Dark came early, but she did not stop until she had reached the edge of the cliff and crawled down it in a spidery bundle of legs and claws. Once at the bottom she could smell water and hear many trickling fells, thin and musical in the dark. A shaving of moon lit the Lake of Faces and made silver streamers of the water dropping into it from the cliffs above. The spider shape yawned, Shifted; the fustigar yawned, Shifted. Mavin stood in her own shape upon the shore, ivory in the cool night. She scratched. Whatever shape one Shifted into, the skin stayed on the outside and all the dirt of the road stayed on it. The water welcomed her as she slid beneath its surface, relishing its chill caress.
The lake had been so inviting she had taken no time to look around her. Now, floating on her back with her hair streaming below her like black water weed in the moonlight, she began to see the Faces.
White poles emerged from shadow as she peered into the dark, an army of them in scattered batallions on the shore, in the shallows, marching out into the fringes of the forest. One such stood close beside her, and she clung to it, measuring it with hands which would not quite reach around it, finger to finger, thumb to thumb. She lay on the water and thrust herself away from the pole so she could look up into the face at its top, white as ivory, blind-eyed, close-lipped, its scalp resting upon the top of the pole, a thin strap extending from ear to ear behind the pole and nailed there with a silver spike.
It was a woman’s face, a mature woman, not thin, not lovely but handsome. The face had no hair, only the smooth curve as of a shaved skull, pale as bleached bone.
Though it seemed no more alive than a statue and was no more real, it troubled her. She swam away a little, found another of the white posts and confronted a man’s face, weak-jawed and petulant-looking, the blind eyes gleaming with reflected light. The moon had come higher, making the pale poles stand out against the dark of the forested cliffs like a regiment of ghosts.
From high above the cliffs, a scream shattered the silence; the harsh, predatory cry of some huge bird. Mavin looked up to see two winged blots circling down toward the lake. Shifting herself, she sank beneath the waters to peer at them with protruding, froglike eyes.
Harpies! She edged upward, let her ears rest above the water in the shadow of the pole, drawn by something familiar in the cry. Yes. Though she had not heard that voice for twenty years, she could not mistake it. One of the descending forms was Pantiquod—Pantiquod who had brought the plague to Pfarb Durim, who had almost killed Mertyn, who should have been far to the south at Bannerwell with her evil children—screaming a welcome to another child.
“Well met, daughter! I thought to find you during new moon at the Lake of Faces. And here you are, at old Chamferton’s oracle. Does he send you still to question the Faces?”
The voice in reply was as harsh, as metallic, with an undertone of wild laughter in it. “Pantiquod, mother-bird, I had begun to think you too old to take shape. What brings you?” The two settled upon the shore, folding their wings to stalk about on high, stork legs, bare pendulous breasts gleaming in the moonlight. Mavin became aware of a smell, a poultry house stink, chemical and acrid. Shifting her eyes to gather more light, she saw that the shore among the poles was littered with Harpy droppings, white as the masks themselves.
“Not too old, daughter. Too lazy, perhaps. Since Blourbast is dead, I have luxuriated with no need to Game or bestir myself.”
“And how are my half sister and brother,” the younger Harpy cried, voice dripping venom. “The lovely Huldra, the lovelier Huld?”
“Well enough, daughter. Well enough, since Huldra bore a son, Mandor, she has had little to do with Huld. She hates him, and he her, and both me and I both. I do not let it trouble me. I stay with them for the power and the servants and the comfort. In the caves beneath Bannerwell there is much pleasure to be had.”
“I can imagine. Years of such pleasure you’ve had already. More years than I can remember, yet never a word from you since Blourbast died. Why now, mama? Why now, loathsome chicken?” And she cawed with wild laughter, at some joke which Pantiquod shared, for the older Harpy shrilled in the same tone.
“Oh, does Chamferton call you that still? And me as well? I came not before, dear daughter, because I do not serve him still and would not be caught again in his toils. I come now because you do serve him still and I want to borrow it from you. For a moment or two.”
“I do not serve him. He holds me, as he once held us both. And you want to borrow it? The wand? Foolishness, mother-bird. He would know it in a minute.”
“Would it matter if he did? After eight long years, is he still so violent? Would he punish you? For granting a small request to your own mother?”
The younger Harpy lifted on her wings, threw her head back and screamed with laughter, jigged on her stork legs, wings out, dancing. “Would Chamferton punish me? Would Chamferton punish me? What a question, a question!”
Mavin paddled her way closer to the shore. They were talking more quietly now, the screaming greetings done, and she thrust her ears upward to catch each word.
“I will not lend it to you, Mother. Do not ask it. Try to take it and I’ll claw your gizzard out and your eyes as well. But I’ll use it for you, perhaps, if you have not any purpose in mind Chamferton would find hateful enough to punish me for.”
“It is no purpose he would care a thrilpskin for. Does he care for Huld? Is the Face of Huld still here?”
“He cares nothing for Huld, and the Face is still here, where he had you put it, Mother. Long ago.”
“He has probably forgotten it. But I have not forgotten, and I need to know from it a little thing. Ask it for me: Will it grow and flourish like webwillow in the spring? Or will it shrivel and die? Ask it for me, daughter. And I will then do what is best ... for me.”
The two stork-legged shapes moved away among the poles, Mavin after them flat as a shadow on the ground, invisible as she crept in their wake. They wound their way through the forest of poles, searching for a particular one. At last they found it, cawing to one another excitedly. “Oh, it is Huld’s Face, as he is today. He was handsomer when young, daughter. For a time I thought him a very marvel of beauty, before Blourbast changed him and made him what he is.”
“Ahh, cahhh, ah-haa, mate a Ghoul with a Harpy and blame the Ghoul’s influence for what comes out. Well, Mother. Shall I ask?”
There were whispers. Then the younger Harpy stood back from the pole with its Face and called strange words into the silence of the place, striking the pole three times with a long, slender wand she had drawn from a case on her back. Three times she repeated this invocation. On the ninth blow, the lips of the Face opened and Huld’s voice spoke—Huld’s voice as it would have come from another world, beyond space. It was the timeless ghost of his voice, and it made shivers where Mavin’s backbones might have been.
“What would you know?”
“Will you live or die, Huld?” asked the Harpy. “Will you flourish or wilt into nothing?”
“For a season I will flourish. I will lose that which I now hold precious and discover I care not. I will heap atrocity upon atrocity to build a name and will lose even my name in a dust of bones.” The lips of the Face snapped shut with the sound of stones striking together. The young Harpy spun on her tall legs, snickering.
“So, Mother? Is that enough?”
“It is enough,” Pantiquod said in a dry, harsh voice. “I felt something of the kind. A pity. If one would choose, one would choose a son who would not be so ephemeral. Still. It is he who will dwindle and die, not I. There is time for me to protect myself. I will be leaving Bannerwell, daughter.”
“And your other daughter, lovely Huldra?”
“As she will. She may choose to stay, or go.”
“Where will you go?”
“If I do not wish to share Huld’s eventual ruin, away from him. Into the Northlands, I think. I have heard there are fortunes to be made and damage to be done in the Northlands. And I will not go empty-hand
ed.”
“Ah-haw, cawh, I would think not. Will you wait with me now, Mother, while I do Chamferton’s bidding? Will you keep me company?”
“We were never company, daughter,” said Pantiquod, rising on her wings and making a cloud of dry, feathery droppings scud across the ground into Mavin’s face. “But I fly now to Chamferton’s aerie, and you may return there before I go. Maybe he will have news for me of doings in the north.” She flew up, circling, crying once at the top of the spiral before wheeling north along the valley.
Now the younger Harpy moved among the Faces, chattering to herself like a barnyard fowl, full of clucks and keraws. Three times she stopped before Faces and demanded certain information of them. Three times the Faces replied before returning to their silent, expressionless masks. A man with a young-old Face was asked where he was and answered, “Under Bartelmy’s Ban.” It was a strange Face and a strange answer. Both stuck in Mavin’s memory. An old woman’s Face opened its pale lips and chanted, “Upon the road, the old road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone ... “ There was a long pause, then the lips opened once more. “The daylight bell still hangs in the last tower.” The Harpy chuckled at this before going on to the next Face, that of a middle-aged man with a missing eye who announced that the Great Game being played in the midlands near Lake Yost would soon be lost for all who played, with only death as a result and the Demesne of Lake Yost left vacant.
By the time Mavin had heard the words of invocation said three times for each of these, she could have quoted them herself. The moon was high above. The young Harpy seemed to have finished her assigned duties and now moved among the poles and Faces only for amusement, Mavin still following doggedly, her curiosity keeping her close behind.
She almost missed seeing Himaggery’s Face, her eyes sliding across it as they had a hundred others, only to return, shocked and fascinated. It was the face of a man in his mid years, perhaps forty, with lines from nose to mouth and a web around his eyes. And yet—and yet see how those lips quirked in a way she had remembered always, and the lines around his eyes were those her fingertips remembered. He looked as she had dreamed he would, as she had known he would, and that second look told her it was he beyond all doubt.
She came up from the guano-smeared soil in one unthinking movement, grasping the Harpy with fingers of steel before she could react.
“I will take the wand, daughter of Pantiquod.”
The Harpy did not reply, but began a wild, wheeling struggle, beating her wings against Mavin’s face, thrusting with her strong talons. When she found she could not escape, she began screaming, raising echoes which fled along the lake-shore, rousing birds who nested there so that they, too, screamed in the night. Mavin felt the distant beating of wings, heard a cry from high above, knew that fliers there could plunge upon her in moments.
“Call them off,” she instructed breathlessly. “At once. I have no desire to kill you, Harpy, unless I must.”
There was only a defiant caw of rage as the Harpy redoubled her struggles. Mavin shook her, snapped her like a whip, raised her above to serve as a shield—and felt the talons and beak of whatever had plummeted from the sky bury themselves in the Harpy’s body. Abruptly the struggles ceased.
Mavin dropped the body. Perched upon it was a stunned flitchhawk, its dazed, yellow eyes opaque. Mavin pulled it from the Harpy’s throat and tossed it away. It planed down onto the soil to crouch there, panting.
Mavin turned her back on the bird. She drew the Harpy’s wand from its case. The battle had driven the words of invocation from her memory, and it took a moment to recall them. Then she stood before Himaggery’s Face and chanted them, striking with the wand three times, three times again, and a final three.
The stony lips opened. “What would you know?” asked the ghost of Himaggery’s voice.
“Where are you?” she begged. “Where are you, Himaggery?”
“Under the Ban, the Ban, Bartelmy’s Ban,” said the ghostly voice, and the lips shut tight.
She had heard that meaningless answer before! She tried to open his lips again with the wand and the words, but it did no good. She wandered among the Faces, to see if there were others she knew. There were none. At length her weariness overtook her, and she returned to the water to wash away the harsh, biting smell of the place. After that was a long time of sleep on a moss bank, halfway up the cliff, where no Harpies had come to leave their droppings. And long after that, morning which was more than halfway to noon.
She went down to the lake for water. The Harpy lay where Mavin had thrown her the night before, dried blood upon her throat and chest. That chest moved, however, in slow breaths, and the wound had clotted over. Mavin mused at this for some time before turning to the water. When she had washed herself and found something juicy for her breakfast, she returned to the Harpy’s unconscious form and took it upon her back. “I will return you to your master,” she announced in a cheery tone, Shifting to spider legs which could carry them both up the precipitous cliffs around the lake. “You and your wand—the Wizard’s wand. It may be he will be grateful.”
“And if he is not?” asked some inner sceptical part of her. “And if Pantiquod is there?”
“Well then, not,” she answered, still cheerily. “He can do no worse than try to enchant me, or whatever it is Wizards do. I can do no better than Shift into something horrible and eat him if he tries it. So and so. As for Pantiquod ... likely she will have gone on by now. She did not intend to await her daughter’s coming.” The spider shape gave way to her lean, fustigar form when she reached the cliff top. Before her the canyon stretched away in long diagonals where the toes of two mountains touched, northwest then northeast then northwest once more. The small river in its bottom was no more than a sizeable creek, bright shallow water sparkling over brown stones and drifts of gravel. Fish fled from the shallows where she stood and something jumped into the water upstream, bringing ripples to her feet.
She lapped at the water, feeling it cool upon her furry legs. The water joined her breakfast to add bulk, making the body on her back less burdensome. Squirming to get it more comfortably settled, she trotted up the canyon into the trees, which grew thicker the farther north she went.
At noon she put her burden down, caught two ground-running birds, Shifted into her own form and cooked them above a small fire as she watched the smoke, smelled it, smiled and hummed. The mood of contentment was rare and inexplicable. She knew she should feel far otherwise, but as the day wore on, the calm and content continued to grow.
“Enchantment!” her inner self warned. “This is enchantment, Mavin.”
“So,” she purred to herself. “Let be. What will come will come.” It was dusk when she rounded a last curve of the canyon to see the fortress before her, its battlements made of the same stone it stood upon, gray and ancient, as though formed in the cataclysm which had reared the mountains up. There was a flash of light from the tower, like a mirror reflecting sun from the craggy horizon. In that instant, the mood of contentment lifted, leaving behind a feeling of dazed weariness, as when one had drunk too much and caroused too late. She knew someone had seen her, had weighed her up and determined that the protection of enchantment was not necessary any longer. She snarled to herself, accepting it.
After waiting a few moments to see whether anything else would happen, she trotted forward. A road began just before her, winding, grown over in places, but a road nonetheless. She followed it, tongue out and panting. The way had been long and mostly uphill. Breakfast and lunch were long gone.
The fortress stood very high upon its sheer plinth of stone. From the canyon floor, stairs wound into darkness up behind the pillar. Mavin dropped her burden and lay down at the foot of these stairs, first nosing the Harpy to determine whether she still lived. She stretched, rolled, then began licking sore paws. She would stay as she was, thank you, until something definitive happened. She was not about to get caught in any shape at all on th
at dark, ominous staircase.
“Is that as far as you intend to bring her?” asked a hoarse, contentious voice from the stairs.
She looked up. He stood there, framed against the dark, in all respects a paradigm of Wizards. He had the cloak and robe, the tall hat, the beard, the crooked nose and the stern mouth. She was silent, expecting sparks to fly from his fingers. None did. He seemed content to stand there and wait.
Mavin fidgeted. Well. And why not? She Shifted, coming up from the fustigar shape into her own, decently clothed, with a Shifted cloak at her shoulders. Let the man know she was no savage.
“I had need to borrow her wand,” said Mavin flatly. “She fought me.”
“So you wounded her. Considerably, from the look of her.”
“She called down a flitchhawk from the sky. It wounded her. I thought her dead until this morning. Then, when I saw she breathed, I decided to return her to you.”
“What did you expect me to do with her in that state?” There was a movement behind the Wizard as someone emerged upon the stair, a tall, gray woman hi a feathered headdress—no longer in Harpy’s shape. Pantiquod.
Mavin shrugged elaborately, pretending not to see her. “If she has value, I presume you will have her Healed. If she has none, then it doesn’t matter what you do. In any case, I have returned your property. All of it.” She took the wand from her shoulder and laid it upon the Harpy’s breast where it moved slowly up and down with her breathing. Pantiquod screamed! She started down the stairs, pouring out threats in that same colorless voice Mavin had heard her use in Pfarb Durim, hands extended like claws, aimed for Mavin’s throat. “Shifter bitch! It was you killed Blourbast! You who set our plans awry! You who have wounded my daughter, my Foulitter. Bitch, I’ll have your eyes ...”