by neetha Napew
‘Ah. And when they have learned to crawl, what then?’
She seemed doubtful. ‘We have one or two in the building by the stream. They learned to crawl long ago and now are learning to feed themselves with their hands. It would be easier if they were not so frail.’
‘Frail?’
‘Well . . .’ She looked around herself, whispering, ‘There are only two. And one of them is over eighty years old. She has forgotten her toilet training now, but
I have refused to bring her back here.’ One evidently did not discuss the age of their charges; to do so required a whisper.
I said nothing. I could say nothing. Back in Stoneflight Demesne I had had a neutered fustigar named Grompozzle. Grommy for short. It had taken me exactly six days to house-train him. He had known how to feed himself from birth. I looked at the beds around me, stinking again, the odor permeating the very stones of the place. I thought I very much wished to meet Father.
The day went on. It went on in the same way. Sister Therapist sat by Bobby, grunting whenever she smelled him. Sister Rejoice cleaned shit and pee out of endless bedsheets. Sister Someone Else spooned gruel into mouths that would not open or would not shut, down throats that would not swallow. I watched as long as I could, then went out into the forest to hit trees. I waited for Ganver, but Ganver didn’t come.
Nighttime did. Along toward dusk, a bell rang, and the Sisters left the buildings in procession, single file, winding through the woods toward a tall lamplit building with an arrangement of bell tower and chapel to one side. I followed them and filed in behind them, me being invisible as taught by the seven. To no avail, for one of the hawk-eyed men who sat in the tall chair at the front of the place saw me in the instant. His face was lean, very handsome, very stern. His eyes gleamed like a were-owl’s sighting prey when he sighted me.
The Sisters sang, not very tunefully. I couldn’t blame them. They were tired, dispirited, and they smelled. No matter how clean they tried to be, the poor things couldn’t help it. They did smell.
The tallest Father preached. He stood before us in robes of gleaming white, surrounded by the smoke of sweet incense, fondling his groin from time to time as he talked of St. Phallus. St. Phallus loomed behind the altar, erect, massive, as though ready to rape the world.
It was not the first such monument I had seen. Wherever men were ignorant and hungry for power, I had seen these things, though never one as large as this. Father fondled his groin and preached.
‘Holy fruit of St. Phallus,’ he said.
‘Clean seed planted in filthy ground,’ he said.
‘Corrupted by dirty woman-wombs,’ he said.
‘Sisters atone for being women by being Servants,’ he said. The Sisters nodded, a few of them weeping. I wondered how old they had been when they were brought here. After the service, I asked Sister Servant Rejoice. She thought she had been around eight years old.
‘Why did you decide to come to the Sanctuary?’ I asked, wondering why anyone would.
‘I didn’t decide,’ she said, astonished. ‘Oh, no, I was only a filthy woman-child. Father decided. He took me from my people; he brought me here. He saved me. Oh, I fought him, too. Threatened to run away. Father had to tie me up for a long, long time. He had to whip me before I would settle to my duty. Bless Father.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Bless Father indeed.’
From behind us in the clean, sweet-smelling place. Father watched me walk away, his intention clear in his face. I went in the front door of the other building, down to the kitchen to get my pack, and out the back door. Jinian was young and strong. Jinian could be tied up and whipped until she, too, settled to her duty. Jinian had no intention of allowing that to happen.
In the woods, from a high ridge of stone behind some bushes, I watched the place. Sure enough, it was not long before Father and two or three of his ilk came along, one of them carrying what looked very much like shackles. What was it Ganver had said, ‘Watch and learn’?
Learn what? What question had I asked? Ah, yes. I had asked what the star-eye means.
So I settled there upon the ridge, listening with some curiosity to the shouting going on below, the running
about, the muffled scream of some Sister as she was slapped for letting me get away. I sat staring at the star pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me. A star. With an eye in the center.
An eye. Looking out.
A star shape. With an eye, looking out.
Looking away.
Away from its own shape.
Toward ... ?
For a moment I thought I had it, but then it eluded me. I knew it was there, in the shape, in the lesson, but I couldn’t quite reach it. I struggled for a long time, chasing the thought as I might a fish in shallows, but each time it slipped through my fingers.
Then, because I felt great sorrow for the Sister Servants and pity for the flesh they tended, which mercy would not have kept alive, I did Inward Is Quiet upon all the mindless creatures that lay in the beds in those buildings below. Inward Is Quiet in the imperative mode. Forever. They would not need to be cleaned or fed again. I wondered how the Fathers would react to that. Almost I wanted to stay to find out, but Ganver returned about that time. I looked up from my work to find the Eesty watching me.
‘Have you seen?’ asked Ganver.
‘I’ve seen what’s down there, yes. I’m afraid it doesn’t explain the star-eye to me, Ganver. And I can tell you, I hate this memory.’
‘Oh,’ said Ganver. ‘This place is not part of the Maze. This place is real. It has been thus for a thousand years. These genital worshipers live well, and they are not encumbered by too much work. They have their Servants.’
‘It need not be thus much longer,’ I told the Eesty, ‘I can set a few spells upon it to try the philosophy of those who enslave these women.’
Ganver looked at me very keenly. ‘You may punish these men, surely, for what it is they do, but they will not profit from it. Think what you do!’
Without answering, I opened my pack, took out certain things I needed. I was not truly listening to Ganver. The evil of the place was too much with me. I could not bear it.
I made a little image with a little phallus, dressed it in a bit of white fabric from my shirt, incensed it with sweet gum and resin. I named it. ‘Father,’ I called it, bathing it in the sweet smoke. Then I melted its little phallus away in the fire. I did Dream Chains to Bind It to include all the Fathers, no matter where they were. ‘You must find another saint to worship, Fathers. You no longer have the symbol of St. Phallus to comfort you.’ I wondered how they would handle that.
I put things away in my pack, suddenly uncomfortably aware that Ganver still stood there, staring at me, saying nothing. It made me self-conscious, embarrassed, and for the first time I began to consider what I had done, casting about for an explanation.
‘Think, Jinian,” Ganver murmured at me. The voice was hypnotic, compelling. ‘Think what you do, how you feel, what you have just done. You have been angry. You sought something which was not there. Because it was not there, you punished certain creatures for its lack. Why, Jinian? Will you punish a gnat because it cannot sing? You will not have the power of the star-eye until you understand these things.’
It came back to me then, all in a flash, standing there in that dark forest with the scent of the resins still in my nostrils. I remembered where I had heard the star-eye mentioned recently before. By the Oracle. In the cave of the giants. The Seer had looked at the star-eye on my chest and had suggested the Oracle take it from me. The Oracle had refused, saying it was only a symbol, that it had no real power. I mumbled something about this, trying to put that notion together with what had just happened. Ganver, hearing me, gave a high, keening sound, like weeping - or terrible laughter.
I tried to comfort it. ‘Ganver, Ganver, do not grieve so. The Oracle is only a foolish thing. ...” Which seemed only to make the matter worse. I could not tell what it was that grieved Ganver so
. It was all part of that star-eye puzzle which it kept trying to teach me without telling me anything helpful at all.
After a long time, we left the place and went elsewhere.
Six
Peter’s Story: The Bright Demesne
I used the flying shape - which had worked quite well previously - to get as far as the mountainous scarps south of Bannerwell, stopping for the night when dark, weariness, and the chill air of evening made it imperative. There were farms along the shelving mesa lands, and I bought my dinner at one of them with civil words and appropriate coin. The shape I took was a nothing-much minor functionary type; harmless, as I thought that would do best and be least threatening in this isolated place. They fed me middling well and offered me a bed, but the pawnish farmer had a glint to his eye that boded ill for a sleeper’s safety, so I smiled and made conversation and got myself off into the forest. I had been gone but a half league and was well hidden in the brush when he came sneaking along after with a bludgeon on his shoulder. I spent a little effort to Shift and gave him a pombi scare to last him some years. He may have stopped running in Bannerwell.
Next day took me a little south of southeast down the range to the cliffs above Long Valley and a dinner hunted by me in fustigar shape and eaten raw. From there it was a mere skip of the wings over the hills to Lake Yost. A high scarp lay at the northwestern end of the lake, and from it I could see the Bright Demesne across the waters. It was a good vantage point, but not good enough to make out details. Also, I did not wish to make any decisions until full day, considering what Mertyn had said about shadows.
When time came for the last lap, I flew slow and low and careful, among trees or down canyons, glad I had done so when I came out at last on the eastern edge of the hills. I thought at first a thunderstorm had gathered over the lake, so gray and dismal it was, then understood what I saw with some dismay. Before spying it out, I spent some time arranging myself to be unobserved: finding a rock nest set behind foliage and with a good overhang and camouflaging myself to discourage detection. Not that they were looking for me, but one could not be too careful. That was a Jinian thought. Three years ago I might not have considered it.
The Bright Demesne lies on the shore of Lake Yost. Middle River flows into the lake slightly to the north of the Demesne, and there is a bridge there. East are forests and the meetings of the roads to Vestertown and Xammer. South are farmlands reaching away for leagues until the forests begin again, and other ranges of mountains.
The Demesne is surrounded by hot springs. Even the hills behind me showed the remnants of old cones. This place had once been alive with fire pots and volcanoes, many thousand thousand years ago, so had said Windlow, the old Seer and teacher. Now only the hot springs remained, they and an occasional wisp of smoke or steam rising from a cone to the south of the High Demesne, where King Prionde and the Ogress had reigned.
So, one expected the Bright Demesne to be surrounded by clouds of waving mist; it is one of the charms of the place. In the cold seasons it is more than charming, for then the great house and the dormitories are pleasantly warm while otherwhere people go shivering about their business. The steam is white, however, and the cloud that now seemed to cover the Demesne was gray as ash.
Until recent years the Demesne had had no walls. It was Barish who had convinced Himaggery they wero needed, and the Tragamors of the Demesne-who had built them - together with a hundred or so skilled pawnish craftsmen recruited from the countryside around and well paid for their work. Now the walls stretched in a loop from the lake eastward, southward, and then west to the lake again, including all the hot springs except one small one that steamed away to itself in isolation quite far to the north east. I had always called that one the ‘Porridge Pot,’ for it plopped and mumbled away to itself as the morning grain did over the kitchen fire. (Forgive me for going on and on about the setting, but you will not understand the siege unless I tell you.)
Along the lakefront a bastion of stone had been built, a kind of high quay with a crenellated wall, broken in several places by wooden gates above stairs that went down to the jetties. Thus the Demesne was surrounded on all sides by walls or heavy gates. As you will know, walls are no protection against Elators, who may flick in or out where they will. Himaggery had met this threat by channeling the power of the hot springs into a network of glowing fire which hung above the Demesne like a great inverted colander. He had used this power first at the Battle of Bannerwell, as I had good reason to remember. It was kept in place by the concentration of linked Sorcerers and Tragamors, working in shifts, or it may be by some Wizardry Himmagery and Barish had worked up between them. That is, if they were speaking to one another. They had not been when I had come to the Demesne last.
Outside these walls, above this net of fire, the shadow lay or everything, including the surface of the lake. Even in the sky there were shadows, rippling masses of gray, like wind-torn storm clouds. There were shadows everywhere except along the level lands to the southeast, where stood the tents of the besieging army.
I Shifted vision, creating telescopic eyes to spy out Huldra’s tent; she was flying her dead brother’s banner.
I recognized the colors and ensign from my captivity in Bannerwell. At some distance was another high pavilion; this one belonging to Dedrina Dreadeye. I did not recognize the ensign of Daggerhawk Demesne - now vacant and home for were-owls, according to Jinian -but I recognized the Basilisk herself. She had not improved in appearance during the seasons since we had encountered her in Fangel. Along with these two were a great horde of Durables and Ephemera, major and minor Gamesmen. I recognized a few banners; players all, whom Himaggery had not much respected, and there was one tall tent with no device or banners at all.
So, it appeared the Demesne was safe enough. Those outside could not get in. However, neither could those inside get out, and in time food would run short, even though there were stores in the cellars below the great house and fertile gardens inside the wall. They produced crops in all seasons beneath the gentle benison of the steams. I wanted to get in, mostly to tell those inside that others were aware of the difficulty and ready to assist. However, the fact that Himaggery had not struck at those camped at his gates when he had the power to do so troubled me and gave me another reason for the attempt.
I lay there the better part of the day. There was no activity in either camp. When night came, I decided to try to get in. If shadows could not exist underwater, my maneuver would probably work. If they did - well, if they did, I would be in considerable difficulty.
Dark came. I slipped down to the lakeshore under cover of the night and into the water. Snake shapes were easy to take. Eel shapes were no more difficult. A fish might have been easier yet, but the water gates that let the water of the hot springs run out through the base of the bastion were covered with grills too small for a large fish to enter.
It was a long cold slither from the western shore, warming as I went farther, becoming quite warm, rather too warm, near the jetties. I thickened the eel’s skin, building in a layer of insulation below it. I hadn’t thought about the heat, which made me divert my path from the northernmost water gate to the one farther south. The water there was cooler since it had been used to warm the buildings before flowing out into its own drainage ditches.
No shadows could be seen on the surface of the lake, but they could be felt. There was a tingling discomfort on my eelskin, that same feeling one gets sometimes when being watched, not palpable but discernible. I slithered and was silent, wriggling among the water weeds and ooze, up current, finding my way to the gate.
It was hotter than any human could have withstood. As it was, there wa a good deal of discomfort when I snaked through the grill and plunged madly upward into the familiar tunnel, seizing its rough rock roof with spider claws to pull myself out of the hot water and hang panting from that slimy vault, gasping, putting out feathery gills to shed heat, waving them madly. I suppose it was a fairly noisy process,
&n
bsp; ‘Who goes there?’ came the bellow, then the lantern light peering down the tunnel at me like some huge eye. ‘Who goes there?’
For a moment it was so surprising, I couldn’t remember how to Shift vocal organs, and it was only in the nick of time I managed to gargle, ‘Himaggery’s son, Peter,’ before someone decided to launch a flaming spear at me. Mumble, mumble. ‘Didn’t look like a person at all.’ Mumble, mumble. ‘Heard he was a Shifter!’ ‘Shifter? That’s right. Child to that Mavin.’ Mumble, mumble. ‘Best thing would be to kill’m.’ Mumble, mumble. ‘Not if he’s who he says. Come out slowly.’
‘I’m not in man-shape,’ I called. Mumble, mumble, in which ‘Get rid of m,’ and ‘Come out slowly’ were equally voiced.
So I came out, pincer foot by pincer foot, then Shifted very slowly while they watched. They made faces. I don’t know why other Gamesmen always make faces, but most of them don’t like Shifters, and that’s all there is to it. So far as I can tell - and I’ve watched in a mirror -there’s nothing particularly repulsive about it. Oh, an occasional inside-outness, perhaps, but guts are guts, after all. We all have them.
I stood there, decently dressed though dripping. ‘If one of you will be kind enough to inform Himaggery I am here, he can identify me.’ I said. All the guardsmen were strangers, and they looked nervous. Being under siege had done nothing to improve their equanimity. ‘Or, if Barish is available, he can identify me.’ Some of their faces smoothed somewhat. Uh-oh, I said to myself. There’s factionalism here. It occurred to me an excellent time to try the Eesty way of message transmission. I stepped forward and laid my bare hand on the hand of one of the guardsmen. ‘I would appreciate your bringing word to either one of them,’ I said, concentrating on my skin, ‘pushing’ the blue crystal message through. It had worked when I was an Eesty.
It worked here, also. The man’s face was slightly hostile when I approached him and touched him. Then less so. Then conciliatory. ‘Brog,’ he said to one of his fellows. ‘Go tell the boy’s father he’s here.’