The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “He did that at least once before,” said Peter. “Long ago. At Bannerwell.”

  “Well, we wish good luck to him. Unless he succeeds, I don’t know what will put heart into the workers. We start each day with a plan in mind, but by noon we have drifted into despair once more. It’s the shadows. Everyone says so. They lie around us like leeches, sucking up our hope.”

  I thought of Mind Healer Talley, wondering if she had found some key to the Maze, some clue to Lom’s mind, anything that would relieve this depression. Seemingly not. I could feel it trying to swallow me, and Dodir was obviously fighting it, for he breathed heavily as he went on.

  “Additionally, we’ve had some trouble with the blind runners. They didn’t want to give up their city, and we’ve had to run them off by force. They keep coming back. We’re trying not to hurt any of them, but it’s getting difficult as they’re getting more frantic with each passing day.

  “And as for what’s been done, well, look around you. We’ve found almost all the Bell. The pieces were more or less in one place, under the ruined Tower. Most of the stones are sorted out—many of them by plain muscle when Talent wouldn’t work—and as soon as we can get the power situation worked out, we should move very rapidly.”

  “The Tower,” I breathed. “The stones for the Tower of the Daylight Bell? You found them?”

  Dodir nodded. “Found them. Yes. Broken, many of them. We’ll need stone cutters to replace them.”

  “They fell from a great height,” said Peter in a dull voice. It was unlike him. He had been unlike himself since the thing had happened to Mavin. He had not even looked at me, not touched me. It was as though he had shut me away, and it had gone on far too long. I had let him alone, respecting his grief, but this was too much.

  “Did you find a lamp?” I asked. “It would have been under the ruined Tower. A silver lamp? And a book?” I was, quite frankly, thinking of the prophecy I had heard long since. “The Wizard holds the book, the Bell, the light. . . .” Which Wizard it might be, I couldn’t guess. I wasn’t even sure it was the right book and light, though the Bell part seemed self-evident.

  Dodir shook his head. “Such things would have been crushed flat. However, we’ve not entirely cleared the place, and it may yet turn up.”

  “Where would we find Himaggery?” I asked. If telling Himaggery what had happened was part of what was eating at Peter, better have it over with.

  Dodir pointed the way, through the city and up the slope at the other side toward what had been a grassy hill. “There’s a stream there, lady, and Himaggery’s made camp, but he may be off to the east somewhere, overseeing that power system of his. He says the area around Lake Yost is yet untouched by the world’s malady. I hope he is right.”

  We started to ride away, and he called after us, “And if these things of yours do indeed eat shadows, we will need them tonight.”

  “You have shadow down in the city here?”

  “From dusk to dawn. As though scouting for someone. Shadow, and strange shapes upon the hills, like nothing I have seen before. Things with painted faces and ribbons.”

  I’m sure he could read in our faces that this was evil news. Somehow we had hoped, senselessly perhaps, that the Oracle and all its followers were back in the Maze, kept busy by Ganver and its kin, and that we would not have to confront them. Now it seemed that hope was false, and it was with a sense of fatalistic despair that I nodded at Dodir and took the reins from Peter’s hands.

  “I’ll send someone to show you where the shadows come,” he called behind us. I waved but did not answer.

  As for Peter, he was slumped beside me as though he did not hear or see, looking into his folded hands as though he held everything there, everything that mattered. Or perhaps he looked on an emptiness in which nothing mattered. We went on through the ruined city, the other wagons following behind, Mertyn standing tall on the wagon seat to see that all of them were there. Behind us we heard Dodir call out, “All right. Enough of this lying about. Let’s have the first crew over here!” Then a crash of rock, an aching screech, as heavy stones shifted into place.

  The farther we went, the more obvious the progress. They had started at the south side of the city. They had not even begun on the Tower, however. I looked down the avenue where it should have stood to see only piles of crumbled stone. Peter was right; it had fallen from a great height.

  We came up to Himaggery’s camp. Someone had called him. He came rushing out, full of wide smiles, grasping me by the hand, Peter by the hand, rushing on to meet Mertyn, not stopping to look, to see. I saw Peter’s fingers, wet with tears again.

  Enough of it. I had had enough of it. Chimmerdong had taught me that one cannot lie about in these moods, not even in grief. One must go on. I went to Himaggery and demanded he come with me into his tent, telling him I must speak to him privately. Mertyn shook his head at me warningly, but I ignored him, tugging Himaggery back as he had come, he half-irritated, half jocular. When I had him inside, I said baldly, without any attempt at tact, “Mavin saved Peter’s life, Himaggery. She died. I’m sorry. . . .” And all the old gods knew I was.

  He was angry. He accused me of making a bad joke. He accused me of pretending for some Wizardly purpose of my own. When he had said all the unforgettably forgivable things people do say in these circumstances, when he had said them several times over, he apologized to me, came down to his own feelings, and cried out her name very loudly two or three times as though his heart were broken.

  I told him while he wept. “Huldra had the spell ready, Himaggery. She had to utter only one word. She turned on Peter. I doubt that Mavin even knew what was about to happen. She had gained bulk from somewhere—there were some stores in the room, back behind the pillars—and then climbed across the ceiling of the room to get above the Witch. Huldra had taken time to mock us. She had taken too long at it, enjoying it. Mavin simply dropped over Huldra like some great basket. Mavin had been doing that a lot lately, basketing Bryan, basketing the Oracles outside the Bright Demesne. She caught the spell as it was uttered. It turned her to stone. The stone crushed Huldra. Then, when Riddle came, the stony form fell away and she lay there in her own shape, still as ice. . . .”

  Sometime during this tale, Peter came in. They hugged each other awkwardly, the way men do who have not been accustomed to showing affection. Then they went out to see her, leaving me there. Murzy came in with a glass of something very warming, which half untied the cold knots of my heart. “What is it?” I asked, pointing at the cup.

  “Bitter Tears Falling,” she said. “We cannot cure grief, but we can postpone it and must. There is too much to do.”

  When I had drunk the wize-art brew, I let her lead me away to the place our own tents were being pitched.

  “They’ll not be thinking of anything tonight, child, and someone must. I’ve been asking about, and the shadows are coming through here and there, picking off a Gamesman or two every night. It’s not contributing to morale.”

  I sighed from weariness. “Dodir said he’d send someone who knows where they come from. Has he done so, Murzy?”

  She pointed over her shoulder at a meek-looking little Elator, all neat thin bones and slim small feet with a narrow bird face at the top of it all. “They call me Little Flitch, ma’am.” He bowed. “Dodir put me to scouting out the shadow routes, and I’ll venture I’ve spotted most of them.”

  Which I think he had. I got three or four of the men to drive the wagon with me, and we went around the city sunwise, left to right, up and over, while he showed us every pass over the surrounding hills and hole through the stone escarpments while the turnips became almost hysterical with anticipation. The last two we had left were Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, and these two planted themselves at a saddle of the hills after several sexy little minuets and suggestive remarks. Little Flitch was very taken with the whole group; he said he’d flick among them in the dark hours, keeping them apprised of what happened.

  And after tha
t, I really couldn’t stay awake. I thought of Peter and Himaggery, probably drinking themselves silly beside the fire, and couldn’t find it in me to go to them or try to help them. I couldn’t. I had hardly known Mavin, and yet every time I thought of it, it made me want to die from sorrow and shame.

  Why? Because . . . because if anyone understood the true meaning of the star-eye, it had probably been Mavin. How did I know? I simply knew. It was in her face. If anyone had been free, it had been she. If anyone had followed their own unerring choice as to the reality of what was good, it had been Mavin. She had had her sorrows, too, and her joys, but she had never blamed anyone else for either. She had not been sentimental. I had envied her. I thought of me drudging away there in Chimmerdong, doing my blasted duty for all I was worth, and I envied Mavin. I was still doing my duty and still envying her. She shouldn’t have done it.

  But then, if she hadn’t, Peter would be lying in her place now. And perhaps that was most grievous of all, that tiny chill of joy that it had not been Peter.

  And perhaps that is what was bothering him, too. Perhaps he, too, had that tiny joyful pulse that it had not been he. Oh, grievous indeed. Sighing, I left my bed and went to find them. They were drunkenly telling Mavin stories beside the fire. I sat and drank with them until the fire went out, then wrapped Himaggery and Peter warmly in blankets against the cold and staggered back to my own bed. “Mavin,” I whispered to the night. “I’m still doing my duty, lady. And those you loved are safe. At least for now.”

  Morning came. Little Flitch made the rounds of the turnips and came back to say they had grown during the night. I went to see for myself. When I had first met Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, they had been about the size of my head. They had grown some on the trip, not a lot, for we were constantly moving and there was little time to root and feed. This morning they looked doubled in size, quirkier than ever, full of volatile good humor that could turn in a moment into malicious games.

  “Oh, Jinian, lots of shadows. Lots of thick ones, all full of juices.” So Molly-my-dear addressed me, jigging heavily upon her root hairs. “Fat, so fat, like a moon, like the sun, I am glorious, so glorious.” She began to swing on my trouser bottom, laughing like a maniac.

  “Isn’t she beautiful,” giggled Big-blue. “Like a great waterox cow, she is, bigger than big. And the seeds, you know”—giggle, nudge—”they’re ready! “

  I didn’t know what to make of this. No such slowness on the part of Little Flitch, however, who begged them with every show of sincerity to give him their seeds, all of them, to be planted at once.

  “That’s good,” said Big-blue. “If there had been many more shadows, we couldn’t have eaten them all. We need more of us, Jinian. Little Flitch can have the seed.”

  “But surely,” I said, “they won’t grow in time to-” I didn’t finish, ashamed of myself. I had forgotten I was a Wize-ard. There was a spell. Of course. Hatching to Follow. A spell to make things come to fruition very quickly. They rolled about, laughing, seeming to read my mind.

  “Oh, You Wizardly ones, so silly,” said Molly-my-dear. “Gardener knows how to do that. He does it all the time. You or him, makes no never mind.”

  And so was our morning spent, Little Flitch’s and mine, in planting turnip seed. These two had not been the only ones ready, and by noon there were vast tracts of fertile soil scratched and sewn and spells muttered over. Fronds of green were showing by afternoon.

  And at noon Peter and Himaggery emerged from their tent, physically somewhat the worse for the late and spirituous vigil they had held, but otherwise the better for it. And Peter came to me.

  “We’re taking Mavin down to the Tower. When the Tower is raised again, we will build a catafalque for her there. Until then, it is a good place for her to lie.” He was silent then awhile, staring out with bleak eyes at the ruined city. “During the trip here, I thought it might be better to give it up. Better not to love anyone than to feel like that when they go. Better just shut all the feeling down. I really did think that, Jinian. I was even trying to do it. And I felt so guilty. She had wanted just to hold me for a time when I escaped, just for a moment or two, but I was in such a fever to get to you. I felt I didn’t deserve to live.”

  So that had been it. Guilt, simple guilt, over a boyish—no, a human failing. I leaned against him, put my arms tight around him as he went on.

  “I told Himaggery. He said it was a natural feeling, but silly. He wouldn’t trade his pain now for his joy then—back when he and Mavin were lovers—so he says. And I mustn’t, either. So. I won’t. And I think—well, I think we must take whatever time for love we have, and the time of your oath must be about done.”

  “It will be soon,” I said, wiping several tears away surreptitiously. “Murzy says the time is probably already past.” Then I made myself get busy with something else or I would not have done anything all that day but cry.

  We made a ceremony for Mavin. There had been no time back at the caverns. We lit candles. We placed her upon a temporary catafalque, one great stone that Dodir and several of the other Tragamors had moved beside the empty pool in the ruined Tower. I longed for music, but there was none. Most of the Gamesmen of Barish were there. Barish-Windlow, Hafnor, Wafnor, and Shattnir were away east, setting up the power transmission from the Bright Demesne. Trandilar was there. She wept. I kept my eves away from Dorn the Necromancer, knowing Peter was struggling in the same way. Dorn could Raise up the dead. But Mavin was not dead. And yet she was. For a thousand years dead.

  Beedie and Roges were there. When the ceremony was done, they bid me good-bye before setting out to return over the sea. “It may be we will never come to the chasm alive again,” Beedie said. “Never see the children again. If you fail in what you are doing here, then all will fail. I know that. Sometimes I wish we had not come. . . .”

  “Beed,” said Roges. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Well, and no, I don’t,” she confessed. “Mavin was my friend. She saved my life and the lives of many in the chasm. It was she brought Roges and me together. No. I would have come. But it is a sad thing, nonetheless.”

  I agreed with her it was a sad thing, then let them go, setting such spells of protection on them as I could, and thinking it was wise of them to get out of the city while they still could.

  Vitior Vulpas Queynt was there. When I had told him about the Oracle and its followers, about Ganver and the other Eesties, he had flushed with anger. “Evil,” he muttered at me. “What we did, what men did, was heedless and stupid, but what they do is purposefully evil.” At the ceremony he was grim-faced and said nothing.

  Chance was there, of course, close beside Peter, offering his shoulder and his strong arm. Mertyn and Himaggery were both good, strong men, but I loved Chance.

  When it was over, I stood looking around at the shattered stones of the floor and remembering the lamp. I had fallen over it in memory, kicking it into that corner. A large stone lay there. Finding me tugging at it, Dodir asked if he could help me, and when he moved it away the lamp was there, flattened but whole.

  “Ganver said the Tower was a gift from Lom which contained three treasures,” I told him. “The Bell, the book—by which he meant the music—and the lamp. Here is the lamp. Can it be repaired?”

  He looked at it doubtfully. I knew they had recruited smiths among the laborers and said something to that effect. Shaking his head over it, he took it away. When I went to see Mavin the next day, the lamp stood upon its pedestal, and I could not even see where it had been mended. It glowed dimly from a candle burning within it. I wondered how the lambent light that had come from it in times past might be restored.

  The metalworkers had set up their foundry just outside the Tower walls. There an artist had labored over the fragments of the Bell, piecing them together. Now it was complete, he told me, he was making a mold from it. Then he would smooth all the broken places in the mold itself so the Bell, when melted and recast, would be as perfect as it once had been.<
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  “You were lucky to find it all,” I murmured, lost in admiration for what would have seemed to me a hopeless task.

  “Not quite all of it,” he complained. “Here on the rim is a line of writing, or symbols, perhaps. There is a nick. One small piece we cannot find. Perhaps one symbol or letter upon it, and no way of knowing what it was.”

  I stared at the line of symbols, strangely evocative, as though I might once have known their meaning. As an Eesty I would have known what they meant, but my Talent for understanding speech did not extend to writing. “Perhaps the piece will turn up. The Tower floor isn’t completely cleared yet.”

  He nodded gravely, going on with his work. “We can’t wait,” he said. “We must try to cast it soon, while there is still enough life in us to do so.”

  And it was true. Life burned low in all of us. There were no smiles, no laughter. If it had not been for the turnips, we would have wept our way into silence. We were calm, too calm. Only the antics of the shadow-eaters kept us moving, irritated but alive.

  We had three laborious days after that during which no attacks came. On the fourth day came an Elator to tell us of an assault of the blind runners, those who had lived in the city before we came. We seven went to the outskirts and waited for them. They had befriended me when I was a child. I thought it might be possible to talk to them. Which it might have been, had they not come hooded and blind and unhearing, running on the road itself, naked as eggs. We did the only thing we could; both Night Will Come Turning and Silence and Shadow, the two spells reinforcing one another and both invoked on all of them, leaving them sleeping in heaps by the roadside.

  “How long?” I asked Murzy, for it had seemed the night spell had been done with a twist to put a very long sleep upon them.

  “Until someone wins this battle,” she said flatly. “Us or the shadow. Until Lom lives or dies. If Lom dies, they are better off asleep.”