The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "Buinel," I shouted at the top of my voice, startling a flight of birds out of the trees around us, "if you do not set fire to the Ghoul and to all the liches in this tree, we are dead and you with us."

  Something happened. I think it was Tamor, the pattern of Tamor, though it may have been Hafnor. Some pattern in my head issued a command, said something harsh and peremptory to the pattern which was Buinel, and the tree behind the Ghoul burst into flame, all at once, like a torch. The Ghoul turned, startled, but not too startled to begin storing the power of flame. Shattnir was in my hand in the instant drawing from the same source. "More," I demanded. "By the ice and the wind and the seven devils, Buinel, more fire. Burn these liches at my feet." For another of the corpses had reached to lay hands upon me. The cerements on the creature began to smoke, the very bones began to glow and it dropped away silently as other trees went up in explosive conflagration. Meantime, Shattnir and the Ghoul fought it out for the available heat. There was more than was comfortable.

  The Ghoul sent up a clamor, "Allies, allies!" into the roar of the flames. I thought I heard a Herald's trumpet away somewhere and turned to catch a sudden dazzle of light reflected off something, but I could not see it and could not wait. I had enough power by then to lift the women and flutter away, through the columned forest like a crippled bat, bumping and sliding across branches in a search for water. Behind me I could hear the Ghoul screaming, and I muttered "Ghoul's Ghast Ten," to myself. "Move and Game." I had never planned to die as Armiger's Flight Ten in a strange wood, eaten by liches. But it had been close.

  We found a little islet in a pond, and there Silkhands Healed our burns. I drew more power and Searched as the fire burned in all directions, wider and hotter. It would stop at the river on the south, and there were only flat fields to the east, but it would burn long to the north and west unless some sensible Tragamors brought in clouds and wrung them out. I could do nothing about it alone, chose not to in any case, for I wanted to see who ran before those flames. Twice I caught that dazzle of light, but I could find no one. Whoever it might have been had flown away. At last I gave up and returned to the women.

  They had made a couch of grasses behind some fallen trees. All three of us lay there in the late afternoon sun to let it quiet us. Later I was to think it strange that I did not inquire what Talent the girl, Jinian, had. Silkhands had not mentioned the matter in my hearing. If she had had any headdress, it had been lost in the attack. In any case, I did not ask and she did not offer. She did ask to borrow my knife in order to set a snare, but I told her I would furnish a meal before I left them to go away and arrange our farther travel. I did it by Shifting into pombi shape and murdering some foolish farm poultry who had wandered into the woods to brood. While the fowl popped over the flames, we spoke of alternatives. I could have gone back to Xammer to procure horses, supplies, a replacement carriage, even guards and servants. We chose not to do so. Instead, when we had eaten, I Shifted myself into a middling ordinary human shape and went off to find some settlement where goods and beasts would be available.

  After that was only a weary time of looking and bargaining and going elsewhere for this thing and that thing which no one, ever, would have thought of having when and where it might be wanted or convenient to any other thing which might have been wanted. The evening spent itself into night and the night into morning. It was noon the following day before I led Silkhands and Jinian out of the trees to see what I had accomplished.

  "By the pain of Dealpas," said Silkhands reverently, "I have never seen such a tumbletrundle in my life."

  I nodded, pleased. The wagon did look as though it might fall apart at any moment, but it would not. I had fixed certain parts of it myself. The animals hitched to it were probably mostly water oxen, though the parentage of either could have been questioned. They were large, ugly, and looked too tough to tempt hunters, too rough to tempt thieves. The clothing in the wagon was of a kind with the rest, ugly and boring.

  "No one would want it," said Jinian. I cast her a quick look, thinking it a pity she was so plain-looking, for she had a perceptive mind. "Exactly," I said. "Now we must make sure that no one would want any of us, either."

  I believed that we succeeded. Time would prove, the occasion would tell, but we had certainly changed the conditions of our travel more than a little. No one would be interested in the old man or either of the two mabs at his side. All three had dirty faces and gap-toothed smiles. The girls' teeth were blackened out with tar; from an armslength away they appeared to be missing. When evening came of this day after I had left Chance, we were on the Great North Road once more, only a little north of the Boundary bridge. Looking back at it, I sighed. We had spent much time and effort coming a very small way, and there were still twenty leagues between us and Three Knob.

  I had only one real satisfaction. The episode with the Ghoul had decided me firmly and finally that Huld was responsible. The earlier episode with the Witch might have been Riddle's doing, but it was Huld who set Bonedancer and Ghoul upon my trail. He had made a fool's call once, in the ice caverns. He had called Necromancer Nine on me, but he could not Play to fulfill it. Now, he was determined to fulfill it, to fulfill it in a way I could not mistake, using Ghoul and Bonedancer, Rancelman and Exorcist-all of them with Necromantic Talents. I had used the dead against Mandor and Huld; now he would use them against me to the death. He had underestimated me before and again this latest time, though not by much. He still did not know what I was or could do.

  It was rare to find Gamesmen who did many things well. Sometimes there are children born who, when they reach puberty, seem to have bits and pieces of many Talents. Often they turn into ineffectual idiots who sit in the sun playing with themselves, endlessly moving one stone atop another or floating a handswidth above the earth or porting tiny distances around a circle to the accompaniment of loud laughter. Having more than four or five different abilities seemed to carry destruction with it. Minery Mindcaster was sometimes called a twinned Talent. The way we had all learned to think about Talents made it easier to accept her as being a combination Pursuivant and Afrit than simply as having seven separate Talents. I, who had all eleven chose I to use them, would not be thought of as a possibility by Huld. Not yet. He had known me first as Necromancer, and he was stuck with that notion for some time. Perhaps he knew me as Shifter, but I thought not. He had seen me fly in the ice caverns, but did he think it was my own ability or that some Tragamor lurked out of sight and Moved me? When I blasted out the barrier Huld had set across the exit to that place, did he know I had done it, or did he think some Sorcerer was involved? If he thought I had done it, then he was judging me as an Afrit, for these were the Afrit Talents.

  However, he was not a fool. He might be misled for a time. His Bonedancer and his Rancelman had not found me on the road. His Ghoul was dead. Nonetheless, Huld was an implacable enemy who grew stronger and more clever with time. Could I lay all my powers down in the northlands and confront him with nothing… ? Nothing but myself? Inside me I whimpered and cowered until at last I was sickened at myself. I had been more courageous at Bannerwell than I was being now, and I reflected that a little taste of power could take a reasonably sensible person and make some kind of groveling, cringing thing of him.

  5

  Three Knob

  I HAVE SAID that the land to the east of the Gathered Waters is flat. It was no less flat and unenlivening the second time I traveled it in the space of a few days. The pace of the water oxen may have been as much as a league an hour, when they hurried, which they were inclined to do only toward evening when it grew cool and they sensed water ahead. I had coached both Jinian and Silkhands in the use of jiggly rhymes or songs should any Demon or other Talent with Reading skills come by, and I had set myself a persona, Old Globber, in expectation of some such event. As a matter of fact, one Demon did ride by toward dusk of the second day. So far as I could tell, he cast not even a passing look toward us. We were, indeed, very unattractive.
>
  Boredom began to oppress us early. In midafternoon of the second day, Silkhands and Jinian began to share confidences concerning their emotions and feelings toward those of my sex, and I found myself alternately titillated and embarrassed by their frankness, finally being made so uncomfortable that I sought some way to change the subject. Some idea had been fluttering at the back of my head for several days, and I thought the little book in which Windlow had set such store might net it for me.

  "Jinian," I said, thrusting my request into a brief niche in their conversation, "I have something I've been studying, a little book. Would you read it to me?" She said she would, though I could tell that she was surprised at the request. I dug out the Onomasticon and gave it to her. My hope was that hearing it in another voice might let the words fall into some pit of comprehension. Thus Jinian, and when she tired, perhaps Silkhands.

  "Shall I start at the beginning?" She was doubtful, having dipped into it and found little sense there.

  "Pick a page," I said. "At the beginning, or anywhere. There is supposed to be some deep meaning or content in these pages, so an old friend of Silkhands and mine thought. However, I've been unable to find the key to it. Perhaps you'll find it for me."

  She began. " `When the Wizard returns for the ninth or tenth time, there will be much work to do.." She stared at the page, then turned to me. "Which Wizard is that?"

  "Barish, I suppose," I said. "You've heard it. So have I. People saying, `When Barish returns.' I heard one codger in a market say he would drop his prices at the twelfth coming of Barish."

  She nodded thoughtfully and went on. " `The greater power these Gamesmen have, the more they are corrupted… yet there are still some born in every generation with a sense of justice and the right… so few when compared to the others. I would that they become many!' And I say so-be-it to that," said Jinian. "I would there were more like you, Peter, and Silkhands, and fewer like that Ghoul."

  I think I may have flushed, conscious as I was of my own struggles to perceive and do the right. Gamelords! It is not hard to risk your life when you have nothing to live for, but it is a hard thing when life is sweet. I tried to catch Silkhands' eyes, hoping for a lover's glance from her, but her eyes were closed and she breathed as though asleep. Jinian went on reading, unaware.

  " `In the meantime, Festivals will provide opportunity for reproduction by young people… School Houses will protect them… I fear that those at the Base have lost all touch with reality. They are breeding monsters in those caverns and they do not come into the light…

  " `I have met some of the native inhabitants of this place. How foolish to think there were none. They leave us untroubled in this small space but will not do so forever…

  " `I have set this great plan… a thousand years in the carrying out… centuries of the great contract between us and the people we have set to guard us

  "Read that last part again," I said to her.

  " `… a thousand years in the carrying out. It will depend upon a hundred favorable chances, the grace and assistance of fate and those who dwelt in the place before we came, and the perpetuation through the centuries of the great contract between us and the people we have set to guard us.' "

  "Nothing ponderous about that," I said in an attempt to be witty. "Lords, but the man took himself seriously."

  "What man? Who wrote this? I thought at first it was printed, like some books, but someone wrote it by hand in tiny printing in old style letters. In places it's all smudged, as though the person was tired or confused." She thrust it at me, pointing with one strong finger, and I saw what she meant. Over the years the ink had faded and the paper discolored to make the whole monochromatic and dim. Her question triggered that evasive thought which flickered at the edge of my mind. It was too late; we were too weary. I could hardly see the road verge, much less the pages in the failing light.

  "I believe Barish wrote it," I said. "A kind of diary of his thoughts? Though why such a diary should now be considered so important is beyond me. Windlow the Seer searched for this book for decades and read it constantly once he had found it, searching in it for-what? Right now I believe the Immutables are searching for this book. Perhaps others search for it as well. Oh, it's an important book, I'm sure. If I could only find out why. I thought hearing it in your voice might help, but the solution won't come…"

  And then, while Silkhands dozed, I told Jinian all that I knew or guessed about. this book and about the Gamesmen of Barish while she asked sensible, penetrating questions in a manner which reminded me much of Himaggery on his better days. In the dusk her face had a pale, translucent quality, a kind of romantic haziness, and I remembered I had thought her plain before. Though what was it Chance always said? Any hull looks sound in the dark? Well, her hull was sound enough, dark or light.

  "Windlow said something about words changing their meaning over time," I told her. "He said that if we knew the words, then we would know what things once meant-or words to that effect. He mentioned, for example, that in this book the word `Festival' meant `opportunity for reproduction,' and he said that was important. I don't know why."

  She was a sober little person, very serious and intent. When she considered things, two narrow lines appeared between her eyes and her mouth turned down as though she chewed on the idea. It made me want to laugh to see her so earnest with the dirt on her face and her teeth blacked out. It was as though she had forgotten how she looked. Silkhands had not. Every time she wakened, she made some petulant remark about it.

  "It is true that powerful Gamesmen are careless of the lives of others," Jinian offered. "We all know that, of course. It's part of the Game. So if we did not have School Houses, then young people without Talent yet, or those who don't know how to use their Talents, would be eaten in the Game in great numbers. And if they were shut up always in School Houses, then they would not have babies. We were taught at Vorbold's House that it is easiest for women to bear children when they are youngthe women, I mean, not the babies. So, when women are young, they are in School Houses, and if they must have babies then, we must have Festivals. Otherwise there would be few babies and everything would stop." She sighed. "If Barish wrote this, he is saying that School Houses and Festivals are necessary, and further he is saying that he, personally, has invented both. But-that was so long ago. It is a very old book."

  "Very," I murmured. "Very old. What was that bit about the native inhabitants?"

  She did not answer for some time. I thought she had gone to sleep. I thought of going to sleep myself. The water oxen were now plodding along in starlight, and we had to give serious consideration to stopping for the night so they could browse and we could eat and sleep, preparatory to our mad gallop into tomorrow behind the faithful team. When Jinian spoke at last it was conversation extended into dream.

  "Did you ever hear the story of faithful-dog?" she asked. I nodded that I had. It was a nursery tale. "Did you ever see a dog?"

  "It's just another word for fustigar," I said sleepily.

  "No it isn't," she said. "In the story of faithful-dog, the dog wags his tail, his tail, you know? Remember? Fustigars can't wag their tails. They don't have tails."

  "Well, maybe at one time they did," I objected. I had never thought of that, though indeed the old story did have a wagging tail in it. That was the point of the story for children, for it was the wag of our bottoms as we acted it out which made it fun.

  "Pombis don't have tails," she continued. "Cats do. Mice do. Owls and hawks do, but flitchhawks don't. Horses do. But zellers don't."

  "We don't," I said.

  "I know. That's what's confusing, because I think we belong with cats and horses and faithful-dog. But we don't have tails and they all do. Anyhow, it's as though there are two kinds of animals and birds and creatures, one kind from here and one kind from somewhere else. Only I don't know if we're the kind from here or the kind from somewhere else. Do you?"

  In the place of the magicians, I had learned an answer to t
his. "We're from somewhere else." She accepted this, as she did almost everything I said, very soberly. "The shadowpeople are from here, however. And they have no tails."

  "Have you seen them?" She was as excited as a child seeing the Festival Queen for the first time. I told her I had seen them, and what they were like, and she laughed when I told her of their songs, their flutes, their dances, their huge eyes and wide, winged ears, their appetite for rabbits (which have tails) and bunwits (which don't). I told her of their language, the sound of them crying "Peter, eater, ter ter ter," in the caverns of the firehills. The water oxen had found a convenient wallow at the side of the road where a canal spilled into a little slough, and they refused to plod another step. I shook Silkhands awake, and we burned charcoal in the clay stove I had bought to heat our food. Somewhere to the north of us a shuddering growl came out of the earth, and we felt the vibrations under us. "Groles," said Silkhands. "Have you ever seen them, Peter?"

  I told her I had not, though I had heard the roar often as a child when I had lived in Mertyn's House.

  "Sausage groles?" asked Jinian eagerly, and both Silkhands and I laughed.

  "No. Rockeaters. From Three Knob. For sausage groles, one must go on up to Learner, where the Nutters live. Only rockeaters make that noise, and there will be no fustigars or pombis within sound of it, for it drives them away."

  "Do they have tails?" This from Jinian, so sleepily that I knew she would not hear the answer. And she did not, making a little sighing noise which told me she was asleep. I covered her with a blanket and let her lie where she was. The ground was at least as soft as the wagon bed, and probably cleaner. I didn't know whether groles had tails or not. I thought not. I went to sleep making an inventory of all those birds and beasts with tails, thinking how odd it was that I had learned this from Jinian when none of my Gamesmasters seemed to have known or thought anything about it.