The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Dorn," I whispered. Before, I had been fearful. This time I was less so, and perhaps this accounted for my courtesy to him, as though he were my guest. I explained what we were to do, and he became my tutor.

  "Here and here," he said. "Thus and thus." My hand reached out, but it was Dorn who pointed the finger at the grass, Dorn who called the dust and bones within to rise. Mandor had not been long dead. The ground cracked and horror came forth, little by little, the worms dropping from it as it rose. I heard Riddle on the hill behind me choking back a gasp, whether awe or fear I could not tell.

  "Thus and thus," Dorn went on. "So and so."

  The bones became clad in flesh, the flesh in robes of state. The head became more than a skull, then was crowned once more, until at last what had been so horrible at the end of Mandor's. life became the beauty I had known in Schooltown, bright and lovely as the sun, graceful as grass, and looking at me from death's eyes.

  From this uncanny fetch came a cry of such eerie gladness that my heart chilled. "Whole," it cried in a spectral voice. "Oh, I am risen whole again"…

  I could have wept. This wholeness was not an intended gift, and yet .. it was one I would have made him during life if I had known how. "So and so," said with Dorn within me. "You could not have made him so or kept him so in life for any length of time."

  Riddle called from the hillside, reminding me of our purpose there. So I asked it, or Dorn did, of those strange crystalline contrivances which Riddle was so concerned about. The phantom seemed not to understand.

  "These are not things which Mandor knew. These are things of Huld. Playthings for Huld. Magicians made them. Huld understood them, not Mandor. Oh, Mandor, whole, whole again …"

  I heard Riddle cursing, then he called to me, "I'm sorry, Peter. Let the pathetic thing go back to its grave."

  But I was not ready to do that. I had remembered Mertyn's words concerning those who had vanished.

  'Mandor, do you speak with others where you are? Do the dead talk together?"

  The fetch stared at me with dead eyes, eyes in which a brief, horrible flame flickered, a firefly awareness, a last kindling.

  "In Hell's Maw," it screamed at me. "They speak, the dead who linger speak, before they fall to dust, in the pits. When all is dust, we go, we go.

  "Have you spoken to Himaggery?" I asked. "To Windlow the Seer?" I remembered the names of others Riddle had told me of and asked for them, but the apparition sighed no, no, none of these.

  Then it drew itself up and that brief flame lit the empty eyes once more. "Words come where Mandor is .. troubling all .. seeking those you seek .. not there .. not in the place .. Peter .. let me be whole, whole, whole."

  I sobbed to Dorn. "Let him be whole, Dorn, as he goes to rest." And so it was the phantom sank into the earth in the guise he had once worn, the kingly crown disappearing at last, in appearance as whole as he had been in Schooltown before his own treachery maimed him.

  And I was left alone, Dorn gone, Mandor gone, only Riddle standing high upon the rim as the wind sighed through the black firs and the grasses waved endless farewell on Mandor's grave. Inside me a small dam seemed to break, a place of swampy fear drained away, and I could turn to Riddle with my face almost calm to go with him back to the millhouse. He was no more given to talk than I, and we had a silent breakfast, both of us thinking thoughts of old anguish and, I believe, new understanding.

  When we had eaten he said, "Peter, I will go with you a way north. I have an errand in that general direction, and it is better never to travel alone. That is, if I am welcome and my own attributes will not inhibit your .. business."

  I laughed a little. "Riddle, my business is a simple one. I am going in search of my mother who has .. left word of her whereabouts in a place known as 'a city which fears the unborn.' All I know of the place is that it is north of here."

  "But, my boy, I know the place," he exclaimed. "Or, I should say, I've heard of it. It is the city of Betand, between the upper reaches of the Banner and .. what is the name of that river?.. well, another river to the west. I will go with you almost that far. My business will take me east at the wilderness pass."

  "Why is it called a city which fears the unborn?"

  "It seems to me I heard the story, but I've forgotten the details of it. Something to do with a haunting, some mischance by a wandering Necromancer. Your Talent is not generally loved, Peter, though I can see that it may be useful."

  He was being kind, and I helped him by changing the subject. I was glad enough of his company, gladder still when he proved to be a better cook than Chance and almost as good a companion as my friend Yarrel had been when we were friends. On the road we talked of a thousand things, most of them things I had wondered at for years.

  One of the things that became apparent was that the Immutables cared little for Gamesmen. Riddle's toleration of me and of a few others such as Himaggery was not typical. I asked him why they let Gamesmen exercise Talents at all, feeling as they did.

  "We are not numerous enough to do otherwise," he said. "There are fewer Immutables than there are Gamesmen, many fewer. We do not bear many children, our numbers remain small and our own skills remain unchanging through time.

  Immutable, as you would say. Each of us can suppress the Talent of any Gamesman for some distance around us. I can be safe from Demons Reading my thoughts or Armigers Flying from above, but I am not safe from an arrow shot from a distance or a flung spear, as you well know."

  I nodded. Tossa had died from an arrow wound.

  "So. those of us with the ability find it safer to band together in towns and enclaves with our own farms and crafters. Thus we can protect ourselves and our families from any danger save force of simple arms, and this we can oppose with arms of our own. We could be overrun, I suppose, if any group of Gamesmen chose to do so, but Gamesmen depend too much upon their Talents. Without the Talent of Beguilement, few if any of their Rulers would be able to lead men into battle. And, of course, the pawns will not fight us. They turn to us for help from time to time."

  "I would think all pawns would flock to you for protection."

  "We could not protect them. We are too few."

  "What do they want, you want, Riddle? The Immutables?"

  "We want what any people want, Peter. We want to feel secure, to live. We want to be free to admire the work of our own hands. Even Gamesmen do the same. Why else their 'schools' and their 'festivals'? The Gamesmen depend upon the pawns for labor, for the production of grain, fruit, meat. If we were numerous enough to protect the pawns, and if they came to us, then . . . then the Gamesmen would fight, even without their help."

  "They could till the soil themselves," I offered, somewhat doubtfully.

  "Would they?" asked Riddle. Both he and I knew the answer to that. Some few would. Some few probably did, out of preference. As for the others in their hundreds of thousands, they would rather die in battle than engage in "pawnish" behavior.

  So we rode together, I in the circle of his protection, he in the circle of fear which came with the Necromancer's garb. No one bothered us. There was little traffic upon the road in any case, and those we encountered left a long distance between themselves and us.

  "The things you found in Bannerwell," I asked. "Why are you so curious about them?"

  "I am curious about anything subtle and secret, Peter. It is difficult to keep secrets among Gamesmen. A powerful Demon can learn almost anything one knows, can dig out thoughts one does not know one has. How then are secrets kept? You would not deny that they are kept?"

  "One has one's own Demons to guard against thought theft by outsiders. One stays in one's own purlieus, in one's own Demesne. .

  "Ah, but walls of that kind can be breached, or sapped. No. Sometimes secrets are kept, even by those who go about the world in the guise of ordinary Gamesmen. There were secrets kept in Bannerwell. Someone there knew things that others do not. Huld, it seems. How did he manage that. . .

  "Do you know,"' he
went on, suddenly confidential, "as a child I envied the Gamesmen. Yes. I was much enamored of Sarah. A Seer. How wonderful to see the invisible, the inscrutable, the future .. how wonderful to know everything!"

  "I don't think that's quite how it works," I said, remembering old Windlow and his frustration at partial visions of uncertain futures.

  "Perhaps not. Still. There are many things I want to know. For example, does the name 'Barish' mean anything to you?" His tone was casual, but he watched me from the corner of his eye.

  I took a deep breath, hiding it, wondering what to say. "Barish? Why, it's a name from religion. A Wizard, wasn't he? Did something very secret and subtle-I forget what." I waited, scarcely able to breathe. "Is it a name I should know?"

  "Secret and subtle." He mused. "No. Everyone knows that much, and seemingly no one knows more than that." He smiled. "I am merely interested in secret and subtle things, and I ask those who may know. I have heard, recently, of this Barish."

  I turned my hand over to let his words run out. "I do not know, Riddle. You riddle me as you must riddle others. Do you always ask such questions?"

  "I talk to hear my voice, boy. I tie words on a journey as a woman ties ribbons on her hat."

  "Do they?" I asked, interested. "I have only seen ribbons on students' Tunics, come Festival."

  "Oh, well, Peter. You have not seen much." And with that, he lapsed into along, comfortable silence. It had rained betimes and we found lung-mushrooms all along the sides of fallen trees. Riddle cut away a nice bunch of them, glistening ivory in the dusk, and rolled them in meal to fry up for our supper. He told me about living off the countryside, more even than Yarrel had done. Riddle spoke of roots and shoots, berries and nuts, how to cook the curled fronds of certain ferns with a bit of smoked meat, how to bake earth-fruits in their skins by wrapping them first in the leaves of the rain-hat bush, then in mud, then burying the whole in the coals at evening to have warm and tender for the morrow's breakfast.

  Our road cut across country between loops of the River until the land began to rise more steeply. Then the River ran straight or in long jogs between outcroppings, plunging over these in an hysteria of white water and furious spray. Our horses climbed, and we strode beside them for part of each morning and each afternoon so they would not tire or become lame. Stone lanterns along the way began to appear, at first only broken, old ones. half crumbled to gravel, but later newer ones, and then ones lit with votive lights.

  "What are these?" I asked. "Burning good candles here in the daylight?"

  "Wards against the Gifters," said Riddle. "The people hereabouts are most wary of Gifters and what Gifts they may make to the unsuspecting."

  "Why have I never heard of them until now?"

  "Because students hear of very little." He did not make it a rebuke, but I was offended nonetheless.

  "We were taught morning to evening. They did nothing but teach us of things."

  "They did nothing but teach you of certain things," Riddle replied sternly. "And they told you nothing of other things. They told you nothing of the Gifters, though the world north of the Great Bowl goes in constant fear of them. You are told nothing of the nations and places of this world, but only of the small part you inhabit…

  "Riddle." I was caught up in a curious excitement. "Why do you say 'this world'? Do you believe it is true what the fablers say, that there are more worlds than this?"

  "There are stories of others. Not that the stories are necessarily true. But that's part of what I mean. In the Schools you are all taught so little about what really is and what may truly be."

  "Why would they do that? Why would my own thalan, for example, fail to teach me things I would need to know?"

  "Because they do not believe you do need to know," he replied in exasperation. "They think the least told, the least troubled. If you do not hear of the Northern Lands, you will not venture there. If you do not hear of Gifters, you will not fall prey to one. It is all arrant nonsense, of course. Pawner caravans pick up a hundred ignorant youths and carry them away north for every one who adventures there on his own. Gifters make between-meal bites of the naive, while the well-taught escape with their lives. I have even heard old Gamesmen speak with tears in their throats of the 'innocence' of youth. 'Innocence, indeed. They should say arrant ignorance and be done with it." He fumed for another league and I did not interrupt him, for I often learned much by letting him burble. Thus it was I did not ask him more about Gifters when I should have done.

  "There is a pawnish settlement in the south," he said at last, "in which they do not teach their children anything of sex. It is kept a great mystery. The belief of this sect is that this ignorance will keep their children from harm. As a result, they value virginity highly and it is virtually unknown among them."

  I did not believe this, but allowed it to stand unchallenged as we rode on. I didn't ask about Gifters, or the northlands, or anything else. Ah well. Yestersight is perfect, so they say.

  We had been several days on the road when we came to a rolling range of hills and began to track upward by repeated switch-backs, higher and higher, the way becoming more rocky and precipitous as we went. I was reminded a bit of the road from Windlow's House to Bannerwell, except that this one did not seem to run through wilderness. There were villages all along the way, cut into the sides of the mountains with meadows the size of handkerchiefs spread upon the ledges, and a constant procession of lanterns, little ones and big ones, never seeming to run out of candles. At last we came to a high pass at which the road split, one fork leading downward to the north, the other winding to the east among the crags.

  "Well," he said to me. "We are near Betand. We come to the parting of ways, Peter. I am thankful for your company thus far. If you will slit your eyes you will see the roofs of the city away to the northwest, and I wish you well in your journey."

  I was sorry to part from him. Truth to tell, I had never been really alone before the brief trip from Schooltown to Bannerwell, and I did not like it much. It was not fear I felt, but something else. A kind of lostness, of being singular of my kind. As though there were none near to greet me as fellow. Of course, the Necromancer's hood had much to do with that. Nonetheless, I had been grateful for his company and said so. We sat a time there on the pass, saying nothing much except to let one another know we would be less comfortable on the journey after we parted. At last, as I was about to run out of polite phrases and begin to choke, he patted me upon one shoulder.

  "I go east from here, to Kiquo, and to the high bridge only recently restored though it was eighty years ago in the great cataclysm that it fell. I go to seek mysteries, my boy. You go to seek mysteries of your own. Well, then, good journey and good chance to you." And he went away, not looking back, leaving me to press down the further slope toward the city I could see beneath me iii the westering sun of late afternoon.

  Smoke lay above it like a pall through which the towers reached, like the snouts of beasts seeking upward for air. My eyes watered, just looking at it. If there were not wind before evening, it would be thick as soup in that bowl which held the city of Betand, the City which Fears the Unborn.

  3

  Perlplus

  It took several hours to reach the city, and a wind had come softly from the north to greet me as I rode by the outskirts of the place, inns and caravansaries, stables and eating houses, taverns and stews. I decided to have a meal before entering the city. There was a place there called the Devil's Uncle, and it seemed as good as any other from the point of cleanliness and better than most from its smell. The stable boy took my beast without making any signs at all, which I took either as a sign of sophistication or of total ignorance. Either many Necromancers came here or none did. It did not matter much which.

  Once within, I saw a few curious faces, one or two down- turned mouths, but no ward-of-evil signs. I ordered wine and roast fowl and a dish of those same stewed ferns Riddle had fed me on the outward journey, evidently a local delicacy. They
were not laggard with the food, nor was I in eating it. No one there paid me much attention until I was almost finished and had only half a glass left in the jug. Then a wide-mouthed Trader sat opposite me and showed me his palms. I raised mine courteously, and let him talk.

  "Laggy Nap, fellow-traveler," he greeted me. "Trader by Talent, philosopher by inclination. What brings one so young and horridsome to the city of Betand?"

  I did not know whether to be offended, which I was, or pretend to be amused. I chose the latter as having the lesser consequence.

  "Merely one who would travel through Betand on his way to somewhere else," I said. At which he laughed, repeating my remark to some others who also laughed. I supposed there was something entertaining in the intent to travel through Betand, so ordered wine for those around and asked, all innocence, if the city were accounted so amusing by all who went there.

  "Oh, sir." said the Trader, "it is my amusement to ask new wanderers whether they intend to go through Betand, and then to offer them a meal at my expense at the Travelers' Joy, which is on the other side of the city. You can tell me then whether you were amused, and I will be entertained by your account." He fixed a glittering eye upon me, seeming to look further than I would have wished. He was a man with down-slanting brows and deep furrows between his eyes, wide-mouthed, as I have said, with a long, angry-looking nose against which his eyes snuggled a bit too closely. His eyes belied his mouth, the one being all motion and laughter while the others were cold and full of accounts.

  "You do not wish to tell me why I will be.. amused?" I asked him. He merely chuckled, elbowed some of those around him, and together they engaged in laughter of a mocking sort. Almost my hand sought Dorn in the pouch at my belt, but I decided against it. No point in stirring up trouble. I took my leave of them and went on toward the walls, a gaping gate full of torchlight before me.