The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped (13 page)

She smiled warily. “I’m really doing the only thing I can.”

“You’re shifter, aren’t you? I should have guessed. The minute Windlow said ‘sister,’ I should have guessed. I did guess. Except that ...”

“Except that you don’t like shifters,” she said in a flat, emotionless tone. “Other Gamesmen, yes. But not shifters.”

“Hold! I’ve never known a shifter. Surely, shifters are supposed to be—well, what are they supposed to be. Stranger than the rest of us? Less understandable?”

“Less trustworthy?” Her smile was sweet, poisonous. “Less reliable? Less honorable?”

“More tricky,” he said, amused again. “More devious, more challenging, more entertaining.”

“Less destructible,” she said in a firm voice, putting an end to the catalogue. “Which is why I think I can get through Poffle to the outside world. Which is why I think maybe I can find shadow-people, though others possibly have been unable to do so.”

“How old are you?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

“Fifteen,” she said, before she thought.

“Young. Have you had talent long? I mean ...”

“You mean, have I had it long enough to learn to use it. Yes, Wizard, I have. Probably better than you have learned to use your own. I had to.” And she turned away from him to march out into the dark through a side door, he following mutely, feeling it a better idea to hide his curiosity than to annoy her with any more questions. Once outside he led her in a circuitous route through the grounds of the Mont and onto a narrow walkway curving along the rim of the escarpment. The way was unfrequented, littered with small trash, ending in a parapet surrounded by a low wall.

“Down there.” He pointed.

She looked over to see the narrow crevasse which fell below the wall, a walkway there lined with needled, misshapen trees. At the end of the walkway a lonely lantern burned beside a grilled arch, and outside the grill a platoon of guardsmen moved restlessly back and forth. The archway led into darkness.

“This is the Ghoul Blourbast’s private highway into Pfarb Durim,” said the Fon. “It was pointed out to us by Huld. The Seer was not happy to learn of that young man’s true identity.”

“How was it that you did not know?”

“The arrangements were made through third parties, Negotiators and Ambassadors. That alone should have warned Windlow that something was amiss. What use has an honest Gamesman for Ambassadors!”

“It seems Huld didn’t care much for the arrangement either.”

“Valdon is an example of humility compared to Huld. After some time in Valdon’s company I thought him the epitome of arrogance, but I was wrong. I believe Huld has never asked for anything, no matter how outrageous, which he has not been given. Who is he, really? No one seems to know, except that Blourbast holds him dear. And he went back down that hell hole, Mavin, so watch out for him.”

“He will not see me,” she said soberly, then, taking him by the arm, “Fon, can you help me? With the shadowpeople? What language do they speak? What would they ask of me in return for healing Mertyn?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew, Mavin. I would help you in any way I could, if only because you tricked me and teased me and made my mind work in odd ways. You must find them first and then try to do them a service, as you would for anyone, Gamesman or pawn. If they are peoplelike—and I have heard that they are in some ways—then they will seek to do you a service in repayment. How you will speak with them, I do not know. I have never seen one of them. At times I have doubted they exist.” He pulled her to him and squeezed her, quickly releasing her, so that she felt only breathless and wondering at the suddenness of it. “Let us make a pact, however. If you have need of me, you will send word—let me think! The word shall be the name of that place you stayed, BALD BADGER. Or, if there is no way to send word, then the first letter of your name in fire or smoke or stone or whatever. Given that word, that signal, I’ll get to you somehow.”

“You can’t get out,” she said. “The city is closed.”

“You can’t get out either,” he replied. “And yet you are going. So. Strange are the Talents of Wizards. Leave the way of it to me.” And he released her, standing away from her, and looking at her in a way no one had looked at her before. Mavin shook her head, trying to clear it, then gave it up and turned from him to slide over the low parapet at the edge of the declivity. She cast one look over her shoulder to see him walking steadily away. She had not wanted him to watch her as she changed. Seemingly he had understood that.

She shifted into something which could climb walls, rather spiderlike if she had thought about it, which she had no time to do. At the bottom of the ditch, she skulked along behind the twisted trees until the light of the torches splashed amber on the stones before her. She had already decided what to do next. Using an arm much stronger than her own, she heaved a paving stone high onto the opposite bank, some distance behind her. It crashed through the branches with a satisfactory sound of someone thrashing about. The guards ran toward it, not looking behind them, and she slipped through the bars of the gate into darkness, resuming her own shape once hidden in shadow. Only a shifter could have come through the gate—a shifter or a serpent. The bars had been set close together.

There was no light in the tunnel. Far ahead she thought she could see a faint grayness in the black. She fumbled her way forward, stopping close to the walkway, feeling a slimy dampness on her hands where they touched the walls or floor. Furred feet made no sound. Soon she was walking four-footed, making a nose which would smell out trails and paths. A sharp sound broke the silence, echoed briefly like a shout into a well, and was gone. Still, it had given her direction in the darkness. The grayness grew more light. She turned toward it, out of the widened corridor and into a side way. It was torchlight, reflected off wet walls around several sinuous turns. The torch burned outside another barred gate which was no more trouble than the first had been. Now the corridor was lighted, badly, with smoky torches at infrequent intervals.

She became aware of sound, a far, indefinite clanging, an echoing clamor, a whumping sound as though something heavy fell repeatedly into something soft. Through it all came a thin cry of song, high, birdlike, quickly silenced. She shivered, not knowing why. The sounds were not ugly or threatening, and yet heard together they made her want to weep. She sneaked along the way, now finding windows cut into the stone which looked out into black pits. As she went, she tossed bits of gravel through the openings, listening for the sound. Her ears told her some were merely small rooms or closets while others were bottomless. The sounds came closer, and suddenly—

“Wait a minute, will ya. I’ll be with you. Run, run, So impatient. Wait a minute!” The voice screeched, whined, almost at her shoulder, and Mavin fell against the wall, crouched, ready to be attacked.

“I’ll be right with ya,” the voice screamed.

She reached out, patting the air around her. Another of the openings was just above her head, and hung inside it, far enough inside that no light struck it at all, was a cage. Mavin found the ring on which it was hung, drew it down and into the light. Inside it crouched a ragged-looking beasty, eyes dilated into great, brown orbs, teeth bared, patches of its hide missing as though they had been burned away. “Run,” it screamed at her. “Run, run.”

Without thinking, Mavin opened the cage and shook the creature out onto the stones where it lay for a moment, too shocked to move. Then in one enormous leap, it crossed the corridor and disappeared down a side way, shrieking as it went. Thoughtfully, Mavin hung the open cage back where she had found it and followed. “Run, run,” it screamed, fleeing at top speed into darkness. “I’ll get to ya.”

“I hope you do,” she muttered. “To one Pantiquod, one strange, gray woman. To one someone who talks, who can be overheard, who knows the way out of here.”

She had need of her nose again, for the little animal lost itself in darkness. The stench of it—part illness, part dirty cage, part the beasty itself—lingered on the stones, however, and Mavin tracked the little animal through dark ways into lighter ones to a heavy door upon which the little creature hung, still trying to shriek, though its voice had wearied to a whisper. “Run,” it whimpered. “Run. I’ll get to ya.”

Mavin stood to one side, pressed down upon the latch and let the door swing open. The thrilpat was through it in an instant. Hearing no alarms, Mavin followed. She was now in a well lit corridor ending in a broad flight of stairs. A small balcony protruded to her left, half hidden behind embroidered draperies. She oozed into the cover of these, hearing voices from below.

“I thought I told you to get rid of that animal!” The voice was heavy gasping, full of malice and ill humor. Peering between the railings, Mavin could see where the voice came from—a vast, billowy form lying in a canopied bed. Only the bottom half of the form was visible to her. She could see all of the other persons in the room, however, and was unsurprised to recognize the gray woman from the lodging house, now dressed in an odd, winged cap with a feathered cape at her shoulders. It was Pantiquod, the mangy animal now clinging to her ankle as it sobbed and pled.

“I gave it to one of your servants, brother, and told him to dispose of it.”

“Which servant was that?”

“I don’t really know. One of those who stand outside this room from time to time.”

“Well, find out which one. Have hin chained to the long wall in the tunnel. If you can’t find out which one, have the whole lot of them chained. Let them hang there till they rot.”

“Which they assuredly will. Have you not had enough of rottenness, brother Ghoul? Has it not brought you to this pass? Perhaps it would be well to dwell less on rottenness for a time?”

“Shall a trifle of sickness make me forsake my life’s work?” The bulk upon the bed heaved with laughter, and Mavin, watching it, found a kind of fascinated nausea in the sight. The figure heaved itself upright, and the sight of its face made her stomach heave, for it was covered with hideous growths from which a vile ichor oozed. The hands which stroked an amulet at the creature’s throat were as badly afflicted. “My bone pits are not yet full, Panty, my sister, my dove. Panty, my dear one, mother of my delicious twins, Huld and Huldra, my dear boy and his delightful sister. And though she has obviously learned aplenty about the world—and will soon enough bear us yet another generation—my dear boy is not yet fully educated. Though it seems he does not want to go into the world to mix with his inferiors.”

“It was a foolish idea,” she said calmly, seemingly unafraid of this monster on the bed. “You have not reared him to care what others do, or think, or say. How then should he care for education, for is that not the study of what others care about? Hmmm?”

“He says we have taught him enough, you and I. Har, ahrah, enough, he says. Enough that he can use what we have taught him to conquer the world. Harar, aha.” The vast figure shivered with obscene laughter, and Mavin trembled upon the balcony.

“I have taught him to dissemble, my lord. To pretend. To play the Gamesman of honor. To mock the manners of others, if it seems wise—or amusing—to do so. What have you taught him?”

“To care for nothing, my love. To be sickened by nothing, repelled by nothing, to be capable of anything at all. Between us, he has been well educated.”

“Well then, why this mockery? Why all this effort expended to put him in the company of Prionde’s sons? He cared not for them. Should he have?”

“Softly, my dove, my cherub. He did all that was needed. He found in Valdon’s mind the way to the King, to Prionde. That was all he needed to do for now. It will be useful for some future Game. They will not suspect him of plotting, not at his age. But he and I—we have planned, sister. We have planned.”

“But does it not seem now all those plans are for naught?”

“Araugh,” the man screamed in rage. “Beware, sister. Do not be quick to condemn me to death. Blourbast does not die of ghoul-plague. My thalan made me immune to ghoul-plague when I was younger than Huld. I have eaten forbidden meat all my life, and the plague has not touched me!” The bulk heaved, quivered, drew itself upright, then collapsed once more.

“It has not touched you until now,” she said, her face as cold and empty of emotion as a mask. “Until now. It amused you to hold the shadowpeople to ransom for their relic. So they came at your command. I told you they were sick, but you sent them to your kitchens nonetheless. You gave the meat to those destined to be sent above, to Pfarb Durim. Well enough. But it was foolish to dine from the same dish, brother. You have not had ghoul-plague before, but you had not used the disease to empty a city before, either. In fact,” she turned an ironic glance upon him, “there had been no ghoul-plague for some tens of years. For most of our lifetimes, yours and mine, Blourbast. Now the disease comes again. Perhaps it is a new strain to which you are not immune.”

“Ghoul-plague is ghoul-plague,” he growled. “I am immune, I say. I ate only what was necessary so that they should not suspect what meat I fed them. I have eaten this meat many times before.”

“No,” she contradicted him. “You have not. I tell you again, brother, this is not any disease which has come upon us before. You are not immune, and now the Healers have spread the ban against you. You should not have tried to force healing out of them.”

“In Hell’s Maw, Gamesmen play as I will.”

“But in Hell’s Maw they did not. I told you that shadowpeople are reputed to cure this disease. What have you done to learn the truth of this?”

“I have a few dozens in my cellars, madame. Since they speak no tongue I can understand, what good to question them? I had a little man once who spoke their tongue, but he is dead now. My Demons have attempted to Read their little minds, to no end. So let them hang there and starve.”

“You have given up eating them, then? You do not fatten them in their cages?”

“Let them starve, I say. I hold their relic here,” and he stroked his breast once again, the motion of those horrid hands holding Mavin’s eyes fixed. “Here. So let them starve. Let them all die. It is nothing to me.”