  Mavin assumed he meant Himaggery. She shook her head. “He is near, but worse off than you, Wizard. Now, before you say anything more, tell me a thing. The Dervish who hid you told me to bring you out of the pombi shape ‘where no shadow was.’ Well, there is no shadow here, but I doubt not they are somewhere perhaps within sight of us. Are you in danger in your shape? And if so, shall I return you to beastliness?”

  At first the High Wizard Chamferton understood none of this and it took considerable time for Mavin to explain it. By the time he had climbed a tree to see for himself where shadows lay upon the line of hills, smells of breakfast were wafting from the fires along the road, and they were both hungry.

  “My brother used a certain drug on me, Mavin. He knows little enough of his own Talent, and even less of mine, or he would have realized that in that drugged state, the shadows would pay me no more attention than they might pay a block of wood. Though I could see them and even consider them in a dreamy way, I had no more volition than a chopping block. No. They did not care about me and will not be attracted to me. I am certain of that.”

  “Certain enough to risk our lives?” she persisted.

  He nodded, again solemn. “Certain.”

  “Well, that’s something the Dervish didn’t know.” This made Mavin cheerful for some reason. It was good to think that there were some things a Dervish might not know. “Well then, how do I explain the loss of the pombi?”

  “Don’t explain it. Put me back as I was, woman, and let us part from these good people amiably. Perhaps in time we will want their friendship. Then, when we have separated from them, you can bring me out again. Next time it will not be such a task, for I will set myself to remember who I am, even in pombi shape.”

  Mavin, well aware of the lure of forgetfulness which came with any beast shape, did not totally believe this optimistic statement but was content to try it. “Go back, Arkhur,” she said, needing to say it only once. They emerged from the trees to the welcoming bugle of the Singlehorn and in time for breakfast.

  “Have you a map of the way you are going?” she asked the old man, Byram, who seemed to be totally responsible for a
ll matters of record. “Perhaps I might rejoin your party farther on?”

  He sniffled, scuffled, laid the map out on a wagon’s hinged side and pointed out to her the way they would go.

  “Well, here’s the way of it, girl. Last time we were by here, I was a youngun. ’Prentice to the manager before me, just as he was to the one before him clear back to disembarkation. He took the notes and went over ’em with me, and I took ’em down myself, just to have another copy – he used to say that a lot: ‘one copy’s a fool’s copy,’ meaning if you lost the one, where’d you be? Eh? Well, so I always had my own copy made from then on. Now, though, after fifty years, try and read it! So look here. It goes from where we are on west, and west, bumpety-bump, all through these whachacallems forests…”

  “Shadowmarches,” offered Mavin. “This whole area west of the Dorbor Mountains and east of the sea, north of the Calihiggy Creek cliffs, all the way to the jungles.”

  “Sha-dow-mar-ches,” he wrote laboriously, spelling it out. “Well now, that’s good to know. So, westward, westward for a long straight way, then we come to the coast and turn away down south. No road north from there, just trails. At least fifty years ago was just trails. Maybe won’t be any road south either, now, but we can usually find flat enough to march on.

  “Anyhow, the road goes south and south until it comes to this long spit of land heading right out into the sea, down the west side of this great bay, almost an inland sea. Well, the road goes along south. East across the bay you can see a town, here, at the river mouth. What d’ya call that?”

  “Ummm,” said Mavin, puzzling out the map. “That’s Hawsport.”

  “Right! See, those little letters right there. That’s what they say. Hawsport. So you know it’s been there a while, don’t you? Well, we go on until we’re well south of Hawsport, then the spit of land turns east a little, coming closer to the mainland, closer and closer until it gets to a bridge.”

  “I don’t think there’s a bridge there,” said Mavin. “Not that I remember.” She tried to summon bird memories of the coast as seen from above, as she had crossed it again and again in the long years’ search for Handbright. No bridge. Certainly not one of the length the old man’s map called for.

  “Now then, isn’t that what I said to the Bandmaster! I said, likely that bridge’s gone, I said. There was a storm not long after we were here before that would have been a horror and a disaster to any bridge ever built. Even if it isn’t gone, likely it’s in a state of sorrowful disrepair. Oh, the bridges we’ve gone over that trembled to our step, girl, let me tell you, it’s no joke when a band must break step to keep a bridge from collapsing. And the ones we’ve not dared tread on and have had to go around, ford the stream, march along the river to a better place. Bridges! They’re the bane of my life.”

  “I truly don’t think there’s one there,” she repeated. “What will you do if there isn’t?”

  “Well that’s not my problem,” he said, folding the map with small, precise gestures. “I’ve told Bandmaster, told him in front of half the horn section just this morning, and he paid me no mind. So we get there and no bridge? Well, that’s his problem, not mine.”

  “You’ll have to go back?” she asked.

  “Likely. And wouldn’t that make him look silly.” The old man giggled into his hands in a childlike way, then harumphed himself into a more dignified expression. “If you don’t find us on the shore, Mavin, you look for us across the great bay. Likely we’ll be there, waiting for boats!”

  Mavin had to be satisfied with this. She felt she could take twenty days or more and still meet them somewhere on the road, across the bay or this side of it, safe from shadows. Or so she told herself to comfort the cold sorrow with which she left them. Perhaps she would only bring Arkhur into his own shape and let him go east alone. Perhaps, she told herself, watching him shamble along behind the wagons, that solemn expression upon his face, as though he considered all the troubles of the world.

  After the noon meal she left the Band, turning aside on a well traveled track as though such a destination had been intended from the beginning. When the Band had tootled itself away into the west, no more than a small cloud of dust upon the horizon, she stood upon the ancient pave and said, “Arkhur, come out.” This time he was less hesitant, and he did remember himself – which somewhat increased her respect for Wizards, or at least for this one – so that their way east could begin immediately. Only Singlehorn stood behind them, crying into the west as though he could not bear the music to be gone. Mavin had to tug him smartly by the halter before he moved, and even then it was with his head down, his horn making worm trails of gloom in the dust.

  “There is the one who saved you, Arkhur. We are not far enough from the shadows to restore him to his own shape, but his name,” she whispered, “is Himaggery, and you may choose to remember it. You will want to return to your own Demesne. There is probably little I could do to help you there, and since it is not our affair, we will go on south.”

  “It is not your affair,” he agreed in a troubled voice, “if you are sure my brother has not your Face at the Lake of Faces, yours nor Himaggery’s. I need not search the place to be sure he has mine!”

  “He does have Himaggery’s,” she confessed. “Though he said it did not hurt those from whom he took them. No more than a pin prick, he said.”

  “No more than a pin prick at the time, no more than a year’s life lost each time he questions the Face thereafter. He need only send evil Pantiquod or her daughter Foulitter to question a Face some forty or fifty days running, and the life of even a youngish person would be gone. I am sure he questions my Face from time to time, to no purpose so long as I was in the Dervish’s valley. What would it have said?”

  The question had been rhetorical, but Mavin answered it. “It said the same as Himaggery’s did; that you were under Bartelmy’s Ban.”

  He thought deeply, hands covering his eyes as he concentrated upon this information. “Well, I think it likely that such an answer did not shorten my life nor Himaggery’s. But my brother Dourso will not cease questioning. He may be there now, or tomorrow, asking of my Face. And when he hears I am no longer under – what was it you said? – Bartelmy’s Ban, will he not strip me of what life I have left as soon as he may? And he will not neglect to take yours, Mavin, and Himaggery’s as well. Do not ask me why, for I do not know, but it is no coincidence that all three of us came from Chamferton’s aerie to the Shadow Tower.” He gloomed over this, seeking a solution. “No. We must go quickly to the Lake of Faces, you as well as I, for either one of us alone might be unable to complete the task. Run as we may, are we not six days, eight days from the Lake of Faces? More perhaps?”

  “You, perhaps,” she said. “Not I.” Even if she could not Shift, dare not Shift, for some reason only the Dervish understood, she could lengthen her legs and her stride. That was not truly Shifting. It was only a minor modification. “It is likely he has my Face as well. I slept deeply when I was there, too deeply, now I think of it. Perhaps he took my Face…”

  “I think it probable,” Arkhur said. “More than probable. In my day I had a dozen Faces there, no more, all of them of evil men and women whose lives are a burden to the world. Even so, I questioned them seldom and only in great need. Not so my brother! I doubt not he has filled the Lake with them, and the forest as well.” Seeing Mavin’s expression, he nodded, confirmed in his belief. “Well then, we must move as quickly as we can. You must go there swiftly, Mavin. Take our masks down from the posts on which they hang and press them deep into the Lake. They will dissolve. Once gone, they are no danger.”

  “Can you run faster as a pombi?” she asked, wondering whether he would know.

  “No faster than when I am not.” he said, “except that I may run safer.”

  “Will you bring Singlehorn as quickly as you can? I can go faster without either of you. It will perhaps save a day or two – a year or two…”

  The High Wizard Chamferton
looked at her with serious eyes, and Mavin knew she could trust him with her own life or any other she could put in his keeping, to the limit of his ability. She nodded at him. “I will make a trail for you to follow. Watch for signs along the road.” Then she spoke as the Dervish had done once more. “Go back, Arkhur.”

  She ran away to the east without looking behind her, lengthening her legs as she went. There were still no shadows near nor on the road. It stretched away east, straight and clear, edged by long, ordinary sun shadows from the west, seeming almost newly built in that light. She fled away, stride on stride leaving them behind, hearing the shuffle of pombi feet and the quick tap of Singlehorn hooves fade into the silence of the afternoon.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She had not gone far before discovering that it was one thing to run long distances when one could Shift into a runner – whether fustigar shape or some other long-legged thing – and quite another thing when one must run on one’s own two legs, even when they were lengthened and strengthened a bit for the job. The road was hard and jarring. She stepped off it to run on the grassy verge, seeing the shadows lying under the trees, wondering if they were of that same evil breed she had seen around the tower, knowing they were only a flutter away from her if they chose to move. The fact that they did not made them no less horrible.

  She fell into a rhythm of movement, a counting of strides, one hundred then a hundred more. It seemed to her that she felt weariness more quickly than she had done on other similar occasions. Was it age? Was it only having to run in her own shape? Was it the fact that she ran eastward toward the Harpies once more, toward that paralyzing fascination she had felt once and dreaded to feel again? Was it the presence of the shadows? Was it that other thing – whatever it was – which prevented her Shifting? And what was that other thing? A mystery. Inside herself or outside?