“I don’t understand you, boy,” he said in that plaintive thunder of his. “We’re at the edge of a new age. Change rushes upon us. Great things are about to happen; Justice is to be had at last. We invite you to help, to participate, to plan with us. You won’t. You go hide in the orchards. You mope and slope about like some halfwitted pawn of a groom, and then when I twit you a bit for behaving like a perennial adolescent, you merely say you will change into a Dragon and go off to find Mavin Manyshaped. Why? We need you. Why won’t you help us?”
I readied my answers for the tenth time. I behave as an adolescent, I would say, because I am one—barely sixteen and puzzled over things which would puzzle men twice my age. I mope because I am apprehensive. I hide in orchards because I am tired of argument. I got ready to say these things.
“And why,” he thundered at me unexpectedly, “go as a Dragon?”
The question caught me totally by surprise. “I thought it would be rather fun,” I said, weakly.
“Fun!” He shrugged this away as the trifle it was.
“Well, all right,” I answered with some heat. “Then it would be quick. And likely no one would bother me.”
“Wrong on both counts,” he said. “You go flying off across the purlieus and demesnes as a Dragon, and every stripling Firedrake or baby Armiger able to get three man-heights off the ground will be challenging you to Games of Two. You’ll spend more time dueling than looking for Mavin Manyshaped, and from what your thalan, Mertyn, tells me, she will take a good bit of finding.” He made a gesture of frustrated annoyance, oddly compassionate.
“You have others,” I muttered. “You have thousands of followers here. Armigers ready to fly through the air on your missions. Elators ready to flick themselves across the lands if you raise an eyebrow at them. Demons ready to Read the thoughts of any who come within leagues of the Bright Demesne. You don’t need me. Can’t you let one young person find out something about himself before you eat him up in your plots?”
Windlow said, “If you were just any young person, we’d let you alone, my boy. You aren’t just any young person. You know that. Himaggery knows it. I know it. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t care,” I said, trying not to sound merely contentious.
“You should care. You have a Talent such as any in the world might envy. Talents, I should say. Why, there’s almost nothing you can’t do, or cause, or bring into being.”
“I can’t,” I shouted at them. “Himaggery, Windlow, I can’t. It isn’t me who does all those things.”
I pulled the pouch from my belt and emptied it upon the table between us, the tiny carved Gamesmen rolling out onto the oiled wood in clattering profusion. I set two of them upon their bases, the taller ones, a black Necromancer and a white Queen, Dorn and Trandilar. They sat there, like stone or wood, giving no hint of the powers and wonders which would come from them if I gripped them in my hand. “I tried to give them to you once, Himaggery. Remember? You wouldn’t take them. You said, ‘No, Peter, they came to you. They belong to you, Peter.’ Well, they’re mine, Himaggery, but they aren’t mine. I wish you’d understand.”
“Explain it to me,” he said, blank faced.
I tried. “When I first took the figure of Dorn into my hand, there in the caves under Bannerwell, Dorn came into my mind. He was… is an old man, Himaggery. Very wise. Very powerful. His mind has sharp edges; he has seen strange things, and his mind echoes with them—resonates to them. He can do strange, very marvelous things. It is he who does them. I am only a kind of a…”
“Host,” suggested Windlow. “Housing? Vehicle?”
I laughed without humor. They knew so much but understood so little. “Perhaps. Later, I took Queen Trandilar, Mistress of Beguilement. First of all the Rulers. Younger than Dorn, but still, far older than I am. She had lived… fully. She had understanding I did not of… erotic things. She does wonderful things, too, but it is she who does them.” I pointed to the other Gamesmen on the table. “There are nine other types there. Dealpas, eidolon of Healers. Sorah, mightiest of Seers. Shattnir, most powerful of Sorcerers. I suppose I could take them all into myself, become a kind of… inn, hotel for them. If that is all I am to be. Ever.”