The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Days would go by during which we got great stretches of the road uncovered, and then a morning would come when the shadow lay everywhere. On every clot of earth. On every stone. Nothing moved in the forest then. No bird, no bunwit. Nothing. The flood-chucks wouldn’t come near us, nor the moles. Everything stopped. On those days, I would lie close to the hearth, the window shuttered, a small fire built, and say the protection words over and over to myself with bunwit and tree rat huddling close at my side and not a sound from the forest. I knew what the shadow could do if it touched me, and I did not want it to happen again.

  Then, a morning would dawn with the shadow gone, and we would resume the work as though nothing had happened. After a time, I began to think of the shadow as a kind of traveler which could not be everywhere. So, it came and stopped everything, but while it was here, it could not be elsewhere, and eventually it had to go stop what was happening somewhere else. When it went, we would go on. This was a comforting thought.

  The weather turned cold. The Season of Storms came on. Tree rat and his friends put on another roof over the first one, and I built a pair of shutters for the window. Someone left me a thick blanket woven of moss, and bunwit carried in stacks of soft, dried grass for my mattress. I didn’t go hungry. Tree rat and bunwit seemed to have a bottomless cache of dried fruits and nuts. Some bird left me eggs every day or so. There were edible fungi and roots. The gobblemoles were still working on the southern road. The eastern one was clear. The flood-chucks had started on the western one. There were a couple of problems, not least the river to the south and west which ran right over where the road should go.

  At first it didn’t occur to me to finish up the story. The third creature in the story is a d’bor wife. D’bor are ocean creatures, though sometimes found in very large lakes. They are not river creatures. They are very fearsome, a wild, unfamiliar kind of beast, neither furry nor feathered. I did not like the thought of the d’bor wife. Still, there was that river running half around the forest where it had no business being. Finally, after many many days had gone by, I sat bunwit down and put the problem to him.

  “I don’t suppose there are any d’bor in the forest,” I said. Bunwit went on chewing, paying no attention.

  “Are there any d’bor?” I asked. It looked at me. I sighed.

  “Take me to the d’bor wife,” I said at last, fatalistically. He would or he wouldn’t. Trying to hold back wasn’t doing me any good.

  I wasn’t really surprised when he hopped off in his usual errand-running manner. Southeast. Into the deep chasms of that part of Chimmerdong. Dangerous terrain. Leg-breaking terrain, and no Healer closer than Lake Yost. We slipped and slid. Night came on, and we slept under a tree. It was colder than comfortable. Morning came, dim under black clouds. We went on slipping and sliding.

  Midday, I heard the sound. A waterfall. Sizable. A constant tumult of water into some deep, forlorn place. We were coming to it along the bottom of a canyon. The canyon opened out, wider and wider, and there the pool was before us. More than a pool, a lake. Across it the pillars of stone loomed up to the top of the sky and water fell in a strong, crashing flow.

  And at the edge of the pool, grodgeling in the shallow waters, was a d’bor wife. She was slick and black and hideous. Her flappers were long and hard, shaped like coffin lids. Her one eye peered at me out of her tentacled head, and her jaws clashed their beaky plates together. I stood where I was, going no closer at all, and cried, “Why are you grodgeling away there, d’bor wife?”

  She gargled at me. It took a little time before I understood the words. Story words. Oh, yes. Grodgeling to find the Daylight Bell. The lake spray tasted salt. Might be, I thought, it was tied through underground ways far and far to the Western Sea or the Southern Sea or even the Glistening Sea, far to the east. I did not want to go near her. Her mouth smelled of blood.

  “Well then,” I cried, voice trembling so I could hardly understand myself, “I’ll grodgel with you, d’bor wife.” And I stumbled forward to bend above the shallow waters and begin grodgeling at it, splash, splash.

  And I saw it, there, just sinking away beneath the waters, just the edge, the very edge, golden as dawn, curved, unmistakable, a bell sinking beneath the waves of the lake ...

  So when she took me up, I screamed in real surprise and anguish. “I saw it! I saw it! Just then when you took me up, d’bor wife, I saw the Daylight Bell, sinking beneath the water ...”

  There was no time to be frightened. She dropped me then, at once, and began trying to find it. I forgot the thong, forgot it all. Only after a long time, as she whuffed away in the water did I come to myself enough to slip the thong around a back tentacle and cry, hoarsely, through my tears, “Daylight Bell in water shan’t be; 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!” For I knew then it was too late. We had almost found it, the d’bor wife and I, but we had lost it.

  When I told her the boon, she gargled, deep bubbling sounds like fountains at the bottom of the ocean. Her hide was dark as char and hard, half leather, half shell. Her tentacles wove spells before my eyes, and the suckers on them opened and closed like hungry little mouths. “Not a great boon,” she gargled. “I will owe you a boon more, ground-child. The things of the deep are mine, all things washed by ocean or sea. If you have need in such places, call on me.”

  Well, you know the way of these stories. The river that blocked the Old Road was changed in its course, for the d’bor wife grodgeled it back where it belonged as her boon to me. The moles finished their work, and the flood-chucks. Each road was opened once more to the gray, and we set fires there that burned and burned in ever-widening arcs. When the Season of Storms was done, so was I. The Forest of Chimmerdong was open to the world on every side.

  I sat in my room in the ruin and summoned forest, expecting the small twiggy creature to return. I had not thought, truthfully. It had been a long task, a dirty, endless task, with leagues run every day to spy out all the edges of the road and clear them all. So I summoned, glad it was done, not thinking much, not expecting much.

  It came. I was thrust back against the wall, breathless, as all leaf came into the room, all tendril, all bark, ramifications of trunk and twig, fortresses of root, everything in one, in itself, enormous yet contained, all smells, all light, rain and sun, mist and moonlight, stargleam on pond, dawn on marsh, noon on brook, sparkle and splash. Murmur of wind was there, and howl of storm. Quiet of evening was there, and rattle of hail on high limbs against the sky. Moss, fern, tracery of forest, lip of blossom, whir of wing, cry of beak, all, all, all.

  Field mint and bergamot, rose and startle-flower, lady lily, zeller flower, Healer’s balm, sweet grass.

  Rustle in the underbrush, crash of fleeing prey, howl of predator, shriek of watcher, hum of unconcerned bee creature in the hollow of a stump. All. Wings folding, unfolding like gems; rise of fish from the deeps to make the single, opening ripple that reached, reached, reached outward. Night, morning, noon. High cry of the hawk on gold, low croak of the froggy marsh walker, joined, joined, music, melody, from top to bottom of being, speaking, saying—what?

  “Well done ...”

  Below hearing. Above hearing.

  “Well done ...”

  I could not breathe, did not care, died and did not care. Upon my breast the fragment burned within its locket, a heart of fire upon my own. Then it went away all at once, and I lay on the floor where I had fallen, sucking in air like a beached fish. A forest is a very large thing to come into a room that size.

  Perhaps I had not really believed in the old gods, not until then.

  And yet, though it had been huge, immense, beyond comprehension in its size and complexity, still I had had the feeling it was not a whole thing. A thing made whole, yes, but not a whole thing. There was more, elsewhere. After much thought I decided it was rather as though my foot had spoken to me, a good useful foot without blemish or ill, and
yet only a foot for all that. Not a person entire.

  And what I thought I meant by that, I was not certain an hour later. On my breast an arrow of fire remained, the skin red and burned. It left a scar there when it healed, but there was never any pain.

  On the morning after that, as though carefully timed for my task’s completion, the old dams came singing down the road in the wagon, all five of them, with a cheerfully plain girl of about twelve sitting on the seat beside Cat Candleshy. “Sister,” Cat said, “greet Dodie, who joins us upon the way.”

  I knew we were soon to be seven once more.

  18

  I said hello to Dodie, politely. She greeted me a good bit more eagerly than that, and I looked her over, approving of her. A slightly uncomfortable silence fell.

  I broke it. “You took a long time finding me,” trying to keep a whine out of it.

  “Well, chile,” said Murzy, “we had word you were doing well enough. Coming to grips, you know, the way we all must. Seemed best to leave you at it.”

  “But now,” said Margaret, putting her arms around me and her cheek next to mine, turning the full blaze of Beguilement on me so that she glowed with it like a little furnace and me with it, warming, “we must be with you to celebrate your sixteenth year.”

  That was surprising, but of course a year had gone since we’d had cakes and wine in Xammer. More than two years since Joramal had come to Stoneflight Demesne. Three years since I had been to Schooltown. Ah. The thought caught me all at once and I breathed in with a sob, as though I’d been hurt.

  “Why, chile, chile, what is it?” Murzy was hugging me and listening to me breathe as though something were broken inside.

  “Will you want me still?” I asked. “The Dervish says one can be Wize-ard even without Talent, but oh, I did want something ...”

  “Bartelmy!” muttered Cat.

  “All the sensitivity of an icicle,” murmured Sarah. “We should have known.”

  “Oh, shush,” said Murzy. “Bartelmy is what she can be. Now. You’ve had a hard time, chile, but that’s no excuse for feeling sorry for yourself. Of course we would want you, Talent or no. Once a seven, always a seven, ‘til death breaks us. That’s the way of it, and that’s all.”

  “However,” interrupted Cat, “there is no question of that. You have a Talent, according to Bartelmy. A very strong, unusual one. And, quite frankly, I am surprised that a girl as intelligent as you should not have realized it. No!” She held up her hand as Margaret started to speak. “Let her figure it out for herself. It may give her several hours or days—or, by all the old gods, weeks, if her current silliness continues—of honest bewilderment. Which is always good for the soul. Now, let us have supper.”

  So we had supper. Smoked fowl and bread and candied fruit from Xammer. And wine. And nuts as a gift from tree rat, and fresh fruit as a gift from bunwit. To all of which I paid no attention at all, lost in wonder what my Talent was that Bartelmy should have known of and I not.

  My preoccupation did not stop the celebration. There were gifts. A pair of gloves hand-stitched. “Tess made them,” said Murzy quietly. “Before she died. It was she who birthed you, she who took word to Bartelmy that the woman would not keep her bargain and relinquish you. She grew to love you dearly, Jinian. Remember her kindly.”

  There was a strange package, wrapped up with coils of twine and a tough parchment layer within. Inside was a worked leather scabbard of a size to hold the Dagger. On the parchment, a note. “The Oracle told true that the Dagger would protect you. It will threaten you as well. Be sure of your anger before you use it. It is safer in the scabbard than outside it. Remember me kindly.”

  It was signed with a scribble, as though she had started to write one word, then substituted another. “Bartelmy.”

  “Everyone should be remembered kindly,” I said, perhaps a little bitterly.

  “Being a Dervish is not easy. They sacrifice much.” This was Sarah, soft-voiced and sympathetic as always. “If the woman at Stoneflight had given you to them as she was paid to do, you would have been one of them, Jinian, and would have felt loneliness for its own sake, because you chose it, and the lesson of the shadow, because you would have had to know it. So, you felt it without choosing it and learned the lessons as you would have done anyhow. Do not think Bartelmy has not yearned over you, even though she is not allowed to show it.”

  There were assorted other gifts. Including a book from Joramal on the history and geography of Dragon’s Fire Demesne.

  “Then King Kelver cleaves to his bargain.” I sighed, wondering what I would do about this.

  “He does. And his wife died not a season ago.” This from Cat.

  “We have come to return you to Vorbold’s House. Queen Vorbold has agreed to say nothing to the King about your lengthy absence. Provided that you leave for Dragon’s Fire soon.” Bets Battereye, very busy making plans. “That is, ostensibly we came for that.”

  “And what are we going to do about that? I have no intention of marrying King Kelver, you know.”

  “We know.” Sarah sighed. “We haven’t decided yet what is best to do.”

  So we talked, and plotted, and drank wine, and came to no conclusions. And I talked, and drank wine, and wondered what my Talent was. And night came on. They brought mattresses and blankets out of the wagon into my dwelling, and we built another little fire there and talked, still, into the dark hours.

  And Cat Candleshy said, “Ouf, but that wine has made me thirsty. Where is the pool you drink from, Jinian?”

  And I, deep in conversation with Murzy, said, “Ask the bunwit. He’ll show you.”

  And then silence came down, with all of them looking at me, and Sarah trying not to laugh while Margaret did laugh.

  “How would you suggest I do that?” asked Cat.

  And my mouth came open, then shut, then open again. Because, of course, she couldn’t. No more could I, except that I did. Because it had not been the forest all along that spoke to the animals for me; it had been me, myself.

  “What is it?” I breathed, afraid to say it out loud for fear it would go away. “What is it called?”

  “Not in the Index,” said Murzy. “Nowhere. Reading, some, I should think. Perhaps some power of the Flesh. Who knows? Bartelmy thinks it has something to do with your being born Dervish, but not reared Dervish. One must be reared to Dervishdom with all its special rites and foods to become a Dervish truly. But your Talent is not like theirs. It is yours. No one else’s. Bartelmy says it is most unusual.”

  “Why did she ask me, then, about having no Talent?” I shouted. “Why?”

  “Shhh,” said Cat. “She probably asked you about not having a known Talent, Jinian. An unknown Talent might be, in some cases, like having none. What insignia would one wear? What is the costume of the type? Ah? We said to Bartelmy when she found us upon the road that it would not matter to you, for you had learned the first lesson well. She asked you only to satisfy herself.”

  The first lesson. Of course. The lesson of invisibility. As the old dams were invisible. Their Talents mattering not, except when they needed them. So what was I? A Beast-talker. Jinian Footseer, Beast-talker. I said it out loud. Giggling.

  Then we were all giggling, even Dodie, who had watched all this with wide, wondering eyes, and the night closed in around us peacefully, the fire went out, and we slept. During the night bunwit came in and snuggled next to me. In the morning he was still there. Wondered, just for a time, could he come along with us. Decided not. He would be easy prey for any hungry Gamesman, and his life was in Chimmerdong. Still, when I left him there, it was harder than leaving Grompozzle or Misquick had ever been. They had helped me little, but the bunwit had helped me much. I kissed him on his nose. I don’t know what he made of that.

  Slow, the wagon in its way back to Xammer. A long road, that, twisting down from the heights to the ford of the north fork of the Stonywater. Down Long Valley, easy, among fields as bright as jewels with the horses muttering i
n their noses and I telling them what good, biddable beasts they were. Talking to geese. Talking to strange bunwits in hedges. Singing to birds in the air or on treetops, sometimes out loud and sometimes silently. Made no difference to the beasts. They heard me, either way. I was beginning to hear them back, more clearly every day. It was embarrassing to realize that bunwit and tree rat had been talking to me the whole time I was in Chimmerdong.

  “I don’t suppose there are d’bor in Chimmerdong,” I had asked.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” had said bunwit.

  “Are there any?” I had asked, cursing him for not answering me in the first place.

  “I told you, yes,” he would have said, hurt. “You never listen!”

  Like one deaf, I. No longer. No, I sang and tweeted and muttered up my nose like any horse. Cat told me at last to cease making such noises, as it sounded like a zoo. It didn’t trouble her, really. She was only cautioning me for the future.

  Because there was a future. Oh, yes, indeed, indeed.

  Ferry across the Middle River. Then a bit faster down the good road to Gaywater, across and into the town. When we came to Vorbold’s House, the Queen was there to greet us. She did not look angry. Merely firm.

  “Your friends have advised you? Good. You will depart soon for Dragon’s Fire. I have decided to send one of the Gamesmistresses with you. Silkhands, the Healer. She needs a break in duty; you need someone to keep an eye on you, Jinian.” That was all. She started to go in before me, then turned.

  “I’d almost forgotten. Your mother and brother have asked to meet with you as soon as you return. The visit will be chaperoned, of course. They are in the town now. I will have word sent.”

  I felt my face turn cold, knew it was pale, for the pallor reached deep within. I started to say no, reached out as though to stop her, then held my hand. Mendost. And Mendost’s mother. Not mine. Garz was Mendost’s father. Not mine. And Mendost was not my brother. Good. So let them come.

  Murzy took me by the shoulder. “Tha’ll be awright, chile.”