The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  And after a long time there, watching what it was the great bones of this world did upon the wastes of Bleer, I gave up bulk and went up onto the stones to find my friends. Then we sat there together in wonder until the thing was done. Dorn was not moving them, nor was I, nor Wafnor. They drew no power from us. They warred because the world desired that they do so.

  I saw in them giants which could have been pombis, or fustigars; things long and curled which might have been groles of some ancient and mightier time. Things with great scimitar teeth raged among the Gamesmen while the trampling of the bones continued. It went on well into the night. Long, long after the last of Huld's Gamesmen were dead or had fled away, the great beasts of the heights continued their battle. Only toward dawn did they begin to collapse and fall, to lie as we had seen them first upon the high plateau, like wind carved things, dead, gone these hundred thousand years. Among them ranged the shadowpeople, singing lustily, piping upon their flutes and calling my name and Jinian's. When we went down to them, they clustered about us and begged earnestly for something roasted and juicy. Not for them any lasting awe, thus not for me. We fed them, and sang with them, and in the dawn we saw Himaggery and Mavin falling toward us out of the sky.

  13

  Talent Thirteen

  THEY CAME, DRAGON AND DRAGON-BACK, Mavin and Himaggery. Behind them came a small host of Armigers, flown not from the Bright Demesne but from some place north of Schooltown. One of Himaggery's Seers had told him help would be needed long before my message reached them. I began to be a little acid about this until Mavin hushed me.

  "The Seer said we would not be needed during the conflict, but afterward. Indeed, look around you. Where are any Gamesmen standing against you? There are none. Not against one of my tricksy line."

  She was right, of course. Somehow the battle had been not merely turned but decisively won. Chance was jogging about saying "Obliterated" over and over. He had observed the battle through his glass from a safe distance. "Obliterated." The word, I thought, could be applied to a number of things with equal pertinence. There was no time to consider it. Himaggery had to be introduced to Barish and to the Wizard's Eleven, he so overcome by awe and respect during this process as to lose all his crafty volubility for the space of several hours. When Mertyn arrived, the introductions were repeated, and again at the arrival of Riddle and Quench.

  I was very stiff with Riddle. He flushed bright red and almost sank to his knees begging my forgiveness. "My only thought was to learn what I could, Peter. I did not want you to know about it, as it was a matter secret to the Immutables. Quench assured me the cap was perfectly safe, that it could not harm you in any way…" He fell silent beneath my glare.

  Jinian, who stood beside me during all this ceremony, saved the situation. "Peter knows that you meant him no harm, Riddle. But a Pursuivant is dead in the forests near Xammer, and whether you meant Peter harm or not, the result was harm to someone."

  "My fault," asserted Quench. "You must forgive Riddle, young man. I did not understand the complexity of all this Gaming. I did not realize that death often results. I was too many years in that pest hole beneath the mountains. Nothing was real there. All was ritual and repetitions and hierarchy and concern about relative positions in the order of things. Nothing was real. You must forgive him. Hold me responsible, for I am."

  The end result of which was that I offered Riddle my hand, though not smilingly, and accepted his explanation for what it was worth.

  "It was a year ago, Peter, that I found some old papers of my grandfather's. They told of an ancient contract, a promise of honor between our people and Barish. I had never heard of it. My father was only a child when his father died. I was only a child when my father died. So if there had been a contract, this sacred and secret indebtedness, the chain of it had been broken at Dindindaroo. The papers spoke of a certain place in the north. You recall traveling with me a year ago. I left you below Betand to go on to Kiquo and over the high bridge into these wastes. It was all futile. There was no guide, no map, nothing.

  "Then, not a season gone, came this fellow Vitior Vulpas Queynt to tell me of this same contract. He was full of hints, full of words and winks and nods. And at that same time, some of our people found Quench here wandering among the mountains to the west. Well, Quench and I put our heads together, and it seemed the only way we would know anything surely was to raise up my grandfather. As I said, we meant no harm."

  "So that is why you were burrowing about in Dindindaroo," I said. "You had only recently learned of this ancient agreement."

  "Learned of it," rumbled Quench, "for all the good it did us. I wanted proof the Gamesman Huld was a villain. I wanted to know where Barish had gone, and what this Council business was all about. Our own history spoke of Barish, mind you, and Vulpas too. I wanted to know everything, real things, but you sent us scurrying off to the south on an idiot's quest. Well. I suppose we deserved being ill led for having led you ill. Let it be past and forgotten."

  "When we returned," said Riddle, "with empty hands, we went to Himaggery as we should have done in the first place. I knew him to be honorable. We should have gone there first."

  "It would have saved us much thrashing about," said Himaggery, who had come up to us in the midst of all these revelations and confessions. "We were hunting Quench all over the western reaches from Hawsport south, and we were hunting Huld everywhere but Hell's Maw. We knew it for a den of horrors, a Ghoul's nest, but we did not envision Huld as master of the place. He had seemed too proud for such dishonor."

  "I believe," said Jinian, "that we will find it necessary soon to revise our notions of dishonor." She squeezed my hand and left me to ruminate upon that while the others continued their explorations into history in a mood of such profound veneration that it almost immobilized them.

  Dorn was not among the group. I went off looking for him. He was with Silkhands, Tamor, and King Kelver upon a bit of high ground near Barish's Keep. Tamor had been healed of his wound, though not of the wound to his pride, for he had been the only one of us to be wounded at all. He bowed himself away after a wink at me, as did Kelver and Silkhands, hand in hand, oblivious of much else in the world. I think I sighed. Dorn gave me a sharp look which I well recognized, though I had not seen it with physical eyes before.

  "You had plans concerning her?" he asked.

  "No. And yes," I confessed. "Yes, some time ago. But no, not since Kelver came along."

  "And Jinian came along?"

  That was rather more difficult. True, she had said she loved me at some confused point during the last day or two. True, she had told me I was clever and that had proved to be marginally accurate, if the outcome of the battle was any test. True, parts of me stirred at the thought of her, at times. But…

  "She says she is a Wizard," I said.

  "Ah," said Dorn. "That is difficult."

  "I think it is hard to love a Wizard," I said. "Though it is very good to make alliances with them."

  "Who else knows of this Wizardry?"

  "No one. I was not supposed to tell anyone, but you and Didir-well, you are part of me. It is like talking to myself. Oh, Chance knows, for he was there when she told me. But she doesn't trifle with the truth, Necromancer. If she says she is, she is."

  "Oh, I have no doubt of it. I wonder if you've thought what else she is?"

  "Another Talent than Wizardry! I didn't know such was possible."

  He laughed. "Peter, the young are truly amazing. In each of the young, the world is reborn. No, I do not mean that Jinian has any other Talent. What she is, other than a Wizard, is a human person, female, about seventeen years old. In my experience, human persons of that age-and those considerably older also-are much alike. Most of them love, hate, weep, lust, tremble with fear. Most of them fight and forgive and resolve with high courage. May I suggest, if you are resolved upon friendship with Jinian, that it be with the person rather than with the Wizard. Likely the Wizard needs no one-not even Jinian herself. Like
ly Jinian needs someone during those times that the Wizard is not in residence." And he patted me very kindly as though I had been some half trained fustigar.

  This so gained my attention that I wandered off for several hours and did not talk to anyone during that time.

  Chance caught me when I returned. He wanted to talk about the battle, about the great bones, the mightiness of them. "And they went on and on, long after you'd all given up raising them. So Dorn and Queynt say."

  I was truly puzzled by that, but I told him it was true, so far as I knew. "The forces of the world," he said, "according to Queynt. Oh, there's things here we know nothing of, according to Queynt." He spoke proudly, not at all awed or envious, possibly the only person in all that company save Jinian who accepted Vitior Vulpas Queynt as mere man. I knew Queynt had found a follower, a companion, a true friend. Well, part of me said, I no longer need a child minder. Well, part of me said, you will miss him dreadfully if he goes off with anyone else.

  So.

  What may I tell you?

  Of Mavin and Thandbar? She approached him warily, ready to become a worshipper if he proved to be an idol, holding reverence in readiness. When I passed them an hour later, Mavin was telling him some story about Schlaizy Noithn, and he was bent double with laughter. I sniffed. I had not thought it that amusing when it had happened to me.

  Of Barish-Windlow and Himaggery, circling one another in mixed antagonism and love, Himaggery full of protest and fury at the fate of the hundred thousand in the ice caverns, Windlow equally distraught, Barish trying to fight them on two fronts, justifying his experiment on the grounds of human progress. Himaggery wondered what it was a hundred thousand master Gamesmen were to do, how they were to live when released from age old bondage; Barish overrode Windlow's concern to shout that he expected people to use their heads about it. I pitied Barish and envied him. He had too much Windlow in him to be what he had once been. But then, what he had once been had needed a lot of Windlow in it.

  Later I saw him bend down to pluck the leaves from a tiny gray herb growing in a crack of the stone. He crushed the leaves beneath his nostrils and touched them to his tongue as I had seen Windlow do a thousand times. I went to him then and hugged him, looking up to see the stranger looking at me out of Barish's eyes. But it was Windlow's voice which called me by name and returned my embrace.

  Of Quench and the techs, gathered around the machine in Barish's Keep, talking in an impenetrable language while some of their group scavenged among the bookshelves. "Fixable!" Quench crowed at last. "The machine can be fixed! There are spare parts in the case. We can take the thing apart and reassemble it in the caverns…" So he had been set on a proper track by Himaggery and Mavin, and I was glad to have him among the people I liked and trusted. I decided to forgive him for that business with the cap. He had not meant it ill.

  Of Mavin and Himaggery and Mertyn when they heard that the machine could be fixed? Of their plans to raise up the hundred thousand from their long sleep and bring them all to the purlieus of Lake Yost and the Bright Demesne? They were determined to raise them all in one place and build a better world from them.

  Windlow-Barish, hearing this, was puzzled and torn once more. He started to say, "Now wait just a minute. That's not the way I had planned…" But then he fell silent, and I could sense the intense inner colloquy going on. Then the argument started all over again, and this time Windlow-Barish had things to say which Himaggery listened to with respect.

  Later, of Jinian and Himaggery.

  "Will you have Rules?" she asked. "In your new world?"

  "There will be no irrevocable rules," he said ponderously. "How will you live?"

  "We are going to try to do what Windlow would have wanted," he said. "He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game. It was the laws, the rules which made Gaming. It was Gaming made injustice. We can only try something new and hope that it is better."

  She left it at that. I left it at that, thankful that the thing Windlow had cared most about had a chance to survive.

  Of Barish and Didir, standing close together and so engaged in conversation that they did not see me at all.

  "Well, my love," he said. "And are you satisfied?"

  "How satisfied? You told me to lie down for a few hundred years so that we might wake to build a new world out of time and hope and good intentions. So I wake to find others building that world, others in possession of your seed grain, others planning the harvest, another inhabiting you, my love. Perhaps I should think of something else. Have a child, perhaps. Raise goats…"

  "There are no goats on this world, Didir. Zeller. You can raise zeller."

  "Zeller, then. I will domesticate some krylobos, become an eccentric, learn weaving."

  "Will you stay with me, Didir?"

  "I don't know you. This you. Perhaps I will. But then I would like to know what it is that Vulpas knows. How has he lived all this time while we slept?"

  "Will you stay with me, Didir?

  "Perhaps."

  Of Buinel and Shattnir, drinking wine in Barish's Keep.

  "And my thought was, Shattnir, that he should have written it down very plainly, not in that personal shorthand of his, and have made at least a hundred copies. They could have been filed in all the temples, and certainly it was a mistake to confide in only one line of the Immutables."

  "It doesn't matter now, does it?" Shattnir, cold, impersonal.

  "It's not a question of it mattering. It's a question of correct procedure! If he'd only asked me, I could have told him…"

  Of Trandilar.

  To me. "Well, my love, and what does your future hold of great interest and excitement?"

  I blushed. "I haven't had a chance to think of it yet, Great Queen."

  "Ah, Peter. Peter. Great Queen? Gracious. So formal. Do we not know one another well enough to let this formality go? Do you need to think about it, really? I should have thought your future would have raced to meet you, leapt into your heart all at once like the clutch of fate."

  She was laughing at me, with me. She stroked my face, making the blush a shade deeper, and then went on.

  "You do not want to be part of Himaggery's experiment, do you? There is scarce room in it for Himaggery and Barish, let alone any others. You would not live under their eyes and Mavin's? No. I thought not." She beckoned over my shoulder to someone, and then rose to hold out a hand to Sorah who sat beside us, laying her mask to one side.

  "Sister," said Trandilar, "you see before you one who is quite young and confused. It would help him to know where his future lies."

  Solemnly, but with a twinkle, Sorah put on the mask, smoothed it with long, delicate fingers, held out her hand in that hierarchic gesture the Seers sometimes make when they want to impress a multitude.

  "I See, I See," she chanted, "jungles and cities, the lands of the eesties, the far shores of the Glistening Sea, and you, Peter, with a Wizard-a girl, yes, Jinian." Her voice was mocking only a little, kindly and laughing, and I readied myself to laugh with her. Then, suddenly, her voice deepened and began to toll like a mighty bell. "Shadowmaster. Holder of the Key. Storm Grower. The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell…" And she fell silent.

  Trandilar shook her head. "Peter, learn from me. Mock Talent at your peril. It is no joke." And she helped Sorah away to find a place to lie down.

  Of Peter and Jinian.

  "It is probably difficult to live in close association with a Wizard," she said to me. "I believe Mavin found it so, which is why she and Himaggery have this coming and going thing between them. But then, it is not easy to know a Shifter, either."

  "A Shifter is usually the same inside," I objected.

  "Usually, though not always. Do we not learn from our shapes what we are? You have told m
e of Mandor. Did he not learn from his beauty what he became? Oh, I do not mean that there is goodness in some shapes and evil in others, but simply that we learn from them to our own good or ill. So might you change, Peter?"

  "Don't Wizards change?" I wanted to ask her, desperately, what the Talent of Wizards might be, but I was too wary of the answer I might get. "Are they always the same?"

  She grinned at me. "Oh, we change. I was quite content, so I thought, to become an alliance for my brother with King Kelver, until I met you, Peter."

  "Kelver is better looking," I said.

  "True, but then he is older. He has had a chance to grow up to his face. You may do the same, in time."

  "You do not think me too young for alliancing?"

  She sighed. "I think we are not too young to decide what we will do when we leave this place. Himaggery will expect you back at the Bright Demesne. I could return to Xammer. Neither of us wants to do that. I said a silly thing when I said we would do what Barish would have done. Barish will do it. Himaggery will do it. It is their plan, not mine."

  I shifted from foot to foot, bit my lip, wondered what to say next. Then I thought of Sorah's words, not the bell tolling ones, but the earlier, laughing ones.

  "Jinian, would you like to see the jungles and cities, the eesties, the shores of the Glistening Sea? Queynt is going there, so he says. He would let us go with him."

  "Oh, Peter, I would like that more than anything." So what is left?

  Hell's Maw.

  We went there, Dorn, Himaggery, Mertyn, Mavin, and a host. There were bones there wandering free, moving on their own, talking to an old, blind man who wandered among them with a key, trying to find the lock he had lost. Dorn put them to rest, large and small, in such form as they may not ever be raised again. There is nothing left of the place now. Every stone of it has been tumbled and spread by a hundred Tragamors as far away as the Western Sea. There I linked the Gamesmen once again, realizing for the first time that I had what Himaggery called Talent Thirteen. Jinian was right. I do not need anyone but me-and a hundred or so Gamesmen with large Talents.