The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "It probably has something to do with cold," I mumbled around a mouthful of bread. "In the School Houses, we always kept the blues cold. They have not been cold in my pocket. Perhaps that has something to do with it. Perhaps it is natural for them to recombine, and the machine only aids that process…"

  "What does the machine do, Peter?"

  "Ahh," I said, remembering chill wire and hostile casing, the infinite lattices of crystal in which I had lost myself. "It warms the body, warms the blue, scans the blue and Reads it into the mind of the body. Having seen the innards of the machine, I can do part of what the machine does. I can Read the blue, I think, with Didir's help. And Shattnir can help me warm the place. But I don't know how to Read the thing back into a body. It seems all a puzzle…"

  "I can Read the body," said Silkhands. "If you will link with me, as they linked in the Bright Demesne when they searched for you. As Tragamors sometimes link to increase their strength."

  I shuddered, remembering that such a linkage was precisely what Mandor and Huld had demanded of me in Bannerwell-of me, or of Mavin. Still, this was to no evil purpose. It took me a while to work myself up to it, but once we were started it seemed to flow along of its own movement. It was not as simple as that sounds, and yet it was simpler than I would have expected.

  First was Shattnir, gathering all the warmth she could from the sun to bring it below and warm the chamber of the Gamesmen. Then was Didir, to set her pattern firmly in my head, telling her what we intended, begging her to stay within and help me, show me the way.

  Then I took the blue of Thandbar in my hand and put my arms tight around Silkhands as she laid her hands upon Thandbar's head. He came into my mind and greeted me with such joy that it burst through me in a wave, a wordless, riotous joy, the rapture of a prisoner released, a caged thing set free. "Only free," I heard him murmur in my head. "Only free." I remembered it as one of his names and knew in that instant what innate quality it was had enabled him to escape the cold room and move out across the world. His Shifter's soul could not have been held, had not been held. I had no time to think of it, for with Didir's pattern tight in my mind I began to Read him, spark by spark, shivering lattice by lattice, sending my warmth down the chill circuits of his being, following those circuits as Silkhands Read them from me and impressed them once again into the body before her.

  Time went, seeming hours of it, days of it. Pictures fled through my head. I saw Schlaizy Noithn, bright in the noon light, where Thandbar walked with a loved one. I saw far mountains as seen from above by the eyes of a mist giant. I heard music, not only the wind song I had heard before but generations of bell and flute in the high, wild lands of the shadowpeople. I became tree, mountain, road, a whole legion of beasts I had never seen and knew nothing of. In Thandbar's day, they had lived closer to mankind. In the intervening centuries they had fled away.

  I saw memories of Barish: Barish lecturing; Barish pounding a table; Barish laughing; Barish cajoling. I felt horror at the things being done by some Gamesmen, revulsion, anger, and felt Barish play upon that horror and revulsion. In Thandbar's mind, I heard Barish's voice. "We will accumulate the best, like seed grain. We will plant them in the ground of today, for a mighty harvest in the future," his voice ringing, passionate. In Thandbar's mind, I Read belief, then doubt (centuries of doubt), then terror at a conviction of eternal imprisonment. Out of that terror he had fled like mist, to walk the wide world calling for help from his kinsmen.

  So the pictures fled across my mind as the blue melted away in my hand, becoming a featureless lump, a sliver, a nothing at all. The body before us stirred, stirred again, until at last its eyes opened, its mouth moved. "I dreamed you, Healer," it whispered in a voice whiskery with dust and age. "I dreamed you." The eyes blinked, blinked, tried to focus. I knew they saw only blurs of light, mute shadows. At last they fastened upon me, and the dusty voice said, "Kinsman. Thanks."

  And after that was a long, cloudy time in which Silkhands lay upon the floor exhausted and I trembled in my place like a wind gong perpetually struck, and the others had to take us up, we two and Thandbar, to wrap us up warmly and feed us to the wild piping and cheers of the shadowpeople. It was night. "How long?" I whispered to Queynt.

  "You were both exhausted when you began," he said. "You must not try any more tonight. Silkhands could not, in any case. On the morrow, raise up Dealpas. She must help you. Then Didir, for she can do what you have done if I understand it aright." So I slept. Bones marched against us from over the edge of the world, and I slept. Horror collected itself and thundered toward us with drums and trumpets, and I slept. If I had been condemned and upon the scaffold ready to be hanged, I would have slept. There was no more strength in me to stay awake, and morning came and moved itself toward noon before I wakened again to find Silkhands sitting beside me, looking a little wan but determined.

  "Come," she said. "Let us waken Dealpas."

  Which we did, though Barish's Healer did not wish to be wakened. She fought us the whole way, moaning and weeping, carrying on as though she were the only creature in the world ever to have felt pain. Her whining sickened us, and I was ready to give up and let her lie there forever, but Silkhands was not. I felt her do something I had never known of before: she administered a mental spanking-a lashing along the nerves like a snake striking-and we had Dealpas' attention at last. When we had her awake, she began to moan, half-heartedly, and Jinian came forward to shake her into full wakefulness.

  "I have no patience with this Broken Leaf nonsense," she cried into Dealpas' pouting face. "I know not why Barish chose you as a worthy one of his Eleven, why he chose you from among all Healers, unless perhaps there were no others in your time. Well, you are not the best, by any rule, not fit to wear Silkhands' smalls, but you will do what you will do or by the Giant of Thandbar I will teach you what pain is!"

  Dealpas was stung, furious, her pain forgotten. I linked with her, somewhat reluctantly, to raise Didir, and in that linkage I learned what had set Dealpas upon her course of whines and plaints. Barish had thought her pretty, had babied her, had petted her-the more she whined, the more petting. So it was I began to doubt that Barish was what I had thought him to be. Wizard, perhaps, but not all wise to have spoiled her so.

  We did not work together as well as Silkhands and I had done, but Didir was helping from within to raise up her own body, so all went well and expeditiously in the end. She came up off the stone slab in one fluid movement, not at all grandmotherly, but lithe and still young. "Peter," she said to me, looking full into my eyes, "there will be a better time than now for thanks. Be sure that time will not be forgotten." She hugged me then, and kissed me as a mother might (as Mavin never had in my memory) and went off above to gather some power and settle some ancient matter between herself and Dealpas. When they returned, they were ready for work, and I did not hear Dealpas whine again.

  The two of them began with Shattnir, who rose as she had slept, straight, all at once, rising as if she had lain down the night before. I saw her keen eye upon me, recognizing me, and was not surprised. There had been much more life in the blues than I had known. They had changed while with me, while within me. They had used me as I had used them, and I prayed as I saw her glance that she would consider the bargain good. Then she gave me a quick, mocking smile-nothing about Shattnir was ever wholly human-and went about her way.

  Meantime Silkhands and I awakened Dom. Having done this once before, I did not need Didir's help again but was able to Read out the blue of Dorn as though I read a familiar book. Oh, there were surprises, particularly in his youthful memories; and there were terrors as he gained his Talent and learned to use it, but still, what I had known of him was the greater part of him, and he rose at last to greet me by name.

  "You do know me," I mumbled.

  "How should I not, Peter? Have I not walked in your head as a farmer walks his fields? Have we not raised up ghosts together?"

  "I wasn't sure you would remember," I said weakly
, remembering myself thinking things I had rather he not know of.

  "Why shouldn't I remember a friend?" he asked me, drawing me into an embrace. I had never felt for Mertyn or for Himaggery what I felt in that instant for Dorn. I had never known Mertyn or Himaggery as I knew Dom. Perhaps he had shaped some essential growing in me, as a father might shape it in a pawnish boy or a loving thalan who knew his sister's child from infancy. What he said was true. I remembered him as a friend. He had never had to do me any hurt, not even for my own good, and so there was no taint between us.

  Then Dealpas and I awakened Buinel while Silkhands rested and Didir took time to learn all that was happening. I felt her searching mind go forth, seeking Huld, I thought. It was not difficult to raise up Buinel, only boring. In my whole life I was never to meet anyone so relentless in putting down any spontaneous thought or evanescent desire as was Buinel. He wanted rules for everything, and he wanted them graven in bronze or cut into stone so that he could see they were no temporary things. Well, we persevered, Dealpas and I, she with her mouth all twisted up in distaste and some anger still. When we had him fairly roused he became deeply suspicious of us for having wakened him, so we turned him over to Queynt and Dorn. If they could not settle him I cared not whether we got him settled, though I did owe him much for having saved our lives from the Ghoul. Then Silkhands and Didir returned to wake Hafnor, Wafnor, and Tamor, one after another, each time quicker. It was true, with practice the thing became much easier. Wafnor gave me a glad hug, from a distance, his sturdy body creaking as he bent and twisted, trying to free himself in a few short minutes of the stiffness of centuries. Hafnor gave me a teasing wink. If he had had more power, he would have done something silly and boyish, I knew it, but he had to go above to warm himself in the sun. There was no power below except what Shattnir brought down to us from time to time for the work.

  Then Silkhands and I were alone once more, only Sorah and Trandilar upon their pedestals. And Barish. I stood there looking down at him, fingering the lone blue in my pocket. Now that I had given up the others, it seemed an evil thing to keep Windlow by me, an evil thing to keep him so imprisoned. He had no body of his own. It had been burned and destroyed in the place of the magicians. Barish had no blue. It had gone into some other body, perhaps, or been destroyed by the machine. Why not put the two together? Then Windlow might at least live again, live long, and be no worse off than he was now. The body would be strange, but surely it was better to visit a strange place than not to live at all. Silkhands and I were alone in the place. The others had all gone above to seek for Huld or plot their strategy or discuss ways in which we might leave the mountaintop without condemning the rest of the world to Huld's fury.

  I called her over and showed her Windlow's blue in my hand, letting my eyes rove over the body of Barish.

  She did as I had done, looking back and forth from one to the other. "Why not," she said. "Let us do it now before someone comes down and makes some objection."

  "He may only live a little while, to be killed in that battle which is coming," I warned her.

  "He will at least die in reality then," she said bitterly, "not be lost in some rock crevasse forever, caught in neither living nor death, perhaps in that same terror Thandbar felt."

  I nodded, took Windlow's blue into my hand and put my arms around her as she laid her hands upon Barish's head.

  Then was maelstrom. Nothing which had gone before had prepared me for it. There was Windlow, surging in my mind like a flood, like a mighty stream pouring over a precipice. There was something else, surging to meet it as the tide meets the outflow of a river, battering waves which meet in foam-flecked flood to crash upon one another, flow around one another, mix together in an inextricable rush and tug and wash. Cities toppled in my head; rivers burst mighty barricades; millennia-old trees fell and splintered. Faces passed as in an endless parade. The sun made a single glittering arc across the sky, flickering between darkness and light as day and night sped past. Then the struggle eased, slowly, and I felt things rise in the flood to heave above the waves, to rock and stabilize themselves upon the flow like boats until all within was liquid and quiet above the steady roll of whatever lay below. Windlow's blue was gone. Silkhands leaned back within the circle of my arms, exhausted. I heard someone come into the room behind us, recognized Queynt's step but was too strained to turn to him as he gasped.

  The figure before me on the pedestal opened its eyes. Someone behind those eyes smiled into my face and said, "Peter?" Then that same someone-or another-looked across my shoulder and spoke to Queynt. "Vulpas?" I felt myself thrust aside as Vitior Vulpas Queynt moved to

  His brother's side.

  His brother.

  My friend.

  Windlow.

  Barish.

  The same.

  12

  The Bonedancers of Huld

  YOU HAD HIM ALL THE TIME!" Queynt advancing as though to strike me.

  A voice from the pedestal, laughing weakly, not Windlow's voice. Not entirely Windlow's voice. Pattern and intonation different. Not so peaceful, not so kindly. "Oh, Vulpas. He didn't know he had me. Poor lad. And he didn't have much of me, at that, or all of me, depending upon how you look at it. He didn't know; Windlow didn't know."

  So that Queynt turned again to that voice which seemed more familiar to him than it did to me. "Windlow?"

  A long silence. I looked at the body on the pedestal, close wrapped in its Wizardly robes. It had not moved yet, seemed uncertain whether it could. One hand made a little abortive gesture; a foot twitched. The eyes were puzzled, then clearing, then puzzled once more. When he spoke it was tentatively, slowly, as though he had to consider each word and was even then not certain of it.

  "The body they brought for me, Vulpas. The bodies were always supposed to be brain-burned. Plenty of those around. Every Game always left them littered about, weeping women, mothers crying, pathetic bodies, able to walk, breathe, eat-nothing else. They were supposed to bring one like that. So they did; body of a Seer named Windlow. Only it wasn't brain-dead-maybe half, maybe only stunned, sent deep…

  "The machine. It had been acting strangely. Meant to go to the base and get some tech to come back with me and fix it. I didn't go. Why? Forget why. The time before, the last time I was in this body-the machine didn't separate me. Not all of me. Most of me was still here, in the body, cold. I dreamed…

  "Dreamed I saw Thandbar go out of this place like a wind, like a mist, singing. Dreamed little people came in here, singing. Wanted to say `Help,' wanted to ask them to find Vulpas, find Riddle. Imprisoned. No movement. No voice…"

  "Who was it then, who went out of here?" demanded Queynt. "Who was it Riddle put the blue into? That last time. When you were supposed to meet me?"

  The figure on the slab moved, a supine shrug, a testing of long unused muscles. "Windlow, mostly. Partly me. The machine broke that time, once for all, finally. Screamed like a wounded pombi, like a fustigar in heat, screamed and shrieked and grated itself silent. The light went on. I saw it when I departed, and Riddle said something about not bothering to come back, there was nothing anyone could do…"

  "But if you knew all that," I said stupidly, "then why didn't you tell me, Windlow? Why all the mystery? The hiding and hunting and not seeming to know everything there was to know about the Gamesmen and the book? Why all that?"

  "Ah, lad." Whoever it was began to sit up, struggling more than any of the others had had to do, achingly. I moved forward to help him, and he patted me on the arm in a familiar way. "I didn't remember. Windlow didn't remember. It was all so dreamlike, so strange. How would Windlow tell the difference, Vision or reality? And it was then that the moonlet fell, the world shook and tumbled and fell apart. Then it was run and run and try to stay alive, partly Windlow, partly Barish, the memories all mixed and tumbled with the world, all the people and all the landscape. I forgot Vulpas, forgot the Gamesmen almost, forgot the book almost. Then later some memories came back. Were they memori
es? Visions of a Seer? How would Windlow-Barish know? And then the memories began to tease, began to make mysteries. Then Windlow-Barish began to search for the book, search for the Gamesmen, remember odd things. Did he ever come back here? Why would he? If he did, the way was lost I suppose…"

  "What do you mean, did he?" I shrieked at him. "If Windlow is in you at all, he knows whether he did or not! Think him. Ask him." I was grieving. I had not meant to trade Windlow, whom I loved, for this stranger.

  There was long silence from the pedestal, then the rustle of his cloak, the harsh scratch of the embroideries rubbing upon one another. His voice, when it came, was more as I remembered it. "Right, my boy. Of course. I did not come here. I did not remember this place. I did remember the book, the Gamesmen, but did not remember why they were important. Well, why would Windlow remember any such thing?"

  I turned to him desperately. "Are you in there, Windlow? Have I killed you?"

  He laughed, almost as Windlow would have done. "No, Peter. No. See. All of Windlow is here when I reach for him. I remember the garden of Windlow's House, the meadow you chased the fire bugs through. I remember the tower in which Prionde had us imprisoned, the way we escaped by creeping through the sewer…"

  "You did not creep," I said. "We carried you."

  "You carried me. Yes. And I came to Himaggery's place, to the Bright Demesne. It's all there, my boy, all the memories of Windlow's life. They may not be exactly as they were in Windlow's head before, but they are there."