“We have not had a lovers’ quarrel,” I said impatiently, almost angrily. “She’s somewhere in the Great Maze, being shepherded by Ganver the Eesty, who’s trying to save her life. The Oracle is after her. And I’m here because she sent me here, and I don’t like being separated from her one bit. And, a little thing you wouldn’t know because you’ve been so occupied with treeishness, the Demesne is under siege.”
“It is?” She sounded interested but not at all distressed. “Who? Let me see. It would be Huldra, wouldn’t it. It would have to be Huldra. Tosh. I should have done her in long, long ago when I was only a log she sat upon. Have I told you of that time, Peter?” She had, of course, more than once. It was long ago, when Mertyn was only a child. She went on. “I could have Shifted long, long teeth and eaten her, bottom first. Shame that I didn’t. An opportunity lost. Ah, well, I suppose we shall have to get out of it somehow.
“And you haven’t had a lovers’ quarrel? Ah, Peter, Peter. I’m so sorry, child. I didn’t mean to tease. Come now. Sit back down and tell me all about it.” She plumped herself down on the grasses. “Have some fruit. I seem to have shed a good deal.”
It was true. She had shed fruit widely over the orchard grass, and it smelled like all the honeycombs of the forest, rich as perfume. So we sat eating Mavin fruit while I told her everything, including all the things I had not mentioned to Himaggery—being careful to say I had not. “If we get out of here,” I told her, “we must head straight for the Old South Road City, not to the Ice Caverns. Things are already moving well there, and I don’t think they need help. But the Old South Road City must be rebuilt.” We talked about this for some time, she nodding and nodding, seeming to understand exactly what was needed. Well, she had seen the Shadow Tower, after all. When we had finished, she brushed off her skirt and told me to go along. “I want you to go fetch your son,” she said. “Tell his mama you are taking him for a walk. To get better acquainted. Then bring him straight to me. What nonsense, trying to rear a Shifter child somewhere other than behind a p’natti. Though, I must remember, you turned out well-enough reared elsewhere though you were.”
“You didn’t like it behind the p’natti much yourself!” A p’natti, according to Mavin, was a kind of ritual obstacle course the Shifters used during their holidays.
“I didn’t like Danderbat Keep, my boy. I didn’t like Danderbat of the Old Shuffle, that’s the truth. But Battlefox the Bright Day was a good place for Swolwys and Dolwys.” She was speaking of my cousins. “And there’s Bothercat the Rude Rock and Fretowl and Dark Wood, and Watchhawk Keep and Fustigar Mountain Keep as well as a half hundred others. But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was only going to look him over, for now. From what you tell me, we’ve no time to be running weanlings off to a Shifter keep. There’s too much else to do.”
I went off to collect Bryan, finding Sylbie still full of questions about where people were but quite willing to have the baby gone for a while. I took him down to the orchard and left him there with Mavin for a time while I went back to see what Himaggery and Barish had decided. I didn’t tell them Mavin was back—or that she had never left. She preferred not, so she said. I have never understood my mother or her relationship with my father. I thought I was unlikely to understand it in my lifetime and would be wise to give up trying. Better to leave it alone, which I did.
7
JINIAN’S STORY: FURTHER LESSONS
We two came out on a hill overlooking a long, fertile valley, Ganver whirling as we came into the place, whirling us into other shapes, other sizes. When Ganver had done, we began to walk down the winding road, Ganver in the guise of a statuesque woman clad in an Elator’s dress and I a page, smaller than myself, with a face I knew was changed though I could not see it.
“Do you think the Oracle will follow us here?”
“I think not. The Oracle will cool, in time. It will stop this flapping pursuit and start to think. It will not consider this place. Why would it seek meaning in what it thinks merely symbolic?”
The bitterness in Ganver’s voice was deep and harsh, but I knew it was not directed at me. “Watch and learn,” it said to me again, so I turned face forward and watched where I was going. Evidently there were more lessons in store. More lessons that would make no sense and from which I would draw no meaning. Who had said that? The Oracle. In the giants’ stronghold. The Oracle had looked at my unconscious body and mocked the meaning of star-eye. Remembering it infuriated me. I resolved to find meaning or die, then set that resolution aside as I saw what awaited us.
Two fortresses stood on opposite sides of the road, tall and strong with mighty walls, facing one another like two Gamesmen in the lists during a contest of skill.
“Watch,” said Ganver again. “And learn.”
As we approached the two fortresses, Armigers detached themselves from the opposing
