The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped

  “Gamelords,” she said. “What have I done now?”

  The shadowperson who had ridden her shoulders so happily came forward to take her dangling hand. “Quirril?” it asked. “Quirril?”

  For a moment she could not think what to do. Then she shrugged and hoisted the little one onto her shoulders, beckoning the others to come on. “Come,” she cried aloud, “Let us visit my thalan, Plandybast.”

  She stopped within a few man-heights of the gate, peering upward at the watchers along the wall. “Plandybast,” she cried, making her voice a trumpet, full of sonority, dignified and pleading at once. “Plandybast, I come at your invitation, I, your sister’s child, Mavin.” Then she waited, ready, so she told herself, for someone to call down in a cold voice that Plandybast was not at home, or had never lived here, or was long dead.

  Instead the gate began to creak, and she saw the almost familiar face peering at her from around the corner. “Mavin? May I come out? Will I frighten them? Some are saying they are ... shadowpeople? Could that be true?”

  She wanted to giggle. All her worry and concern, and here was her thalan as full of wonder as some child seeing Assembly for the first time. “Come out, Plandybast. I don’t think they’ll frighten, not so long as I am here.”

  He came to her, put his hand out to her, watching the little rider on her shoulder the while. “Where’s Mertyn?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  “Thalan, there is no time to tell you everything that has happened. I can only tell you two important things. Mertyn lies ill of ghoul-plague in Pfarb Durim. That is the first thing. The second is that a cure may be wrought by these little ones, if I bring some of my kindred to help. I need you, you and some others.”

  Plandybast looked up, called to the watchers, “It is as we heard. Ghoul-plague. In Pfarb Durim.”

  There was an immediate outcry, a kind of stifled protest or moan, and he turned back to her; shaking his head in a kind of fussy sympathy which hid his curiosity only a little.

  “You must be frantic with worry,” he said. “I can see that. You say there’s little time? Surely you have time to come in? To eat a little something? Have a warming drink?”

  She shook her head, looking sideways at the shadows, seeing how they stretched now a little east, a little past high noon. “We must be there by midnight. The Agirul said when the blue star burns in the horns of Zanbee. A Wizardly saying, evidently. Midnight. No later than that, and it is a way from here. As far as I have run since dawn, and farther. We must be there. Will some of you come, Plandybast? Do we have other kin here who will help us?”

  “I will come with you if you need me, of course. But to ask others—we must at least tell them where. And what the plan may be. And why they are needed. They will be so curious, so delighted to see you. Can you come in?”

  She moved toward the gate, a bit uneasily, at which all the assembled shadowpeople began to cry out, moving away from her, and her shoulder rider began to scramble down, bleating.

  “They won’t come in,” she sighed. “They have no good experience of walls. If I come in, they may all go—and I need them to guide me back. No. Better I stay out here. Could you bring us something to eat? I had some food with me, but not enough ...”

  “Don’t distress yourself, child. Or them. This is so great a wonder, why should we spoil it with ordinary behavior. If they will not come in, we will come out.” He called up to the watchers again, and there was a bustling among them as some went off at his request. It was not long before two or three of the shifters came out of the gate carrying baskets laden with fresh loaves split open and filled with roasted meat. There was no need for the shadowpeople to pass the food about or share it for each of them had both hands full. By that time a dozen of the Battlefox shifters had gathered at Plandybast’s side, and Mavin found herself trying to explain once more.

  There were long looks from the Battlefoxes. Long looks and pursed lips, shaken heads and skeptical eyes. Among the most doubtful-looking was one Itter, a narrow-faced woman introduced as Plandybast’s sister—at which Plandybast merely looked uncomfortable, saying nothing to confirm or deny this claim. “Who is he?” the woman asked when Mavin spoke of the Fon.

  “A Wizard,” she replied for the third time. “From the southlands.”

  “A Wizard,” the questioner repeated after her, making the words sound slick and unreliable. “From the south.”

  “Yes,” Mavin said, beginning to be angry. Everything the woman said was an accusation, an allegation of dishonesty or stupidity, unspoken but most explicitly conveyed in her words. “A Wizard. A young Wizard. Perhaps too young to be much regarded by the dwellers of Battlefox. As I am young. As Mertyn, who will die if a cure is not found, is young.” She clenched her fist, turning from them to her thalan who stood shifting from one foot to the other at the edge of the group. “It comes to that in the end, doesn’t it, Plandybast? The Fon and I are young enough to need help, therefore too young to be trusted when we ask for it.”

  “Now, child,” he objected, “don’t be so quick with blame. Itter didn’t mean to sound ...”

  “Oh, but I did,” said Itter sweetly. “Your other sister, Plandybast, was known for her eccentricity, her individuality. Are we to assume that her child—her children—are any less ... individual?” In the woman’s mouth the word became a curse, an indictment.

  “Now, now, no need to rake up old troubles. Let’s take a little time to talk this out.”

  “There’s no time!” Mavin cried. “Tonight it will be done. The little people will be there, and the Fon, and old Blourbast with his armies and his foul sister. And I am supposed to be there, too, with help from the shifter kindred. They will expect me, and I will not fail them no matter what the people of Battlefox do or don’t do.”

  “Why not let the Ghoul alone?” the woman asked in her sharp, accusing voice. Her eyes were calculating and cold. Her mouth curved but her eyes were chilly, and the shadowperson cringed away from her when she stepped closer. “The Ghoul does no more than any Gamesman. He plays in accordance with his Talent. From what you say, the Wizard’s plan will work well enough without shifters. The cure will be wrought. The people will be healed. What matter that the Ghoul returns to his tunnels? What business is it of ours? Our business is the education of our young, not interfering with Ghouls. When he is cured, you bring Mertyn here to be educated, and forget the Ghoul. All will be as it was before.”

  “But it will not be as it was before,” said Mavin, gritting her teeth. She had already said this twice. “The disease is one which afflicts the shadowpeople from time to time. They have always been able to cure it before, with the Bone. If Blourbast is left alive, if he returns to his tunnels with the Bone, then the disease will strike again, and again. As it returned again and again in the ancient time.” The little creature on her shoulder trilled, and Mavin understood the meaning. “My friend says it may strike next time at you, Madam Itter, and at the children you are so eager to see educated, perhaps your own. It would not be wise to return to that ancient time, before Ganver.”

  Hearing this name the shadowpeople began to sing, a lamenting song, full of runs and aching sadness, so engaging a song that they put down the food they held to put their arms about one another and sway as they sang.

  “What are they doing?” asked the woman in sudden apprehension.

  “They sing of Ganver. A god to them. Perhaps Ganver would have been a god to us as well. It is Ganver’s Bone the Ghoul has. Listen to them, woman! Listen to them, Plandybast! To you they were legends? Myths? Now they are here before you, singing, and you owl me with those doubtful eyes and will not promise to help me.” She flung her arms wide in a despairing gesture and moved away from them toward the shadowpeople.

  Plandybast came after her. “Some of them will probably come, Mavin. Just give them a little time. Itter is a kind of sister to me. At least, her mother said she was my father’s child. But you’ve heard her. She always assumes that others are stupid, or
evil, or both. It isn’t only you, she behaves so to all of us. And she does have a point, you know. There seem to be a lot of details you’re not sure of. And none of us relish the idea of having anything to do with the plague, or with the Ghoul, come to that. We don’t really interfere in the business of the world that much, we Battlefoxes. Oh, we hire ourselves out for Game from time to time, but there seems to be no fee and no honor in this ...”

  “Fee! Honor! I have seen these little ones so frightened that their faces run with tears and shuddering so hard with sobs they can scarcely stand, and they go on while they are crying! I call that honor, Plandybast. You would respond better to a call to Game? If I had come with a Herald, announcing challenge, would that have made it easier? I could have done that! Watch, now, thalan. See the Herald come?” She was angry and tired. She shifted without thinking as she had done once before in Danderbat keep, without planning it, letting her shape become that of the Herald she had seen outside the walls of Pfarb Durim. She made her voice a bugle, let it ring across the walls of Battlefox keep. “Give ear, oh people of Battlefox Demesne, for I come at the behest of the Wizard Himaggery, most wise, most puissant, to bring challenge to the sluggards of this keep that they stay within their walls while Game moves about them!” Then she trembled, and the shape fell away. There was only silence from them, and astonishment, and—fear.

  “Impossible,” Plandybast quavered. “Shifters cannot take the form of other Gamesmen. But your face was the face of the Herald Dumarch-don. I know him. Your voice was his voice. Impossible. You’re only a child.”

  “I’m a forty-six-season child,” she agreed. “It is said to be impossible, but I can do it. Sometimes. You have not asked how we escaped from Danderbat keep, thalan. You have not asked how I came out of Pfarb Durim, a city under siege. It is better, perhaps, that you do not know, but I made use of this Talent to do it. I have been long on the road to you, coming to you at your invitation. Now look to your kin. They are all fainting with shock.” And she turned away bitterly, knowing that fear had done what politeness might have prevented—made them refuse to help her.

  Itter was already cawing at the group. “You see! What did I tell you! She is no true shifter! Can a true shifter take the shape of other Gamesmen? Can they? I said her mother was guilty of individuality, and so she was. Now will you believe me?”

  “Go with them,” Mavin said wearily to Plandybast. “I will wait out here for an hour, perhaps two. I will sleep here on this sun-warmed hill and make strength for the journey back, among my small friends who account themselves my kindred while my kindred sort out whether they are my friends or not. Any who will come with me will be welcome. If none will come—well, so be it.” And she turned away from him to move into the welcoming arms of the shadowpeople who snuggled about her on the slope, a small hillock of eyes watching the walls of Battlefox Demesne.

  A voice spoke calmly from above her head. “They are not eager in your aid, your kinsmen.”

  She looked up. The Agirul hung above her head. “How did you get here?” she cried. Around her the little people twittered and laughed.

  “I have been here,” said the Agirul. “All along.”

  “Then you’re not ... the one who ... you don’t know ...”

  “What the Agirul knows, the Agirul knows,” said the creature in a voice of great complacency. “Which means all of it, wherever its parts may be.” It released one long, clawed arm to scratch itself reflectively, coughing a little, then twittering a remark to the shadowpeople which made them all sigh. “I said that you are saddened by your reception in this place.”

  “Old Gormier would have been biting on the bit by now,” she said. “Him and Wurstery and the others. They may be evil old lechers, but they would have been full of fire and ready to move.” Then she added, more honestly, “Of course, I don’t really know that to be true. They might have been willing to be involved, but might not have responded to a plea from me, or Handbright, or any girl from behind the p’natti.”

  “Wisdom,” growled the Agirul. “Painful, isn’t it? We assume so much and resist learning to the contrary. Well, neither Danderbat nor Battlefox meets our needs at the moment. Shall we consider other alternatives?”

  “Our needs, Agirul? I didn’t know you were involved.”

  The beast swung, side by side, a furry pendulum, head weaving on its heavy neck. “Well, girl person, if we were to speak strictly of the matter, I am not involved. If we speak of curiosity, however, and of philosophy, and of being wakened and not allowed to go back to sleep—there are consequences of such things, wouldn’t you agree? And consequence breeds consequence, dragging outsiders in and thrusting insiders out, will we or nil we, making new concatenations out of old dissimilitudes. Doesn’t that express it?”

  She shook her head in confusion, not sure what had been expressed. “Are you saying I shouldn’t bother to wait for Plandybast?”

  “Leave him a note. Tell him to meet you on the road south of Pfarb Durim tonight with any of his people who will assist or to go to Himaggery and offer himself if you are not there. In that way, you need not linger, wasting tune, and it is indeed a waste. If one may not sleep and one may not act, then what use is there sitting about?”

  After a moment’s thought, she did as the Agirul suggested, finding a bit of flat stone on which a charcoaled message could be left. He could not fail to see it. The letters were as tall as her hand, and the Agirul assured her there would be no rain, no storm to wipe them away in the next few hours. “Where, then?” she asked him. “Back to Pfarb Durim?”

  “I thought we might seek assistance from some other source,” the Agirul replied, lapsing into shadowperson talk while the little ones gathered around in a mood of growing excitement. “I have suggested they take you to Ganver’s Grave. It is not far from here, and the trip may prove helpful.”

  “Ganver’s Grave? We have no dead raisers among us, Agirul. And truth to tell, after Hell’s Maw, I have no desire to see or smell any such.”

  “Tush. The place may be called Ganver’s Grave, girl, but I did not say he is dead. Go along. It is not far, but there is no time to spend in idle chat.”

  “Are you coming?” she inquired, offering to help it down from the branch it hung upon.

  “I’ll be there,” it said, humming, still swinging. “More or less.”

  Shaking her head she allowed herself to be led away, following the multitude which scampered ahead of her into the trees. A tug at her hand reminded her that a small person waited to be carried, and she lifted him onto her shoulder once more. He kicked her, and she shifted, making it easier for him and herself to catch up to the fleeing shadows before them. They led east, back toward the River, she thought, and the long valley in which it ran. The land was flat, easy to move across, with little brush or fallen wood to make the way difficult. After they had run for some little time, Mavin began to wonder at the ease of the travel and to look at the land about her with more questioning eyes. It looked like—like park land. Like the land at the edge of the p’natti, where all the dead wood had been cut for cook fires and all noxious weeds killed. It looked used, tended. “Who lives here?” she panted, receiving awarble which conveyed no meaning in answer. “Someone,” she said to herself. “Something. Not shadowpeople. They would not cut brush or clear out thorns.” Someone else. Something else. “Maybe some Demesne or other. Some great Gamesman’s private preserve.” But, if so, where were the thousand gardeners and woodsmen it would take? She had run many leagues, and the way was still carefully tended and groomed and empty. “If there are workers, where are they?”

  She heard a warbling song from far ahead, one which grew louder as she ran. The shadowpeople had stopped, had perhaps arrived at their goal. She ran on, feeling the warmth of her hindquarters as the sun rolled west. There through the trees loomed a wall of color, a towering structure which became more and more visible, wider and wider, until she emerged from the trees and saw all of it, an impossibility, glowing in the li
ght. “Ooof,” she whispered, not believing it.

  “Ooof,” carolled the shadowpeople in sympathy, coming back to pat her with their narrow hands and bring her forward.

  It was stone, she thought. Like the stone of which the strange arches were made. Although they were green and this was red as blood, both had the same crystalline feel, the misleading look of translucence. The wall bulged toward her out of the earth, then its glittering pate arched upward at the sky. “A ball,” she marveled. “A huge ball, sunk a bit in the ground. What is it? Some kind of monument? A memorial? Agirul called it Ganver’s Grave. Is Ganver buried here?”

  “Unlikely,” said the Agirul from a tree behind her. “I don’t think the Eesties bury their dead. I don’t think Eesties die, come to think of it. At least I never heard one of them saying anything to indicate that they might. Not that I’ve been privileged to hear them say that much. No, I’ve probably not heard a word from an Eesty more than a dozen times in the last two or three thousand years.”

  “You’re that old! Two or three thousand years!”

  The beast shifted, as though uncomfortable at her vehemence. “Only in a sense, Mavin. What the Agirul knows, the Agirul knows. It may not have been precisely I who spoke with the Eesties, but then it was in a sense. The concept is somewhat confusing, I realize. It has to do with extracorporeal memory and rather depends upon what filing system one uses. None of which has any bearing on the current situation at all. We came, I believe, to seek some help, and should be getting at it.” The Agirul came painfully out of its tree and began dragging itself toward the red ball, moving with so much effort and obvious discomfort that Mavin leaned over and picked it up, gasping at the effort. The Agirul was far heavier than its size indicated, though she was able to bear the weight once it had positioned itself upon her back. She would need more bulk if she were to bear this one far, but the creature gave her no time to seek it. “Around to the side, to your left. There’s a gateway there. It will probably take all of us to get it open.”