Sheri S. Tepper - Shapeshifter 02 - Necromancer Nine.pdf - Sheri S. Tepper - widez2

Necromancer Nine

Sheri S. Tepper

1 - Necromancer Nine

I had decided to change myself into a Dragon and go looking for my mother despite all argument to the

contrary.

Himaggery the Wizard and old Windlow the Seer were determined otherwise. They had been after me

for almost a year, ever since the great battle at Bannerwell. Having seen what I did there, they had

decided that my "Talent" could not be wasted, and between them they had thought of at least a dozen

things they wanted done with it. I, on the other hand, simply wanted to forget the whole thing. I wanted to

forget I had become the owner-can I say "owner" ?-of the Gamesmen of Barish, forget I had ever called

upon the terrible Talents of those Gamesmen. I'd only done it to save my life, or so I told myself, and I

wanted to forget about it.

Himaggery and Windlow wouldn't let me.

We were in one of the shining rooms at the Bright Demesne, a room full of the fragrance of blossoms

and ubiquitous wisps of mist. Old Windlow was looking at me pathetically, eyes three-quarters buried in

delicate wrinkles and mouth turned down in that expression of sweet reproach. Gamelords! One would

think he was my mother. No. My own mother would not have been guilty of that expression, not that

wildly eccentric person. Himaggery was as bad, stalking the floor as he often did, hands rooting his hair

up into devil's horns, spiky with irritation.

"I don't understand you, boy," he said in that plaintive thunder of his. "We're at the edge of a new age.

Change rushes upon us. Great things are about to happen; Justice is to be had at last. We invite you to

help, to participate, to plan with us. You won't. You go hide in the orchards. You mope and slope about

like some halfwitted pawn of a groom, and then when I twit you a bit for behaving like a perennial

adolescent, you merely say you will change into a Dragon and go off to find Mavin Manyshaped. Why?

We need you. Why won't you help us?"

I readied my answers for the tenth time. I behave as an adolescent, I would say, because I am

one-barely sixteen and puzzled over things which would puzzle men twice my age. I mope because I am

apprehensive. I hide in orchards because I am tired of argument. I got ready to say these things.

"And why," he thundered at me unexpectedly, "go as a Dragon?"

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The question caught me totally by surprise. "I thought it would be rather fun," I said, weakly.

"Fun!" He shrugged this away as the trifle it was.

"Well, all right," I answered with some heat. "Then it would be quick. And likely no one would bother

me."

"Wrong on both counts," he said. "You go flying off across the purlieus and demesnes as a Dragon, and

every stripling Firedrake or baby Armiger able to get three man-heights off the ground will be challenging

you to Games of Two. You'll spend more time dueling than looking for Mavin Manyshaped, and from

what your thalan, Mertyn, tells me, she will take a good bit of finding." He made a gesture of frustrated

annoyance, oddly compassionate.

"You have others," I muttered. "You have thousands of followers here. Armigers ready to fly through the

air on your missions. Elators ready to flick themselves across the lands if you raise an eyebrow at them.

Demons ready to Read the thoughts of any who come within leagues of the Bright Demesne. You don't

need me. Can't you let one young person find out something about himself before you eat him up in your

plots

Windlow said, "If you were just any young person, we'd let you alone, my boy. You aren't just any

young person. You know that. Himaggery knows it. I know it. Isn't that right?"

"I don't care," I said, trying not to sound merely contentious.

"You should care. You have a Talent such as any in the world might envy. Talents, I should say. Why,

there's almost nothing you can't do, or cause, or bring into being

"I can't," I shouted at them. "Himaggery, Windlow, I can't. It isn't me who does all those things."

I pulled the pouch from my belt and emptied it upon the table between us, the tiny carved Gamesmen

rolling out onto the oiled wood in clattering profusion. I set two of them upon their bases, the taller ones,

a black Necromancer and a white Queen, Dorn and Trandilar. They sat there, like stone or wood, giving

no hint of the powers and wonders which would come from them if I gripped them in my hand. "I tried to

give them to you once, Himaggery. Remember? You wouldn't take them. You said, 'No, Peter, they

came to you. They belong to you, Peter.' Well, they're mine, Himaggery, but they aren't mine. I wish

you'd understand."

"Explain it to me," he said, blank faced.

I tried. "When I first took the figure of Dora into my hand, there in the caves under Bannerwell, Dora

came into my mind. He was.., is an old man, Himaggery. Very wise. Very powerful. His mind has sharp

edges; he has seen strange things, and his mind echoes with them-resonates to them. He can do strange,

very marvelous things. It is he who does them. I am only a kind of. .

"Host," suggested Windlow. "Housing? Vehicle?"

I laughed without humor. They knew so much but understood so little. "Perhaps. Later, I took Queen

Trandilar, Mistress of Beguilement. First of all the Rulers. Younger than Dorn, but still, far older than I

am. She had lived. . . fully. She had understanding I did not of. . . erotic things. She does wonderful

things, too, but it is she who does them." I pointed to the other Gamesmen on the table. "There are nine

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other types there. Dealpas, eidolon of Healers. Sorah, mightiest of Seers. Shattnir, most powerful of

Sorcerers. I suppose I could take them all into myself, become a kind of... inn, hotel for them. If that is all

I am to be. Ever."

Windlow was looking out the winDorn, his face sad. He began to chant, a child's rhyme, one used for

jump rope. "Night-dark, dust-old, bony Dora, grave-cold; Flesh-queen, love-star, lust-pale, Trandilar;

Shifted, fetched, sent-far, trickiest is Thandbar." He turned to Himaggery and shook his head slowly, side

to side. "Let the boy alone," he said.

Himaggery met the stare, held it, finally flushed and looked away. "Very well, old man. I have said

everything! can say. If Peter will not, he will not. Better he do as he will, if that will content him."

Windlow tottered over to me and patted my shoulder. He had to reach up to do it. I had been growing

rather a lot. "It may be you will make these Talents your own someday, boy. It may be you cannot wield

a Talent well unless it is your own. In time, you may make Dorn's Talent yours, and Trandilar's as well."

I did not think that likely, but did not say so.

Himaggery said, "When you go, keep your ears open. Perhaps you can learn something about the

disappearances which will help us."

"What disappearances?" I asked guardedly.

"The ones we have been discussing for a season," he said. "The disappearances which have been

happening for decades now. A vanishment of Wizards. Disappearances of Kings. They go, as into

nothing. No one knows how, or where, or why. Among those who go, too many were our allies."

"You're trying to make me curious," I accused. "Trying to make me stay."

He flushed angrily. "Of course I want you to stay, boy. I've begged you. Of course I wish you were

curious enough to offer your help. But if you won't, you won't. If Windlow says not to badger you, I

won't. Go find your mother. Though why you should want to do so is beyond me and his voice faded

away under Windlow's quelling glare.

I gathered the Gamesmen, the taller ones no longer than my littlest finger, delicate as lace, incorruptible

as stone. I could have told him why I wanted to find Mavin, but I chose not to. I had seen her only once

since infancy, only once, under conditions of terror and high drama. She had said nothing personal to me,

and yet there was something in her manner, in her strangeness, which was attractive to me. As though,

perhaps, she had answers to questions. But it was all equivocal, flimsy. There were no hard reasons

which Himaggery would accept.

"Let it be only that I have a need," I whispered. "A need which is Peter's, not Darn's, not Trandilar's. I

have a Talent which is mine, also, inherited from her. I am the son of Mavin Manyshaped, and I want to

see her. Leave it at that."

"So be it, boy. So I will leave it."

He was as good as his word. He said not another word to me about staying. He took time from his

meetings and plottings to pick horses for me from his own stables and to see I was well outfitted for the

trip north to Schooltown. If I was to find Mavin, the search would begin with Mertyn, her brother, my

thalan. Once Himaggery had taken care of these details, he ignored me. Perversely, this annoyed me. It

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was obvious that no one was going to blow trumpets for me when I left, and this hurt my feelings. As I

had done since I was four or five years old, I went down to the kitchens to complain to Brother Chance.

"Well, boy, you didn't expect a testimony dinner, did you? Those are both wise-old heads, and they

wouldn't call attention to you wandering off. Too dangerous for you, and they know it.''

This shamed me. They had been thinking of me after all. I changed the subject. "I thought of going as a

Dragon."

"Fool thing to do," Chance commented. "Can't think of anything more gomerous than that. What you

want is all that fire and speed and the feel of wind on your wings. All that power and swooping about.

Well, that might last half a day, if you was lucky." He grimaced at me to show what he thought of the

notion, as though his words had not conveyed quite enough. I flinched. I had learned to deal with

Himaggery and Windlow, even to some extent with Mertyn, who had taught me and arranged for my

care and protection by setting Chance to look after me, but I had never succeeded in dealing with

Chance himself. Every time I began to take myself seriously, he let me know how small a vegetable I was

in his particular stew. Whenever he spoke to me it brought back the feel of the kitchen and his horny

hands pressing cookies into mine. Well. No one liked the Dragon idea but me.

"Well, fetch-it, Chance. I am a Shifter."

"Well, fetch-it, yourself, boy. Shift into something sensible. If you're going to go find your mama, we got

to go all the way to Schooltown to ask Mertyn where to look, don't we? Change yourself into a baggage

horse. That'll be useful." He went on with our packing, interrupting himself to suggest, "You got the Talent

of that there Dorn. Why not use him. Go as a Necromancer?

"Why Dorn?" I asked and shivered. "Why not Trandilar?" Of the two, she was the more comfortable,

though that says little for comfort.

"Because if you go traveling around as a Prince or King or any one of the Rulers, you'll catch followers

like a net catches fish, and you'll be up to your gullet in Games before we get to the River. You got three

Talents, boy. You can Shift, but you don't want to Shift into something in-con-spic-u-ous. You can Rule,

but that's dangerous, being a Prince or a King. Or you can, well, Necromancers travel all over all the

time and nobody bothers them. They don't need to use the Talent. Just have it is enough."

In the end he had his way. I wore the black, broad-brimmed hat, the full cloak, the gauze mask smeared

with the death's head. It was no more uncomfortable than any other guise, but it put a weight upon my

heart. Windlow may have guessed that, for he came tottering down from his tower in the chill mowing to

tell us good-bye. "You are not pretty, my boy, but you will travel with fewer complications this way."

"I know, Old One. Thank you for coming down to wave me away."

"Oh, I came for more than that, lad. A message for your thalan, Mertyn. Tell him we will need his help

soon, and he will have word from the Bright Demesne." There was still that awful, pathetic look in his

eyes.

"What do you mean, Windlow? Why will you need his help?"

"There, boy. There isn't time to explain. You would have known more or less if you'd been paying

attention to what's been going on. Now is no time to become interested. Journey well." He turned and

went away without my farewell kiss, which made me grumpy. All at once, having gained my own way, I

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was not sure I wanted it.

We stopped for a moment before turning onto the high road. Away to the south a Traders' train made a

plume of dust in the early sky, a line of wagons approaching the Bright Demesne.

"Traders." Chance snorted. "As though Himaggery didn't have enough problems."

It was true that Traders seemed to take up more time than their merchandise was worth, and true that

Himaggery seemed to spend a great deal of time talking with them. I wasn't thinking of that, however, but

of the choice of routes which confronted us. We could go up the eastern side of the Middle River,

through the forests east of the Gathered Waters and the lands of the Immutables. Chance and I had come

that way before, though not intentionally. This time I chose the western side of the River, through

farmlands and meadowlands wet with spring floods and over a hundred hump-backed, clattering bridges.

There was little traffic in any direction; woodwagons moving from forest to village, water oxen shuffling

from mire to meadow, a gooseherd keeping his hissing flock in order with a long; blossomy wand. Along

the ditches webwillows whispered a note of sharp gold against the dark woodlands, their downy kit- tens

ready to burst into bloom. Rain breathed across windrows of dried leaves, greening now with upthrust

grasses and the greeny-bronze of curled fern. There was no hurry in our going. I was sure Himaggery had

sent an Elator to let Mertyn know I was on the way.

That first day we saw only a few pawns plowing in the fields, making the diagonal ward-of-evil sign

when they saw me but willing enough to sell Chance fresh eggs and greens for all that. The second day

we caught up to a party of merchants and trailed just behind them into Vestertown where they and we

spent the night at the same inn. They no more than the pawns were joyed to see me, but they were

traveled men and made no larger matter of my presence among them. Had they known it, they had less

to fear from me than from Chance. I would take nothing from them but their courtesy, but Chance would

get them gambling if he could. They were poorer next day for their night's recreation, and Chance was

humming a victory song as we went along the lake in the morning light.

The Gathered Waters were calm and glittering, a smiling face which gave no indication of the storms

which often troubled it. Chance reminded me of our last traveling by water, fleeing before the wind and

from a ship full of pawners sent by Mandor of Bannerweli to capture me.

"I don't want to think about that," I told him. "And of that time."

"I thought you was rather fond of that girl," he said. "That Immutable girl."

"Tossa. Yes. I was fond of her, Chance, but she died. I was fond of Mandor, too, once, and he is as

good as dead, locked up in Bannerwell for all he is Prince of the place. It seems the people I am fond of

do not profit by it much."

"Ahh, that's nonsense, lad. You're fond of Silkhands, and she's Gaxnesmistress down in Xammer now,

far better off than when you met her. Windlow, too. You helped him away from the High King, Prionde,

and I'd say that's better off. It was the luck of the Game did Tossa, and I'm sorry for it. She was a pretty

thing."

"She was. But that was most of a year ago, Chance. I grieved over her, but that's done now. Time to go

on to something else."

"Well, you speak the truth there. It's always time for something new."

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Sheri S. Tepper - Shapeshifter 02 - Necromancer Nine.pdf

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