“Ah. He may know us both, Mertyn. Handbright says they don’t forget everyone. He’ll know us. He’ll just forget the shifter things it’s better he forgets, anyhow, if he’s not shifter. Why clutter up your mind with all stuff no good to it? Hmm? Besides, I can teach you to play wand-catch.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Well if you can, why didn’t you? I should’ve learned last year. I’m getting old fast, Mavin. Everyone says so.”
“Ah. Do you think you’re getting older than I am? If you could manage that, it would be fine, Mertyn. Then you could take me with you and we’d go travel the world.”
“I’m not catching up to you, Mavin,” he said seriously. The boy had little humor in him, and she despaired sometimes that he would ever understand any of her little jokes. It upset him if she told him she had been teasing so she pretended serious regard.
“No, of course you’re not. I was just wishing, thinking it would be nice to go traveling and shifting.”
“Oh, it would. If you go, you mustn’t leave me all alone here, Mavin. I had Leggy, and he’s gone, and there’s only Handbright except you. I want to go traveling and shifting more than anything. I dream about it sometimes, when I’m asleep and when I’m awake. I want to go. But you can’t go until you’ve had childer, Mavin. Girls aren’t supposed to. Janjiver says it messes up their insides.”
Mavin bit her lip, wanting to laugh at his tone of voice, unable to do so for the tears running inside her throat. “Tell me, Mertyn, why it is it doesn’t mess up a boy shifter’s insides? Boys have baby-making parts, too, don’t they? But I’ve seen them shift their parts all over themselves and then put them back and make a baby the same day. So why is it only she-shifters have to be so careful?”
The boy looked doubtful, then thoughtful in that way he sometimes had. “I don’t know. That would be very interesting to know, wouldn’t it. What the difference is. I’ll ask Gormier Graywing ...”
“Don’t,” she said harshly. “Let me find out, brother child, I’d rather.” She left him sitting there under the stars, went out only to return and whisper to his shadow crouching dark against the wall, “Mertyn, if I were to figure out a way to go traveling, would you go with me?”
His voice when he replied was all child. “Oh, Mavin, could you? That would be fun!”
Could she? Could she? Could she do what Throsset of Dowes was said to have done? Leave in the dark of night, slipping away in silence, losing herself in the fire hills or the roads away north to Pfarb Durim. Oh, the mystery and wonder of Pfarb Durrni, city of the ancients!
This was only dream stuff, only thoughts and ruminations, not intentions. She was not yet at the point of intention. Meantime it was Old Shuffle time, Assembly time, and she no less than any in the keep would watch the processions on the morrow.
For it was tomorrow that the visitors would come, tomorrow that the first procession would come through the p’natti, through Gormier’s new pillars and doors. Even now those of the younger clans were probably roaming about in the fire hills in pombi shape or fustigar shape or flying high overhead, endlessly circling like great waroo owls, ready to assemble with first light, making themselves a great drum orchestra to beat the sun up out of bed. She went to sleep in a cubby which faced the sunrise, so that the coming of the shifters should not take her by surprise.
They began before dawn, drumming, hooting, whistling, a cacophonous hooraw which woke every person in the keep and brought them all to the roof where today’s kitchen crew gave them hot spiced tea and biscuits made of ox-root, all nibbling quietly in the pre-morn darkness while out in the firehills that un-gamish hooraw went on and on, rising and falling. Mavin huddled in her blanket, perched within the rainspout once more, out of sight and therefore out of anyone’s mind at all, she told herself. She did not want to see Handbright’s face.
It came toward dawn, and the Elders put their score pads on their laps, ready to note what it was they liked about the procession, already seeing shifting shapes out beyond the p’natti, high tossed plumes, lifted wings, whirlings and leapings just at the edge of the light. Mavin waited, holding her breath. She had told herself that she was not so childish as to be excited, but the breath stuck in her throat nonetheless.
Full light. Out at the edge of the p’natti a hedge of prismed spears arose, shattering light in a thousand directions, then broke into shapes which came forward to the music of their own drumming. They came low, then upward to fly, to catch, to slide down, to rear upward again, to sparkle in jeweled greens and blues, fiery reds and ambers, scales like emerald and sapphire—the mythical jewels of heaven—and eyes which glowed a hundred shades of gold. Beyond the narrowing pillars they thrust upward into trees of gems, glittering from a million leaves, slid forward between the pillars and confronted the square-form portals in contracting shapes of bulked steel, gleaming gray and shiny. Around the slither-downs they came, erupting now into different shapes, some winged, some coiled like leaping springs, some vaporous as mist, all to break like water upon the barrier of the slything walls and take the shapes of fustigars and pombis and owls, tumbling and leaping over the walls and the ways until they were at the walls of the keep itself where they became whirling pools of light and shadow, towering higher and higher, drawing up, up, up to meet at the zenith above the keep in a dome, a shining lattice of drawn flesh, all the time the drumming going on and on, louder and louder, until a crash came to make their ears fall deaf.
And in that moment the high lattice fell, drew in upon itself like shadow to become the visitors from Bothercat the Rude Rock and Fretowl the Dark Wood and a dozen other Xhindi keeps, laughing outside the walls and demanding entrance. So was the first processional ended. Mavin sat in the high hidey hole, mouth open, so full of wonder at it that she could not wake herself from the dream.
Still there were some hundreds to be fed, and it would have taken advance planning and great determination to hide from so many. She was winkled out and set to carrying plates within the hour, and thereafter was not let alone for so much as a moment during the days or nights.
It was on the last day of Assembly that one of the Xhindi from Battlefox the Bright Day sought her, making a special thing of asking after her and begging her company for a walk in the p’natti. He told her his name was Plandybast Ogbone. “Your thalan, child. Do you know what that is?”
She looked at him mouth open. “Full brother of my mother? But she was Danderbat! Not Battlefox!”
“Oh, and yes, yes, child. True. But your grandma, her mother, was Battlefox right enough. Bore six for Battlefox, she did, before taking herself away into the deep world for time on her own. And it was here she met a scarfulous fellow called young Theobald, so it seems she told Battlefox Elders. And he got twins on her, which was your mama and me, and then she died. And young Theobald, he took the girl child and brought her back to the Danderbats knowing their deep scarcity of females, but me he kept with the Battlefoxes, reminding me frequent that I was thalan to any of her childer. He died some time back. And so I am thalan to Handbright, and to you, and to young Mertyn.
“Time ago I invited Handbright to come visit Battlefox the Bright Day, but she pled she could not leave young Mertyn. Today I asked her to bring him, and you, if she would, but these here have convinced her the walls of Danderbat keep are Xhindi gold. It seems a slavey in Danderbat is equal to an Elder in Battlefox—or so she believes. No, no, I lie if I say that’s true, for I’ve talked with her and talked with her, and it’s something other than that. Something is awry with her, and she seems unable to decide anything. She simply does and does and tries not to think about it. Well, you know the old saying, ‘Vary thought, vary shape.’ Since we do not take the same shapes, it is silly to expect us to think alike.” He shook his head. “Though, weary as she looks, I would expect her to have accepted my invitation. Though I have a kinsman or so there who may be a bit difficult—most particularly one kinswoman, of whom the least said the best—she would have companions and help at Battlefox.”
“She’s the only girl behind the p’natti,” whispered Mavin, so moved by this intelligence that she forgot to be wary of telling anyone, and him a stranger man for that. “Until she tells them about me.” So Plandybast Ogbone looked at her, and she at him, sharing a wordless kind of sympathy which she had not felt from any of the Danderbats.
“So that’s the way of it. And when they are told about you, all the oldsters will be at your bedroom door night on night, won’t they? Ah, surely Danderbat keep may be the oldest and the original, but it has fallen into a nasty sort of decay. We do not so treat our she-children at Battlefox and would have you welcome there. Or are you too convinced that the keep walls are Xhindi gold?”
“No,” she whispered. “I want out.”
“Ah. Well. There’s young Mertyn. He’d miss you no doubt.”
“Bring him with me,” she said. “I would. Couldn’t leave him here. To hear unkind things. About me, as I have heard about mother.”
“What is it they say about my sister Abrara?”
“That she shifted forbiddens while she carried Mertyn, and died from it.”
“Oh, Gamelords, what nonsense. I’ve known many who shifted before and during and didn’t die of it, though the Healers do say the child does best which isn’t shifted in the womb. This all reminds me of my other sister, Itter, going on and on about Abrara whom she never knew and knows little enough about. There are some who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living. Abrara died because she was never strong, shifter or no. That’s the truth. They should have had a Healer for her when she was young, as they did for me, but they didn’t, for the Danderbat Xhindi set themselves above Healing. Lucky I was the Battlefoxes are no such reactionary old persons, or like I’d have died, too. She should have been let alone, not made to have childer, but the Danderbats are so short of females these two generations, and she had had daughters. She should have been let alone.”
“At the Old Shuffle, we are not let alone.”
He looked at her seriously, walked around in a circle, as though he circled in his thoughts. “You know, child, if I took you away from Danderbat with me, there’d be fits and consternation by the Elders. Particularly since Danderbat is so short of females just now. There’d be hearings and meetings and no doubt unpleasant things for me and you both. That’s if I took you. Stole you, so they’d say, like a sack of grain or a basket of ripe thrilps. If you came to me, however, at Battlefox the Bright Day, you might have a few nasty words from Itter, but I’d not send you away empty-handed or hungry. You’ve seen maps of the place? You know where it is?”
She stared at him, but he did not meet her eyes, merely seeking the sky with a thoughtful face as though he had said nothing at all of importance.
“Yes,” she said finally in a voice as casual as his own. “I know where it is. It lies high upon the Shadowmarches, northwest of Pfarb Durim. If I came to visit you some day, you’d be glad to see me?” she offered. “More or less.”
“Oh. Surely. More or less. I would be very glad to see you. And Mertyn.”
“Ah,” she said. “I’ll remember that, my thalan, and I thank you.” She turned to leave him, full of dignity, then turned to hug him briefly, smearing his face with unregarded tears. “Thank you for telling me about my mother.” Her gait as she left was perfectly controlled, and he looked after her, aware of a kind of envy at her composure. It was better done than he had seen from many twice her age.
CHAPTER THREE
The Assembly was concluded. The visitors left. The cooks departed in their wagon looking weary and half drunk, for they had had their own celebration when the last banquet was over. Up in the small room at the top of the tower, Handbright slept in total exhaustion, and for once the old ones were so surfeited with food and frolic that they left her alone. Mavin, watching, made sure of this. She had set herself to be Handbright’s watchdog for the time Mavin remained at the keep. That would not be long. She had resolved upon it. But she was still too untried a shifter to take child Mertyn into the wide world trusting only on her own abilities to keep him safe. As the shifter children were often told, there were child markets operating in the Gameworld, and whether a child might be shifter or no, the bodies of the young were saleable.
She knew that when they went safety would depend on covert, quiet travel over many leagues, for the way to Battlefox the Bright Day lay a distance well beyond Pfarb Durim through the Shadow-marches. And covert travel would be totally dependent upon Mavin’s Talent, child Mertyn having none of his own save a sensible and thoughtful disposition. Her Talent had to be tried, and exercised, and practiced. Each night when the place was still, Mavin went beyond the p’natti into the woods—a forbidden excursion—or deep into the cellars—empty now—to try what it was she could do with herself.
It took her several nights to learn to damp the pain of shifting, to subdue it so that it did not distract her from what she was attempting. She spent those nights copying herd beasts from the surrounding fields, laying her hands upon them and feeling her way into their shapes, hide first as it were, the innards coming along as a consequence of the outer form. She learned to let discomfort guide her. If there was a feeling of itchy wrongness, then she could let the miraculous net within her sort it out, reach for a kind of Tightness which felt both comfortable and holdable. There were parts which were difficult. Hooves were troublesome. And horns. They had no living texture to them, and making the hard surfaces took practice. She learned the shape of her own stomach by the forms it took in shifting, the fineness and texture of her own skin, the shape and function of her own female parts, for she had determined to ignore the proscription against shifting placed upon females by the Danderbat. Reason said that if men could do it and still produce progeny, then women could do it also. And if not, then not. She would do without childer. Whatever she might do or not do, she would not end like Handbright.