Mavin shook her head, seeing Rootweaver’s eyes on them from across the table. “Perhaps I was.”
The older woman nodded. “Sometimes each of us is. Now, I think from the smell that food is cooked. Will you share it around, Roges?” And she rose to seat them all at the table.
They were only half through the meal when a Maintainer woman entered, beckoning Rootweaver into the hall. She returned with a sad face. “Your sister is not young, Mavin. Among our people, we would not want to bear children at her age.”
“She’s almost forty,” said Mavin “Is there trouble?”
“The birther women are concerned, worried. She has been in labour for a very long time now. She does not seem concerned. She sings, and does not concentrate. She seems to feel nothing. We have medicines, but they are dangerous ...”
“Well,” Mavin rose. “I will come. No—alone. Beedie, you stay here. I’ll see if I can help her, but I must do it with as few as people around as possible.”
Handbright was lying on a white bed, her legs drawn up, the muscles in her belly writhing, but her face was as calm as a corpse as she sang a little, wordless song. Mavin motioned the women out of the room, asking only the head birther to stay. The place smelled of the sea, salt and wet.
“Tell me what she must do,” she directed the birther, taking Handbright’s head between her hands to make the blind eyes stare into her own. She began to speak. It was the voice she had used in Landizot and in Mip; the voice she had used on the Banders mobs, utterly confident and compelling.
“Handbright. White bird. Shifter. Sister. You have seen birthing before. This is a good child. Like Mertyn, Handbright. Mertyn. Mertyn. A good child. You must save this good child, you must birth it, Handbright. Think.” The birther woman gestured, thrusting down. “Push. Birth the good child.”
Something fled behind Handbright’s eyes, the singing stopped. Mavin went on, demandingly. “Save this good child, Handbright. Concentrate. Push. Think. This is a good baby. Handbright always wanted a baby. Think. The birther says now, Handbright. Push. See. That makes it easier. Now again, push.”
Handbright cried out, a sound completely human rather than the strange birdsongs she had made before. The birther nodded, e ncouraged, and felt the swollen belly. Mavin spoke on, and on, and on.
There was a thin cry, and she looked down to see a wriggling form, all blood and wetness, in the birther’s hands. Sighing, exhausted, she released her sister’s hands and sat back. There was a scurrying. Others came in from the hallway. Handbright cried out once more and the birthers moved even faster around the bed, lifting another child in their hands. Mavin looked on only, bewildered.
“Twins,” cried one. “Twin boys.”
“Ah, now, now,” thought Mavin, tears in her eyes. “One would have been quite enough. More than enough.” She rose unsteadily and went out into the hall, breathing deeply. She had seen death in Handbright’s eyes. If not now, soon. Soon. Well, she could have come more quickly. She could have interfered less in the world’s business and paid more attention to her own. She leaned against the wall, weeping, not knowing Beedie was there until she felt the strong young arms tight around her.
The birther came into the hall, her face strained and tight.
“Never mind,” said Mavin. “I know.”
“She’s asking for you,” the birther said. “She’s come to herself. She’s asked for the babies, too.”
“Well then,” Mavin responded. “Well then.”
She sat in that quiet room for the rest of the day, and most of the day following. The birthers put Handbright’s children on her breasts, though she had no milk for them yet and none of them expected that she would have. Still, she asked to have them. And Mavin. She talked of Mertyn and their mother. And died, lying quietly there with the babies in her arms.
The Birders came the next day, expecting to send Handbright’s body to the Boundless. Mavin told them it had already gone.
“What are their names?” asked Beedie, poking one of the babies with her strong, Bridger fingers to make it smile.
“Swolwys and Dolwys,” said Mavin. “Dolwys has hair that is a little darker, I think.”
“Will you let me have them?” asked Beedie, all in a rush. “Me and Roges. We decided together we’d like to have them. We’ll have some of our own, too, of course, but we’d like very much to raise Handbright’s sons.”
“No, sausage girl. You’ll have enough of your own to keep you busy. These are my own kin, my own Shifty kin, and they will need to be reared by those who understand our ways. I’ll take them with me, as soon as they are a tiny bit older and able to travel.”
“How will you carry them, Mavin? How can you manage with two?”
“I’ll manage,” she said. “I’ll figure out a way.”
It was in the summer season that the people of Battlefox the Bright Day, a Shifter demesne on the high downs of the shadowmarches, looked out across the p’natti to see a great beast. The beast would not have been considered extraordinary by any Shifters’ demesne. Shape and size and aspect are all infinitely variable in Shifters’ lives, and they are not surprised by fur or wing or feather. Still, there was something surprising about this beast: the red-haired twin boys who rode upon its back.
The beast opened its mouth and bellowed, “Plandybast!” at which one of the inhabitants of Battlefox Demesne trembled with mixed apprehension and delight.
By the time he had threaded his way through the p’natti, Mavin stood there in her own shape, holding her toddlers by their hands. “Plandybast,” she said. “Thalan. My mother’s brother. You told me once Handbright would have been welcome at Battlefox Demesne. Tell me now that her sons are equally welcome!”
After which was a time of general rejoicing, story-telling, lying, and welcoming home. Plandybast’s half sister, Itter, had left the Demesne long before and was believed dead. Mavin sighed with relief and offered polite consolation. Itter had been the one thing she had doubted about Battlefox Demesne. Now there was nothing to doubt, and even Mavin herself felt at home.
Still, in a few seasons, after the babies were accustomed to the place and had found dozens of kin to care for them, she took quiet leave of the demesne.
“Can you tell me why you’re leaving us?” begged Plandybast, who had grown fond of Mavin.
“Oh, thalan, you will think it a silly thing.”
“I would rather be told and think it a silly thing than think myself not worthy of being told.”
“Well then, hear a tale. Some almost twenty years ago, I came w ith Mertyn to Pfarb Durim. He was a child, and so was I, scared as two bunwits in a bush when the fustigars howl. So, we made it up between us I would say I was a servant of a Wizard. Himaggery. Mertyn made up the name.”
Plandybast nodded. “Not a bad stratagem. Wise men don’t fool with Wizards, or the servants of Wizards.”
“That’s what Mertyn thought. So, I told my tale, but during the next few days I came into danger and told my tale to unbelieving ears. Then came one who said, ‘This is my servant, and I am the Wizard Himaggery.’”
“Ah,” said Plandybast.
“And the end of the tale was I sworn him an oath, thalan, that in twenty years time I would come once more to the city of Pfarb Durim, to find him there.”
After a thoughtful silence, “Will you be back for Assembly?”
“Perhaps not then. But I will be back. I’ll be back for the boys when they’re old enough. I want to take them to Schlaizy Noithn myself, if they turn out to be Shifter. If they turn out to be something else—or nothing else—well, I want to decide what should be done in that event.”
“Not the Forgetter?”
“No. Not the Forgetter. We have tried to convince the world we are ... limited, thalan. So they would not fear us, or hate us. We have woven mystifications around us, and the world does not believe them. Shifters are not well liked in the wide world. That being so, why should we commit evil deeds to protect that which can’t be p
rotected?
“Ah, well. I don’t intend to get the demesne in an uproar raising the question now. It’ll be ten years or more before we know what Handbright’s sons will be. It may be best to take them back oversea to their father’s people.”
“Who is their father?” asked Plandybast, curious about this matter for the first time.
Mavin thought briefly she would tell him, “A glue blob in the bottommost lands of a chasm, over the sea.” Instead she contented herself with a larger truth. “A priest,” she said. “A good and kindly if imperfect man.”
She turned when she arrived at the bend in the road beyond which the demesne dissappeared behind the hill. He was waving to her, s miling, weeping a little. Beedie had wept a little, too, and Roges, when she had left them. It was pleasant to be wept over in such kindly fashion.
And the better part of twenty years was gone since she had promised she would keep tryst in Pfarb Durim, twenty years from then.
And the better part of twenty years was gone.
“I am the servant of the Wizard Himaggery,” she hummed, remembering that refrain. “Perhaps. Almost. But not quite yet.”
The Search Of Mavin Manyshaped
Book 3 of The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter One
The season of storms had begun in earnest when Mavis Manyshaped rode down the Ancient Road, beneath the strange arches, toward the city of Pfarb Durim. It was almost twenty years since she had been there last; twenty years since she had promised to come there again. “The Blue Star hangs upon the horns of Zanbee,” she sang to herself, not sure she was remembering it, correctly. It was something Himaggery had said, was it? Something; Wizardry, a specific time which had to do with the season and the arches? The tall horse she rode tiptoed into the shadow of each arch with shivering skin, dancing as he came out again, and she adjusted to this fidgety movement with calm distraction. Twenty years ago they had promised to meet upon the terrace of the hotel Mudgeif Mont in the city. Looking down from this height upon the labyrinth of walls and roofs, she was not sure she could find her way to the hotel. Ah. Yes, there it was. Upon the highest part of the city, almost overlooking the cliff wall. She chirruped to the horse, urging him to stop fidgeting and move along.
Just beyond the last of the Monuments was a small inn, a dozen empty wagons scattered around it, as though parked there until the weather cleared, and a fork in the road with one branch leading down to the town. A distant rumble of thunder drew her attention to the clouds, boiling up into mountainous ramparts over the city, black as obsidian, lit from within by a rage of lightning and from the east by the morning sun. This was the weather during which the Monuments were said to dance. While it was never alleged that they had any malevolent intent, it was true that certain travelers caught on the Ancient Road during storms arrived at Pfarb Durim in no condition to pursue their business. If they had the voice for it, and unfortunately sometimes when they did not, they tended to lie about with unfocused eyes singing long, linear melodies which expressed a voice of disturbing wind. Mavin shivered as the horse had done, encouraging him to make better speed toward the distant gates.
A few she knew of had actually seen the Monuments dance. Blourbast the Ghoul had seen, only to die moments later with Huld’s dagger in his throat. Huld the Demon and Huldra, his sister-wife had seen, as had their mother, Pantiquod the Harpy. Mavin spat to get the memory of them out of her mouth. She had heard they had gone away from Hell’s Maw, left that warren beneath the walls of Pfarb Durim to inhabit another demesne: Bannerwell, beside the flowing river. It was, so her informant had said, a cleaner and more acceptable site for a Gamesman of power. Kings and Sorcerers who could not be enticed to Hell’s Maw for any consideration would plot freely with Huld in Bannerwell. She spat again. The memory of him fouled her mind.
Two others had seen the Monuments dance, of course; Mavin, herself, and the Wizard Himaggery. They, too, had gone away separately after promising to meet again when twenty years had passed. Now Mavin Manyshaped rode her tall horse along that Ancient Road, so lost in memory of that other time she paid little attention to the clouds towering over the city. Two decades ago there had been wild drumming in the hills, a fury of firelight, and a flood of green luminescence from the dancing arches. The murmur of present thunder and the threatening spasms of lightning merely rounded out the memory.
A challenging shout brought her to herself. A gate guard, no less fat and lazy than those who had been here long ago. “Well, woman? I asked were you bound into Pfarb Durim or content to sleep on your horse?”
“Bound in, guardsman. To Mudgery Mont.”
He gave her a curious glance, saying without saying that he thought her a strange guest for the Mont. Most of those who stayed there came with retinues of servants or with considerable panoply. She gave him a quirky smile to let him know she read his thought, and he flushed slightly as he turned away. “Go then. The gates are open to all who have business within.”
As indeed they always were, she reflected. There was no city in all the lands of the True Game so open, not even Betand, which was a crossroad itself. And, as in other of the commercial cities of the land, there was little large scale Game—though much small scale stuff, Games of two, family duels and the like—and a minimum of Game dress. Helmed Tragamors could be seen around the inns and hotels. Even here guards were often needed. A gaudy band of Afrits entered the square as she crossed it, bound away south, no doubt, to the Great Game lately called in the valley land beside Lake Yost, in the midland. Everyone had heard of that; the first Great Game in a decade and half. The Gamesmen in the land headed to it or from it, as their own needs struck them.
The streets were shrill with hawkers, bright with banners, alive with a smell she remembered, rich and complex, made of fruit both rotted and fresh, smoked meats, hides, the stink of the great cressets upon the wall full of grease-soaked wood. The pawnish people of Pfarb Durim had a distinctive dress; full black trousers thrust down into openwork boots (which let the dust and grit of the road sift in and out while somewhat hiding the dirty feet which resulted) and brilliantly colored full shirts with great billowy sleeves. The women belted these garments with an assortment of sashes and chains, topping all off with an intricately folded headdress; the men used simple leather belts and tall leather hats. Both sexes fluttered like lines full of bright laundry or a whole festival of pennants, and were shrill as birds with their cries and arguments. The tall horse picked his way through this riot fastidiously, ears forward, seeming interested in all that went on around him.
As she came farther into the city, the noise quieted, the smell dwindled, until, between the rumbles of thunder, she could hear the wind chimes and smell the flowers in the Mont gardens. The courtyard wall was surmounted with huge stone urns spilling blossoms down the inner wall where a dozen boys plied wet brooms to settle the dust, though by the look of the sky this task would soon prove redundant. The Heralds at the entry looked up incuriously, and then returned to their game of dice, dismissing her in that one weighing glance. “Of no importance,” their eyes said. Mavin agreed with their assessment, content to have it so.
A liveried stableman came to take the horse, and she let him go thankfully. It was no easy matter to ride upon another’s four legs where she could go easier upon her own. But Shifters were not always welcome guests, not even among Gamesmen notable in treachery and double dealing, so she came discreetly to the Mont, clad in softly anonymous clothing of sufficient quality to guarantee respect without stirring avarice or curiosity.
Now, she thought, I will meet him as I promised, and we will see. What it was she would see she had not identified. What it was she would feel, she had carefully avoided th
inking of. Each time her mind had approached the thought it had turned aside, and she had let it turn, riding it as she might a willful steed, letting it have its own way for a time, until it grew accustomed to her—or she to it. She went into the place, shaking her head at the man who would have taken her cloak, wandering through the rich reception halls toward the terrace she remembered. It lay at the back, over the gardens which stretched down to the cliff edge and the protecting wall, bright under their massed trees, their ornamental lanterns. The door was as she remembered it, opened before her by a bowing flunkey—
And she stood upon the terrace, shaken like a young tree in a great storm.
“Gameswoman?” She didn’t hear him. “Gameswoman. Are you well? A chair, Madam? May I bring you something to drink?” Evidently she had nodded, for he raced away, stopping to say something to some senior servant at the doorway, for that one turned to look at her curiously. She took a deep breath, grasped at her reason with her whole mind.
“Come now, Mavin,” she said to herself in a stern, internal voice seldom used, always heeded. “This is senseless, dangerous, unlike you. Sit down. Take a deep breath. Look about you, slowly, calmly. Think what you will say when he returns, how you will set his curiosity aside. Now. He is coming. Careful, quiet.”
He set the glass of wineghost before her and she took it into her hand, smiling her thanks. “I was here last many years ago at the time of the great plague,” she said in a voice of calm remembrance. “It was a tragic time. We lost many dear to us. The memory caught me suddenly and by surprise. You are too young to remember.” She smiled again, paid him generously, and waved him away.
At the door he spoke once more to the other man, shaking his head. The other man nodded, said something with a serious face, but did not look in her direction. So. All was explained. All was calm. She sipped at the wineghost, staying alert. No one was interested in her. The few on the terrace were talking with one another or—admiring the gardens or simply sitting, looking at nothing as they soaked the last of the morning sun slanting below the gathering clouds. Was Himaggery among them? Had he seen her come out without knowing her?