The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  It was true that Traders seemed to take up more time than their merchandise was worth, and true that Himaggery seemed to spend a great deal of time talking with them. I wasn't thinking of that, however, but of the choice of routes which confronted us. We could go up the eastern side of the Middle River, through the forests east of the Gathered Waters and the lands of the Immutables. Chance and I had come that way before, though not intentionally. This time I chose the western side of the River, through farmlands and meadowlands wet with spring floods and over a hundred hump-backed, clattering bridges. There was little traffic in any direction; woodwagons moving from forest to village, water oxen shuffling from mire to meadow, a gooseherd keeping his hissing flock in order with a long; blossomy wand. Along the ditches webwillows whispered a note of sharp gold against the dark woodlands, their downy kit- tens ready to burst into bloom. Rain breathed across windrows of dried leaves, greening now with upthrust grasses and the greeny-bronze of curled fern. There was no hurry in our going. I was sure Himaggery had sent an Elator to let Mertyn know I was on the way.

  That first day we saw only a few pawns plowing in the fields, making the diagonal ward-of-evil sign when they saw me but willing enough to sell Chance fresh eggs and greens for all that. The second day we caught up to a party of merchants and trailed just behind them into Vestertown where they and we spent the night at the same inn. They no more than the pawns were joyed to see me, but they were traveled men and made no larger matter of my presence among them. Had they known it, they had less to fear from me than from Chance. I would take nothing from them but their courtesy, but Chance would get them gambling if he could. They were poorer next day for their night's recreation, and Chance was humming a victory song as we went along the lake in the morning light.

  The Gathered Waters were calm and glittering, a smiling face which gave no indication of the storms which often troubled it. Chance reminded me of our last traveling by water, fleeing before the wind and from a ship full of pawners sent by Mandor of Bannerweli to capture me.

  "I don't want to think about that," I told him. "And of that time."

  "I thought you was rather fond of that girl," he said. "That Immutable girl."

  "Tossa. Yes. I was fond of her, Chance, but she died. I was fond of Mandor, too, once, and he is as good as dead, locked up in Bannerwell for all he is Prince of the place. It seems the people I am fond of do not profit by it much."

  "Ahh, that's nonsense, lad. You're fond of Silkhands, and she's Gaxnesmistress down in Xammer now, far better off than when you met her. Windlow, too. You helped him away from the High King, Prionde, and I'd say that's better off. It was the luck of the Game did Tossa, and I'm sorry for it. She was a pretty thing."

  "She was. But that was most of a year ago, Chance. I grieved over her, but that's done now. Time to go on to something else."

  "Well, you speak the truth there. It's always time for something new."

  So we rode along, engaged at times in such desultory conversation, other times silent. This was country I had not seen before. When I had come from Bannerwell to the Bright Demesne after the battle, it had been across the purlieus rather than by the long road. In any case, I had not been paying attention then.

  We came to the River Banner very late on the third day of travel, found no inn there but did find a ferrymaster willing to have us sleep in the shed where the femes were kept. We hauled across at first light, spent that night camped above a tiny hamlet no bigger than my fist, and rode into Schooltown the following noon.

  Somehow I had expected it to be changed, but it was exactly the same: little houses humped up the hills, shops and Festival halls hulking along the streets, cobbles and walls and crooked roofs, chimneys twisting up to breathe smoke into the hazy sky, and the School Houses on the ridge above. Havad's House, where Mandor had been Gamesmaster. Dorcan's House across the way. Bilme's House, where it was said Wizards, were taught. Mertyn's House where my thalan was chief Gamesmaster, where I had grown up in the nurseries to be bullied; by Karl Pig-face and to love Mandor and to depart. A sick, sweet feeling went through me, half nausea, half delight, together with the crazy idea that I would ask Mertyn to let me stay at the House, be a student again. Most students did not leave until they were twenty-five. I could have almost a decade here, in the peace of Schooltown. I came to myself to find Chance clutching my horse's bridle and staring at me in concern.

  "What is it, boy? You look as though you'd been ghost bit."

  "Nothing." I laughed, a bit unsteadily. "A crazy idea, Brother Chance."

  "You haven't called me that since we left here."

  "No. But we're back, now, aren't we? Don't worry, Chance. I'm all right." We turned the horses over to a stable pawn and went in through the small side door beside the kitchens. It was second nature to do so, habit, habit to remove my hat, to go off along the corridor behind Chance, habit to hear a familiar voice rise tauntingly behind me.

  "Why, if it isn't old Fat Chance and Prissy Pete, come back to go to School with us again."

  I stopped dead in savage delight. So, Karl Pig-face was still here. Of course he was still here, along with all his fellow tormentors. He had not seen my face. Slowly I put the broad black bat upon my head, turned to face them where they hovered in the side corridor, lips wet and slack with anticipation of another bullying. I was only a shadow to them where I stood. I shook Chance's restraining hand from my shoulder, moved toward the lantern which hung always just at that turning.

  "Yes, Karl," I whispered in Dora's voice. "It is Peter come to School again, but not with you." Stepping into the light on the last word, letting them see the death's-head mask, hearing the indrawn breath, the retching gulp which was all Karl could get out. Then they were gone, yelping away like whipped pups, away to the corridors and attics. I laughed silently, overcome.

  "That wasn't nice," said Chance sanctimoniously.

  "Aaah, Chance." I poked him in his purse, where the merchants' coins still clinked fulsomely. "We have our little failings, don't we? It was you who told me to travel as a Necromancer, Chance. I cannot help it if it scares small boys witless." My feelings of sick sweet nostalgia had turned to ones of delighted vengeance. Karl might think twice before bullying a smaller boy again. I planned how, before I left, I might drive the point home.

  In order to reach Mertyn's tower room we had to climb past the schoolrooms, the rooms of the other Masters. Gamesmaster Gervaise met us on the landing outside his own classroom, and he knew me at once, seeming totally unawed by the mask.

  "Peter, my boy. Mertyn said you'd be coming to visit. He's down in the garden, talking to a tradesman just now. Come in and have wine with me while you wait for him. Come in, Chance. I have some of your favorite here to drown the dust of the road. I remember we had trouble keeping it when you were here, Chance. No less trouble now, but it's I who drink it." He led us through the cold classroom where the Gamemodel swam in its haze of blue to his own sitting room, warm with firelight and sun. "Brrrr." He shivered as he shut the door. "The older I get, the harder it becomes to bear the cold of the game model. But you remember. All you boys have chapped hands and faces from it."

  I shivered in sympathy and remembrance, accepting the wine he poured. "You always had us work with the model when it was snowing out, Master Gervaise. And in the heat of summer, we never did."

  "Well, that seems perverse, doesn't it? It wasn't for that reason, of course. In the summer it's simply too difficult to keep the models cold. We lock them away down in the ice cellar. It will soon be too warm this year. Not like last season where winter went on almost to midsummer." He poured wine for himself, sat before the fire. "Now, tell me what you've been doing since Bannerwell. Mertyn told me all about that." He shook his head regretfully. "Pity about Mandor. Never trusted him, though. Too pretty."

  I swirled my glass, watching the wine swirl into a spiral and climb the edges. "I haven't been doing much."

  "No Games?" He seemed surprised.

  "No, sir. Th
ere is very little Gaming in the Bright Demesne."

  "Well, that comes with consorting with Wizards. I told Mertyn you should get out, travel a bit, try your Talent. But it seems you're doing that." He nodded and sipped. "Strange are the Talents of Wizards. That's an old saying, you know. I have never known one well, myself. Is Himaggery easy to work with?"

  "Yes, sir. I think he is. Very open. Very honest."

  "Ah." He laid a finger along his nose and winked. "Open and honest covers a world of strategy, no doubt. Well. Who would have thought a year ago you would manifest such a Talent as Necromancy. Rare. Very rare. We have not had a student here in the last twenty years who manifested Necromancy."

  "There are Talents I would have preferred," I said. Chance was looking modestly at his feet, saying nothing. This fact more than anything else made me cautious. I had been going to say that Necromancy was not my own or only Talent, but decided to leave the subject alone.

  "I don't think I even have a Gamespiece of a Necromancer," he said, brow furrowed. "Let me see whether I do. He was up, through the door into the classroom. I followed him as seemed courteous. He was rooting about in the cold chest which housed the Gamespieces, itself covered with frost and humming as its internal mechanism labored to retain the cold. "Armigers," he said. "Plenty of Armigers. Seers, Shifters, Rancelmen, Pursuivants, quite an array here. Minor pieces; Totem, Talisman, Fetish. Here's an Afrit, forgotten I had that. Here's a whole set of air serpents, Dragon, Firedrake, Colddrake, all in one box. Well. No Necromancer. I didn't think I had one."

  I picked up a handful of the little Gamespieces, dropped them quickly as their chill bit my fingers. They were the same size as the ones I carried so secretly, perhaps less detailed. Under the frost, I couldn't be sure. "Gamesmaster Gervaise," I asked, "where do you get them? I never thought to ask when I was a student, but where do they come from?"

  "The Gamespieces? Oh, there's a Demesne of magicians, I think, off to the west somewhere, where they are fashioned. Traders bring them. Most of them are give-aways, lagniappe when we buy supplies. I got that set of air serpents when I bought some tools for the stables. Give-aways, as I said."

  "But how can they give them away? To just anyone? How could they be kept cold?"

  Gervaise shook his head at me. "No, no, my boy. They don't give Gamespieces to anyone but Gamesmasters. Who else would want them? They do it to solicit custom. They give other things to other people. Some merchants I know receive nice gifts of spices, things from the northern jungles. All to solicit custom." He patted the cold chest and led the way back to Chance. The level of wine in the bottle was considerably lower, and I smiled. He gave me that blank, "Who, me?" stare, but I smiled nonetheless.

  "I hear Mertyn's tread on the stairs," I said. "I take leave of you, Gamesmaster Gervaise. We will talk again before I leave." And we bowed ourselves out, onto the stair. I said to Chance, "You were very silent."

  "Gervaise is very talkative among his colleagues, among the tradesmen in the town, among farmers. . . ." Chance said. "You may be sure anything you said to him will be repeated thrice tomorrow."

  "Ah," I said. "Well, we gave him little enough to talk of."

  "That's so," he agreed owlishly. "As is often best. You go up to Mertyn, lad. I'm for the kitchens to see what can be scratched up for our lunch."

  So it was I knocked on Mertyn's door and was admitted to his rooms by Mertyn himself. I did not know quite what to say. It was the first time I had seen him in this place since I had learned we were thalan. I have heard that in distant places there are some people who care greatly about their fathers. It is true here among some of the pawns. My friend Yarrel, for example. Well, among Gamesmen, that emotion is between thalan, between male children and mother's full brother; between female children and mother's full sister. Here is it such a bond that women who have no siblings may choose from among their intimate friends those who will stand in such stead. But our relationship, Mertyn's and mine, had never been acknowledged within this house.

  He solved it all for me. "Thalan," he said, embracing me and taking the cloak from my shoulders. "Here, give me your hood, your mask. Pfah! What an ugly get-up. Still, very wise to wear it. Chance's choice, no doubt? He was always a wary one. I did better than I knew when I set him to watch over you."

  I was suddenly happy, contented, able to smile full in his face without worrying what he would say or think when I told him why I came. "Why did you pick Chance?" I asked.

  "Oh, he was a rascal of a sailor, left here by a boat which plied up and down the lakes and rivers to the Southern Seas. I liked him. No nonsense about him and much about survival. So, I said, you stay here in this House as cook or groom or what you will, but your job is to watch over this little one and see he grows well."

  "He did that," I said.

  "He did that. Fed you cookies until your eyes bulged. Stood you up against the bullies and let you fight it out. Speaking of which, I recall you often had a bit of trouble with Karl? Had a habit of finding whatever would hurt the most, didn't he?"

  "Oh," I said and laughed bitterly, "he did, indeed. Probably still does."

  "Does, yes. Early Talent showing there. Something to do with digging out secrets, finding hidden things. Unpleasant boy. Will be no less unpleasant in the True Game I should think. Well, Chance stood you up to him."

  "I'm grateful to you for Chance," I said. "I . . . I understand why you did not call me thalan before."

  "I didn't want to endanger you, Peter. If it had been known you were my full sister's son, some oaf would have tried to use you against me. Some oaf did it anyhow, though unwittingly." He sat silent for a moment. "Well, lad, what brings you back to Mertyn's House? I had word you were coming, but no word of the reason."

  "I want to find Mavin."

  "Ah. Are you quite sure that is what you want to do?"

  "Quite sure."

  "I'll help you then, if I can. You understand that I do not know where she is?"

  I nodded, though until that moment I had hoped he would tell me where to find her. Still.

  He went on, "If I knew where she was, any Demon who wanted to find her could simply Read her whereabouts in my head and pass the word along to whatever Gamesman might be wanting to challenge her. No. She's too secret an animal for that. She gives me sets of directions from time to time. That's all. If I need to find her, I have to try to decipher them."

  "But you'll tell me what they are?"

  "Oh, I've written down a copy for you. She gave them to me outside Bannerwell, where we were camped on Havajor Dike. You remember the place? Well, she came to my tent that night, after the battle, and gave them to me. Then she pointed away north—which is important to remember, Peter, north—and then she vanished."

  "Vanished?"

  "Went. Away. Slipped out of the tent and was gone. Took the shape of an owl and flew away, for all I know. Vanished."

  "Doesn't she ever stay? You must have grown up together as children?"

  "Oh, well, by the time I was of an age to understand anything, she was almost grown, already Talented. Still, I remember her as she was then. She was very lovely in her own person, very strange, liking children, liking me, others my age. She did tricks and changes for us, things to make us laugh.

  "And she brought me to you?"

  "Yes. When you were only a toddler. She said she had carried you unchanging, and nursed you, unchanging, all those long months never changing, so that you would have something real to know and love. But the time had come for you to be schooled, and she preferred for some reason not to do that among Shifters. I never knew exactly why, except that she felt you would learn more and be safer here. So, she brought you here to me, in Mertyn's House, and I lied to everyone. I said you were Festival-get I'd found wrapped in a blanket on the doorstep. Then I tried never to think about you when there were Demons about."

  "And I never knew. No one ever knew."

  "No. I was a good liar. But not a good Gamesman. I couldn't keep you away from
Mandor."

  "He beguiled me," I mused. "Why me? There were smarter boys, better-looking boys."

  "He was clever. Perhaps he noticed something, some little indication of our relationship. Well. It doesn't matter now. You're past all that. Mandor is shut up in Bannerwell, and you want to find Mavin Manyshaped. It will be difficult. You'll have to go alone."

  I had not considered that. I had assumed Chance would go with me wherever I went.

  "No, you can't take Chance.

  Mavin may make it somewhat easier for you to find her, but she will not trust anyone else. Here," he said and handed me a fold of parchment. "I've written out the directions."

  Periplus of a city which fears the unborn.

  Hear of a stupration incorporeal.

  In that place a garment defiled

  and an eyeless Seer.

  Ask him the name of the place from which he came

  and the way from it.

  Go not that way.

  Befriend the shadows and beware of friends.

  Walk on fire but do not swim in water.

  Seek Out sent-far's monument, but do not look upon it.

  In looking away, find me.

  "It makes no sense," I cried, outraged. "No sense at all!"

  "Go to Havajor Dike," he said soothingly. "Then north from there. She would not have made the directions too difficult for either of us, Peter. She does not want to be lost forever, only very difficult to find. You'll be able to ravel it out, line by line. There is only one caution I must give you."

  He waited until he saw that he had my full attention, then made his warning, several times. "Do not go near Pfarb Durim. If you go to the north or northwest, do not go near that place, nor near the place they call Poffle which is, in truth, known as Hell's Maw." He patted me on the shoulder, and when I asked curious questions, as he must have known I would, said, "It is an evil place. It has been evil for centuries. We thought it might change when old Blourbast was gone, but it remains evil today. Mavin would not send you near it—simply avoid it!" And that was all he would say about that.