Sheri Tepper - Shapeshifter 01

by King's Blood Four(Lit)

  Immutables, Yarrel had thought up at least three reasons why.

  "Mandor may have sent them. If he is not dead, he may be remorseful and desirous of making it up to you. ''

  I thought this most unlikely. I had seen Mandor's face when Mertyn moved against him. "Mertyn may have sent them, " he went on. "He has decided he made a mistake to send you away and... " Chance hushed him, as did I. In our opinion, mine for what small count it has, Mertyn makes very few mistakes of any kind.

  "Or, someone may have seen the play, " Yarrel continued, "when the power flew at Mandor, and may have thought it came from you... "

  I said nonsense.

  "Truly, Peter. Some kin of Mandor may have thought so and desires to take you for vengeance. "

  "Met I did nothing to him. It was he who tried to kill me. "

  "But, they may not know that. Someone watching from a bad vantage point, they might think it was you. "

  "Or someone from afar, " agreed Chance. "Someone who saw or heard about it but did not know the truth.

  Perhaps they think you a Wizard Emergent, and the pawners are recruiting for a True Game somewhere. "

  "Where?"

  "Who knows where. Somewhere. Some petty King of a small purlieu may have offered high for a Wizard. No tested Gamesman would go to a small purlieu, so a pawner would be paid to look for a student, or a boy with talent just emerging. "

  "But, it was Mertyn's Sorcerer, not me. Mertyn's power, not mine. Power bled into that Sorcerer for days, perhaps, little by little, so that we'd not feel it going, so that he'd be ready when the moment came. It was Mertyn! Not me. "

  Chance agreed, pursing his lips and cocking his head like a bird listening to bugs in the wood. "You know it, lad. I know it, and so does Yarrel, here. Someone else may not. "

  I exploded, "What do I look like? Some Wizard

  Child?" There was a moment's terrified silence. One does not shout about Wizards or their children if one cares about surviving, but no lightning struck at me out of the fog. "I look like what I am. A student. No sign of talent yet. No sign of a name. No nothing. Oh, I know what they said at the house, what that fat-faced Karl always claimed, that I was Mertyn's Festival get. Well. So much for that and that. I'm gone from Mertyn's House with no sign of Kinging about me to rely on. Now, this is nonsense and makes me sick inside. "

  Yarrel had the grace to put his arms around my shoulders and hug me, after which Chance did the same, and we stood thus for a long moment while the ship wallowed and splashed itself toward the jetty. Around us masts of little boats sketched tall brush strokes of stone gray against cloud gray, tangles of rigging creaked and jingled while a circle of wan light hung far above us like a dead lantern. It was mid-day masked as evening with dusk bells tolling somewhere in the fog, remote and high, as though from hills, and such a feeling of sadness as I had not felt before. Long minutes told me it came from the pungent soup of salt and smoke, as of grasses burning on the water meadows, a smell as sad and wonderful as youth in speaking of endings and beginnings.

  Came a hail out of the shadow, and we grated against the stones. The Captain was over the rail in a moment, talking earnestly to those he met there. The plank clattered down to let us off the unquiet deck, our legs buckling and weaving like dough from the long time on the water. Howsoever, we stiffened them fast enough to gather up our gear and follow Chance up through the lanes, twisting and dodging back upon our trail until we came to a tavern. That is, I suppose they would have called it a tavern, though most they served there was tea and things made of greenery.

  There was one there to meet us, their "governor, " so they said, a brown, lean man with a little silver beard tike the chin hairs of a goat. He said his name was

  Riddle.

  "Riddle. A question with a strange answer, or an answer with strange sense, or so my daughter says. She'll be along by and by to guide you south overland. We want no part of you, nor of those pawners who came after you. "

  "They actually came into harbor after us?" Chance's question was more curious than fearful. Well, it wasn't him the pawners were after.

  "They did so. The Demon with them is already complaining that he is blind and deaf here in our land. So, we say, let him get out of it. " He smiled sarcastically.

  "And let you get out as well. You Gamesmen have no

  Game here. Your Demons cannot read any thought but their own; your Seers cannot see further than their eyes will reach. Your Sentinels can make no fire but with steel and spark, as any child can. "

  "Your land truly is outside the Game? Almost I thought Chance was jesting with us when he said it... "

  "No jest. Here, no Game of any kind. Howsoever, we bear no malice, either, and will send you away as you would. South, I think you said. "

  "I thank you for helping us, " I mumbled, only to be stopped by his harsh laughter.

  "No help, lad. No. We want none of the nonsense of the Game, none of its blood and fire here. If you are gone, so will the pawners go. It is for our own peace, not yours. "

  So I learned that people may be kind enough while not caring a rather. He sent his girl child to us after a bit, she with long, coltish legs, scarred from going bare among the brush, and hair which fell to her waist in a golden curtain. Tossa, her name was. Riddle held her by the shoulder, her eyes level with mine, unsmiling, as he spoke to Chance.

  "We have none of the Festival brutishness here, sir.

  These your boys need be made 'ware of that. See to it you make it clear to them, or you'll not walk whole out of our land. " Chance said he would make it clear, indeed, and Yarrel was already blushing that he understood. I was such an innocent then that I didn't know what they were talking about. It made no difference to me to be guided by a girl or a lad or a crone, for that.

  Tossa threw her head up, like a little horse, and. I thought almost to hear her whinny, but instead she told us to come after her quick as we might and made off into the true night which was gathering.

  Oh, Tossa. How can I tell you of Tossa? Truly, she was only a girl, of no great mind or skill. In the world of the Game she would have been a pawn, valued perhaps for her youth or her virginity, for some of the powerful value these ephemera because they are ephemera, and perhaps she would have had no value at all to spend her life among the corn. But to me-to me she became more than the world allows in value. Her arms reaching to feel the sun, her long-fingered hands which floated in gestures like the blossoms of trees upon least winds, her hair glinting in the sun or netting shadow at dusk, her laugh when she spoke to me, her touch upon the bandage at my head as she said, "Poor lad, so burned by the silliness abroad in the land"...

  She was only teasing me, so Yarrel said, as girls tease boys, but I had no experience of that. Seven days we had, and seven nights. She became my breath, my sight, my song. I only looked at her, heard her, filled myself with the smell of her, warm, beastly, like an oven of bread. She was only a girl. I cannot make more of her than that. Yet she became the sun and the grass and the wind and my own blood running in me. I do not think she knew. If she knew, she did not care greatly. Seven days. I would not have touched her except to offer my hand in a climb. I would not have said her name but prayerfully...

  Except that on the seventh dusk we came to the end of the lands which the Immutables call their own. We stood upon a tall hogback of stone, twisty trees bristling about us, looking down the long slope to a river which meandered its way through sand banks, red in the tilting sun, wide as a half-day's march and no deeper than my toes. A tumbled ruin threw long shadows on the far side, some old town or fortification, and Chance got out the charts to see where we were. We crouched over them, aware after a moment that Tossa was not with us.

  We found her on a pinnacle, staring back the way we had come, frowning.

  "Men on the way, " she said. "Numbers of them. " She put the glass back to her eyes and searched among the trees we had only lately left. "Trail following.

  Riddle didn't think they'd follow you!"
She sounded frightened.

  Chance borrowed the glass. "They've stopped for the night? Can't tell. No sign of fire, but they've not come from under the trees yet. Ah. An Armiger, lads. And a

  Tragamor. "

  Tossa exclaimed, "But they are powerless within the boundaries. " Still, she was frightened.

  Chance nodded. "Yes, but they have blades and spears and fustigars to smell us out. They have more strength than we. And the boundaries are too close. The river marks them, doesn't it?"

  She nodded. Yarrel was thinking, his face knotted.

  "Let the girl go away to the side, " he suggested, "while we take to the river. They aren't following her. The river will confuse the fustigars. They have no Seer with them? No Pursuivant?"

  Chance told him he saw none, but Tossa would have none of it. She had been sent to guide us out, and she would guide us out. "We will all go by the river, quickly, before they can get up here to see which way we went. "

  Strangely, as we went down the hogback and into the river, I began to think of the boundaries and what they meant to the people who lived there. They were all pawns here, I thought, with no strength in them except their arms and their wits. In this land the Armiger could not rise into the air like a hawk on the wind; the

  Tragamor could not move the stones beneath our feet so that we stumbled and fell. In this land, we were almost their equals; no Chill Demesne would grow around us, blooming like a hideous flower with us at its center.

  Almost, I smiled. Now I recoil when I remember that almost smile, that sudden, unconsidered belief that we and those who followed were on equal footing. We galloped down the slope and into the river as dusk came, almost gaily, Chance muttering that we would run down the river then cut back into the Immutable land. The water splattered up beneath our feet; Tossa reached out to seize my hand in hers and hasten me along. When she fell, I thought she had stumbled. I mocked her clumsiness, teasingly, and only when I had prodded her impatiently with a foot did I see the feathered shaft protruding from her back. Then I screamed, the sound hovering in the air around us like a smell. Chance came and lifted her and there was no more smiling as we raced down that stream for our lives, angling away into a creek which fed it at a curve of the river, praying those who followed would go on down the flow rather than up the little stream, running, running, until at last we came to earth among trees in a swampy place, Tossa beside us, barely breathing.

  I could feel the shaft in me, through the lung, feel the bubbling breath, the slow well of blood into my nostrils, the burning pain of it as though it were hot iron. I sobbed with it, clutching at my own chest until Chance shook me silent. "Be still, " he hissed at me. "You are not hurt. Be still or we are dead. "

  The pain was still there, but I knew then that it was not from the arrow but from some other hurt. I hurt because Tossa hurt; it was as though I were she. There was no reason for this. I didn't even blame it upon "love, " for I had loved Mandor and had never felt his hurts as my own. This spun in my head as I gulped hot tears into my throat and choked upon them, smothering sound.

  Away to the south we could hear the baying of the fustigars, a dwindling cacophony following the river away, toward the border. The soil we lay on was wet and cold; the smell of rot and fungus was heavy. I heard

  Yarrel ask, "Is she dead?" and Chance reply that she breathed, but barely.

  "A Healer, " I said. "Chance, I must find a Healer.

  Where?"

  He muttered something I couldn't hear, so I shook him, demanding once again. "Where? I've got to find someone... "

  "That ruin, " he gargled. "Back where we came into the river. The chart showed a hand there, a hand, an orb, and a trumpet... "

  A hand was the symbol for Healer. The orb betokened a Priest, and the trumpet a Herald.

  "Let me go!"'Yarrel was already dropping his pack. I thrust him back onto the earth beside her.

  "Help her if you can. I cannot. I hurt too much. I must go or I'll die. They won't be looking for one person, alone... "

  "Your bandages, " Yarrel said. "One glimpse of you and the pawners will know. "

  "They will not, " I hissed. I ripped the pad of gauze from my head and dropped it into the muddy water, sloshing it about before unwinding it to spiral it around my head, covering my face. "Your cloak, " I demanded of Chance, taking it from him before he could object.

  "Oh, High King of the Game, " he protested, "take it off, Peter. Of all forbidden things, this is most forbidden. "

  "And still, we do them, " I quoted at him furiously.

  "Quickly, give me soot from the lantern for the face... "

  He fumbled fingers into the chimney of the dark lantern, cursing as he burned them on the hot glass, cursing again as he drew sooty fingers across the muddied gauze to make the eyes, nose, and slitted mouth shape of a

  Necromancer. "Oh, by the cold but you're doing a terrible thing. "

  I turned from them, from her where she lay so helpless beside them, telling them to bring her near the river and across it as soon as they saw me return. It would do no good to bring a Healer into the land of the

  Immutables. Then I ran, not knowing that I ran, not thinking of anything except the hand in the ruins, the Healer there.

  The waters of the river fountained beneath my feet.

  The hard meadow of the farther shore fled behind me until the ruins loomed close on their rocky hill. I felt a chill, and with the chill came a measure of sanity which said, "You will do her no good if you are caught in some

  Game, no good if you are hasty. " The truth of that stopped me. Shuddering, I circled the hill to measure the Demesne, keeping the chill upon my right hand, six hundred paces, more or less. A small Demesne, someone at the center of it pulling only so much power as it might take to rise into the air (as Heralds can) to spy out the land around. I crept toward the ruin's center, searching the skyline from moment to moment.

  Shattered corridors led into roofless rooms, and at last I found a wall with slitted windows overlooking a courtyard.

  Of the three gathered there I saw only the Healer at first, her pale robes spread upon the mossy stones, half in shadow, half in light from the fiery pillar which rose and fell in a languorous dance. Beside it stood a

  Priestess, gesturing in time with the firelight. One glance was enough to tell me what she was, for such beauty and glamor are unreal, passing all natural loveliness. The

  Herald sat near her, bright tabard gleaming, raising and lowering his finger to make the fire move. They were within sound of my breath, and it seemed to me they must have heard my heart. Close as they were, it would do me no good unless I could get the Healer away from them and to the river's side.

  Even as I struggled to find a plan, the fire sank from its dancing column into an ordinary blaze, a small campfire. The Priestess sighed, complaining, "So I build a fiery web, Borold, with none to see and admire... "

  He rose to put a cloak around her shoulders, stroking her arms gently. "I admire, Dazzle. Always... "

  The Healer moved in a gesture of exasperation. "You have only made the place cold. Why can't you be content to leave well enough alone and give up these children's tricks?"

  The Herald objected. "Give over, Silkhands. She has made a pillar of fire and I have made it dance. Together we have pulled no more power than you might use to heal a sparrow. Why should she not do something for her own amusement?"

  "When has she ever done anything not for her own amusement?" the Healer countered. "We are sent here to sit like badgers upon an earth because Dazzle insisted upon amusement. "

  When the Priestess turned toward her I saw again that matchless face, curled now into spiteful mockery, "You will not be content until you destroy me, Healer-maid.

  You are disloyal to me now as always, hating and jealous of my following. " The woman preened in the firelight, stretching like a cat in satisfied self-absorption.

  "We will not be here long, only until Himaggery decides that he misses me, which he wi
ll, and sends word for me to return to the Bright Demesne. The Wizard will bring us back soon. "

  "I have never been disloyal, " said the Healer in a low voice, full of strain. Though I could not see her face, I thought she was fighting tears. "But I would rather live where I can use my skills to heal. Here I can do nothing, nothing. "

  I thought I would give her something to do as I turned from the slit window to approach them from below. I had gone only a pace or two before turning back in a fit of inspiration to strip off my white shirt and hang it within the window. The breeze moved it slightly there, pale in the firelight.