“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 you 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 heasitant 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 land 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 dem
esne 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 fell 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?”
“She learned of it at the Lake of Faces. Actually, I already knew of Lake Yost. A marvelous location but it was held by a troop of idiots, True Game fanatics, wanting only to challenge and play, come what might of it. They called Great Game a season ago, a Game so large we haven’t seen its like in a decade. With the unlimited power of the place, they succeeded in killing all the players, every Gamesman. The place is emptied and dead, ready for my taking.”
“And will Mavin go with you?”
“Of course! We can’t lose one another now, not after all this time.”
Windlow went to the tower window, stood there watching the clouds move slowly over the long meadows to the west. There were shadows beneath them on the grasses, and he wondered if the shadows hid in these harmless places unseen, when they did not wish to be seen. “Have you thought she might have something else she would like to do?”
“Ah, but what could be more important than this, old teacher? Eh? A place where your ideas can be taught? A place where we can bring together Gamesmen who believe in those words of yours, where we can work together! Wouldn’t anyone want to be part of that?”
“Not everyone, my boy. No. There are many who would not want to be part of that, and that doesn’t make them villians, either.”
“Mavin will want to come with me,” he said with satisfaction. “Windlow, we are so in love. I imagined it, all those years, but I could not imagine even a fraction of it. She wouldn’t lose that anymore than I would.”
“You’ve asked her, I presume.”
“Of course I have! What do you take me for, old teacher? Some kind of barbarian? Kings and other Beguilers may hold unwilling followers—or followers who would be unwilling if they were in their own minds—but Wizards do not. At least this Wizard does not.”
“I just wondered if it had occurred to you—a thought I’ve had from time to time, a passing thing, you know—that love behaves much as Beguilement does. Mertyn, for example. Do you remember him at all?”
“Mavin’s brother. Surely I remember him. A nice child. Boldery’s friend. Of course, he was only eleven or twelve when I left the School, so I don’t remember him well ...”
“Mertyn had the Talent of Beguilement, you know. Had it early, as a fifteen-season child, I think. And it was Mertyn who kept Mavin’s sister from leaving the place they lived, not a very pleasant place for women to hear Mertyn tell of it. He blamed himself, you know, crying over it in the night sometimes. And I asked him if his sister loved him, even without the Beguilement, and he told me yes, she did. So—mostly to relieve the child’s mind, you understand—I said it could have been love did it just as well. And he was not responsible for that. We may be responsible for those we love, but hardly ever for those who love us. Takes a saint to do that.” He turned from this slow, ruminative speech to find Himaggery’s eyes fixed on some point in space. “Himaggery?”
“Um? Oh, sorry. I was thinking about Lake Yost. There’s a perfect site for a community, as I recall, near the place the hot springs come up. I was trying to remember whether there was a little bay there. It seems to me there was, but it’s not clear. You were saying?” He turned his smiling face toward the old man, eyes alight but already shifting again toward that distant focus.
“Nothing,” Windlow sighed. “Nothing, Himaggery. Perhaps we’ll talk about it some other time.”
“I wanted you to have this account of the Eesties,” said Mavin, handing the sheets of parchment to the old man. “Foolishly, I betrayed myself into giving one such account to the false Qiamferton. He was very excited over it. I think he would have tried to hold me in some dungeon or other if I hadn’t cooperated with him so willingly.” She sat upon the windowsill of the tower room, waiting while he read them over, hearing his soft exclamations of delighted interest, far different from Chamferton’s crow of victory when he received his copy. The washerwomen were working at the long trough beside the well, and a fat, half-naked baby staggered among them, dabbling in the spilled water. She considered this mite, half in wonder, half in apprehension.
“And you can’t speak of this at all?” Windlow asked at last.
“Not at all,” she said. “And yet nothing prevents my writing it down.”
“Let’s see,” he murmured. “You went to Ganver’s Grave and ... ahau, ghaaa ...” He choked, coughed, grasped at his throat as though something were caught there, panted, glared around himself in panic. Mavin darted to him, held him up and quiet as the attack passed. He sat down, put his head upon his folded arms. “Frightening,” he whispered. “Utterly frightening. The geas is laid not only upon you, then, but upon anyone?”
“To speak of it, yes. But not to write of it. That fact makes me wonder strangely.”
“For a start, it makes me wonder if the ... they do not choose to be spoken of by the ignorant. They don’t mind being read of by literate people, however. Remarkable.”
“I thought so, too,” she agreed. “Except that the pawns
have a thousand fables about the rolling stars and the Old Ones and the Eesties. Nothing stops their throats. Nothing stopped old Rose-love when she told me the story of Weetzie and the daylight bell.”
“Because fables are fables.” He nodded, ticking the points off to himself. “And facts are facts. You could probably tell the story of your own meeting with them, Mavin, if you fabulized it.”
“Girl-shifter and the Crimson Egg,” she laughed. “The story of Fustigar-woman and the shadowpeople.”
“Quite wonderful. Are you going back there? Seeking the Eesties again?”
“Of course,” she cried in unconscious delight of which Windlow was altogether conscious. “Who could not? Oh, Windlow, you would like that place. As full of marvels as a shell is full of egg. And there are other things, things having nothing to do with the Eesties. There’s a place below the ridge by Schlaizy Noithn like nothing you have ever seen. I call it the Blot. Traders come there—Traders some say. I think them false gifters, myself—and I want to explore it one day. And I left a girl-child friend across the sea. Her I would see again, before I am old, her and her children.”
“And what about your child?” he asked, head cocked to one side, gentle as the wind as he said it.
“How did you know?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I’m a Seer, Mavin. Of one thing and another. In this case, however, it was a case of using my mind and my heart, nothing more. Himaggery doesn’t know, does he?”
“Anyone might know,” she replied in a sober voice. “Anyone who used mind or heart. Throsset knew.”
“You won’t allow that he’s simply afire to get on with his life, so much of it having been spent in a kind of sleep?”
“Why, of course!” she answered in exasperation. “Why, of course I’ll allow it. Do I constrain him to do other than he will? He lost eight years in that valley. Should I demand he turn from his life to look at me? Or listen to me? Windlow. That’s not the question to ask, and you know it.”
He nodded, rather sadly, getting up with a groan and a thud of his stick upon the floor. “Surely, Mavin. Surely. Well. Since it seems you’ll not be Shifting for a time—do I have it right? That is the custom? More than custom, perhaps?—call upon me for whatever you need. Midwives perhaps, when the time comes? I have little power but many good friends.”