The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  So we stopped talking about it altogether and got on with what Windlow called our schooling. We reviewed the different sorts of games; games of two, that is, "dueling," and games of intrigue such as that one Mandor had played during Festival, and Battle Games of all sizes from little to great, and hidden games played by Gamesmen for their own purposes with no others knowing of it, and games of amusement, and art games, and the game of desperation. And we reviewed the language of True Game, the labels of risk, King's Blood, Dragon's Fire, Armiger's Flight, Sorcerer's Power, Healer's Hand-all of them. One says "King's Blood" to mean that the King is at risk in the play. If the risk is small, one says, "King's Blood One." If the risk is great, if the King will be killed or taken, one says, "King's Blood Ten." I asked Windlow why we did not simply say, "King's Risk" or "Dragon's Risk, " the same for all of them. It would be much simpler.

  "The nature of the artificer is to make things complex, not simple, " he said, his mouth frowning at me while his eyes smiled. "We invent different labels for things which are not different and so we distinguish among them. I have read that in the utter past people did this with groups of animals. One would use a different name for each type of animal. It persists still today. We say, 'a coven of crows' or 'a follow of fustigars.' It makes us sound learned. We who are Gamesmen wish to seem learned in all aspects of the Game. So, we use the proper titles for the risks we run. It is more dramatic and satisfying to say, 'Sorcerer's Power Nine' than it would be to say, 'I'm about to smash your Sorcerer…'" We laughed. He asked if we understood. I told him solemnly that I understood well enough. King's Blood Four meant that the King was not seriously threatened, but that some other Gamespiece might be.

  "Oh, yes, " he shrugged. "There are always throwaway pieces. Talismen. Totems. Fetish pieces of one kind or another. Pawns or minor pieces used as sacrifices because the Game requires a play and the Player is unready or unwilling to play a major piece. And then there are Ghost pieces…"

  "I thought they were only stories," said Yarrel. "To scare children…"

  "Oh, no. They are real enough." The old man rearranged the blanket around his shoulders, shifted to a more comfortable slouch in the woven basket hair."After all, when Necromancers raise up the dead, the dead were once Gamesmen. They would be Ghost Gamesmen, with Ghost talents." At which point, just as we wanted to ask a hundred questions, he fell asleep. Before he woke to continue our lessons, the tower Sentinel cried warning to the House, and we looked up to see a cloud of dust on the long road down from the forest edge through the valley. I was standing beside Windlow when the cry came, and he woke suddenly, his eyes full of pain and deep awareness.

  "The High King, Prionde, has sent these men, " he said. "He has been made deeply suspicious of us. Someone has come to him bearing tales of guilt and treachery. Guardsmen come to take us all prisoner." I saw tears in his eyes. "Poor Prionde. Oh, pitiful, that my old student should come to this."

  Silkhands, who had been sitting beside him, holding his hand as she did for hours each day said, "Dazzle. Dazzle and Borold. They are the ones." She said it with enormous conviction. It was not Seeing, of course. She had no Talent of that kind, but she knew, nonetheless. We all heard her and believed her, and we were not totally unprepared when the dusty guardsmen rode in to gather us up as though we had been livestock, handling the old man with no more courtesy than a sheep, and shut us within the Tower to await some further happening. Silkhands spoke softly to one of them, asking if a Priestess had come to the High Demesne. Yes, one said. A very beautiful Priestess with her brother, a Herald and a group of pawners had come to the Demesne the day before. This was enough for Silkhands. She sat in a corner and wept away the morning.

  "But all they need to do is send a Demon to Read us," I protested. "They did it often enough when we were there! They know we have no plots against the High King."

  Old Windlow spoke softly to us from the cot where We had laid him. "My son, be schooled by me. If your people taught you when you were a child that there are monsters in the wood, you would have believed them. Then, later, if a woodsman had come and said to you, leading you among the trees, 'See, there is nothing here but shadow and light, leaf and trunk, bird and beast. See, I show you. Look with your own eyes. ' Though you would look and see nothing, still you would believe there were monsters there. You would believe them invisible, or behind you, or hiding beneath the stones, or within the trees somehow. No matter what the woodsman said, you would believe your fear. Men always believe their fear. Only the strong, the brave, the curious-only they can overcome their fear to peer and poke and pry at life to find what is truly there…"Prionde believes his fear. His Demons tell him we are harmless to him, but he is afraid we have discovered some way to fool the Demons, some way to avoid the Seers, some way to trick the Tragamors. He believes his fear…"

  There were tears in the old man's eyes, and with both Windlow and Silkhands mourning, Yarrel, Chance, and I did not know what to do except be still and let the day wear out. The guardsmen did feed us and bring us wine and a chamber pot, which we did not need for there were old closets built into the wall of the tower, unused for many years.

  The day diminished. We lit the lanterns and sat in. the fireglow of evening as the stars pricked the sky above the lightning bugs in the meadow. We grew very bored and sad. There was a gameboard set into the top of an old table in the room where we all were, and I thought it might make things more bearable to play an old twospace game with Chance as we had done when I was a child. I took the pouch from my belt and set the pieces and the little book out, quite forgetting what Himaggery had said about them. After all, I was among friends. Chance was curious at once, full of questions about where I had found them. After a time, Windlow got up and tottered over to have a look while I went on chattering about the ancient room in the ruins. Something in the quality of the silence elsewhere in the room made me look up, words drying in my mouth. Everyone was looking at Windlow, and he at the table, face shining as though lit from within. Perhaps it was a trick of the lantern light, but I think not. He shone, truly.

  He touched the carved Demon. "Didir, " he said. Then he lifted the Armiger. "Tamor." He laid a trembling hand upon my shoulder, leaning to touch the Elator. "Hafnor, " he said, "Wafnor, " as he laid his finger upon the Tragamor. He named each of them, "Sorah, Dealpas, Buinel, Shattnir, Trandilar, Dorn." Last he picked up one of the little Shapeshifters and said, "And Thandbar and his kindred. How wonderful. How ancient and how wonderful." I mumbled something, as did Silk-hands, and the old man saw our confusion. "But don't you understand? It is History! The eleven!"

  Yarrel said, "We are stupid today, Sir. We do not understand what is special about these eleven."

  "Not these eleven, boy, or those eleven. The eleven. The eleven Gamesmen who are spoken of in. the books of religion. The first eleven…" We looked at one. another, half embarrassed, not sharing his excitement. Yes, there had been eleven mentioned in the books of religion. Yes, there were thousands of types of Gamesmen, each mentioned in the Index, each different. What did it matter that these tiny, carved figures were of the first eleven. As we watched him, his wonder turned to caution. He said, "Who knows of these?" I replied, "Only those of us here, and Himaggery. I showed them to him, and the book as well…"I put the little volume into Windlow's hands, half hoping to distract him from this strange passion, for he looked very distraught. It did not have the desired effect. It was only a little glossary, directions for a Game, I thought, written in an archaic lettering, much faded. I had not paid it much attention. Windlow, however, took it as though he took the gift of life from the hands of a god. He peered at it, opened it, caressed the page, raised it to his face to smell of it. He leafed through it, leaning so close to the lantern I thought he would burn himself.

  When he murmured, "The Onomasticon…" the word meant nothing to me. "All those Rancelmen…" he said. "Year after year, hundreds of them sent into the world, to search, search, always looking for it, and it is put into my hands
by an ignorant boy-beg pardon, lad, no reflection upon you personally-who does not know what he gives me. Ah. Life is full of these jokes. Full of jest…"

  Then I understood. This was the book, the one he had been searching for. At least, he believed it to be the book. I remembered he was a Seer. If this was the book he had Seen himself having, then it surely was the book.

  He went on talking, almost to himself. "See. The word Festival. In the Onomasticon it carries the meaning 'opportunity for reproduction. ' We talk of School House, but the book says, 'Protection of Genetic Potential. ' We say True Game. The book says 'Population control. ' We say King. The book says…"

  Yarrel leaned forward to put a hand over his lips. "Sir, is it safe to speak so?" Windlow looked up, dazed, lips still moving. Then he became still, as though listening.

  "No. No, lad, not safe to speak so. Not safe to say what I have said, not even to those I have spoken to. I would not go from this place before, for I had Seen myself having the book here, in the old Tower. Also, I have been fond of Prionde as though he were my own sister's son. Now, however, the book is here and my love is a foolish thing, for Prionde has turned against me. Let us leave. Let us get out."

  6

  Escape

  "Out?" I think Chance said it, though it may have been Yarrel. We were all equally astonished, not at the thought, for each of us had probably considered the idea since we had been shut up in the tower. We were astonished at the matter-of-fact way Windlow stated it.

  "Out?" I repeated. "How do you propose that we do that?"

  "Why, I have no idea." Windlow said. "Though I do know that we are to get out, or at least that I am, for I have Seen myself with the Book in another place than this. I have the Book, and there seems little reason for delay if we can think of a way to go now…"

  None of us could think of a reason for delay either, but this did not help us think of a way to get out. The guards who had been sent by the High King showed no signs of relaxing their alert stance. There was an Invigilator among them who, while not quite as thorough in pursuit as a Pursuivant might be, was nonetheless to be reckoned with. At least one of them was an Armiger, which meant we could be seen from above if we succeeded in leaving the Tower but needed to cross the meadows. We had no Armiger of our own to carry us through the air. I wondered if it might be possible to burrow under the ground and said something of the kind to the others. At once Yarrel fastened upon the idea and began wandering about the tower with an abstracted look of concentration.

  "That old earth closet, " he asked Windlow, "does it go into a pit? Do you know?"

  "Why, no." The old man searched his memory. "There is a stream up the valley which was diverted, yes, I recall when the builders were at it. They brought it underground so that it would not freeze in winter. It comes into a tank above the cookhouse and laundry. Then the drains and the rest of it run down under the Tower, here, and the closet empties into it."

  "How?" Yarrel sketched a circular dimension with his arms. "Like a pipe, small? Or a tunnel? How did they build it?"

  "Why, a tunnel, small as tunnels go, I suppose. About as high as your shoulders. The walls and floor were laid in stones, I remember, with beams over the top and earth on that."

  "And it comes out where?"

  "I don't know." He looked almost ashamed, as though he were guilty of some obscure sin. "I didn't pay attention. Do you think it might join the stream again, further down?"

  "It would make sense to do that," said Chance. "I've seen it done that way many a time. Probably dumps out into a pool somewhere to overflow into the old riverbed. So I've seen it done."

  Yarrel's eyes were glinting with an adventurous spark. He said, "Well, easy enough to find out. Shall we go together, Peter? You and I? Exploring once more?" He was remembering when we were very small boys searching the crannies of the attics in Mertyn's House. The, memory brought back smells of dust and sunwarmed wood and the look of bats hung on old rafters like black laundry.

  We cut a blanket into strips and made rope out of that. Chance lowered us one at a time down the old closet. It hadn't been used in a long time, so it smelled no worse than an old barnyard midden, musty and rank, -but not actually foul. Once at the bottom with our little lantern, we kicked away piled rubbish to disclose the turgid flow of water which crept from one side of the shaft to the other.

  "I'll wager it's broken or plugged further up," said Yarrel. "Which is lucky for us. There's hardly any water at all." Still, there was enough to make the place slimy with mold and greeny slickness on the walls. In places the old beams had broken or half broken to sag down into the already low ceiling of the place and drop clods of mud and things with legs onto our necks. The way turned and swerved inexplicably, but Yarrel said it was probably that they had dug it in a way to miss large outcroppings of rock. Whatever the builder's reasons, it made a confusing way, and I soon lost any sense of the direction in which we moved. However, it was only a short time until we saw a glimmer of light ahead and came up to an opening all overgrown with brush through which the trickle wandered out and down a little slope into a mire. I could hear the river but not see it. We were surrounded by trees.

  "Thank the Game Lords, Peter. We are in the trees and behind the stables. We may go from this place undiscovered and mounted, all else willing." I left him where he was and went plodding back up the little-tunnel to be hauled up into the light once more, blinking and filthy. Silkhands wrinkled her nose at me, and old Windlow said, apropos of nothing at all, "I have always wondered how moles keep clean…" He did not seem at all surprised when I told them the way was clear and we needed only wait until dusk to meet Yarrel at the tunnel entrance. We then spent some time, in devising a way to carry Windlow through the tunnel, for Silkhands demanded that he not be forced to huddle and crouch like the rest of us. In the end we slung him into an uncut blanket, and Chance and I carried him between us. Before we went, however, nothing would do but he must scurry around like a tottery old heron and pack up bits of herb and grass about himself, bladders full of this and wraps of that. By that time the warders were bringing our evening meal, so we shut the closet door and pretended Yarrel was within. When they had gone, we ate two bites and packed up the rest before lowering Windlow into Silkhand's waiting arms. I went down, then Chance, pulling the makeshift rope after him. We abandoned it in the tunnel. The second trip down the little tunnel was easier for me, for I knew where it ended. Yarrel was not at the entrance, but three saddles were, together with other tack. He had even managed to steal some water bottles from somewhere. We had brought such clothing as we thought we would need, and now waited impatiently for Yarrel to come while Windlow lay upon his back making learned comments about the stars. He seemed to know much about them, as he did about everything, from all that Reading, no doubt. I could hear whickering of horses in the meadow, that coughing noise they make when they are quite contented, but interested in something. It was not long until they came, three of them, following Yarrel as though he had been their herd leader.

  "There were only these three loose, " he said. "I do not want to risk being discovered in the courtyard where they have stabled the others; These came after me like lambs, no commotion at all, but it means we will have to ride double. Chance, you and Silkhands take the roan, he's a sturdy beast. I will take Window upon the gray. That will leave the white for you, Peter. You're among the lightest of us, and it's a small beast. I should not wonder if it had not some onager blood. Still, even double is quicker than afoot."

  We agreed, saddled the animals and led them away through the trees as quietly as owls' flight. Only when we had come over the ridge separating the Tower from the forest did we mount. As we mounted we heard a braying from the south, as of a brazen trumpet, but it sounded only once and was blown away on. the wind. We held still for long moment waiting for it to be repeated. There was only an uneasy silence. At last we rode away in the, belief our departure was yet unnoticed, leaving it to Yarrel to find us our way in the wilderness-t
hat long way north to Lake Yost and the Bright Demesne.

  We would have ridden faster had we known of the tumult behind us. A cavalcade had arrived from the High Demesne; Dazzle and Borold with it, the pawner I had escaped twice before, and a Demon of some considerable power. The trumpet we had heard summoned warders from the surrounding hills. We were pursued long before we knew of it, and we rode though moonlight and shade down the dark hours, guided by what Yarrel, could learn of the slope we traveled, marking our way by the river's edge, waiting for enough light to sight some landmark which would set us more firmly upon our way.

  Before we had left the Tower, Chance had puzzled over the charts so that he could tell Yarrel of them now what lay north, what ranges and valleys. All of us knew that this study may have been useless. The charts might be true or false, true as any man's skill could make them, or false as a man's need might draw them. One never knew in buying charts what Game the maker played.

  The Demon behind us could not see us or touch us, therefore he could not pick out our thoughts from the, countryside. He could only throw his net into the void to skim whatever vagrant pulses were there, to recognize fear, perhaps, or some thought of the pursuer in the mind of the pursued which would tell him that those he sought were in one direction only. Though we did not know it, he did not find us for some time, for we had dropped below the rocky ridge of hills, out of his line of search. Then, at the bottom of the first long slope, we dropped down once more into a maze of little canyons which twined themselves down the long incline like a twisted rope, joining and rejoining among high, floodwashed walls. Once we were into the twisting way we were doubly hidden. He had to leave the search and climb the highest mountain to our west in order to Read us. Once he had done so, however, he found us soon enough, and the pursuers came behind us at twice our speed.