I did not speak to those who still stood in the wreckage. I turned from them all and went away toward the heights. Behind me I heard voices raised briefly in argument. When I looked down from the trail they had gone. The valley was as I had seen it first, green, wooded, garlanded with rivers and jeweled with lakes. At the edge of the valley nearest me was a scar of gray. “Become grass, and cover it,” I whispered to them. “To hide your shame.”
Within me, Didir stirred. “Never mind,” I said. Let them look upon the scarred earth for a while. Perhaps it would make them think of something they should have done. Or would have done, had they learned any of the words old Windlow taught me.
In that moment I would not have given a worm-eaten fruit for all the Shifters in Schlaizy Noithn.
Mavin’s Seat
AT THE TOP OF THE SLOPE a trail led around the valley. I turned toward the west since this was the direction opposite the one from which I had come into Schlaizy Noithn. The way led higher and higher, ending at last at a pinnacle which speared out westward over the lands beyond. I leaned against a tree, staring at the far horizons from ice-topped mountains in the south to a far, mist-shrouded land in the north where the jungly swamps were to be found. I leaned, thinking of nothing much, until a movement caught my eye. There upon the pinnacle was Mavin, crouched above a fire over which several plump birds were roasting. My mouth filled so in anticipation of the taste of them that I could not speak as I approached.
She looked up at me and snarled, “What kept you? I expected you long since.”
It was too much. I felt the hot fury build in me and blow up my backbone like a hard wind. “How could you allow an abomination like that to exist?” I screamed at her. “Centuries of it. Festering like a sore! And you did nothing. Nothing! I came close to being killed. Like the thousands who were killed! Who were they? Little people? Pawns? People of no consequence? Eaten up in play? How could you let your own flesh fall into that trap? How could you…” I sputtered out, made mute by rage.
She did not seem to have listened. She plopped one of the birds upon a wooden trencher, dumped a spoonful of something else at its side, added a hunk of bread and set it all on a stone beside me. “You’ll be hungry,” she said. “Exorcism is hard work.”
I screamed at her again. She bit neatly into a leg of fowl, using one finger to tuck in a bit of crispy skin. The smell ravished me. She said, “Your dinner will get cold.”
I raged, howled, strode back and forth in a perfect frenzy of extemporaneous eloquence. She went on eating. At last the exertion of the day, the long rage, and sheer weariness caught up with me. I choked, gagging on my own words. At this, she put a wooden mug into my hand. I thought it was water, drank half of it in a gulp, then choked myself into silence. It was pure spirit of wine, wineghost, and it burned away my fury, sweeping through me like a broom through a midden.
“Ahhg,” I said. “Ahhg.”
“Exactly.” She placed the trencher in my hands. “If you have done with your peroration, my son, I will answer your charges. How old do you think I am? No. Never mind. Surely you do not think me a thousand years old? No. I thought not. Well, then, I can disclaim any responsibility for that place you speak of for at least nine hundred years. Since I became aware of it as a curse upon the valley of Schlaizy Noithn, I have tried three times to correct the matter. I tried first to get some of those stiff-necked Immutables to come into the valley. I was sure the Shifter was mad, and I told the Immutables so, but they would not come. None of their affair, they said, whether it ate a thousand Gamesmen or a thousand thousand. Later, I tried to get a noted Healer to come with me into the valley. He refused me, saying he felt the chance of success was small. My third attempt succeeded. Castle Lament is gone, and you are here, eating roast fowl and none the worse for it.” I stared at her, unbelieving. She had meant me to fall into that.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked. “It was mad?”
“It was dead,” I mumbled. “Dead, and I could’ve been killed.”
“Nonsense. You are my son. You are a Shifter. Shifters of Mavin’s line do not ‘get killed.’ We are too shifty, too clever, too sly … Besides, you have help.”
The wineghost had seeped into my fingers and toes, warming and tickling them into a feeling almost of comfort. The food slid down my throat. I could not summon the energy for anger. “You got me drunk,” I accused.
“I know how to deal with hysteria,” she said stiffly. “You did take your time in coming to visit me. Did the invitation confuse you?”
“No … no. I wanted to come. But others wanted me to stay. Time went by.”
“The journey? Was it easy?”
“The worst was the Trader. I did think I might be killed there. He tried.”
“Nap? A smallish man with a wide mouth? Mouth all full of smiles and easy words? Eyes full of flint and old ice? That one?”
I nodded yes. “Stupid. I was stupid to fall in with him. But he was persistent.”
“He is that.” Her voice grated.
“It took me a while to figure out he wanted to kill me. Or something else. I’m not really sure.”
“What did he try?”
“Drugged wine. Or poisoned. No, I think drugged, because he was wild when I convinced him I was dead.” I went on to tell her in fits and starts what had occurred during the journey, leaving out nothing except what had set me off in haste to her in the first place. Well, I was full of wineghost. When I told her of my long trials in Schlaizy Noithn, she shook her head.
“We call it the monument of Thandbar, true. Howsomever, it is as much a nursery as anything else. Many of those there are new come to their Talents, or very young, or limited. Sambeline has only three shapes, her own, a pombi, and an owl. Many there are were-owls or were-pombis. Some there are experimentalists, madmen or women who cannot adapt to the Talent at all, who shift and become locked into strangeness. Roads which move. Speaking hillocks. Some experiment themselves into shapes they cannot get out of. I think Castle Lament was one such. I have long thought it would be worthwhile to have a few Immutables available to unlock them, but I have been unable to convince the Immutables of that.”
“They have no fondness for Gamesmen.” I yawned. “Though Riddle has been very kind to me.”
“Well, perhaps we can call upon that kindness come someday. Tell me of my kindred? Is Mertyn well? Does he plot still with Himaggery and old Windlow?”
I cursed myself. She didn’t know. I had sat by her fire eating and drinking for an hour, and she did not know. I blurted it all out, the disappearances, Himaggery gone, Windlow gone, Mertyn in the Bright Demesne. She looked at me frozen-faced with suspicious wetness at the corner of one eye.
“Himaggery vanished! Oh, Gameslords, but I feared it would happen. He is a sweet man, full of juice as ripe fruit.” She paused, and then said, “He is your father. I remember him kindly always, though he does not so remember me. He would have had me stay with him and live with him like some pawnish wife of a farmer; me, Mavin Manyshaped, for whom the world is not too large! So I left him against his will and he likes me no longer.”
“Does he know? Did he … I mean, that he is my father?”
“Oh, knowing I am your mother and what your age is, he should have figured it out. Yes. I should think so. Not that it matters. Which is what I told him, but he was full of pawnish ideas. Enough. Whether he likes me well or not at all, still I would not have him vanished into the shadows like so many of our friends. Mertyn did well to send you to me. Now. What’s to do about this.”
“Mertyn wanted me to find them, search for them. He told me to ask for them wherever I went, as Necromancer .”