The Caves of Bannerwell
WE AWOKE to the smell of smoke and food, the clamor of guards and grooms, the pawnish people of the fortress about the business of breakfast, the cackle of fowls, the growling of hungry fustigars. When we had received our slabs of bread and mugs of tea, we sat on the sunwarmed stones while I told Chance and Yarrel what I could do. More important, what I could not. I saw Chance’s look of disappointment, but Yarrel’s face was as stony as it had been the night before, almost as though he were forbidding himself to have any part in my difficulties. Well, if he would not, he would not. I did not beg him for pity or assistance. If he would be my friend again, he would when he would. I could only wait upon him, and this I owed him for the many times he had waited upon me. So and so and so. It wasn’t comforting, but it was all I could do.
“Well then,” said Chance. “We’ll busy ourselves around the stables. Likely no one will bother us if we are seen grooming horses and mucking out. That will give you time to think more…”
“We haven’t time,” I said. “And I have already thought as much as I can. They gave me to the Divulger because they saw an Elator flick into my dungeon, give me a looking over, then disappear. Would that have been Himaggery’s man?”
Chance said, “Himaggery knew where you were. He had a Pursuivant close enough to Read you. He wouldn’t have risked your life so — no. It would have to be someone else.”
“Then who? Mandor knew where I was. It was none of his doing, obviously. Mertyn?”
“Unlikely,” said Yarrel in a distant voice. “Himaggery had already sent word to Mertyn. He would not have risked your life either, as you well know.”
“Then again, who?”
“The High King,” said Chance. I stared at him in astonishment. I had never thought of the High King.
“But why? What am I to the High King?”
“You are a person who was with Windlow, that’s who. You are a person who was with Silkhands. The Elator may have been looking for her, for Windlow, not for you at all. But the High King would look, wouldn’t he? He’s a suspecter, that one.”
“Having found, what would he do?”
Chance mused. “Get himself into the midst of us one way or. another, I’d say. He was set on keeping old Windlow captive, most set. Like a fustigar pup with his teeth in a lure, not going to let go even though there’s nothing in it but fur. Likely he’s wanting Windlow back again and come here looking for him.”
“Windlow will be here,” said Yarrel. “When Himaggery comes, Windlow will be with him.”
I was dizzy with the thought of it. “So, Himaggery comes from the east, with Mertyn, in such might as they can muster. And the High King comes from the south, also in might. Are there no contingents moving upon us from other directions as well…?”
Yarrel said coldly, “From what direction might Mavin come, knowing her son is held captive by Mandor?”
I refused to rise to this bait. Being Mavin’s son was no fault of mine. I would not be twitted about it. Remembering the dream of the pawns with hayforks, I tried to sympathize with his feelings.
“The end of it all will be only blood and fury,” I said, as softly and kindly as I could. “First the Gamesmen will kill one another, and then perhaps the pawns will come to kill those of us who are left, if any are left, and there will be more Mandors and more Dazzles to turn death’s faces upon the world.” I saw their incomprehension. They had not seen Dazzle and Mandor as I had. I tried again. “The Great Game will be a monstrous Death. In which we may all perish. This is not the way to do things. There must be something better.”
“Justice,” said Yarrel. “Himaggery says we might try that.”
“I do not know the word.” Indeed, I had never heard it.
“Few do,” he answered. “It means simply that the rules do not matter, the Game does not matter so much as that thing which stands above both rules and Game.” He went on, becoming passionate as he described what Himaggery had said and what he, himself, had been thinking and dreaming in all his journey from the Bright Demesne — perhaps in his journey since birth. I understood one tenth of it. That tenth, however, was enough to give me an important thought. How important, even I did not know.
“Yarrel, if you believe in this, then why do we not try to do it — try to stop the Game.”
“Surely,” he sneered. “Ask Mandor to let you and Silkhands go. Ask him to let you both go to Himaggery without Mandor’s plotting against Himaggery. Ask the High King to leave Windlow alone. Ask Dazzle to stop building conspiracies against Silkhands. Ask the world to change. Ask that my people be given Justice. All that.” His voice was bitter.
“There are those who could not need to ask,” I pleaded. “The Immutables, Yarrel. They wouldn’t need to ask. If they came, then there could be no Game.”
There was a long silence. “Why would they come?” he asked at last.
“Perhaps because of this ‘Justice’ you speak of. Perhaps because their leader’s daughter was killed by Mandor and Huld and the pawner. The killers are here. Perhaps because we beg it of them. I don’t know why they would come, but I know they will not unless someone asks them, begs them…”
“And how may we beg them, we who are prisoners here?” ‘
That piece I had already worked out. “I have an idea,” I said, and told them about it. Chance objected to certain things about it, and Yarrel offered a suggestion or two. By the time we were done with our bread and tea, which we had made last longer than any of those around us, we had a plan and my heart was a little lighter. Yarrel had looked at me once without enmity, almost as he used to do. They went off to the stables and I went to offer myself to my taskmaster, the gardener, who was furious that I had not been with him since before dawn. Swallow gaped a witless grin at him and let the words of fury slide away. Within moments he was at the barrow handles once more, on his way to the dung heap.
When he went to get the second barrow-load of the day, Chance signaled from the stable door and Peter rose. I let the barrow rest near the privy, as though I might be inside, and slipped away to the kennels. One of the fustigars lay against the fence, drowsing in the sun, and I laid hands upon her body for long moments before she roused to challenge me. It was enough. I skulked away behind the kennels and went over the fence in the shape of a fustigar, opened the kennel gates in that guise (easy enough even with paws, when the mind inside the beast knew how to do it) and then went among the great, drowsy beasts like a hunter among bunwits. I was mad. My mouth frothed, my growls were deafening as I snapped at flanks, howled, bit, drove them into panic and from panic into wild flight out the open gate. From the stables came the high, screaming whinny of horses similarly driven into fear and flight, and I knew that Chance and Yarrel were at their work getting the horses to the same frenzied pitch as the hunting animals. The fustigars burst across the courtyard in a howling mob, me among them still snapping at hind legs; the horses came out of the stables in a maddened herd, both groups headed straight for the bridge. The lounging Tragamors who guarded it dived out of the way as the animals plunged past them pursued by Yarrel and Chance, pitchforks in their hands, shouting, “Get the horses, don’t let the horses get away, grab those horses…”
By the time some surly guardsmen were sent in pursuit, Chance and Yarrel were hidden within the forest whistling up their own saddled and laden beasts who had gone unnoticed among the stampeding animals. No one had realized that the two pawns pursuing the horses were not grooms from Mandor’s own people. It was true what Yarrel had said. No one paid much attention to pawns.