A Glimmer of Guile Read online

  Nearly two years had passed since then. Now, an hour's walk from Raym's cottage, I had no real doubts about the wisdom of what I was doing. Until we've both become stronger in our resolve, he'd said on that last day we'd spent together.

  Well, my resolve was strong enough to make up for whatever weakness might remain in his. There was no chance of us falling into each other's arms. More likely, he'd be annoyed at my turning up again. But I intended to stay only long enough for him to teach me how to get out of the Great Shift. Surely he owed me that, after the mess he'd made of it the first time. I would say I didn't trust Harken to show me properly, and he knew Harken's reputation well enough to see the sense in that.

  However, I didn't plan to tell him why I needed to master the skill exactly now. Young Tedor's disappearance and my assignment were my own affair. If I were to mention the problem to Raym, he might take it as a plea for help in finding the boy, which I didn't want.

  As I saw it, this would be my moment of truth. If I were to succeed in returning Tedor, I'd have proved my independence. My allegiance to Ladygate could be at an end. If I were to fail and, having failed still managed to survive, I might as well disappear as best I could. I'd never be able to practice my guile anywhere within Harken's range of knowing if I didn't carry out this assignment successfully.

  I left the road at the beginning of the lane leading to Raym's cottage and was almost at the edge of the clearing when I realized something was wrong. My witch-sense was ringing like an alarm bell, and I didn't know why. I stopped walking, closed my eyes, and opened all my internal senses, hoping to find the reason. It wasn't long coming. The glimmer I'd felt at Ladygate's bridge and at Horok's court flooded over me like a wave of horror. Orath.

  At first I couldn't even think. She was here, too. Why? And then, more importantly, Where? My instinct to freeze like a frightened deer battled my instinct to turn and run like a scared rabbit. I'd been approaching the cottage with my glimmer shielded to keep Raym unaware of me for as long as possible, and now I strengthened that shield. Was I too late? Had she felt me coming?

  After a couple of minutes I forced myself to calm down and consider the situation. I could feel Raym's glimmer, too, but under Orath's terrible aura his was faint. There was no way I could guess what she was doing here. I could run. But if she was aware of my approach, running probably wouldn't do much good. If she wanted me, she'd now be able to sense me wherever I was, and she'd find me.

  Anyway, a necessary part of my assignment was to find her. It was going to happen sooner or later. I wasn't really prepared at the moment, but would I ever be? I knew I was strong in guile, and Raym had told me that someday I'd be stronger than she was. Maybe today was the day. If I were to run away, she'd have the upper hand and she'd know it.

  The best thing to do, I decided, was to face her. She wouldn't know who I was, after all, nor would she know I recognized her glimmer. If I surprised her, the advantage would be mine. A little attitude might go a long way.

  All I had to do was to somehow stop my knees from knocking together.

  I took some deep breaths and walked boldly into the clearing. My mouth tasted coppery--the taste of fear, I supposed. I'd been afraid before, but never to the point of tasting it. And Orath would sense my fear, naturally. Well, let her. I wouldn't act afraid, and that ought to count for something.

  I strode to the middle of the front garden and faced the house. Another deep breath. Then, in a voice as loud and deep as I could muster without actually shouting, I commanded, "Orath. Come out and greet me." I put the effort of all my guile into summoning her, making her come to me.

  Nothing happened.

  I waited for a few moments. Still nothing.

  I looked more closely at the cottage then and noticed that the window shutters were open and the door stood ajar. It swung open at my touch. The place was deserted.

  Orath's glimmer was there, but now I realized that it had been fading even at the moment I'd first noticed it. She'd been here. I didn't know how long ago, but I did know beyond a doubt that she wasn't here now. Nor was Raym. His glimmer, too, had faded.

  I looked around the cottage's single room. It took only a glance to see that Raym's departure hadn't been planned, had perhaps not even been voluntary. The cot, neatly made up, hadn't been slept in. On the table was his lamp, its chimney black with soot, the wick turned up; it had burnt itself out. A book lay beside it, open, and beside that a knife, a jug of water, bread and a piece of hard sausage. A mouse had been at the bread and sausage, and a slow fly buzzed above them. Worst of all was Raym's chair, which lay on its back beside the table as if he'd risen suddenly, knocking it over, and hadn't had time to right it.

  I felt the base of the lamp. It was cold, offering no clue about when it had gone out. I knew that Raym habitually took a very late supper and read until almost dawn. I looked at the book--one of his few treasures, a richly bound volume by a fabulist of the last century. I closed it with care and took it back to the chest where it belonged.

  When I opened the chest, I got a shock. There in plain sight was the object Raym had used to prepare me for the Great Shift. As I've said, this was something he'd kept securely wrapped in illusion, and I knew that nothing and no one--not Orath, not a gang of demons--could have forced him to uncover it. Nor would anyone else in the world have recognized it for what it was. Yet there it lay, simple, guileless, and as glowing as the first star of evening. I knew instantly that he'd released it from his guile and left it there for me to find. Could he have guessed I was on my way to him? No. He must only have hoped, and so wan a hope told me he was in terrible trouble indeed.

  Carefully I shut the chest and went back to the table. Once I'd trimmed away the portions of bread and sausage that the mouse had spoiled, I ate the rest. I put the cottage to rights, picked up my pack, retrieved the object, and went out, closing the door behind me. It was time for me to go after Orath--to go after them both.

  If the Red Prince's Lady had taken Tedor, and had now taken Raym too, where could she have taken them but to Maal? In any case, she would return to Maal eventually, and I wanted to be there when she did.

  I went down to the stone bench by the stream, where a pair of wild geese waited as if they were expecting me to join them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the end, my second flight as a wild goose turned out to be more or less a disaster. But I chose the form for what I thought was a good reason. Maal was a long way off, across Monsara and then across a large body of water, and it seemed to me that flight in a straight line would be the quickest way to get there.

  Sitting on the stone bench, I put my pack down at my feet and went over everything I remembered about the Great Shift until I thought I'd have at least an even chance of becoming human again once I arrived. I'd never have attempted it on my own if there were another alternative, but I knew without question that the necessity had now gone far beyond Tedor's disappearance.

  Whatever had happened to Raym, it was clear to me that he might well be in mortal danger. The possibility that he and Orath were somehow in league did occur to me, but the signs of his hurried leaving suggested strongly that this wasn't the case.

  Anyway, there seemed no point in pondering the situation. Instead, I cleared my mind to accomplish the Shift. I kept reminding myself that if Harken could do something, I was certainly able to do it as well or better. Finally, holding the secret object in both hands, I concentrated and went through all the steps. When I felt my body begin to lose substance, I dropped the object into my tunic pocket and stepped down into the stream. The other geese greeted me with bland looks and we paddled around together for a few minutes. Finally I took off, heading in the general direction of the Great North Sea. The other geese followed.

  All went well for several hours. My sense of direction, enhanced by my acquired goose-instincts, took us straight and true until late afternoon, when I felt a deep urge to find a watery place to settle for the night. Before long, looking down, I saw
a wide river shallows where a larger flock had already set down. I remembered what Raym had said about safety in numbers and decided to join this group. Down I went with my two followers, and soon we were all bobbing together in the water, honking drowsily, a few drifting shoreward to feed on tender grasses. As the sun sank into the woods, I half-dozed. The sense of the flock around me was comforting, and while real sleep came only in intervals of a few moments at a time, it was restful.

  In the morning I was ready to resume my journey, and I innocently supposed that the two geese who'd come with me this far would accompany me. I didn't know exactly which two these were. All wild geese look more or less alike, except probably to one another, and I hadn't been one long enough to distinguish individual features. But I flew up from the river's edge to make a start. All around, I heard the flurry of wings. The whole flock had flown up too. And when we'd sorted out the ragged V of flight, I saw with a sinking heart that I was no longer the leader. At the point of the V was a big, sleek gander with a muscular wingspan and a determined jut to his beak. He was leading us decisively to the southeast.

  That day was depressing. After many hours of following King Goose, as I came to think of him, in the wrong direction, it became plain to me that I'd have been at least as well off if I'd taken the form of a frog and started hopping to the north coast.

  Several times I took off on my own, hoping that at least a few others would join me, but King Goose's hold on them all was too strong. I worked my way to just behind him by the end of the second day, and it seemed to me that he changed his course minutely at my silent urging. But I still had to admit that I was getting nowhere far too fast. I could have flown on my own course alone--or so I told myself, although the instinct to follow the leader was stronger than I wanted to admit--but I'd have had to stop eventually, and I knew that, as a lone goose, I'd be at risk from all kinds of predators.

  In only a few hours, I learned how real that risk was, even with the flock around me for protection.

  We stopped for the night on the shore of a big lake, and I dozed with the others, tired from a day of strenuous flying, trying to make up my mind what to do next. I had reason to wish I'd thought my venture through more thoroughly before starting out. I was far enough now from the northern sea that it would take me many days to get there, whether in my own form or that of any four-footed creature, and I realized how stupid it had been to waste so much time as a goose. Tomorrow morning, I thought, I'd stay behind and try to reassume my own form, after which I could make a more rational choice and try again.

  My thoughts were dull as I drifted in and out of the half-sleep that was all my goose-instincts would allow. And I felt a small chill of apprehension. I had to admit that one of the reasons I'd worn myself out flying with a silly flock of geese was a lack of confidence that I could change back. I tried to get rid of the apprehension by practicing the mind-clearing exercise Raym had taught me. It worked all too well. My doze deepened into a real sleep, dark and dreamless.

  When I awoke, it was to screams and gabbles and a flurry of panicked flight. For a horrible moment I had no idea where--or what--I was. There were quick, dark shapes moving powerfully around me and suddenly I was staring into a mouth of slashing teeth, hearing and--horribly--smelling the harsh breath of a monster.

  With a pounding heart, I flew up into the air over the lake. The rest of the flock headed across the water, but I turned back and circled above where we'd been only a moment before. Five wolves were thrashing about at the water's edge, fighting each other viciously for the crippled and dying geese they'd managed to take. I'd come within inches of being one of those.

  That decided me. Instead of rejoining the flock, I set down at the middle of the lake by myself and spent the night afloat. When morning came, the flock left the opposite shore at sunup, and I managed to resist the urge to follow. I flew alone until I passed over a village and alit by a small stream a little way from it. There, after resting for a few minutes, I took a deep breath and, in my mind, pronounced Raym's word carefully. Instantly I was in my own form again, enormously thankful that the word had worked.

  Because the Great Shift leaves us clothed, when we come out of it, in whatever we were wearing to begin with, I was still dressed in the grimy disguise I'd been traveling in. Should've changed before I left. I'd been upset, though, and in a hurry, and thinking of other things, so I forgave myself. Thank God I had another change of clothes in my pack. I reached up to pull it from my shoulders.

  That was when I realized I didn't have the pack. For two seconds I stood thunderstruck, wondering what had become of it. But then I knew. It was still where I'd set it down, by Raym's stone bench. You have to be actually wearing something, or at least carrying it, for it to shift with you.

  Raym had pointed out on several occasions that I tended to rush into things without thinking them all the way through. Now it occurred to me that he might have been right, especially when I realized that the pack had held, among other things, the small purse of coins that Harken had grudgingly allowed me for my journey.

  Well, there was nothing to do about any of it now. At least Raym's object to enable the Shift was still in my pocket. But I was without funds and looking far from my best.

  I was also exhausted and ravenously hungry. If I'd had King Goose within reach, I'd cheerfully have wrung his neck, cooked him, and eaten him on the spot. Clearly, I had to get food somehow. I slept for a while and then walked into the village, where I eventually found an hour's hot, disgusting work cleaning a chicken-house, for which I was paid enough to buy a loaf of bread. I returned to the stream, bathed to get the stink of the chicken-house off me, ate a few bites to take the edge off my hunger, and fell right to sleep again, dressed again in my filthy--and only--set of rags.

  It was night when I wakened, so I made a fire, finished my bread, and glumly contemplated the fix I'd gotten myself into. I was in a part of the country where I knew no one. I had no money. I was still dressed as a boy, but anyone who looked closely could see that I wasn't a boy, and the only way to keep them from looking closely was to make my appearance and aura so distinctly unpleasant that no one would want to offer me work unless it was something so awful they couldn't find anyone else to do it.

  My recent experience as a goose had demonstrated that there were serious drawbacks to the Great Shift. Traveling as a bird was quick, but it also made one vulnerable to terrible dangers. The more I thought about it, the more clearly I saw that any form would have its disadvantages. When I reached the seacoast, maybe I could become a rat and stow away on a ship, although the idea wasn't a particularly happy one. But between now and then I'd have to pick something that could travel relatively fast without spending too much time hunting for food, and something that everything else wasn't trying to eat. Despite the ease with which I'd accomplished the Shift, I was feeling a lot less confident than I'd felt two days ago. Guile was fine, but so far it hadn't done me much good all by itself.

  The sound of voices interrupted my gloomy thoughts. Instantly alert, I extended an aura of extreme malice, as I'd done on the way to Raym's cottage. Two men were moving my way, and I wanted to discourage them as quickly as possible. When they were just outside the circle of firelight, I heard them pause. "Maybe we should just go on, you know," one said softly. "There's only one man, but he doesn't look friendly."

  The other laughed. "Doesn't look friendly? What gives you that idea? His back's to us. We'll see if he'll share his fire." He took a step forward. "Say, brother," he said cheerfully to me. "A fine evening for company at your fire, if you've no objection."

  I turned and fixed him with a menacing look, twisting my awful scar into a sneer and shooting out a ray of pure, hateful threat. He stepped back, confused. He was a man in his fifties, strong looking, carrying a heavy pack on his back.

  "Of course, if you'd rather not, we'll just go on..."

  Suddenly I recognized him. "Father!" I exclaimed, dropping the malevolence.

  "What?" He w
as not happy, it seemed, to be called so familiar a name by so unattractive a specimen of humanity. I could tell he felt a pang of guilt as well; he'd been in this part of the world before and had perhaps left a souvenir or two.

  "Sorry, brother, you've made a mistake, that's all," he said. "We'll just go along and not bother you, all right?" But he couldn't help staring. Instantly I removed the illusion. His eyes rounded and he raised a hand with two fingers extended. "Witchery. Get back."

  "Of course, witchery," I said impatiently. "It's what you paid to have me learn, when you left me with Katra all those years ago. It's me. Vivia."

  Always quick on the uptake, my old man. He grinned broadly. "Vivia! I'm damned if it's not! She did a good job of teaching you, too, it looks like, for a couple of rings and that fine purple stone set in gold. Damned if I didn't see some poor vile-faced yokel sitting here plain as day, just a couple of seconds ago." He put down his pack and threw his arms around me, planting a big garlicky kiss on my mouth. "Jareth! Come on, boy. It's only your little sister, Vivia!"

  My brother Jareth had been a big, earnest simpleton of eighteen when I'd last seen him; now he was a big, earnest simpleton of twenty-six, still following Father around, carrying the heavy packs, doing whatever he was told. The two older boys had both tired of this some time back, apparently. They'd settled down with wives and learned other trades, Father told me, rubbing his hands briskly before the fire. When he became too old for the road, he'd go to live with one or the other of them; then Jareth would be free to marry, too, if he wished. That, of course, would not be for a long time yet.

  He eyed me speculatively. "Maybe I can spend my twilight years dividing my time among all my children. I've always been interested in how the practice of witchcraft works, you know."

  I lowered my eyes modestly and told him I lived in an all-female community in a place that might not be named. I had no intention of entertaining my father in his old age with my magic tricks.