The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Huldra turned her back, but not before I saw the gleam of triumph in her eyes, not before I heard the words, “Vengeance is sweet, Jinian Footseer. So dies the killer of my brother and the beloved of my son’s killer.”

  I hadn’t killed Huld, not really. Peter had. Still, I supposed I was responsible for it, in a way. “You didn’t give a damn about your brother,” I tried to say.

  I said nothing. Lips and tongue did not obey. No part of me would move.

  They went away into darkness then, Jinian Footseer became someone else. I, the observer, floated in the air somewhere, uninvolved, yet unable to escape.

  Where Jinian went, I would have to go. Something was dragging her through the rocky corridors. They came through beams of light from above, and I saw they were Oracles, six, eight, a dozen of them. Surely not. The smoke must have disturbed my reason. Still, they looked very much like Oracles. The same shape, size, costume. The same painted faces. The same napping ribbons. They slipped in and out of vision, finally fading into darkness.

  There were creatures. Moles. Not gobblemoles with their clean velvet skins and little pink feet. No, other moles, ragged creatures with fangs and hands and half-blind eyes, which dug and dragged and dropped Jinian in a corner, where her eyes stared, unable to shut. Creatures from Morp, Jinian thought.

  From the charnel house at Morp.

  There were people in the place. Someone came to peer down at Jinian. “This is the one,” she said. “This is the one I have Seen.” I looked up into a gauze mask painted with moth wings. A Seer, leaning forward to finger the little star-eye pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me when I was a child. A Seer in this place, speaking as though her gauze mask were thick as a curtain, sound-deadening. Though I did not seem to be present, still something within me heard and remembered. “This one wears the star-eye, Riddler. Here on her breast. She has worn it since a child. It was given her by a Wize-ard. And it was given to the Wize-ards by those you know. It has power, Riddler. I would advise you to take it from her.” Even in my weakness, something within me rebelled at the thought they would take my star-eye from me.

  “Why take it?” Laconic, a voice I knew. “The old ones, Ganver and the rest, they pretend it has significance. Oh, I recall that pretense, Seer. In my youth I was shown many things. ‘Watch and learn,”’ they said to me. ‘Bao,’ they said to me. So I watched, but it was only nonsense. They showed me this and showed me that, but it meant nothing. It was only pretense, done to mystify us young ones and keep us subservient. The sign has no power. It is nothing. A symbol only; a symbol of our degradation. If it had any power at all, it would be the power of our people, not hers. She could never learn to use it.”

  “You’ve been playing with her, Riddler. Playing. Games. Oh, I can See, See what you’ve been doing. Games. Risky Games. You gave her the Dagger.”

  “Why not?” it asked in a bleak, careless voice, full of malice and yet without emotion, as though its evil were an abstract thing, intended but not felt. “I created it out of my anger. I gave it to Daggerhawk Demesne, saying it came from them” And he gestured back, toward that place where the giants were. “In time I grew annoyed at Daggerhawk Demesne and wished to remove my gift from them. So I played with them, with her. Why not play with her, with any of them? A moment’s amusement at least?

  “Am I not protected by your Seeings, Seer? You looked into the future and Saw her fall into our hands. You Saw she could not use the Dagger against me. Now. Why should I not play with her? Why not, Seer? Are you saying now you did not See what you told me?”

  “No,” the Seer mumbled. “I Saw as I told you. And yet the place I Saw her was not like this. The time was not this time. Do you not fear, Riddler? Fear she may yet find the book and the light? Fear she may yet find the bell?” The words held association for me. They circled into my dizzy fog and whirled there, like moths made of light, and I remembered Sorah the Seer upon the Wastes of Bleer saying, “The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell.” What Wizard was that? Was it Jinian?

  The Oracle paid no attention, made no answer.

  She—I—was dragged away again, seeing things at the edge of vision, as through a cloud. Glass jars, vats, tall vats full of the same silvery stuff that had filled the pool of the sevens. Crystal milk. Wires hanging down inside the vats, and on the wire crystals growing.

  Green ones. Amber. Red. Amethyst. All with that shading across them, dimming the color. From the tops of the vats the wires ran out along the walls.

  Where? Where do they go?

  The moles have picked Jinian up again, tugging her along, head bumping on the stone. They are dragging her along the wall of the cavern, near the giants’ feet, just out of reach. See the fingers reaching for her, just out of reach. High against the cavern roof are great caps where the wires go. That’s where the wires go, into the caps, and the caps on the giant heads and the thoughts of the giants flow down into the vats and crystals grow. There. In the crystal milk.

  Darkness and pain.

  Then only darkness.

  I came to myself at last, knowing nothing except that a very long time had passed. All of me was present in one place. I wanted to giggle about that and couldn’t. Someone had put a gag in my mouth.

  Light.

  Low, at the level of my eyes where I lay. Dim. A long, bow-shaped arch between the place where I was and some other place. Out there the dim light swam and blurred. Things were moving between me and the source of the light. I slipped away, faded into black, realizing how uncomfortable I was. Something hard and curved was pressed into my back.

  When I came back, the light was a little brighter. I could see what lay to one side. A pole. A long pole, extending outward through the window into the light. There were a pair of hoofed feet in front of me.

  There was something tied to the pole. Something dead.

  I could move, some. I twisted my head, trying to roll myself on the curved surface. It shifted, rolled.

  On the other side, another pole, something tied to it as well. This body was human. The feet were on a level with my eyes. I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth, realizing for the first time that my hands were free.

  The gag first. It came loose after a time, some wad of filthy stuff. I spat it away, blacked out for a moment, then came back to begin a frantic exploration of the ropes that bound me to the pole I was on.

  No knots. Two heavy ropes bound below my breasts. Two around my thighs. I could move my arms, my lower legs, but it did no good. I was lashed to the pole.

  My pack! In it the things needed to lay some spell upon the ropes, some freeing magic. It had been a little pack. When Huldra’s smokes had caught me, it had been on my back. I raised my head, twisted, trying to see, sorry I had looked. The poles stretched away on either side, each with its burden. Not many.

  Half a dozen or so. Against a far wall was a packshaped blot, put where I could see it, where I could know where it was without reaching it.

  There was a fine cruelty in that. The Oracle, perhaps. It felt like a thing the Oracle would do.

  I lay back, breathless, screams trembling at the edge of my throat. I could feel them gathering there, like birds, fluttering in panic. They were ready to come out, fly out, shriek their way into the cavern’s quiet.

  Quiet. Too quiet. An expectant quiet.

  Perhaps that is what they were waiting for. To hear me scream. It was obvious they intended to eat me but had not done so at once. Why?

  Vengeance, Jinian, I told myself. They want to hear you scream, girl. Want you to struggle. Cry out. Beg.

  They will eat Jinian then. But not until then. Perhaps.

  So she would not scream. Would not let herself make any sound.

  Out of this frantic fear I heard an old voice, long remembered, harsh as a slap across the face.

  “Enough, Jinian. Consider water.” Murzy’s voice, coming clearly even through this hysteria and fear. So I took a deep breath and considered water. The dams had always suggested this a
s a way of recovering calm and good sense. I considered water in all its aspects, raging and still, bringing myself at last to a kind of quiet.

  Outside the low archway, in the light, something moved from right to left. By raising my head from the pole I could see its shadow. There was something familiar in that shadow.

  “Our vengeance approaches,” rumbled the voice of the Dream Miner. “Are you content at that?”

  “Who can say?” the answer came, a whisper, something familiar about that voice. “Who can say if we will be content?”

  “You have planned it. These hundreds of years, you’ve worked at it, as we have. It was you who began it.”

  “And yet, who can say we will be content? Some of us think not.”

  “Faugh. Some of you are witless fools, hiding in your graves like rotten nuts in their shells.”

  “Still, they are some of us. We feel their absence, Giant One. As you might feel Storm Grower’s absence if she were reft from you.”

  “In which I would delight,” came the other giant’s voice. “I would walk the world in joy.”

  “You could not walk the world at all,” said the Miner. “Nor could I. We have grown too great for our bones to carry us. Never mind.” The great voice paused, then continued speaking to the smaller creature, whatever it was. “No, never mind. Vengeance will come from here, at last, as it was begun a thousand years ago when you gathered up all the blue crystals and brought them here.”

  “Which some of us have since regretted.”

  “Fools. Hadn’t you suffered enough at men’s presence?”

  “We thought so, then.”

  “And now?”

  “Some of us still think so. Though we may find our vengeance bitter.” There was a titter then. Highpitched; the sound a bird makes in the night when it only dreams of singing.

  “It wearies me,” whined Storm Grower. “Send it away. Then give me one. I’m hungry.” There was a great huffing sound, as of lungs compressed. Into the light came great groping fingers.

  One of the poles was pulled outward into that light and the munching sound began. Another pole followed. And then two more. Chewing, swallowing noises, a scream. One of the poles had carried live meat. Now there were only three left. The ones on either side of me and the one I was lashed upon.

  I began to rip at my clothing. Perhaps they had left me the Dagger. If I could get to the Dagger, I could cut the ropes. It took only a moment to find what a vain hope that was. The scabbard lay at the back of my thigh, tight between my leg and the pole, bound there.

  The Seer. She had seen me falling to the Oracle.

  She had seen the Dagger being of no help to me. Of course they had left it. As they had left my pack, out of reach. Out of hope.

  I fumbled at my waist, trying to find the cord on which my pouch was hung. It was tangled deep in the fabric of the pantaloons, lost in them, which was probably why I had it still on me. If they had seen it or felt it, they would have taken it.

  I worried it out at last, opening it to pour the contents onto my chest. The amethyst crystal in which Huldra’s sending was trapped. The yellow crystal from the mines outside Fangel. The blue one Beedie had given me. A few restorative herbs. A tiny bottle of scent, shaped like a frog. A lock of Peter’s hair. My fragment from the well of the sevens. I lay, head up, looking down at these few things. After a time I returned all but two of them to the pouch, shoving it inside my shirt.

  The munching had stopped and the breathing sounds from the cavern had become louder, slower, as though the giants slept. Soon this breathing was succeeded by snoring, great rumbling sounds, rhythmic as tides.

  I braced my feet and arms against the rock on either side of the pole and pushed, trying to drag it back, out of the light. It moved a finger’s width.

  Again. Again a tiny movement. I timed the pushes to coincide with great snores. Once again. And again.

  Over and over, endlessly, exhaustingly. I was wet, even in the clammy cold of the cavern, soaked with the sweat of this effort. Push, and push again. The creature on my left was almost even with me now. I reached out to touch it. My fingers were a hand’s width from the thing’s mouth. I needed its mouth.

  Push again. The snores stopped. A giant mumbled in his sleep. A giantess answered in hers. Again the breathing of sleep. Push, and push again. My legs felt as though they had been dipped in fire. I could reach the thing’s mouth.

  I took the amethyst crystal in one hand, reaching out. I was trembling. My hand was slick with sweat. I dropped it, dropped it, rolling about on the stony floor.

  Tears then, silent and bitter and exhausted. And after the tears some measure of resolution. I rolled as far to my left as I could, explored the floor with my hand. It could not have gone far.

  Fragments of rock. Bits of bone. Things filthier than these. And then the hard, faceted shape of it in my fingers. I brought it back to my chest, wiped the fingers dry, tried again.

  I reached out and thrust it into the mouth of the dead thing next to me.

  Push, push again. The human corpse on the other side was farther back. Twice I had to stop to rest, the second time using some of the restorative herbs from the pouch, which left a bitter taste in my mouth but a painful clarity of mind. Then push and push again, and the yellow crystal in the corpse’s mouth. It was a corpse. It was dead. I wept at this, too. I had been wondering what I would do if it were alive.

  I peered down between my feet. The end of my pole still lay outside the window, in the light. With the last of my strength I pushed once more, seized a rock behind me over my head and pulled as well, seeing the end of the pole slide under the arch, into the shadow, into the room where I lay. So much for that.

  I let the swirling darkness swallow me up. Just for a time, just for a bit of rest, to wake thinking of the Oracle, perhaps having dreamed of the Oracle. Oh, I knew the creature now for what it was. Not a simpering, harmless creature. No. No. Full of malice and ancient guile. The true source of the evil in the north.

  The Oracle, not the giants. They were too simple. All their cleverness came from the Oracle. I prayed it had gone away. I prayed it had not stayed to see my end.

  “Aaaangh,” came a whining rumble from the other room. “Aaangh. Give me one. I’m hungry.”

  “Get it yourself. I’m tired of giving you. Get it yourself.” The sound of lightning. A frying noise. Complaint, monstrous hairy fingers groping at the window.

  There’s only two here.” Voice like thunder. “Where’s the other one? The fun one? The one that was supposed to be here. You there, minions. You from Morp. Provender!” Chewing, masticating noises. At the far side of the low room, a scurrying as some large furry creatures moved in and out of the light, moving poles, tying bodies to them. They did not come near me. I made not a sound. This had an air of calculation about it.

  The giants would not eat me until they had wrung the last shred of agony and apprehension from me. I played dead. Let them think I had fainted, or slept.

  Then an anguished howl, the howl of a tornado, of a hurricane. “Ouuuuugh, pain. Brother. Ouuuuugh, pain. I have got a pain in my gut.” I caught my breath. Across the dim room the furry shapes stopped what they were doing, froze in place.

  The howl was immobilizing, terrifying. It rang through the cavern, blasting at the stones. Dust fell.

  Gravel rolled.

  Oh, she should have a bellyache indeed, should Storm Grower. She had Huldra’s sending in her belly, dissolved out of the crystal that had held it, a voracious sending ready to eat its way out of its fleshy prison. It should find enough in Storm Grower to fill it. I wondered briefly what Huldra would think when it returned. This made me want to giggle hysterically, and it was all I could do to bite down hard on a finger and keep silent.

  “Hush,” breathed Dream Miner. “You are disturbing me. I want to ... want to ... sleep. Peace. Contentment. How sweet. I did not know how sweet...” She had the amethyst crystal. But he had the yellow one. He desired sleep. Peace. Cont
entment. I hoped it would last for some time. This would solve the problem of being eaten, but I was still firmly lashed to the pole.

  “Ooooogh, pain.” A sizzle of lightning ricocheted from the floor into the room where I lay. In the flash I saw one side of the room disappear in a sapphire glow. In the after-image I thought I saw a small form leaping there. Perhaps more than one.

  Wind began to blow. Wet wind, clammy with fetid smells in it. The pain the giantess felt was being translated into storm. “Ouuuugh, pain. Dream Miner. Wake. How can you sleep? Wake. I’m dying.” There was disbelief in that voice, horror and anguish. “I’m dying and you sleep!”

  “Lolly lolly alum baff?” sang a quiet voice. “Is the Wizard girl in here?”

  “Here!” I cried half-hysterically. “Who’s there?”

  “Proom,” answered the small voice, approaching.

  “Come to help you if you need help in return for the help you gave our people in the town.” He was not alone. Others of the small people had joined him; still others were gathered at the far wall in an excited horde, busy with something.

  “What did you do to the giants?” He seemed to know I had done it, though that was far from obvious, given my condition.

  “I fed them something bad for them. She may die of it, maybe not. He may die of it, maybe not. They are very big and what I gave them was quite small.”

  “Then we had best hurry.” He knelt at my side, busy with teeth and knife. I felt the rope loosen, then give, as I struggled to sit up while he worked on the ropes around my thighs. When he had done, I stood up, wavering on my feet, almost falling.

  “We will lead you out!”

  “In a moment. First. ... first I should be sure they do not recover.” I stumbled to the pack where it lay against the wall, falling over bodies of men and beasts, to stand over it panting. What could I use? No missile I could control would be large enough. There were two or three very complicated spells that might be useful. End and Beginning. That would take all day, and in the other room Storm Grower was summoning up such a storm as might kill us all. Lightning flashed around us, in and out of the room. No time for that.