The End of the Game (49 page)

“They’re going. Queynt and Chance are taking them, with those two from oversea and their monster in the basket.”

“But you ...”

“But I wasn’t about to lose you, stupid girl. I love you, Jinian Footseer. After we found you were gone, I sat there for hours trying to convince myself it was all for the best. You’re not easy to get along with, you know ...”

“I’m not easy! I’m not!”

“That’s what I said, you’re not. Neither am I, but we both knew that to start with. It doesn’t matter, though. I love you, and that’s all. I’ll just have to make the best of it.”

“But. . . but. ...”

“I know. It would have been easier to just let you go. I know why you went. At least partly. It was my fault. Some of it. But what decided me was thinking about Mavin and Himaggery, you know. They love each other and always have. The first time I ever heard my mother say his name, I knew she loved him. The first time I ever saw him look at her, I knew he loved her. She risked her life to save him, you know. Risked mine, too, come to that, though I was a bit too undeveloped to know anything about it. But he never really said the right things to her. And she never said the right things to him. And so they spent most of their lives apart and the time they spent together they spent fighting with each other. So, I said no. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t just let you go, and when I found you I wouldn’t sit around saying nothing. Even if I said all the wrong things and had to take them back.”

“Sylbie,” I said stuttering. “The baby.”

“Oh, well, yes. There is that. Stupid girl left the wagon and followed me. I didn’t catch her at it until it was too late to send her back. Then the first time I Shifted she went all hysterical.”

“But she ... it’s your baby.”

“Yes. It’s my baby. Which was begot, you might say, in pursuance of duty. Now I’m not going to do what Mavin would, which is not talk about it. And I’m not going to do what Himaggery would, which is talk about something else. You’ve got to understand this …

“It was in Betand. They called it “the City That Fears the Unborn”. Some Necromancer had come there, got drunk, and summoned up a ghost. Instead of being a ghost of something dead, though, it was the ghost of someone unborn. So, every visitor to the city had to beget if at all possible in order to get the unborn born as soon as possible. You understand?”

“I don’t understand what an unborn could do to send a whole city so silly.”

“Well, Jinny, you’re going to have to take my word for it. The howling alone would have driven you crazy. It was a real haunting, no mistake about it. Half the people in the town had lost their minds. Well, so there I was, riding up to Betand, all innocence, trying to find out something about where Mavin was, and the next thing I knew I was in this room with Sylbie, having been instructed to beget. She was crying and carrying on, and I was scared to death. See, I’m being honest. If you don’t like that, tough.

“It was more Trandilar who did it than me. I didn’t know anything about sex at all, Jinian. Not a shred. I knew it would be awful, so I summoned up Trandilar, and she actually did all the lovemaking and so forth. Of course Sylbie fell for that. Who wouldn’t? I would have myself. Trandilar is—well, you know what Trandilar is. So, we begot a baby, which was what we were supposed to do. As it happens, it’s likely the very baby who was haunting Betand. At least, so Dorn said when we put the haunting down. He’s turned out to be a very nice baby, but I don’t love Sylbie, I never did. It would be very easy to love the baby, and that would be pleasant, but not if it means giving up Jinian. If we can work out something including Jinian and the baby, very good. What I got to thinking was, suppose the baby turns out Shifter? Sylbie will fall apart.”

“She really had hysterics when you Shifted?”

“Full-fledged, whooping and screaming hysterics. All I did was a snakey little thing to get to the top of a tree, and it set her off.”

I had seen some of Peter’s snakey little things and was not entirely unsympathetic with Sylbie. “Where is she now?”

“She’s up this trail, a league or so. In a cave which I dug for her—took pombi shape to do that, and she didn’t like that, either—until I could get back. She’s got food and water.”

I sighed, sagging back into his arms. It would be nice just to stay here, close held. Spend.the night, perhaps, cuddled in furry arms in the hollow of a tree. Too much had happened. Too much was going on.

Too much was going on. Exactly. I drew him down beside me and told him the tale.

“Giants? I never dreamed there were real giants. And Proom?” he whispered when I had done. “Really, Proom? He’s like some kind of fairy godmother following my family around. Mavin, then me, then you. Gods, those amethyst crystals. We’ve got to warn them. They have no idea.”

“None of them have any inkling at all. Not Himaggery, nor Mavin, nor any of the rest of them. But there’s more to it than that.”

I told him then what I suspected. What I’d been worrying over in my head ever since we saw the little crystal mine outside Fangel and talked to old Buttufor.

“I’m afraid it’s true, Peter. Everything the giants said only confirmed it. Up until then, I thought they might be responsible for those yellow crystals, but they’re not. They were as frightened by them as I am.”

His face was as drawn and hopeless as I’m sure mine had been many times in recent days. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know. It may be too late to do anything, but we have to try. That was the lesson I learned in Chimmerdong, Peter. No matter how hopeless it looks, you still have to try. I got a few more of the blue crystals from Proom. You’ll have to take them south with you. Warn Himaggery and Mavin and all the rest. Then suggest to them in the strongest possible way that they stop arguing and get the hundred thousand out of the cavern. And when each one wakes, he or she must have a sliver of this crystal in his mouth. If the ones I have here aren’t enough, then more must be found in Beedie’s land. Perhaps Mavin can get them, and perhaps some of her kindred would help.”

“You’re going with me.”

“It would slow you down. I hope you can take some shape that flies, for that’s what’s needed now. You’ve got to go south. Gamelords, how I prayed for a Shifter outside that cavern.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“You have to leave me. The warning must be brought to our people, Peter. As soon as possible, delaying for nothing at all. I’ll meet you when you return. Ah. Where? Listen, if you follow this trail down to the northwest, past where the village of Bleem was, you’ll come to a trail leading north. The trail forks. The right-hand one goes to the giants, and the left-hand one goes up over the mountain by a huge red pillar of stone. I’ll meet you there, by the red stone, with or without Sylbie. I’ll go get her. Maybe I can find someone to take care of her and the baby, bring them south to Mavin. If not, I’ll keep them with me, but they should be taken farther from Fangel. I don’t like the idea of the baby that close to Valearn.”

He wasn’t listening. But then, he hadn’t been reared on nursery stories of Valearn. “I don’t want to leave you! I’ll carry you with me.”

“I don’t want you to leave me. But you can’t carry me and Sylbie and the baby without wasting time, and we can’t just leave them here alone.” Briefly I let myself melt against him, let all the turbulent feelings I had quelled for season after season burgeon between us until a new kind of storm began to batter at me, melting me. “I don’t want you to leave me. And whichever of us gets to the pillar first is to wait for the other one—forever, if need be. I don’t want you to leave me, but I have to ask you to.”

“Jinian, I swear by all the gods and most of the new ones, if we get out of this ...”

“Yes. Now go.” I didn’t watch him, not out of any sense of dismay at the changes, but simply because I was crying and didn’t want him to see. I heard odd sounds, a strangled cursing, and then the irregular beat of wings. When I turned at last it was to see a blackwinged form staggering across the sky. Evidently Peter had not recently practiced wings. The thing looked more like a dragon than a bird, and it was not built for speed. Even as I watched, however, the black silhouette elongated, became more slender, more streamlined. It plunged out of sight against the southern clouds.

So much for that. I dried my face, noticing in passing that all my hermitish notions seemed to have left me. So much for the lonely life, then. If there were any future, I would spend it with Peter.

If there were any.

I plodded a league away, seeking the cave, calling softly when I should have been near it, and only after wreathing the area with Inward Is Quiet, a pacifying spell when done in the passive mode, to be sure no one lurked there with evil intent. No response. I walked another league, repeating the call. Nothing.

Now seriously worried, I returned the way I had come, this time casting back and forth either side of the trail. Halfway to the place I’d met Peter, I found it, a cave well dug in sandy soil, half-hidden behind a fallen tree. And tracks around it. Boots. More than one pair. Two parallel lines, where someone’s feet had been dragged. The soil still moist. It had not happened long before. A baby nappy drying on a branch. It, too, still damp. Half-hidden under a stone, the baby trousers Roges had sewn, their bright checks showing up against the dun earth.

I didn’t need window magic to peer into the past and learn what had happened. Huldra had been watching, through a Seer, perhaps. Through a sending, perhaps.

Or perhaps Valearn herself had hired some Rancelman to help her find the food she yearned for. It did not matter which. More than one person had come here to drag Sylbie and the baby away. Up the hill a way were the tracks of horses, not on the trail. That’s why I hadn’t seen them as I searched. They did not join the trail to Fangel for another league beyond.

Weariness left me. I went at speed through the waning day, forgetting the ache in my legs. At sunset the trail left the forest, sloped downward along the meadow toward the walls of Fangel. When dark came, the city would lie in a cataleptic sleep; watchers would watch, but they would not be the people of Fangel. Huldra? Valearn? Perhaps the Duke of Betand?

There was no spell I could cast that Huldra might not be able to counter. Worse, if I used any spell at all, anyone competent in the wize-arts could smell it out. My use of the arts would say “Jinian” as loudly as the Fangel curfew gong. The only advantage I had was that they all thought I was dead.

I sat, arms wrapped around knees. Shortly it would be night. If Sylbie was to be saved, it could not be put off until the morrow. On the morrow there might be no Sylbie, no child. The walls of Fangel loomed, the gates still open but shortly to close. I dared not use a spell, not the least one in my art, for Huldra was there and watching, there and waiting. Huldra might have learned much from the return of her sending. Full of Storm Grower’s blood and d’bor wife’s water, it might have had much to tell her.

So. Get in. Without a spell. Without being seen.

There were wains moving in and out of the north gate when I arrived, hay wains, others that had been loaded with meat and vegetables for the markets and were now returning empty. My hair was thrust up under a cap, my face dirtied, my clothes stained. I walked beside a horse, talking to it, it obligingly hiding me from the wagoner who drove, my face further hidden behind a sheaf of fodder I had picked up along the way. The team hid me not only from the driver but from the guards as well, troubled enough by this great load of hay arriving so late.

“Business?”

“Oh, come down from it, Gorbel. You know my business. I’ve got a load of hay for the residence stables, and I’m late enough without all this.”

“You’re almost too late. Word runs there’s a hunt tonight. Get in and get out.”

“I’d ‘a been in and out except for a broken wheel. Don’t shut the gate ‘til I’m through. Won’t be long.” When the wain turned into a side street, out of sight of the gate, I slipped away into an alley. The late afternoon light made cold blocks of shadow in the streets. People were leaving the park, the alleys. Doors were shutting. A food cart still plied along one alley; I hid my face behind a meat pie, working my way toward the center of the town.

From there one could see in all directions down radiating avenues, almost to the wall. I ensconced myself in a deep doorway, black with shadow. After a time I heard the distant creaking of wheels as the last wagon went out through the gate.

The gate closed with a metallic, clamoring echo.

Nearby, at the residence, the great gong rang its tremorous demand upon hearing, shattering into silence.

The streets were empty. On the western horizon the sun sank in a swollen ball, leaving a stripe of red like a bloody sword upon the horizon. Dusk came, then the rushing dark, then the first light of the full moon setting alternating blocks of gray luminescence and ebon shadow, long diagonal lines of black slanting down the sides of walls and into the street to make hard-edged crevasses of dark. I walked from light to dark to light again, no less conscious of being watched in the darkness than I was in the light. And yet, it was almost an impersonal watching. A machine kind of watching.

High on the walls the twined letters of the Dream Merchant’s monogram glittered and twinkled, little gems gleaming with a light of their own. It was a machine watching! Up there on the walls were eyes.

But who observed what the watchers saw? Was there some deep den in this place where human observers crouched, seeing through these glittering eyes? I thought not, sensed not. The city of Fangel watched for itself, but what it watched for or why it cared, I did not know. There was undoubtedly some action that would bring out the denizens of this place.

Briefly I wondered what would happen if one rang the great gong now, in the middle of the night. The idea sent horrid premonitory shivers down my spine, a kind of visionary grue, as though a door had opened into some unpleasant future.

I shut down the thought, crept around a corner, paused within sight of the residence, its serpentine gates now opened wide.