The musicians were dressed in tight white garments with colorful fabric wrapped about them to make bright kilts from their waists to below their knees, reflecting the hues of the plumes as they swished and swung, left-right, left-right. Polished black boots thumped upon the stones; the musicians moved on. Behind came the children, ranks and files of them, some with small instruments of their own, and behind the children the wagons, horses as brightly plumed as the musicians were, the elderly drivers sitting tall as the animals kept step, legs lifted high in a prance.
She could see no shadows anywhere near, not upon the road nor within the forest, perhaps not within sound of the music. Mavin moved onto the roadway behind the last of the wagons. From the back of it, an apple-cheeked old woman nodded at them with a smile of surprise, tossing out a biscuit which the Fon caught between his teeth. Mavin got the next one and the pombi the third, throwing it high to catch it on the next step, marching as it chewed in the same high, poised trot the wagon horses displayed.
“Are you Circus?” cried the old woman from a toothless mouth. “Haven’t seen Circus in a lifetime!”
Mavin had no idea what she meant, but she smiled and nodded, the Singlehorn pranced, and Arkhur-pombi rose to his hind legs in a grave two-step. So they went, on and on, keeping step to the drums even when the other instruments stopped tweedling and flourishing for a time. The sun dropped lower in their faces, and lower yet, until only a glow remained high among the clouds, pink as blossoms.
Then the whistle, shreeee, shreee; whompity-womp, bang, bang. Everything stopped.
A busy murmur, like a hive of bees. Shouts, cries, animals unhitched and led to the grassy verges of the road. Fires started almost upon the road itself, and cookpots hung above them. Steam and smoke, and a crowd of curious children gathering around the Fon-beast and Arkhur-pombi, not coming near, but not fearful either, full of murmurs and questions.
“Are they trained, Miss? Can you make them do tricks? Can you ride them? Would they let me ride them? Are you Circus?”
“What,” she asked at last, “is Circus?”
“Animals,” cried one. To which others cried objection, “No, it’s jugglers.”
“Clowns.”
“Acrobats, Nana-bat says.”
“It’s marvels, that’s what.”
An older child approached, obviously one to whom the welfare of these had been assigned, for he wore a worried expression which looked perpetual and shook his head at the children in a much practiced way. “Why are you annoying the travelers? One would think you’d never seen an animal trainer before. We saw one just last season, when we left the jungle cities.”
“Not with animals like this, Hirv.”
“Those were only fustigars, Hirv.”
“Nobody ever told me you could train pombis, Hirv.”
“Hirv, what’s the one with the horn. Ask her, will you Hirv.”
“That beast is a Singlehorn,” Mavin replied in an ingratiating tone. “The pombi was raised by humans since it was a cub.” Which is true enough, she told herself. Arkhur must have been raised by someone. “I am not their trainer. I am merely taking them south to their owner.” She had thought this out fairly carefully, not wanting to be asked to have the beasts do tricks. “If it would not disturb you, we would like to go along behind you for a time. Your music makes the leagues shorter.” And she provided another ingratiating expression to put herself in their good graces. The children seemed inclined to accept her, but the one who was approaching next might be harder to convince.
He was the music master, he of the tall, plumed staff and the silver whistle. He thrust through the children, planted the staff on the pave and looked them over carefully before turning to the child-minder. “What does she want?”
“Only to follow along, Bandmaster. She says it makes the leagues shorter.”
The Bandmaster allowed himself a chilly smile. “Of course it does. The Band swallows up the leagues as though it had wings. Music bears us up and carries us forward. In every land in every generation.”
The children had evidently heard this before, for there was tittering among them; and one, braver than the rest, puffed himself up in infant mockery, pumping a leafy branch as though he led the marching.
“What is your name?” the Bandmaster demanded.
“Mavin,” she said, making a gestured bow. “With two beasts to deliver to the southland.”
“I assume they are not dangerous? We need not fear for our children?”
Mavin thought of the murdered bunwit and looked doubtfully at Arkhur-pombi, who returned the gaze innocently, tongue licking his breast hairs, still slightly stained with bunwit blood. “I will keep it near me, Bandmaster. Can you tell me where you have come from? I have traveled up and down this land for twenty years, and I have not run across your like before.” The Bandmaster smiled a superior smile, waving his hand to an elder who lingered to one side, arms clutched tight around a bundle of books. “Where have we been in twenty years, Byram? The Miss wishes to know.”
The oldster sank to his haunches, placing the bundle on the ground to remove one tome and leaf through it, counting as he leafed back, stopping at last to cry in a reedy voice, “Twenty years ago we were on the shores of the Glistening Sea nearby to Levilan. From there we went north along the shore road to the sea cities of Omaph and Peeri and the northern bays of Smeen. And from there,” leafing forward in his book, “to the Qtadel of Jallywig in the land of the dancing fish, thence north once more along Boughbound Forest to the glades of Shivermore and Creep and thence south to the jungle roads of the Great Maze. Oh, we were on the roads of the Great Maze ten years, Miss, and glad to see the end of them at last in the jungle cities of Luxuri and Bloome. And from there south across the Dorbor Range onto the old road where we are now. We have played the repertoire forty times through in twenty years ...”
“How long have you been doing this?” she asked. “Traveling around this way?”
“How long have we been marching,” corrected the Bandmaster. “Why, since the beginning, of course. Since disembarkation or shortly thereafter. At first, so it is written, there were few roads and long, Miss, but as we go they ramify. Ah, yes, they ramify. Used to be in time past, so it is written, we could make the circuit in five years or so. Now it takes us seventy. In time, I suppose, there will be children born who will never live to see their birthplace come up along the road again. Jackabib, there, with his leafy bough pretending to mock the Bandmaster, why, it may be he will never see the city of Bloome again.”
Jackabib did not seem distressed by this thought. He only flushed a little and ran off into the trees where he peeked at them from among the leaves like a squirrel.
“Well then, I would not have seen you,” agreed Mavin. “You have not been this way in my lifetime. I am mighty glad you came this way now, however, for it is a sight I will always remember.” And a sound, she thought, aware of the ache in her legs. The sound had carried them step on step, and never a sign of weariness or hurt until the music stopped. “This pombi is pretty good as a hunter as am I. May we contribute meat for the pot?”
This was agreed to with good cheer, so she led Arkhur beast into the trees and set him on the trail. She poised, then, ready to Shift herself into hunting fustigar shape, only to stop, listening, for it seemed she heard a deep, solemn humming in the trees. The sound faded. She took a deep breath, began the Shift, then heard it once more. The voice came on the little wind like a sigh. “Do not Shift, Mavin. Stay as you are. You risk much if you Shift, the shadows not least.”
When it had spoken, she was not sure she had heard it. When she readied herself once more, however, she knew she had heard it, for her flesh twinged away from the idea of Shift as though it had been burned.
“Well then,” she said to herself, not ready yet to be worried at this. “I will do as the children of Danderbat Keep were taught to do. I will set snares.”
Arkhur-pombi returned to her from time to time with his prey, like a cat bringing marshmice to the door. Each taime Mavin patted him and took the preferred bunwit with expressions of joy, as though he had indeed been some young hunting beast she sought to train. She laughed at herself, yet went on doing it. Her snares, set across burrow runways, were also useful; and they returned to the wagons some hours later, Mavin’s arms laden with furry forms, even after feeding two of them to Arkhur to assure the safety of the children.
She found the people of the band occupied with a myriad orderly duties, cooking, cleaning their musician dresses, polishing boots and helmets, copying strange symbols by firelight on squares of parchment which they told her conveyed the music they played. Mavin had not seen written music before, and she marveled at it, as strange and exotic a thing as she could remember ever having seen. Others of them gathered food from the forest by torchlight, rainhat berries, fern fronds, fungus to be sliced and dried before the fires. “When we play in the cities,” she was told, “we are given coin, and we use that coin to fill the meal barrels and the meat safes. Between times, we must live upon the land.”
The Fon-beast, tethered to a tree, was suffering himself to be petted and decked with flowers by a tribe of children. Mavin offered fruit and bread from her hand, only to be copied by all the young ones. So she could leave the Singlehorn without guilt in their tender hands and sit by other fires to hear what these people knew. She ended the evening telling stories of lands across the sea, of giant chasms and bridge-people who lived below the light, and stickies—one of whom, at least, probably remembered the days of disembarkation. “His name is Mercald-Myrtilon,” she said. “And he has memories in him of that time a thousand years long past.” There was much expression of interest and wonder at this, and the Bandmaster even began to talk of taking a ship to that farther shore to march there, until Mavin told him there were no roads at all.
After which she slept beside her beasts along with half a dozen children who had fallen asleep while petting or feeding one or both. When they woke, it was a brighter world than on any recent morning.
“Come, Arkhur-pombi,” she teased the beast up and into motion. “There are no shadows near this road, and I must risk us both to learn something sensible.” She took him off into the trees, not far, watching all the time for that telltale darkening of foliage or sky, seeing nothing but the honest shadows cast by the sun. There in a sweet clearing full of unrolling ferns she told him in the closest approximation of the Dervish’s voice, “Arkhur, come out!”
It was some time before he did, rising on his hind legs, dropping again, circling uneasily, then at last seeming to set his mind on it. The figure which materialized out of the pombi’s shape was no more impressive than before. It still had that young-old expression of apologetic intransigence, a face which said, “I know you all think this a stupid idea, and perhaps I do also, but I must get on with it.” When he was fully before her, he seemed to have no idea what to do with his hands, but stood waving them aimlessly, as though brushing flies.
“You are Arkhur?” she asked in a gentle voice, not wanting to startle him. “Younger brother of the High Wizard Chamferton?”
She might as well have struck him with a whip. His eyes flashed; his back straightened; the hands came down before him in a gesture of firm negation.
“I am Arkhur,” he said in a furious tenor. “I am the High Wizard Chamferton, younger brother of a foul Invigilator who despised his Talent and sought to usurp mine!”
“Ahh,” she breathed. “So that was it. And how came you to this pass, Arkhur—or should I call you High Wizard, or sir? I called your brother by your name, I’m afraid, but it doesn’t surprise me to learn the truth. He had a slyness about him.”
“I trusted him,” the pombi-man growled, so suddenly angry he was almost incoherent. Mavin had to struggle to understand him as he spat and gargled. “I trusted his pleas for understanding and rest. He told me he was an old man. Beyond scheming anymore, he said. Beyond treachery. Wanting only warm fires and warm food, cool wine and quiet surroundings. And so I took him in. And he stayed, learned, Read me when I least expected it, then drugged me deep and sent me to be Harpy-dropped where the shadows dance. Fool! Oh, much will I treasure vengeance against him, woman. But well will I repay the Gamesman who brought me away from the shadows and the tower.” He seemed to savor this for the moment then demanded:
“Where is he?”
Mavin assumed he meant Himaggery. She shook her head. “He is near, but worse off than you, Wizard. Now, before you say anything more, tell me a thing. The Dervish who hid you told me to bring you out of the pombi shape ‘where no shadow was. ‘ Well, there is no shadow here, but I doubt not they are somewhere perhaps within sight of us. Are you in danger in your shape? And if so, shall I return you to beastliness?”
At first the High Wizard Chamferton understood none of this and it took considerable time for Mavin to explain it. By the time he had climbed a tree to see for himself where shadows lay upon the line of hills, smells of breakfast were wafting from the fires along the road, and they were both hungry.
“My brother used a certain drug on me, Mavin. He knows little enough of his own Talent, and even less of mine, or he would have realized that in that drugged state, the shadows would pay me no more attention than they might pay a block of wood. Though I could see them and even consider them in a dreamy way, I had no more volition than a chopping block. No. They did not care about me and will not be attracted to me. I am certain of that.”
“Certain enough to risk our lives?” she persisted.
He nodded, again solemn. “Certain.”
“Well, that’s something the Dervish didn’t know.” This made Mavin cheerful for some reason. It was good to think that there were some things a Dervish might not know. “Well then, how do I explain the loss of the pombi?”
“Don’t explain it. Put me back as I was, woman, and let us part from these good people amiably. Perhaps in time we will want their friendship. Then, when we have separated from them, you can bring me out again. Next time it will not be such a task, for I will set myself to remember who I am, even in pombi shape.”