Windlow was looking out the window, his face sad. He began to chant, a child’s rhyme, one used for jump rope. “Night-dark, dust-old, bony Dorn, 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 I 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 Dorn’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 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 onerous 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.