Day succeeded day. Cormier and Haribald were gone from the keep on a long hunting expedition, for the food storage rooms were virtually depleted. In their absence Handbright stopped insisting that the Elders must be told, and Mavin relaxed a trifle, sleeping a few more hours than she would have done otherwise.
She developed her own systems for rapid acquisition of Talent, reminding herself how quickly the babies in the nursery learned to talk once they had begun. If one spent hours every day at it, it came fast. Even the boys who began to show Talent were not usually allowed as many free hours for practice as Mavin took for herself, for they had to attend classes and spend time with the Elders listening to history tales. With the Assembly so recently over, however, everyone was tired. The Elders themselves were off in the woods in easy shapes which required no thought. The children were left to their own devices and seemed to spend endless days playing Wizards and Shifters. In a few days the keep would pull itself together to resume its usual schedule, but just now it was open and relaxed, ideal for Mavin's purposes. She thanked the Gamelords, prayed to Thandbar it would last as long as she needed, and practiced.
She knew she did not have time to learn many different things. She could not trifle with herself, learning the shape of a whirlwind or a cloud. She must take what time she had to learn a few things well, learning even those few shapes in wonder and occasional chagrin. She worked endlessly at her horse shape, believing that a boy the size of Mertyn could best be carried farthest on some ordinary, acceptable animal. Besides, horses could fight. Horses with hooves honed to razor sharpness could fight particularly well, and she spent prodigious hours rearing and wheeling herself, striking with forefeet and back ones, all in absolute silence so that no one would hear and come to investigate. She practiced gaining bulk, all the bulk one needed to become a horse, practiced doing it quickly and leaving it just as quickly. Taking bulk was not an easy thing. One had to absorb the extra bulk, water or grain or grass—organic things were best. Then one had to pull the net out of the extra bulk to return to one's own shape, quickly, neatly, with no agonizing tugs or caught bits of oneself lingering. It was not an easy thing, but she learned to do it well. Not knowing what she could not do, she did everything differently than other shifters would have done it, comforted herself by naming herself "Mavin Manyshaped," and did little dances of victory all alone.
She began to pay attention to other shifters, to the way she knew them, could identify them, even inside other shapes, and discovered at last a kind of organ within herself which trembled in recognition when another shifter with a similar organ was near. It was small, no bigger than a finger, but it was growing. A few days before, she would not have known it was there. Desperately, she set about shifting that organ itself, veiling it, muffling it, so that it could not betray her. She wanted to be horse, only horse, with no shifter unmasking her as anything else. The difficulty lay in the strange identifier organ, for when she muffled it directly, it was as though she had become deaf and blind, unable to walk without losing her balance. Not knowing that it was impossible—as any Elder of the Xhindi would have told her—she invented a bony plate to grow around it which allowed it to function inside her body without betraying itself outside. The plate was bulky. She could not contain it in a small shape or a narrow one, but she could do it as a horse, and the night she achieved it she slept for hours, so drowned in sleep that it was like waking from an eternity.
Waking to find that Cormier and Haribald had returned, and with them Wurstery and half a dozen others. The hunt had been successful; the kitchen courtyard was full of butchery, with smoky fires under the racks of meat, drying it for storage.
And Handbright was there with great black rings around her eyes, looking cowed and beaten, as though she had not slept for days. "I told them," she said to Mavin, not meeting her eyes. "I had to. I can't go on."
Mavin looked up to find Cormier's eyes upon her, full of a gloating expectation. Ah, well. She had had more time than she had expected. "When?" She did not reproach Handbright. The strange identifier organ would have betrayed her sooner or later, and what she intended to do would be reproach enough.
"They want to have your Talent party today. They're drawing lots who stays with you first tonight. Well, it's time for you, Mavin. You'll live through it, though. We all have."
"I'm sure I will. Of course I will. Don't fret. Come with me to the kitchen and have a cup of something hot. You look exhausted."
"They woke me in the middle of the night, the three of them. They … they put … I … I had to tell them."
"Of course." Soothing, kindly, hypocritical, Mavin led her to the kitchen. "Handbright, listen to me. 1 want you to go to Battlefox keep in the Bright Day demesne. Our thalan, Plandybast Ogbone, wants you to come. Promise me?"
Handbright shook her head, a frantic denial. "Mertyn. Mertyn needs me."
Mavin thought it was only habit and a weary inertia which made Handbright speak so. "He doesn't need you, Handbright. He's fine. The youngest child in the nursery is five years old, and you've spent long enough taking care of them. You should know by now you're not going to conceive, and you'd have been long gone if you had conceived. So you must go. There are lots of Danderbats can come in to take care of the childer. Besides, I'll be here."
"But … alone. It's so hard alone … and Mertyn … "
"You did it alone. After you have some rest, you can come back and help me if you like. But I want you to go, Handbright. Either to Plandybast, or to the sea, as you once said you would do. Today." She bent all her concentration upon her sister, willed her to respond. "Now, Handbright."
"Now?" Hope bloomed on her face as though this had been the secret word of release; but there was a wild look in her eyes. "Now?" Mavin wondered what had happened to make the woman respond in this way. It could not be her own pleading, for she had pled before and nothing had happened. No. Something else had happened. She did not take time to worry about what it might have been.
"Now. Become a white bird, Handbright! Fly from the tallest tower. From your bedroom, up there in the heights. Nothing carried, nothing needed—to Battlefox. Or to the sea."
Handbright rose, a look almost of madness on her face, eyes darting, hands patting at herself. "Now. Mavin. Now. I'll go. Someday, I'll … you'll come. Mertyn's all right. He's a big boy. He'll be fine. Now." And she fled away up the stairs, Mavin close behind but unseen, as though she had been a ghost.
Clothes fell on the stone floor. Handbright stood in the window, naked. From the doorway Mavin gasped, seeing bruises and bloody stripes on the naked form which changed, shifted, wavered in outline to stand where it had stood but feathered, long neck curled on white back, beak turned toward Mavin, eyes still wild and seeking.
"Fly, sister," she commanded, fixing the maddened eyes with her own. "Fly, Handbright. Go."
The wings unfurled slowly, the neck stretched out tentatively, cautiously, then all at once darted forward as the wings thrust down, once, twice, and the great bird launched itself into the air, falling, falling, catching itself upon those wide wings at the last possible moment to soar up, out, out, away toward the west.
Mavin found herself crying. She flung herself down on Handbright's narrow bed, aware for the first time of the basket in the corner, the ropes, the little whip carelessly thrown down upon the stones. It was a punishment basket, the only true punishment for a shifter, to be confined, close confined, unable to move, to speak, to change into any other shape. The baskets were woven in Kyquo, tightly woven, tightly lidded. And this one had been used on Handbright, or she had been threatened with it.
So. Threatened or used; what did it matter. Hand-bright was gone. Mavin wiped her face in a cold, unreasoning fury and without knowing how she did it, or even that she had done it, took on the very face and features of Handbright; the well known expression, the tumbled hair, the tall, slender form bent with work and abuse, the eyes dark-ringed with pain to look upon herself reflected there—Handbright's own fo
rm and face.
"Everyone knows," she whispered, "that it is impossible for a shifter to take the form of another living person. Everyone knows that it lies outside our nature, that it is forbidden. Everyone knows that. But—but, someone has done it." She smiled at herself in the mirror, a cold smile, and went slowly, with fearful anticipation, down into the smoke of the kitchen court to confront Cormier's truculent stare.
"Well?" he demanded. "She's been told there's been enough of this holding back, has she? Celebration for her this day and for me this night. I've won the draw."
And he grinned widely at her as he displayed the red-tipped stick he had drawn. "Time I had a little luck after too long of your dead body, old girl. Time we had some fresh blood behind the p'natti."
"She doesn't want a celebration." This in the very tone and substance of Handbright's own voice, dull and without emotion. "She's sick to her stomach. She's up in my room, and you can go up there, come dark, but she'll have no celebration."
"Well, and go up I will. And after me Wurstery, and after him Haribald, for that's the way it falls."
Still in Handbright's voice Mavin let her curiosity free to find the limits of the old ones' abuse. "Couldn't you have pity on her this night? Make it only one of you?" Wurstery had overheard this from his drying rack duties and intervened to make his own demands. "We've been days in the woods, old girl. Make a nice homecoming for us. Besides, best begin as we mean to goon."
"Well then," Mavin said in Handbright's voice, "she'll have to bear it, I suppose."
"Let's hope she bears better'n you've borne, old girl." And they went back to their smoky work in a mood of general self-righteousness and satisfaction. Mavin went back into the keep, into a shadowy place, and leaned against the wall, weeping. When she had done, the Handbright shape had dropped away, and though she tried, she could not bring it back. She went to find Mertyn to tell the boy they would leave Dander-bat keep that night.
She went over it with him several times, though the boy understood well enough even at first. "The horse will come to the corner of the p'natti wall farthest toward the fire hills. You'll have all your clothes and things in this sack, everything you treasure, lad, for you'll not be back. And I will meet you on the road."
"And I must not say anything about it to anyone," he concluded for her, puzzled but willing. "Especially not to any of the Danderbats."
"That's right. Especially not to the Danderbats. And you're to wait. Even if it gets very late and scary, and you hear owls or fustigars howling. Promise."
"Promise." He put his small hand in hers, cold but steady. "I'll wait, Mavin. No matter how late."
She left him, trusting him. Then to the cellars for two more of the punishment baskets, thick with dust, hardly ever used. Except by shifters like Cormier, for Mavin had no doubt it had been his idea—to spice things a bit. Then to the kitchens for a sack of grain. Then to Hand-bright's room. She would have to be ready by dark, and it would take that much time to gain the bulk she would need to become a horse—to become a horse, but first to become something else indeed, only a part of which would resemble Mavin.
She did not know that what she was doing was impossible. She knew only that she would not rest and could not go until Cormier and Haribald and Wurstery knew what Handbright had known, the sureness of pain, the tightness of confinement. And another thing. One other thing. When they knew that, it would not matter that there were no Danderbat girls behind the p'natti in future.
In the deep middle of the night her horse shape came to Mertyn, exactly where she had told him to be. She whinnied at him, pushing at him with a soft nose, letting him feel her ears and neck to reassure him that all was well. He scrambled clumsily onto the low wall, and from that to Mavin's back, the sack of possessions balanced in a lump before him.
"Nice horse," he said doubtfully. "Are you going to take me to Mavin?"
The horse's head nodded, and the beast stepped away from the wall, into the forest which Mavin knew as few others of the keep had ever known. By dawn they would need to be leagues away, down the cliff road which led to Haws Valley and well buried in the woods which lay along the upper stretches of the River Haws. She could not let the boy know she was shifter. His mind would be open to any Demon riding along who might choose to Read him, and it was better if he simply did not know. So, there would be play acting aplenty in the hours and days to come.
They would be safe from pursuit for at least this day. The three in the tower room would not be found for hours, perhaps not for days. Each one of them had struggled, frightened half out of his wits and mad with the pain of missing vital parts of himself. Struggle had been useless. Mavin had prepared for the encounter by taking more bulk than the three of them put together, part of that bulk a Mavin-shaped piece, and the rest a huge, tentacled thing which swumbled them up and 5 thrust them into the baskets no matter how they howled, pushing and squashing until they were forced to take the shape of the basket, without lungs or lips or eyes. Cormier had been first, arriving full of explicit, lewd instructions for the cowering girl, ready to force them upon her, only to be thrust into agonized silence by the hugeness that was Mavin. Then Wurstery, then Haribald, each coming into the dark room expecting nothing more than a bit of the usual. Well, usual they now had. Handbright's usual. They would probably live, if they were found before they starved, but they would not father any more Danderbats. A shifter might shift as he would: once that part of his self was gone, it was gone forever. He might shift him a part which looked similar, but he would take no pleasure from it. Beneath Mer-tyn's drowsing form the horse shuddered, half in horror, half in satisfaction.
Now that the boy was soundly asleep, Mavin grew tentacles again, small ones to hold him securely on her back, and began to run. The horse shape was well and fully practiced, constructed for fleetness with eyes that could spy through the dark to see every hollow or bit of broken ground. Night fled past. Behind them in the keep a hysterical Wurstery managed a hair-thin tentacle to lift the latch of his basket. Behind them in the keep was consternation, fury. The Elders were summoned out of their inner privacies by bells. "Handbright," they said. "It was Handbright!" No one was thinking to look for Mavin or for Mertyn. A shifter girl only just come to Talent could not have done this thing. It could only possibly have been done by someone older, someone who had practiced secretly. Ah, yes, that is why she never conceived. Surely it was Handbright. The Dander-bats had only thought the creature looked like Mavin. The room had been dark. It had been Handbright, shifting shape, desirous of protecting (protecting?) her little sister.
Jealous, Cormier offered. Jealous that the younger girl would get all their attention. At which there was much clucking of agreement, save among the crones who looked knowingly at one another but said nothing.
The Xhindi did not believe in Healers, but one was sent for nonetheless. The three Danderbats were in too much pain to let nature heal them. Pain and fury.
Far off to the north, the horse ran on, the boy cushioned soft on its wide back, as dawn leaked milky into the edges of the sky. She stopped, laid him down, went off into the woods to give up bulk and clothe herself. When she came out into the clearing, he was rubbing his eyes, looking up at her in gladness. "Mavin. You said you'd be here, but I thought maybe you'd forget."
She took him in her arms, glad that he could not fully see her face. "Oh, no, Mertyn," she said. "Never fear that about Mavin. Mavin does not forget."
He slept curled in her arms, as secure as though he had been in the childer's rooms at the keep, waking full of deep thoughts about the day. Mavin had brought with her a handful of the seeds of the fruit of the rainhat bush, used by the crones in the keep whenever shallow, quiet sleep was needed by someone ill or wounded. She fed half a dozen of these to Mertyn with his stewed grain, and then made him up to look like quite another boy. She had brought dye for his hair and bits of false hair to tuft his eyebrows out and a brush to make freckle spots on his clear skin. When she had done, he smiled at
her in his sleep, quite content, looking utterly unlike himself. She wanted him passive, unable to take fright or betray them by recognizing someone, for they would need to travel part of the day on the Hawsport Road which led along the River Haws all the way from the far northern lands over Calihiggy Creek and down to the sea. Later, when there was time, she would explain it all and trust to his own good sense, but there was no time now for any explanation, and she dared not trust his guile.
The horse form she took was sway-backed and old, with splayed hooves which turned up at the edges. A horse ridden by an unaccompanied child might be coveted by someone stronger, but this horse could be coveted by no one. So she took bulk and changed, scooping the sack and the child onto her back with a long, temporary tentacle and holding them in place with nearly invisible ones thereafter. Then they wandered down through the woods to the road, empty in either direction. She began to plod along it, heading north, the river on her right and on both right and left, leagues away, the crumbly cliffs of Haws Valley. On that western height, well behind her, lay Danderbat keep. It was from that height that search would come, if search came, but it did not cross Mavin's mind that the search might be for Handbright.
The sway-backed horse shape was unbearable. It was inefficient and it ached. Without in the least meaning to do so, Mavin changed herself to remove the aches and make it easier to move along the road, only to come to herself with a sense of impending danger at the sounds of something coming along the road after her. A quick self check—she thought of it as a kind of patting the pockets of herself to see what she had in them—showed her a form so unnatural and strange as to have evoked immediate interest in anyone except a blind man. Hastily, and barely in time, she shifted back into the old horse form, plodded off the road and into a clump of bushes to let the travelers pass her by. She knew them for shifter the moment they came into view as dark, moving splotches against the moon-grayed loom of the forest. She even knew which shifters they were, Barfod Bartiban, thalan to Leggy Bartiban, and Torben Naffleloose. She knew them by the fustigar shapes they had taken, ones often seen in processionals at the Danderbat keep, as familiar in their way as the actual shapes of the two shifter men. The two shapes were hard run, panting, lagging feet in the dust to stir up a nose-tickling cloud. Mavin repressed a sneeze and tightened her grip on Mertyn, praying they would not see her, know her, somehow spy her out in the horse shape with the bony plate around her shifter organ.
Tepper,Sheri - The Song of Mavin Manyshaped Page 4