The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Some trick of the light made its painted face seem real, made the malice there seem to move. No matter whether the face was real or not, the thing itself was real enough, and it came for us, whirling down the shattering stairs like an avalanche of fury. It knew us. I clutched at Ganver and we went away, into the gray nothing.

  “It saw you,” said Ganver. “As it saw me.”

  “Were we there or not?” Peter asked in a breathless voice. “Sometimes we seem only to be watching history, sometimes we seem to be involved in it. How long ago was the Tower destroyed?”

  “The Daylight Bell was destroyed some centuries ago,” it said as though beginning a chronicle. “First was the arrival of your people; then destruction and pain followed by the Battle of the Great Ones against your people, in which many of the great ones were destroyed; then the giving of the Talents; all these in a narrow space of years. Within one lifetime of your people, from the time you came, all these things occurred. . . .

  “Much later came the blue crystals; then the destruction of the Tower. There were three irreplaceable treasures in the Tower of the Bell: the book from which the Shadowpeople sang; the lamp from which the light was spread; and the Bell itself. All destroyed when the Tower fell, as the great ones had been destroyed. Destruction and destruction. In my own memory, all these events were not long apart. In the eternal time of Lom, they were close indeed. . . .

  “And since that time, the shadow has gathered with each ringing of the Shadowbell. It gathers most deeply here in the recollection of Lom, gathers here and flows from here. As for your being part of what you saw, yes, you were there. There are eddies in time. We Eesties move among memories, along the lines of thought. Sometimes we observe, sometimes we are there. Sometimes we participate. It is our movement in the Maze which recalls memory to Lom. It was your movement into the mind of Lom which recalled those memories. Our dance is the dance of recollection.

  This seemed to me to be more poetry than practicality, but the sense of it was clear enough. The usual rules of cause and effect didn’t apply. This world we were in, this Maze, existed outside normal time. It had its own rules which even Ganver might not totally understand.

  “There is one thing I do not perceive,” Ganver was saving to me now. “The Riddler, the Oracle, it wants to destroy you particularly, Jinian. Why?”

  “I don’t know why! But I know you mustn’t let it happen, Ganver. If it wants to get me, it must have a reason connected with this evil thing it’s doing. And if you want to stop the evil, then you have to help me. That’s all there is to it.” I was as sure of that as I was of my own name.

  “Ah, ah,” it said. “So I must help you. I have been told this by another of you, by others of you. I helped the one called Queynt. I helped the one called Mavin. I helped the one called Bartelmy, though she did not know it.”

  “Bartelmy is my mother,” I said. “Mavin is Peter’s mother. Fate, Ganver. Do you believe in fate?”

  “I have believed only in Lom. Is there something other than Lom?”

  “I don’t know, Ganver. Truly I don’t. But at this moment, I think it would be wise for us to assume there is at least something else we can call upon. Call it fate or what-you-will, still we had better believe.”

  The big old Eesty was silent so long I thought we had offended it mortally and it might not speak to us again. Finally, however, it said, “You accused me of complicity. Before we go further, tell me if you accuse me still?”

  I couldn’t say anything. The old being was obviously so shattered by it all, it was hard for me to tell it what I really thought. Peter, however, seemed to have it well in hand. Of course, Peter was impervious to some of the feelings that had been floating around, which had cushioned him somewhat. Now he stood very straight on a heap of gray vacancy. I could visualize him in his own shape, his thumbs hooked into his belt as he sometimes posed when he was being judicious.

  “I would not judge you wrong to have killed every man, woman, and child upon Lom for the destruction we did,” he said once more. “That would have been self-defense. Nor would I have blamed you if you had killed the Eesties who rebelled against you and against Lom and against all that was good in following the Oracle. But I judge that you have betrayed Lom also, for you retreated from the fray and did not move to assist and had to be winkled out by me and Jinian. If you had done nothing else, you could have struck at them when the Bell fell in. All the beribboned ones were frightened then and in disarray. But you didn’t. So you are culpable, and so are we, and that’s my judgment.”

  I thought of Mavin’s story in which she had said, “Once you’ve interfered, you simply have to go on. You can’t say it isn’t your responsibility.” I wanted to laugh, somehow, even though there was nothing at all to laugh about and Ganver would probably get angry and do something drastic to us at any moment for what we’d said already.

  But that didn’t happen. It simply stood there, looking inward at something we would never see, in a sadness too deep to measure. And at last it said, “Then I must atone. If it is not too late for atonement. And your safety must come first because the Oracle threatens you, Jinian Star-eye.”

  “Why do you call me that?” I asked, curious.

  “Because of the Eesty sign you wear upon your body. The sign of the eye. The sign we taught to some of your people early in their lives upon Lom, trying to teach them other ways than the way of destruction.”

  “It was you who taught the sevens?”

  “It was we who taught them some things. And we who taught the Dervishes some things. And I who laid myself upon Queynt to teach him some things also, after he had been abused by those. . . .”

  “The Dervishes believe you are one of the old gods, Ganver. Is that true?”

  The being before us was silent. Perhaps stunned? Perhaps offended. “I am to the old gods as you are to me, Jinian,” it said at last in a voice that shook a little. “We are not unlike, and yet we are not equal in what we are.”

  Ah, so it would at least allow we were not unlike. “I thought you hated us.”

  “We hated what you did. In some of you we could find no bao at all. Some of you did not have it. Would never have it. You have a type of person who assists at birthing. . . .”

  “Midwives.”

  “Your midwives. One of the “Talents given by Lom allowed them to seek bao in your children, to let only those young live who had it. Perhaps, if the midwives had been more respected . . .”

  I took the pendant out of the neck of my shirt, staring at it. I had worn it ever since Tess-Tinder-my-hand had given it to me when I was a child. Tess the midwife. Who had, evidently, found some bao in me. Something about the shape tickled at my memory. Someone had said something about it. Someone else had called me Star-eye recently. The memory fled away, refusing to be caught, leaving a trail I sniffed at. The memory was important. Why couldn’t I hold it? “What does the stareye mean?” I asked.

  “It is a lesson which must be learned from observation,” it said. “We say, `Watch and learn.’ It is a knowledge with five parts. Though we have no midwives, it is a knowledge we have always believed all Eesties have at birth, as the warnet knows the meaning of his hive and the gnarlibar the meaning of his teeth.” Ganver spoke in a grieving voice, and yet there seemed no reason for sadness in what it had said.

  We hung there in the haze, nowhere. At the edges of vision were roiling movements as though something struggled to shape itself. Inside my head—or what passed for my head in the Eesty shape—there was similar roiling. It was Peter who broke the lengthy silence.

  “It is profitless to discuss this now,” Peter said. “We must do something, Ganver. The Oracle is hunting Jinian. Is she safe here?”

  “We are between forevers here,” the star replied. “The gray land in which nothing changes. Though the Oracle cannot find us, we can do nothing here. Of such a space was Ganver’s Grave created. It is a space in which nothing may occur.”

  We hung there a time longer, say
ing nothing, meditating, I suppose, on all we had seen and heard. It would do no good to stay where we were. At last I sighed.

  “Take us out of here, Ganver. If we can do nothing here, we must leave the place.”

  It nodded. We spun once more, out through the flickering lights of memory travel. Ganver gasped, and I glimpsed a pursuing shape, wildly flapping. In an instant we were in the gray once more.

  “The Oracle?” I asked hopelessly. “Did it find us?”

  “It caught sight of us.” A pause, the silence of thought. I perceived in Ganver a slight red flush, as of the merest hint of anger. “The Oracle seeks these shapes we wear. So, we will shape ourselves differently.” Ganver turned to Peter. “You, I will take to the edge of the Maze, where you may go away before it knows you are gone. The Oracle seeks three, not two.” Ganver turned to me. ‘`I will return to hide you away where it will not find you, then I will trick the Oracle away, far away, to a place from which it cannot return quickly.”

  “But . . . but,” said Peter.

  “It’s all right,” I murmured at him, feeling something inside me melt like hot sugar, a flood of bittersweet anguish. “It’s all right, Peter. Go, get out of here. One of us has to get back to Himaggery and Mavin and the rest. They have to know about the Daylight Bell. About the Tower in Old South Road City. About the Oracle and the blue crystals and how all this started. See if you can find Murzy. Tell her I need her.”

  “But, but,” he said again, his body slumped into a tragic pose, like a clown’s. “Where will I find you? I can’t leave you. Jinian, I just can’t!”

  “Meet me in Old South Road City, Peter. Where the fragments of the Bell will still be, buried there under the ruins. Oh, they must be there. We must see to recasting the Bell, Peter. Meet me there. With all the help you can bring, and as soon as you can.” Privately I thought I might not live to meet him. If the Oracle was after me, it would find me eventually. As though I were a Seer, I knew we would fight, the Oracle and I, and I had no hope of the battle between us coming out in my favor. Even if I were defeated, we might not lose everything if Peter had a chance to get away. So I thought, glad of the Eesty shape which did not show my emotions. The shape was calm. Inside was a whirling pool of fear and love, loathing and longing.

  I had the feeling that Ganver was looking at me closely, though nothing in that enigmatic Eesty shape actually seemed to peer. Never mind. I leaned against Peter, star to star, every part of my body pressed against him. For a moment there was this ecstatic flow, then he was pulled away.

  “We have no time for mating now,” said Ganver in a tone of prissy concern. “And you are only two.”

  I laughed to keep from weeping. “We were not mating, Ganver. And among our kind, it only takes two. Take him away. And keep him safe.” I turned away so Peter could not see me crying, forgetting for a moment that this shape didn’t cry. And in a moment I was alone in the gray, watching the roiling shapes at the edge of my sight, trying not to feel utterly alone.

  4

  PETER’S STORY: THE FLITCHHAWK

  At sunset, Ganver brought me out of the Maze at its southern edge, which would be to the north of the Shadowmarches, somewhere west of the River Haws in its upper reaches. The creature took pains to tell me where I was and point the best direction of travel before releasing me from its enchantment to my own Peter-shape once more.

  I stood back from it and bowed in as courtly a manner as I could manage, considering the sudden acquisition of arms and legs which felt quite foreign to me. It stood there looking at me. I suppose one may say “looking,” though when I had been inside that shape it had been rather more like tasting. Can one taste a shape? A color? Certainly I had done so as an Eesty. “My thanks,” I said at last, realizing it expected something from me. “Will you try to protect her? Please.”

  It nodded. I knew enough of Eestiness to realize there was no promise more binding than this nod. It agreed to do what it could, and no documents or oaths were necessary.

  “I’m going to fly,” I said. “As fast as possible. Tell her I’ll be waiting.”

  It sighed. When it spoke, the voice was breathy and sad once more, without any of that anger it had displayed recently. “Your Talent is of Lom,” said Ganver. Then it pointed down the hill we were standing on. I looked, at first not seeing what was indicated, then realizing that great stretches of the forest were dead. “Your Talent is of Lom,” it repeated. “And Lom dies.”

  Experimentally, I Shifted an arm. It went into the shape I wanted for it, feeling about the same as usual. “I’ll be careful,” I said.

  “Husband your power,” Ganver directed. “Use it carefully. Go in the day, where there are sun-warmed places. Remember the Shadowbell has rung.”

  I considered this. Power from the sun wouldn’t be influenced by Lom’s weakness, though my Talent might. If there were dangerous shadows about, they could only be seen in daylight. Ganver had given me good advice, for which I was grateful. I bowed again before turning to make my way down the hill. It was evening, and I needed to find somewhere safe to hole up until morning.

  There were shadows, not many. Until I came out of the Maze, there had been nothing much to attract them. They seemed undisturbed by my passing, rising in my wake to flutter gently in the air before settling again. I wondered, as Himaggery must have wondered in his time, as I know Mavin had wondered, what it was the shadows wanted, what it was that shadows felt.

  There was a rocky wall above a small stream halfway down the slope of the forest. The wall had a hole in it large enough to sleep in. We might have been in the Maze for days or for a season. However long it had been, we had not slept in that time. Now I felt the need for sleep, and something about the place reminded me of my travels in Schlaizy Noithn. As a wanderer in that strange place, needing rest and peace, I had found both in pombi shape in a hollow tree. I found both again in similar shape on this evening. A pombi with weapons on his paws and fangs in his jaws, a pombi who could fit into a hole, leaving no room for shadows.

  It was warm in the hollow. The air breathed coolly upon my face. The agonies of the world slipped away in the comfort of the moment. Sleep tugged at me, but so did thoughts of Jinian. I did not want to sleep for fear I would dream of something else.

  When I was young, in Schooltown, I had not much considered love. The first love I’d believed in had been Mandor’s for me, and that had proved false. The first true love I’d seen had been Mertyn’s for me, and I had not thought of it as love at all. Mertyn was my thalan, of course, Mavin’s full brother, but I hadn’t known of the relationship until after leaving Schooltown so did not much regard it when I found out. The next love I saw was the love of Yarrel for his long-lost sister, Izia, taken by a Shifter, so it was said. That I believed in well enough, for when he learned I was Shifter, too, it had cost me his friendship. In the meantime, I had lusted after the Immutable girl, Tossa, the one who had died. And after Silkhands, in a sort of brotherly way. And after Izia herself, though I think it was really Yarrel I longed for.

  At last I had taken up with Jinian, without any intention of loving her at all. And yet I had dreamed about her sometimes. I dreamed she was sitting in a window, leaning down to hand me something marvelous. I dreamed she was in danger and needed me. I could not escape thinking of her. Oh, yes, she irritated me. From the first times we were together, she chivied me this way and that. But it got so I could not think of myself without thinking also of Jinian. I wanted her near. Wanted to argue with her. Wanted to touch her. Wanted to tease her. Wanted to make love to her—wanted to.

  And couldn’t, of course, because of that damn oath of hers. I had come close to breaking that oath, telling myself I’d do it by force if necessary, but good sense prevailed. Mavin had said it often enough. A man who forces a woman is no true man. He is only a thing. Without soul, said Mavin. “Without bao,” I said to myself. Jinian would not love one without bao, I supposed. Better wait than woe.

  So I thought, half-dreaming, letti
ng the dream come at last. I slept, and when I woke I could not remember what the dream had been.

  I came down to sit upon sun-warmed rock thinking of Jinian once more with an accustomed degree of frustration. I would go south because it needed doing, but also because Jinian said go south. I would wait in the Old South Road City because there would be work there to do, but also because Jinian had said she would meet me there. My body did not move, however, and I did not Shift wings, for I was closest to her where I was and did not want to leave her. If this is love, then love is what it is. If love is something worse than this, I do not care to know about it.

  The rock wall faced east. It heated quickly under the morning sun. Shaking myself back into a sense of duty, I took that heat to change myself into a flying thing, sleek and shapely, blue below and dark above, like a fish with wings. I had a quick, unreasonable longing for Chance. “Brother Chance,” I would have said, “get yourself on my back and we’ll go find that sportive widow of yours in Mip.” Or had it been Pouws or some other place? “Brother Chance, get yourself on my back and clutch tight with your legs, because I’m scared to death.” Fine thing for a Gamesman, a Shifter, fine thing for the son of a Wizard. I was scared, and it took a bit of time before I realized it wasn’t me—or certainly not only me—I was frightened for.

  At last it was the shadows that moved me. I saw them trembling beneath the trees, fluttering as though about to fly. I did not want to encounter them in the air so thrust downward with wings long warmed in the morning sun and launched myself to spiral above the stone, where an updraft lifted me higher and higher.

  From above, I could see how the world died. Throughout the Shadowmarches were leprous patches of dead forest. All down the River Haws were mud slides and eruptions of red and yellow smoke, as though great pustules had broken from beneath the skin of the world. So suddenly. So long hidden, and now so suddenly the illness broke forth. And yet it is the way of some sicknesses, so Healer Silkhands used to say, to give no sign while they eat away inside, then break through when it is almost too late to do anything about them.