The End of the Game
Page 33
Soon there were feather tufts mounted high, labeled “Yarnoff” and “Barnoff,” while I was frantically wondering if it mattered whether I had put the right feathers with the right names.
It was not done too soon. Wraiths red as hot iron came screaming from the sky to settle upon the hasty bundles. If we had delayed a moment, we would have delayed too long.
“Now what?” begged Beedie, pale as milk. “We have no such things as these in the chasm.”
“What chasm is that, lady?” asked Chance, breathing heavily. He had not liked the look of those wraiths and was eager to talk of something else.
“In the chasm where we live, on the great root cities.”
“Great root cities,” I said distractedly. “Are there things like groles there? Great things like huge worms?” And on being told there were, I was confirmed in an earlier supposition and saddened thereby.
“I ask again,” said Beedie, amazed at this easy change of focus. “What now?” I rubbed my head wearily, trying to remember.
“Well, now the Witch will be told by her wraiths that they have found and eaten the ones she sent them after. If she is not too clever, that will be enough. If she is very clever and does not mind the time it takes, she will examine the wraiths for blood scent and, finding none, know she has been tricked.”
“At which,” came Queynt’s heavy, pained voice from the wagon, “she will be very annoyed. You should have put some fresh meat in the dummies, Jinian.” I was ashamed to have forgotten it. There was no excuse for it except funk, fear and funk from a growing supposition that something was terribly wrong. “I forgot.”
“Well, you had little time to do anything. Sorry I was of so little help.”
“Any meat? Why not blood of your own?” Roges asked.
“Because that would feed the wraith and lead it directly to the source,” said Queynt. “No, any nonhuman meat would do. It is a clever Witch indeed who can tell the difference between man blood and zeller blood by smell. Of course, Huldra may be that clever. We know almost nothing about her, including the source of her animosity.”
“Let us take her animosity as proven, Queynt, without worrying about its source.”
“Not only hers,” he said. “The Dream Merchant spoke to the Duke concerning Storm Grower. They travel to meet with Storm Grower and the Dream Miner, who also have animosity toward you. I wonder why.”
“Before traveling to the north with you, Queynt, I had heard the name twice. Once in Chimmerdong Forest, when Porvius Bloster said the order to kill me had come from ‘them, the Dream Miner and Storm Grower’. Then again on the Wastes of Bleer, Sorah the Seer said something to Peter about a Storm Grower. It made little enough sense, then or now.
“Shadowmaster. Holder of the key. Storm Grower. The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell.” Make what you will of that, Queynt. It meant nothing to me.”
“I make nothing of it yet. Nonetheless, there is a Storm Grower, and a Dream Miner, both somewhere together. And tomorrow the Duke goes there with his ghastly maidens.”
I tried to make sense of this. “Oh, Queynt, I am too tired to think! I wish Peter and the other krylobos would come tell us pursuit has been sent aside.” Privately I was thinking it was not a long leap of suspicion from Jambal to Jinian, if the Witch knew Jinian existed. If the Witch cared. If the Witch were a creature of the Dream Miner. If. If. If. Perhaps another sending would come before long.
As though summoned by my thoughts, a cry from the forest brought an answer from Yattleby. “Pursuit ended. Peter comes.”
“We can stop,” I said thankfully, reaching for the reins. “We can stop,” I krerked to the birds.
We did stop, gratefully, waking Sylbie and the baby in the process but otherwise much gratified to be able to stretch, walk about, go into the woods to relieve ourselves.
“Doe see birs!” demanded the baby.
“What’s his name?” I asked, in a fatalistic mood.
“Bryan,” said his mother, surprisingly. “It was my older brother’s name. He had hair just this color. My mother always said I should name my first child after my brother, if it was a boy. This is Jinian, Bryan. Can you say Jinian?”
So much for Peter’s inherited red pate! I stood by as the baby did go see the birds, seeming totally unafraid of the great creatures. “This one is Yittleby,” I instructed. “That one is Yattleby.”
“Yilby,” crowed the baby. “Yalby.” He had a fine grasp of infinitesimal distinctions, this one. “Jinny,” he went on, giving me an effulgent smile.
“He’s very friendly,” murmured Sylbie apologetically. “My mother always said I was, too, as a baby.”
“A charming child.” I was cool, not very amused at myself for being so.
A disruption in the underbrush announced Peter. He came out dressed in his own Shifter fur and carrying the Zinterite garments. “Damn,” he said when told of the wraiths. “I liked those clothes. Besides”—hopefully—”I didn’t tell my name to anyone.”
“I did,” I apologized. “Unfortunately. Sorry, Peter, but it’ll be safest if you hang them.”
“What was the name we used for me?” he wondered aloud. “I’ve forgotten.”
“Chorm,” howled a hungry wraith voice, far back up the trail. “Choooorm ...”
“Oh, yes,” he said, scrambling for the straw sack and the upward trail all at once, while I mumbled the likeness spell for the fifth time. When he returned he was paler. “Nasty thing, that was. All greenish and flapping. Gamelords, but I’m glad I hadn’t met a Witch before.”
“You did,” corrected Chance. “We met one together on the road to Xammer. Before we met this Wizard,” indicating me, Jinian, with his elbow.
“Well, that one was nothing much. All Beguilement, as I recall. Nothing compared to this Huldra!”
“Huldra may have a Witch’s Talent,” said Queynt, “but mere Talent would not enable her to send these wraiths. No, she’s studied the arts. Not wisely, but deeply in a narrow way. Found some corruptible Wizard, most likely, and bought the secrets from him.”
“Did I hear Chance say you’re a Wizard?” asked Beedie curiously, eyes turned weighingly on me.
“Yes. Of a sort. A very young one,” I admitted.
“Can you do ... things like that? Like those blue things?”
“I could, yes. Likely I wouldn’t. There’s a blood price for doing things like that. One I wouldn’t want to pay, but that someone like Huldra wouldn’t mind paying. For each wraith she sends, someone dies. It is lifeblood which empowers the creatures. To Huldra, the life of a pawn or follower would be nothing. Her whole family was like that, starting with Blourbast, so I understand.”
“Bloody intentioned,” agreed Peter. “Though sometimes they hid it for a time, to further their own aims.” He was remembering the time at Bannerwell when he had been almost convinced—for a very short time—of Huld’s honor.
Sylbie and Bryan returned .from their bird watching. Bryan staggered to Peter and climbed onto his knees. Peter patted the child awkwardly as he blushed deeply. “Tows!” the baby demanded vehemently. “Tows!”
“Baby wants his trousers,” said Sylbie. “I had to take them off him. They were wet and he was getting peevish. We were so long in the wagon, and I had no others to bring.”
“Well, now,” said Roges heartily, “that’s easy to remedy. Let’s see if the wagon master keeps needle and thread and whether there is such a thing as a raggedy shirt no one needs any longer ...” He picked Bryan up, jogging him expertly, and went to query Queynt where he lay beneath a tree.
“Roges misses ours,” said Beedie. “Though none of them are babies anymore. The youngest is eight by now, five when we left.”
“Where is he? she?” I wanted to know.
“She. Our first girl. We named her after Mavin. She’s home in Bridgers’ House, being spoiled rotten by my Aunt Six. We talked of bringing her, but the journey was so chancy.”
“How did you meet Mavin?”
“This thing?”
Beedie looked at Roges, and he at her. “That man is Mavin’s son,” said Roges, indicating Peter. “And these others are his friends. Some others ought to know, Beed.”
“True. Others ought to know.” She went to the basket, then, taking the cover off and removing some leafy wrappings from within. “It may be,” she said, pointing to the basket, “that this was the reason we were kept captives by the Duke. He may have intended our friend here for his zoo.”
“I aaam huuungry,” puffed a small voice from within. “Pleeeez foood.”
“Do you have any meat?” asked Beedie, her voice concerned. “He hasn’t been fed for several days.” We gathered around the basket to peer within, seeing only a formlessness there, a roiling shininess.
“How much do you want?” asked Chance.
“A chunk, about head-sized.” She spoke into the basket. “Meat coming, Mercald-Mirthylon.” When Chance brought it to her, she lowered it into the basket and put the lid back on. “It will only be a minute.” Roges was busy with needle and thread and an old shirt of Peter’s, jouncing Bryan on one knee the while. “Not a pretty sight, watching them eat, so we don’t. I suppose, from their point of view, watching us eat could be mighty unaesthetic, too. I’d better warn you, don’t touch what’s in the basket. It will eat you as quickly as it will that meat, not intentionally but uncontrollably. That’s how it got the name of Mercald. Mercald was a friend of ours, a priest, and he thoughtlessly laid hands upon it.” Beedie nodded. “We call the race ‘the Stickies’. They are sticky on top and dissolve anything that touches them. In their native chasm land, they live on insects and plants and small fish which brush against them. Or larger things, if such are unwary. And if a Sticky eats something with a mind, then the mind becomes part of it, too. So, we have a creature here in this basket who has eaten two living men—one named Mirtylon many hundreds of years ago. One only twenty years ago or so, named Mercald.” She looked around at the circle of disbelieving faces.
“Well, you shall hear for yourselves.” She removed the lid from the basket and turned it on its side. The moist shininess within rolled out onto the earth, settling itself into a thick disk, rounded upward at the centre, from which an ear and a small trumpet gradually extruded themselves.
“How do you do.” It puffed. “I am gratified to meet you, Peter, Mavin’s son. (Puff.) I knew Mavin. She was very wise. Wiser (puff) than I.” There was then a strange, strangled sound, and after a time we realized the thing was laughing.
“Jinian, you are very brave. (Puff.) I heard the sending screaming. Most frightening. (Puff.) Sylbie and the baby we knew already from the procession. (Puff.)” The trumpet collapsed into the general shininess, which quivered for a time before the vocal apparatus extruded itself once more.
“I feel much stronger, thank you. (Puff.) I am happy to meet Chance and Queynt. (Puff.) Also the birds. I was a birder priest. Birds are (puff) messengers of the Boundless. (Puff, puff.)” Though I didn’t understand this at all, I translated it for the benefit of the krylobos and was rewarded by an incredulous hoot.
“Well, perhaps they have not (puff) been taught of (puff) the Boundless.” The windy voice sounded sad.
“Tell them about the discovery, Mer-Mir,” said Beedie. “You can talk about religion later.”
“Yes. Ummm. While wandering deep in chasm (puff) found tunnel leading deep. (Puff.) Took others and formed expedition. (Puff.) Tunnel went very deep. Fires there. Pools of strange stuff. Silver. Thick. Very poisonous. One of us was dissolved (puff) in it. Near the pool were scattered blue crystals. Many.”
“They brought a lot of them out to us,” said Roges, trying his handiwork on Bryan, who crowed delightedly. “How they got in and out of there, I’ll never know.”
“Very difficult. Took much time. Effort. (Puff.) But we had touched the blue crystal. (Puff.) Once we had touched it, we had to bring it out. (Puff.) Touched it. Knew we had to. (Puff.)”
“They touched it with themselves, absorbed some of it, and it turned out to be message crystal.” Beedie, striding about the clearing, swinging her arms, stretching.
“Message crystal?” These words were like the ringing of an alarm bell. Everything inside me sat up to take notice of the world. “Message crystal?”
“The things you call dream crystals, we call message crystals. In our land we have a necessary tool, the root saw. The teeth of the saw are made from jewel gravel, hard jewel gravel from the bottom lands, glued to a flexible band. The saw makers buy the gravel from traders, so much a weight, and among the real gems are often tiny pieces of message crystal. When we were brats, we would “borrow” the gravel from the saw makers so we could suck through it for message crystals. Unsanitary, as my Aunt Six would say, but you know how disgusting children are.”
“What kind of messages?” I begged, sure that I already knew. “What did they say?”
“Oh, pictures, mostly. Dim, dreamy things. The messages weren’t intended for us, you know. Now that I’ve been to the bottom lands, I can guess some of them were messages to the great bottom worms. Locations of vines to eat. New hot springs with special minerals to cure skin troubles. I found one crystal once that must have been intended for a bird, full of flying, strangeness, lands and valleys below, and a queer town with funny doors, wider at the top, and a lovely tall tower. It was a tiny crystal. It dissolved in a minute, but I’ve remembered it for years.”
“The city you saw might have been Pfarb Durim,” I told them. “It has odd doors like that. Lots of places used to have doors like that. Gerabald Buttufor once found a flying crystal, too. He said it was full of great cities built on roots.”
“Our cities are built on roots,” said Roges, amazed.
“Think of that! Messages concerning your cities on our side of the world, and messages concerning our cities on yours. Well, it’s all one world, after all.”
“Excuse me,” puffed the thing from the basket. “But we have to tell Mavin (puff) about it.”
I said, “I don’t understand this necessity. Is there some astonishing message in the crystals?”
“Astonishing?” Beedie thought about this. “No, Jinian. Not astonishing. The only astonishing thing is that we haven’t had this message before. You must see for yourself.” She burrowed deep into the small pack she carried, came up with what appeared to be a small, rough block of wood. “We couldn’t bring very many because of the weight. We got out of the chasm in a balloon made of flattree leaves, and weight was crucial. If we carried them openly, we were afraid they might be stolen. So, Roges made this.” She pressed the wood along one of its sides, sliding a thin slice away to reveal a cubby hidden inside, tipping it to drop something into my hands. A small, bright blue crystal.
“Taste it.”
I recoiled. I’m sure my face was flaming. “I ... I can’t.”
“Let me,” said Queynt. “I’m already overdosed on the damn things it can’t hurt me worse than I already am.”
“It won’t hurt you,” said Roges, shocked. “I’ve tasted it, and Beedie. All of our children. Almost everyone in the chasm by now, I imagine.”
I didn’t object. He took the thing from my hands. I couldn’t watch him. In a moment, however, he gave it back to me and spoke in a puzzled voice.
“I can’t taste anything, Jinian. It must be identical to the one the Shadowpeople gave me all those years ago. Why are you so nervous about it?”
I tried to laugh. “Probably nothing. Nerves. The wraiths have put my skin on backward. Put it down to so
me personal quirk, Queynt.” I held the thing but did not taste it. “If you are agreed that it should be taken to Mavin, then take it. And if you believe it should be taken quickly, then take it quickly. If it will undo some of the evil those yellow crystals are causing, then do it, soon as may be.” I turned the blue crystal in my fingers, passed it from one hand to the other. I thought I knew without tasting it what the intent of it was.
Queynt gave me one of his odd, concentrated looks. I stared him down, not letting him see how troubled I was. I could have been wrong. I wanted to think about it more. This time I couldn’t be breezy and quick. This time I wanted to crawl in a hole and think, and sleep, and think some more. I put the crystal in my pouch. Beedie had others. I might have need for this one.
The baby, newly trousered, staggered toward Peter’s lap and almost fell into the fire in transit.
Under cover of this confusion, I leaned near the strange being—very careful not to touch it—and asked, “Mercald-Mirtylon, in the cavern where the blue crystals were, was there any evidence of any living creature?”
“(Puff.) Nothing there at all. Stickies were the first (puff) and probably only. Very hot. (Puff.) Not good for living things.”
“Do you think the blue crystals had been there long?”
“Very long. They were (puff) far from the white stuff. At the edges of the (puff) cavern. Only yellow crystals near the white stuff (Puff.) I think, very old.” I thanked the creature, remembering at the last minute not to pat it, which would have been my instinctive gesture of thanks with most beasties.
The baby had been rescued, had gained Peter’s lap and plumped himself down there, chattering in sleepy infant talk which even my language Talent could not follow. Sylbie came to curl beside Peter and the child, inserting herself neatly under Peter’s arm so that he held her, perforce, without actually having reached for her. Still, he did not draw away.