Bryan’s mother was not present. The serving man was asleep, possibly drunk, for he did not awaken even when Bryan turned into his most monstrous gorbling form and fled the tiny gatehouse to wreak havoc in the Demesne. According to Himaggery, people were fleeing every which way, the place was like a hive of warnets that had been overset, and there was serious danger of the inhabitants breaching the gates in their panic and falling straight into Huldra’s hands. Huldra, however, had departed before dawn, leaving only half her strength behind. Otherwise, the story of the Bright Demesne might have ended at that point.
The noise brought Mavin out of the orchard, blossoms in her hair and apples growing from her ears. She did not wait to be told what had happened but went straight to the place Bryan was gorbling and boiling, howling like a monstrous siren. There she began to take bulk, screaming at Barish and Himaggery to bring her bread. Afterward, it became a kind of joke. “Twenty more loaves,” she cried. Only they two and some of the Gamesmen could withstand Bryan’s howling. All the others in the Demesne had fled as far away as possible, and only the loyalty and training of Himaggery’s men kept the walls manned.
When Mavin had gobbled enough bread to give her the bulk she needed, she Shifted into the form of a giant basket, which snatched up the gorbling ghost. Then she closed, compressing what was within into smaller and smaller shapes, compressing even more, and more, until baby Bryan was uncomfortably pressed into his own shape, no other, and had learned he could not terrorize the Demesne with impunity any longer.
“It was quite a horrid sight,” said Himaggery thoughtfully. “In some respects, it is not easy to love a Shifter.”
“I quite frankly thought I would be ill,” said Barish. “Thandbar never did anything like that in all the time I knew him.”
“I found it interesting to watch,” said Dealpas the Healer. “I thought she’d squash the baby, but she didn’t. Bryan was perfectly all right, though less temperamental subsequently.”
“The part that interests me is that taking on of bulk,” said Shattnir the Sorceress. “Theoretically, at least, it should provide additional power to . . .”
Well, you get the idea. Other Gamesmen find Shifters either repulsive or odd, for the most part. Himaggery told me all this much later, including the comments of those present, laughing over it in genuine amusement, and I suppose I laughed as well. Mavin would not have been offended. She had come past the time of being hurt over what others think of us Shifters. One thing Jinian never said to me was that it was difficult to love a Shifter. Perhaps that is why I loved her so much when I finally decided that I loved her at all.
Which is beside the point. All of this happened by midmorning of the day I had been carted away.
Not content, then, with merely having squelched the baby and restored general order, Mavin decided to get into the besiegers’ camp and see to my rescue herself. She did this just as I had, eeling herself along the drainage ditch from the Porridge Pot, slything out onto the bank among some bushes, then creeping silently as any wraith—avoiding the shadow meantime—into the camp. While there was shadow plastered over every possible exit from the Demesne, there was none at the drainage ditch. I was known to be the only Shifter present; everyone thought Mavin was far away. It’s a mistake ordinary Gamesmen often make: assuming we’re far away when we’re not.
In the camp there were scattered tents for the Gamesmen, a rather large contingent of Armigers and Armigerian types, along with any number of Tragamorians. No Elators. Huldra had taken them all with her. No Seers or Demonics or Healers. No Rulers, of course. Huldra would not have wanted her own sway threatened by any other’s Beguilement. There were, however, several Sorcerers and Sentinels, ready to assist an assault on the Demesne if and whenever its defenses failed.
Mavin noticed all these and ticked them off as of no importance once she knew I was no longer there. Her interest focused on that other tall tent at the midst of the camp, a tent with closed flaps and guards set close around it. Though I had never seen her do it, Mavin had told me of her practice at moling and weaseling, a skill that took her underground, beneath the guarded tent, and allowed an extruded eye to protrude inside at the canvas edge.
There were two beribboned forms within the tent, forms with painted faces and a strange way of moving. “Like Eesties,” she said, “trying to move like humans, waving their points first here, then there.” She watched for a time, not betraying her presence, and
