A Shifter. Until that moment I had not understood the lovemaking implications of that. Human bodies are designed for many things, love-making among them, but there are elbows and knees and awkwardnesses.
But with a Shifter there is—there is nothing left undone. There can be no awkwardness. When a Shifter loves, he . . . he Shifts to a shape for that alone. There is no part left uninvolved. There is—
There is what we had.
When I opened my eyes, the moon had moved from the top of the sky. Beside us on the pedestal the lamp glowed with its own light, softly lambent, and I knew it had drawn from us a light that could not be dimmed, as it had drawn a light from the city in times long past. Dawn crept into the east. On the far side of the wall the men called encouragement to one another, and we heard the long, falling hiss of molten metal flowing into the Bell mold.
And as I lay there looking into Peter’s eyes, I understood what it was Ganver had been trying to teach me. It did, yes, have something to do with lovemaking. What was it Ganver had called it, “A following of perfection.”
“How long before we can use the Bell?” I asked.
He shook his head, stroking my hair back from my forehead. “A day or more, I think, Jinian love. It must cool.” And then he laughed. “As I think I must.”
“Not for a day or more, surely.” I pressed my mouth into the hollow of his throat.
“Not that long, no.”
I did not explain. The night would come soon enough. I would have to use what I thought I understood then, but I said nothing about it, merely smiling up at Peter in anticipation of what he might do next.
Which was a surprise, for he suggested breakfast.
Along about midmorning, I left him and went with the rest of the seven to the hills. Everyone in the city and outside it had been wandering about, brave smiles on their faces, making kind speech to this one and that one, just as I had done. We knew general Wize-ardrv wouldn’t work. We knew the shadow-eaters couldn’t stay the monstrous flow that would come at us. And those who had been shadow bit, like Himaggery and me, had been at some pains to tell others what it was like, leaving it to them whether to face the shadow or take their own lives. Not one of those in the city had suggested flight. Not one Armiger. Not one Elator. Whoever had selected the hundred thousand in that long-ago time had done well.
“You’ve learned something,” said Cat to me, observing me closely, perhaps noting the little smile I wore.
“Yes,” I said. “But I won’t talk of it, Cat. It’s too tenuous yet. Too uncertain. It has to do with love and children and parts contained in the whole. It has to do with weeding a garden without destroying the good plants in it. It’s coming, slowly. I’m letting it come.”
She nodded, not badgering me. Evidently they understood very well what this kind of feeling was, the notion that one knows something but cannot yet put it into words. “I’ll need your help, though. Come night and the Oracle again, I’m going to try the final couplet.”
“Jinian,” Murzy breathed while Dodie looked white-eyed at me. “Dangerous.”
“And fatal not to,” I said, still smiling at them all.
“It can only be used once in a generation,” said Cat in her most pedantic voice.
“Has it been used in mine?”
She shook her head at me, pursing her lips. “No. No, Jinian. So far as I know, it hasn’t been used in centuries.”
I laughed at her, at Murzy. “Then there are many uses stored up to use now. Don’t fret, Murzemire Hornloss, nor you, Cat Candleshy. We will or we won’t, and fretting won’t help either outcome.”
The things needed to invoke the final couplet were many, varied, involving all of us in a daylong search for this and that. It would have been easier if the land had been alive and verdant. To find certain herbs among the ash and choking smokes, amid the dead trees and fallen branches—that was more difficult than we liked. It was not until after dusk we came back to the city to find the shadow-eaters spread into their circle, not shrilling now, not making any sound, as frightened as the rest of us. It had occurred to them perhaps for the first time that we were all mortal, they and we, that they, too, could be eaten into nothingness. Thus I was not surprised when I crossed their line to hear a soft sound like a tiny growl coming from the ground.
“Courage,” I whispered. “Perhaps you will have help tonight.”
We mounted to the hilltop above Himaggery’s camp and began our preparations in a glade beside a fall that came down from the higher mountains beyond. Peter came and sat on the grass behind me.
“You’ll be more comfortable below,” I told him. “With the others.”
“I am more comfortable here,” he said. “With you. No matter what comes.
I shut my mouth, remembering what I had asked him to do for me if the Oracle came too close. Of course he must be here. By me. I went to him and knelt there, my cheek against his. “Is the mold of the Bell cooling?”
“Not noticeably.” He made a grimace. “The foundrymen say it takes days sometimes. They dare not crack the mold until it is cool.” Then, pulling me close, “Have you seen the lamp?”
I stood tall to gaze down into the valley. The lamp in the ruined Tower glowed, shone, setting all the broken stones into silver and shade. “Did we do that?”
“Seemingly. We. Or perhaps Mind Healer Talley. Someone did.”
“There’s still the Bell and the book,” I said. “The book was long ago eaten by mice, I’m sure. Used by bunwits to line their nests.”
“It wasn’t really the
