Free The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped by Sheri S. Tepper Page B

road brought a wagonload of them to the camp every day or so, and the campmaster heated them in his own oven. When they had done, they wandered a bit through the camp, trying to identify all the Gamesmen they saw, and then went back to their tent.

    “No one is looking for us,” Mavin said. “No one at all. They’ve all gone back to Danderbat keep. And likely we will not see Handbright again until we come to Battlefox. Well, it’s less adventurous than I’d thought.”

    “It’s adventurous enough,” the child responded, voice half dazed with sleep. “Enough. Lie down, Mavin.”

    She sat down, then lay down, then pulled the blankets up to her chin. They were only three days away from the place she had lived all her life, and already the memory of it was beginning to dim and fade. She was no longer very angry, she realized in a kind of panic. The anger had fueled her all this way, and now it was dwindled, lost somewhere in the leagues they had traveled. Something else would have to take its place.

    She thought about this, but not long before the dark crawled into her head and made everything quiet there.

    When morning came, she went out into it, telling herself what Mertyn had told her the night before. She watched how the men of the camp walked, and walked as they did, watched their faces as they talked and made her face take the same expression. She went first to the campmaster to ask whether he knew of a wagon going to Pfarb Durim, following his laconic directions to a large encampment among the trees in the river bottom. There she confronted a dozen faces neither hostile nor welcoming and had to take tight control in order that her voice not tremble.

    “I greet you, Gamesmen,” she began, safely enough, for there were a good many Gamesdresses in the group. “My young charge and I travel toward Pfarb Durim. Our mounts were lost in a storm in the mountains through which we have come, and we seek transport and company for the remaining way.”

    There was among the group a gray-headed one, still strong and virile-looking, but with something sad and questioning about his face. He looked up from his plate—for they were all occupied with breakfast—and said, “As do we all, young man. You have not told us who you are?” He set his plate down beside him, the motion leading Mavin’s eyes to the spot, and she saw a Seer’s gauze mask lying there, the moth wings painted upon it bright in the morning light.

    “Sir Seer.” She bowed. “I am servant of one Wizard, Himaggery of the Wetlands and I have in my care thalan to the Wizard, the child Mertyn.”

    “So. Would you have us escort you against future favors from your Wizardry master? Can you bargain on his behalf?” This was shrewdly said, as though he tested her, but Mavin was equal to this.

    “Indeed no, sir. He would have me in ... have my head off me if I pretended such a thing. I ask only such assistance as my master’s purse will bear, such part of it as he entrusts to me.” She felt a small hand creep into her own, and realized that Mertyn had come up beside her. A quick glance showed that he was simply standing there, very quietly, with a trusting expression on his face.

    “Ah.” The Seer seemed to think this over. He had a knotty face, a strong face, but with a kind of strangeness in it as though it were hard for him to decide what expression that face would wear. His hair was a little long, thrust back over his ears in white wings, and he had laid the cloak of the Seer aside to sit in his shirt and vest. The others around the fire watched him, made no effort to offer any suggestion. These were mostly young men, no more than nineteen or twenty, with a few among them obviously servants. The horses at the picket line were blanketed in crimson and black, obviously the colors of some high Demesne around which Gamesmen gathered. At last one of the young men walked over to them to stand an arm’s-length from Mavin and look her over from toe