“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 all 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 Cagihiggy 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 w ould only bring Arkhur into his own shape and let him go alone. Perhaps, she told herself, watching him shamble along behind the wagons, that solemn expression upon his fece, 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 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 fer 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 not!”
“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 as I was in the Dervish’s valley. What did my face say?”
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 t
ask. 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 feet 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 feet 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?
Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven ...
It isn’t the Dervish who speaks to me, telling me not to Shift, she told herself. Even though I hear that strange Dervishy humming all around, it isn’t the Dervish. If the Dervish had known a reason I should not Shift, the Dervish would have said so, just as it said too many other things.
Besides, when she had pulled power there on the hillside above the shadowed tower the chill had attracted their attention, or it had seemed to do so. So it might be her own dream-mind telling her to be careful, telling her things her awake-mind was too busy to notice. Too busy to notice. As for example, how relieved she was to have left the Fon-beast behind ...
“That’s not true!” she tried to tell herself. “That’s nonsense.”
The denial was not convincing. It was true; she was relieved to have left him behind. There was too much feeling connected with his presence, a kind of loving agony which pulled first one way then another, making her conscious of her body all the time. It was easier not to worry about that, easier to be one’s own self for a time.
“Selfish,” she admonished herself. “Selfish, just as Huld and Huldra were thinking only of themselves.”
“Nonsense.” Some internal monitor objected to this. “You have lived for thirty-five years on your own, mostly alone, not having to worry about another person every day, every hour. Thirty-five years sets habits in place, Mavin. It is only that this new responsibilty disturbs your sense of the usual, that’s all.”
But it was not all. If that had been all she could have left the Fon-beast at any time for any reason, and so long as he was cared for, she should have felt no guilt. If that had been all, it would not have mattered who cared for him. But as it was, she knew she would not leave the Fon-beast unless it were necessary to save his life. He was now her responsibility. Set into her care. Given to her. Foisted upon her. She could no more turn her back on that than she could have turned her back on Handbright’s children. “But I did not agree to that,” she said to herself in a pleading voice. “I did not agree to that at all.”
Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three ...
“You agreed to meet him. Of such strange foistings are meetings made.”
She did not know where these voices came from, familiar voices, sometimes older, sometimes younger than her own. They had always spoken to her at odd moments, calling her to account for her actions—usually when it was far too late to do anything about them. “Ghosts,” she suggested to herself. “My mother’s ghost? Ghost of all the Danderbat women, dead and gone.” It was an unprofitable consideration which distracted her attention from covering the leagues east. She tried to think of something else, to concentrate upon counting her strides.
One hundred, and a hundred more, and a hundred more ...
Responsibilty. Who had taught her the word? Handbright, of course. “Mavin, it is your responsiblity to take the plates down to the kitchen. Mavin, you are responsible for Mertyn. Don’t let him out of your sight. Mavin, you must acquire a sense of responsibility...”
What was responsibility after all but a kind of foisting? Laying a burden on someone without considering whether that person could bear it or wanted to bear it. Dividing up the necessaries among the available hands to do it, though always exempting certain persons from any responsibility at all. Oh, that was true. Some were never told they must be responsible. Boy-children in Danderbat Keep, for example.
So it was some went through life doing as they chose without any responsibility or only with those responsibilities they chose for themselves. Others had it laid upon them at every turn. So Handbright had tried to lay responsibility upon Mavin, who had evaded it, run from it, denied it. She had not felt guilty about that in the past. Why then did she feel guilt because she relished being on her own again, away from the thin leather strap which tied her to the Fon-beast, linking her to him by a halter of protection and guidance, a determination to bring him to himself safely—one hoped—at last. And it was not really the Dervish who had laid it on her; she had it laid on herself—laid it on with that promise twenty years ago.
“Every promise is like that,” she whispered to herself as she stopped counting strides for a moment. “Every promise has arms and legs and tentacles reaching off into other things and other places and other times, strange bumps and protrusions you don’t see when you make the promise. Then you find you’ve taken up some great, lumpty thing you never knew existed until you see it for the first time in the light of morning.” It was easier not to think of it.
Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven ...
A great lumpty thing one never saw before. Not only ecstasy and joy and an occasional feeling of overpowering peace, but also guiding and protecting and watching and hoping, grieving and planning and seeing a
ll one’s plans go awry. “I did not agree to be tied to any great, demanding responsibility,” she said, surprised at how clearly this came. “I don’t want to be tied to it.”
“Come now,” said a commentator. “You don’t know what it is yet. You think it’s likely to be lumpty, but it might not be that bad. You haven’t seen it. How would you know?”
“I know,” said Mavin, scowling to herself. “Never mind how I know, I know.”
“She knows,” said the wind. “Silly girl,” commented the trees. Her inner voices agreed with these comments and were silent.
She tried to estimate how far she might be from the Lake of Faces. Two days perhaps, or three. The Lake was a good way south of Chamferton’s aerie, of course, and the road lay north. It was probable a great deal of distance could be saved if she could cut cross country southeast to intercept the canyons north of Pfarb Durim. Shadows lay beneath the trees to the southeast. Everywhere except on the road. Benign or malign. Both looked superficially the same until they moved, quivered, flew aloft in sucking flakes of gray. Better not tempt them. Run on.
Ninety-nine, one hundred, start over.
“You loved him as Fon-beast,” her internal commentator suggested, as though continuing a long argument. “When you ran wild in the forest. Why do you disavow him now, at the end of a halter?”
“Because,” she hissed, “I am tied to the other end of it! If he is tied, we are both tied. Now, voices, be still. Be done. I will think on it no more, care about it no more, worry it no more. I have leagues to run again tomorrow. I run to save my life and Himaggery’s life and Arkhur’s life, and there is no guilt in that, so be done and let me alone.”
This exorcism, for whatever reason, seemed efficacious. She ran without further interruption to her concentration until darkness stopped her feet. She thought she would have no trouble sleeping then, though the stone was of a hardness which no blanket was adequate to soften. She would still sleep, no matter what, she thought, but that supposition was false. She lay half dozing, starting awake at every sound, realizing at last that she heard a Harpy scream in each random forest noise. When she realized that, she remembered also that she was traveling back toward the Lake of Faces, back toward the Harpy’s own purlieus. It would be impossible to avoid them there. Impossibe to avoid those eyes, those mouths, those long, snaky necks. She fell at last into shuddering dream, in which she was pursued down an endless road, Harpy screams coming from behind her, and she afraid to turn and see how many and how near they were.