She looked up at me and snarled, “What kept you? I expected you long since.”
It was too much. I felt the hot fury build in me and blow up my backbone like a hard wind. “How could you allow an abomination like that to exist?” I screamed at her. “Centuries of it. Festering like a sore! And you did nothing. Nothing! I came close to being killed. Like the thousands who were killed! Who were they? Little people? Pawns? People of no consequence? Eaten up in play? How could you let your own flesh fall into that trap? How could you…” I sputtered out, made mute by rage.
She did not seem to have listened. She plopped one of the birds upon a wooden trencher, dumped a spoonful of something else at its side, added a hunk of bread and set it all on a stone beside me. “You’ll be hungry,” she said. “Exorcism is hard work.”
I screamed at her again. She bit neatly into a leg of fowl, using one finger to tuck in a bit of crispy skin. The smell ravished me. She said, “Your dinner will get cold.”
I raged, howled, strode back and forth in a perfect frenzy of extemporaneous eloquence. She went on eating. At last the exertion of the day, the long rage, and sheer weariness caught up with me. I choked, gagging on my own words. At this, she put a wooden mug into my hand. I thought it was water, drank half of it in a gulp, then choked myself into silence. It was pure spirit of wine, wineghost, and it burned away my fury, sweeping through me like a broom through a midden.
“Ahhg,” I said. “Ahhg.”
“Exactly.” She placed the trencher in my hands. “If you have done with your peroration, my son, I will answer your charges. How old do you think I am? No. Never mind. Surely you do not think me a thousand years old? No. I thought not. Well, then, I can disclaim any responsibility for that place you speak of for at least nine hundred years. Since I became aware of it as a curse upon the valley of Schlaizy Noithn, I have tried three times to correct the matter. I tried first to get some of those stiff-necked Immutables to come into the valley. I was sure the Shifter was mad, and I told the Immutables so, but they would not come. None of their affair, they said, whether it ate a thousand Gamesmen or a thousand thousand. Later, I tried to get a noted Healer to come with me into the valley. He refused me, saying he felt the chance of success was small. My third attempt succeeded. Castle Lament is gone, and you are here, eating roast fowl and none the worse for it.” I stared at her, unbelieving. She had meant me to fall into that.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked. “It was mad?”
“It was dead,” I mumbled. “Dead, and I could’ve been killed.”
“Nonsense. You are my son. You are a Shifter. Shifters of Mavin’s line do not ‘get killed.’ We are too shifty, too clever, too sly … Besides, you have help.”
The wineghost had seeped into my fingers and toes, warming and tickling them into a feeling almost of comfort. The food slid down my throat. I could not summon the energy for anger. “You got me drunk,” I accused.
“I know how to deal with hysteria,” she said stiffly. “You did take your time in coming to visit me. Did the invitation confuse you?”
“No … no. I wanted to come. But others wanted me to stay. Time went by.”
“The journey? Was it easy?”
“The worst was the Trader. I did think I might be killed there. He tried.”
“Nap? A smallish man with a wide mouth? Mouth all full of smiles and easy words? Eyes full of flint and old ice? That one?”
I nodded yes. “Stupid. I was stupid to fall in with him. But he was persistent.”
“He is that.” Her voice grated.
“It took me a while to figure out he wanted to kill me. Or something else. I’m not really sure.”