“Digested off,” suggested the Thinker.
“Perhaps,” she agreed, silent for a time after that trying to visualize a being shaped like a flatcake, with an odd smell, which could eat greenroot without dying from it. “Of course, once I saw the greenroot framework inside those things, I knew they couldn’t have been people.”
“It would poison people,” agreed Mercald. Fresh greenwood sap on the skin, even small quantities of it, caused ulcers which did not heal. He had been listening to all of Mavin’s discoveries, sadly shaking his head from time to time, not in disagreement but in profound disappointment that what he had thought was a religious community was likely to be something quite different.
“And then,” she went on, “I found a burial kite—what do you call them?”
“Wings of the Boundless,” said Mercald. “Which carry the dead into the Boundless sky. Or, sometimes, into the Bounded depths. Depending upon what kind of life they’ve lived, of course.”
“Of course. Part of the duty of the Messenger caste, as I understand it? Manufacture of wings and dispatch of the dead thereon? Yes. Beedie told me. Well, two days ago I saw one of the ... wings ... descending into the chasm. There was a bright feather on the ... well, on the fellow’s cap. That wing now lies on the n et a short way from here. The cap is there, and the white wrappings, and the other clothing, but the body is gone.”
“Of course it’s gone,” said Mercald with asperity. “It went into the care of the Boundless.”
“I thought the ones that went up went into the care of the Boundless. This one came down.”
“Well, naturally, both end up in the care of the Boundless, it’s just that ... our ... theology is a little indefinite about ...”
“It’s just that you don’t know, Mercald. Do you really think that the Boundless cares about bodies? Well, no matter. In my experience across the lands of this world, bodies invariably vanish because something buries them or burns them or eats them. Beetles, usually. Or things that look like beetles. Except that I could find no beetles around the kite. Excuse me, Mercald. Around the Wing of the Boundless.
“I did find the smell of whatever. Whatever wore those robes. Whatever greeted us in human language. Whatever guided us here. Whatever has now gone elsewhere, probably because the wind has started to blow and whatever is afraid of being crushed.”
“The inescapable hypothesis is, then, whatever ate the people of Lostbridge.” said the Thinker.
“Whatever,” agreed Mavin. She leaned forward to fasten the rattling gate more tightly. The wind kept up its steady pressure on the thong, stretching it.
“How horrible,” said Mercald, making a sick face. “How dreadful.”
“Dreadful, certainly,” she agreed. “But helpful. I think we can draw some conclusions from what we know, can’t we, Thinker?”
“Ahhm. Well. Yes. A form of life which absorbs some—how much, I wonder?—of the mental ability or memory of whatever it eats. Hmmm. Yes. Language for example? Yes. Hmm. Doesn’t manage it any too well, but does have the general idea. Tends to use it reflectively ...”
“They don’t think very quickly,” said Mavin. She had come to this conclusion some time ago. The poor creatures, whatever they were, did not think well. They struggled with thought, struggled to put ideas together, like a partly brain-killed Gamesman trying to do things he had once done easily, not able to understand why these simplicities were now impossible. She had seen that. More t han once. She clenched her teeth at the memory, set it aside.
“What would explain this masquerade? Why the robes? Why the names of the long gone?”
Mercald cleared his throat. “Because, Mavin, they told the truth when they spoke of expiation. No. Listen. Let us suppose these creatures, these whatever, came upon Watertight in the darkness those hundreds of years ago, came upon it and ate the people, only to take into themselves all the memories of those people, and the thoughts, language, feelings. All the sorrows. All the pain.
“Before that, they had been animals. They hadn’t had any ‘thinking’ at all. Now, suddenly, they would have language and thought and guilt. For the first time, guilt. Oh, what a terrible thing. A simple animal of some kind, with only animal cleverness or skill, and then suddenly to have all that thinking. No way to get rid of it. No way to go back as they were before. Only the idea of expiation which they had swallowed at the same time they swallowed guilt, but no way to do that, either. And the thinking perhaps gets less and less useful as time goes on ...” He fell silent, sorrowing, hearing the wind sorrowing outside as though it agreed with his mood.
“Probably asexual reproduction,” said the Thinker. “Which means clones. Which means no change, no natural selection. Every generation the same. as the preceding generation, and every individual—though there really wouldn’t be individuals in that sense—the same as every other. So, whatever ate Mirtylon is still Mirtylon. And whatever ate Lovewings is still Lovewings ...”
“Because she didn’t die when she jumped,” said Mavin. “She landed in the net and the whatevers got to her while she was still alive.”
“Possibly more than one of them,” the Thinker went on. “And possibly learned from her that there was good eating on Watertight bridge. If that was the case, then we have to assume that the total effect of thought didn’t come about immediately. Maybe it took s ome time for it to be incorporated into the beings, the whatevers.”
“Poor things,” said Mercald, sadly. “Poor things.”
“Well, if they are such poor things, tell me how to help them, Priest. Would you have them expiate, finally, what it was they did? Perhaps we could arrange it. That is, provided they don’t eat us first.”
“Surely not. Having once felt guilt ...”
“Having once felt guilt, Priest, there are those who court it, believing that more of the same can be no worse. No, there may be sneaky slyness at work here. I will believe only what these creatures do, not what they say. I do not think they understand words very well, though they use them. I have known people like that in the world above. They say human words, but from an unhuman heart. Even a thrilpat may speak human language, often with seeming sense, but that does not mean I would trust one with my dinner.”
“But you speak of expiation ...”
“Yes. Something is trying to kill the oozers that threaten the bridgetowns, or so Thinker says. We know of nothing which could be making that attempt save these whatevers. So. If these creatures, whatever they are, succeed in killing gray oozers, then they will have expiated their guilt at wiping out Lostbridge—Watertight. We will give them ... what is it you give penitents, Priest? Forgiveness? We will give them that. Perhaps it will satisfy them.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Mercald, giving her a narrow and suspicious look. “And do you intend to give them Slysaw Bander and his followers, as well?”
Mavin smiled a slow smile at him, a wicked smile which burrowed into him until he shifted uncomfortably, unable to bear the stare. “Well, Priest. I thought of it, yes. And I decided against it. Can you tell me why?”
He sighed in relief, wiped his forehead which had become beaded with perspiration. “Because you are a messenger of the Boundless, Mavin, and would not judge without proof?”
“No, Priest,” she said in the same wicked tone. “Because I am a pragmatist. I do not want one of these whatevers sliding about in the Bottomlands with Slysaw’s evil brain alive inside it, moving it. It may be we are fortunate that none of those who were eaten on Lostbridge desired power. If they had wanted power or empire, the creatures that ate them might not have stopped with Watertight. If Slysaw Bander had eternal life, clone or no clone, I would not sleep soundly in my hammock anywhere in this chasm or, it may be, in this world. Even though the things seem to have trouble keeping their train of thought, I would not risk it. It may be they merely find language difficult.”
Mercald flushed. “You mock me, Messenger.”
“I instruct you, Priest. Pay heed. When you believe that messengers arrive from God, it is wise to listen to everything they say, not merely when they recite accepted doctrine.” She was ashamed of herself almost immediately. He turned so pale, so wan. Well. It was only as she had suspected from the beginning. Many men had a strong tendency to tell God how to behave, and religious men were more addicted to this habit than most.
“All of which,” she said, changing the subject, “is not relevant to our current need. We need a way to destroy the oozers. The whatevers evidently have not found a way, not yet. It would help if we knew whether the whatevers think at all. Do they think, Thinker?”
He shrugged. “What is thought? No current theories explain it. I suggest you attempt what it is you wish to do and see whether it works. Though I am not an experimentalist, at times one must simply sit back and observe what experimentalist manage to accomplish. In the interest of acquiring data. No other way. Sorry. Sometimes, one simply must.”
“Well, then, Thinker, we are stymied until the wind stops. Whatever they are, they will not come out until midnight. I suggest we sleep until then, keeping watch turn about. Priest, you seem wide awake.”
“I am troubled,” he said with dignity. “I will watch first. It is unlikely I would sleep in any case.”
“I have abused you,” said Mavin, “if only for your own good. So watch then. Wake me when you grow sleepy.”
She curled into a ball on the sandy floor, covering herself with her blanket. Though the gate of the cave was loosely woven, it seemed to be out of the wind, protected on the up-chasm side by a protrusion of the root wall. The wind was cool but it did not feel as cold as it had the night before upon the stair. She drowsed, half dreaming, half remembering.
Near the source of the River Dourt was a town called Mip. It lay in the valley of the Dourt, below the scarps of the Mountains of Breem, far east of the Black Basilisk Demesne of which the people of Mip spoke often, softly, and with some fear. As far to the east as the Black Basilisk lay west was the Demesne of Pouws, and between the desmesnes a state of wary conflict had become a way of life and death. Mip, lying as it did between, strove quietly to be invisible. The people around were small holders, farmers, those to the south raising livestock while those in the river valley grew vegetables and fruits for towns as far away as Vestertown and Xammer in the south or Learner in the north. Thus the town itself was largely devoted to commerce of an agricultural kind, full of wagons and draft animals, makers of harness and plows, seed sellers, animal Healers and minor Gamesmen who would dirty their hands and Talents with ordinary toil.
Mavin had come there, pursuing the white bird, coming south from Landizot, down the rocky shores of the Eastern Sea, past Hawsport, with its harbor full of fishing boats behind the breakwater, down along the mountains to the Black Basilisk Demesne which was mad with celebration over the birth of a boy child named Burmor to the family of the Basilisks. Mavin went quiet there, anonymous, answering fewer questions than she was asked, learning at last that the white bird had been seen. “Ah, yes, stranger. Seen by the Armigers on duty at the dawn watch. Two of them flew off in pursuit of it, losing it in the haze above Breem Mountains. It would have gone to water along the Dourt, no doubt. But that was some time ago. Ask in Mip.”
So she had gone to Mip.
A quiet little town, on both sides of the Dourt, which so early in its flow was little more than a brook, full of inconsequential babble and froggy pools. A town full of trees, planted there, most of them, generations before by the first settlers in the area. “We feed the Basilisks,” she heard whispered. “We feed Pouws. They have no wish to go hungry, so leave us alone.”
And, indeed, there was little sign of Great Game in Mip. No tumbled rocks to show that Tragamors had heaved the landscape about. No piles of bones to show where Gamesmen had pulled the heat from the very bodies of the townsmen to fuel their Talents. An occasional Armiger from the Black Basilisk Demesne high in the western sky, light shattering from his armor; an occasional highly caparisoned Herald from Pouws stopping for beer at the Flag and Branch on his way to or from some other place. Mavin had settled into the town, found a quiet room on the upper floor of the Flag and Branch and moved about to ask questions.
There was a hunter in Mip. “I saw the bird, Gameswoman, in t he marshes. The source of the Dourt lies there in the ready marshes, and the wild fowl throng there between seasons, moving north or south. I did not attempt to take the bird. I do not take the rare ones. Only the common ones, those we may eat without feeling we have eaten the future and so kept it from the lips of our children. It seemed contented there, though without a mate or nest or nestlings to rear. If you go there, likely you will find it, though if you go to harm it, I would beg you to reconsider.”
“I am a Shifter,” Mavin had said. “As is the white bird. My sister.”
At which the hunter had moved away, with some expressions of politeness, his face suddenly hard and unpleasant. It was not the first time Mavin had seen that expression when Shifters were mentioned. Seemingly no other Gamesmen—no, not even Ghouls and Bonedancers, who moved among hosts of the dead to the horror of multitudes—were held in such disrepute. It was fear. Seemingly some pawns did not believe the carefully constructed mythology which Shifters were at considerable effort to put about. Seemingly some pawns believed they had special reason to distrust, to fear the Shifter Talent. It was a reaction Mavin found curious. She promised herself she would learn the cause of it some day.
Come that day when it would come; she took herself off to the swamps at the source of the Dourt. This was high country, much wooded, with little meadows surrounding the streams and the low, marshy places grown up with reeds. It reminded her a little of another forested place, and she was almost contented there, in one shape or another, searching for the white bird.
The streams came down out of many shallow valleys into a myriad meadowlands. Searching was no matter of high flight and sharpened eyes. She had to seek along each separate creek and gully, among each separate set of marshes. It was not until ten days had passed that she caught sight of the bird, the white bird, helplessly beating her wings against the net which held even as the hunter closed in to take her. If it was not the same hard-faced hunter she had left in Mip, it was his twin, and the anger that was always close to the surface in Mavin boiled up in a fury. Still, she held back, seeing the way he peered about, face sly and full of hating intensity. She knew then what he meant to try. This white bird, a Shifter, was to be bait for another Shifter, herself. The fact that he brought n othing but a net showed his ignorance. He believed, then, only the common knowledge about Shifters, much of it spread by the Shifters themselves. He thought a Shifter could be either human or one other thing—a wolf, a pombi, a fustigar, a bird.