The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  He came down out of the hills, sometimes playing for the Shadowpeople, sometimes listening as they sang for him. To accompany their singing they had only drums. When he returned to a town where there were craftsmen, he had bells made, and silver flutes, taking them into the Marches as gifts for the Shadowmen ...

  “And now, a thousand years later, I sit in a tower room,” he said, “in a strange city telling the story to Jinian Footseer, watching the wrinkle between her eyes deepening like a crevasse. You will be a quizzical oldster, Jinian. What deep thoughts has my story raised in you?”

  I was fingering the star-eye that hung about my throat, which had hung there since I had received it from Tess Tinder-my-hand when I was only a child. I had always thought of it as an Eesty sign. Now that Queynt had told me his tale, I was not sure it was an Eesty sign at all. The Eesties he described were not what I had thought then. They were not what Mavin, Peter’s mother, had thought them, either. A mystery there. I asked him, “But if they hated you, why have you lived so long, Queynt?”

  “Something to do with the blue crystal, I think. When I left the Marches, I knew I would live a very long life. No. That’s not quite right. I was conscious of death being remote, put it that way. The blue gem did that. It imposed a kind of understanding upon the fiber of oneself.

  “I said to Peter once they would likely do the same for him. I think they would do so for any of us. If whatever makes the gems could only make enough of them to go around, to make everyone understand what I did ...”

  I recoiled at this, but he did not see me. I could not bear the thought of being compelled by some outside force. I rebelled against it.

  He went on, “That is why I am immune to other crystals, I suppose. The pattern of the first one, the blue one, is too well set in me to be disrupted.” He sighed then, taking the pouch from his belt and pouring the crystals into his palm. “There are enough here for you to have one, and Peter.”

  I thrust out my hands, warding him away. “No! No, Queynt. Not for me. And I would hope Peter would say no as well. I do not like the thought of compulsion.”

  He shook his head at me. “Not compulsion, Jinian. Information, more like. It is as though I had been given a map which showed both the good roads and the swamps. Is it compulsion to avoid the swamps if one knows they are there?” I thought he was sincere, but still I would have none of it. Compulsion is always said to be something else.

  “Kind of you, Queynt, but no.” Changing the subject, “It is noon. We have been riding for two days without sleep. If you wish to drink and tell tales, do so, but quietly. I’m going to sleep.” Which I did, lying awake only a little time thinking about Queynt’s story and that strange word or meaning the Eesties had used. Bao. Bah-ho. I knew I would think of it at more length another time.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I woke with a start to a cacophony of shouts, thuds, and explosions. Among these louder sounds were Chance’s whuffing complaint at being wakened and Queynt’s calm voice going on in one of his loquacious monologues.

  “... when one is having the best rest one has had for ages, something eccentric in the way of barbaric behavior breaks loose outside one’s window, and the peace of the evening is disrupted ...” It was disrupted further by more violent blows on the door and another explosion from the street below.

  “Friends, visitors!” Brom’s voice, frantic with a mixture of frustration and panic. “The fireworks shop on Shebelac Street has caught fire and is going up all at once. Let me in. You have the best windows!” Furniture-moving sounds came from the neighbouring room, the barricade being removed. I rose, albeit reluctantly, leaning out of my own window to watch bouquets of rockets blooming across the darkening sky above a volcano of spouting scarlet. Whistles and sirens competed for attention. Figures as dark and tiny as ants ran to and fro before the leaping light.

  It was night. We had slept the day away. I rummaged in my pack for something to wear, taking what was on top, one of the voluminous smocks they wore in the purlieus around Zog. Pulling the soft, bright fabric over my head, I went into the other room.

  Brom hung half-out the window, hitting his fist on the sill in an agony of amused apprehension. “Oh, what a mess! It’s funny, you know, but it isn’t funny at all. At dawn tomorrow comes Finaggy-Bum—not a major festival, but one that deserves some effort for all that—and there won’t be a rocket left. The revelers will be so disappointed.”

  “Revelers?” asked Queynt. “Who are the revelers?”

  “Why, Queynt, those for whom the festivals are held, surely. Those from the towns of Zib and Zog, Chime and Woeful. Those from the villages and farms around Thorpe. Those travelers from no settled place. We do all we can here in Bloome to attract them, though there are those who say our festivating so to excess has lowered our custom rather than raising it...”

  “Customers? For?”

  “Well, originally for anything at all made of cloth, sir. We’re a cloth-weaving town, after all. More recently for the dream crystals as well. What else have we to sell? Why else am I Dream Merchant’s man?”

  “Would some of these be yellow crystals?” I asked. “Yellow as piss, about the size of my thumb-tip?”

  “They would not,” Brom said in an offended voice. “They would be green ones, some large, some small. And amber-brown ones as big as my ear. And little red ones. Those yellow crystals were never intended for commerce. Dream Merchant sent a man here from Fangel. He told me to keep an eye out, confiscate any I found. Which I did. Told me to destroy any I found. Which I would have done. Save for that damned Oracle. Took the sack I put them in. Took them all. Stole them.”

  “Would this “Oracle” be a strange creature in a fancy robe?” I asked. “With a painted face, and full of emphatic language?”

  Brom assented at once to this description. “Oh, he came here, all ribboned up like a Festival Horse, wandered around Bloome, full of amusing stories. So, I invited him here to amuse my ... my friends. When every day is festival it’s hard to come by any genuine amusements. He was gone the next day, and so was the whole sack of yellow crystals meant for the disposal pits. And since, then I’ve been hearing troubles from every side. People who should have come to Bloome to take part in festival, who should have come to buy costumes, come to buy good crystals, dead along the road! Dead! What good will that do commerce? I ask you! Bad enough that half the roads are ruined.” For a moment, when it seemed he knew something about the crystals, I had been almost ready to fly at him, dagger in hand (and no small weapon, but the Dagger of Daggerhawk which needed only to touch in anger to cause death). Now I took my hand out of my pocket.

  The Dagger was in its holster high upon my thigh. It was seldom far from my reach, but Brom did not seem worth the use of it. Besides, what he had to say was interesting.

  I said casually, “And what has destroyed half the roads, Brom? Come. Tell us.”

  He choked. I saw him struggling not to speak. He had been told not to speak? Threatened, perhaps? Whatever it had been that kept him silent was no match for the truth tea we had given him.

  “Storm Grower,” he mumbled, making two syllables out of it, the last one a growl.

  “Why? Why is that, Brom?”

  “Does ... does that when she’s angry. When people don’t ... do what she wants. Oh, don’t make me speak. She’ll kill me, truly she will. Or Dream Miner will. Or the Merchant. He’s their son, you know. So he says. I don’t believe it, but so he says.”

  “So you are not responsible for ruining roads or distributing yellow crystals. None of it.”

  “None of it but doing my job,” he sulked. “And that’s no more than anyone would do. All I really want to do is go away.”

  “How was it you had the things in the first place?” asked Peter, watching the man through narrowed eyes. “Where did you say you got them?”

  “They came in a shipment from the Dream Merchant in Fangel, as all of them come. Neatly packed in boxes, a dozen to the box. They come to me from th
e district headquarters, in Fangel. They come to Fangel from the Dream Miner, I suppose. How these yellow ones got in with the others, no one says. No one tells me anything.”

  “And the Miner gets them where?” pressed Queynt, eager to learn something real after our long search.

  “Why, I suppose he digs them up! I’ve seen Dream Mines. Well, no, I saw one. A little one, just outside Fangel. Nice old fella there, him and his wife, they watch the place. He digs them up with a shovel and a pick, just like you’d dig for anything.” An idea nicked through my head, one of those quick, glittering ones that go before you can grab it.

  Something to do with mines and crystals. I sighed.

  “There for a moment, I thought I had something. By the Hundred Devils, Queynt, but this whole business gets stranger and stranger.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it now, Jinian,” said Peter, doing what he too often did, coming close to me, putting his arm around my waist, his hand flat against my side, burning there with an aching heat. I took a deep breath and moved away, choking back a desire to return the caress.

  “I suppose you’re right. But still, I’d like to know more about these mines.”

  “Well, of course,” said Brom. “If you’d like to come with me to Fangel, you could see the one I saw for yourself. But if you come with me to Fangel, you wouldn’t be staying here in Bloome, and I’d still be Merchant’s man.”

  I returned to the other room as Chance said, “And why’re you goin’ up to Fangel, friend Brom? Is it a city worth seein’?”

  “There’s to be a great reception there for the delegation of the Duke of Betand on his way north,” came the answer in a dull, uncaring voice. “Him and his new allies. The Ogress, Valearn. The Witch, Huldra. There’s another Gameswoman, too, but her name I can’t remember. All the Merchants’ men have been sent for.” I turned, suddenly alert, seeing Peter stiffen as well.

  He had responded to the first name mentioned; I to that of Valearn. Queynt, too, had suddenly grown very quiet. “Huldra?” he said. “Peter, I seem to recognize that name from conversations I had with Mavin. Isn’t that the twin sister of your old friend Huld?”

  “Gamelords,” Peter hissed. “I thought that family done with. Is there no end to them?” He began to enumerate them, coldly ticking them off with his fingers. There was Huld’s father, Blourbast the Ghoul. Huld killed Blourbast, and Mavin saw him do it. Then Mavin herself killed Pantiquod the Harpy, Huld’s mother, and that other harpy, Foulitter, Huld’s half sister. All that was long ago, before I was even born. Then I came along to fall victim to Huld’s son-thalan, Mandor. He died by his own act, though Huld held me at least partly responsible. I thought all were gone but Huld, and him we did away with on the Wastes of Bleer. That should have been an end to it! Now we hear there’s another one yet alive? That Huld had a twin?”

  “That and worse,” I said from the doorway. “You also did away with King Prionde on the Wastes of Bleer. But he had a sister-wife, Valearn. Their son, Valdon, was killed by the Faces some eighteen or nineteen years ago, so Mavin told me, though it is unlikely they ever knew Mavin’s part in that...”

  “My mother seems to have confided greatly in you both,” said Peter, not altogether pleasantly.

  “Peter, before we began this journey, you may recall that you and I and Mavin and Himaggery and a great mob of people all traveled together to Hell’s Maw, a trip of some days’ duration, during which time I got to know her rather well. She told me her life’s story, as she would have been glad to tell you if you’d ever taken time to sit down and listen. I continue: Out of grief, it is said, Valearn turned Ogress and feasted upon the children of our region. Those of us from the lands around the Stonywater in the south were warned to fear her more than her late husband, the King. And now these two are allies with the Duke of Betand? I heard of these dangerous alliances in Xammer!” (Actually, I had heard of them at the Citadel of the Wize-ards, but that was no one’s business but mine.) “Now, what is going on here? What is the reason for these alliances?”

  Brom was looking from one to another of us, his worried face growing more haggard with each word he heard us say. “It would be more likely for the Cloth Merchants’ Council to award you ten thousand bonus points than for me to know anything about that, lady. Do you think the Dream Merchant consults me? Do you think he asks a Merchant’s man, “May I take an ally?” He sends us crystals to sell, and sometimes he summons us up to Fangel for some do or other, and that’s all I know about the monsters you’re talking of. And I’m supposed to go be part of a welcoming deputation!” He sobbed. “I would as soon walk into a gnarlibar’s jaws.”

  “Ah, well,” I said comfortingly. “It is the Merchant’s man who is to go, is it not?”

  “I. Me. The Merchant’s man, yes.”

  “And on the festival of Finaggy-Bum, tomorrow, the arbiters of Bloome will select their Merchant’s man?”

  “From among the least stylish, yes. But you have found me out. You were not naifs at all. My chances of laying the job off on one of you are next to nothing.” So saying, he burst into angry tears, letting them flow down his face and into his beard without bothering to wipe at them at all. The truth tea had this effect of truth telling even upon emotions. Chance patted the fellow on the shoulder, commiserating, while Queynt tried to hide his smile.

  “I think we may assure your stylishness tomorrow,” I told him. “And one of us will wear your old clothes, friend Brom, thus guaranteeing that it will be one of us who goes to Fangel as Merchant’s man of Bloome.” Of course, which one of us it would be was another matter.

  “One of us, then,” I said to the troupe. “Whoever wishes to act the part?”

  “I,” said Queynt. “Peter and Chance may be known to Huldra or Valearn. You traveled in the High Demesne, didn’t you, my boy? Some three or fours years ago?”

  “We did, yes. But I never saw Prionde’s wife. Chance, did you?”

  “I didn’t see any such lady. Oh, there was talk of a wife hiding somewhere in a tower, but I never saw her.”

  “Still, she may have seen you. You, Jinian, will be needed for something else. Therefore, it must be me.” Queynt smiled again, posturing. “I will make a very good Merchant’s man.”

  “We are not too different in size,” said Brom. “The old things would fit you. But... but no matter what we do, it may be the Cloth Merchants’ Council will still hold me to the position. They’ve said I’m not bad at the job. Or maybe they just hate me. Oh, it may be hopeless!”

  “We will see to that,” I promised him. “Do they meet at any given time and place?”

  “They will meet tonight,” he answered. “In the loft of the weaving mill.” He turned away, his face working, murmuring as he went, “Think of it. Riding out of Bloome. Titty-tup, titty-tup, along Tan-tivvy Boulevard. Not to Fangel. No. West, I think. Or even south. Tittytup, titty-tup.” He went down the corridor, galloping as though he had a hobby between his legs, lashing one thigh with an imaginary whip.

  “Mad,” said Queynt almost affectionately. “Quite mad.”

  The great mill of Bloome crouched upon the eastern edge of the city, a heaped monstrosity, glaring banefully through a hundred eyes, growling and munching as it ate the provender brought by the citizens, spewing out its cloth in endless lengths to be rolled into bolts and carried away. Day and night those who were not involved in the festivals of Bloome were involved in feeding the mighty machine or carrying its excreta away.

  Just now all the shoulder-high slots in the courtyard were vomiting fabric of an excruciating pink color into waiting wagons. A bored knife man stood to one side, ready to cut the weave when each cart was full, and around him the drivers sat, some drinking, some playing at dice, some half-asleep.

  From this cluttered courtyard, a narrow door opened upon an even narrower iron stair, which twisted its skeletal length upward through roaring, dust-filled spaces to a loft. This space, tall as a church, was lit by grimed windows and a few scattered bu
lbs whose filaments alternately glowed and dimmed as the mechanicals below grumbled and howled. There, at a brokenlegged table, the Cloth Merchants’ Council of Bloome sat upon rickety chairs at its interminable meetings. It was here they were assembled while the fireworks shop burned on Shebelac Street, unable to hear the sirens for the endless growling of the looms below.

  If one looked out the dirty windows by daylight, one could see the hoppers at the rear of the building where the carts lined up each day to dump weeds and trees, trash and old furniture, last night’s costumes and banners and tents into the huge, shaking hoppers. The hoppers emptied into a steel enormity where no man had ever gone alive and from which only fabric emerged at the other end. There were only two rules of life so far as the Cloth Merchants’ Council was concerned. Never let the machine run out of stuff to weave. Never run out of ways to use the weaving up.

  The machine had run out of raw materials only once.

  Bloome had learned then that the machine had its own ways of collecting materials if it was not sufficiently fed.

  Babies, geese, fustigars, tame zeller, houses, people: the machine did not discriminate. Since that time (called “The Exemplary Episode” in the minutes of the council) the machine had not been allowed to run dry.

  That was practical politics, that rule.

  The other rule was religious.

  Bloome had been a cloth-making town as long as anyone remembered. The mill had always been there. It was assumed to have been put there by a god or by the ancestors, either to be equally revered. Since neither god nor the ancestors did things without purpose, the cloth, arriving in quantities ever greater and always far more than could be used in Bloome, must have a purpose. It had been up to the people of Bloome to find it.

  They had found it at last, after many trials. Festivals.

  At first only once or twice a season, later six or eight times a season, most recently every few days. Every few days a new festival, to deck the city with new banners.

  Every few days a new festival, requiring new costumes for residents and visitors alike. Every few days a new festival, with new tents and marquees to be sewn. And in the quiet times between, weary cleanup crews laboured to gather the materials to take to the hoppers again. A precarious balance, but better than another “Exemplary Episode”.