“A Shifter is usually the same inside,” I objected.
“Usually, though not always. Do we not learn from our shapes what we are? You have told me of Mandor. Did he not learn from his beauty what he became? Oh, I do not mean that there is goodness in some shapes and evil in others, but simply that we learn from them to our own good or ill. So might you change, Peter?”
“Don’t Wizards change?” I wanted to ask her, desperately, what the Talent of Wizards might be, but I was too wary of the answer I might get. “Are they always the same?”
She grinned at me. “Oh, we change. I was quite content, so I thought, to become an alliance for my brother with King Kelver, until I met you, Peter.”
“Kelver is better looking,” I said.
“True, but then he is older. He has had a chance to grow up to his face. You may do the same, in time.”
“You do not think me too young for alliancing?”
She sighed. “I think we are not too young to decide what we will do when we leave this place. Himaggery will expect you back at the Bright Demesne. I could return to Xammer. Neither of us wants to do that. I said a silly thing when I said we would do what Barish would have done. Barish will do it. Himaggery will do it. It is their plan, not mine.”
I shifted from foot to foot, bit my lip, wondered what to say next. Then I thought of Sorah’s words, not the bell tolling ones, but the earlier, laughing ones.
“Jinian, would you like to see the jungles and cities, the eesties, the shores of the Glistening Sea? Queynt is going there, so he says. He would let us go with him.”
“Oh, Peter, I would like that more than anything.” So what is left?
Hell’s Maw.
We went there, Dorn, Himaggery, Mertyn, Mavin, and a host. There were bones there wandering free, moving on their own, talking to an old, blind man who wandered among them with a key, trying to find the lock he had lost. Dorn put them to rest, large and small, in such form as they may not ever be raised again. There is nothing left of the place now. Every stone of it has been tumbled and spread by a hundred Tragamors as far away as the Western Sea. There I linked the Gamesmen once again, realizing for the first time that I had what Himaggery called Talent Thirteen. Jinian was right. I do not need anyone but me — and a hundred or so Gamesmen with large Talents.
So you may picture us now as we ride to the very highest point of the road across the Dorbor Range, that place where the road bends down toward the jungles of the north. Queynt and Chance are upon the wagon; Yittleby and Yattleby are pulling them along with that measured, effortless stride. Jinian and I are looking back to the south where all the lands of the True Game are spread, town and demesne, land and stream, tower and field, far and veiled by distance in the light of the westering sun. There is no mist giant now to walk the edges of the world. We may walk it ourselves, in time, in chance, in hope.
Who knows?