The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  It passed from there beneath the concealing fringes, here and there, mouth to hand to hand to mouth, from one silver pillar to another. Some refused it. Most tasted it. I gave them all the others but three. Fringes shook, quivered, bodies turned. One reeled into another. Some cried out. Then stillness. The Dervishes were there in their thousands, assembled rank on rank, and the rear ranks quivered now as the remnant of the crystal passed.

  “How long?” asked Bartelmy. “How long, Jinian?”

  “How long? How long ago did this world send us that message? You guess, Bartelmy. Soon after we came here, I would suppose. If we came here a thousand years ago, perhaps a few hundred less than that. More or less.”

  “And who robbed us of it?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect, but I don’t know. A race of creatures, ambitious, proud, who did not want this man on this world. A race of beings who sought to drive me away, who gathered the message crystals up, every one, and who took them to the cavern where the giants dwelt. Some creature which hated man.” I could not identify that creature. I suspected. Only suspected.

  “Is it too late?”

  “It may be. I suppose we could give up with good grace. Lie down and die. Disport ourselves for a time, like lice on a corpse. Or go on dancing while the shadow comes. The shadow is part of this, I’m sure. You’ve seen it Bartelmy. I’ve seen it. Perhaps all you Dervishes have seen it. It flows now, from somewhere, like a flood. Where is it coming from?” Silence greeted this, but they did not disagree. “Of one thing I am very sure. If this world dies, we will not survive it long, but we might play while there is time.

  “Or we might try, whether it is too late or not. Try to get the roads fixed. Try to get some runners on them. Yourselves, since that’s what you’ve been breeding for. What race ran these roads before we came?”

  “Eesties. We have seen so with the deep look.”

  “Eesties? Really?” This did surprise me. “I thought it might be Shadowpeople.”

  “No. Eesties. We look into the past and see them spinning upon the roads, spinning into the ancient cites. They spin. As we do. Those odd doors in Pfarb Durim? Larger at the top? They are Eesty doors. It was an Eesty city. All across the world there are ruins with those doors.”

  “That’s why you’re Dervishes. You copied them.”

  “We tried. It is said one of them helped us originally.”

  “You copied them, but then just sat about waiting?”

  “We thought ... we thought the day would come. We were holding ourselves in readiness for the day.”

  “The day when someone else would fix things?”

  “The day things would be fixed, somehow. Yes.” A collective sigh. Then, “Jinian, why was it you who saw this?”

  I considered this. How had I known it? How did anyone know things? “I don’t know, Bartelmy. There always has to be someone to see things first. By the time Queynt gets to Himaggery in the south, others may have seen. Surely—oh, surely you will not merely stay here in your pervasion and let it happen.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Mavin told me you have powers. You changed Himaggery into a beast one time.”

  “We made him think he was.”

  “Then you can make Tragamors and Sorcerers think they are road builders. You can make Demons think they are hunting fustigars to seek out whoever robbed us of the message. You can make Healers think they are Lom fixers. I don’t know. You can do something!”

  “If there are more of these crystals across the sea,” said Cernaby, “they must be brought here. Shared out.”

  “Better late than not at all,” came a voice from the ranked multitude. “Better a tardy lover than a lonely bed.” A quiver of what could have been laughter ran through the ranks. Laughter? I was shocked at this, realizing only later that it was the laughter of despair.

  “You can help Himaggery decide how to get west over the sea and back again. It took Beedie and Roges three years, and we don’t have three years to spend. Mavin flew there, Beedie said. Which means Shifters can fly there and bring crystals back. Oh, Dervishes, I beg you ...”

  “You need not beg,” said Bartelmy. “I told you once to stop crying and get to work. I will not wait for you to say the same to me ...”

  “Mother,” I said, shivering at the sound of the word in my mouth. “Mother. Do not take time to confer. Can you truly set your patience aside?”

  “When we must. Yes, Jinian. When we must.” They went. I was not sure which way they went, except that in a few moments all were gone. Beside me the door to the hut stood open. Within were two narrow beds, a table with two chairs. A cupboard. They had indeed set their laws aside and prepared for my visit. I sat at the table, laid my head upon my arms, and wept as I had not wept since Chimmerdong, weariness mostly. Sadness, perhaps. And after weeping I lay upon the narrow cot and slept.

  When I woke Cernaby was standing in the doorway.

  “I waited,” said the Dervish. “We wanted to know what you were going to do next, and Bartelmy thought you might need one of us to carry a message somewhere, to someone.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Some have gone south to others of our race. Some to find Queynt and the rest and be sure they reach the south safely. Some into the Shadowmarches in search of the Shadowpeople, though it may be we will need Mavin to help in that search. Some to the caves where the hundred thousand lie. A few to the giants’ cavern to see whether any of the blue crystals remain there when the waters drain away. Some to carry messages among those others, to keep us all informed.”

  I stared at her incredulously. “So quickly! I did not think it possible.”

  “We are not benighted, Jinian. If we have had any fault, it has been too much pride. We had a revelation from our founder. We had Seers’ visions which we misinterpreted. We had what we thought was the answer and we troubled to look no further. Who ever believes that time will end before one’s solution can be put into place?”

  I laughed, coughing. “Give me a moment, Cernaby. You have moved faster than I can.” I rose, walked around the room, found bread in the cupboard, ate some of it with a cup of water from the pitcher on the table. “It seems I am part of this matter. Not of my own doing, but merely because Murzemire Hornloss saw me involved in it. If for no other reason than that, I must play out that part.” I thought long on this. Then, “Cernaby, my thanks. No. This is one of those games without a name and which I keep getting involved in. Let me play it out, I do not think your presence will matter. Though I would welcome your company, perhaps your company is not what is most needed. I would rather you carry a message for me. To Murzy—Murzemire Hornloss. Tell her what we found. Tell her to raise the sevens. In all my dreams I can think of only three forces in this land unified enough to do anything sensible: the sevens, the Immutables, and the Dervishes. Himaggery and Barish will argue. Mavin will go kiting off on her own wild way. The pawns? Well, what powers have we left them that would make them useful now? Peter has destroyed the Magicians. Beedie’s people are far away. So. Go to the Immutables, and carry the word to Murzemire with my love.”

  Cernaby did not linger. There was no sentimentality among the Dervishes, there was little enough sentiment. When she was gone, I was alone in the pervasion with only my thoughts for company. I went through a number of the huts, packing what food I found. There was not much. Evidently the Dervishes lived on air, or sunlight. It would not have surprised me much to learn this was true. When I had repacked everything, as tightly and neatly as possible, I went back the way I had come. Wherever I was going next, I wanted Peter with me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I arrived at the pillar of red stone. Peter wasn’t there. I didn’t really expect him. It would have taken some time for him to get to the Bright Demesne—assuming that’s where everyone was, which might not be the case—and convincing them of anything might take longer. Unless he’d simply put the crystals in their soup. Which I abhorred philosophically but thought might
be pragmatically justified. As long as it wasn’t me it was done to.

  Since it was possible I might have a long wait, I made a good camp, summoning up a few flood-chucks to help me with it. They explained they were very busy cleaning up the storm damage, and I explained that I understood all that, but I needed a camp nonetheless.

  We bowed to one another and said it all once again.

  Finally we compromised on a tightly woven hut thatched with reeds on the shore of a nearby lake. They threw in a latrine as lagniappe. We bowed again, satisfying one another with our mutual respect, and then I gave them one of the blue crystals, which they shared before moving away very thoughtfully into the woods. I had not even taken time to consider before giving them the crystal. It seemed right they should have it.

  I needed the hut to keep the shadow out as I had needed a house long ago in Chimmerdong. Shadow had lain deep on Chimmerdong, and I’d learned of its evil ways at first hand, getting myself shadow bit in the process. It lay thickly now in these northlands, flowing from somewhere in an unending flood.

  Even if there had been no shadow, a hut would have been a comfortable thing to have. Though Storm Grower was dead, it might rain. There were pombis rambling about in the wood. I might have to wait a very long time. Forever, if necessary, I think we had said. So.

  I would wait. And watch.

  Each day was spent wandering, looking, finding different lookouts from which one might spy upon the world. Each vantage point was more depressing than the last, for there were great swatches of forest dying, strange stinking smokes rising from far valleys. One day I thought of going back to the cavern of the giants but did not. Funk, I think. I couldn’t face it. My imagination told me too vividly what I would find there.

  Having rejected that idea, I decided to visit the ridge above the Great Maze. Since it was a high point, I could see a long way from there. It occurred to me I might see Peter returning.

  It wasn’t far, actually. Less than a half day’s scramble.

  It was saddening to look down into the empty pervasion, and the hill wasn’t as lofty as I remembered it.

  Still, it gave a good view out over the Great Maze and the lands sloping down to the sea. I scouted around in the pervasion, robbing a few huts of their stale bread it wasn’t bad dipped in tea—and a pot to boil water in. Somewhere between Storm Grower and Fangel, I’d lost mine.

  I built a small fire at the foot of one of the stone pillars, brewed some tea, and set myself to watch the southern sky.

  Birds. Clouds. Nice white ones, for a change. Sitting there with the fragrant breeze in my face, it was hard to believe that the world was dying beneath me. Grasses nodded; small things crept about making nests. It didn’t feel dead or dying, and yet I knew it was. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted Peter, and the less likely it seemed he was going to come. The sky was empty.

  I looked down for a while, to rest my eyes.

  I saw it coming out of the Great Maze.

  It came from the Maze itself. There was a movement at the edge of the Maze, a puzzling kind of change. I stared at it. The hedge of the Maze was no different.

  Nothing was entering or leaving it. And yet...

  Something had changed. There was a new configuration of light. Something shifted. For a time I gazed at it, uncertain, and then it moved. The shadow. Flooding out of the Maze and flowing downward, along the trail.

  An endless gray tide, covering the world.

  From the Maze? Why from the Maze?

  I spent a few minutes in futile cursing, then headed back for my camp. I’d have to find out as much as possible, before Peter came. He might drop directly into it. Be frozen, as Himaggery had been before Bartelmy had rescued him. Oh, by the Hundred Rotten Devils, I sighed, why now?

  Finding out anything would be like playing with an avalanche, rather. Toying with an angry dragon. I had talked long with Mavin. I knew what the shadow could do. Still, one had to know, as Queynt would say. One had to know.

  Back at the hut I considered the matter. What was there around me that still retained some integrity? The forest was smashed, riven, and storm-wrecked. The very mountains were torn. About the only thing around that looked whole was the lake we had built the hut beside, a charming little oval of shallow water, set in reeds, decked with lilies, full of fish and small plopping things. Though the forested banks were reduced to rubbish and the lake itself muddied from landslides upstream, still it had a certain immaculate charm left about it.

  The hut had one window, which I used for the window magic. As in Chimmerdong, I hung my blanket before it to serve as a curtain. Then I called up the lake.

  I don’t know quite what I expected. Some bubbly shape, perhaps, with fish for eyes. Some reedy thing with lilies in its hair. What came was a rounded silver dart, not unfishlike in shape, curved on every side and reflecting the interior of the hut like a mirror so that I saw a hundred Jinians in its sides. It did not bubble; it did not splash. It spoke as running water speaks, a quiet burble, a ruminative sibilance. “What would you, Jinian Star-eye?” it asked me as I was shutting the curtain.

  “The giants are dead,” I told it. “I expect you already knew that.”

  “We did. Yes.” Expressionless. That fact meant little to it, I thought.

  It made me dizzy to look at it. I stared into the fire, instead. It kept shifting, never alike for two instants. “I have seen the shadow flowing from the Maze. I thought it might come from there for some reason.”

  “You thought your being here might evoke it? That your summons might interest it?” It still seemed very little concerned. Instead it was detached, remote. “No. It does not concern itself with you now, Jinian Star-eye. It grows as the algae grows when lakes and rivers have died. It grows without thought, without care, and will die in its time without grief. When everything dies, so then will the shadow die as well.”

  “I am told,” I said carefully, “that the shadow can seek a certain person.”

  “It can be sent to do so,” sighed the lake. “Of itself, it does not seek. It grows in the Maze and flows from there. Whenever the destruction is remembered, more shadow flows ....”

  “Destruction?”

  “Of the Daylight Bell.” I thought about that. At the moment it didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t pursue it. “Then the only reason it’s flowing out of the Maze now is that the Maze is full of it? No other reason?”

  “No other reason. We are too near, too small, to concern those who sometimes send it.”

  “Chimmerdong concerned it.”

  “Chimmerdong was mighty, once. Boughbound was mighty, once. And the Glistening Sea and the Southern Sea and the River Ramberlon, which you call Stonybrook. If we live, call us up again, Jinian Footseer, and we will tell you the names of all the mighty who once gloried in the world.”

  “If we live. If the shadow does not catch me.”

  “You know,” it whispered to me. “You know. They may send it after you, human-girl, but they have not done so. Yet.” It left me then. I had not had the foresight to realize the hut would be very wet when it left. That night I slept beneath the stars, nervously.” Peter returned in the morning. He woke me where I slept, rolled in my cloak.

  “There was a flood in your hut?” he asked in a despondent voice. “I thought maybe you’d drowned.”

  “Peter, what’s the matter?” He hugged me sadly, almost absentmindedly. “Oh, Jinian, from worse to worse yet. Himaggery and Barish were arguing when we left there two years ago. While we’ve been away it went from argument to open animosity, and from that to a split at the Bright Demesne. Barish is for raising all the hundred thousand at once to make what he calls ‘massive changes’, not that he’s raised even one of them yet. Himaggery wants them raised a few at a time to make what he calls, “balanced programs’. Mavin got disgusted with them both and left. No one knows where she is. Mertyn went back to Schooltown.” He seemed about to weep.

  “Shh, shh,” I hushed him. “Bad e
nough, my love. But I know you. I know my sly, snakey Peter. What did you get done?”

  “I talked to Barish and demanded that the old Windlow part of him listen to me. He heard the warning. I said it over and over until he really seemed to have heard it. Then I put a blue crystal in his tea.”

  “I thought you would.” I wanted him to know I did not disapprove. Himaggery and Barish were stubborn, pombi-proud idiots. Heaven save me from male Wizeards who want to play politics. “And then?”

  “Then I told Himaggery he owed it to me as his son to listen to me. Which he agreed to. I warned him. Then I put a blue crystal in his wine.”

  “Ah.”

  “Then I left. I made a stop in Schooltown. Mertyn did believe me and he will send word to Mavin—somewhere, somehow, if he ever figures out where she is and though no one knows how long it will be before she gets the message, if she gets it at all. The two of us together went to see Riddle and Quench in the land of the Immutables. I gave crystals to each of them. I was sure the Immutables would be immune, just as they are to Talent, but they weren’t. None of them doubted me.”

  I cursed. “Doesn’t it prove what I said, Peter? Only three disciplined forces in the world. The Immutables; the Dervishes; the sevens.”

  “Well, we’ve got three alerted. A Dervish arrived about the time I left Schooltown. Don’t ask me how she got there that fast, because I flew the whole way. She said her name was Cernaby and to tell you your message had gone to the sevens.” He sighed, stretched out beside me, and pulled half my blanket over him. I didn’t even worry about his closeness. Oath or no oath. It just wasn’t that important anymore.

  “What did you do with the other crystals? You had several dozens of them?”

  “Gave them to Riddle and Quench and Mertyn. One for Mavin, when they find her. Six to be sent by trusted messenger to the others of your seven in Xammer—if they are still there ...”