"Sheri S. Tepper - The Song of Mavin Manyshaped" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

Danderbat citadel, go off to a strange place and become something else again when all he knew was
shifter. He could take comfort from the fact that he wouldn't grieve. He wouldn't even remember a week
hence when the Forgetters had done with him. Still, looking at it from this end, it must seem dreadful.
Mavin ducked her head to hide her own tears, feeling for him. It could have been her. She might not have
been shifter, either. No one knew she was, not yet.
"All right, childer. I'm not keeping you long today. Elder Garbat Grimsby is coming in for a minute, just
to ask a few simple questions, see how you're coming. Since two of you are off to Schlaizy Noithn in the
morning, he'll just review two or three little shifter things and let you all go. Sit up straight and don't go
boneless at the Elder, it isn't considered polite. Remember, to show politeness to elders and honored
guests, you hold your own shape hard. Keep that in mind … " She broke off, turning to the door as she
heard the whirring hum of something coming.
It came into the room like a huge top, spinning, full of colors and sounds, screaming its way across the
room, bumping chairs away, full of its own force, circling to stop before them all and slowly, slowly,
change into old Garbat, hugely satisfied with himself, fixing them all with his shifter eyes to see if they
were impressed. All of them were. It was a new trick to Mavin, and when reared in a shifter stronghold
those were few and seldom, with every shifter challenging every other to think of new things day on day.
The Elders came infrequently out of their secret place deep within the keep, or at least so it was said.
Mavin thought that if she were an Elder, she would be around the keep all day every day, as a bit of rock
wall, a chair, a table in some dusty corner, watching what went on, hearing what was said. It was this
thought which kept her behavior moderately circumspect, and she looked hard at the Elder now. He
might have been the very pillar she had sat under to shift her toes. She shivered, crouching a little so as
not to make him look at her.
Handbright managed some words of welcome. Old Garbat folded his hands on his fat stomach and fixed
his eyes on Janjiver. "What about you, Janjiver. You tell me what shapes shifters can take, and when."
The boy Janjiver was a lazy lout, most thought, with a long, strong body and a good Talent which went
largely unused. There were those who said he would never come out of Schlaizy Noithn, and indeed
there were some young shifters who never did. If one wanted to take the shape of a pombi or a great owl
or some other thing which could live well off the land, one might live in Schlaizy Noithn for all one's life
without turning a hand. "A shifter worth his net," said Janjiver in his lazy voice, "can take any shape at
all. He can bulk himself up to twenty times bigger, given a little time, or more if the shape is fairly
simple. He can conserve bulk and take shape a quarter size, though it takes practice. The shape he cannot
take is the shape of another real person."
"And why can't he do that, Janjiver?"
"Because it's not in our nature, Elder. The wicked Mirrormen may mock mankind but we shifters do not.
All the Danderbats back to the time of Xhindi forbid it."
"And you, Thrillfoot. What is the shifter's honor?"
"It is a shifter's honor to brook no stay, be stopped by no barrier, halted by no wall, enclosed by no fence.
A shifter goes where a shifter will." Thrillfoot threw his hair back with a toss of his head, grinning
broadly. He was looking forward to Schlaizy Noithn. In the citadel he was befamilied to death, and the

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 THE SONG OF MAVIN MANYSHAPED - Sheri S. Tepper

desire for freedom was hot in him. He rejoiced to answer, knowing it was the last answering he would do
for many a year.
"And what is a shifter to the rest of the world, Jan-jiver?"
"A shifter to the rest of the world, Elder, is what a shifter says he is, and a shifter always says less than he
is."
"Always," agreed Thrillfoot, smiling.
This was just good sense and was taught to every shifter child from the time he was weaned. The shapes