“What mind does the lizard have upon the rock?” she asked. “What mind the crocodilian in the mire? Mind enough to eat, to breathe, to fight, to hold its own territory against others of its kind—of any kind. So much, no more. No reason, no imagination.”
“How long,” breathed Dorn. “How long could it survive?”
“Forever,” whispered Didir. “Why not? What enemies could stand against it?”
“So, I questioned them, ‘‘the creator of this place is … dead? Perhaps long dead? But something of … it … survives, some ancient, very primitive part?”
Outside the room the hissing began, the door began to open. I flowed across the wall once more, quickly, for it entered the room in one hideous rush of fury. I sensed something which sought the intruder, something ready to rend and tear. This time it stayed within the room for a long, restless time, turning again and again to examine the room, the surfaces of it, the smell and taste of it. Terrified time passed until at last it flowed away again, out the other door, away down the corridors of the place.
“How do we stop it?” They did not answer me. “Come,” I demanded. “Help me think! Was the place built? Or is it rather like that hillside I sat upon which spoke to me? Are we within the body of a Shifter?”
“It doesn’t matter.” said Wafnor. “Call upon my ancestor, Hafnor, the Elator, who is among the Gamesmen. Call upon him and we will be transported from this place …”
I gritted my teeth at the temptation. “Had I desired that, I would have called him rather than Grandmother Didir. Think of the stone heads. The beasts in the gardens. Shall we leave them here forever to cry out their pain?” This was presumptuous of me, but I had resolved that no cry for help would find me wanting in the future. The fate of Himaggery and Windlow—and, perhaps, Izia—burned too deep within me, the guilt too fresh to allow another yet fresher. I felt them move within me, uneasily, and it made me feel dizzy and weak, depleted of power.
“Ah, well,” said Wafnor from within. “If we cannot find the mind, then we must attack the body.”
I felt him reaching out with his arms of force, out and out to a far, slender tower upon the boundary of the building, felt him push at it using all the power Shattnir had built up for him. The tower swayed, rocked, began to fall. From somewhere in that vast bulk came a screaming hiss, a horrid cacophony of furious sound, a drum roll of doors opening and closing down the long corridors toward that tower. Like a whip, Wafnor’s power came back to us, reached once more, this time in the opposite direction. He found a curtain wall over a precipice and began to hollow the earth from beneath it, swiftly, letting the stone and soil tumble downward as the bottom layers weakened. I felt the wall begin to go, slowly, leaning outward in one vast sheet which cracked and shattered onto the stones far below. Within the castle the sound of fury redoubled, a rushing of wind went through the place from end to end, seeking us, searching for us. The hissing grew to a roar, a frenzied tumult.
“The thing is hurt,” said Didir. “See the doors…”
Indeed, the doors stood open into the corridor, open here and there up and down that corridor, moving as though in a wind, uncertain whether to open further or close tight. Wafnor reached out once more, this time to a point of the wall midway between his two former assaults, once more undermining the wall to let it shatter onto the mosaic paving in a thunder of broken stone. The door before us began to bang, again and again, a cannonade of sound. Between one bang and the next came a long, rumbling roar, and the stone heads burst through the open door to ricochet from wall to wall, side to side, screaming, eyes open, stone lips pouring forth guttural agonies. The clamor increased, and they rolled away, still shrieking, as Wafnor began to work on the fourth side of the castle. The walls of the room began to buckle.
“It is striking at itself,” whispered Didir. I pulled myself across the room, onto the opposite wall, watching and listening with every fiber. The wall opposite me breathed inward, bulging, broke into fragments upon the floor and through it into the endless halls below. Then Wafnor came back to me, and we did not move, did not need to move, for around us Castle Lament pursued its angry self-destruction, biting at itself, striking at itself in suicidal frenzy. Walls crumbled, ceilings fell, great beams cracked in two to thrust shattered ends at the sky like broken bones. Then, suddenly, beam and stone and plaster began to fade, to blur, to stink with the stink of corruption. Gouts of putrescence fell upon us, rottenness boiled around us. I rolled into myself, made a shell, floated upon that corruption like a nut, waited, heard the scream of that which died with Castle Lament fade into silence, gone, gone.
When the silence was broken by the songs of birds. I unrolled myself into furred-Peter once more. I stood upon a blasted hill, upon a soil of ash and cinder, gray and hard, upon which nothing grew. Here and there one stone stood upon another, wrenched and shattered, like skeletal remains. Elsewhere nothing, nothing except the stone heads, the stone beasts, silent now, with dead eyes. I kicked at one of them and it fell into powder to reveal the skull within. It, too, stared at me with vacant sockets, and I wept.
“Shhh,” said Didir within. “It does not suffer.” At the foot of the hill, two trees shivered and became two persons, youths, fair-haired and solemn. A pombi walked from the forest, stood upon its hind legs and became Sambeline. A bird roosted upon one of the stone heads, crossed its legs and leaned head upon hand to look at me with the eyes of a middle-aged man. Slowly they assembled, some of the Shifters of Schlaizy Noithn, to stare at me and at the ruins, curiously—and curiously unmoved. At length I looked up and demanded of them, “How long was this place here?”
The bird man cocked his head, mused, said, “Some thousand years, I have heard.”
“What was it? It was a Shifter, wasn’t it?”
“I have heard it was one called Thadigor. He was mad. Quite mad.”
“He was not mad.” I forced them to meet my eyes. “He was dead.”
“That could not be,” said Sambeline. “If he had been dead, Castle Lament would have gone.”
“No,” I swore at them all. “The Shifter was dead. His mind had died long ago. Only some vestige of the body remained, some primitive, compulsive nerve center which kept things ticking over, the fires lit, the walls mended, doors opening and closing, holding and hating. Only that.” I waited, but they said nothing. “How many of you has it taken … captured … killed?”
“Few … of us,” said the bird man.
“Ah. So you warned your own? But you let others learn for themselves. Or die for themselves. How many went in?”
“Thousands,” said Sambeline moodily.
“And how many came out?”
“None,” said the bird man.
“Wrong,” I said. “They have all come out. All. And now, I demand of you an answer which I have earned from you. Where is the monument of Thandbar?”
They looked at one another, shifty looks, gazes which glanced away from eyes and over shoulders to focus on distant things.
“I can do to others what I did to Castle Lament,” I threatened, softly. “No matter what shape you take, I will find you.”
It was Sambeline who spoke, placatingly. “Schlaizy Noithn is the monument to Thandbar,” she said. “All of it. The whole valley.”
Almost I laughed. Oh, Mavin, I thought. Mother, are you of this shifty kindred, this collection of lick-spittle do-nothings? And, if so, do I want to find you at all? My eyes went to the heights. “Look not upon it,” she had written. Well, if I look not upon Schlaizy Noithn, I would look upon the heights. Somewhere up there.