King's Blood Four

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I had seen some such chair. I could not remember when.

  The yarn she used frothed between her hands as though alive, pouring from the needles in a flood which spread its loose loops over her knees and cascaded to the stone.

  The speed of her knitting increased to a whirling rattle, the creaking of the chair faster and faster, - like a bellows breathing, until she was finished all at once. She flung the completed work onto the stone before her where it lay like a pile of woolen snow.

  "What have you made?" asked Silkhands, doubtfully. I knew she was unable to think of anything else to say. I could think of nothing at all. The woman fixed us with great, inhuman eyes, yellow and bright as those of a bird.

  "I have knitted a Morfus, " she said in a deep voice.

  "Soon it will get up and go about its work, but just now it is resting from the pain of being created. " The piled fabric before her shivered as she spoke, and I thought it moaned. "Would you care for some cabbage?" the woman asked.

  Silkhands said, "I would be very grateful for anything to eat, madam. I am very hungry. " When she spoke, my mouth filled with saliva, even though I hated cabbage raw or cooked and always had. The woman found a cabbage somewhere beside herself in the chair and offered it. Silkhands tore off a handful of leaves.

  The woman said, "It is better than nothing. Although

  I do not like it as it is. " She stared intently at the vegetable in her hand, turning it this way and that. It fuzzed before my eyes, fuzzed, misted, became a roasted fowl.

  The pile of fabric moaned once more, sat up, extended long, knitted tentacles and pushed itself erect. Vaguely manshaped, it swayed where it stood, featureless and without much substance. I could see through it in spots.

  An impatient snort from the woman brought my attention back to her. She had given the fowl to Silkhands.

  "Try this instead. Tell me if it tastes right. "

  Silkhands tore a leg from the fowl and took a bit of it, wiping her face on her arm, nodding. "It tastes... only a little like cabbage. "

  "Ah. Well, then, it's an improvement. Still, you could do much better, being a Healer, if that lazy youth would help you. "

  "I don't understand, " said Silkhands, remembering at last to offer me some of the fowl. "What do you mean, I could do better?"

  ''Have you ever Healed a chicken?" the woman asked.

  "Never. "

  "Ah. Well then, perhaps you could not do as well as I have done. If you had ever Healed a chicken, you would know how the flesh is made. And if that boy were to

  Read you as you thought about that, then he could change the cabbage far better than I have done. "

  "Pardon, madam, " I said. "But I have not that

  Talent. " -

  "Nonsense. You have all the Talents there are, from

  Dorn to Didir, or from Didir to Dorn, as the case may be. You have the Gamesmen of Barish, I know it. Even if I had not felt the spirit of Dorn moving in the corridors of the earth like a waking thunder I would still have known. Was it not Seen? Was it not foretold? Why else am I here and are you where you are?"

  "The Garnesmen of Barish?" By this time I was certain that I still slept, dreaming in the high stone wall on the little ledge. "I don't know what you.... "

  "These, " she flicked a knitting needle at me, catching the loop of my pouch and rattling the Gamesmen within it. ''These. You have already taken Dorn into being.

  Soon you must take others, or if not soon then late. By the seven hells, you're not afraid of them are you, boy?"

  "Afraid? Of them? Them... who?"

  "Witless, " she commented acidly, looking me over from head to foot as though she could not believe what she saw. "Witless and spitless, no more juice than a parsnip. By the seven hells, boy, you raised up the ancient Kings of Bannerwell. How did you think you did that? Did you perhaps whittle them up out of a bit of wood and your little knife? Or whistle them up like a wind? Or brew them, perhaps, like tea? How did you do it, gormless son of an unnamed creation? Hmmm?

  Answer me!"

  I was beginning to be very angry. As I grew wider awake and even slightly less hungry (the fowl was filling, though it did taste like cabbage), I became angrier by the moment. I was distracted, however, for at that moment the Morfus decided to do whatever it was a Morfus did. Moaning shrilly, it staggered off toward one side of the great cavern and began to climb the stone. It lurched and flapped like laundry upon a slack line, wavering and lashing itself upward.

  "At this rate, it'll never get there, " she commented as she took up the needles and the wool once more to pour out another long confusion of knitting upon her lap.

  "You haven't answered me, " she said. 'How did you think you raised them up, boy? By what means?"

  "I raised them up by using the pattern I found in one of the Gamespieces, " I said, stiffly. "By accident. "

  "No more by accident than trees grow by accident.

  Trees grow because it is their nature to do so. The

  Gamespieces of Barish were designed to have a nature of their own-to lie long hidden until a time when they would fall into the hands of one who could use them. "

  There was a long pause and then she said in a slightly altered tone, "No. That is not quite correct. They would fall into the hands of one who would use them well. That is tricky. Perhaps a bit of fear and confusion would not be amiss under those circumstances. " The knitting poured from her lap onto the floor and lay there, quivering. Then the knitted creature heaved itself upward to stagger toward its companion which still struggled upward against the far rock wall.

  Silkhands had been observing the woman narrowly, and now she seated herself at the knitter's feet and laid hand upon her knee. The woman started, then composed herself and smiled. "Ah, so you'd find out what goes on, would you, Healer? Well,, stay out of my head and the rest of me be thy play-pen. There's probably some work or other needs doing in there. "

  "What are the Gamesmen of Barish?" I asked.

  "Please stop confusing me. I think you're doing it purposely, and it doesn't help me. Just tell me. What are the Gamesmen of Barish?"

  She rose, incredibly tall and thin, like a lath, I thought, then changed that thought. Like a sword, lean and keen-edged and pointed. She laughed as though she

  Read that thought; "Long ago, " she chanted, "in a time forgotten by all save those who read books, were two

  Wizards named Barish and Vulpas. You've* heard of them? Ah, of course. You've heard of them from the self-styled Historian. " She laughed, almost kindly.

  "These two had a Talent which was rare. They called it

  Wisdom. Or, so it is said by some. They caused the

  Immutables, you know. They learned the true nature of the Talents. They codified many things which had been governed until then, in approximately equal parts, by convention and superstition. Those who lived by convention and superstition could not bear that matters of this kind be brought into the light, and so they sought out Barish and Vulpas with every intention of killing them.

  "Later the Guardians announced that Barish and

  Vulpas were dead. There was much quiet rejoicing.

  However, there are books which one may read today (if one knows where to find them) which were written by

  Barish and Vulpas many years after the Guardians announced their deaths. Could it be the Guardians lied?

  Who is to say. It was long ago, after all... "

  "The Gamesmen, " I said firmly.

  "Barish claimed, " she went on, "that the pattern of a

  Talent-nay, of a whole personality, could be encoded into a physical object and then Read from that object as it could be Read in a man, by one with the ability to do so. "

  "That would be utter magic, " said Silkhands.

  "Some may say so, " the knitter said. "While others would say otherwise. Nonetheless, the books say that

  Barish made his claim manifest in the creation of a set of

  Gamesmen. There are eleven different pieces
in the set, embodying, so it is written, the Talents of the forebears. "

  "Why?" I breathed, ideas surging into my head all at once. "Why would he have done this thing? It's true,

  Silkhands. I know it's true. It was exactly like Reading a person. I felt Dorn, felt him sigh. It was he who raised the spectres up, not me. How terrible and wonderful.

  But why would he do it?" I babbled this nonsense while the knitter fixed me with her yellow eyes and the

  Morfuses clambered ever higher against the stones.

  "If Barish was able to code the Talents in this way, then he must also have been able to perceive them for himself. In which case, he would have perceived the

  Talent of Sorah, Seer. Perhaps through Sorah he saw something in the future. Who can say? It was very long ago. " ..

  "You are saying that the Wizard did this thing long ago so that someone-Peter-could use these Talents now?" Silkhands seemed to be asking a question, but it was directed more at me than at the knitter, sounded more like a demand than a query. "So that Peter can use them, " she repeated. What did she want me to do?

  Gamelords! She seemed to want something, Yarrel wanted something else, Mertyn another thing, Mandor something else again. While I... what in the name of the seven devils did I want? Nothing. I wanted to do nothing. Nothing at all. Doing things was frightening.

  Every time I had done anything at all decisive, I had been terrified,

  I said it to Silkhands, praying she would understand.

  "When I heard Dora sigh within me, I was afraid... "

  The knitter interrupted. "But you knew Dorn could control the Ghosts. You knew you could do it. "

  "I knew someone could. Someone. But it didn't feel like me. "

  "Aha, " she chortled, rocking so hard that the wood of the chair began to creak in ominous protest. "You felt you were someone else, did you? And when Grimpt cracked Grimpt's skull and put him down the oubliette?

  Hmmm? Who did that?"

  "No one knows about that, " I said, horrified. "No one at all. "

  "No one except those who do know about it.

  Watchers. Morfuses. Seers. Bitty things with eyes that peer from crannies and cracks. "

  Silkhands said, "Who is Grimpt?"

  "Ann, shh, shh, we've upset him enough. Poor boy.

  All this Talent throbbing away at his fingertips and he doesn't know where to put his hands. "

  What was I to say. She was right. I had the Talent in my mind or in the pouch at my belt to fling Mandor and all his house into the nethermost north, into the deepest gorge of the Hidamans. All I needed was a source of power great enough... and even with ordinary power, the heat in the stone beneath me, I could summon up legions of the dead and was afraid to do so. "You've a poor tool in me, " I said. "A poor tool indeed. Dorn terrified me. Sorah would probably petrify me. Why couldn't I have been a pawn, like Yarrel. I'd have been a good pawn, moved about by others... "

  "Better a poor tool than an evil one, " she said. Then she reached out to touch me for the first time, and it was as though I had been lightning struck. "You've been too long in the nursery, boy. Too long with lads and dreamers and cooks. Come out, come out wherever you are!

  The cock crows morning, and the Great Game is toward! Play it or be swept from the board. "

  From high above came a keening howl, a ghost noise, like wind down a chimney. We looked up to see the

  Morfuses' black shapes against a glow of sky. They had found a way out and called to us of their discovery.

  "There it is, " said the knitter. "The way out. You can go that way if you like. Sit on a pile of stone up there on

  Malplace Mountain and watch the Game. Or, you can go out through the funeral doors to the tombs, out with a host behind you. " She was across the floor and up the wall like a spider, arms, legs, head all a blur as she moved toward those two figures high on the wall. "It's your choice, boy. Mothers should not force their young.

  It's bad for personal development... "

  "Who, " I rasped, choking. "Who... who are you... "

  "Mavin Manyshaped, boy. Here to cheer you with two of your cousins. "

  The Morfus shapes before the light flickered and changed before us. Now there were only two slim youths grinning down at us out of glittering eyes, flame-red hair, falling across their faces. Then they were out of the hole and gone, her behind them, so quickly gone there was

  110 time to say anything. Mavin-Mother. And two

  Shapeshifter cousins, children, that meant, of Mavin's sister or sisters. And a way out. High and pure through that sunny hole came the sound of a trumpet calling "To

  Air, To Air" for the Armigers. A drum answered from a hillside, "Thawum, Thawum, " signal to the Tragamors,

  "move, move. "

  "Oh, hells, " I giggled hysterically. "Who is doing battie with whom? Is it Himaggery? Or the High King? Or merely some trickery of a Shapechanger who says she bore me... "

  Silkhands cried, "Oh, Peter, if you're going to go all sensitive and nervous, this isn't a good time for it at all. "

  I screamed at her, screamed at her like a market stall woman or a mule driver, thrust her before me up the rocky slope until she was pushed half out of the opening, half laughing, half crying at me. "Be damned, Healer, "

  I shouted at her. "It isn't you has to do the things you expect me to do. Go out there and watch the Game, you silly thing, you chatter-bird. Go, go out; out of here and leave me alone... "

  Then I tumbled back down the rock wall into the bottom of the cavern to lie face down on the stones, weeping miserably and feeling that never, never in my fifteen years of life had I been understood by anyone at all.

  After which I went and raised up the dead.

  13

  The Great Game

  I must leave myself again to tell you what I later learned had happened to others. I must go back to. Himaggery's realm, back to the fourteenth day of my captivity. An

  Elator arrived from Schooltown to tell of Mertyn's arrival only hours before he himself arrived.

  I have visualized that arrival many times. King

  Mertyn, in a dusty cloak, his travel hat stained with rain, beard floured with the dirt of the road, riding into the courtyard of the High Demesne among the mists and the blossoms. They offered him time to bathe before he came to Himaggery, and he refused it. He came into the audience hall to find Himaggery awaiting him, not seated upon his chair, elevated, but standing alone without servitors by the door. The two had not met before.

  And the King used his Talent. He used Beguilement upon Himaggery, a fatal charm, a deadly charisma.

  Standing in that room of power, where no chill might rob him of the full use of that Talent which was his, he used it as he had not used it in his life theretofore. So he has told me, his thalan, since that time. He wagered his life upon being able to charm Himaggery into doing what the King wished.

  And Himaggery laughed. He laughed, clasped

  Mertyn by the hand, and led him to a table where he offered him a wash basin full of hot water, a towel, and foods steaming from the kitchens.

  "You need not beguile me, King. I will help you without all that charm. I will help you because I believe it is right to do so, though I am less sure of that than of some few other things. Our cause, however, seems to be the cause of Justice. "

  Mertyn was better educated than many of his fellows.

  He had, after all, been a student of Windlow, as had

  Himaggery. Unlike Prionde, the High King, he had listened to Windlow, had even understood some of what he was taught. Thus, when he heard Himaggery use the word "justice" he recognized the word, and with that recognition came a sense of peace.

  "My friend, " he said solemnly, "forgive me. I thought to protect my thalan, Peter, through his early years. Who knows? Perhaps I hoped to protect him throughout his life, though we know that in the Game such things are impossible. I have broken many rules. I am paying for that now, perhaps, in being consumed with fear for
the boy. I never called him by any name of kinship. I tried to warn him away from that kindermar,

  Mandor. At the end, I only tried to save him, and I might as well have thrust him into Mandor's hands.

  Have you any news of him?" Despite all dignity, I am told, his eyes were wet.

  "Shh, shh, I understand, " said Himaggery. "I had no sisters, thus have had no thalan, but there are young ones I have loved and cared for and fretted over in the dark hours. Yes. I have word brought by an Elator from