The End of the Game (54 page)

I needed the hut to keep the shadow out as I had needed a house long ago in Chimmerdong. Shadow had lain deep on Chimmerdong, and I’d learned of its evil ways at first hand, getting myself shadow bit in the process. It lay thickly now in these northlands, flowing from somewhere in an unending flood.

Even if there had been no shadow, a hut would have been a comfortable thing to have. Though Storm Grower was dead, it might rain. There were pombis rambling about in the wood. I might have to wait a very long time. Forever, if necessary, I think we had said. So.

I would wait. And watch.

Each day was spent wandering, looking, finding different lookouts from which one might spy upon the world. Each vantage point was more depressing than the last, for there were great swatches of forest dying, strange stinking smokes rising from far valleys. One day I thought of going back to the cavern of the giants but did not. Funk, I think. I couldn’t face it. My imagination told me too vividly what I would find there.

Having rejected that idea, I decided to visit the ridge above the Great Maze. Since it was a high point, I could see a long way from there. It occurred to me I might see Peter returning.

It wasn’t far, actually. Less than a half day’s scramble.

It was saddening to look down into the empty pervasion, and the hill wasn’t as lofty as I remembered it.

Still, it gave a good view out over the Great Maze and the lands sloping down to the sea. I scouted around in the pervasion, robbing a few huts of their stale bread it wasn’t bad dipped in tea—and a pot to boil water in. Somewhere between Storm Grower and Fangel, I’d lost mine.

I built a small fire at the foot of one of the stone pillars, brewed some tea, and set myself to watch the southern sky.

Birds. Clouds. Nice white ones, for a change. Sitting there with the fragrant breeze in my face, it was hard to believe that the world was dying beneath me. Grasses nodded; small things crept about making nests. It didn’t feel dead or dying, and yet I knew it was. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted Peter, and the less likely it seemed he was going to come. The sky was empty.

I looked down for a while, to rest my eyes.

I saw it coming out of the Great Maze.

It came from the Maze itself. There was a movement at the edge of the Maze, a puzzling kind of change. I stared at it. The hedge of the Maze was no different.

Nothing was entering or leaving it. And yet...

Something had changed. There was a new configuration of light. Something shifted. For a time I gazed at it, uncertain, and then it moved. The shadow. Flooding out of the Maze and flowing downward, along the trail.

An endless gray tide, covering the world.

From the Maze? Why from the Maze?

I spent a few minutes in futile cursing, then headed back for my camp. I’d have to find out as much as possible, before Peter came. He might drop directly into it. Be frozen, as Himaggery had been before Bartelmy had rescued him. Oh, by the Hundred Rotten Devils, I sighed, why now?

Finding out anything would be like playing with an avalanche, rather. Toying with an angry dragon. I had talked long with Mavin. I knew what the shadow could do. Still, one had to know, as Queynt would say. One had to know.

Back at the hut I considered the matter. What was there around me that still retained some integrity? The forest was smashed, riven, and storm-wrecked. The very mountains were torn. About the only thing around that looked whole was the lake we had built the hut beside, a charming little oval of shallow water, set in reeds, decked with lilies, full of fish and small plopping things. Though the forested banks were reduced to rubbish and the lake itself muddied from landslides upstream, still it had a certain immaculate charm left about it.

The hut had one window, which I used for the window magic. As in Chimmerdong, I hung my blanket before it to serve as a curtain. Then I called up the lake.

I don’t know quite what I expected. Some bubbly shape, perhaps, with fish for eyes. Some reedy thing with lilies in its hair. What came was a rounded silver dart, not unfishlike in shape, curved on every side and reflecting the interior of the hut like a mirror so that I saw a hundred Jinians in its sides. It did not bubble; it did not splash. It spoke as running water speaks, a quiet burble, a ruminative sibilance. “What would you, Jinian Star-eye?” it asked me as I was shutting the curtain.

“The giants are dead,” I told it. “I expect you already knew that.”

“We did. Yes.” Expressionless. That fact meant little to it, I thought.

It made me dizzy to look at it. I stared into the fire, instead. It kept shifting, never alike for two instants. “I have seen the shadow flowing from the Maze. I thought it might come from there for some reason.”

“You thought your being here might evoke it? That your summons might interest it?” It still seemed very little concerned. Instead it was detached, remote. “No. It does not concern itself with you now, Jinian Star-eye. It grows as the algae grows when lakes and rivers have died. It grows without thought, without care, and will die in its time without grief. When everything dies, so then will the shadow die as well.”

“I am told,” I said carefully, “that the shadow can seek a certain person.”

“It can be sent to do so,” sighed the lake. “Of itself, it does not seek. It grows in the Maze and flows from there. Whenever the destruction is remembered, more shadow flows ....”

“Destruction?”

“Of the Daylight Bell.” I thought about that. At the moment it didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t pursue it. “Then the only reason it’s flowing out of the Maze now is that the Maze is full of it? No other reason?”

“No other reason. We are too near, too small, to concern those who sometimes send it.”

“Chimmerdong concerned it.”

“Chimmerdong was mighty, once. Boughbound was mighty, once. And the Glistening Sea and the Southern Sea and the River Ramberlon, which you call Stonybrook. If we live, call us up again, Jinian Footseer, and we will tell you the names of all the mighty who once gloried in the world.”

“If we live. If the shadow does not catch me.”

“You know,” it whispered to me. “You know. They may send it after you, human-girl, but they have not done so. Yet.” It left me then. I had not had the foresight to realize the hut would be very wet when it left. That night I slept beneath the stars, nervously.” Peter returned in the morning. He woke me where I slept, rolled in my cloak.

“There was a flood in your hut?” he asked in a despondent voice. “I thought maybe you’d drowned.”

“Peter, what’s the matter?” He hugged me sadly, almost absentmindedly. “Oh, Jinian, from worse to worse yet. Himaggery and Barish were arguing when we left there two years ago. While we’ve been away it went from argument to open animosity, and from that to a split at the Bright Demesne. Barish is for raising all the hundred thousand at once to make what he calls ‘massive changes’, not that he’s raised even one of them yet. Himaggery wants them raised a few at a time to make what he calls, “balanced programs’. Mavin got disgusted with them both and left. No one knows where she is. Mertyn went back to Schooltown.” He seemed about to weep.

“Shh, shh,” I hushed him. “Bad enough, my love. But I know you. I know my sly, snakey Peter. What did you get done?”

“I talked to Barish and demanded that the old Windlow part of him listen to me. He heard the warning. I said it over and over until he really seemed to have heard it. Then I put a blue crystal in his tea.”

“I thought you would.” I wanted him to know I did not disapprove. Himaggery and Barish were stubborn, pombi-proud idiots. Heaven save me from male Wizeards who want to play politics. “And then?”

“Then I told Himaggery he owed it to me as his son to listen to me. Which he agreed to. I warned him. Then I put a blue crystal in his wine.”

“Ah.”

“Then I left. I made a stop in Schooltown. Mertyn did believe me and he will send word to Mavin—somewhere, somehow, if he ever figures out where she is and though no one knows how long it will be before she gets the message, if she gets it at all. The two of us together went to see Riddle and Quench in the land of the Immutables. I gave crystals to each of them. I was sure the Immutables would be immune, just as they are to Talent, but they weren’t. None of them doubted me.”

I cursed. “Doesn’t it prove what I said, Peter? Only three disciplined forces in the world. The Immutables; the Dervishes; the sevens.”

“Well, we’ve got three alerted. A Dervish arrived about the time I left Schooltown. Don’t ask me how she got there that fast, because I flew the whole way. She said her name was Cernaby and to tell you your message had gone to the sevens.” He sighed, stretched out beside me, and pulled half my blanket over him. I didn’t even worry about his closeness. Oath or no oath. It just wasn’t that important anymore.

“What did you do with the other crystals? You had several dozens of them?”

“Gave them to Riddle and Quench and Mertyn. One for Mavin, when they find her. Six to be sent by trusted messenger to the others of your seven in Xammer—if they are still there ...”

This astonished me. I had not thought of it myself, but Peter had. He continually surprised me by being more thoughtful and intelligent than I expected him to be. He didn’t notice my surprise but went on.

“The others they will use as they see fit. I told them what you said about the hundred thousand good Gamesmen who are still frozen under the mountain. When I left them, Quench was talking with Cernaby about starting the resurrection, Barish or no Barish. Quench has the resurrection machine, you know. It’s his people who fixed it, and they were the ones who were going to do the work anyhow, if Barish ever got around to it. The problem is, of course, that Quench hasn’t enough of the crystals to be sure all of the resurrectees are given them, and you said that was important.”

“I think it’s important. Why bring them back at all if not to help? Otherwise, they only return to die with the rest of us. I would have thought Barish would have started bringing them back to life by now, Himaggery or no Himaggery.”

He turned toward me, laying an arm across me, tugging me close. “He’d rather argue than do. I think the mixture of Windlow into him has immobilized him. He still remembers what he planned to do once, but with Windlow inside his head he sees all the flaws in his original plan. I felt sorry for him.” He breathed very deeply in my ear. I lay very quietly, not discouraging him. If something was going to happen between us, I was not going to talk about my oath. What did happen between us was a gentle snore. So much for breaking my oath to make love beside the limpid waters. I laughed at myself and fell asleep.

When he wakened, I told him what I had learned about the shadow. Peter had heard Mavin’s story of the shadow. “It lives in the Great Maze?”

“So the lake creature said. It lives in the Great Maze, among the memories of the world.” I did not realize what I had said until I had said it. Cernaby had told me that.

“Among the memories of the world? Jinian. We store our memories in our minds.”

“In our brains,” I corrected him. “The mind is something else. It, too, lives in the brain, but it is something else. So I was told long ago by a Healer who saved my life. Peter, if the shadow lives in the brain of Lom, of the world, then is the shadow part of this world, or is it something else? Something from outside? As we were from outside? As mankind was from outside? Did we really bring some plague with us? Queynt talked with Eesties who alleged so. Were they right?”

“We could go in the Maze and find out,” he offered.

I laughed, then told him only a little about my short journey through a shallow edge of the Maze. He gave me disbelieving looks. “Wasn’t there a guide?”

“The Oracle. The Oracle who almost got me killed at Daggerhawk. The Oracle who trapped me and gave me to the giants. That Oracle?”

“We could tie it up. You could put distraints on it.”

“We could tie it up. I don’t think that would work, but we could try. Distraints, however? I don’t think so, Peter. I think anything I know, the Oracle knows something stronger. It’s a kind of evil Devil. A kind of dancing mischief maker. All full of—puffed-up anger and pride and envy. Some kind of trouble-god. And there isn’t only one of it. I thought I was dreaming in the cavern, but the more I think about it, the more sure I become that it was all true. I saw many of them in there. Oracles and Oracles. One, perhaps, as the leader, but followers without number. And oh, Peter, but I am afraid of them.”

He was listening to me, concentrated upon me, looking deep into my eyes. “You know what you’re implying, Jinian. You don’t say it, but you must know it.”

“That they’re the ones who hid the blue crystals. The ones who took them all instead of seeing they were distributed all around the world. Yes, I’m sure they did it. The Oracles.” It was out. Said. It rang true. Who else would have assembled them in the cavern of the giants? Who else would have taken them? Who else would have displayed such warped hatred for mankind? Oracles. Who never told the whole truth. “Oracles The very father and mother of liars,” I said. “Not trustworthy as guides, Peter. Truly not.”

“I can see you thinking, Jinian Footseer. You’re thinking about going into that Maze, guide or no guide. No matter what it’s like.”

I couldn’t deny it. I’d been thinking about it for days.

How to get in. How to find my way in. How to test whether my art worked there, and if so, how. How to use it, then. How to find the place the shadow lived. If Lom was dying, wasn’t it possible the shadow was killing it, no matter what the lake had told me? Oh, I thought about it. At various times I had thought about a whole seven going in. Or maybe a group of Dervishes.

Each time, something within me said, No. Not great armies, just one or two people. That’s all.

“Yes,” I admitted. “It seems someone will have to. Everything that can be done on the outside is being done, except one thing.”

“And that is?”

“Going to Beedie’s land and getting the crystals that are there. Mercald-Mirtylon said there were many. They only brought out a few. Since I made that mistake at the cavern, calling up the boon too quickly, the ones in Beedie’s chasm may be the only ones left. I was depending on Mavin to do that.”