The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Saving one’s life, perhaps,” I mumbled, remembering too well what I had had to do to the centipig in the Forest of Chimmerdong. “Saving someone else’s life.” Or, said some deep voice, saving something more important than life itself.

  I remember putting my head down on the stone, wishing Murzy were there to give me some advice. It would be so easy to hold Peter at a comfortable distance, just for a time. Surely there were rules! Surely there were answers!

  Well, Murzy wasn’t there, so it did no good to wish it. I gave up the whole matter and went to find myself some breakfast.

  The delegation from the Cloth Merchants’ Council arrived a little after noon bearing Queynt on their shoulders and hailing him as the new Merchant’s man.

  He already wore the sparkling seal of office, the letters “DM” entwined in gems upon jet. Brom, sneaking along behind so as not to draw any attention to himself, stayed only long enough to divest himself of the pink vertical and get his horse out of the stable. It seemed he had been packed long since, for the merchants had scarcely begun advising Queynt of his future duties before the titty-tup of Brom’s horse’s hooves was fading down Sheel Street.

  “The garbage schedule tomorrow,” Madame Browl was saying in a firm voice. “First thing tomorrow!”

  “Not tomorrow,” said Queynt. “Tomorrow the Merchant’s man is summoned to Fangel. Brom told me so. I leave tonight.” The council members scowled at one another, robbed of their opportunity to show authority immediately and thus, some seemed to feel, robbed of it perpetually.

  “Well then, when you return. As soon as you return.”

  Queynt had no more intention of returning than I did, but he agreed amicably and things went on pleasantly thereafter as they discussed the matters of garbage and machine-feeding detail and the maintenance of the fire brigade. In the midafternoon the festival ended—early, because there would be no fireworks—and soon after that, the workmen I had asked for arrived. Peter and I went off with them to the great mill while Chance and Queynt prepared to depart. There was something in my boot, and as I stopped to empty it, I heard the two of them behind me.

  “What’s she up to, that girl? Lately she’s seemed troubled.” Chance was a dear to care like this. Though he never seemed to be taking notice, nothing really escaped him.

  “She has power, Chance. Power she may use, if she will. Power she fears using unwisely and thus fears using at all.”

  “Looked on Barish, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. Yes, she looked on my brother, Barish, and what Barish did. Jinian sees the implications of that, I think. She does see things like that.”

  “But Barish took the hundred thousand for something greater. So you said.”

  “Oh, yes. And now he must try to answer the question I’ve been trying to answer for these hundreds of years, Chance. The question those hundred thousand will ask when they wake. The question Jinian is trying to answer. Is there anything greater?” And there it was, of course. That was the thing that had been bothering me, and it didn’t help greatly to know that many others had wrestled with it as well.

  We went out onto the dusty cobbles of Sheel Street, littered with torn banners and tangled worms of confetti.

  Birds quarreled in the gutters over spilled confections.

  Wagons were moving from corner to corner while weary crews filled them with the festival flotsam. Down the hill we went, twisting and turning to arrive at the yard before the mill. We got to work, Peter and me and a dozen carpenters and metal workers, toiling away on the roof.

  When Queynt and Chance arrived in the wagon, each endless length of pink cloth that had spewed from the front of the building was drawn up like a great fustigar tongue, licking the nose of the mill.

  Chance was astonished. “Now, by all my grandma’s teacups, what’re they up to?”

  “Rollers, I should imagine,” said Queynt. “Drawing the stuff up the front, and across the top, and down the back into the hoppers. Saves all that using up in between.”

  “Well, why didn’t the silly Bloomians think of that?”

  “Religion, I imagine, friend Chance. Religion serves to prevent thought in many cases, and I’d say it had done so here. They started with the presumption that anything as complex as the mill must exist for a good reason. Then they spent all their time inventing a good reason—and some god to be responsible for it—rather than looking for a sensible solution to their problem. Jinian has merely substituted Drarg for whatever other deity they had involved.”

  “Clever,” mumbled Chance. “Only I don’t think she’ll let herself enjoy it. By night she’ll be worrying whether it was the right thing to do.” He leaned back to watch the carpenters where they hammered away on high and saw that I’d been listening. He merely winked at me. Chance wasn’t at all shy about his opinions.

  There was a cheer from the roof as the first of the cloth reached the hoppers in back. Queynt clucked to Yittleby and Yattleby, who strode off around the building to the rear. Wide bands of pink descended in a steady flow to disappear into the huge, shaking hopper.

  Queynt got down from the wagon and came to meet me as I came down the ladder.

  “They’re going to have to add some trash now and then, you know,” he told me. “The cloth alone won’t be enough.”

  “It won’t? I thought if everything that came out went back in ...” In fact, I had been rather proud of thinking this up, and his corrections made me peevish.

  “Not quite. It uses up some, you see. During the weaving. Better tell the workmen, or it may not work right.” He strode back to the wagon, pausing to take a bow to the group of council members who had just come around the corner of the building. Madame Browl was staring upward, face creased in concentration. Mergus frowned, at first unable to believe what he saw. Others murmured behind them, Philp among them.

  “An excellent solution,” said Queynt in a loud, definite voice, winking in my direction. “Drarg’s representative is to be congratulated.”

  “But, but...” Madame Browl seemed about to object.

  “No longer the endless round of festivals!” cried Peter. “The people of Bloome may sleep of a morning.”

  “No more uncomfortable clothes,” cried Chance, getting into the spirit of the thing. “No more being bedeviled by the Hundred Demons!”

  “No more banners,” someone cried from the rooftop.

  “No more pink stuff!” cried someone else.

  At the reference to the pink stuff, there was a general cheer, under the sound of which Madame Browl’s disapproving voice fell silent.

  “Leaving already, are you?” Philp asked Queynt, staring suspiciously at the great birds the while.

  “Drarg’s ambassador will ride with me to Fangel,” he replied in an innocent tone, bowing in my direction. “It seemed impolite to delay her. Inasmuch as she has helped Bloome so immeasurably.”

  “Well. Be sure you get back promptly. This”—he gestured at the mill—”is going to cause upheaval. Half the people in town won’t know what to do with themselves. Do we go ahead and arrange for Pickel-port-poh? I ask you, do we? And Shimerzy-waffle?”

  “Oh, I would,” said Queynt. “Definitely. However, as Merchant’s man, I’d suggest Bloome should start looking into handlooms for your weaving. No reason you can’t use some of the stuff from the mill, here, if it ever produces anything you want, but for real quality, one wants the handwoven stuff. That will provide jobs for all those ousted as hopper fillers, and it will be better quality than you’ve had for centuries. That, in turn, should increase custom. No reason you can’t still sell costumes, and have processions. And fireworks. The fireworks factory should be half-rebuilt by the time I’m expected back. I’m sure the Cloth Merchants’ Council can hold things together while I’m in Fangel.” And thereafter, I thought to myself. And thereafter.

  I came to the wagon, walking in my best plenipotentiary manner.

  “Madame.” Queynt bowed.

  I gave them all a haughty loo
k before climbing to the seat. “When Drarg returns, he will see to turning the mill off for you, though I am bound to tell you he may not return for several hundred years.” Then I waved at them all in an imperious manner while Queynt krerked to the birds and took us off.

  Peter and Chance mounted up and plodded behind the wagon. “We could’ve got one night’s sleep,” complained Chance. “Before settin’ out again. Those were good beds there in the mansion.”

  “I think our Wizards are on the track of something,” said Peter a little sullenly. He was cross and irritable, overtraveled, underslept, underloved. With a sudden clarity I realized that if I was finding our relationship difficult, Peter was finding it damn near impossible, and this threw the whole matter into confusion again.

  If he felt grumpy and uncivil about it, well, so did I.

  We followed on Brom’s track for the first part of the way, back up the twists and down the turns of Sheel to the Forum Road, thence northwest on Tan-tivvy until it came to a crossing some way out of the town. Painted signboards pointed the way to a dozen places, east to Omaph and Peeri and beyond them to Smeen. Northeast to Jallywig and the unexplored depths of Boughbound Forest. Northwest to Luxuri and the Great Maze.

  South, the way we had come, to Zib, Zog, Zinter, Chime, and Thorpe. North to Woeful and Fangel.

  The way from Zinter to Bloome had been river bottom, a flat road and an easy one, which went on through Bloome to Luxuri through the warm, moisture-laden airs of the jungle. The northern road to Woeful climbed abruptly out of this basin onto a narrow ridgeback above the trees. We looked down onto a steaming roof of vegetation, where flocks of bright parrots screamed their way toward the setting sun. The road stretched upward, no end to the slope in sight, and after some leagues of it, the krylobos decided abruptly that they had had enough for one day. They communicated this fact by squatting and waiting to be unharnessed.

  “They never stop unless there is water near,” commented Peter. “I’ll find it.” He set off down the western slope, listening as he went. In a few moments he called out, returning shortly thereafter with a full bucket. “A spring,” he said. “Running into a lovely, cool basin. Supper first, then cold baths if anyone wants.”

  “How far to Fangel?” I asked.

  “A long day,” replied Chance. “The fellas I talked to usually make it in two, stopping in Woeful for the night, but that’s with a late start. I figure we can make it in one.”

  “The fellas?” inquired Peter. “What were you up to, Chance?”

  The round, brown man shrugged elaborately in response. “Well, we have to know what’s goin’ on.”

  “There wasn’t a small game, was there?” Peter asked.

  “Might have been,” Chance replied with a complacent expression. “Looky here.” He squatted at the side of the wagon, spreading the contents of his pouch on a flat rock. Coins, large and small, silver and gold. A piece of worked gold—half of a lacy brooch. And an amethyst dream crystal, larger than others we’d seen, of a curiously muted color, as though a shadow lay across it.

  “They gamble with crystals? As though they were coins or gems?”

  “This one fella did. I said no to him twice, told him I didn’t want it. Fella insisted. Said it was valuable, not like any others we’d ever seen.”

  “You won, of course.”

  “No reason not to.” He shuffled his loot upon the stone, running it through his fingers. “Wonder what good it is?” Before I could move to stop him, Queynt reached for the stone and touched it to his tongue. Truly, I did move to stop him, warned by something, perhaps by the shadow that seemed to lie across the color in the stone. I was too late.

  It was as though he had turned to lava, a kind of liquid stone that surged slowly beneath the skin, changing him as one watched, but so slowly one could not see change from moment to moment, could not say, “See, see what just happened,” for nothing just happened. His face changed, and his body, not as a Shifter changes, but as water in a bucket changes, sloshing to and fro, returning always to the shape of the container. I couldn’t keep myself from screaming, a little high-pitched shriek of horror that brought Peter to us at once.

  Queynt was weeping, huge tears welling from both eyes to make long dust tracks down his broad face, and he making no effort to stop them or wipe them away, meantime shrieking a high, lifeless sound like a knife upon a whetstone. His eyes were distant, unfocused, his breathing shallow and slow. The hideous shifting under his skin went on for a moment longer, then stopped slowly, like a tide ebbing away as he sagged onto the ground, the thin, shrieking sound going on and on, endlessly. The amethyst crystal dropped into the dust. I seized it and put it away, where it could do no more damage.

  He had showed me the blue crystals he carried, those few the Shadowman had given him in the long ago, the ones he had offered to me. They were in his pouch, and I burrowed for it, trying to move his heavy, shrieking body aside, finally dragging it out and pouring the contents into my hand, three of the small blue crystals he had shown us in the tower of Bloome.

  I didn’t know what to do! Surely these had some curative properties if one of them had kept him alive for a thousand years. There was nothing else to try. No wize-art could be used against the totally unknown, and I could not taste the amethyst crystal to see what horrible thing in it Queynt had encountered. Peter read my terrible doubt and indecision and said, “Do it, Jinian. Something awful has him. Anything’s better than this ...” as he helped me get one of the blue stones into Queynt’s mouth.

  For a time nothing changed. Then the thin, tortured shrieking ended, the tears stopped flowing, and he looked more or less like himself. We held him between us, warming him. After a long time he spoke in a distant, windy voice not like his own.

  “I thought I was immune.” The words were said so slowly I had to recapitulate the sounds to understand them.

  “What was it? What did it do?” He could not or would not answer. He could not or would not say anything. We sat beside him, watching his face. After a time, his eyes closed. After a longer time, he began to breathe as though he were asleep.

  We wrapped him warmly. After a long time, we left him there. The two krylobos had come nearby during his shrieking, and they sat by him, keeping him warm.

  We prepared a meal, laid out our blankets, fed the birds, who were up now, striding nervously back and forth, staring at Queynt from the sides of their eyes, muttering bird talk that I could not really understand because they didn’t understand it. I took it to be some kind of rote-learned ritual or invocation.

  We ate. Chance took a bowl of broth to Queynt and spooned it into his mouth, whispering to him the while. I think Queynt slept then. Later, when we were all almost asleep by the coals of the fire, he began to speak, little more than a whisper, so we had to strain to hear him.

  “I thought I was immune. The blue crystal I was given so long ago—oh, it does not seem long sometimes, but now it seems an eternity since that happened. The blue crystal—often I tried to tell myself what it had done to me. All I could think of to describe it was to say I had swallowed a map.” He fell silent again, as though thinking what he might say next.

  I sat up, seeing the fire reflected from Peter’s eyes where he sat half against a wagon wheel.

  “Perhaps it was not a map or not only a map, but a set of instructions, a guide in cases of perplexity, a set of consistent directions to be used in all eventualities.” He struggled up on one elbow, reaching for the water jug.

  I gave him a drink, hushing him. “No, no. You worry, Jinian, that the crystal took my will from me. It did not. If one has a map which shows two routes going to a place, one a good road, the other through a swamp, does it destroy one’s will to know the swamp is there and reject that direction in favor of the better road? You are not sure. You would like all choices to be equal. Only if all choices were equal could one be sure one had free will. Otherwise ... otherwise ...” He pushed himself up, half-sitting.

  “Otherwise
one always wonders if someone else is pulling the strings. However ... however, I had swallowed the map and it was part of me. From that time to this I have never felt anyone else pulling the strings. Inside myself the map was clear. Avoiding the swamps was simple good sense. Avoiding accident. Avoiding death. Avoiding pit and dragon, both. So. I wandered the world of my map …

  “Which, like most maps, did not specify a destination.” I could hear him breathing, deep, fast breaths as though he fought to climb some great height.

  “A destination?” I asked at last, prompting him.

  “Most maps are tools one uses as an aid in journeying. They do not usually give a destination.”

  “And the other crystal?” asked Peter hesitantly. “The amethyst crystal? Did it show a destination, Queynt?”

  “A wrong one,” he sobbed. “Yes. A wrong one.”

  “Shhh,” I said, putting my arms around him, cradling him to me as though he were a child. “Shhh, Queynt. Tell us. What do you mean, a wrong one?”

  “It summons to another place. Not on the map I was given at all. To some horrid cavern beneath the earth where monsters roar in the dark and all dreams are murdered.”

  “Summons you, Queynt? Against your will?”

  “Not against my will, child. Making it my will to go! That’s the horror of it! But bless you, child, the blue one is there as well, saying, No, not the right place, not the right thing to do.” He could not say any more. Perhaps he would not say. I sat there cradling him well into the night, he still crying without a sound and Peter sitting by, the fire making mirrors of his eyes, glowing disks turned in my direction. At last Queynt slept.

  “Well, Wize-ard?” said Peter.

  “I won’t let it happen,” I said. “I will prevent it.”

  “What will you do to save him?”

  “I don’t know, Peter. I don’t know. Whatever it is is inside him. Perhaps by morning it will have worn off. Perhaps it’s addictive, as the yellow ones were. We must watch him, protect him. But I don’t know what I’ll do if he isn’t well by morning. I haven’t any idea at all.” It was some time before we slept.