King's Blood Four

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Once out of the ruin and on the plain below them, I put my hands to my mouth to make that echoing ghost call with which we boys had frightened each other in the attics of Mertyn's House. As I approached the tumulus the Herald rose above it to stand high upon the air. He called, "Who comes?" but I did not answer. I knew what he saw; black cloak, skull face, a Necromancer. I spread the cloak in a batwinged salute and called in the deepest voice I could make.

  "One comes, Herald, bringing a message from a

  Wizard to one known as Silkhands, the Healer... "

  There was a little fall of rubble as the Priestess and the

  Healer climbed onto the piled stone beneath him. I kept eyes unfocused, unseeing of that face, but still I could feel the pull of her eyes. Priests have that quality, and

  Kings, and Princes-by some called "follow-me, " and by others "beguilement. " Dazzle had more of it than any I had seen, so I did not look her in the face. She called.

  "Come, Necromancer, closer that we may hear this message you bring in comfort... "

  "Nay, Godspeaker. Let her whom I have named come with me to hear the words of Himaggery. " The

  Healer struggled down the pile toward me. When she was close, I whispered, "You are to come with me,

  Healer, to do a thing the Wizard desires. " She followed me as I turned away, but the Priestess was not of a mind to let us go.

  "Oh, come up to me, Necromancer, that I may judge whether this is a true message... " Her voice was sweet, sweet as honey, a charm and an enchantment.

  Almost I turned before I thought. The three of them had no power of far-seeing among them, but the disguise would not stand close inspection, as Chance had well known. I would have to try the trick I had planned.

  I turned again toward her where she stood above me on the stones.

  "My Master, who is your Master also, has warned me that you are not always quick to do his will. Therefore, he has suggested I take the time, if you are troublesome, to show you your dead... " I gestured high, letting the sleeve fall away from my pale arm as I pointed at the far slit window behind them. Luck was with me. As they turned, the breeze caught my shirt and moved it as though something living or undead moved among the stones. Once again I gave the ghost call. The Priestess shuddered. I could see it from where I stood and knew then that she was one of those with reason to fear her dead. I led Silkhands away. From behind came a frantic call.

  "The shade you have raised remains, Necromancer.

  Will you not remove it?"

  "The shade remains only for a time, Godspeaker. Go to your rest. Come morrow it will be gone. " As it would be. I had no intention of letting them discover the trick.

  The Healer followed me, mute, until we drew near the river. I gestured her ahead to the place where Yarrel and Chance waited, a dark blot upon the earth between them. She ran toward them. I tried to say something to her, command her, but my body had gone dead, as though all the energy which had forced me to the ruin and into the masquerade had drained away leaving me empty. I felt horror, breathlessness, an aching void, then fell, hearing as I did so the Healer's voice crying,

  "She is dead, dead. "

  The Wizard Himaggery

  I woke with the Healer's hands on my chest, my heart beating as though within them. Some mysterious message seemed to move between my eyes and hers, shadowed against the dawn sky. She said, "Well, this one lives, and he is no Necromancer. Nor, I'll warrant, was it any Wizard's message which sent you to me. Why did you bring me to her?" She gestured with her chin to the place Tossa lay, tight wrapped in her own cloak, a package, nothing more. "I could not have healed her even had she been alive when I came. She is an

  Immutable, not open to healing. "

  I struggled away from her hands. "I thought, if we brought her outside their land... "

  "No, no, " she said impatiently, with a gesture of tired exasperation which I was to see often. "No. It is something they carry in them, as we carry our talents in us.

  Not all of them have it, but this one was armored against any such as I. "

  "You could tell? Even with her dead?"

  "Newly dead. If I had had great strength, and if she had not been what she was-well, it might have been done. But, she was what she was. And you are what you are, which is not a Necromancer from Himaggery's

  Demesne. "

  Chance stepped forward to offer her a cup of tea, his old head cocked to one side like that of a disheveled bird, eyes curious as a crow's. He made explanation and apology. I felt no pride at all in the trick I'd managed, but the Healer seemed slightly amused by it, in a weary way. I would have been amused, perhaps, if it had worked. As it was, I felt only empty.

  "What happened to me?" I asked.

  "It was as though you had been the girl herself, " the

  Healer answered. "Arrow shot, heart wounded. But, there was no mark on you. Were you close kin? No, of course not. Stupid of me. She was an Immutable. What was she to you?"

  I didn't answer for I didn't know. The moment passed. What had Tossa been to me? Chance murmured something by way of identification of her, a guide, a mere acquaintance, daughter of the governor of the

  Immutables (at which Silkhands drew breath). What had she been to me? I was terrified, for I could remember what she had been but felt nothing at all, nothing. The

  Healer caught my look and laid her hands upon me.

  Then it was all back, the agony of loss, the terror of death.

  "Will you bear it?" she asked. "Or, shall I heal it?"

  In that time it seemed an ultimate horror that I could be healed of the pain while Tossa lay unmourned. I said,

  "Let me bear it-if I can. " I was not certain I could.

  They carried her body back to the edge of the trees, wrapped well against birds and beasts, and buried it under a cairn, leaving a message there to her father for those who would come searching. Chance trembled at the thought of that man's anger following us; the

  Immutables were said to be terrible in wrath". We went off to the ruins as I wept and ached and drew breaths like knives into me. She had been a girl, only a girl. She had been. She was not. I could not understand a world in which this could be true and the pain of it so real. I did not know her at all; I was her only mourner. This was more horrible than her death.

  The Healer called out as we approached the ruins.

  While the others circled it, I went through the tumbled stones to retrieve my shirt. The trickery had been laid bare, but it was a good shirt and I had no intention of leaving it there. The route I had taken on the night before eluded me; I came at the slit windows from a different direction. There was a sharp, premonitory creak, then the earth opened beneath me to dump me unceremoniously into a dusty pit. My head hit the floor with a thump. When I stood up, dazed, it was to find myself in a kind of cellar or lower room which smelled of dust and rats. The walls were lined with slivered remnants of shelves and rotten books. Something small turned under my foot.

  I picked it up, saw another, then another, stooped to gather them up. They were tiny-no longer than my littlest finger-game pieces carved from bone or wood, delicate as lace, unharmed by time. Pieces of a rotten game board lay beneath them, and a tiny book. I gathered it up as well, even as I heard Chance calling from above.

  I wondered afterward why I had moved so quickly to hide them and put them away in my belt pouch. It would have been more natural to. call out, to show them as a prize. Later I thought it was because of the way we had lived in the School House. There had never been any privacy, anything of one's own. There were few secrets, virtually no private belongings. Secret things were wonderful things, and these were truly marvelous, so I gathered them as a squirrel does nuts, hiding them as quickly. They were not paying any attention to me at any rate, for the Healer had attracted it all. She had found all her belongings gone, Borold and Dazzle gone, and was in full lament.

  "My clothes, " she wailed. "My boots. My box of herbs. Everything. Why would they do that?"


  "Probably because they thought they were following you, " said Yarrel, sensibly. "To that Wizard Peter pretended the message came from... "

  "Oh, by the ice and the wind and the seven hells, " she said. "They would be just such fools as to do that. "

  Then she fell silent and we didn't find out for some time what that was all about. There was nothing for us to do but travel together, for the Bright Demesne, of the

  Wizard Himaggery lay south, the way we were going.

  We slept before starting out, I crying myself to sleep, hurting because of Tossa, saying to myself, "This is what love is. " It was not love, not at all, but I did not know that then. When we woke it was with a high riding moon to light our way south.

  During the way south I learned something more of women. Yarrel taught me. He did not see the Healer as anything mysterious or strange. He saw her as a woman and treated her, so far as I could see, as he had treated

  Tossa, with a certain teasing respect which had much laughter in it. The first village we came to he insisted we buy her a pagne to wear, she having nothing with her but the one dress and light robe, both becoming raggedy from the road. Once the people saw a Healer was come, however, nothing would do but that they stoke the oven in the market place and bring the sick to lie about it.

  She, all glittering-eyed and distant, walked among them touching this one and that until, when she was finished, most had risen on their feet and the oven was cooled no warmer than my hand from her draw of power from it.

  They paid her well, and she insisted on repaying us for the pagne, though I argued it was small pay for healing me.

  "I have your company, " she said simply, for once not going on like a coven of crows gabbing all at once. She was tired. I could see it in her face. "It is good to have company on the road, even pawns and boys, if you take no offense at that. "

  We told her we were not offended by truth. Later, when we stopped for the night, she wrapped herself in the bright pagne and combed out her hair. I thought once again of birds, but this time of the clamorous, unpredictable parrots with their sudden laughter and wise eyes. Her hair was the color of silver wood ash, and her eyes were green as leaves in her pale, oval face.

  Chance was once more gloating over his charts, and she leaned on his shoulder to trace our way south among the hills. "Dazzle has gone to the Bright Demesne, " she said. "She and Borold, thinking Himaggery sent for me.

  Oh, she will be a jealous witch, Dazzle, thinking anyone has sent for me. " She sounded very tired. I thought of

  Dazzle's beauty and shivered. How could one such as that be jealous of anyone? Silkhands went on. "She believes she loves him, you see, the Wizard. But

  Himaggery is proof against her, and it drives her to excess. Ah, well, we will get there soon after her and no doubt bring her away again. She will be very angry. "

  Yarrel asked, "Why do you care? Are you her leman?"

  "Half sister, rather. Our father was the same, but she was born to another mother than Borold's and mine. I am oldest, by six years. "

  "Why were you sent away?"

  "Because Dazzle stirs trouble as a cook stirs soup.

  You called her Godspeaker, Priestess, but she is no

  Priestess. She is a witch, as uncontrollable as storm. "

  "Where is this Bright Demesne?" asked Chance. "I can't find it here what should be so sizeable. "

  She helped him search, but there was no sign of it upon the chart. Chance puffed his cheeks in complaint.

  "No trust, lads, that's what it comes to. Pay gold, or healing, or laughter if you're a clown, and get nothing but tricks and lies. This chart was said to be complete, and look at it-some old thing dusted off and sold with pretense. " He folded it sadly, stroking the parchment with a calloused hand. I knew how he felt. It was a godlike feeling to spread the charts and trace one's way softly along a crease of hill, imagining the way, learning the names and aspects of the land. It was less wonderful if one knew that the charts lied. Then it was only pretend, not true game.

  That night I lay awake after the others slept, mazed by a lucific moon, and set out the tiny Gamesmen I had found. For the first time I noted they were not like those

  I had played with as a child. Of the white pieces, the tallest was a Queen, but there was no King beside her.

  Instead there was a white Healer. There were two Seers, two Armigers, two Sentinels, but no Churchmen. Of the black pieces the tallest was a Necromancer. There was a

  Sorcerer almost as tall, then two Tragamors, two

  Elators, two Demons. I could not tell what the little men were, crouchy and fuzzed in the moonlight. In the first morning light I looked again. They were crouchy indeed, Shapeshifters all, of the same ilk but differing in detail. Each piece had the same fascination in the hand I had felt when I first held them. Unwillingly, I put them away, each wrapped in a scrap of cloth and buried under my needfuls.

  Traveling south, sun and rain, forest and meadow,

  Silkhand's chatter, Yarrel's silences, Chance's wry commentary upon the world, no chill, no menace. Silkhands said that Himaggery had taken much of the land around

  Lake Yost and assembled thousands of Gamesmen there. Chance laughed, but she claimed it was true.

  How so many could find power to exist, she did not say.

  We did not ask. It was only a tall tale, we thought. Hum of bees, quiet sough of wind. Then, suddenly, as we climbed a high ridge of stone, a cold gust from above, chill as winter, without warning. We ran for overhanging stone and peered from beneath it like badgers.

  "Dragon, " whispered Yarrel. I saw it then, planing across the valley beyond, great wings outspread, long neck stretched like an arrow, tail behind, straight as a spear. Fire bloomed around its jaws. I was the first to see the other, higher, diving out of the sun. It was something I had never seen before. "Cold Drake, " someone said in a hiss. The cold intensified. We huddled close, pulling clothing from the packs to wrap with our blankets around us, to keep Our heat in. Neither of the

  Gamesmen knew we were there or cared. They would soak our heat for their play just as they would that from the sun-hot stones. All we could do was wait in the shelter of the stones, praying they would fly on before it grew too cold for us.

  I wondered as we lay there how many thousands of pawns-and lesser Gamesmen, too-had died thus, lying helpless under stones or trees or in their houses while Gamesmen drew their heat away, slow degree by slow degree, until they fell into that last sleep. We had seen bones here and there as we traveled, littering the roadside, heaped around the ruins where Silkhands had been, all those who had stayed quiet and cold while

  Gamesmen played. Even so, it was a wondrous thing to watch the Dragon and the Cold Drake fight.

  The cine was all sinuous movement, twisting coil, black on black with frosty breath; the other all arrow darting, climb and dive, amber on gold with the breath of fire. As it grew colder around us, it grew more difficult for the Gamesmen to draw heat as well, and their movement slowed. We kept expecting them to move away, over the sunwarmed plains, but they did not. We knew then that they dueled, that they had set the boundaries of their Game and would not leave them until one or both were dead.

  The end came as suddenly as the beginning. The Cold

  Drake caught the Dragon full in a looping coil which tightened, tightened. The Dragon screamed. They fell together, linked, faster and faster, wings unmoving, a blur in the clear air. Then they were upon the plain before us, lost in a stirred cloud of frigid dust which erupted into the wind and was gone. The Healer sobbed and moved into the open, stumbling toward those distant bodies, we after her. She paused at one body only a moment, then went on to the other. He breathed feebly, back in his own form, a slender youth looking scarcely older than I, pale of skin with black hair and the long ears of the southern people. He tried to focus his agonized gaze upon the Healer, said "Healer... please... " Silkhands reached out as though to touch him then turned away.

  "Too cold,
" she said. "Oh, there is nothing to make into a fire. If we could have fire swiftly... " We all looked around, but there was nothing to burn upon the hard-packed earth. The youth gave a bubbling cry and was silent. I turned to find Silkhands weeping.

  "Too cold, always too cold and I can do nothing. No power, no way to get power. Oh, Lords of the seven hells, but I wish you were a Tragamor... " She sobbed upon Chance's chest like a child. Looking toward the far line of forest I, too, wished I were a Tragamor, though with the cold as it was I doubted even a Tragamor could have ported wood from that forest in time. My eyes caught a glitter there; we all stared at the procession which came. It was not lengthy but puissant, the tall figure on the high red horse most of all. I knew him by the fur-collared robe embroidered with moonstar signs, even before Silkhands sank to her knees murmuring,