The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Next block was the residence itself, still dark and silent. The great gong hung in its usual place, the striker beside it, and I put every measure of strength I had ever possessed into hitting it, not once or twice but three horrendous times.

  Lights came on. Doors opened. People poured out, just as they had done on that morning we had arrived in Fangel. Food carts, guardsmen, populace, more of the lizard warriors, more of other kinds of things, too.

  Though their responses were fairly limited by the crystals they had been given, the populace had not been prepared for lizard men or any of the other creatures that swarmed from the Merchant’s warehouses. They ran screaming through the streets, their voices betraying terror even as their words did honors to Betand, to Huldra, to Dedrina Dreadeye. They had no other words to scream with and were forbidden the safety of their houses by the tyranny of the gong.

  Better than I had hoped, great mobs of them made for the gates. Of course. When the gong rang, the gates were always open. Good. Now back to Sylbie.

  I ran openly in the street. There were so many creatures running, people and monsters both, that I was merely one of a throng that spread in every direction, like an anthill that had been overturned.

  One block, two, down toward the grilled window ...

  To stop, horrified. No. Furious. The gate into the little courtyard was open. Sylbie had unbarred the gate and left.

  I found her two streets down, toward the gates.

  Unfortunately, Valearn had found her first.

  Valearn had the baby. Sylbie had Valearn by one leg. There were a dozen deep dwellers fastened onto Valearn at various points. Valearn was paying no attention. Her fangs were bared and she lowered them to Bryan’s throat. . .

  And all that had gone before became as nothing.

  There was no baby in her hands. There was a boiling, formless, gorbling cloud, a keening scream of rage and hatred battering her with its sound, its horrible sound, driving her before it like some farm zeller while she screamed in genuine horror, Valearn the Ogress, victim of what she had sought.

  I sagged on the stones beside Sylbie, trying to hold my splitting head together against that sound, mouthing, “What in the name of all old gods? ...” There was a break in the howling.

  The unborn,” she whimpered. “It’s the unborn. It’s Bryan. He went back to being what he was before. He was frightened. I told her not to frighten him.”

  “You knew he would do that?”

  “He does that. Whenever he gets angry. Or doesn’t get fed on time. Or gets too wet.”

  “You hadn’t seen fit to mention it.”

  She arranged her dress and looked at me with honest-seeming eyes. “I didn’t think it was important.” Little liar.

  “How long will he stay that way?”

  “I imagine until he kills Valearn. She bit him.”

  “And then?”

  “And then he’ll find me, wherever I am.” Was there a note of satisfaction in that?

  “Outside the walls?”

  “Of course. He may be very temperamental, as my mother would say, but he’s quite bright. He’ll find me.”

  “Then let’s go, Sylbie. Let’s leave Fangel to its own mighty troubles.” Which we did. On the south side of the city there were wagons parked that had been waiting to enter Fangel on the morrow. I made arrangements with a wagoner and his wife to take Sylbie south, all the way to Zinter. “From there,” I told her, no longer worrying about her safety. “From there, keep going south. Here are enough coins to pay your way. Don’t waste them. Get to the Bright Demesne, south of Schooltown, on Lake Yost. Once there, ask for Mavin. That’s Peter’s mother. I think she’ll want to meet her grandson.” Two of a kind, I thought.

  “I was waiting for Peter.” Shyness personified, sweet little look out of the corner of her eye.

  “Don’t, Sylbie. Peter’s a Shifter. I think it probable that Byran is, too. This manifestation of his is strange, but it fits with being Shifter. Shifter young need to be reared by their own. I know Bryan comes back to you now, but when he begins to change into snakey things”—why did I enjoy seeing her shudder at the thought?—”he’ll need some older Shifter to control him and teach him. I’m sure if we put our heads together, we can come up with a better plan for you than just waiting for Peter. I hope that doesn’t make you too unhappy.”

  “He was different once,” she said, a dreamy look in those violet eyes. “In Betand, he was wonderful.”

  “That wasn’t really Peter,” I said brutally, telling her who it really was.

  “Trandilar! But she’s ... she’s ...”

  “Trandilar is the great Queen of Beguilement. She’s female, and who would understand better what some young female would enjoy? It wasn’t Peter. Now, can I rely on you to go with these people, or will you do something stupid again?”

  She nodded. It was a real nod, I think. “I’ll do what you say, Jinian. Tell Peter ... tell him I decided it wouldn’t work.”

  “I’ll do that.” I trusted that little nod not at all. I watched from the forest until the wagon left in the morning. Both Bryan and Sylbie were aboard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  There were many dead in Fangel. The Merchant was one, the Duke of Betand another. The pombis and the gnarlibar had been less successfully hunted than they had planned. I found Valearn’s body just down the street from the place she had bitten the baby. Her neck was broken, it appeared. There was no sign of Huldra.

  Nor of Dedrina Dreadeye. On reflection, I thought it likely they had left Fangel before the confusion started and were on their way south with the crystals they had been told to distribute. Of all in that group, those two were the most dangerous, and I regretted that they still lived.

  There was great disorder in Fangel. The dwellers had gone back to their depths, but there were bodies everywhere, and roaming beasts, and those strange creatures that had come out of the Merchant’s warehouses. The city was not likely to survive. It had no real reason for being. Already the wagons that had been assembled to enter the gates were turning away. They would find other customers.

  I went to the residence. It was luxurious and spacious and empty. I knew which room Huldra had occupied by seeing how it was littered with bits and pieces from her spell casting and from the great flood of mixed blood and water on the floors. Her sending had returned, but Huldra had been gone. She did not know, then, that the giants were dead.

  Looking the rooms over, I shuddered. I knew what some of the litter was for, and it was the kind of stuff that the seven would repudiate, always. Still, it was best to know how deeply into the art she was. The answer: deeply indeed. She knew things I did not. Of that I was sure. I picked up what food was available in the place and went out the northern gate. It stood open and unguarded.

  A day traveling once again the same old way. Around ever-deepening masses of shadow, down toward Bleem. I didn’t go into the village, though I did speak to a herdsman on the road to tell him Storm Grower was dead. If there were any left there or any who had returned, let them enjoy that news. The next day I got to the red pillar of stone. I had seen it from the valley before. Up close it was even more imposing, an obelisk that pointed a long black finger of shadow down into a little valley, much damaged by storm but with a small lake sparkling at its bottom.

  The evening was spent thinking before the fire, pulling the shreds of evidence together. I stared for a long time at the blue crystal. I didn’t taste it, just stared at it. There was no one near to make demands upon me. No rescuing to be done, no sneaking or slying. No great white roads to be repaired. Merely quiet in the evening with the fire making small scrolls of smoke, ephemeral writing upon the slate of the sky, meaning flowing into meaning and mystery into mystery.

  And, on thinking it over, I decided I had been right.

  Right all along. Everything I had told Peter was true. All the evidence pointed in one way and one way only. I felt as I had felt so long ago, traveling toward Bleer with Peter, when he put t
he clues to a mystery in my hands and asked me to make sense of it. Now, as then, all the pieces were in my hands, or in my head. The great flitchhawk who had granted me a boon in Chimmerdong, and the d/bor wife, and the gobblemole. The story of Little Star and the Daylight Bell. The Oracle.

  The Eesties. Yellow crystals and blue, separated by a thousand years of time, more or less. What was a thousand years, after all? Even to Vitior Vulpas Queynt it was a mere lifetime. My illness in Chimmerdong. The diagnoses of Bartelmy of the Ban, the Dervish, my mother. All these. And they did make a kind of horrible sense. No matter how I turned them, there was no other explanation. Only this one.

  So. Could anything be done?

  If anything could be done, who would do it? Not one young Wize-ard alone, surely. It was all very well for Bartelmy of the Ban, my mother, to set me a gigantic task in Chimmerdong, saying it was mine and none other’s. No one’s life had hung on that. Had seemed to hang on that, I amended. If I had failed, things were no worse. Though I had succeeded, were they any better?

  But this. This meant an ending. For all of us. For everything. Tree and flower, hill and road, sea and shore, man, woman, child, all beasts, all birds, all fishes.

  And though I might do what I could alone, surely it would be better if a disciplined body of persons were to work at it as well.

  So. I thought about that for some time. Finally, I resolved upon a sending. Not an eater of blood, like Huldra’s, but a seeker of persons. It did not take a blood sacrifice, at least not much of one. A few drops of my own, was all. I sent it out into the world to seek Bartelmy of the Ban. She had said we would meet again. Why not now? Now, when I needed her. The sending pulled at me. I was like the reel on a fishing pole; it was the line with the hook; and it pulled at me, reeling out and out and out until there was nothing left of me at all. Only the line, spun into the world, far, far beyond any place I could see. I lay upon the ground, close-wrapped in my cloak, and let the line spin out.

  For a very long time, I knew nothing. Then the line reeled in, restoring me to myself. The hook had caught something. I lay on a long bank above a length of flat that could only be a buried stretch of road. Down this flat the Dervish came, a whirling silver cone balanced on its tip, blurring with motion, settling before me into a still column of fringed quiet.

  “Jinian, Dervish daughter,” it said.

  “Bartelmy?” I replied from the ground. It had not sounded exactly like Bartelmy and yet almost like.

  “No. She is not far from here. I was closer, however. I am one of her near kindred, alerted to expect your coming.”

  “Even I did not know I would be coming this way.”

  “Still, Bartelmy had thought it likely. When your sending came, we were not surprised. A Seer’s vision, perhaps.” Murzemire Hornless, I thought. Who had not been distressed at my going into the north. Was it because she had known what would happen? Had she known why I would leave the others?

  “You say you expected my coming. Have you plans concerning me?”

  “Not plans precisely, since we do not know why you have come. Provisions, certainly, for one not exactly a Dervish. A rare thing among us to provide for one outside our company.” The Dervish gestured off down the flat stretch. “If you are strong enough to rise and walk?” I struggled to my feet. The line had been reeled in, but I was still weak enough to stagger.

  “Heat food for yourself. I can wait.” The Dervish not only waited, but helped me by gathering sticks for the fire and talking gently about trees and clouds while I ate. Much refreshed, I buried the fire and stood ready to walk beside the Dervish, who surprised me by walking beside me, stride on stride. It noticed my surprise. “We walk, sometimes. Sometimes we eat, drink. Rarely, we sleep.” It made a sound, almost like a chuckle.

  “You astonish me,” I murmured. “That sounded almost like laughter.”

  “We even laugh, sometimes. Bartelmy is among the most serious of us. She finds little to laugh about. I can find it amusing to walk beside a Dervish daughter who is no Dervish, who is a Beast-talker, so I am told. Speak to that owl yonder and tell me what it says.” The Dervish gestured and I saw a tiny dot upon a branch, so far at the limit of vision it could scarcely be seen at all.

  It was too far to speak in its language, so I spoke to it silently and it replied in muted tones which floated toward us on the wind. “It says, “Good day,”“ I said. “As would any polite and sensible beast.” The Dervish laughed again, a very small sound, but unmistakably amusement.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The pervasion of the Dervishes is nearby.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Cernaby of the Soul.”

  “What do they mean, your names? Bartelmy of the Ban? What is that? Of the Soul? What sense does it make?”

  “If you have ever lain beneath Bartelmy’s Ban, you would know. As for me, I can see souls, Dervish daughter. As you would see a flame burning. I see yours now, hot and red with angry pity. It must itch you, burning like that.”

  This surprised me, sure as I was I had achieved a kind of balance. “I suppose yours are never like that.”

  Cernaby did not answer, merely turned to lay her hands upon my eyes, like a mask. I could see through them to the flames that surrounded her, blue as the noon sky, cool and limpid as water. I looked down at myself to see my hands and arms, blossoming with heat.

  “You can dim it,” the Dervish whispered. “Watch it, concentrate upon it, think of it turning orange, then yellow, then green. Finally blue, blue as water.” She laughed a little. “As your dams of the seven would say, ‘Consider water.’“

  With Cernaby’s hands across my eyes, I could do nothing else. The flames upon me leapt and danced as I watched them, thinking them faded, thinking them cooled. At last they were green as grass upon me, only an occasional flicker of yellow lighting the edges of the flames. I could cool them no further than that. Cernaby took her hands away and I blinked up at the evening stars. I had not been conscious of the time passing. “It will come easier next time,” said Cernaby. I felt a little calmer, that was all, together with a little core of anger at her having wasted so much time.

  We walked farther then, along the winding flat among the jungle trees, then up a rising trail that wound above the trees toward two pillars of stone high upon the ridge. We looked down to our left to see mighty hedges, solid as walls, twisting, turning, winding upon themselves as far as I could see.

  “The Great Maze lies below us,” said Cernaby, “league upon league of it, from the mountains to the sea. When last the band marched here, it spent ten years marching through the edges of the Maze. It is said there are cities in the Maze lost from all outside contact for millennia. It is said no man knows the extent of it or the way to its center.” She pointed to this impenetrable wall of foliage below the trail we were on. “That is the edge of it.”

  “What is it, exactly? I had always thought it was roads with walls or hedges, full of misleading turnings.”

  Cernaby again made the sound of quiet amusement.

  “More than that, Jinian. Men can climb walls, cut through hedges. We will go a little way in and I will show you.” Along our trail several little paths went down the slope into openings in the hedges. She spun down one of these. I followed.

  A narrow door was cut into the solid green. A narrow path stretched inward. Cernaby stood upon it at some small distance, where it made a turning. “Here,” she called. “Come to me here.” I took a step.

  Onto the rim rock of a high cliff, so near the edge I staggered back in fear. Below me lay a shadowed bowl of green. The dawn, or sunset, was on my face and on the rock at my feet. From above came a shrieking, a banshee howl, mightier than any number of voices. I looked up to see a dart of silver falling, bellowing as it came, downward and downward, the sound shivering the rocks on which I stood so that I fell to my knees, hands over ears, watching in amazement as the thing landed in the bowl, as a door opened in it and something strange came ou
t. Strange? So I felt, and yet it was obviously human. Nothing strange about it? Why this feeling of intense curiosity, this thought of weirdness?

  “Jinian,” I heard the voice. “Turn to your left and walk toward that midnight tree, the first one. Go behind it.” Cernaby’s voice. “Jinian!” Commanding now. Obediently, I turned and made my way to the midnight tree, outpost of a grove. I moved behind it...

  Onto the Wastes of Bleer. It was as I had seen it last, barren and cold and dry. Full of thorn and devil’s spear. Heaped with wind’s bones, which were not wind’s bones at all but the bones of the ancient creatures of this place. Coming toward me out of the eastern sky was a glowing ball of flame. No sound, only this ball, hurtling toward me. “Jinian. Quickly, to your right, and down into that little empty crevasse.” I did not like the look of the doom approaching so made quick work of the directions; half a dozen steps to my right and down ...

  Into a hall, vast and gray, where my footsteps echoed whispering down corridors of pillars. From a high window came a crowd roar so threatening I turned instinctively to flee.

  “No!” cried the voice in warning. “Turn again. The other way! Beside the pool.” Resolutely I turned back, stumbling across a fallen pedestal, kicking a silvery lamp that lay there in my path. I caught myself. Another pedestal lay across the way, the book it had held flung against the far wall. I walked beside the low coping of a pool, coughing as a fitful draft blew smoke into my eyes, so that I stepped blindly...

  Onto a road. Cernaby was beside me. “Here,” Cernaby said, stepping in a certain direction. I followed. We stood outside the Maze on the path we had left only moments before. High on the ridge the tall stones brooded above us.

  “What is it?” I asked. “I can’t believe it!”

  “Who can? One time long since, Mind Healer Talley came here to confer with the Dervish paramounts. She spent long hours within the edge of the Great Maze and left at last, saying the places within it were memories.”