The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part one

The two rose and followed him to the loft to lay themselves wearily down, with many grunts and sighs. Swallow sat in the dark away from them, letting the sight of their faces fish Peter up out of the dark waters to whisper, “Yarrel. Yarrel, listen to me. It’s Peter.”

He sat up, staring wildly about. “Peter? Where are you?’

“Shhh. I am here in the shadow.”

“Come out here, into the moonlight. We expected to find you in the dungeons.” I did not move, and he said warily, “Is this some trickery?”

I was very tired. I did not want to use any more of Windlow’s herb, there was so little left. At that moment I could not remember the “how” of changing back, and I was too tired to try. Instead I said, “No trick, Yarrel. Listen, you and I stood on the parapet of Mertyn’s House and saw a Demon and two Tragamors riding to Festival. You said the horses came from Bannerwell, remember? You said it to me. No one would know of that but us.”

“A Demon might have Read it,” he said coldly.

“Oh, a Demon might, but wouldn’t. Think of something to ask me, then…”

“I ask you one thing only. Come into the light!”

Sighing, I moved forward. He seized me roughly by the shoulder and shook me. “You. You are not Peter.”

It was Chance who said, “Yarrel. Look at his eyes, his face. This is Peter right enough.” Evidently even in my weariness, I had let my own form come forward a little, my own face. Still, Chance had been very quick. I wondered at that moment whether he had not known all along who my mother was, whether he had not perhaps expected something of the kind. The thought was driven away by Yarrel’s chilly, hostile voice.

“Shifter. You’re a Shifter.”

I slumped down, head on knees. He who had been my friend for so long was now so unfriendly. “I am the son of Mavin Manyshaped,” I confessed. “She is full sister to Mertyn. I was told this by Huld, thalan to Mandor, as Mertyn is to me. He Read it in Mertyn’s mind at Festival time.” There were tears running down my legs, tears from tiredness. “Oh, Yarrel, I would rather have been a pawn in a quiet place, but that isn’t what I am…”

Chance reached forward to stroke my arm, and I intercepted a stern look he directed at Yarrel. “Well, lad, if there has to be a Talent, why not a biggun, that’s what I say. If you’re going to make a noise, might as well make it with a trumpet as with a pot-lid, right?”

Yarrel had moved away from us, spoke now from some distance in that same cold voice. “Pot-lid or trumpet, Chance, but a Shifter, still. Shifty in one, shifty in all, or so I have always learned. Not Peter any more, at least. I am certain of that.”

“That’s not the way it is,” I screamed at him in an agonized whisper. “You don’t understand anything!” I knew this was a mistake as soon as I had said it, for his voice was even more hostile when he answered.

“Perhaps you will enlighten us. Perhaps you will tell us ‘how it is’, and what you intend to do…”

“I don’t know,” I hissed. “If I knew what to do, I’d have done it by now. I know I have to get Silkhands and you two out of this place, somehow. Mandor is mad and if he can use her in any way to do evil against those he imagines are his enemies, he will do so. And Dazzle is here to make sure he imagines enemies. He could easily give Silkhands to the Divulgers, as he did me…”

But it was not Yarrel who calmed me and comforted me and told me all that I have recounted about Himaggery’s Demesne and the surety of a Great Game building around Bannerwell. No, it was Chance, comfortable Chance, dependable Chance. Only when I spoke of Mandor’s wild plan to link some various Talents together to get himself a new body did Yarrel speak, saying roughly, “More minds than one on that idea. Himaggery works along that line as well, to link the Talents of the Bright Demesne. In Himaggery’s hands it might not go ill for my people, but in Mandor’s…”