I strapped Bartelmy's gift scabbard to my thigh, high beneath my skirts, where it could be reached through a slit pocket, then stood for a long time looking at the weapon it would hold. It was an ugly thing still, breathing with a palpable menace, a hard, horrid chill. But... but I had labored hard for the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne, risked my life for it, been dangled and threatened, all to have the tool to save Peter's life and my own should it be needed. Would it be needed? I had only the Oracle's word, and the Oracle never told all the truth.
At last I slipped it into the scabbard, recoiling as the pommel touched me. It lay angrily against my skin, an intimate hostility. After a few hours, I grew accustomed to the feeling. It was never less than discomfort.
And in the brightness of a morning Silkhands and I got into the light carriage that was to carry us north, waved farewell to Queen Vorbold (on whose face I read definite indications of relief), and were trotted out onto the road north.
Peter later wrote an account of that time. I have read it, being alternately amazed and amused. I do not remember saying some of the words he attributes to me. And though in the main it is an accurate enough account, from my point of view, things were not quite as Peter recorded them.
Since this trip was to offer an opportunity for Peter to save my life, it was obvious that I had to be careless enough to put my life at risk. I knew from Silkhands' chatter that Peter was being harassed by some enemy, possibly that same Huld who had caused him so much trouble in the past. Both Silkhands and I knew that someone out in the wide world very much wanted me dead and gone. Despite this, neither of us spoke to Queen Vorbold about it, and we set out in a light carriage with only two guardsmen, both of them old, ready for retirement, and half-blind.
This was not unlike Silkhands. Healers tend to be a bit casual about security. I, however, looked the guards over cynically when we left, hoping they would not be victims in what was likely to occur.
As it happened, when the Ghoul came out of the woods, with a great troupe of staggering dead, the guards could make only a token resistance; both were injured immediately, one may have been killed. Silkhands was a Healer, not a fighter, and despite all my plots and plans, I was so surprised and horrified that I had all I could do to keep my hand away from the Dagger. Since the Ghoul made no immediate move to harm us, however, I concentrated on what was happening; counted the liches; and memorized the Ghoul's face in the event I should meet him again.
Just as I was about to decide that using the Dagger would be prudent inasmuch as this wasn't the occasion the Oracle had in mind, I heard Peter screaming - his voice always cracked when he was excited; it went on doing it until he was well into his twenties - screaming, `Ghoul's Ghast Nine.' And then he swooped up the
two of us, Silkhands and me, and carried us off to a treetop.
Unfortunately, he had used the last of his power in that swoop, while the Ghoul had plenty in reserve. We clung and kicked and cursed a bit, and finally Peter got a grip on one of the tiny Gamesmen he carried in his pocket - Buinel the Sentinel, it was - who stirred up a fire which burned up the Ghoul and the liches and very near barbecued us in the process. I didn't, quite frankly, think it was terribly good planning on Peter's part. Still, he had saved my life as the Oracle had suggested. Since he had saved Silkhands, too, however, it did not produce the desired effect.
We went on. Some of his enemies caught up with him in Three Knob, and I was able to suggest a stratagem that didn't require his using the Gamesmen of Barish. I thought he might act more prudently and consistently if he were not used to calling on them all the time. Loving Peter was sometimes like loving a committee. He often went into these odd, silent conferences with himself, them, leaving one very much on the outside. It was obvious he would not be able to love anyone by himself as long as he carried the Gamesmen in his pocket and in his head. Finding a solution to their presence would have to come soon. It could not come soon enough, so far as I was concerned.
King Kelver turned out to be a strikingly handsome man, younger than I had expected. The first moment he set eyes upon us, I knew he preferred Silkhands to me. Part of that was my own doing. I had not wanted him to like me much. Still, it was a bit crushing to find one had succeeded so well. His feelings seemed to be returned by Silkhands. She looked at him in a way she had never looked at Peter.
I considered them both, Silkhands and the King, and twiddled my thumbs thinking of Murzy's warning. `Never for anything small, chile,' she used to say. So far as I was concerned, it was not for anything small. I found the sixteen ingredients for the love potion with some trouble, found privacy with which to mix them with a little more trouble, and then - then threw them out, threw myself down on the bed, and cried for an hour or so. It was no good. Remembering the centipig, that horrible, witless lusting that was compelled rather than felt, I could not do it to either of them. Things would just have to take their course. After only a few days, I knew no potion was necessary. She was quite besotted with him. Seeing them together, I wondered how often potions were used between two who might have loved anyhow. Well, no matter. King Kelver would obviously not object to breaking the contract.
And once Silkhands was disposed of in such a friendly fashion, I allowed another occasion on which Peter could save my life. I had to appear to do a very foolish thing, of course, and had it not been for my special Talent, it would have been a foolish thing in truth. I was shut up in a housenut that was being eaten out by groles. This time was actually much less dangerous than the previous time, since groles are beasts and quite responsive to being talked to. I kept them well away from me until the last minute, though when Peter arrived they were chewing away at my perch with every appearance of eating me imminently. He rescued me very nicely, held me as though I were precious to him, realizing for the first time that I was female.
Had it not been for Peter's old friend Chance, grumphing away in the background, my oath of celibacy might have been forgotten right then. From that point on, Peter began to have feelings for me. They were troubled feelings, yes. Uncertain feelings. Still, I thought in time he would come to love me a good deal. The whole matter might have been less complicated if there had not been that oath which still had two years to run.
We found the solution to the Gamesmen of Barish upon the heights of Bleer. Though he fought against it, Peter did the right thing. He and Silkhands raised them up, restoring them to themselves, and I was not even jealous. Silkhands saved his life in the process, so we all seemed even up with nothing owing to anyone.
A nice conclusion to the tale, his and mine. A good place to leave it, is it not? All of us properly paired off, loving couples or with some hope of being, having achieved great things. Many of the old stories end in such a way. `And then they lived happy all their lives.'
And so with us, except that our lives were to be short ones lasting at most only a few hours from that time. As it was, we few stood alone upon the Wastes of Bleer waiting for too short a time to pass before we died. It was then and there I began this tale.
From what I have said, you know we did not die. The way of our salvation was this.
We stood together then upon the Wastes of Bleer, the great convoluted forms of the Wind's Bones all around us, eleven Gamesmen plus Barish-Windlow, and five of us who had come there, seventeen in all, while against us marched an army of bones stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. I had reconciled to dying, almost, and the others as well. We would die, but we would fight. We would die, but we would die honorably - and I considered the distinction with some wry, mordant cheer. A false distinction, but better than none under the circumstances. I had cried and scribbled one night away, sorry I could not have forgotten the oath for that last night. It seemed such a futile thing if I were to die, never to have loved him fully. But then I thought if I were to die, better to die true to myself than false. And who knows, making love under such conditions might not have been very wonderful the first time. I understand it often isn't. Margaret
explained that to me. So, I stood there facing the marching horde, the Dagger in my hand, hoping I would have a chance of letting one of the human movers of that horde feel the edge of it, grieving a little.
Then there was no more time to grieve over lost loving, for the army of bones was upon us. Peter had Shifted into a grole, ready to eat as many of the enemy as he could. The rest of us were ready to fight, knowing it would be futile against that array, about to be overrun.
And then... in the middle of that great tumult I felt Peter trying to raise up the Wind's Bones, those great buried hulks that lay all about us, trying to link with the Gamesmen as he had so often in the past, trying to use their strength to bring the great old bones of the world to our defense. They were too monstrous, too deep, too heavy, too far buried. He could not. They quivered only slightly, shifting reluctantly in their age-old bed. And yet, they had been beasty things after all, no matter how huge. Things of the earth, I thought half-hysterically as the marching skeletons came in their white rattling thunder toward us. Buried things, old things...
The words rang in my head like a bell. `Earthways are mine, and things old and buried. If you need help with such things, call on me.' The boon I had been promised by the gobblemole.
There was no time to do what I did! Time slowed around me as I ducked into a hidden place between the stones, set out the articles, drew the design, said the words of summoning and the boon requested, all in one great gust of breath as though I would not have a moment in which to finish. Never before, and not often since, have I felt the power of word, gesture, and intent unified into an irresistible summons as it was in that moment. I did not see old gobblemole, but I could feel him, feel him in the way the great bones heaved up all at once, higher and higher, monsters of ancient times trampling up into the daylight with the mold still falling from them. Bones to fight bones. Dead things to fight dead things. The dead things of this world to fight the dead things that had come from another world.
Gobblemole held them in himself, of course, just as forest held every tree and silver-bell, just as flitchhawk held every darter's wing, just as d'bor wife held every minnow. Old gods, holding all their kind in their minds, marvelous and mighty. And I heard them speaking as if they were beasts alive once more, heard their subterranean fury swell from the clinging soil to burst with shattering ferocity upon the skeletons of men: `Adown the false, foul, outlander bones. Adown the brittle, breaking, wildly shaking skeletons from the afars. Adown the interloper, stranger, alien horde. Adown them all, all, into dust, sand, soil, stone...'
And in the end, as you know, they were indeed adown, into dust upon the wind, blots upon the stone, while the great old beasts trampled still, only falling to the stones once more when the long day was done. When it was over, we felt like rags, sodden and limp, the sweat drying clammy on us, unable to raise a finger. It was timely to see Peter's folk come down at us out of the sky, bearing little help for what we had been through but much comfort and food and cheer now that it was over.
In the quiet that came at last, I set my feet upon the ground to feel the tingle there where the Old Road still ran.
They shut up the old gods, Bartelmy the Dervish had said, shut them up. Wounded them.
`I would not allow myself to be shut up,' I had said to Cat once, knowing nothing about it at all. It had seemed a simple thing.
It was not that simple, neither the shutting up nor the turning loose. Certainly the towering anger that came in answer to my summons was not a simple thing. There was wrath beneath my feet, vengefulness, a great force that might be loosed against all things not of this world. As I was not. As Peter was not. Though it came to my call, that was no guarantee it hated me less than it had hated the bones. No. It was not a simple thing to shut up an old god. So were my thoughts, momentarily.
There was no time to ruminate upon it. I walked among the Gamesmen of Barish, looking them over as others were doing, wondering to find myself here among legends and almost-gods. I heard them talk with one another, with Mavin and Himaggery, heard them plan for a new age, a better time, plotting to raise up a hundred thousand great Gamesmen to achieve their purposes. There was Tamor, Armiger; Dealpas the Healer. There was Thandbar, the first Shifter, forebear of Peter and his mother. There was Trandilar, great Queen, mistress of Beguilement, cosseting Peter in a tone that turned me red and eager, not with envy but with some hot feeling it was not easy to put down. Sorah was there, the great Seer of ancient times, pretending to have a vision for him.
Then I saw her face change and the vision became a real one. She was saying. `Shadowmaster. Holder of the key. Storm Grower. The Wizard holds the book, the light, the bell
And I did not consider it. I laughed, with Peter, both of us red-faced and a little embarrassed, and we forgot it. The terror was over. All either of us could think of was the fermenting, bubbling joy of being alive, of having a future. Nothing else seemed important. I knew nothing then about the shadowmaster except what Bartelmy had told me. I did not care to hear more about Storm Grower. I had only seen one edge of the bell - had I really seen it at all? - and knew nothing of the book or light. I was only a young girl. I was alive, who had thought she would be dead. I was in love.
I did not give much thought to Bartelmy's words, or those of the Oracle who tells only part of the truth - not then. Peter had invited me to go with him, northward still, to see the world we had not seen before.
There were things... things my head wanted. And I'll confess it, even then a faint fatal curiosity was beginning to brew.
But Peter had asked me to go with him northward.
And for that little time, that was enough.
The End
Sheri Tepper - Jinian 01 - Jinian Footseer Page 22