“I ask you one thing only. Come into the light!”
Sighing, I moved forward. He seized me roughly by the shoulder and shook me. “You. You are not Peter.”
It was Chance who said, “Yarrel. Look at his eyes, his face. This is Peter right enough.” Evidently even in my weariness, I had let my own form come forward a little, my own face. Still, Chance had been very quick. I wondered at that moment whether he had not known all along who my mother was, whether he had not perhaps expected something of the kind. The thought was driven away by Yarrel’s chilly, hostile voice.
“Shifter. You’re a Shifter.”
I slumped down, head on knees. He who had been my friend for so long was now so unfriendly. “I am the son of Mavin Manyshaped,” I confessed. “She is full sister to Mertyn. I was told this by Huld, thalan to Mandor, as Mertyn is to me. He Read it in Mertyn’s mind at Festival time.” There were tears running down my legs, tears from tiredness. “Oh, Yarrel, I would rather have been a pawn in a quiet place, but that isn’t what I am…”
Chance reached forward to stroke my arm, and I intercepted a stern look he directed at Yarrel. “Well, lad, if there has to be a Talent, why not a biggun, that’s what I say. If you’re going to make a noise, might as well make it with a trumpet as with a pot-lid, right?”
Yarrel had moved away from us, spoke now from some distance in that same cold voice. “Pot-lid or trumpet, Chance, but a Shifter, still. Shifty in one, shifty in all, or so I have always learned. Not Peter any more, at least. I am certain of that.”
“That’s not the way it is,” I screamed at him in an agonized whisper. “You don’t understand anything!” I knew this was a mistake as soon as I had said it, for his voice was even more hostile when he answered.
“Perhaps you will enlighten us. Perhaps you will tell us ‘how it is’, and what you intend to do…”
“I don’t know,” I hissed. “If I knew what to do, I’d have done it by now. I know I have to get Silkhands and you two out of this place, somehow. Mandor is mad and if he can use her in any way to do evil against those he imagines are his enemies, he will do so. And Dazzle is here to make sure he imagines enemies. He could easily give Silkhands to the Divulgers, as he did me…”
But it was not Yarrel who calmed me and comforted me and told me all that I have recounted about Himaggery’s Demesne and the surety of a Great Game building around Bannerwell. No, it was Chance, comfortable Chance, dependable Chance. Only when I spoke of Mandor’s wild plan to link some various Talents together to get himself a new body did Yarrel speak, saying roughly, “More minds than one on that idea. Himaggery works along that line as well, to link the Talents of the Bright Demesne. In Himaggery’s hands it might not go ill for my people, but in Mandor’s…”
“Himaggery marches against Mandor for your sake, Peter,” said Chance. “What will you do?”
“I hoped you would help me. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t really understand how this Shifting works. I’ve only done it twice. The first time it just happened, not even intended. I thought you and Yarrel…”
Yarrel interrupted, firmly, coldly. “The Talent is yours. I will not take responsibility for it. It is yours by birth, yours by rearing. We are no longer schoolfellows to plot together. You have gone beyond that…”
“But, Yarrel…” I stopped. I didn’t know what to say to him. This chance was unexpected, sudden. I remembered his saying to me on the way to the High Demesne that I might gain a Talent which would make us un-friends, but surely he would not pre-judge me in this fashion. Except that…it had been a Shapeshifter who had done great harm to his family. Except that. Oh, Yarrel.
Chance said, “We’re as good as rat’s meat if Mandor knows who we are, lad. From what you say, Silkhands should be out and away from here as soon as may be. If this Talent of yours can help us, time it did so, I’d say. Great Game is coming. It would be better not to be caught in the middle of it.”
“A Great Game,” I said miserably. I turned away from them to lie curled on my side, hurt at Yarrel’s coldness. After a time, I slept. I dreamed of a Grand Demesne, a Great Game gathering around Bannerwell. The ovens in the courtyard were red hot, their mouths gaping like monstrous mouths came to eat the people of Bannerwell. Stokers labored beside them, black against the flame. Once more I saw the flicker of Shifters in and out of the press of battle, Elators in and out of the lines of Armigers upon the battlements, saw fire raining from the sky, a sky full of Dragons and Firedrakes and enormous forms I had not seen before. And there, far at the edge of vision, gathered at the forest edges, were the pawns with their hayforks and scythes, stones in their hands. I woke sweating, gasping for air. The dark hours were upon the place. I rose wearily and went from the stables through the garden down to the little orchard which grew behind low walls over the abrupt fall to the River.
I needed someone with more knowledge than I had. If I found someone, however, what would I do? Kill him for whatever thoughts were on the surface of his brain? Likely they would be only about his dinner or his mistress or his gout, and I’d be no better off. I needed to know what I could do and had no idea how to begin. So, there in the darkness among the trees I tried to use my Talent.
After a time, it was no longer difficult. I found I could become anything I could invent or visualize, any number of empty-headed creatures like Swallow, male or female, though there were things about the female form which were uncertain at best. I could turn myself back into Grimpt, or into something else which didn’t look or smell like Grimpt but had Grimpt’s small Talents. The kitchen cat meauwed at me from the orchard grass, and I laid my hands on it to try to take that shape, only to burst out of the attempt with heart pounding in a wild panic. The cat’s brain was so small. As soon as I began to be in it, it began to close in from all sides, pressing me smaller and smaller to crush me. Was it only that it was small? Let others find out. I would not try a creature that size again.
By the time I heard the cock gargling at the false dawn from atop the dung heap, I knew why it was that Shifters were said not to take human form. Had it not been for the panic, Windlow’s herb, and my own inheritance, I would not have been able to do so when I changed to Grimpt. Only ignorance had let me make up the person of Swallow. In the dark hours I had learned that I could change only if the pattern were there, only if I could lay hands upon it and somehow “read” it. So much for easy dreams of shifting into an Elator and flicking outside the walls, or shifting into an Armiger to carry Silkhands to safety through the air from her window. I could not become a Dragon because I had no pattern for it, nor a Prince, nor a Tragamor. Not unless I could lay hands upon a real one. Which it would be death for Peter to do and highly dangerous for Swallow to attempt. Grimpt? I could, perhaps, go back to that. There were undoubtedly other clothes in the filthy hidey-hole the man had lived in.
But there were other creatures larger than a cat on whom Swallow might lay hands. Horses. The great hunting fustigars from the kennels. There were possibilities there. Well enough. I went back to the loft and spoke to Chance, telling him that I needed to sleep. I said it in a firm voice without begging for help. My pride would not let me do that. If Yarrel would not help me, I would help myself.
Still, the last thought I had was a memory of Yarrel saying that I might get a Talent which would make him hate me. I knew I had already done so, and there was no comfort from that thought. I let Peter sink away from it into swallowing darkness, let Swallow come up again into the quiet of sleep. A few hours until day. It would come soon enough.