“Time ago I invited Handbright to come visit Battlefox the Bright Day, but she pled she could not leave young Mertyn. Today I asked her to bring him, and you, if she would, but these here have convinced her the walls of Danderbat keep are Xhindi gold. It seems a slave in Danderbat is equal to an Elder in Battlefox – or so she believes. No, no, I lie if I say that’s true, for I’ve talked with her and talked with her, and it’s something other than that. Something is awry with her, and she seems unable to decide anything. She simply does and does and tries not to think about it. Well, you know the old saying, ‘Vary thought, vary shape.’ Since we do not take the same shapes, it is silly to expect us to think alike.” He shook his head. “Though, weary as she looks, I would expect her to have accepted my invitation. Though I have a kinsman or so there who may be a bit difficult – most particularly one kinswoman, of whom the least said the best – she would have companions and help at Battlefox.”
“She’s the only girl behind the p’natti,” whispered Mavin, so moved by this intelligence that she forgot to be wary of telling anyone, and him a stranger man for that. “Until she tells them about me.”
So Plandybast Ogbone looked at her, and she at him, sharing a wordless kind of sympathy which she had not felt from any of the Danderbats. “So that’s the way of it. And when they are told about you, all the oldsters will be at your bedroom door night on night, won’t they? Ah, surely Danderbat keep may be the oldest and the original, but it has fallen into a nasty sort of decay. We do not so treat our she-children at Battlefox and would have you welcome there. Or are you too convinced that the keep walls are Xhindi gold?”
“No,” she whispered. “I want out.”
“Ah. Well. There’s young Mertyn. He’d miss you no doubt.”
“Bring him with me,” she said. “I would. Couldn’t leave him here. To hear unkind things. About me, as I have heard about mother.”
“What is it they say about my sister Abrara?”
“That she Shifted forbiddens while she carried Mertyn, and died from it.”
“Oh, Gamelords, what nonsense. I’ve known many who Shifted before and during and didn’t die of it, though the Healers do say the child does best which isn’t Shifted in the womb. This all reminds me of my other sister, Itter, going on and on about Abrara whom she never knew and knows little enough about. There are some who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living. Abrara died because she was never strong, Shifter or no. That’s the truth. They should have had a Healer for her when she was young, as they did for me, but they didn’t, for the Danderbat Xhindi set themselves above Healing. Lucky I was the Battlefoxes are no such reactionary old persons, or like I’d have died, too. She should have been let alone, not made to have childer, but the Danderbats are so short of females these two generations, and she had had daughters. She should have been let alone.”
“At the Old Shuffle, we are not let alone.”
He looked at her seriously, walked around in a circle, as though he circled in his thoughts. “You know, child, if I took you away from Danderbat with me, there’d be fits and consternation by the Elders. Particularly since Danderbat is so short of females just now. There’d be hearings and meetings and no doubt unpleasant things for me and you both. That’s if I took you. Stole you, so they’d say, like a sack of grain or a basket of ripe thrilps. If you came to me, however, at Battlefox the Bright Day, you might have a few nasty words from Itter, but I’d not send you away empty-handed or hungry. You’ve seen maps of the place? You know where it is?”
She stared at him, but he did not meet her eyes, merely seeking the sky with a thoughtful face as though he had said nothing at all of importance.
“Yes,” she said finally in a voice as casual as his own. “I know where it is. It lies high upon the Shadowmarches, northwest of Pfarb Durim. If I came to visit you some day, you’d be glad to see me?” she offered. “More or less.”
“Oh. Surely. More or less. I would be very glad to see you. And Mertyn.”
“Ah,” she said. “I’ll remember that, my thalan, and I thank you.” She turned to leave him, full of dignity, then turned to hug him briefly, smearing his face with unregarded tears. “Thank you for telling me about my mother.” Her gait as she left was perfectly controlled, and he looked after her, aware of a kind of envy at her composure. It was better done than he had seen from many twice her age.
CHAPTER THREE
The Assembly was concluded. The visitors left. The cooks departed in their wagon looking weary and half drunk, for they had had their own celebration when the last banquet was over. Up in the small room at the top of the tower, Handbright slept in total exhaustion, and for once the old ones were so surfeited with food and frolic that they left her alone. Mavin, watching, made sure of this. She had set herself to be Handbright’s watchdog for the time Mavin remained at the keep. That would not be long. She had resolved upon it. But she was still too untried a Shifter to take child Mertyn into the wide world trusting only on her own abilities to keep him safe. As the Shifter children were often told, there were child markets operating in the Gameworld, and whether a child might be Shifter or no, the bodies of the young were saleable.
She knew that when they went safety would depend on covert, quiet travel over many leagues, for the way to Battlefox the Bright Day lay a distance well beyond Pfarb Durim through the Shadowmarches. And covert travel would be totally dependent upon Mavin’s Talent, child Mertyn having none of his own save a sensible and thoughtful disposition. Her Talent had to be tried, and exercised, and practiced. Each night when the place was still, Mavin went beyond the p’natti into the woods – a forbidden excursion – or deep into the cellars – empty now – to try what it was she could do with herself.
It took her several nights to learn to damp the pain of Shifting, to subdue it so that it did not distract her from what she was attempting. She spent those nights copying herd beasts from the surrounding fields, laying her hands upon them and feeling her way into their shapes, hide first as it were, the innards coming along as a consequence of the outer form. She learned to let discomfort guide her. If there was a feeling of itchy wrongness, then she could let the miraculous net within her sort it out, reach for a kind of rightness which felt both comfortable and holdable. There were parts which were difficult. Hooves were troublesome. And horns. They had no living texture to them, and making the hard surfaces took practice. She learned the shape of her own stomach by the forms it took in Shifting, the fineness and texture of her own skin, the shape and function of her own female parts, for she had determined to ignore the proscription against Shifting placed upon females by the Danderbat. Reason said that if men could do it and still produce progeny, then women could do it also. And if not, then not. She would do without childer. Whatever she might do or not do, she would not end like Handbright.
Each morning she woke Handbright with a cup of tea – aware that this sudden solicitude evoked a certain suspicion – and repeated that she did not want the Elders told, not just yet. Each day Handbright would reluctantly agree, and Mavin would go to sleep for a few hours before finding some deserted place to practice in. Day succeeded day. Gormier and Haribald were gone from the keep on a long hunting expedition, for the food storage rooms were virtually depleted. In their absence Handbright stopped insisting that the Elders must be told, and Mavin relaxed a trifle, sleeping a few more hours than she would have done otherwise.
She developed her own systems for rapid acquisition of Talent, reminding herself how quickly the babies in the nursery learned to talk once they had begun. If one spent hours every day at it, it came fast. Even the boys who began to show Talent were not usually allowed as many free hours for practice as Mavin took for herself, for they had to attend classes and spend time with the Elders listening to history tales. With the Assembly so recently over, however, everyone was tired. The Elders themselves were off in the woods in easy shapes which required no thought. The children were left to th
eir own devices and seemed to spend endless days playing Wizards and Shifters. In a few days the keep would pull itself together to resume its usual schedule, but just now it was open and relaxed, ideal for Mavin’s purposes. She thanked the Gamelords, prayed to Thandbar it would last as long as she needed, and practiced.
She knew she did not have time to learn many different things. She could not trifle with herself, learning the shape of a whirlwind or a cloud. She must take what time she had to learn a few things well, learning even those few shapes in wonder and occasional chagrin. She worked endlessly at her horse shape, believing that a boy the size of Mertyn could best be carried farthest on some ordinary, acceptable animal. Besides, horses could fight. Horses with hooves honed to razor sharpness could fight particularly well, and she spent prodigious hours rearing and wheeling herself, striking with forefeet and back ones, all in absolute silence so that no one would hear and come to investigate. She practiced gaining bulk, all the bulk one needed to become a horse, practiced doing it quickly and leaving it just as quickly. Taking bulk was not an easy thing. One had to absorb the extra bulk, water or grain or grass – organic things were best. Then one had to pull the net out of the extra bulk to return to one’s own shape, quickly, neatly, with no agonizing tugs or caught bits of oneself lingering. It was not an easy thing, but she learned to do it well. Not knowing what she could not do, she did everything differently than other Shifters would have done it, comforted herself by naming herself “Mavin Manyshaped,” and did little dances of victory all alone.
She began to pay attention to other Shifters, to the way she knew them, could identify them, even inside other shapes, and discovered at last a kind of organ within herself which trembled in recognition when another Shifter with a similar organ was near. It was small, no bigger than a finger, but it was growing. A few days before, she would not have known it was there. Desperately, she set about Shifting that organ itself, veiling it, muffling it, so that it could not betray her. She wanted to be horse, only horse, with no Shifter unmasking her as anything else. The difficulty lay in the strange identifier organ, for when she muffled it directly, it was as though she had become deaf and blind, unable to walk without losing her balance. Not knowing that it was impossible – as any Elder of the Xhindi would have told her – she invented a bony plate to grow around it which allowed it to function inside her body without betraying itself outside. The plate was bulky. She could not contain it in a small shape or a narrow one, but she could do it as a horse, and the night she achieved it she slept for hours, so drowned in sleep that it was like waking from an eternity.
Waking to find that Gormier and Haribald had returned, and with them Wurstery and half a dozen others. The hunt had been successful; the kitchen courtyard was full of butchery, with smoky fires under the racks of meat, drying it for storage.
And Handbright was there with great black rings around her eyes, looking cowed and beaten, as though she had not slept for days. “I told them,” she said to Mavin, not meeting her eyes. “I had to. I can’t go on.”
Mavin looked up to find Gormier’s eyes upon her, full of a gloating expectation. Ah, well. She had had more time than she had expected. “When?” She did not reproach Handbright. The strange identifier organ would have betrayed her sooner or later, and what she intended to do would be reproach enough.
“They want to have your Talent party today. They’re drawing lots who stays with you first tonight. Well, it’s time for you, Mavin. You’ll live through it, though. We all have.”
“I’m sure I will. Of course I will. Don’t fret. Come with me to the kitchen and have a cup of something hot. You look exhausted.”
“They woke me in the middle of the night, the three of them. They … they put … I … I had to tell them.”
“Of course.” Soothing, kindly, hypocritical, Mavin led her to the kitchen. “Handbright, listen to me. I want you to go to Battlefox keep in the Bright Day Demesne. Our thalan, Plandybast Ogbone, wants you to come. Promise me?”
Handbright shook her head, a frantic denial. “Mertyn. Mertyn needs me.”
Mavin thought it was only habit and a weary inertia which made Handbright speak so. “He doesn’t need you, Handbright. He’s fine. The youngest child in the nursery is five years old, and you’ve spent long enough taking care of them. You should know by now you’re not going to conceive, and you’d have been long gone if you had conceived. So you must go. There are lots of Danderbats can come in to take care of the childer. Besides, I’ll be here.”
“But … alone. It’s so hard alone … and Mertyn…”
“You did it alone. After you have some rest, you can come back and help me if you like. But I want you to go, Handbright. Either to Plandybast, or to the sea, as you once said you would do. Today.” She bent all her concentration upon her sister, willed her to respond. “Now, Handbright.”
“Now?” Hope bloomed on her face as though this had been the secret word of release; but there was a wild look in her eyes. “Now?” Mavin wondered what had happened to make the woman respond in this way. It could not be her own pleading, for she had pled before and nothing had happened. No. Something else had happened. She did not take time to worry about what it might have been.
“Now. Become a white bird, Handbright! Fly from the tallest tower. From your bedroom, up there in the heights. Nothing carried, nothing needed – to Battlefox. Or to the sea.”
Handbright rose, a look almost of madness in her face, eyes darting, hands patting at herself. “Now. Mavin. Now. I’ll go. Someday, I’ll … you’ll come. Mertyn’s all right. He’s a big boy. He’ll be fine. Now.” And she fled away up the stairs, Mavin close behind but unseen, as though she had been a ghost.
Clothes fell on the stone floor. Handbright stood in the window, naked. From the doorway Mavin gasped, seeing bruises and bloody stripes on the naked form which changed, shifted, wavered in outline to stand where it had stood but feathered, long neck curled on white back, beak turned toward Mavin, eyes still wild and seeking.
“Fly, sister,” she commanded, fixing the maddened eyes with her own. “Fly, Handbright. Go.”
The wings unfurled slowly, the neck stretched out tentatively, cautiously, then all at once darted forward as the wings thrust down, once, twice, and the great bird launched itself into the air, falling, falling, catching itself upon those wide wings at the last possible moment to soar up, out, out, away toward the west.
Mavin found herself crying. She flung herself down on Handbright’s narrow bed, aware for the first time of the basket in the corner, the ropes, the little whip carelessly thrown down upon the stones. It was a punishment basket, the only true punishment for a Shifter, to be confined, close confined, unable to move, to speak, to change into any other shape. The baskets were woven in Kyquo, tightly woven, tightly lidded. And this one had been used on Handbright, or she had been threatened with it.
So. Threatened or used; what did it matter. Handbright was gone. Mavin wiped her face in a cold, unreasoning fury and without knowing how she did it, or even that she had done it, took on the very face and features of Handbright; the well known expression, the tumbled hair, the tall, slender form bent with work and abuse, the eyes dark-ringed with pain to look upon herself reflected there – Handbright’s own form and face.
“Everyone knows,” she whispered, “that it is impossible for a Shifter to take the form of another living person. Everyone knows that it lies outside our nature, that it is forbidden. Everyone knows that. But – but, someone has done it.” She smiled at herself in the mirror, a cold smile, and went slowly, with fearful anticipation, down into the smoke of the kitchen court to confront Gormier’s truculent stare.
“Well?” he demanded. “She’s been told there’s been enough of this holding back, has she? Celebration for her this day and for me this night. I’ve won the draw.” And he grinned widely at her as he displayed the red-tipped stick he had drawn. “Time I had a little luck after too long of your dead body, old girl. Time we had
some fresh blood behind the p’natti.”
“She doesn’t want a celebration.” This in the very tone and substance of Handbright’s own voice, dull and without emotion. “She’s sick to her stomach. She’s up in my room, and you can go up there, come dark, but she’ll have no celebration.”
“Well, and go up I will. And after me Wurstery, and after him Haribald, for that’s the way it falls.”
Still in Handbright’s voice Mavin let her curiosity free to find the limits of the old ones’ abuse. “Couldn’t you have pity on her this night? Make it only one of you?”
Wurstery had overheard this from his drying rack duties and intervened to make his own demands. “We’ve been days in the woods, old girl. Make a nice homecoming for us. Besides, best begin as we mean to go on.”
“Well then,” Mavin said in Handbright’s voice, “she’ll have to bear it, I suppose.”
“Let’s hope she bears better’n you’ve borne, old girl.” And they went back to their smoky work in a mood of general self-righteousness and satisfaction. Mavin went back into the keep, into a shadowy place, and leaned against the wall, weeping. When she had done, the Handbright shape had dropped away, and though she tried, she could not bring it back. She went to find Mertyn to tell the boy they would leave Danderbat keep that night.
She went over it with him several times, though the boy understood well enough even at first. “The horse will come to the corner of the p’natti wall farthest toward the fire hills. You’ll have all your clothes and things in this sack, everything you treasure, lad, for you’ll not be back. And I will meet you on the road…”
“And I must not say anything about it to anyone,” he concluded for her, puzzled but willing. “Especially not to any of the Danderbats.”
“That’s right. Especially not to the Danderbats. And you’re to wait. Even if it gets very late and scary, and you hear owls or fustigars howling. Promise.”