Sheri Tepper - Shapeshifter 02 - Necromancer Nine
1 - Necromancer Nine
I had decided to change myself into a Dragon and go looking for my mother despite all argument to the contrary.
Himaggery the Wizard and old Windlow the Seer were determined otherwise. They had been after me for almost a year, ever since the great battle at Bannerwell. Having seen what I did there, they had decided that my "Talent" could not be wasted, and between them they had thought of at least a dozen things they wanted done with it. I, on the other hand, simply wanted to forget the whole thing. I wanted to forget I had become the owner-can I say "owner" ?-of the Gamesmen of Barish, forget I had ever called upon the terrible Talents of those Gamesmen. I'd only done it to save my life, or so I told myself, and I wanted to forget about it.
Himaggery and Windlow wouldn't let me.
We were in one of the shining rooms at the Bright Demesne, a room full of the fragrance of blossoms and ubiquitous wisps of mist. Old Windlow was looking at me pathetically, eyes three-quarters buried in delicate wrinkles and mouth turned down in that expression of sweet reproach. Gamelords! One would think he was my mother. No. My own mother would not have been guilty of that expression, not that wildly eccentric person. Himaggery was as bad, stalking the floor as he often did, hands rooting his hair up into devil's horns, spiky with irritation.
"I don't understand you, boy," he said in that plaintive thunder of his. "We're at the edge of a new age. Change rushes upon us. Great things are about to happen; Justice is to be had at last. We invite you to help, to participate, to plan with us. You won't. You go hide in the orchards. You mope and slope about like some halfwitted pawn of a groom, and then when I twit you a bit for behaving like a perennial adolescent, you merely say you will change into a Dragon and go off to find Mavin Manyshaped. Why? We need you. Why won't you help us?"
I readied my answers for the tenth time. I behave as an adolescent, I would say, because I am one-barely sixteen and puzzled over things which would puzzle men twice my age. I mope because I am apprehensive. I hide in orchards because I am tired of argument. I got ready to say these things.
"And why," he thundered at me unexpectedly, "go as a Dragon?"
The question caught me totally by surprise. "I thought it would be rather fun," I said, weakly.
"Fun!" He shrugged this away as the trifle it was.
"Well, all right," I answered with some heat. "Then it would be quick. And likely no one would bother me."
"Wrong on both counts," he said. "You go flying off across the purlieus and demesnes as a Dragon, and every stripling Firedrake or baby Armiger able to get three man-heights off the ground will be challenging you to Games of Two. You'll spend more time dueling than looking for Mavin Manyshaped, and from what your thalan, Mertyn, tells me, she will take a good bit of finding." He made a gesture of frustrated annoyance, oddly compassionate.
"You have others," I muttered. "You have thousands of followers here. Armigers ready to fly through the air on your missions. Elators ready to flick themselves across the lands if you raise an eyebrow at them. Demons ready to Read the thoughts of any who come within leagues of the Bright Demesne. You don't need me. Can't you let one young person find out something about himself before you eat him up in your plots
Windlow said, "If you were just any young person, we'd let you alone, my boy. You aren't just any young person. You know that. Himaggery knows it. I know it. Isn't that right?"
"I don't care," I said, trying not to sound merely contentious.
"You should care. You have a Talent such as any in the world might envy. Talents, I should say. Why, there's almost nothing you can't do, or cause, or bring into being
"I can't," I shouted at them. "Himaggery, Windlow, I can't. It isn't me who does all those things."
I pulled the pouch from my belt and emptied it upon the table between us, the tiny carved Gamesmen rolling out onto the oiled wood in clattering profusion. I set two of them upon their bases, the taller ones, a black Necromancer and a white Queen, Dorn and Trandilar. They sat there, like stone or wood, giving no hint of the powers and wonders which would come from them if I gripped them in my hand. "I tried to give them to you once, Himaggery. Remember? You wouldn't take them. You said, 'No, Peter, they came to you. They belong to you, Peter.' Well, they're mine, Himaggery, but they aren't mine. I wish you'd understand."
"Explain it to me," he said, blank faced.
I tried. "When I first took the figure of Dora into my hand, there in the caves under Bannerwell, Dora came into my mind. He was.., is an old man, Himaggery. Very wise. Very powerful. His mind has sharp edges; he has seen strange things, and his mind echoes with them-resonates to them. He can do strange, very marvelous things. It is he who does them. I am only a kind of..
"Host," suggested Windlow. "Housing? Vehicle?"
I laughed without humor. They knew so much but understood so little. "Perhaps. Later, I took Queen Trandilar, Mistress of Beguilement. First of all the Rulers. Younger than Dorn, but still, far older than I am. She had lived... fully. She had understanding I did not of... erotic things. She does wonderful things, too, but it is she who does them." I pointed to the other Gamesmen on the table. "There are nine other types there. Dealpas, eidolon of Healers. Sorah, mightiest of Seers. Shattnir, most powerful of Sorcerers. I suppose I could take them all into myself, become a kind of... inn, hotel for them. If that is all I am to be. Ever."
Windlow was looking out the winDorn, his face sad. He began to chant, a child's rhyme, one used for jump rope. "Night-dark, dust-old, bony Dora, grave-cold; Flesh-queen, love-star, lust-pale, Trandilar; Shifted, fetched, sent-far, trickiest is Thandbar." He turned to Himaggery and shook his head slowly, side to side. "Let the boy alone," he said.
Himaggery met the stare, held it, finally flushed and looked away. "Very well, old man. I have said everything! can say. If Peter will not, he will not. Better he do as he will, if that will content him."
Windlow tottered over to me and patted my shoulder. He had to reach up to do it. I had been growing rather a lot. "It may be you will make these Talents your own someday, boy. It may be you cannot wield a Talent well unless it is your own. In time, you may make Dorn's Talent yours, and Trandilar's as well."
I did not think that likely, but did not say so.
Himaggery said, "When you go, keep your ears open. Perhaps you can learn something about the disappearances which will help us."
"What disappearances?" I asked guardedly.
"The ones we have been discussing for a season," he said. "The disappearances which have been happening for decades now. A vanishment of Wizards. Disappearances of Kings. They go, as into nothing. No one knows how, or where, or why. Among those who go, too many were our allies."
"You're trying to make me curious," I accused. "Trying to make me stay."
He flushed angrily. "Of course I want you to stay, boy. I've begged you. Of course I wish you were curious enough to offer your help. But if you won't, you won't. If Windlow says not to badger you, I won't. Go find your mother. Though why you should want to do so is beyond me and his voice faded away under Windlow's quelling glare.
I gathered the Gamesmen, the taller ones no longer than my littlest finger, delicate as lace, incorruptible as stone. I could have told him why I wanted to find Mavin, but I chose not to. I had seen her only once since infancy, only once, under conditions of terror and high drama. She had said nothing personal to me, and yet there was something in her manner, in her strangeness, which was attractive to me. As though, perhaps, she had answers to questions. But it was all equivocal, flimsy. There were no hard reasons which Himaggery would accept.
"Let it be only t
hat I have a need," I whispered. "A need which is Peter's, not Darn's, not Trandilar's. I have a Talent which is mine, also, inherited from her. I am the son of Mavin Manyshaped, and I want to see her. Leave it at that."
"So be it, boy. So I will leave it."
He was as good as his word. He said not another word to me about staying. He took time from his meetings and plottings to pick horses for me from his own stables and to see I was well outfitted for the trip north to Schooltown. If I was to find Mavin, the search would begin with Mertyn, her brother, my thalan. Once Himaggery had taken care of these details, he ignored me. Perversely, this annoyed me. It was obvious that no one was going to blow trumpets for me when I left, and this hurt my feelings. As I had done since I was four or five years old, I went down to the kitchens to complain to Brother Chance.
"Well, boy, you didn't expect a testimony dinner, did you? Those are both wise-old heads, and they wouldn't call attention to you wandering off. Too dangerous for you, and they know it.''
This shamed me. They had been thinking of me after all. I changed the subject. "I thought of going as a Dragon."
"Fool thing to do," Chance commented. "Can't think of anything more gomerous than that. What you want is all that fire and speed and the feel of wind on your wings. All that power and swooping about. Well, that might last half a day, if you was lucky." He grimaced at me to show what he thought of the notion, as though his words had not conveyed quite enough. I flinched. I had learned to deal with Himaggery and Windlow, even to some extent with Mertyn, who had taught me and arranged for my care and protection by setting Chance to look after me, but I had never succeeded in dealing with Chance himself. Every time I began to take myself seriously, he let me know how small a vegetable I was in his particular stew. Whenever he spoke to me it brought back the feel of the kitchen and his horny hands pressing cookies into mine. Well. No one liked the Dragon idea but me.
"Well, fetch-it, Chance. I am a Shifter."
"Well, fetch-it, yourself, boy. Shift into something sensible. If you're going to go find your mama, we got to go all the way to Schooltown to ask Mertyn where to look, don't we? Change yourself into a baggage horse. That'll be useful." He went on with our packing, interrupting himself to suggest, "You got the Talent of that there Dorn. Why not use him. Go as a Necromancer?
"Why Dorn?" I asked and shivered. "Why not Trandilar?" Of the two, she was the more comfortable, though that says little for comfort.
"Because if you go traveling around as a Prince or King or any one of the Rulers, you'll catch followers like a net catches fish, and you'll be up to your gullet in Games before we get to the River. You got three Talents, boy. You can Shift, but you don't want to Shift into something in-con-spic-u-ous. You can Rule, but that's dangerous, being a Prince or a King. Or you can, well, Necromancers travel all over all the time and nobody bothers them. They don't need to use the Talent. Just have it is enough."
In the end he had his way. I wore the black, broad-brimmed hat, the full cloak, the gauze mask smeared with the death's head. It was no more uncomfortable than any other guise, but it put a weight upon my heart. Windlow may have guessed that, for he came tottering down from his tower in the chill mowing to tell us good-bye. "You are not pretty, my boy, but you will travel with fewer complications this way."
"I know, Old One. Thank you for coming down to wave me away."
"Oh, I came for more than that, lad. A message for your thalan, Mertyn. Tell him we will need his help soon, and he will have word from the Bright Demesne." There was still that awful, pathetic look in his eyes.
"What do you mean, Windlow? Why will you need his help?"
"There, boy. There isn't time to explain. You would have known more or less if you'd been paying attention to what's been going on. Now is no time to become interested. Journey well." He turned and went away without my farewell kiss, which made me grumpy. All at once, having gained my own way, I was not sure I wanted it.
We stopped for a moment before turning onto the high road. Away to the south a Traders' train made a plume of dust in the early sky, a line of wagons approaching the Bright Demesne.
"Traders." Chance snorted. "As though Himaggery didn't have enough problems."
It was true that Traders seemed to take up more time than their merchandise was worth, and true that Himaggery seemed to spend a great deal of time talking with them. I wasn't thinking of that, however, but of the choice of routes which confronted us. We could go up the eastern side of the Middle River, through the forests east of the Gathered Waters and the lands of the Immutables. Chance and I had come that way before, though not intentionally. This time I chose the western side of the River, through farmlands and meadowlands wet with spring floods and over a hundred hump-backed, clattering bridges. There was little traffic in any direction; woodwagons moving from forest to village, water oxen shuffling from mire to meadow, a gooseherd keeping his hissing flock in order with a long; blossomy wand. Along the ditches webwillows whispered a note of sharp gold against the dark woodlands, their downy kit- tens ready to burst into bloom. Rain breathed across windrows of dried leaves, greening now with upthrust grasses and the greeny-bronze of curled fern. There was no hurry in our going. I was sure Himaggery had sent an Elator to let Mertyn know I was on the way.
That first day we saw only a few pawns plowing in the fields, making the diagonal ward-of-evil sign when they saw me but willing enough to sell Chance fresh eggs and greens for all that. The second day we caught up to a party of merchants and trailed just behind them into Vestertown where they and we spent the night at the same inn. They no more than the pawns were joyed to see me, but they were traveled men and made no larger matter of my presence among them. Had they known it, they had less to fear from me than from Chance. I would take nothing from them but their courtesy, but Chance would get them gambling if he could. They were poorer next day for their night's recreation, and Chance was humming a victory song as we went along the lake in the morning light.
The Gathered Waters were calm and glittering, a smiling face which gave no indication of the storms which often troubled it. Chance reminded me of our last traveling by water, fleeing before the wind and from a ship full of pawners sent by Mandor of Bannerweli to capture me.
"I don't want to think about that," I told him. "And of that time."
"I thought you was rather fond of that girl," he said. "That Immutable girl."
"Tossa. Yes. I was fond of her, Chance, but she died. I was fond of Mandor, too, once, and he is as good as dead, locked up in Bannerwell for all he is Prince of the place. It seems the people I am fond of do not profit by it much."
"Ahh, that's nonsense, lad. You're fond of Silkhands, and she's Gaxnesmistress down in Xammer now, far better off than when you met her. Windlow, too. You helped him away from the High King, Prionde, and I'd say that's better off. It was the luck of the Game did Tossa, and I'm sorry for it. She was a pretty thing."
"She was. But that was most of a year ago, Chance. I grieved over her, but that's done now. Time to go on to something else."
"Well, you speak the truth there. It's always time for something new."
So we rode along, engaged at times in such desultory conversation, other times silent. This was country I had not seen before. When I had come from Bannerwell to the Bright Demesne after the battle, it had been across the purlieus rather than by the long road. In any case, I had not been paying attention then.
We came to the River Banner very late on the third day of travel, found no inn there but did find a ferrymaster willing to have us sleep in the shed where the femes were kept. We hauled across at first light, spent that night camped above a tiny hamlet no bigger than my fist, and rode into Schooltown the following noon.
Somehow I had expected it to be changed, but it was exactly the same: little houses humped up the hills, shops and Festival halls hulking along the streets, cobbles and walls and crooked roofs, chimneys twisting up to breathe smoke into the hazy sky, and the School Houses on t
he ridge above. Havad's House, where Mandor had been Gamesmaster. Dorcan's House across the way. Bilme's House, where it was said Wizards, were taught. Mertyn's House where my thalan was chief Gamesmaster, where I had grown up in the nurseries to be bullied; by Karl Pig-face and to love Mandor and to depart. A sick, sweet feeling went through me, half nausea, half delight, together with the crazy idea that I would ask Mertyn to let me stay at the House, be a student again. Most students did not leave until they were twenty-five. I could have almost a decade here, in the peace of Schooltown. I came to myself to find Chance clutching my horse's bridle and staring at me in concern.
"What is it, boy? You look as though you'd been ghost bit."
"Nothing." I laughed, a bit unsteadily. "A crazy idea, Brother Chance."
"You haven't called me that since we left here."
"No. But we're back, now, aren't we? Don't worry, Chance. I'm all right." We turned the horses over to a stable pawn and went in through the small side door beside the kitchens. It was second nature to do so, habit, habit to remove my hat, to go off along the corridor behind Chance, habit to hear a familiar voice rise tauntingly behind me.
Sheri Tepper - Shapeshifter 02 Page 1