There were birds nesting in the trees behind her. She heard them scolding, saw their shadows dash across the ground as they sought bits of litter and grass. One of them darted near her face. It hopped toward a bunch of grasses on which the shadow flake lay, gathering dried strands as it went. There was plenty of grass outside the shadow. The bird half turned, as though to go the other way, but a breeze moved the grasses. Within the shadow, they beckoned. The bird turned and hopped into the shadowed space. The grasses dropped from its beak. It squatted, wings out, beak open, then turned its head with horrid deliberation to peck at one wing as though it attacked some itching parasite.
All was silent. Mavin lay without breathing, prone, almost not thinking. Before her on the slope in the patch of shadow a bird pecked at its wing, pecked, pecked.
After a time the shadow lifted lazily, hovering as it turned, becoming a blot, a line, a blot once more as it rejoined the clotted shadow at the tower. Behind it on the slope a bird stopped pecking. With a pitiable sound it stumbled away from its own wing which lay behind it, severed.
Mavin drew upon the power of the place without thinking. She Shifted one hand into a lengthy tentacle, reached out for the bird and snapped its neck quickly to stop the thin cry of uncomprehending pain. The piled shadows heaved monstrously, as though someone had spoken a word they listened for. They had noticed something—the draw of power, her movement, the bird’s death. She could not watch any longer. Head down, she wriggled back the way she had come.
When she had returned to the road, she saw shadows there as well, one or two upon the verges, a few moving across the sky from tree to tree. At the top of each rise were a few, and in each hollow. As she approached the great midnight trees at the entrance to the valley, she saw others there, more, enough to shimmer the edges of the guardian trees in an uneasy dance. Between them stood the Dervish. ”You have seen.” It was not a question. It was a statement of fact. Mavin knew what she had seen showed in her face; she could imagine the look of it. Ashamed. Terrorized.
“I have seen something,” she croaked. “I do see. They lie in the trees around us.”
“I know,” the Dervish replied. “In usual times, they lie only upon the tower as they have done for centuries, hiding it from mortal eyes, hiding the bell within. I have seen them, as have others before me. But Himaggery was not content merely to see. He attempted to penetrate, to get into the tower.”
“How is that possible?”
“To a Wizard, anything is possible,” the Dervish said with more than a hint of scorn. “Or so they lead themselves to believe.”
“If you think so little of Wizards, why did you save him from the shadows at all?” Mavin asked this with what little anger she could muster.
“I counted it my fault he went there. He asked about the tower and I answered, not realizing his arrogance. I did not warn. Therefore this disturbance was my responsibility, Shifter. At least for that time. Now it is one I will pass on to you, for it is you who thwarted my releasing him. You will take him away with you. His presence, and yours, disturb my work.”
“If you’ll put him into his own form,” agreed Mavin, not caring at the moment what the Dervish’s work might be. “Though he may immediately try to go back to the tower and finish whatever it was he started ...”
The Dervish hummed a knifelike sound which brought Mavin to her knees, gasping. “Not in his own form! And he will not go back to that tower! How far do you think these will let him go in his own form?” The Dervish gestured at the shadows, making a sickening swooping motion with both arms, then clutching them tight and swaying. “They would have him tight-wrapped in moments. No. It must be far and far from here, Mavin Manyshaped, that he is brought out of that shape. Come!”
There were no shadows in the valley, at least none that Mavin could see. There was a silvery beast waiting beside the flowery pools, and she fought the instinctive surge toward him, the flux of her own flesh inside its skin. There was a pombi there as well, huge and solemn beside the low wall, leaning against it, an expression of lugubrious patience upon its furry face.
“Come out, Arkhur,” commanded the Dervish.
The pombi stood on its hind legs, stretched, faded to stand before Mavin as a sad-faced, old youngster dressed in tattered garments. Mavin gasped. It was the face she had seen at the Lake of Faces, the other which had spoken of Bartelmy’s Ban. So here was Chamferton’s brother, wearily obedient to this Dervish.
“Go back, Arkhur,” said the Dervish.
The youth dropped to all fours and became a pombi once more.
“I didn’t know anyone could do that,” grated Mavin. “Except Shifters, and then only to themselves.”
“No one can, except Shifters, and only to themselves. He only believes he is a pombi. You believe it because he believes it. He believes it because I believe it. Even the shadows believe—no, say rather the shadows do not find in him that pattern they seek. When Himaggery went to the tower, he found this one nearby, enchanted, perhaps, or drugged, or both. When Himaggery fled, he carried this one out with him, though he would have been wiser to go faster and less encumbered. I hid him as I hid Himaggery, though it is probable it was not as necessary. Now both must go. Those you meet upon the road will believe he is a pombi.
“So, too, with the other. He believes he is the fabulous beast he appears to be to others. You believe it also. All others will believe it. The shadows will not sense in him the pattern they seek. But you must go far from here, very far, Mavin Manyshaped. No trifling distance will do. You must be several days’ journey from your last view of the shadows before you bring him out into himself once more. Do it as I did. Call his name; tell him to come out. Make him hear you, and he will come out.”
“A place far from here.” Mavin staggered, too weary to stand. “Far from here.”
“A place well beyond the last shadow, a place where no shadow is,” the Dervish agreed.
She took up a halter which was hanging upon the gate, and wondered in passing whether it was real or whether she only believed she saw it. Whichever it might have been, the fabulous beast believed he felt it, for he called a trumpet sound of muted grief as they went up the road past the guardian trees, the pombi shambling behind them.
CHAPTER FIVE
They could not go far enough. Mavin stumbled as she led the beast, dragged her feet step on step, looking up to see shadows in every tree they passed beneath, on every line of hill, in every nostril of earth. Still, she went on until she knew she could go no farther, then tethered the beast to a tree and coaxed him to lie down as a pillow for her head. The pombi lay beside them without being coaxed, and warmed by the furry solidity she rested. The smooth body beneath her cheek breathed and breathed. She forced herself not to respond to that gentle movement, though she passionately desired to lie right against that body and abandon herself to the closeness, the warmth. Something in the beast responded to her, and he turned to bring her body closer, touching the soft flesh of her neck with a muzzle as soft. She forced herself away, trying to find a position which would not so stir her feelings, found one of sheer weariness at last. Thus they slept, moving uneasily from time to time as night advanced, and it was in the dark of early morning that she woke to begin the trek once more.
The thought of food began to obsess her. She did not know what the beast could eat. She remembered eating grass when she had been his mate, but she had actually Shifted into a form which could eat grass. What did Himaggery eat in this strange shape he thought he bore? Did belief extend to such matters as teeth and guts? Could she feed such a beast on grasses which would not keep the man alive? The pombi did not wait upon her consideration. He shambled off into the forest and returned with a bunwit dangling from his jaws, munching on it with every appearance of satisfaction. Soon after, they passed a rainhat bush. Mavin peeled a ripe fruit and offered it from her hand. The beast took it with soft lips and a snuffle of pleasure. Had it not been for the shadows clustered around them, she would have felt pleased. ”I cannot call you ... Himaggery,” she whispered, giving voice to the name itself. “Not even to myself. To do so starts something within me I cannot hold. And I may not think of you as I did when I was your mate within the valley, for to do so melts my flesh, beast. So. What shall I call you?” She considered this while they walked a league or so, the pombi licking bunwits blood from his bib of white hair, she feeding the other two of them on fruit and succulent fronds of young fern which thrust their tight coils up among the purple spikes of Healer’s balm. Only the rainhat bush bore fruit so early, and she gave some thought to the monotony of the beast’s diet if, indeed, it could not eat grass or graze upon the young leaves.
“I will call you Fon,” she said at last. “For you were Fon when we met. Or I will call you Singlehorn.”
The beast stopped, staring about himself as though in confusion, and she knew her words had reached some inner self which was deeply buried.
“Fon,” she said in pity. “It’s all right. It’s all right, my Singlehorn.”
It was not all right. The shadows had only multiplied as they went, as though attracted by some ripe stink of passion or pain. Something in the relationship among the three of them, perhaps, or between any two of them. Something, perhaps, which sought to surface in either Arkhur or ... Fon. Something, perhaps, which sought expression in herself. She thought of the bird which had severed its own wing, wondering what had motivated the shadow to cause such a thing, or whether any creature, once it had invaded the shadow, would have acted so automatically. Yet Himaggery had sought to invade the tower and had somehow escaped.
The bird had simply gone into the shadow.
How had Himaggery gone?
The shadows had not sought the bird. Or had they?
The shadows were seeking something now. Seeking, following, but not attacking. She wondered at their passivity, knowing they could attack if they would. Their failure to do so was more frightening than the actuality, making heart labor and breath caw through a dry throat without purpose. Running would not help. Conversation would make her feel less lonely, but there was no one present who could answer her. Even her words were dangerous, for either of the beasts beside her might rise to an unintentional inflection, an unmeant phrase, rise into that pattern which the shadows sought.
So, in a forced silence, for the first time since leaving the valley, she began to consider where they were going. Somewhere without shadows. And where might such a place be found?
“We need a Wizard,” she whispered to herself. “One walks at my back, and I cannot use him. Chamferton is far to the east of us. Besides, I cannot like him, dare not trust him. So. Perhaps instead of a Wizard, I need ... a Seer. To find the shadowless place. And who would be more interested than Windlow, Fon-beast, eh? Far and far from here, down the whole length of the land to the mountainous places of Tarnoch. Still, I could rely upon him. And once there—once there we could rest.”
Even though the shadows did not attack, they were present. Weariness followed upon that feet, a weightiness of spirit, a heaviness of heart and foot and hand so that mere bodies became burdens. Mavin wondered dully if she could Shift into something which would be less susceptible to this lassitude and was warned by some inner voice to stay as she was, not to change, not to draw upon any power from the earth or air, for it was such a draw upon the power of the place which had stirred the shadows in her presence once before.
“As we are, then,” she sighed. “As we are, companions. One foot before another, and yet again, forever. Gamelords, but we have come a wearying way.”
They had not come far and she knew it. They had gone up and down a half-dozen small hills, tending always south toward the road of tingling stones where the blind runners had been. She did not know why she had set out with that destination in mind except that it was a real place, a measurable distance from other places she knew, not so far that it seemed unattainable even to a group as weary as this one.
One rise and then another. One hollow and then another. Trees blotted dark on a line of hill. Rocks twisted into devil faces; foliage in the likeness of monsters. Clouds which moved faster in the light wind than they three moved upon the earth. Each measure a measure of a league’s effort to cross a quarter of it. Until at last they came to a final rise and saw the pale line of the road stretching across its feet.
The day had dawned without sun and moved to noon in half light. They could go no further, but she led them on until the road itself was beneath their feet. Once there, they dropped into a well of sleep as sudden as a clap of thunder. No shadow moved on this road. No shadow moved near this road. Pale it stretched from east to west, the stones of it cracked into myriad hairline fissures in which fernlets grew, and burtons of fungus, their minute parasols shedding a tiny fog of spores upon the still air. Mavin lay upon them like a felled sapling, all asprawl, loose and lost upon the stones, the beasts beside her. In their sleep they seemed to flatten as though the stones absorbed them, drew them down, and when they woke at last they lay long, half conscious, drawing their flesh back up into themselves.
It was music which had wakened them, far off and half heard on a fitful wind, but music nonetheless. A thud of great drum; a snarl of small drum; blare and tootle, rattle and clash, louder as it continued, obviously nearing. There were no shadows nearby though Mavin saw flutters against a distant copse. She dragged herself up, tugging the beasts into the trees at the side of the road. They stood behind leafy branches, still half asleep, waiting for what would come.
What came was a blare of trumpets, a pompety-pom of drums, three great crashes of cymbals, thrajngggg, thranggg, thranggg, then a whole trembling thunder of music over the rise to the east. They, saw the plumes first, red and violet, purple and azure, tall and waving like blown grass. The plumes were upon black helmets, glossy as beetles, small and tight to the heads of the musicians who came with their cheeks puffed out and their eyes straight ahead, following one who marched before them raising and lowering his tall, feathered staff to set the time of the music. Mavin felt the Fon-beast’s horn in the small of her back, up and down, up and down, marching in time to the music. Looking down, she saw pombi feet, Fon feet, and Mavin feet all in movement, pom, pom, pom, pom, as the bright music tootled and bammed around them.