The End of the Game (63 page)

“Ah, well, we thought perhaps that was the case,” said Cat Candleshy. “Some time ago Murzy suspected it might be true. And Bartelmy said something of the sort, also. Your confirmation of it now makes us glad we left Xammer when we did.” Until that moment I had forgotten that Murzemire Hornloss was a Seer.

“We’ll go on north to her, boy. You get on your way. Don’t try that bell sound again unless you must. It will only work when it comes as a surprise. It could not have been the sound of the Daylight Bell alone which kept the shadow at bay, but then you probably know that.”

They nodded at me then and went on toward the north, across the Shadowmarches, as though they were out for an afternoon stroll. “So that’s a seven,” I said. There had been no opportunity for me to meet them before Jinian and I had set out two years before, but I had heard much about them since, of course. “So that’s a seven.”

“Only part of one,” murmured the Flitchhawk. “They are more impressive when they are complete.

I don’t know that “impressive” was quite the word I would have used. “Indomitable,” perhaps. I did not worry about them further; they needed none of my concern. Instead, I faced south and asked, “Are you strong enough to go on? We can get to the cavern before dark. I will watch if you will carry. Or I’ll carry and you can watch.”

The Flitchhawk said something about meeting the terms of the boon, which meant it had to carry. I watched, therefore, from above him, or under him, or off to one side or the other. Several times I saw roiling air away in the distance, but nothing approached us. Evidently the surprise of the Bell sound had been enough for a temporary surcease.

We came to the cavern before dusk, slipping in along the fold of hills to find it, spotting it at last by the firelight gleam in the cavern’s mouth. I started to lose my shape and knew that one of the Immutables must be present, so I turned and landed some distance away, coming the remaining distance on my own two feet, naked as a fish.

The governor of the Immutables, Riddle, was there with Mertvn and Quench and a smallish crowd of men and women who could have been techs or pawns or Immutables. When they saw the Flitchhawk slantingdown out of the evening sky, there was a great hoorah, and Mertyn came running to the rock shelf, where he landed just about the time I arrived, puffing. He hugged me, and I him, and someone fetched me some clothing. Then we stood merely looking at one another until an outcry aroused our attention.

The Flitchhawk had set down its burdens, knocked several dozen of the workmen down with its wings, then taken off again. I saw it circling high above me, moving off to the south while the workmen exclaimed and shouted. It was going toward Chimmerdong, I supposed. Jinian had said it preferred to live in Chimmerdong. I waved, not knowing whether it saw the gesture or not. Then they were all around me, pulling me along toward the tents and barracks they had set up just inside the cavern, invisible from above.

“We’ve been waiting for you, boy,” said Quench. “Waiting for those crystals, rather. Didn’t want to start until we had them. Important things, those.”

“Very,” affirmed Riddle, punching me lightly on one arm. “Good to see you, Peter. We didn’t really expect you just yet, but we’re glad to have you here. A matter has come up. . . .”

“It’s the resurrection machine,” said Mertyn. “It’s in good repair, and they can start using it anytime, but the best they can do is bring back twenty-five or thirty a day. At that rate, it will take twelve years to get all the frozen Gamesmen awake, and yet the crystals you gave us urge haste.”

“It’s more than mere urging, Mertyn,” I said, trying not to sound too panicky about it. “We don’t have twelve years. It is questionable if we have even a season left.” And I told them about the deadly yellow crystals and the tragedy of the Maze while they exclaimed and sighed and shook their heads. “We’ll have to do something faster,” I concluded.

“It seems to me that something was mentioned about using Demons? Demons and Healers, wasn’t that what you did on the Wastes of Bleer? I couldn’t quite remember.” This was Mertyn.

Of course they could use Demons and Healers. Silkhands the Healer and Didir the Demon had wakened Thandbar. After which Didir and Dealpas—also a Healer—had wakened others. “Didir should have remembered,” I said half-angrily. “She did it, and it wasn’t that long ago.”

“I’m sure she would have remembered, Peter, but she’s down at the High Demesne. It’s something any Demon and any Healer could do, do you think?” This was Riddle, sounding very uncomfortable about something.

“I should think so.”

“Then I think our strategy is obvious,” said Quench. “Sort out the bodies in there, use the machine to wake the Healers and Demons first —Gamelords, what a job it will be to sort out both bodies and blues and be sure they match—then get teams of them resurrecting the others.”

“lI would have thought Didir would have been here to help you. She and Dealpas.” The last time I had seen her, she had been at the Bright Demesne, with Barish-Windlow.

They looked at one another, shifting from foot to foot very uncomfortably. It was Mertyn who sighed at last and invited me into his tent. “Come in, my boy. I’m afraid we have bad news.”

He hummed and hawed until I was half-crazy with it. I don’t know what it was about Mertyn that made him so irritating; perhaps because he was so cautious not to use Beguilement (which was the Talent of Rulers) on me that he went the other way. He could not even be normally sympathetic without worrying whether he was being manipulative.” After a time I grew weary of it and said, “Mertyn, quit being diplomatic and tell me. Something’s happened to Mavin?”

“No. No, not Mavin.”

“Himaggery then. He’s dead.”

“Gamelords, boy! What would make you think that?”

“You would! You’re dodging all over the place, not telling me what’s happened. What has happened?”

“It’s the Bright Demesne. It seems to be under siege.”

I sagged. Bad enough, but not as bad as I’d feared. “How did you find out? Who’s doing it? Is it a Game?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. We sent an Elator with a message for Himaggery, and he came back saying he couldn’t deliver it. Game has been declared, and the place is shut off. The two main players seem to be a Witch named Huldra and a Basilisk named Dedrina Dreadeye. Ah. I see you know them.”

“I do, yes. Yes, Mertyn. Indeed I do.” As I did. Huldra was, I hoped, the last of her family. I had done away with all the others, one way or another. As for Dedrina Dreadeye, she was Jinian’s enemy, which made her mine also. “Who’s in the Bright Demesne?”

“Himaggery. Barish. I think all the Gamesmen of Barish as well, though some of them could have left before the siege was laid. Oh, that girl, the one Jinian sent from a place called Fangel. The Elator did manage a few shouted messages before the besiegers came too close.”

“Sylbie? And the baby?”

Mertyn blushed. “According to the Elator who saw her on the walls with the child. Do I understand the baby is yours?”

“It is, and honorably got, Mertyn, so don’t make faces. Jinian fully understands the situation. So who else is there? How about Mavin?”

“Mavin had gone before the siege, I think. I still haven’t heard from Mavin. She left another of those enigmatic clues of hers, and there’s been no time to figure it out. Something about the best apples to bake upon the hearth are those from one’s own orchard. She’s really quite maddening at times.”

“No reason given for the siege?”

“We have no idea why the siege, but the Gamesmen have turned up in overwhelming numbers and with an unfair advantage as well. They’re using shadows. Which is why my Elator couldn’t get in and none of the people in the Demesne can get out.”

I smiled. The three who were watching me looked at one another, wondering if I’d lost my mind. “My expression isn’t one of joy,” I said. “It’s just that you seem at a loss for an explanation, and I can give you one. Huldra and Dedrina were sent south to dose us all with poisonous purple crystals. You, Mertyn, and Quench and Riddle. Everyone at the Bright Demesne. However, that could be done easily enough through spies and Elators without need for a siege. So, it’s obvious the siege is for some other reason, probably to do precisely what it is doing, which is to keep Himaggery and Barish bottled up. To keep them from coming here.” I laughed. “Huldra was instructed to come here and destroy everything, but she doesn’t know about you, Riddle. With you here, no Seer can peer into the cavern. So, they don’t know the resurrection is already beginning. Make sure they don’t find out!”

The Immutable frowned. It was his Talent to form a barrier against the use of any other Talent. Barish and Queynt were said to have bred his people long ago in the early years of the millennium as a kind of defense against the unlimited Talents of the Gamesmen. Now he objected, “If Demons and Healers are to be used to raise the frozen Gamesmen, we Immutables must withdraw. Else their Talents will not work.”

“Withdraw, Riddle, but only so far as you must, and let a good rank of you camp between the cavern and Lake Yost, where the Bright Demesne is. Let Huldra’s Seers struggle to get a vision through your people. Let them try to get an Elator through. They won’t be able to penetrate the barrier you’ll make. They’ll continue to try, however, so be on your guard. Sooner or later they’ll send a force to try and destroy the place.”

“Why does this Witch want the resurrection stopped?” Mertyn was puzzled by this, as he should have been.

I had thought about this for many hours during the flight from the Maze. “She cares nothing for the resurrection, thalan. But
the one who gives her orders,
that one
cares that the resurrection should not take place. Huldra thinks she is doing this for the giants in the northlands, giants who are dead, though Huldra probably doesn’t know it. Dead or not, I do not think it was ever the giants who decided upon this. They were huge and powerful, but they were not subtle. They were cruel but not amused at their cruelty. No, they were guided by another mind, a mind more subtle and more depraved, though they never knew it.”

I told them about the Oracle.

There were expressions of consternation, vows of retaliation, loud expostulations from Quench, mutterings from Riddle. When all their exclamations and posturing were done, however, the truth was still there before us. Lom was dying, and avenging ourselves against the Oracle had to take second place to that. When that understanding finally came, also came silence.

“You must get the frozen Gamesmen moving,” I said gently. “The Demons and Healers to raise the others. To raise Tragamors to move the stones of the Ancient Roads and set them in place again. To raise Sorcerers to hold power for them. Sentinels to keep watch against the shadows. Armigers and Elators to carry word across the breadth of Lom. Even the Necromancers, Seers, and the Gamesmen of mixed Talents. All who can must go south, to the site of the Old South Road City,” and I told them where it could be located, using Stoneflight Demesne as a guide. “The city must be raised up again. The Tower must be rebuilt. It
must
be done as soon as possible, and even that may be too late.

“All beneath the mountain were chosen because they were
good,
” I said. “By which is meant, I suppose, that they were unselfish persons of perception. And the lords of fate know we need those qualities now.”

“I have not heard that oath,” said Mertyn. “What lords are those?”

I laughed, perhaps a little shrilly, for I was very tired. “The lords of fate? Those we pray are larger than Lom. If nothing is larger than Lom, then whom shall we swear by if Lom dies?” They smiled at this, as I had intended, though not much.

“That is all we have to do, then?” asked Riddle.

Mertyn answered, shaking his head. “Yes, that’s all. To undo every wrong man has done. Rebuild every road. Replant every forest. Clean every river. Send the message that is in these crystals to every being who walks, swims, flies upon the world. . . .”

“Stretch the crystals as far as they will go,” I advised them. “Have Healers try laving their hands upon other creatures. The Eesties convey messages in this way, and Healers may be able to do it also.’

I sighed. The sleep that my pombi self had had the night before seemed very long ago. And I was worried about Jinian. I seemed to see her face before me, that troubled, slightly concentrated expression she so often wore. “Danger,” her vision face said. “Danger, Peter.” I took a handful of the blue crystals from the basket and secreted them in a pocket. Something told me I would need them.

“Well, then, we’ll be at it,” said Riddle. “And what about you, boy?” “Why,” I said, “I have no
_c
hoice, really. Someone must carry this word to the Bright Demesne.”

5
JINIAN’S STORY: THE FIRST LESSON

Time in the gray spaces between memories was not an easy thing to judge. I might have been there for a season, or perhaps for a few breaths. However long it may have been, there seemed to be a good amount of thinking time. About the time I had decided to count my pulse as a way of measuring—realizing with a panicky sense of loss that the Eesty shape had no pulse I could detect—Ganver came back, sliding through the gray walls of the place like a fish into a shallow.

“Is Peter out?” I asked.

“Out of the Maze, yes. It is evening in the world. He will fly in the morning, south to the lands of your people.”

I must have shown some emotion at that, though how it could be perceived in that Eesty shape I don’t know.

“He is in your bao?” Ganver asked. “Your wholeness, your ubiety?” Wholeness and whereness. I had not thought of it in those terms, but it was true.

“Yes,” I said. “Peter is my . . .”

“Bao-lus,” said Ganver, giving me the right Eesty word for it. “I, too, have experienced this. Once. Among our kind, it takes five to become bao-lus. And only from the perfection of bao-lus does a new form come. You have no child as yet? No. There is an oath among the sevens. I had forgotten. Well, we five had a child. Among our people we say `a following of perfection.’ “