The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Ahead of us we could see the giant twist and change, flowing onto the stony mountain like smoke sucked into a chimney. Yittleby and Yattleby followed us, conversing. We half ran, half walked among the mazes of stone and Wind's Bone to come, starlit at last, to a pocket of darkness into which the shadowpeople poured like water. Jinian and I dropped onto the stone, panting. We could not see well enough to follow them.

  They returned, calling my name and Jinian's, querulously demanding why we did not come. Yittleby said something to them, and they darted away to return in moments with branches of dried thorn. One burrowed into my pocket to find the firestarter, emerging triumphantly in a bright shower of sparks. Then we had fire, and from the fire torches, and from the torches light to take us down into the earth.

  We needed the fire for only a little time. The clambering among tumbled stone was for only a short distance before we emerged into corridors as smooth as those I had seen beneath the mountains of the magicians. There was light there, cool, green light, and a way which wound deep into a constant flow of clean, dry air. At the end of the way was an open door…

  11

  The Gamesmen of Barish

  THE SHADOW PEOPLE OPENED THE DOOR wider as we approached it. The place was not new to them, and I had a moment's horrible suspicion that we might find only ruin and bones within. Such was not the case.

  The pawns have places called variously temples or churches in which there are images of Didir or Tamor or of other beings from an earlier time than ours. I had been in one or two of these places on my travels, and they were alike in having a solemn atmosphere, a kind of dusty reverence, and a smell of smoky sweetness lingering upon the air. This place was very like that. There were low pedestals within, clean and polished by the flowing air, on each of which one of my Gamesmen lay.

  The shadowpeople had surrounded one pedestal and waited there, beckoning, calling "Andibar, bar, bar," in their high, sweet voices. When Jinian and I came near, they sat down in rows around the recumbent figure and began to sing. The words were in their own language, but the music…

  "The wind song," whispered Jinian. "The same melody."

  Though the singer in Xammer had played it upon a harp and these little people upon flutes and bells, the song was the same. I knew then where the frail singer in Learner had heard it first. How she had translated it into our language, I might never know. They sang it through several times, with different words each time, and I had no doubt what they sang and what I had heard differed very little in meaning. When they finished, one very tiny one leaned forward to chew on Thandbar's toe, was plucked up and spanked by another to the accompaniment of scolding words. It did not seem to have damaged Thandbar. He was fully dressed, helm lying beside him, fur cloak drawn about him under a light coverlet. Jinian laid her hand upon him and shivered. "Cold." I already knew that. Except for the ceremonial setting, the careful dignity of his clothing, his body was as cold and hard as those in the ice caverns. And yet, something had left this body to pour into the evening sky, to wander the world and beg his kinsmen for release from this silent cold.

  I walked among the others. Tamor and Didir, looking exactly as I had known them; Dorn, piercing eyes closed in endless slumber; stocky Wafnor, half turned on his side as though his great energy had moved him even in that chill sleep. Hafnor bore a mocking smile as though he dreamed; and Trandilar dreamed, likewise, older than I would have expected, but no less lovely for that. Could she Beguile me, even through this sleep?

  Shattnir lay rigid, hands at her sides, crown in place, as though she had decided to be her own monument. Dealpas was huddled under her blanket, legs and arms twisted into positions of fret and anxiety. Buinel's mouth was half open. The machine had caught him in mid-word, And, finally, Sorah, the light gauze of her mask hiding her face. I drew it aside to see her there, calm, kindly looking, eyes sunken as though in some inward gaze.

  And lastly…

  Lastly. I gasped, understanding for the first time the implications of what Queynt had told me. "Barish," I said. He lay before me, wrapped in a Wizard's robe embroidered with all the signs and portents, two little lines between his eyes to show his concentration even in this place.

  "Barish," Jinian agreed. "He has a good face."

  He did have a good face, rather long and bony, with dark bushy brows and a knobby nose over wide, petulant lips.

  "I did not expect to find him here," I said.

  "Only his body," she replied. "Queynt said he was awakened into different bodies each time."

  "Perhaps he wasn't awakened. Perhaps the blue is here, somewhere."

  "If it had been," she said soberly, "Riddle's grandfather would have taken it to Dindindaroo with all the rest."

  Still, we looked. There were cabinets on the walls, doors leading into other rooms. We found books, machines. In a room we identified as Barish's own there was a glass case which still showed the imprint of a Gameboard which was not there. I fit the Onomasticon into a gap in a bookshelf. This was the place from which Riddle's grandfather had removed the treasures he had sworn to preserve.

  We returned to the outer room. The machine was there, behind a low partition, a tiny light blinking slowly upon its control panel. "There is still power here," I said.

  Then I said nothing for a while.

  Then, "Let us go out of here. I have to think."

  She gave me a long, level look, but did not say anything until we had climbed upward through the tumble to the open air. The little people came with us, chattering among themselves. When we took food from the saddlebags, they clustered around, and I realized there were more of them than we could feed. "I must go hunting," I said. "They will be happy to stay here. Their word for fire is 'thruf.' If you can keep one going, with their help, I'll bring back some kind of meat."

  Then she did try to say something to me, but I did not wait to hear. Instead, I Shifted into fustigar shape and loped off into the stones. I did not want to think, and it is perfectly possible not to think at all, if one Shifts. I did not think, merely hunted. There were large, ground-running birds abroad in the night, perhaps some smaller kin of the great krylobos. They were swift, but not swift enough. I caught several of them, snapping their necks with swift, upward tosses of my fustigar head. What was it brought me up, out of mere fustigar to something else?

  Perhaps it was the awareness of my bones, the long link bones between my rear legs and forelegs, the shorter link bone between the rear legs, the flat rear space where a tail might have been but was not, the curved link bones between shoulders and head, the arching, flexible ribs which domed this structure and anchored all its muscles…

  The starshaped skeleton of this world. Unlike the backboned structure of our world, whatever world it might have been. This world, into which we came, uninvited, surely, to spread ruin and wreck. And yet into which we were welcomed. The shadowpeople waited beside the fire with Jinian for the feast their friend would bring them. They would call Peter, eater, ter, ter into the darkness, play their silver flutes, ring their bells, sniff the bones twice when they had done, and sleep beneath the stones. And they might gnaw a bit on Thandbar and be spanked for it.

  And in Hell's Maw they were meat for Huld. So had said the Elator, laughing, as he ate other meat at his campfire.

  Some acid burned in my fustigar throat, some pain afflicted my fustigar heart. Ah, well, I could not leave them behind me to flee into a darkness forever.

  The animal turned itself about and ran back the way it had come, to stand upon its hind legs and Shift once more. Into Peter once more. Into the same confusion I had left.

  They welcomed me with cries, of pleasure, assisted in cleaning the birds and spitting them over the fire while others foraged for more thorn and devil's spear. We ate together, bird juice greasing our chins and hands, and sang together in the echoing dark. I saw Jinian's eyes upon me but ignored her as if I did not understand. Tomorrow was time enough for decision.

  "I sent Yattleby with a message for Q
ueynt," she said.

  "Ah," I replied. "A message for Queynt."

  "Written," she said. "I gave it to Yattleby, pointed back the way we had come and said 'Queynt.' He seemed to understand."

  "I'm sure he did," I said, fighting down anger. I did not need more pressure on me. Through the thin fabric of my Shifted hide I could feel the pouch I had carried for two years. Inside it were Didir and Tamor. Mine. Shattnir. Mine. Even Dealpas. Mine. "When I give them up," I said in a carefully conversational tone, "I will be powerless to confront Huld. If I had not had them, you would have been meat for groles instead of sitting here beside me, eating roast bird."

  "When you saved us from the bones in Three Knob," she said, "it was by your own Talent. If you had not had Sorah to call upon outside Learner, you would have found another way. You need nothing but yourself, Peter."

  "I do," I shouted at her, making wild echoes flee from the place. "Without them, I am nothing. Nothing at all…"

  She wiped her hands fastidiously, poured water from her flask to wash her face, turned that face to me at last, quiet, unsmiling, unfrowning, quiet. "I have told you I am a Wizard, Peter. I will give you Wizardly advice. Think on yourself, Peter. Think on Mavin, and Himaggery and Mertyn. Think on Windlow. Carefully, slowly, on each. Then think on Mandor and Huld. And when you have done, decide with whom you will stand."

  Gamelords, I said to myself. Save me from the eloquence of Wizards. She sounded like Himaggery, or rather more like Windlow, though Windlow had been a Seer, not a Wizard. This abstraction called justice was all very well, but when it meant that one had to give up one's own power… One considered being Huld-like.

  "Jinian," I cried. "Do you know what it is you ask?"

  "Of course," she said. "Wizards always know what they ask. And they ask everything."

  I held out my arms and she came into them to hold me as a mother might hold a child or a Sorceress her crown. When we slept, it was thus twined together, and for a time I did not think of her being a Wizard. The shadowpeople let us sleep. They faded away in the morning light, into the deep caverns of the rock, to return at dusk, I was sure, expecting another feast, another song fest. Well. Perhaps by then we would have more guests to feed. So saying, I took Jinian by the hand and we went back into Barish's Keep.

  "Which of them first, Wizard?" I asked. "Shall it be Shattnir or Dealpas? Buinel or Hafnor? I think not Buinel. He would ask us to prove our authority before raising the rest."

  "Thandbar," she said. "It is he who has searched for his kinsmen, Peter. It is not fitting he should be raised first?"

  I should have thought of it myself. We lifted the rigid body of Thandbar off the pedestal on which it rested, tugged it around the partition to the machine, and spent both our strengths in heaving it onto the metal plate which was precisely like those I had seen on similar machines under the mountain of the magicians. There was even the small, circular receptacle for the blue. I set it in place, stepped back, and thrust down the lever as I had seen Mavin do it.

  Nothing happened. There was no hum, no scream, no nothing. No sound. No movement. Jinian looked at me with quick suspicion. I protested: "This is how Mavin did it! There is power here. The light is on. Perhaps it must be set in some way." She helped me wrestle Thandbar to the floor before I began a twisting, pushing, turning circumambulation of the device, moving everything movable upon it. I tried the lever again. Nothing.

  I turned to her to expostulate, explain, only to meet her level regard, no longer suspicious. "This is why he never returned. Why Barish never returned."

  Seeing my confusion, she drew me away to Thandbar's pedestal where we sat while she puzzled it out. "They would wake Barish every hundred years. They would bring some brain-dead but living body for him, some poor fellow brain-burned by a Demon perhaps, and would put the body in that machine with Barish's blue. Then he, Barish, in a different body each time, would go into the world to meet Queynt, assess the progress of his plan. He would return here after some years-how many? Ten perhaps? Twenty? Give up the blue again, and the attendant Immutables would take the body away to be buried.

  "But the last time he was awakened, the machine malfunctioned? Yes. I think so. Something went wrong. Either during the process or right after? Yes. Otherwise his blue would be with the rest. That red light you see upon the device is probably a warning light, something to tell the operator that things are awry within. So Barish was no tech. Or if he was, he had no part or lacked some contrivance. The fact that he did not fix it means that he could not. And whoever or whatever Barish was, it went forth from this place knowing it would do no good to return."

  I went back to Thandbar's body, lying on the cold floor of the place. Such is the contrary nature of mankind, or perhaps only of the Peters among mankind, that I now wished most heartily to do what I had fought before against doing. Now that it was impossible, I was determined to do it.

  "Since you are so reasonable, Wizard," I said. "Reason us a way out of this dilemma."

  "I will wait for Queynt," she said. "Since he may have some knowledge of the device. If he does not, then we will think again."

  She went up out of the place. I heard her talking to Yittleby, who had remained behind when Yattleby went away, saying something about patience. I took some confidence from the impatience of the krylobos. It was better than fear. I walked around and around the machine. Surely there was some way it could be understood? Surely some way that a Shifter could understand it.

  In Schlaizy Noithn, I had become a film upon a wall in a place where my very presence was a danger. I reached a tentative finger to the machine, flowed across its metal surface like oil, a thin film, an almost invisible tentacle. This filament poured into a crack, down through the interstices of the mechanism. Here were wires and crystals, hard linkages, soft pads, rollers, some kind of screen which scattered light, a device for casting a narrow beam and manipulating it. I went deeper. This is what Dealpas had done to Izia upon the heights of Mavin's place. Here were strangenesses which I entered and surrounded, tasting, smelling, creating temporary likenesses of. Where was the failure? Where the malfunction? No part of it ached, throbbed, was fevered. Should this dark crystal be alight? This cold wire, should it be warm? Who could tell? No network of nerve enlightened me. I flowed deeper yet.

  Who were the voices crying to me? Why did Dorn cry so loud? Why did Didir sting me with her voice? Out? Out of where? Of what? The mysteries which lay around me were tantalizing. Why come out?

  Was that Jinian? Silkhands? I felt hands upon me, pulling me, some inner person walking my veins and my nerves, hauling upon my bones. I wanted to tell them to let be, but it would take a mouth and lungs to do that. A mouth. Lungs.

  Panic. So does one who is more than half drowned struggle to the surface of water, gasping for breath, unable to breathe. Someone helped me from within. Silkhands.

  And I lay upon the floor of the place while Silkhands and Queynt hovered over me and screamed and cried on me.

  "Fool, fool," said Silkhands. "Even Mavin would not have tried such a thing."

  "Fool, fool," wept Jinian. "Oh, Peter, but you are hopeless and I love you."

  I was not afraid until I knew what I had done, which was to spend the better part of two days trying to become a machine. Silkhands was worn and exhausted. She had spent the time since her arrival trying to extricate me. If there had been no other reason for her to come to the Wastes of Bleer than to save my life, I was grateful for Windlow's vision and the musician's song. It was she who had come into my inside out body and followed it down into madness, calling it out of its strange preoccupation. When I learned of her effort and my foolishness, I wept tears of weary frustration.

  "I don't know what's the matter with it," I confessed.

  "And nor do I, my boy," said Queynt. "I had little knowledge of maintenance. We had techs who were specially trained to do that work. It may be that the books are here, somewhere, and even the parts we may need, but I find Jinian's reasoning persuasiv
e. If Barish could have fixed it, he would have done."

  "I find it odd," said King Kelver, "that the plans of a thousand years would be allowed to go awry on the failure of one mechanism."

  I could not have agreed with him more. However, I had no time for such fine philosophical points because of the news they brought. "The Elator told me last night that Huld is coming," said the King. "I am to betray your location to him when he arrives. He grew impatient and left Hell's Maw last night."

  Jinian had my map upon the floor, measuring the distance with her fingers. "Three days," she whispered. "They will be upon us within three days. Four at most!"

  In a few moments I built and discarded a hundred notions. I could take Wafnor and make a mountain fall. Buinel would burn the bones as they came toward us. Hafnor would flick me to the Bright Demesne where I would repeat my call for help. Didir would Read Huld's mind. All these wild thoughts tumbled one upon another until Jinian took my hand, and I knew she had followed them almost as though she could have Read them.

  "Peter. You can manage two or three of the Gamesmen of Barish at a time. If worst comes to worst, you will do it and we will all pray your success. But oh, how much better it would be if all of them fought at our side."

  She was right, of course. I leaned upon her shoulder and gave a great sigh, half weakness and half weariness, thinking the whole time of roast fowl. My weakness was simple hunger, and I said so. She remedied the lack as soon as I expressed it by putting a mug of hot soup into my hand and crumbling hard bread into it. As I ate it with a tired greediness, she went on.

  "There is something we are not thinking of," she said. "Something simple and obvious. The song we heard in Xammer was learned at the Minchery in Learner from a young songsmith who dreamed it. It is the same music we heard when the giant strode across us in the hills behind Three Knob. It came from Thandbar, somehow, and Thandbar's blue is in your pocket. Somehow, Peter, the separation of body and blue is not as complete as we thought, for something sensible of Thandbar escaped, rose up from his body lying here in the cold wastes of Bleer to stride across the world crying for our help. There is a clue there we are not seeing, Peter. Help me think."