The End of the Game (26 page)

“They wouldn’t ...” Mendost.

“It was long ago ...” Un-Mother.

“It was that same sixteen years,” I pointed out, “which you say is not long. No, no, Mendost. If I am very young, then sixteen years is a short time. If sixteen years is not a short time, then I am not young.”

“Why would they?” he blustered. “After all this time.”

I pretended to consider this. “It may have been concern for my safety which has held them until now. Once Stoneflight Demesne sold me to King Kelver, however, my safety was no longer a concern. Now the Dervishes will do as they like.” I said this idly, as though I didn’t care, staring out the window into the courtyard the while. The Dervishes would do exactly as they liked, of course, and ignoring Stoneflight entirely would probably be part of it. No matter. The two of them didn’t know that.

When I turned back to them, I wore the expression I believed Dervishes might wear. Remote and cold as ice. Whatever the reality, my pretense was good enough. They could not answer it. Could not speak to it. They had found guilt enough in themselves to tally over for a season or two, seeking where the danger to themselves might lie. They had not thought of that when they had cheated the Dervishes. They had not thought of that when they cheated me. Well, let them think of it now.

I had intended to let it go, coldly, as a Dervish might. The sight of them there, so avid, so intent upon their own needs, stirred me to a baffled fury. “Why?” I demanded of her. “Why didn’t you let them have me? Why didn’t you let me go among my own kind, where I would have been ... been cared about? You didn’t care about me, and they’d paid you.”

“Not enough,” she cried, shaking her hair into a circling cloud, moved by some wild imagining to become for an instant as mist-eyed and lovely as I had dreamed her as a child. “Oh, not enough. We had a dream crystal, Mendost and I. It showed us. There’s a thing the Dervishes can do. To be young again. New bodies. I wanted one.” And she reached to Mendost, clinging to him, so I saw in his face that mixed repulsion and lust toward her which I had seen so often in his face without understanding until that moment.

Mendost and his mother. Lovely Eller and her son. I had seen that balance changing, too, over the years as the dream crystal dwindled and the lust faded and the revulsion increased.

A dream crystal! Fools, oh, fools. Every simple Schoolgirl knew the dangers of that. Every pawn, every half-wit. What of themselves had they sold to buy a dream crystal? What of themselves had they sold to suck it together, like two avid children with a lolly? And such dreams! False, foolish, corrupt. Oh, gods, why had I let them come here at all?

“Dervishes can’t do that,” I said flatly, telling her what Cat had told me without caring whether they would understand it or not. “The Dervishes can’t do that. They can only prolong their own lives through such self-denial as you would not submit to for a moment, but that is all. The crystal was false. Most of them are false, I understand. Long ago there were true ones, but no more. You’ve sold your safety for a false, obscene dream. And now the dream is dead.”

So he sat looking at her with an expression I could not define. Was it pity mixed with horror? I think perhaps. And she at him, a kind of haggard terror. And both at both, hideous and hellish. I knew then that their crystal was gone, sucked to a shard, to nothingness, that the dream which had held them had faded.

“Michael,” I said, sickened, “show these people out.”

And that was the end of my tie to Stoneflight. The Demesne did not last long. Poremy and Flot came to Xammer a few days later, stopping to see me, telling me they were going to Dragon’s Fire. Evidently they had struck up a friendship with Joramal and had been won away to the banner of the King. They did not know we were not kin, and I did not tell them. They were not bad boys.

Mendost did what I assumed he would, Gamed so ardently on his own behalf that he died soon thereafter. His rages were already legendary, but his life was brief. I didn’t find out for some time what happened to Eller. Truth to tell, I did not ask.

After that one dramatic, self-indulgent scene, I went back to invisibilty. The gorgeous dress was hung away in dust sheets. From somewhere they found half a dozen simple gowns and suits for me. I went back to classes feeling like a large goose in gosling school. I knew—oh, I knew things they did not. The classes seemed not only irrelevant but childish. What did they have to do with the real world in which old gods walked and the shadow loomed? Only in this false little world of Xammer, this false little world of the Game ... Well. No matter.

I talked often with Silkhands. She knew something of the real world and she was only a few years older than I. If someone had reached her in time, she might have joined a seven, I think. Now her mind was full of other things. Coming as she did from a much frequented Demesne on a main road, she knew a lot of what was going on in the world. She whispered of the strange alliances that were rumored in the north, those even the sevens had worried over. “Huld the Demon,” she said, “and Prionde, King of the High Demesne! One would think Prionde would have learned from Bannerwell not to trust the Demon.” I told her I had heard of Prionde, and of his sister-wife, Valearn, the Ogress.

“Valearn!” she said. “Another strange alliance. Valearn is reputed to have gone north of Betand and joined there with Huldra, Huld’s own sister-wife. So the two men stand together at Hell’s Maw and the two women farther north under the protection of the Duke of Betand, so it is said!”

I did not know what to make of this. “I’m sorry, Silkhands. Should I know of this or be concerned?”

“Know of it? Not necessarily. Huldra has scarcely been heard of since her son, Mandor, was born. If you remember my words at all, Jinian, simply remember to give wide berth where any of these are: Huld or Huldra, Prionde or Valearn, or the Duke of Betand. Where they are, trouble and death are, also.” She shook her head, her face full of sad remembering. I mentally added Dedrina Dreadeye to the list and committed it to memory.

Silkhands, too, had suffered at the hands of those who should have been most dear. Brother, sister, one dead, the other lost, partly through the connivance of that same Huld. Sometimes she was very sad, and we sat together in the sun, commiserating. I think it helped us both. She told me of her friends, the Wizard Himaggery and the Shifter Peter, and all their adventures. It was then I learned that the lair of the Magicians was no more, that her friend Peter was responsible both for its destruction and for thwarting Huld’s plans for it. I marked her warnings in my mind, not really thinking I would need to pay attention to them. Dragon’s Fire Demesne was far east of Betand. It was not likely I would encounter the dangers she mentioned.

Time waddled on. So long as the weather remained unsettled we were in no hurry to depart. The old dams still had much to teach me, and I spent all the time with them I could. They had not yet decided whether to travel north with me when I went there, but all seemed agreed that I was to go for some reason or other. Not to marry King Kelver, but for some other thing. I remembered the calm gong of the Dervish’s voice, ringing in the forest. “Murzemire Hornloss, the Seer,” she had said. Murzy, who evidently saw more and further than I had ever given her credit for. She, too, spoke of my going north.

“There’s many a seven separates for years,” she said quite calmly, while leaving me in no doubt as to her affection. “Some meet only at long intervals. And there’s others tight together as flea on fustigar. No matter where you go, you’ll come to us or we to you. No matter where any of us be, you’d find us.” They did not seem worried by it, as though Murzy had some Seer’s vision that reassured them. Long ago I had given up asking. They would tell me when they felt it wise or appropriate and not until.

The season wore on to the time of the song competition at Xammer.

The song competition is a tradition in Xammer. There are contests at all the Houses, though Vorbold’s is probably the most prestigious. It goes on for ten days. Each of the first seven days there is a topic assigned, and all the songwriters must come up with something on that topic to be sung at banquet. During the last three days, the entrants sing their own selections. Students participate by choosing the topics or by submitting songs.

The final three days are most interesting—both musically and for the content of the lyrics—as the best songs are sung then, old or new, including some the musicians have written. Those who receive the prizes are those who please the audience most each night at banquet—and the judges, of course. Old Vorboldians, all of them, brought back through what they call the “old girls’ net”.

So, since it was a splendid affair, I chose to wear my fringed dress and was not out of place to do so. There were those present who wore ten different dresses, one each night of the gala, but they were the girls who were being approved by some Negotiator or Diplomat or even by the Gamesman who was seeking alliance himself. I remember Lunette of Pouws being very nervous at competition time. Her brother was trying to make an alliance with the Black Basilisks of Breem—though I understood that no Basilisks had been born in Breem for fifty years. It was mostly a Demesne of Elators, now, though there was a strong strain of Tragamorians running in the people there. Lunette seemed well content with the idea of alliance, so I did not speak against it. There was a hard-faced man representing Burmor of Breem who came to dinner each night and stared at her.

I had no such worries. Silkhands had told me we would leave for the north soon after the competition was over. There was nothing I could do about that, not at the moment, so I was extraordinarily relaxed and amused by the whole thing.

The final night came. The favorite singer, Rupert something or other, was to present something entirely new that no one had heard before. There were many giggles and little squeals from the younger girls, who talked of him as though he had been some major Gamesman rather than a mere pawn, however skilled. I was to be at Silkhands’ table.

See it, if you will. The great arched doorway is carved all about with leaves and fruit, two stories high, and the massive doors that swing in it are carved also in massive forms that shine like oil in the light of the chandeliers, crystal and silver, holding one thousand candles when they are filled. During the competition they are filled and every candle lighted. Great fat candles, too, to last out the evening. A long balcony runs around four sides of the hall, and on three sides of this are guest tables, laid in white cloths and silver, with crystal shining and more candles. Eight steps down from this to the floor, where the daises are raised up five steps again, each with its table. And between the tables the servants go, below the level of our eyes, so we do not see them.

The great doors open on the fourth side of the balcony, where no tables are. So the guests assemble and are shown to their tables on the balcony. Then the great bell rings, and a trumpet sounds, and a Herald shouts, “All present give ear, all present give ear.” Drums, more trumpets, and we come in, glittering like frangi-flies, all jewels and draperies, to descend the stairs to the floor, then up once more to the proper dais, where we sit on backless chairs in order that the view of us not be impeded.

I had done it hundreds of times.

That night I did it again, remembering my train and draperies, which weren’t normal attire with me, but it was the tenth night I’d worn the dress and I was getting used to it. The guests were assembled at their tables. Ordinarily, I paid very little attention to them. Their voices were only a low, masculine rumble under our usual sounds. Mostly I was thinking about the dinner because I was very hungry.

He was sitting directly across from the entrance, only two tables away from Silkhands.

I stopped at the top of the stairs, all my breath gone in one explosion of disbelief, and was pushed from behind by Lunette, who said, “Will you move it, Jinian? I’m standing on your train!” So I moved, in shock, not breathing, somehow getting around the dais and into my chair. He had not seen me. He was looking at Silkhands, who was now coming into the room, lovely as a flower. It was all there in his face: fondness, affection, lust. I wanted to cry. I had known him at once. The hair was the same, and the eyes, though he was taller now, taller than I, and with broad shoulders and narrow hips.

“Whom are you staring at?” whispered Lunette. “Your mouth is wide open.”

I snapped it shut. “The young Gamesman at the middle table,” I said. “The ruddy-haired one. Ah, I think I knew him back in Stoneflight.”

“You think you did?”

“Ah, we were children. He’s grown.”

“Well, do you or don’t you?”

“I don’t know. Lunette, would you go over there during the interval? Find out who he is?”

“What’ll you give?”

“Friendship, Lunette.”

“I’ve already got that.” She giggled. “What else?”

I didn’t have much. “My scent bottle shaped like a frog that King Kelver sent me,” I said at last. I loved that bottle, but the other was more important.

Lunette looked at me with her weighing expression. “That’s all right, Jinian. If it’s that important, I’ll do it for nothing.”

After the interval, Lunette returned. “His name is Peter,” she told me. “A friend of Silkhands. I think he comes from the Bright Demesne.”

So this was Peter, of whom Silkhands had spoken so much. So this was Peter, whom I had given a nutpie in Schooltown, years ago. So this was Peter, whom I had dreamed over since, lusted over, longed over, loved with a passion beyond my years and an intensity that had not waned. I tried to think. The Bright Demesne was a Wizard Demesne! Was it possible we shared ... “Wizard?” I asked. She shook her head.

“I think not, Jinian. Something else. He’s wearing no insignia at all, but he’s unmistakably Gamesman. Besides, he talks like a Gamesmaster. He told me all about Ephemera.”

“You already know about Ephemera. We all do.”

“Well, he didn’t seem to know that.”

Then there was a rather strange occurrence.

The favorite singer sang, and was loudly applauded. To which he responded by singing something new, very strange, and seeming to direct it at Silkhands and at her friend. “Healer,” he sang. “Heal the wind. Gamesman, find the wind.” It was a strange song, with much longing in it, chill as a wind itself and personal as a blow. I saw their faces, Silkhands’ and Peter’s. Theirs looked as mine must often have looked in the Forest of Chimmerdong; confused by a strange voice that seemed to summon them to a task ill understood at best, with unknown limits. So they looked, baffled yet intrigued. When the song ended, Peter looked across at Silkhands and she at him, then his eyes fell on me. Oh, I knew those eyes. I had known those eyes for three years. No matter how he would change, ever, I would know those eyes. And as he looked at me, his face showed curiosity, a touch of bewilderment, as though he knew me, recognized me, but could not remember when or where.