The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Between us and the searchers were seven tombs, cubes of marble set with golden crowns. Here lay some past rulers of Bannerwell, some Princes or Kings of time long gone. I sighed once more, the Dorn pattern within me beginning to Read time, back and back again, taking measure from the stone in which the dead Kings lay, back into their lives, taking up their dust, 'their bones, the rotted threads in which they were clad, making all whole again as though living, to rise up, up from the sepulchre into the air, a shade, a spirit, a ghastly King peering down upon these intruders out of shadowy eyes, A speaking with a voice in which the centuries cried like lost children in a barren place, "Who comes, who comes, who comes…"

  Beside me Silkhands hid her face and screamed silently into her hands. Before me the searchers drew up, eyes wide, each mouth stretched into a rictus of fear. The fustigars cowered, and the spirit confronted them, "Who comes, who comes, who comes, " as yet another rose beside him, and then one more, and yet again and again.

  The searchers fled and the spirit heads began to turn toward the place we hid. Within me came the sigh, and Dorn let them rest once more. Now I knew why Dazzle had so feared the threat of her dead. These had been no dead of mine, and yet I feared, for out of these had come a hungering and a thirst which my life would not have slaked. One who raised these dead raised terror. And yet, even as I knew this, I knew that Dorn could hold them so they did no harm, or loose them, as Dorn would.

  I comforted Silkhands, blindly, babbling. "Himaggery told me to keep the Gamespieces safe. To keep them to myself. Well did he say so. I wish I had buried them back once more in the earth."

  "We are alive, " she whispered, practical and fearful at once. "I would rather be alive, even sweating like this. Having seen death, I would rather be alive."

  "I can raise them up again, if we need to…"

  "Not now, " she begged. "I am so tired. I have been afraid for so long. Not now."

  We lit the torch and followed the footprints of those who had fled, but the hope of escape was vain. The great room of tombs was lit with a thousand torches and there were watchers at every corner of it. I could Read Mandor in the room, glowing with anger. I could read Dazzle there, as well, writhing thoughts, like a nest of serpents twining upon one another in incestuous frenzy. A telltale tickle at the edge of my mind pushed me back behind a towering midfeather which held up the groined ceiling. I hugged Silkhands to me. "We can't stay here. Huld is searching for us. We need stone between us and him…"

  My words were interrupted by a fury of sound, drums throbbing, a wild clatter of wheels, and a thunder upon the bridge. Trumpets called. Silkhands said, "So, someone has come to give Mandor a Great Game. Those are the last of the wood wagons being driven across the bridge with fuel for the ovens…"

  We heard Mandor scream instructions at the guards. The doors clanged shut and there was a scurry of purposeful movement. We withdrew into the shadows of the corridor.

  "I have not slept in days," said Silkhands. "If we may not get out, let us hide away and rest. I cannot Heal myself of this weariness much longer, and I am hungry…" . ?'

  I was hungry, too, and we had nothing with us to eat or drink. As for sleep, however, that we could do. We went from squared and vaulted rooms into dim bat-hung halls where dawn light filtered down from grilled shafts twenty manheights above us, and from there into darker corridors lined with vaults bearing each the sign and legend of him who slept there. At last we found a high, dry shelf three-quarters hidden behind hanging stone pillars down which water dripped endlessly in a mournful cadence. There we would be hidden by stone in all directions, hidden by shadow, hidden by sleep. We shared the last of Windlow's herb and fixed our minds upon peace. Lost in the darkness of the place of tombs, we slept.

  12

  Mavin

  I woke to a clicking sound, a small, almost intimate sound in the vastness of that stone pillared cave. It reminded me of the death beetle we had often heard in the long nights in School House, busy in the rafters, the click, click, click timing the life of the Tower as might the ticking of a clock. I was still half asleep when I peered over the edge of the ledge we lay upon. The cavern drifted in pale light, mist strewn, and at the center of it a woman was sitting in a tall, wooden chair, knitting. She had not been there before. I had not heard her arrive. For the moment I thought it was a dream and pinched myself hard enough to bring an involuntary exclamation, half throttled. Silkhands heard it, wakened to it, sat up suddenly, saying, "What is it? Oh, what is it?" Then she, too, heard the sound and peered at the distant figure, her expression of blank astonishment mirroring my own.

  Before I could answer her, if I had had any answer to give, the woman looked up toward us and called, "You may as well come down. It will make conversation easier." Then she returned to her work, the needles in her hands flashing with a hard, metallic light. I stared away in the direction we had entered this vault. Nothing. All was silence, peace, no trumpets, no drums, no torches. Finally, I heaved myself down from the ledge and helped Silkhands as we climbed down to the uneven floor of the cave. The clicking was now interspersed with a creaking sound, the sound of the chair in which the woman sat, rocking to and fro. Once, long, long ago I had seen some such chair. I could not remember when. The yarn she used frothed between her hands as though alive, pouring from the needles in a flood which spread its loose loops over her knees and cascaded to the stone. The speed of her knitting increased to a whirling rattle, the creaking of the chair faster and faster,-like a bellows breathing, until she was finished all at once. She flung the completed work onto the stone before her where it lay like a pile of woolen snow.

  "What have you made?" asked Silkhands, doubtfully. I knew she was unable to think of anything else to say. I could think of nothing at all. The woman fixed us with great, inhuman eyes, yellow and bright as those of a bird.

  "I have knitted a Morfus, " she said in a deep voice. "Soon it will get up and go about its work, but just now it is resting from the pain of being created." The piled fabric before her shivered as she spoke, and I thought it moaned. "Would you care for some cabbage?" the woman asked.

  Silkhands said, "I would be very grateful for anything to eat, madam. I am very hungry." When she spoke, my mouth filled with saliva, even though I hated cabbage raw or cooked and always had. The woman found a cabbage somewhere beside herself in the chair and offered it. Silkhands tore off a handful of leaves.

  The woman said, "It is better than nothing. Although I do not like it as it is." She stared intently at the vegetable in her hand, turning it this way and that. It fuzzed before my eyes, fuzzed, misted, became a roasted fowl. The pile of fabric moaned once more, sat up, extended long, knitted tentacles and pushed itself erect. Vaguely manshaped, it swayed where it stood, featureless and without much substance. I could see through it in spots. An impatient snort from the woman brought my attention back to her. She had given the fowl to Silkhands.

  "Try this instead. Tell me if it tastes right."

  Silkhands tore a leg from the fowl and took a bit of it, wiping her face on her arm, nodding. "It tastes…only a little like cabbage."

  "Ah. Well, then, it's an improvement. Still, you could do much better, being a Healer, if that lazy youth would help you."

  "I don't understand," said Silkhands, remembering at last to offer me some of the fowl. "What do you mean, I could do better?"

  "Have you ever Healed a chicken?" the woman asked.

  "Never."

  "Ah. Well then, perhaps you could not do as well as I have done. If you had ever Healed a chicken, you would know how the flesh is made. And if that boy were to Read you as you thought about that, then he could change the cabbage far better than I have done."

  "Pardon, madam." I said. "But I have not that Talent."

  "Nonsense. You have all the Talents there are, from Dorn to Didir, or from Didir to Dorn, as the case may be. You have the Gamesmen of Barish, I know it. Even if I had not felt the spirit of Dorn moving in the corridors of the earth like
a waking thunder I would still have known. Was it not Seen? Was it not foretold? Why else am I here and are you where you are?"

  "The Garnesmen of Barish?" By this time I was certain that I still slept, dreaming in the high stone wall on the little ledge. "I don't know what you…"

  "These, " she flicked a knitting needle at me, catching the loop of my pouch and rattling the Gamesmen within it. ''These. You have already taken Dorn into being. Soon you must take others, or if not soon then late. By the seven hells, you're not afraid of them are you, boy?"

  "Afraid? Of them? Them…who?"

  "Witless, " she commented acidly, looking me over from head to foot as though she could not believe what she saw. "Witless and spitless, no more juice than a parsnip. By the seven hells, boy, you raised up the ancient Kings of Bannerwell. How did you think you did that? Did you perhaps whittle them up out of a bit of wood and your little knife? Or whistle them up like a wind? Or brew them, perhaps, like tea? How did you do it, gormless son of an unnamed creation? Hmmm? Answer me!"

  I was beginning to be very angry. As I grew wider awake and even slightly less hungry (the fowl was filling, though it did taste like cabbage), I became angrier by the moment. I was distracted, however, for at that moment the Morfus decided to do whatever it was a Morfus did. Moaning shrilly, it staggered off toward one side of the great cavern and began to climb the stone. It lurched and flapped like laundry upon a slack line, wavering and lashing itself upward.

  "At this rate, it'll never get there, " she commented as she took up the needles and the wool once more to pour out another long confusion of knitting upon her lap.

  "You haven't answered me, " she said. 'How did you think you raised them up, boy? By what means?"

  "I raised them up by using the pattern I found in one of the Gamespieces." I said, stiffly. "By accident."

  "No more by accident than trees grow by accident. Trees grow because it is their nature to do so. The Gamespieces of Barish were designed to have a nature of their own-to lie long hidden until a time when they would fall into the hands of one who could use them."

  There was a long pause and then she said in a slightly altered tone, "No. That is not quite correct. They would fall into the hands of one who would use them well. That is tricky. Perhaps a bit of fear and confusion would not be amiss under those circumstances." The knitting poured from her lap onto the floor and lay there, quivering. Then the knitted creature heaved itself upward to stagger toward its companion which still struggled upward against the far rock wall.

  Silkhands had been observing the woman narrowly, and now she seated herself at the knitter's feet and laid hand upon her knee. The woman started, then composed herself and smiled. "Ah, so you'd find out what goes on, would you, Healer? Well,, stay out of my head and the rest of me be thy play-pen. There's probably some work or other needs doing in there."

  "What are the Gamesmen of Barish?" I asked. "Please stop confusing me. I think you're doing it purposely, and it doesn't help me. Just tell me. What are the Gamesmen of Barish?"

  She rose, incredibly tall and thin, like a lath, I thought, then changed that thought. Like a sword, lean and keen-edged and pointed. She laughed as though she Read that thought; "Long ago, " she chanted, "in a time forgotten by all save those who read books, were two Wizards named Barish and Vulpas. You've* heard of them? Ah, of course. You've heard of them from the self-styled Historian." She laughed, almost kindly.

  "These two had a Talent which was rare. They called it Wisdom. Or, so it is said by some. They caused the Immutables, you know. They learned the true nature of the Talents. They codified many things which had been governed until then, in approximately equal parts, by convention and superstition. Those who lived by convention and superstition could not bear that matters of this kind be brought into the light, and so they sought out Barish and Vulpas with every intention of killing them.

  "Later the Guardians announced that Barish and Vulpas were dead. There was much quiet rejoicing. However, there are books which one may read today (if one knows where to find them) which were written by Barish and Vulpas many years after the Guardians announced their deaths. Could it be the Guardians lied? Who is to say. It was long ago, after all…"

  "The Gamesmen." I said firmly.

  "Barish claimed, " she went on, "that the pattern of a Talent-nay, of a whole personality, could be encoded into a physical object and then Read from that object as it could be Read in a man, by one with the ability to do so."

  "That would be utter magic," said Silkhands.

  "Some may say so, " the knitter said. "While others would say otherwise. Nonetheless, the books say that Barish made his claim manifest in the creation of a set of Gamesmen. There are eleven different pieces in the set, embodying, so it is written, the Talents of the forebears."

  "Why?" I breathed, ideas surging into my head all at once. "Why would he have done this thing? It's true, Silkhands. I know it's true. It was exactly like Reading a person. I felt Dorn, felt him sigh. It was he who raised the spectres up, not me. How terrible and wonderful. But why would he do it?" I babbled this nonsense while the knitter fixed me with her yellow eyes and the Morfuses clambered ever higher against the stones.

  "If Barish was able to code the Talents in this way, then he must also have been able to perceive them for himself. In which case, he would have perceived the Talent of Sorah, Seer. Perhaps through Sorah he saw something in the future. Who can say? It was very long ago. " .

  "You are saying that the Wizard did this thing long ago so that someone-Peter-could use these Talents now?" Silkhands seemed to be asking a question, but it was directed more at me than at the knitter, sounded more like a demand than a query. "So that Peter can use them," she repeated. What did she want me to do? Gamelords! She seemed to want something, Yarrel wanted something else, Mertyn another thing, Mandor something else again. While I…what in the name of the seven devils did I want? Nothing. I wanted to do nothing. Nothing at all. Doing things was frightening. Every time I had done anything at all decisive, I had been terrified,

  I said it to Silkhands, praying she would understand. "When I heard Dora sigh within me, I was afraid…"

  The knitter interrupted. "But you knew Dorn could control the Ghosts. You knew you could do it."

  "I knew someone could. Someone. But it didn't feel like me."

  "Aha, " she chortled, rocking so hard that the wood of the chair began to creak in ominous protest. "You felt you were someone else, did you? And when Grimpt cracked Grimpt's skull and put him down the oubliette? Hmmm? Who did that?"

  "No one knows about that." I said, horrified. "No one at all."

  "No one except those who do know about it. Watchers. Morfuses. Seers. Bitty things with eyes that peer from crannies and cracks."

  Silkhands said, "Who is Grimpt?"

  "Ann, shh, shh, we've upset him enough. Poor boy. All this Talent throbbing away at his fingertips and he doesn't know where to put his hands."

  What was I to say. She was right. I had the Talent in my mind or in the pouch at my belt to fling Mandor and all his house into the nethermost north, into the deepest gorge of the Hidamans. All I needed was a source of power great enough .. and even with ordinary power, the heat in the stone beneath me, I could summon up legions of the dead and was afraid to do so. "You've a poor tool in me." I said. "A poor tool indeed. Dorn terrified me. Sorah would probably petrify me. Why couldn't I have been a pawn, like Yarrel. I'd have been a good pawn, moved about by others…"

  "Better a poor tool than an evil one," she said. Then she reached out to touch me for the first time, and it was as though I had been lightning struck. "You've been too long in the nursery, boy. Too long with lads and dreamers and cooks. Come out, come out wherever you are! The cock crows morning, and the Great Game is toward! Play it or be swept from the board."

  From high above came a keening howl, a ghost noise, like wind down a chimney. We looked up to see the Morfuses' black shapes against a glow of sky. They had found a way out and
called to us of their discovery.

  "There it is," said the knitter. "The way out. You can go that way if you like. Sit on a pile of stone up there on Malplace Mountain and watch the Game. Or, you can go out through the funeral doors to the tombs, out with a host behind you." She was across the floor and up the wall like a spider, arms, legs, head all a blur as she moved toward those two figures high on the wall. "It's your choice, boy. Mothers should not force their young. It's bad for personal development .."

  "Who." I rasped, choking. "Who…who are you…"

  "Mavin Manyshaped, boy. Here to cheer you with two of your cousins."

  The Morfus shapes before the light flickered and changed before us. Now there were only two slim youths grinning down at us out of glittering eyes, flame-red hair, falling across their faces. Then they were out of the hole and gone, her behind them, so quickly gone there was 110 time to say anything. Mavin-Mother. And two Shapeshifter cousins, children, that meant, of Mavin's sister or sisters. And a way out. High and pure through that sunny hole came the sound of a trumpet calling "To Air, To Air" for the Armigers. A drum answered from a hillside, "Thawum, Thawum, " signal to the Tragamors, "move, move."

  "Oh, hells." I giggled hysterically. "Who is doing battie with whom? Is it Himaggery? Or the High King? Or merely some trickery of a Shapechanger who says she bore me…"

  Silkhands cried, "Oh, Peter, if you're going to go all sensitive and nervous, this isn't a good time for it at all."

  I screamed at her, screamed at her like a market stall woman or a mule driver, thrust her before me up the rocky slope until she was pushed half out of the opening, half laughing, half crying at me. "Be damned, Healer." I shouted at her. "It isn't you has to do the things you expect me to do. Go out there and watch the Game, you silly thing, you chatter-bird. Go, go out; out of here and leave me alone…"

  Then I tumbled back down the rock wall into the bottom of the cavern to lie face down on the stones, weeping miserably and feeling that never, never in my fifteen years of life had I been understood by anyone at all. After which I went and raised up the dead.