The false Chamferton was speaking. “Two days ago ... knew something had happened ... should have at the time ...”
“You should have done many things at the time!”
Valdon’s voice was raised, easy to hear, stirring memories in her of a long ago time. He sounded no less arrogant now than he had done twenty years before.
“Had you the wits the gods gave bunwits, you would have done many things differently. Eight years ago you engaged upon this elaborate scheme concerning your brother, the Wizard Chamferton. Why did you not merely kill him? Dead is dead, and it is unlikely a Necromancer would seek him out among the departed. But no. You must do this painstaking stupidity, this business of drugging him and having him dropped by Harpies. Why?”
“Because it could have been to our advantage, Prince Valdon. I set him where he could observe the shadow and the tower, the tower and the bell. I kept his Face here to answer my questions. So we might have learned much of mystery and wonder ...”
“Dourso, you’re a dolt! Mystery is for old men teaching in schools because they have no blood left to do otherwise. Wonder is for girls and pawns. But power and Game—that is for men. Save me from puling Invigilators who seek to outplay their betters ...”
“You are in my demesne, Prince.” The voice was a snarled threat. “Shouldn’t you mind your tongue?”
“I am in my own demesne wherever I go, Dourso. You ate my bread and took my coin for decades among the least of my servants. Oh, it’s true you had some small skill in treachery. Nothing has changed. You have had possession of a tower for a few years. You have learned a few tricks for a time. Do not overestimate the importance of these trifling things.”
“I have them at your instigation,” Dourso hissed again. “Let us say at your command. It was you bid me come here and rid the land of the High Wizard Chamferton, taking his place in order that Valdon, King Prionde’s son, might have an ally to the north.”
“Well, and if I did? I said rid the land, not encumber it further with enchantments and bother. Let be. What is the situation now?”
“It is no different than it was an hour ago, or a day ago. When I drugged my brother—half brother, and on the father side, which makes it no kind of treachery—I had my Harpies drop him in the valley where the Shadow Tower is. None can come near that place without being shadow-eaten, so it seemed safe enough ...”
“Seemed,” snorted Valdon in a barely audible voice.
“Seemed safe enough,” repeated Dourso. “I took his Face before he was drugged, but I never questioned it. There was no need to question the Face. I knew where he was. The Harpies swore to it under pain of my displeasure. That same year came the Wizard Himaggery in search of Chamferton, as you had said he would.”
“In pursuit of an old tale I had taken some pains to see he learned of. His eccentricities were well recognized among more normal Gamesmen. It was not difficult.”
“Well, so he came, bringing with him two old dames from Betand. I fed him the stories we had agreed upon, all of which are true enough, and he went off in pursuit of the runners and the tower. I took his Face before he left, also—though he did not know it—and the Face of one of the old dames as well. She was so far gone that the taking killed her, so it is as well he did not know of that either.”
“So Himaggery came and went, and after a time ...”
“After a time, not long after he left, his Face began to answer that it was under Bartelmy’s Ban. Then I thought to question the Face of my brother, and so spoke the Face of Chamferton also. Thus I knew one fate had taken them both. So, I said to myself, Himaggery and Chamferton have both been shadow-eaten, and my friend and ally, Valdon, will be mightily pleased. As you were, my Prince. As you were. It is not long since you feasted in my tower and told me so.”
“As I might have remained,” sneered Valdon, “if he had not returned from the shadow gullet after eight years like one vomited up out of the belly of death.”
There was a pause. Mavin could almost see Dourso’s shrug. “It was that Mavin, I suppose. You told me years ago she would probably follow Himaggery.”
“As I thought she would eventually. Long and long ago she promised to meet him. My brother Boldery told me of it, full of romantic sighs and yearnings—the young fool. And with her gone there would have been only two left upon my vengeance list—her younger brother, Mertyn, and the old fool, Windlow, at the school in Tarnoch.”
“Why such enmity? If her brother is much younger than her, he must have been a child at the time. Was it not at the time of the plague in Pfarb Durim? Twenty years ago?”
“Child or not, Mertyn is on the list. Senile fool or not, Windlow is there as well. Woman or not, Mavin shares their fate. What care I what they may have been. They offended me. They did me an injury. If it had not been for Himaggery, and Windlow, and Mavin and her brother, Pfarb Durim would have fallen into the hands of my friend, and thence at least partly into mine. So my friend tells me. And if I had the wealth of Pfarb Durim in my hands, I would not be grodgeling now about the northern lands in search of allies.”
There was a long strained silence. After a time, the false Chamferton spoke again. “Well, so, Mavin came as you know, interrupting your own visit to me. And I did the same with her, feigning friendship and helpfulness, giving her bits and pieces of the story, telling her at the last about the runners. And I took her Face as I had the others and sent her off.”
“But she did not die, and the others returned from the dead.” Prince Valdon spat the words, working himself up into a fury.
“Which is impossible.” Dourso was vehement. “No one returns from the tower. It holds fifty generations of questing heroes sleeping the shadow sleep at its gates.”
“What is it, this tower?”
Again, Mavin could extrapolate the shrug from the expressive silence. “Something old, from the time before men came to these parts. Something to do with the Eesties. You say you do not care for such things. Well then, it doesn’t matter what it is. It is easy enough to stay away from.”
“And to get away from, seemingly. At least your brother and Himaggery and Mavin seem to have done so.”
“We don’t know that. We know only that when Chamferton’s Face was questioned yesterday, it did not speak of the Ban as it has spoken in the past. It said other garbled things, speaking of pombis and music. And when Mavin’s Face was asked, it, too, spoke of beasts and music. Only Himaggery’s face said what it has said for years, that it is under Bartelmy’s Ban.”
“So it may be they have only exchanged one death for another?” Valdon asked, rather more eagerly than Mavin thought mannerly. “Then they may yet be dead, or as good as.”
“I consider it likely. My Harpies consider it probable. They have been full of celebratory laughter all afternoon. I think you have little to concern you, Prince Valdon. Still, we will let tomorrow come and question the Faces once again.”
“You will wait until tomorrow comes and question them, yes,” Valdon grated in a harsh, imperious voice. “And the day after that, and the day after that, until you have used up whatever lives they might have left in the answering, Dourso. There are more ways to plant a hedge of thrilps than by poking the dirt with your nose, and your maybe this, maybe not approach has not proved satisfactory.”
“As my Prince commands,” said the other, conveying more ironic acquiescence than obedience. “I had intended to do so in any case.”
Well, thought Mavin, squirming back from the tent into the gloom of the rocks. Isn’t he a carrier of long grudges. Twenty years of vengeful thought over a few boyish disagreements. “And a lost city,” reminded an internal voice. “At least part of one.”
She looked over the area. Dark had come with a sliver of moon, enough light to find a Face, perhaps. She thought she could remember where Himaggery’s had been, on the far shore of the lake, about halfway between the water and the trees, roughly in line with a great boulder. Where might her own Face be? Somewhere in that forest, har
d to see in the dark.
A soft touch on her shoulder turned her. Proom, reaching out to touch her face, then gesturing away to the poles. Touching her face once more, gesturing away, that questioning gesture. She nodded in great chin wagging agreement and reached up behind her ears as though she untied something there. She moved her hands forward as though she stripped a mask away, then pointed at the mimed mask and said, “Mavin’s.” She indicated the poles, then gestured to Proom and his fellows as she raised her eyebrows. Could they find her Face? Could they get her Face? There was colloquy among them while she thought further.
Proom had seen Himaggery once, on the side of a hill above Hell’s Maw. She reached out to him, went through the dumb show once more, this time naming the mask, “Himaggery’s.” He cocked his head, thinking. She did it again. “Himaggery’s.”
Aha. His face lighted up, and he turned to his troop with a lilting quaver of words. “Maggeries, gerries, ees, ees.” Proom was becoming Himaggery, miming him, walking with a graceful stride, chin tilted a little in diffidence, face drawn down in a serious expression. For someone only knee high, he looked remarkably like her memory of the tall Wizard. Mavin tittered, smothering the sound, but it had been enough to set them off. In the instant Proom had a parade of Himaggeries, winding their way among the stones. Mavin lay back against a narrow mossy strip between the rocks, weary beyond belief. So. Perhaps they could find her Face, hers and Himaggery’s. She would have to look for Chamferton’s Face herself. There was no way to describe him to Proom.
The moon sank toward the west. Night birds called from the cliff tops and were echoed from the river bottom. One of the Harpies screamed in the forest, a quavering screech that brought Mavin upright in terror, making her head ache. She pressed her head between her hands, but the pain only worsened, two sharp, horrible stabbings around her ears, as though two knives were inserted there. Just when she thought she could bear it no longer, that she must scream, the pain weakened, became merely sore, throbbing rather than agonizing. Trembling, she dipped a handkershief in the trickling fell and bathed her face and eyes. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She was reluctant to move her head. Pressing the cold, wet cloth around her ears helped a little. She brought it away red with blood.
She was still staring stupidly at the stains when Proom wriggled back through the rocks, holding a thing at arm’s distance from him, his lips drawn back in an expression of distaste and fear. He let it fell at her knees, and she recoiled as her own face looked blindly up at her, ragged holes chewed at ear level. Proom had gnawed the strap away which held it to the post. His lips were red, and he bathed them in the stream with much spitting and wiping. When Mavin showed him the wounds at her ears, he recoiled in mixed dismay and horror.
The mask was paper light, like the shed skin of a serpent, fluttering in the light evening air with a kind of quasi life. She held it under the fells, feeling it squirm weakly beneath her hands, suddenly slick as frogskin and as cold. It became a slimy jelly in her hands, then began to dwindle in the cold water, becoming totally transparent before it dissolved and washed away. As it did so, the pain in her head almost disappeared though a quick touch verified that the wounds remained.
Another of the shadowpeople squirmed through the stones bearing a mask. Yes. Himaggery’s. Ragged about the upper fece as her own had been.
“Gamelords,” she cursed to herself. “Did it hurt him as it hurt me?” Knowing even as she said it that it would, that it already had. “He will not understand,” she whispered. “Oh, Chamferton, pray you have tight hold upon him!”
Once more she held a mask in the flowing water, feeling the foul sliminess of it soften into jelly before it vanished. The shadowpeople observed this closely as they talked it over among themselves, and Mavin knew that they were resolving to steal others of the Faces now that they knew what to do with them. Not now, though. Now was time for sleep. She had not the energy to do more tonight.
They climbed the stones beind the fells and found a softer bed among the trees. There was no fire tonight, but she lay pillowed and warmed among a score of small bodies, sleeping more soundly than she had upon the Ancient Road.
She was wakened by a startled vacancy around her, a keening cry of panic which dwindled at once into shushed quiet. There was hot breath on her face. The pombi fece which stared down into her own had a broken strap in its mouth and an expression of sad determination in its eyes. She struggled out of dream, trying to remember the words of exhortation.
“Come out, Arkhur,” she said at last, still struggling to get her eyes fully open. The pombi shape shifted, lifted to its hind feet, solidified into the figure of Chamfertoa, the strap still in his mouth.
He spat it out. “I lost him. Last night, not far from here. He screamed as though he were wounded, and then dashed away into the trees. The strap broke. I thought of going after him, but it was too dark to trail him and I knew you might need me here.”
The first thought she had was that she should feel relieved. She had wanted to be away from the Fon-beast—wanted not to be responsible for him. Now he had gone, and the matter was settled. Except, of course, that it was not. Her eyes filled with tears which spilled to run in messy rivulets down her fece, puffy from sleep.
“He ran because he was wounded when one of the shadowpeople chewed his mask from the pole. I didn’t know that’s what would happen, but it did to me as well.” She lifted her hair from the sides of her fece to show him. “The masks are spiked to the poles, and the little people couldn’t pull out the spikes, so they chewed the masks off. We’ll have to find him, Chamferton, but it must wait a little. There is Game here against you and Himaggery and me. You were right that we need you here.”
She led him to the cliff s edge. They lay there, peering down at the encampment, and Proom’s people, puzzled but reassured by the pombi’s disappearance, came to lie beside them, waiting for whatever came next. “I don’t know how many times they’ve questioned your Face in the past, Wizard, but they intend to question it every day from now on. More often if they can.”
“They can’t,” he said flatly.”And I doubt if any of the questioning done while I was in the valley will deprive me of life. I feel stronger than when I last saw this place, the strength of anger, perhaps, but nonetheless useful. Now what is to be done?” He began to list.
“First—to get my own Face down from that obscene array. Second—to eliminate one Dourso, and his allies if necessary. Third—to find Singlehorn. Can you think of anything else?”
“Harpies,” said Maviin. “I have some cause to think they are dangerous. Pantiquod brought plague to Pfarb Durim, many years ago. Her daughter Foulitter tried to kill me when I was here last. And Pantiquod has threatened me.”
“Harpies,” he said, as though adding this item to his list. “The first thing I need is my wand. We have no strength to oppose Valdon and his men until I have the wand. Dourso has probably hidden it somewhere in the fortress.”
“He has given it into the keeping of Foulitter,” she said. “Look beyond the largest pile of stones, against the trees. See where she struts about there. Look on her back when she turns. See! That is the wand. He gave it to her so that she might question certain of the Faces. I caught them at it when I came here first.”
“The fool! To set such a thing in a Harpy’s hands. They would as soon turn on him as obey him!”
“He has some hold on one of them,” Mavin said. “Pantiquod flies free but her daughter’s in some kind of durance. He told me he would hold her for some time yet.”
“Still a fool. He learned a few words, a few gestures, and fancied himself a Wizard. What he learned was only thaumaturgy, gramarye. Children’s things, ‘well, even children’s toys may be dangerous in the hands of a fool, so we must go careful and sly. I need that wand.”
Mavin forced herself to move. She wanted nothing to do with the Harpies, but something had to be done. She made a long arm to touch Proom and tug him toward her, pointed at the Harpy, movin
g back from the cliff edge to mime the storklike walk, the bobbing neck, the head thrown back in cackling laughter. The shadowpeople took this up with great enthusiasm, becoming a flock of birdlike creatures almost instantaneously. She pointed out the wand, then pretended to have one such on her own back, removing and replacing it. Finally, she led them off through the trees. Chamferton had time to grow bored with the view below him before she returned.
“Come on,” she said. “We need simple muscle, and all of it we can get. The shadowpeople will lead her into a kind of trap, but they are not big enough to hold her.”
The plan had the virtue of simplicity. If the Harpy were typical of her kind, she would pursue any small creature with the temerity to attack her, which Proom or one of his people would do. They would flee away, and the Harpy would follow.
“They’ll try to get her when she’s alone, not with Pantiquod. It seems the shadowpeople aren’t particularly afraid of them one at a time, but they don’t want to tangle with two or more. At least that’s what I think all their lalala-ing was about. Proom is down there behind the biggest pile of stones. The others are scattered in a long line leading to that rockfall. The tricky part will be at that point. The shadowman will drop down into the rocks. Then another one will show himself halfway up the slope, then another one at the top. If they time it right, it should seem to be one small person the whole time. She can’t walk up that slope, but if she’s angry enough, she should fly to the top, at which point they’ll lead her between these two trees. Then it’s up to us, Wizard. Proom left us a knife, and some rope ...” She said nothing about her nausea, her revulsion.