The Wizard gestured violently at the Harpy, crying some strange words in a loud voice, and the woman stopped as though she had run into a wall. “Back,” the Wizard shouted. “Back to your perch in the mews, loathsome chicken. Back before I put an end to you.” The woman turned and moved away, reluctantly, and not before casting Mavin one last, hissing threat. Mavin shivered, trying not to let it show.
Somewhere nearby a door banged. There were clattering footsteps, and several forms erupted from the dark stairway. Servitors. The Wizard pointed to the limp body.
“Take her to the mews. Maldin, see if the Healer is in her rooms. If not, then find her. Fermin, take that wand up to the tower and hang it on the back of the door where it belongs.” He turned to Mavin and gestured toward the stairs. “Well, Shifter, you had best come in. Since you have taken the trouble to return my property, it seems only fitting to offer some thanks, and some apologies for a certain one of my servants.”
Mavin stared upward. The castle loomed high above her, an endless stair length. She sighed.
He interpreted her weariness correctly. “Oh, we won’t climb up there. No, no. We use that fortification only when we must. When Game is announced, you know, and it’s the only appropriate place. It’s far too lofty to be useful for ordinary living. Besides, it’s impossible to heat.” He turned to one of the servants who still lurked in the shadowy stair. “Jowret, tell the kitchen there’ll be a guest for supper. Tell them to serve us in my sitting room. Now, just up one flight, young woman, and through the door where you see the light. To your left, please. Ah, now just open that door before you. And here we are. Fire, wine, even a bit of cheese if hunger nibbles at you this early.”
He took off his tall hat and sat in a comfortable-appearing chair before the tiled stove, motioning her to a similar one across the table; and he stared at her from under his brows, trying not to let her see that he did so.
Uncomfortably aware of this scrutiny, Mavin cut a piece of cheese and sat down to eat it, examining him no less covertly. Without the tall hat he was less imposing. Though there were heavy brows over his brooding eyes, the eyes themselves were surrounded with puffy, unhealthy-looking flesh, as though he slept too little or drank too much. When she had swallowed, she said, “I overheard the two Harpies talking. I know Pantiquod from a former time, from the place they call Hell’s Maw. She called the other her daughter.”
“I doubt they spoke kindly of me,” he said sneeringly, reaching for the cheese knife. “Both of them attempted to do me an injury some years ago. I put them under durance until the account is paid. Pantiquod was sly enough to offer me some recompense, so I freed her, in a manner of speaking. The daughter was the worse of the two. She owes me servitude for yet a few years.”
“She questioned the Faces. I heard her doing it. Three of them for you. One for Pantiquod.” Mavin hesitated for a moment, doubting whether it would be wise to say more. However, if she were to find any trace of Himaggery, some risk was necessary. “And then I took the wand away from her and questioned one myself.”
“Someone you know?” His voice was like iron striking an anvil.
“Someone I’m looking for. He set out eight years ago to find you. His friends have not seen him since.”
“Oh,” he said, darting one close, searching look at her before shrugging with elaborate nonchalance. “That would be the Wizard Himaggery, I think. He stopped here, bringing two old dames with him from Betand. Foolish.” He did not explain this cryptic utterance, and Mavin did not interrupt to ask him to clarify it. “He’d been collecting old talks, songs, rhymes. Wanted to solve some of the ancient mysteries. Well. What are Wizards for if not to do things like that? Hmmm? He wanted to go north. I told him it was risky, even foolish. He was young—barely thirty? Thirty-two? Hardly more than a youth.” He shook his head. “Well, so you found his Face.” He seemed to await some response to this, almost holding his breath. Mavin could sense his caution and wondered at it.
“You put it there?” She kept her voice casual. There was a strange tickle in her head, as though the man before her sought to Read her mind. Or perhaps some other person hidden nearby. She had never heard that Wizards had that Talent.
“Well, yes. I put it there. It does them little damage. Scarcely a pinprick.”
“How did you do that? What for?” Still that probing tickle.
“How do I make the Faces?” He leaned back, evidently reassured that she carried the question of Himmagery’s Face no further. “It would take several years to explain. You said your name was? Ah. Mavin. Well, Mavin, it would take a long time to explain. It took me several decades to learn to do it. Suffice it to say that the Lake is located at some kind of—oh, call it a nexus. A time nexus. If one takes a very thin slice of person and faces it forward, just at that nexus, t hen the slice can see into its future. That is, the person’s future. Some of them can see their own end, some only a little way into tomorrow. And if one commands a Face to tell—using the right gramarye, a wand properly prepared and so forth—then it tells what it sees. Believe me, I use only a very thin slice. The donors never miss it.” Again he seemed to be waiting some response from her.
Why should he care whether I believe him or not, she thought. This question seemed too dangerous to ask. She substituted another. “Why did you want to know his future?”
He paused before answering, and Mavin seemed to hear a warning vibration in her mind, a hissing, a rattle, as when something deadly is disturbed. She leaned forward to cut another piece of cheese, acting her unconcern. This misdirection seemed to quiet him, for the strange mental feeling passed as he said, “Because he insisted in going off on this very risky endeavor. Into places no one knows well. I thought it might yield some new information about the future, you know. But none of it did any good. He went, and when I questioned his Face a season later, all it would say was that he was under the Ban, the Ban, Bartelmy’s Ban.I have no idea what that means. And his quest into the old things is not what I am most interested in.” Again that close scrutiny, that casual voice coupled with the tight, attentive body.
Some instinct bade Mavin be still about the other Face which had also spoken of Bartelmy’s Ban. Was it logical that the Wizard would have two such enigmas in his Lake of Faces?
“That surprises me. I was told that the Wizard Chamferton was interested in old things, that he had much information about old things, that he had much information about old things.” She pretended astonishment.
“So Himaggery said. Which is why he brought the old women from Betand. Lily-sweet and Rose-love.” He paused, then said with elaborate unconcern, “Well, at one time I was interested. Very. Oh, yes, at one time I collected such things, delighted in old mysteries. Why, at one time I would probably have been able to tell you everything you wanted to know about the lost road and the tower and the bell ...”
Still that impression of testing, of prodding. What was it he wanted her to say? What was it he was worried about her knowing? Mavin chewed, swallowed, thanked the Gamelords that she knew nothing much, but felt herself growing apprehensive nonetheless. She went on, “Do you mention roads, towers, bells by accident? One of the Faces your Harpy questioned spoke of a tower, of bells.” She quoted all she could remember of what she had overhead, all in an innocently naive voice, as though she were very little interested.
“Old stories.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “The old women Himaggery brought—they were full of old stories.” He would have gone on, but the door opened and servants came in to lay the table with steaming food and a tall pitcher of chilled wine. Bunwit and birds, raw or roasted, were all very well, but Mavin had no objection to kitchen food. She pulled her chair close and talked little until the emptiness inside her was well filled.
“Well,” she said finally, when the last dish had been emptied—long after Chamferton had stopped eating and taken to merely watching her, seemingly amazed at her appetite; long after the mind tickle had stopped completely, as whoever it w
as gave up the search—“I must learn what I can from you, Wizard. Himaggery is my friend. I am told by a friend of us both that he came in search of Chamferton because he desired to know about old things and it was thought that you had some such knowledge. Now, you say he went from you on some risky expedition you warned him against. The story of my entire life has been spent thus—in pursuit of kin or friends who have gone off in pursuit of some dream or other. I had not thought to spend this year so, but it seems I am called to do it.”
“Why? For mere friendship?” Prodding again, trying to elicit information.
Mavin laughed, a quick bark of laughter more the sound of a fustigar than a person. “Are friends so numerous you can say ‘mere’, Wizard?” What would she tell him? Well, it would do no harm to tell him what Pantiquod already knew. “A long time ago, a Gamesman helped my younger brother during the plague at Pfarbl Durim.
“You heard of that? Everyone south of King Frogmptt of the Marshes heard of it!” And especially Pantiquod, who caused it, she thought.
“I heard of it,” he agreed, too quickly. She pretended not to notice. “Well, I am fond of my brother. So, even if there were no other reason, in balance to that kindness done by this Gamesman, I will do him a kindness in return. He is Himaggery’s friend and wants him found.”
The Wizard’s tone was dry and ironic, but still with that underlying tone of prying hostility. “Then all this seeking of yours, which you find so wearying, is for the Seer Windlow.”
“That is all we need consider,” she said definitely, seeming not to notice his use of a name she had not mentioned. So, Himaggery had talked of his personal life to this Wizard. Of his life? His friends? Perhaps of her? “Anything beyond that would be personal and irrelevant.”
“Very well then,” he replied. “For the Seer Windlow, I will tell you everything I can.”
As he talked, she grew more certain there was something here unspoken, something hidden, and she little liked the feel of it. However, she did not interrupt him or say anything to draw attention to herself, merely waiting to see what his voice would say which his words did not.
“Himaggery came here, eight years ago. Not in spring, but in the downturn of the year with leaves blowing at his heels and a chilly wind howling in the chimney while we talked. He had a map with him, an interesting one with some features on it I didn’t know of though they were near me in these hills. He told me about Windlow, too, and the old books they had searched. Himaggery had been collecting folk tales for six or seven years at that point. He wanted to hear the ones I knew, and I told him he might have full liberty of the library I had collected. Old things are not what I am most interested in now. Now I am interested in the future! It has endless fascination! Himmagery admitted as much, but he didn’t share my enthusiasm. Nonetheless, we talked, he told me what he had found in the books, and we dined together and even walked together in the valley for the day or two he spent here. I took a mask from him for the Lake of Faces, which amused him mightily.” He fell silent, as though waiting for her to contradict him, but Mavin kept her face innocent and open.
“So! What sent him on? Where did he go from here?”
“Ah. Well, truthfully, he found very little helpful here. I was able to tell him about the road. There is a Road south of Pfarb Durim, with Monuments upon it. Do you know the place? Yes? Well, so did he. And when I told him that the Road goes on, north of Pfarb Durim, hidden under the soil of the ages, north into the Dorbor Range, then swinging west to emerge at the surface in places—when I told him that, he was all afire to see it.” He nodded at her, waving his hands to demonstrate the enthusiasm with which Himaggery was supposed to have received this information. “Like a boy. All full of hot juice.”
There was something false in this telling, but she would not challenge it. She sought to pique his interest, perhaps to arouse enthusiasm which would override his careful talk. “The Road south of Pfarb Durim that has Monuments on it—I saw them dance, once. The shadowpeople made them do it.”
“So Himaggery said! You were there then? I would like to have seen that ...”
“My point, Wizard, is that we were not harmed. Some are said to have been driven mad by the Monuments, though I don’t know the trtth of that, but I have never heard that any were killed. Yet you told Himaggery it was risky? Dangerous?”
“So I believed.” He poured half a glass of wine, suddenly less confiding, almost reticent, as though they had approached a subject he had not planned for.
“Come now. You must tell me more than that. You know something more than that. Or believe you do.”
“You are persistent, “ he said in a tone less friendly, lips tight. “Uncomfortably persistent.”
Mavin held out her open hands, palms up, as though she juggled weights, put on her most ingenuous face. “Am I to risk my own life, perhaps Himaggery’s as well, rather than be discourteous? If it is something which touches you close to the bone, forgive me, Wizard. But I must ask!”
“Very well.” He thought it over for a time, hiding his hesitation by moving to the window, opening it to lean out. There he seemed to find inspiration, for he returned with his mouth full of words once more. “There are many stories about the old road, Mavin. Tales, myths—who knows. Well, I had a ... brother, considerably younger than I. He was adventurous, loved digging into old things like your friend Himaggery. I was away from the demesne when he decided to seek out the mysteries of the old road. I did not even know he had gone until much later, and my own search for him was futile.”
“Ah,” said Mavin, examining him closely, still keeping her voice light and unchallenging. “So, if the truth were told, Wizard, perhaps you did not warn Himaggery so much as you might? Perhaps, respecting him as you did, you thought he might find your brother for you?”
“Perhaps,” he said with easy apology. “Perhaps that is it. I have searched my mind on that subject more times than I care to remember. But I do remember warning him, not once but many times. And I do remember cautioning him, not once but often. And so I put myself to rest, only to doubt again on the morning. I believe I did warn him sufficiently, Shape-shifter. But he chose to go.”
She rose in her turn to investigate the open window. It looked out upon the valley, moonlit now, and peaceful. A cool wind moved the budding trees. Scents of spring rose around her, and she sighed as she closed the casement against the cool and turned back into the firelight. “Your Harpy questioned three of the Faces, Wizard. One was an old woman who spoke of a bell. What does it mean. ‘The daylight bell hangs in the last tower’?”
He gestured to say how unimportant a question it was. “I told you Himaggery brought two old story-tellers with him from Betand. I took a Face from one of them—her name was Rose-love—shortly before she died. It was her Face you heard in the lake, saying words from a children’s story. Old Rose-love told stories to the children of Betand during a very long life, stories of talking foxes and flying fish and of Weetzie and the daylight bell.”
“Weetzie?” She laughed, an amused chirrup of sound.
He barked an echoing laugh, watching her closely the while. “Weetzie. And the daylight bell, not an ordinary bell, but something very ancient. Himaggery had heard of it, and of another one. He called it ‘the bell of the dark,’ the ‘cloud bell,’ the ‘bell of the shadows.’ Have you heard of that?” His voice was friendly, yet she felt something sinister in the question, and she mocked herself for feeling so, here in this quiet room with the fire dancing on the hearth. The man had said nothing, done nothing to threaten her. Why this feeling? She forced herself to shake her head, smilingly. No, she had not heard of it.
He went on, “Nor had I. Well, he had found out something about these mysterious bells from old Rose. I question her Face once or twice a year to see how long it will continue to reply. It says only the one thing. First a little verse, then ‘The daylight bell hangs in the last tower.’ “
“The Blue Star is on the horns of Zanbee.”
“It is not,” he said. “That time is just past and will not re turn for many seasons yet.” His voice was harsh as he demand ed, ”Where did you hear that?”
She remained nonchalant. “It was something Himaggery said once. The night the Monuments danced on the Ancient Road sou th of Pfarb Durim. They danced when the Blue Star was on the ho rns of Zanbee—the crescent moon. Now we have, ‘The bell is in the last tower.’ They both sound mysterious, like Wizardly things.”
He relaxed. “I suppose they are Wizardly things, in a sense. Certainly your friend Himaggery thought so. My ... brother, too.”
“What was his name?” asked Mavin, suddenly curious about this unnamed brother. “Was he a Wizard?”
“Ah ... no. No, he was not a Wizard. He was ... a Timereacher. Very much a Timereacher.” He smiled, something meant to be a kindly smile, at which Mavin shuddered, speaking quickly to hide it.
“His name?”
“Arkhur. He was ... ah ... quite young.”
“And so, Wizard.” She rose, smiling at him, letting the smile turn into a yawn to show how little concerned she was with what she said or what he replied. “You can tell me only that there is a road northwest of this place. That there is a bell somewhere, called variously, which Himaggery talked of. That Himaggery’s Face says only what I heard it say. That your brother Arkhur is gone since his youth. That all of this, you think, is connected with ancient things, old things, things beyond memory. You think. You believe.”
“And that it is risky, Mavin. Dangerous ...”
“Everywhere I have gone they have told me that. ‘It is risky, Mavin. Dangerous.’ I have sought Eesties and battled gray oozers and plotted with stickies and crept through Blourbast’s halls in the guise of a snake. All of it was risky, Wizard. I wish you could tell me something more. It is little enough to go on.”