The End of the Game (48 page)

“Aaaangh,” came a whining rumble from the other room. “Aaangh. Give me one. I’m hungry.”

“Get it yourself. I’m tired of giving you. Get it yourself.” The sound of lightning. A frying noise. Complaint, monstrous hairy fingers groping at the window.

There’s only two here.” Voice like thunder. “Where’s the other one? The fun one? The one that was supposed to be here. You there, minions. You from Morp. Provender!” Chewing, masticating noises. At the far side of the low room, a scurrying as some large furry creatures moved in and out of the light, moving poles, tying bodies to them. They did not come near me. I made not a sound. This had an air of calculation about it.

The giants would not eat me until they had wrung the last shred of agony and apprehension from me. I played dead. Let them think I had fainted, or slept.

Then an anguished howl, the howl of a tornado, of a hurricane. “Ouuuuugh, pain. Brother. Ouuuuugh, pain. I have got a pain in my gut.” I caught my breath. Across the dim room the furry shapes stopped what they were doing, froze in place.

The howl was immobilizing, terrifying. It rang through the cavern, blasting at the stones. Dust fell.

Gravel rolled.

Oh, she should have a bellyache indeed, should Storm Grower. She had Huldra’s sending in her belly, dissolved out of the crystal that had held it, a voracious sending ready to eat its way out of its fleshy prison. It should find enough in Storm Grower to fill it. I wondered briefly what Huldra would think when it returned. This made me want to giggle hysterically, and it was all I could do to bite down hard on a finger and keep silent.

“Hush,” breathed Dream Miner. “You are disturbing me. I want to ... want to ... sleep. Peace. Contentment. How sweet. I did not know how sweet...” She had the amethyst crystal. But he had the yellow one. He desired sleep. Peace. Contentment. I hoped it would last for some time. This would solve the problem of being eaten, but I was still firmly lashed to the pole.

“Ooooogh, pain.” A sizzle of lightning ricocheted from the floor into the room where I lay. In the flash I saw one side of the room disappear in a sapphire glow. In the after-image I thought I saw a small form leaping there. Perhaps more than one.

Wind began to blow. Wet wind, clammy with fetid smells in it. The pain the giantess felt was being translated into storm. “Ouuuugh, pain. Dream Miner. Wake. How can you sleep? Wake. I’m dying.” There was disbelief in that voice, horror and anguish. “I’m dying and you sleep!”

“Lolly lolly alum baff?” sang a quiet voice. “Is the Wizard girl in here?”

“Here!” I cried half-hysterically. “Who’s there?”

“Proom,” answered the small voice, approaching.

“Come to help you if you need help in return for the help you gave our people in the town.” He was not alone. Others of the small people had joined him; still others were gathered at the far wall in an excited horde, busy with something.

“What did you do to the giants?” He seemed to know I had done it, though that was far from obvious, given my condition.

“I fed them something bad for them. She may die of it, maybe not. He may die of it, maybe not. They are very big and what I gave them was quite small.”

“Then we had best hurry.” He knelt at my side, busy with teeth and knife. I felt the rope loosen, then give, as I struggled to sit up while he worked on the ropes around my thighs. When he had done, I stood up, wavering on my feet, almost falling.

“We will lead you out!”

“In a moment. First. ... first I should be sure they do not recover.” I stumbled to the pack where it lay against the wall, falling over bodies of men and beasts, to stand over it panting. What could I use? No missile I could control would be large enough. There were two or three very complicated spells that might be useful. End and Beginning. That would take all day, and in the other room Storm Grower was summoning up such a storm as might kill us all. Lightning flashed around us, in and out of the room. No time for that.

No, no, not that. No window magic usable in such circumstances. Gamelords, what? Rain splashed wildly around us. Water.

“Proom, is there a river near? Any water? Anywhere near?”

“Under us, yes. lean hear it.”

Of course. There had to be a river there to carry away the filth of the giants, else they would have long since drowned in their own excretions. That was it.

I burrowed into the pack, laying out the few things needful. I did the gestures twice and didn’t get them right either time. My shoulders kept going into spasms. Oh, gods and Gamelords, but I prayed the one I was about to call upon would remember. A boon a d’bor wife had offered me. The d’bor wife, rather. One of the old gods, perhaps. At least some thought so. A boon. Call on me, she had said. Call on me. I bowed my head, thought of water for a few moments, got myself together, and then tried it again.

“All things of the sea are yours, great and small, of river and lake, of pond and stream. I call upon you, d’bor wife, for the boon you promised me.” Nothing. Only the raging of Storm Grower from the outer cavern, the stertorous breathing of Dream Miner. Nothing.

And then a rivulet running beside my feet, corning from a gap in the wall. Rock breaking free to make it larger. A moist echoing space full of the sound of waters. Salt. The smell of tidal flats. The cry of gulls and the crash of waves in my ears. And with all this the harsh music of a well-remembered voice.

“What would you have, Jinian Footseer?”

“I would have this cavern flooded, d’bor wife. Filled from top to bottom so that those creatures within may be drowned.”

“So be it, Jinian. I will fulfill the boon I promised you.” The Shadowperson had been standing beside me, watching me, seemingly unafraid. Well, this was Proom, Mavin’s friend. Proom, Peter’s guide. He had seen strange and mighty things before, this one.

“Out,” I said to him. “We’ve got to get out, and all your people as well.”

“No,” he cried, anguished. “There are things here we must take.”

Things he must take? What? There were no victims left. He pointed to the far wall, where his people were dashing about, calling to one another.

“Too late!” I pointed at the roof. A stream had broken through and was flooding down onto the sapphire heap where the Shadowpeople were at work. In the intermittent flashes, I saw what it was. A pile of blue crystals, a hill of them, millions. A shout of dismay was all I had time for, echoed by the little people. Then we were all running up the twisty stone corridors toward the light. Behind us the storm raged and the water rose.

When we came into the light, it was into the heart of the storm. Hail fell around us in great, white boulders, and the wind raged against the night, throwing huge trees across the sky like arrows. We crouched in the entrance to the cavern, me, Proom, a dozen of his people bent protectively over their sacks of crystals, all staring with disbelief into the night.

Storm Grower did not die easily. For hours the storm raged. Toward morning it began to wane.

Then, as we watched in fear, a fog spewed from the hill above us and took the form of the sending; screaming with laughter, it dwindled into the east.

“Is she drowned?” asked Proom. “Is the great giant Deviless drowned for all?”

“I think so. Drowned or eaten. One or both.”

“Then perhaps it is a good trade. Long and long ago did great Ganver send me seeking these things. Blue, he said, as a summer sky. A great thing of Lom, of the land our parent, a great thing misused and betrayed and hidden away.

“’Find them, Proom,” he told me. “Go into the world and find them where they have hidden that we may undo the wrong which had been done.” So I sought, long and long but fruitlessly, and returned to my people to find they had been abducted by Blourbast the Ghoul. Then was the song of Mavin made. She was a young girl then. And now you come. And you are the friend of Peter, Mavin’s son.”

I apologized to him, wearily, sincerely. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see the crystals were there until after I’d called for the boon. I didn’t know you were looking for them.”

“Who would have thought to look in the lair of the giants? Who would have thought the evil ones would have brought them there?” He sighed, calling to his people. The storm had almost abated. “I must take these to Ganver. Farewell, Jinian, Peter’s friend.”

“A moment, Proom,” I begged him. “Will you leave a few of the crystals with me?” He assented, pouring a small heap of them into my hands. Then he and his people ran off into the morning, leaping over the fallen trees, flitting like birds into the shelter of the forests—that of it which was still standing. There were a thousand questions I could have asked. A thousand answers he could have given me. I could talk to them. Mavin couldn’t. Queynt couldn’t. But I could. A thousand questions, Jinian, I told myself. At least that. But those I should have asked them of were gone.

CHAPTER NINE

 I had no need to choose which way to go. The Duke’s party had gone back to Fangel, obedient to the instructions of the giants. Those instructions, once set in motion, would not have been stopped by the giants’ deaths. So, one must go to Fangel once more, brave that strange city once more, see what could be done to stop the amethyst crystals going south.

I wished for some way of getting there more quickly. If I had only been a Shifter. Or if Peter were with me.

“If wishes were geese, we would all have featherbeds,” I told myself sternly. “Come, girl, what is the matter with you?” The matter was I was exhausted, hungry, battered, worn. I knew the feeling well. I had felt it before in Chimmerdong and was too experienced in it to give it houseroom. I will eat as I go, I told myself. I will rest when I must. My body did not believe these promises, but the rest of me calmed down somewhat. I took time to fish out the Dagger of Daggerhawk and slit a seam from the pocket with it, returning it to a more sensible location, cursing all the leagues I had not needed the thing and could have had it in my hand, only to have needed it the one time it could not be reached.

I climbed upward from the entrance to the cavern, over tortuous drifts of fallen timber, through slides of mud and rock, around piles of hail so high they looked like snowdrifts, wondering how long I had spent in that underground warren. How far ahead of me were the Duke and Valearn and Huldra? Huldra?

Huldra. A shiver down the spine. A hard clutch at the stomach, pain behind the throat. It was Huldra who had caught me in the cavern. Huldra who had been ready for me, expecting me. How?

There had been a Seer, of course. I vaguely remembered seeing a Seer. A Seer in the employ of the giants.

Somewhere down in that underground warren right now there was a Seer, perhaps more than one, alive or dead, who had seen Jinian’s part in the battle on the Wastes of Bleer. And likely that same Seer had seen Jinian following the Duke of Betand into the cavern of the giants?

Likely, yes. And once seen, the vision had been used to trap me. When the Oracle had taken them aside, he had told Huldra of it, told her to make herself ready. Those spells had been rehearsed beforetime. The ingredients had been laid ready to make the paralyzing smoke. Certain creatures had been posted in readiness to bind me.

I dimly remembered Dedrina demanding to have me for her own. The Oracle had said no. No. The giants had wanted me for another purpose. To feel fear, panic, pain, humiliation. Was it indeed the giants who wanted me for that? Or had they been led to that thought by the Oracle itself?

I reflected on this. How they must have hated mankind, mankind who had created them so monstrously, no less monstrously than the pig I had met in Chimmerdong. How they must have fumed and plotted through the centuries; how they must have welcomed the power that came to them, slowly, the hateful destruction moving out from them like a cancer. What did they desire in the end? That all men should be enslaved? That, at least. That all men be made as horrified, as panic-stricken, as humiliated as they themselves had once been? Oh, yes. They would have left me tied to a pole a long time. Long enough to wring every drop of agonized apprehension from me.

But, as it happened, they had left me a little too long.

Huldra believed I was dead. Still, Huldra was more than a Witch.

And I had seen Huldra’s sending go screaming back to her, out of that dripping cavern. What might Huldra learn from that?

“I hope it drops a washtub full of blood on her,” I muttered, too tired to ill wish more usefully. “She’ll be there in Fangel. Likely she is able to unspell any spell I set. Unless I can come up with something she’d have no knowledge of at all. Oh, Jinian, why did you decide to be a Wize-ard?” There was no answer to this. The Jinian who might have answered had crawled between two sheltering trees and had fallen asleep.

I woke some hours later, feeling more hopeful, able to go on. I went past the place Bleem had been.

There was nothing left of it but trash, and the remnants were awash in shadow. Where did it come from? Where had it come from so recently? Where had it lain, waiting? At least those poor unfortunates had had a chance to escape. I wondered if they had made it to safety. If any place could be called safe in these days. The farther I went, the fewer trees were fallen, the fewer landslides in the path. Storm Grower had not reached far with her destruction; she had probably been unconscious much of the time. I tried to feel some pity, could not.

The way became easier, drier. I passed a scattering of krylobos feathers.

“Back and forth,” I groaned aloud. “Back and forth. Like some backlewheep, bat, bat, bat.”

“Jinian?” The voice was disbelieving.

“Who?” I demanded, putting my back to a tree. “Who is it?”

“Jinian?” No mistaking the joy in it this time. “It’s Peter!” Something large and furry slid down the tree, encompassed me in an enormous embrace, half smothered me before beginning to Shift into a Peter shape. “I thought you were lost forever.” He kissed me; I so surprised I could do nothing about it. He shook me. I did nothing about that, either.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be on your way south, taking the blue crystals to Mavin!”