“Why Manyshaped?” asked Yarrel. “Can she be more than one thing at a time?”
“No. But she can become many different things, unlike most shifters who can take one other shape, or two, three at most. But Mavin¾it is said she can become anything, even other Gamesmen. That, of course, is impossible. It couldn’t happen.”
When we had eaten, we went on again, silent for a time while we digested. Yarrel stopped us several times to examine tracks on the road before us. “A party of horsemen,” he said, “some four or five. Not far ahead of us.” For the first time I thought of the pawner who had ridden away south.
“How far ahead?” I asked. I did not want the man near me and was suddenly sorry I had not asked Himaggery to hold him or send him back to his ship under guard. “How far?”
“A day. We will not ride onto their tails, Peter. You think the pawner rides ahead?”
“I think, somehow, he knew where we were going.”
“We made no secret of it.”
“Perhaps we should have done.” I was depressed at my own ignorance and naiveté. Why had I thought the man had given up? All our ruminations were interrupted, however, by a blast of chill from above. Silkhands threw one glance behind her, cried “Afrit,” and rode madly for the timber, we after her in our seemingly permanent state of confusion.
“Is it looking for us?” I asked. She shook her head. Another blast of chill came from another direction. She frowned.
“What is going on up there?” She led us toward rising land from which we might see the countryside around. We found a rocky knuckle at last and climbed it to peer away across a wide valley. Our way led there, straight across, to a notch in the hills at the other side. It was not a way we would take. Drawn up upon the meadows were the serried ranks of a monstrous Game, files of Sorcerers and Warlocks standing at either side, glowing with stored power. Wagons full of wood lined the areas of command where pawns struggled beneath the whip to erect heavy sections of great war ovens. Above the command posts Armigers stood in the air, erect, their war capes billowing about them, rising and falling like spiders upon silk as they reported to those below.
“Lord of the seven hells,” said Chance. “Let’s get away from this place.”
Silkhands looked helplessly across the valley. Our way was there. Our way was blocked. We could not wait until the Game was over. Games of this dimension sometimes went on for years. We could not go around too closely or we risked being frozen in the fury of battle. Silkhands had no power to pull from those mighty ovens and thus protect us in the midst of war.
“Borold,” she cried, “why are you not here when I need you?” Her brother could have tapped that distant power. We were forced to a fateful decision which meant that we were to come to the High Demesne. Had we gone across the plain, we would have gone no further. We did not know it, but we were awaited in that far notch of hills.
Strange, how all plays into the hands of mordacious fate. Mertyn used to say that.
“We’ll go far around,” said Silkhands, and Chance agreed. It was all we could do. And we would not have done well at it except for Yarrel. It was he who read the maps, who found the trails, who found camp sites sheltered from the wind and rain, who kept the horses from going lame and us from being poisoned by bad food or worse water. He bloomed before my eyes, growing taller and broader each day. I woke one morning to find him standing beneath a tall tree looking out across the land, his face shining like those pictures one sees of the ancient pictures of Gamesmother Didir with the glory around her head.
“Yarrel,” I said, “why were you ever in Schooltown? What was there for you?”
He hugged me even as he answered. “Nothing, Peter. Except a few years during which my mother needed not worry about me. We pawns sometimes have short lives. My beloved sister was used in a Game, “lost in play” by some Shapeshifter who needed a pawn and cared not who it was. We are not considered important, you know, among the Gamesmen. If they wish to eat a few hundred of us in battle, they do it. Or use up a few of our women in some nasty game, they do that. By buying my way into the House, they protected me for a time.”
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