The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “You see.” She nodded at the charcoal pattern upon my hearth, pointing it out with that preemptory finger. “There is a pattern of the roads of Chimmerdong, and there”—the finger directed my attention out through the open door—“there is the reality. There”—indicating the swept white line leading away north—“there is the reality restored. Now you see.” She stood away from me. “And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are.”

  I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the teacup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. “Pain of being as I am? I don’t understand.”

  “But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?”

  Well, I had, of course. Not really easy, perhaps, but easier than this. I guess all children expect life to be easy. It seems easy, just looking at it from outside. Being half-dead as I had been for the past while was easier than this.

  “It’s easier to be dead,” she said, seeming to Read me. “Always.”

  “I think I would rather be alive,” I managed to say. “Even if it hurts.”

  “As it will,” she said firmly, standing back from me to become the silver pillar once more. “Now, Jinian Footseer, you had questions. You ask what it is you are to do. I will try to answer that.

  “Long ago when our people came here—that is, when human people came here—there were creatures already here governing this world. They were not simple beasts or people. That much we can infer. They were not discrete things with edges and centers, brains, hands, feet. They were different from that ...

  “And our people were arrogant. What they did not understand or perceive easily, they either attempted to kill or dispose of. And so they did with these old entities.”

  “Old gods?” I asked wonderingly. “Gods?”

  The Dervish pondered. “That is what some of the Wize-ards call them. What are gods, after all? Do we know? Call them old gods if you like. And say our people wounded them or imprisoned them, though I do not believe we succeeded in killing them or any one of them.”

  “How could they imprison a god?” I demanded. I didn’t think it could be true.

  “As you were imprisoned, Jinian, alive in your own body, only minutes ago. Reduced to small volition. Living from little rage to little rage. With your nerves cut. So your brain might live and your lungs pump and your heart beat, but you would be isolated, imprisoned in your own skull, helpless. Separated. Cut off from the world, as our people cut off these old ones. As they did here, in Chimmerdong.”

  “The ruined roads?”

  “The ruined roads. And those that ran them, those who carried the messages to and fro. They were cut off so that forest was sequestered. And mountain, or great tree, or river. Or beast. All the great old entities. All, we believe, but one.” She fell silent for so long I thought she had forgotten me.

  “One?” I prompted her at last.

  “All but shadow. We do not know what it is. We call it shadow because we can see only the darkness it draws about itself. Even that is not easy to see. We can infer it was not so great before we came. Without the other forces to balance it, however, it seems to have grown.”

  “I saw it in the forest. More than once.”

  “Most of our kin have seen it. Seen it near the Old Road where the blind runners go. Seen it near the shadow tower where I have seen it often myself. Oh, yes, we have seen it. Studied it as best we could, though that is a dangerous occupation. And from what we have inferred about its nature, we believe there must once have been something to control it. Those you call the old gods, perhaps. We have been searching for them for a very long time.”

  “I should think they would want to be found,” I said.

  “Want to be found? By us? Wounded already by us? Hurt? Untrusting of man? Go into the great marshes of Firth, Jinian, seeking a wounded zeller in the limitless swamps. It would be easier to find that zeller than to find a wounded god who has no reason to trust us.

  “Still, over the centuries, we have learned some things. Those who could feel the Old Road seemed to have an advantage in understanding, so we bred for that. Those who are tough and resilient learned more, so we bred for that. Women learned more than men most times, so we built the sevens mostly and the Dervishes entirely of women. And increment by increment we learned, tiny inference piled upon tiny inference.”

  “What do you truly know?” I begged, afraid she would not tell me.

  “What do we know firmly? Without question? There are creatures called Eesties,” she said. “Among them is at least one of the old entities. The Shadowpeople know of it. It is called Ganver. There is an old entity in Chimmerdong, and you tell me you have spoken with it. There are others. We have not seen them, but we know they must exist. Perhaps you have spoken with one of them, also?” I thought of the flitchhawk and nodded. Perhaps I had.

  “We know the roads are the key to understanding, and on this key we have based our existence, our future, our destiny. And we believe, for very ancient songs and chants speak of it, that there is a shadow-master somewhere. Something that controls and guides what we call the shadow. It may have something to do with the ancient tower the blind runners sing of. I may have seen that same tower. Others have seen what I saw. Himaggery the Wizard. Chamferton the Wizard. Mavin Manyshaped, the Shifter.

  “And there is something in legend called the Daylight Bell ...”

  “Little Star and the Daylight Bell. The story I played with the flitchhawk!”

  “A very old story. There are truths in these old tales, Jinian. They persist. The very words persist, century after century. Like rituals. Not merely tales for amusement, but rituals of truth. Perhaps the thing itself exists. And those are the things we know, Jinian Footseer. Little enough, you may say, for some hundreds of years at the task of learning more. That is the task we were given by our founder: to learn more yet. To await the renewal of the roads. To prepare for the destiny of the Dervishes.”

  Came a long silence then. There were many things I should have asked her. About Porvius Bloster and the things he had said. About the Dream Miner and Storm Grower, which—who?—had ordered my death. About the enmity of the Basilisks, so deadly and so unexplained. About the Oracle, who or what it was, and why I had sensed malice from it, and danger. So many things. I asked none of them. I was so awed to think I had talked with an old god that I couldn’t think of anything much to say. I moved a finger, tentatively. It felt good to move. It had not felt good to move for a very long time. I rose on my toes, wiggled my arms. The silver Dervish stood, watching me.

  At last, however, the sight of that still, silver pillar became oppressive and I murmured, “I thank you, Dervish. I confess I did not think one of your kind would tell me anything, and though I do not know why you have treated me so kindly, I thank you for it.”

  “You are my child,” she said.

  The words were senseless. They might have been spoken in gnarlibar growl or bunwit squeak for all the meaning they had.

  “You are my child,” the Dervish repeated. I saw one arm quiver, as though she wanted to reach out and could not. “We cannot bear as others bear. The way we are reared makes our bodies ... different. We have not some of the essential parts for bearing. So, we beget, but we do not bear. We choose healthy, strong women to bear for us, and we pay them well.”

  “My mother?” I asked. “Not?”

  “The woman in Stoneflight Demesne, not.” It was a final word. Odd as it was, what she had just said, I did not doubt it, not for an instant. “When we came for you, she would not let you go. Sometimes women do that out of love for that which they have carried. It was not love with her. She demanded other payment, of a kind we cou
ld not make. We could have forced her. But one of our kind looked deep and told us better not. Good would come if we did not, she said. ‘Let the child grow in this hostile soil,’ she said, “’for her own strengthening. Send her help, and love, and let her grow.”’ So we did, Jinian Footseer.”

  “Sent me ... what?”

  “Our servants. Our friends. Murzemire Hornloss, the Seer. Cat Candleshy, Demon. Sarah Shadowsox, Sorceress. Bets Battereye, Tragamor. Margaret Foxmitten, glorious Queen, Tess Tinder-my-hand, Midwife. She who delivered you”

  “The old dams.” I was struck dumb.

  “Yes, Jinian Footseer. The old dams.” Was there, could there be amusement in that voice? “The Wize-ards.”

  I took up the cup, then set it down, noting that it was almost empty, feeling the wet on my trousers where I had spilled it. “Then Mendost ... Mendost knew. Garz, he knew? They all knew I was not of Stoneflight Demesne?”

  “Of course they knew. How could they not know? Was Eller of Stoneflight Demesne a woman who concealed her feelings? Was she secretive, quiet, sly?”

  I remembered Mother’s rages, her loud furies, during which she would scream anything that entered her head. Those at Stoneflight had kept it from me, yes. They had not wanted me to know. But Garz and Mendost had known.

  The Dervish went on, “We bid her be silent. We paid her well. But if she would not honor one agreement with us, why would she honor the other? In this case we did not judge well whom we chose. The time closed about me, and there had been recent ... distractions.”

  Something in me hurt. “When you do that, how do you know, how can you say who is mother and who is not? Whose child anyone is? How do you know!”

  “Intent,” she said. One word. It tolled like a bell. “Intent, Jinian Footseer. It was my intent to beget and rear a child, and that made the child mine. Before ever you were conceived, there was that intent. And so, no matter how it is done, the intent is all that matters. And if there is not that intent, until that intent, nothing else matters, for the child, however begat or born, belongs to no-one and has no parent.”

  I thought back to childhood. Humiliation and pain. Loneliness assuaged with wandering in forest places. Beast and bird and tree and flower. The Old South Road City. Grompozzle. Misquick. Murzy. The old dams. Things and bits, places and times. Had it been ... had it been dreadful? Or merely uncomfortable from time to time? Would I have changed it? Become someone else? Not myself as I had learned to be?

  “It’s all right,” I said at last, amazed to find that it was perfectly true. “I would not be other than I am.”

  “Even without known Talent?” The Dervish had turned away from me to peer out the window where the lily flowers swung in the sunlight. They would have chimed had they been bells. Almost one could hear them.

  “Even ... even without Talent can I still be Wize-ard?”

  “Most certainly. Many without other Talent are.”

  I took a deep breath. On the turf the lily bells swung, up and down, tossing their heads. They had no Talent, either. They merely were. So.

  “I will be content,” I said. “I will be content.”

  “And cease weeping?”

  I wondered how she knew, not realizing my face bore tracks and tracks of it, dirt and tears mixed. “I will cease weeping, Dervish.”

  “And get on with your work. Now that you know the nature of the illness here, there is much healing to be done.”

  “Is this task truly mine?” I looked out upon the road I could see, realizing how much of it was hidden. It was a very great task. A great burden.

  “Yours and none other. Perhaps this is what was foreseen by my kinswoman. Perhaps some other purpose is served here, but you feel, as do we, it is a purpose for good. Yes. It is your task. In that, the Oracle spoke true. If you meet the Oracle again, Jinian Footseer, remember that it always speaks the truth, but never all the truth, and that its speaking comes most often to pain, and malice, and death for someone. Remember that.”

  There was pain in the Dervish’s voice. I wondered if she would touch me. I thought not. Could she touch anyone without bringing that pain? She trembled once more, saying, “In future time, I will come to you again. In future time, you will come to me.”

  She did not touch me. I think she would have said something more but could not. Then she spun, spun, and spun away, whirling down the road to the north, the open road, the road I had built again. There were so many things I should have asked Bartelmy of the Ban. Things, perhaps, a girl might ask her mother. And I had asked nothing. Nothing.

  There was a pool nearby. I wanted to see who I was now and went there to be astonished at this ashy, red-eyed creature with the tangled, dirty hair. I stared at it for a long time. It was not I, not Jinian Footseer. So, I set about turning it into myself. There was soaproot in the marsh. There were warm springs there as well. There were sandy-bottomed pools, and I had a comb in my kit. Clothes dried in the sun. Boots dried by the fire. Steam and smell of wet hair. All in a dream that said, “Whatever you are, you are Jinian. So be her.”

  And at last another look in the pool to see whether she had returned. And she had, clean and neatly combed, hair braided into coils as Murzy had braided it when I was a child. I was not quite comfortable with the eyes. They were still very red and did not look accustomed to themselves, not yet.

  Very well, Jinian, I told myself at last. You are what you are, now get on with it. On my hearth was the design I had drawn, the one the forest had showed me. A road from the south to the north, one slanting off west, one slanting off east, and I had cleared only the nearest end of the northern branch. As I had been wounded and brought to life again, so I must bring this forest to life again. It was my task to do.

  I turned to tree rat and said with great severity, half to myself, needing the severity to convince myself that this was real, “I need all the flood-chucks in the forest, tree rat. I need any that are within reach. We have much road to restore, and I cannot do it alone.”

  Then, to bunwit, “If one actor from the old tale was here, bunwit, why should not the others be? I need the largest gobblemole in the forest. Now lead me.” I fully expected bunwit to look at me with that maddening, listening look, and then go dig roots. He did look at me with the maddening look, but then he hopped away, rather slowly for him, waiting for me to follow.

  “Well,” I said to myself. “He got something of that.” I thanked the forest for telling him what I needed.

  We went southwest, into a part of the forest we had never wandered through. There were vast open tracts there, wide to the sky, meadows of the sort the gobblemoles prefer, where their draggling can be through soft soil. We saw many, but the bunwit didn’t stop. None of them was above average size. I heard sound from the final clearing before ever we came to it, a kind of scrape-chunk, scrape-chunk. From the edge of the trees we could see the earth flying, high on either side of a long, deep trench. It was a great, blind gobblemole, the largest I have ever seen. I came out of the woods to climb upon the draggled bank, remembering what Bartelmy of the Ban had said. Truth in old tales. Rituals of truth.

  “What are you draggling away there for, old gobblemole?” I cried, clutching the star-eye in my hand like some luck-piece.

  “Draggling for the Daylight Bell, Little Star,” he rumbled, spewing bits of soil all over me. His fur was as close and tight, black as midnight dark, velvet all but his snout and those hard, horn claws. “Draggling for the Daylight Bell.”

  “Well then, I’ll help you druggle,” I said, letting go the star-eye to climb down into the trench. It was deep and moist, full of crawly things and ends of root. I pushed in beside the mole and began to druggie, throwing tiny handfuls of earth on either side. I was conveniently placed for him. He caught me in one foot, the horny claws bending around me like so many curved swords, not touching yet, but sharp as any blade might be.

  “Now I’ve got you, Little Star,” his voice drummed at me. As he very well did. As the flitchhawk had had me be
fore.

  This time I managed a tone of petulance. “Now why did you do that, old gobblemole! just when you caught me there, I caught a glimpse of the Daylight Bell. Right there where you were druggling!”

  Then was a long pause, as though the mole didn’t know the words. A long, long pause while Jinian thought she had miscalculated. A long, long time when nothing happened at all and I thought the tale had gone awry or I had not spoken my lines aright.

  I was about to give up and resolve to die when it said, “Where, where,” dropping me and starting to druggle again as it had before.

  So I put the thong about a back foot and cried out. “Daylight Bell in earthways wan’t be; Daylight Bell in treetop can’t be. Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie, now give me boon or else you die!”

  And it said, just as the flitchhawk had, “What boon will you have, child?”

  So I told it what needed doing.

  “That is not much boon, Footseer,” it rumbled at me. Its eyes were so buried in its thick fur I wondered if it saw me at all, but its claws around me were not threatening. They were huge, hard as stone, and I leaned against them, exhausted, looking up into the great gobblemole face to see a glint of light in those hidden eyes. “We will do as you ask, but a boon is still owed you. Earthways are mine, and things old and buried. If you need help with such things, call on me.”

  Then it set me down, and turned back to its druggling, leaving me staggering there, uncertain of my footing or my senses. Bunwit and I went back to the ruin. Next morn early I went to look, and there were a thousand gobblemoles druggling up the earth that covered the road, throwing it to either side, making huge mounds, and leaving the road beneath as clean as old bone. What they didn’t get, the flood-chucks got, and as the days went by, I could walk farther and farther on the Old Road without losing it or having to go barefoot to feel it. It was slow work. The covering hills were monstrous big, but we progressed.