The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

  “No,” Mavin told him with a measuring look. “Can’t you hear the music? The Band will need to get over here.”

  “The Band?” queried the old voice again. “Did you say Band? Oh, my granddaddy told me about the Band. They came through when my daddy was a boy. Before the storm, when I was just a baby, while the bridge was still there. My oh my, but I do wish I could see the Band.”

  “Since there is no bridge,” Mavin said, “I should imagine that if the fishermen of Hawsport were to sail over to the far side, they might find a full load of paying travelers to bring back. It’s only a suggestion, mind, but if the fishermen are not busy with their nets or hooks at the moment, and if they have nothing better to do…”

  She was speaking to vacancy. The stall-holder had hurried away toward the quay, shouting to a group of small boys to “Go find Bettener, and Surry Bodget and the Quire brothers…”

  “’Tisn’t his brother’s boat at all,” quavered the old voice. “He only says that to save on taxes. Pity you told him about it. He’ll only cheat those Band people, whoever they are, and I would so liked to have seen the Band.”

  “That’s all right, Grandma,” Mavin soothed her. “The Band people have been traveling this world for a thousand years. They probably know tricks your grandson hasn’t thought of yet. There’s an old man named Byram with them. He probably remembers the moon falling down. I’ll bring him to meet you, and you two can talk about old times.”

  She wandered down to the shore, cutting bits of fruit for herself and for the Fon-beast, counting the little fishing boats which were setting out to sea. Not enough. They would have to make two trips or more. The far peninsula lay upon the horizon, a single dark line, as though inked in at the edge of the ocean. The boats were tacking, to and fro, to and fro. Well, say four or five days at the outside. Time enough to rest and eat kitcheny food. She fingered the coins in her pocket, Time enough to buy some clothing for herself. If she couldn’t Shift fur or feathers when she wished, then she would need more than the Dervish’s cast-offs to dress herself in. Time enough to let the Fon-beast finish healing. She stroked him, feeling his soft muzzle thrust up to nuzzle at her ear. Tempting. Very tempting.

  “Not until we get to Windlow’s,” she said, Sighing, she went to find an inn.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mavin and the Singlehorn came to Windlow’s school early of a summer evening. Though the way had been wearying, there had been no fear or horror lately, and the companionship of the Band people had replaced fear and loneliness in both their minds. Singlehorn did not shy at the sound of hunting birds any longer. Mavin did not often wake in the night starting bolt upright from dreams of gray shadows and screaming Harpies. Night was simply night once more, and day was simply day. They had come down the whole length of the shoreline from Hawsport, past the Black Basilisk Demesne, and on south to the lands of Gloam where the road turned east once more. Thence they had come up long, sloping meadows to the uplands of Brox and Brom, and there Mavin had left the Band to turn northward along the headwaters of the Long Valley River.

  They left the river at last to climb eastward into the hills, and at some point in this journey, the Fon-beast began to lead them as though he knew where they were going. At least so Mavin supposed, letting him have his way. When they came over the last shallow rise looking down into Windlow’s valley, she recognized it at once. Though she had never seen it, Throsset had spoken of it, and Windlow himself had described it long ago in Pfarb Durim. There was the lone white tower, and there the lower buildings which housed the students and the servants. Even from the hill she could see the sparkle of light reflecting from a fountain in the courtyard and a shower of colorful blossoms spilling over the wall.

  Singlehorn gave an odd strangled but joyous call, and Mavin saw a small bent figure in the distant courtyard straighten itself and peer in their direction. Windlow was, after all, a Seer, she reminded herself. Perhaps he had expected them. If that were so, the tedious explanations she had dreaded might not be necessary. She had done things during the past season which she found it hard to justify to herself. She did not want to explain them to others.

  Fon-beast led the way down the hill, tugging at the rope. She pulled him up for a moment to take off the halter, letting him gallop away toward the approaching figure. Of course he was tired of being tied. So was she. It might have been only stubbornness on her part which had insisted upon it all those last long leagues, but she had not wanted to risk his running away again. Day after day when Singlehorn had looked at her plaintively, wanting to run with the children, she had refused him. “Not again, Fon-beast. I am weary of searching for you, so you must abide the rope for a time.” However, she had told herself, however, that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is you would go back to that same form with him, Mavin, if you could. “You must learn to abide it,” she had said aloud, ignoring the internal voices.

  In time he had learned to abide it. Now that time was done. She watched his grace of movement, the flowing mane, the silken hide, knowing she had appeared the same when they had been together. They had had perfection together. Was there anything else in life which would make the loss of that bearable?

  Well and no matter, she told herself. That person coming toward you is Windlow, and he is hastening his old bones at such a rate he may kill himself. Come, Mavin. Forget the past. Haste and put on a good face.

  So she greeted him, and was greeted by him, and told him what person lay beneath the appearance of Singlehorn and something of what had passed, saying no more than she had to say, and yet all in a tumble of confusing words. He passed his hand across his face in dismay. “But in my vision, long ago, I saw you together at Pfarb Durim!” He had aged since she saw him last, though his eyes were as keen as she remembered them.

  “I’m sorry, Windlow. It must have been a false vision. We did not meet in Pfarb Durim. We met in a place far to the north, of a strangeness you will not believe when I tell it to you over supper.”

  “And this is truly Himaggery?”

  “It truly is.”

  “Is he bound in this shape forever? Is it an enchantment we may…”

  “No and yes, Windlow. I will bring him out of that shape as soon as you have heard what I must tell you.” And she stubbornly clung to that, though Windlow said he thought she might release Himaggery at once, and so did Boldery, who was there on a visit, and so did Throsset of Dowes who was likewise.

  “I will tell you,” she said to Windlow, granting no compromise. “And then I will release Himaggery and all of you may say whatever you like to him and may tell him everything he should know. When he has had a chance to think about it all – why, then he and I will talk…”

  “I don’t understand,” said Boldery in confusion. “Why won’t she bring him back to himself now?”

  “Let her alone,” Throsset directed, unexpectedly. “I imagine she has had a wearying time. It will not matter in the long run.”

  So there was one more meal with Himaggery lying on the hearth in his Singlehorn guise during which Mavin told them all that she knew or guessed or had been told about Himaggery’s quest and subsequent captivity, carefully not telling them where the Dervish’s valley was, or what had happened to her there, or where she had seen the tower.

  “Chamferton says Himaggery must leave it alone,” she concluded. “I believe him. The shadows did seek Himaggery, and it was a great part luck and only by the narrowest edge that they did not eat us both. The shadows fed upon Pantiquod and her sisters and did not seem to know the difference, but I would not face such a peril again – not willingly.” The telling of it still had the power to bring it back, and her body shook again with revulsion and terror. Throsset put a hand upon hers, looking oddly at her, as though she had seen more than Mavin had said. Mavin put down her empty wineglass and rose to her feet, swaying a little at the cumulative effect of wine, weariness, and having attained the long awaited goal. Her voice was not quite steady as she said, “Now, I have told yo
u everything, Windlow. I will do as I promised.”

  She laid her cheek briefly against Singlehorn’s soft nose. “Come out, Himaggery,” she said, turning away without waiting to see whether the words had any effect. She left the room, shutting the door, while behind her a man struggled mightily with much confusion of spirit and in answer to a beloved voice, to bring himself out of the Singlehorn form and to remain upright on tottery human legs. For Mavin, there was a soft bed waiting in a tower room, and she did not intend to get out of it for several days.

  The knock came on her door late, so late that she had forgotten what time it was or where she was, or that she was. Aroused out of dream, she heard the whisper, “Mavin, are you asleep?” and answered truthfully. “Yes. Yes I am.” Whoever it was went away. When she woke in the morning, very late, she thought it might have been Windlow. Or perhaps Himaggery.

  She had bought clothing in Hawsport, during the days spent there waiting for the Band to be ferried over from the peninsula. Skirts – she remembered skirts from Pfarb Durim a time before – and an embroidered tunic, cut low, and a stiff belt of gilded leather to make her waist look small, though indeed it was already tighter than when she had bought it. When she was fully awake – it might have been the following day or several days, she didn’t know – and after a long luxurious washing of body and hair, she dressed herself in this unaccustomed finery and went into Windlow’s garden.

  Someone observed her seated there and went to tell someone else. After a time she heard halting steps upon the stone and turned to find him there, neatly trimmed of hair and beard, walking toward her with the hesitant stride he was to have for some years, as any four-footed creature might if hoisted high upon two legs and told to stay there.

  She was moved to see him so familiar, as she had pictured him a thousand times. “Himaggery. For a time, you know, I had not thought to set eyes upon you in human shape again.” She was unprepared for his tears, and forgave him that he was not her silken-maned lover any longer.

  They sat in the garden for some time, hours, talking and not talking. He had heard of the journey and was content to ask few questions about it.

  She was less content. “Do you remember anything at all about being the Singlehorn?” she asked. “Do you remember anything at all about the Dervish’s valley?”

  He turned very pale. “No. And yet … sometimes I dream about it. But I can’t remember, after I’ve wakened, what the dream was about.”

  She kept her voice carefully noncommittal. “Do you desire to return there?”

  “I don’t think so,” he faltered. “But … it would be good to run, I think. As I ran. As we ran. We were there together, weren’t we?”

  She waited, hoping he would go on to speak of that time, even a few words. He said nothing more. After a time he began to talk about other things, about plans for his future, things he might do. He asked about the Lake of Faces, and she described it as she had seen it in moonlight, with the Harpy questioning the Faces. She told him of Rose-love’s answer, and of the man who spoke of the Great Game taking place around Lake Yost. This piqued his interest, for he remembered the place, and they spoke for a time comfortably about things which did not touch them too closely.

  When the bell rang to tell them supper was served in the tower, he took her hand and would not let her go. “May I come to your room tonight?” Not looking at her, dignified and yet prepared for her refusal, hardly daring to ask her and yet not daring to go without asking. She was more moved by that pathetic dignity than she would have been by any importunate pleas.

  “Of course. I hoped you would.” That, at least, had been the truth. Later, deep in the ecstatic night, she knew it was still the truth, and more than the truth.

  Several days later she sat with Throsset in that same tower room, lying upon a pile of pillows, a basket of fruit at her side. Throsset had been nervously stalking about for some minutes, picking things up and putting them down. Now she cleared her throat and said, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you? I’ve been watching you for days. All that nonsense on the road with those Harpies! Any Shifter worth a trip through the p’natti could have handled a dozen Harpies without being touched. But you didn’t Shift. You haven’t Shifted once since you’ve been here. Not even to fit yourself to a chair or lie comfortably before the fire. How far along are you?”

  “I don’t know,” Mavin replied, almost in a whisper. “I was Shifted when it happened, not myself. In the Dervish’s valley. It could have been a season I was there with him, or a few days. I don’t know.” She did not mention the time she had visited that valley eight years before. She wondered if Himaggery would ever remember how it had been, they two together in the valley. Somehow it seemed terribly important that he remember it – without being reminded of it.

  “Shifted when it happened! Well and well, Mavin. That leaves me wondering much. Time was we would have assumed it an ill thing and believed that no good issue could come of it. I’m not certain of that any more. Still it’s interesting. And you don’t know how long ago? Well, we can figure it out. I left you near Pfarb Durim early in the season of storms. You traveled from there how many days before you found him?”

  Mavin counted. “One to the Lake of Faces. One to Chamferton’s tower – or to him who said he was Chamferton. I don’t know after that, three or four days, I think, following the runners. Perhaps two days to find the Dervish, then time got lost.”

  “So, the earliest it could have happened would have been still during the season of storms. Only a few days after you left me. Then how long to come south?”

  “Forever, Throsset. Days at Chamferton’s tower, straightening out that mess. Days searching for Singlehorn. Days running from shadows. Days trying to hide from Pantiquod, until the shadows ate her. Days and more days following the Band as it came south along the shore. Days following the river courses. Then across country, through the mountains. To here. And the time here, these last few days.”

  “So. Perhaps about one hundred days ago. Perhaps a bit more. Not really showing yet, but I can tell that you feel it. Any Shifter-woman can feel it almost from the beginning, of course. A kind of foreign presence telling one not to Shift.”

  “You have had…”

  “Two. A son, a daughter. Long ago. Neither were Shifter, so after they came of age I left them with their father’s kin. Better that way. Still, sometimes…”

  “Did you use a Forgetter?”

  “Of course not. They were grown, and fond enough of me. They forget soon enough on their own, and if they’re ever ashamed of having a Shifter mother, then bad luck to them.” She laughed harshly enough to show that the thought of this hurt her. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “Do. Are you going to stay with Himaggery? He wants you to go with him to build a great Demesne at that place he talks of, near Lake Yost. The place with unlimited power. He says anything is possible to one with a Demesne at such a place.”

  “And if I go with him, what?” Mavin asked in a bleak voice. Then, rising to stride about, her voice becoming a chanting croon in the firelight. “When I think of him, Throsset, I am afire to be with him. My skin aches for him. It is only soothed when I am pressed tight against him, as tight as we can manage. My nipples keep pushing against my clothes, wanting out, wanting him to touch them. Then, when we are together, we make love and lie side by side, our arms twisted together, and there is such wonderful peace, like floating – quiet and dusky, with no desires for a time. And then he talks of his plans. His plans, his desires, his philosophy. Of things he has read. I listen. Sometimes I think he is very naive, for I have found things in the world to be different from his beliefs, but he does not hear me if I say so.

  “So I merely listen. I fall asleep. Or, if not, my head starts to hurt. Soon I ache to be away, in some quiet place with the wind calling, or in some wild storm where I could fly, run, move. And so I go into the woods and am peaceful away from him for a time, until I am brought back like a
fish upon a line…

  “If I go with him, what?” she asked. “I keep asking myself that. He has never asked me what I would like to do.”

  “That’s not true,” objected Throsset, “I heard him ask you as we dined last evening….”

  “You heard him ask me, and if you listened, you heard him answer his own question and go on talking. He asked me what I would like to do, and then he told me how useful a Shifter would be to him. He has heard the story of our journey south, but he has not questioned why I could not Shift. He has not questioned why I have not Shifted in the time we have been here.”

  “That’s true,” Throsset sighed. “Men sometimes do not see these things.”

  “So.” Mavin nodded. “Since they do not see these things, if I were to go with him, then what?”

  “You’re planning to go to Lake Yost, aren’t you,” Windlow asked Himaggery. “You haven’t stopped talking about it since you first heard about the place. Not even when you’re with Mavin, at least not while the two of you are with anyone else. Why all this sudden interest in the place?”

  “At first I was afire to go back norther,” Himaggery said, laying the pen to one side and shuffling his papers together. “Couldn’t wait to try that tower again. I figured out how I got caught the first time, and I had all sorts of ideas that might have worked to outwit the shadows – or distract them. I don’t think they have ‘wits’ in the sense we mean. But the longer I thought about it, the more I decided you were right, Windlow. The time isn’t right for it. So, the next best thing is to set up the kind of Demesne you and I have talked of from time to time. And an excellent place to do it is at Lake Yost. There’s more power there than any collection of Gamesmen can use in a thousand years, enough to make the place the strongest fortress in the lands of the True Game.”

  “Mavin told you the place has been emptied?”