The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Well, fellow, what do you want?”

  “May I speak to you, Your Reverence?”

  “Thpeak. You are thpeaking. Tho thpeak.”

  “Your Reverence, they’ve come from Morp, from the Backless Throne again. They want our young people, sir.”

  “Tho?”

  “We can’t send our young people, sir. They’re needed for the crops. For raising the zeller. The Throne wants the zeller, too.”

  “Let me underthtand thith. You are refuthing to do the Throne’th will?” Silence. I could visualize what was going on. Groveling. Fumbling for words.

  “No, sir. Not the Throne, sir. Just Morp. Morp isn’t the Throne, and they don’t understand ...”

  “I hope you have not thaid thith to anyone!”

  “We did send a message, sir.”

  “Fool. Then why are you thtanding here? Get under your roof. Pray you do not all die.” The door slammed. I slipped out to watch Dolcher staggering away from that door, reeling from sorrow and apprehension. Over his head I could see the sky, boiling. It had an unhealthy look. Suddenly I remembered what I had heard about Morp. A charnel town. A town of butchers. Through the wall came exclamations from the group there.

  “The idiot hath refuthed the Throne. Yethterday he did it. Morp will have complained to the Throne. Thtorm will come. We will be fortunate to ethcape with our liveth.”

  Back outside I went. Yes, storm boiled over the western horizon. Black cloud, drooping at the bottom like great pustulent udders. High-piled, running toward us with the inexorable flow of lava. I got myself back into the lean-to and under the wagon just as the first drops of rain hit.

  It was a punishing storm. First rain and wind, tearing at the structures of the place, removing roofs and shutters, sending them flying like pennants into the east. Then hail, piercing what the rain had left.

  Then greater wind. And with it all, a screaming sound of fury. Time and another time, dark as night. Howling rage. The roof of the lean-to went, but I remained half-dry beneath the wagon. I had anchored it as best I could with stakes driven in during the first roaring moments.

  I lay flat, empty, the storm driving out all thought.

  There was no village. There was no life. Only this horror of falling water, this terror of screaming wind.

  One might as well die. I knew they were dead, I was dead. No point in being alive in this.

  And then, after a forever time had passed, it was over. They had given the best house in the place to the Merchant, and now it stood alone. From inside it I could hear snoring. The Merchant and his guests were asleep. Among the sodden ruins the people of Bleem struggled into the light. There were no fields left, no gardens left. I went out into the woods, took away the hiding spell, and came into the village from the other side. Dolcher was there, standing dazed in the midst of the ruin, staring with empty eyes at the punishing sky.

  “Dolcher,” I said. He had been deafened. It was hard to make him aware of me. “Dolcher. Listen to me. Take all your people, now. Right now. What little they can carry, nothing else. No wagons. Nothing else. Go. Go that way, back toward Fangel, around the city, not through it, and then south. You hear me?”

  “Who are you?” He looked at me, not really seeing me. “Who are you?”

  “It does not matter who I am. I am here with a message for you, to help you. Storm Grower will kill you all. You cannot pacify Storm Grower. Only when you are all dead will she rest. So, you must leave here. Go quickly. Go far. Find caves to protect you from hail. Forests to protect you from sight. Go. And go before those in the house waken.” I used every persuasive trick of voice I could manage, setting several small compliance spells on him meantime.

  Not enough to draw interest, just little ones. When I went back toward the lean-to, he was in motion, staggering, bleeding, crying, but in motion.

  It did not take them long. The longest time was spent simply in getting their attention. Once they understood, they moved quickly, as quickly as people can who are half-drowned and totally beaten. There were some dead. They laid them out in one of the wrecked houses and set fire to it. It bled smoke into the sky, smoldering. Then they went as I had suggested. Back toward Fangel, a sad, straggling procession. The last of them wended over the hill out of sight sometime before the Merchant woke.

  He came to the door, opened it, stared out into the shambles. I had restored the hiding spell and was sitting on the well coping. He did not see me.

  “Hey,” he shouted. “We will have our breakfatht now!” Needless to say, there was no response. He cursed for a time, which woke the others, and they came out of the place together.

  “Storm Grower?” asked Betand. “Did she not know we were here?”

  “I doubt they thought of it,” sulked the Merchant. “We will find no thuthtenance here. Let uth depart.”

  “What was all this about?”

  “The people objected to the levy from Morp. It ith Morp which provideth provender for Thtorm Grower and Dream Miner.” Provender was one way of putting it.

  Huldra came into the light, blinking, snarling.

  “How much farther? You have been to That Place before, Betand. How much farther is it?”

  “I haven’t been there,” he said in astonishment. “What made you think I had? No. I have been near there once or twice. The Merchant knows. He has been there.”

  “I don’t know,” the Merchant said. “I have been there many timeth, but each time there hath been a guide.”

  “Then how do we know where we are going?”

  “There will be a guide thith time ath well.” My ears pricked at this. What kind of creature could serve as guide to the Dream Miner? Premonition stirred, and the Dagger of Daggerhawk burned with sullen fire, as though it had ears of its own. I tried to ease it on my thigh and bit back a curse. I was wearing loose trousers with tight cuffs, almost a pantaloon, a very sensible garment for this kind of scrambling travel, but there was no slit in the pocket through which the Dagger could be reached. There was no time to remedy the situation. They were going off into the forest to find their guards.

  The Tragamors had Moved themselves a cave large enough to protect them from the storm. They were unharmed, perhaps even slightly amused to have had a better night than those they guarded. This was my own conjecture, from the few words I overheard as we went downward in the early light, the horses’ hooves making soft plopping noises in the dust of the narrow trail, the troop almost silent except for occasional exclamations when low-hanging branches buffeted them. The voice that greeted them startled them all, and me as well, though I realized I’d been half expecting it. My old friend the Oracle. I sneaked forward through the underbrush to get a clearer view of it. Somehow I had known it would be the Oracle.

  It stood half-concealed behind a leafy branch, only its painted face and one hand clearly visible. “Oh, my, isn’t this a fine array of Talent and perspicacity to bring before the Backless Throne. How marvelous Dream Miner will find you all, how intrigued the Storm Grower will be. I have waited for you for simply days.”

  “Nonsense,” grated Huldra. “We are here on the day appointed.”

  “One anticipates so! One cannot wait!” In this sober light of early day, I was struck by the artificiality of the creature, by a certain surreal quality. I had been too ill in Chimmerdong to notice much, but I wondered at myself for not having seen this. It still wore the hooded robe of straps, bright-colored ribbons that moved and swayed, hiding its form. It turned its face away as it spoke, and I strained eyes to see it. Had its mouth moved when it spoke?

  The question went unanswered as the Oracle swept away in a flurry of ribbons. It went through the trees, appearing now and then upon the trail, the ponies following from point to point. Within a few turns it led them aside from the main trail into a twisting path. Patches of shatter-grass and startle-flower grew across it, growing evidence it was seldom used.

  “Do you bring us to the Throne by some servants entry?” the Duke demanded. “I
s this the honor done the Duke of Betand?”

  “Oh, Duke, my love, be not offended. There are only three entries to the Backless Throne! One from the center of the Great Maze, and we have not the time to take that path. One from the charnel houses outside Morp, where provender for the Great Ones is prepared, and we have not the stomach for that one. And this one. Of the three”—the Oracle giggled in a shrill mockery of amusement—”this is the safest.” Morp? Again Morp. I thought the people of Bleem had done well to escape when they had. I doubted their young had been useful as servants. Morp had an evil reputation. There was an entrance there. So. And another entry from the center of the Great Maze. I made a mental note, hanging back at a turn of the narrow path, waiting for them to get farther ahead.

  The way ended at a tunnel mouth, a gaping hole between two tumbled pillars that once had been carved in the likeness of some great beast. I identified claws, horns, a vast bell-shaped ear. Obviously this route had been more used in ancient times, and I wondered why it had fallen into such neglect, but this question, like others, had no time for consideration. The Oracle had plunged into the darkness.

  “Leave the guards to guarding, good friends. Come along! We are no doubt eagerly awaited!” Well, I had half anticipated some such problem when the hiding spell was set; now I reinforced it, binding it more closely about me. When I drifted from the trees and among the surly Tragamors and Armigers, they noticed me no more than they did the wind. Though I had taken little enough time, the others were far ahead, down distant turnings of the tunnel way.

  Since that time I have often pondered over my heedlessness. I think it was the label set upon Huldra that did it. She was a Witch. Wize-ards had nothing to fear from Witches. They were a minor Talent, no more, and nothing to worry us. Never mind that sendings had come from her; never mind that Queynt had taken the trouble to point out she had more than mere Witch’s Talent to her; still I thought of her as a Witch. This is the trouble with too much Schooling. One learns to manipulate the labels in a way that the Gamesmistresses approve, and one doesn’t realize that things do not always act in accordance with the labels in the real world. One doesn’t realize that the labels, come to that, are often wrong.

  Be that as it may, and even though I knew better, I had taken no steps beyond a simple hiding spell; there are a dozen forms of Egg in the Hollow, and I had used the easiest—to protect myself. It worked well enough against the guards, and I didn’t think beyond that. Ahead of me were the ones I followed, and that is all I was thinking about.

  Fortunately, there were no side ways, no mazes to confuse. One way, one way only, the dust of the tunnel clearly marked by their footprints. I sped after them, risking a wize-art light from fingertips to show the way. I heard their voices, extinguished the light, slowed to their pace. Now they were dawdling, moving without haste.

  “Is this the way guests of the Throne are greeted?” Huldra, more than merely annoyed. Sharply irritated; perhaps suspicious. “Hauled through dusty tunnels, league on league?”

  “Oh, lovely one, why say guests’? Are there guests honored in the great audience hall? Do plenipotentiaries arrive with their steeds all caparisoned, bringing gifts from potentates afar? Guests? Did you imagine you were asked as guests?”

  “What then?” Dedrina, stopping dead at the center of the tunnel. “If not guests, what?”

  “You should not imagine these are my words, dear friends, not my language at all, who am the perfect fount of diplomacy—but if asked—as indeed I have been — I would wager the word used by Storm Grower would be “lackey”. Dream Miner might say more than that, though both grow laconic with the passing centuries. Still, “lackey” will do.”

  “Lackey!” The Duke spat. “I have long been a faithful friend of the Backless Throne!”

  “You have long”—smiled the Oracle—”been a well paid puppet. Ath hath the Merchant here,” in bitter mockery of the Merchant’s lisp. “Come now. It is not wise to linger. Should Storm Grower grow impatient, we all know what consequence might follow.” This was sobering. For the first time, I began to worry. I had assumed what the Duke had assumed: he and his party were guests and would be treated with some degree of courtesy. If they were at risk, then so was I.

  They wound deeper under the earth, down twisting ways. Above us, I later learned, the Great Maze stretched its illimitable hedges; around us worm holes opened into the tunnel, admitting odors of swamp and jungle, hill and moor. They had walked half a day away with me scurrying in their wake when I began to hear the sound, the susurrus of the sea, the ebb and flow of waves upon a shore.

  Waves.

  Not quite. Not quite that ebb and flow. Two rhythms, rather, running almost counter to one another. One slightly slower. And with the sound the movement of air, laden with that same sweetish-foul stench we had smelled too often upon the road.

  Dead things. Decaying things.

  Huldra made some expression of disgust. The Merchant said something to her that made me shudder, something to the effect that it would be wisest not to notice the smell of anything she might soon see. They had fallen silent, so I slowed my pace, peering carefully around each corner before sliding around it into the next stretch of rocky corridor. Still that wave sound. The stench stronger. Still those ahead moving in the wake of the Oracle, now taking no notice of either smell or sound.

  They came to an open area, perhaps two manheights from floor to roof, that roof supported by several dozen great, rough-hewn pillars, irregularly set, much as though the diggers had left a pillar whenever they felt like it rather than by any plan.

  Beyond this hall of pillars was a much larger space.

  There was light there, though not much, and the sound of vast emptiness swallowing up the footsteps of the troop. They moved to the left among the pillars, and I to the right, keeping a pillar between myself and them. By this time the sound was enormous, great heavings of air which I felt gust past me in first one direction, then another.

  The hall of pillars ended in a gallery, a wide shelf curving high around one side of the greater space. A low parapet of stones set in mortar edged it. The others were looking over this parapet at whatever was below. At one point the parapet was broken as though something had struck it; the stones were tumbled inward upon the shelf. It was here I stretched myself, hidden from the others both by my spell and by the stones, looking out into the cavern.

  It was lit from above by a few worm holes piercing the stone. Dust swam in these beams of light, fugitive shining specks to speak of the day. At the center of the cavern a great pile hid the opposite wall, a monstrous, fantastic pile, twisted into organic forms; prodigious legs, monstrous warty arms, folded stone almost like gigantic faces; great jutting plinths of nose above twisted strata of lips. Wrinkled runnels of water-deposited stone above seemed to form gigantic cheeks and eyelids.

  Which opened.

  I was clinging for support to a block of stone while an enormous eye peered into my own. It did not blink or change expression. Only gradually, as my heart slowed, did I realize it didn’t see me.

  The others were at a point far to my left, somewhat around the curve. I could see them easily. The Merchant stood at the center of the group, his long face as impassive as the stones. On one hand were Valearn and Dedrina. Porvius stood somewhat behind them, his face down. The Oracle was some little distance from them, waving and bowing as it made introductions.

  “Dream Miner. Honored sir. Storm Grower. Monstrous madam. I bring you once again your servant, Dream Merchant of Fangel. Also, those you have summoned. Betand. Valearn. Huldra. Dedrina. Fop, cannibal, crone, and lizard. An assortment, madam and sir.” The huge stone lips writhed, revealing themselves as flesh capable of great, slow words, like rocks rolling together in avalanche. “If you say “cannibal” as a term of derision, Oracle, you would be wise to say rather less. Some of us eat what we will. So far as we are concerned, Valearn may eat what she likes.”

  “Come a little closer!” Another voice, one se
eming to come from the opposite wall, enormously booming, higher in pitch. Hearing it, all those present squirmed, feeling the words as an assault. I saw them bend a little, twisting, trying to shed those words.

  “Come a little closer so I can see.” The voice was full of wind, horrid and cold. “Only a little closer.”

  “Careful,” said the Oracle, laughing. “I would not recommend that any of you leave this gallery. If you come within reach of the mighty madam or the honored sir, they may eat you. They cannot help it, poor dears. They are always hungry.” They moved down the gallery, however. I didn’t need to follow them. I could see the source of the other voice well enough from where I was, though it had its horrific head turned away from me. It was another giant, seated behind the first and faced in the opposite direction, a female, perhaps, though what I could see of the huge face had no delicacy to it and was as obdurate as the first. If they had been standing, they would have been ten manheights tall. They were about seven manheights tall, seated as they were back to back upon a colossal pillar.

  “The Backless Throne,” I said, surprised into uttering it half-aloud.

  Across the cavern on the gallery the Oracle turned in my direction. It had heard me! Through all that ebb and surge of mighty breathing, it had heard me. I lay quiet, not moving so much as an eyelid, letting the surge of air wash to and fro. With all the echoes in this chamber, it could not be sure. So I told myself.

  So I assured myself, sweating, swallowing, trying to get my heart back where it belonged. After a time, it turned back to the others, ribbons quivering as though in laughter, poised in its eternal mockery.

  I slipped back into the hall of pillars and worked my way toward them, pillar by pillar, keeping stone between. The damned Oracle might see through my spells. I thought it might see whatever it pleased, quite frankly—but it was not likely to see through stone.

  “Storm Grower, mighty madam, may I present your servants.” The Oracle bowed, gesturing to all those on the gallery. “Your most obedient servants.”