The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The men working on the ruins had it marked out with pegs and string and were busy digging and hauling loads away in large barrows. We stopped a distance away from the turmoil, waiting to be decently noticed, and a man came down the pile toward us, wiping his forehead and looking oddly familiar to me. When I told him who I was, he started a little and gave me an extremely curious glance which I put down to his not having expected a Gamesman to visit. I took pains to be polite, coming down from the horse and making no extravagant noises.

  "Would Riddle be here?" I asked. "I have a message for him from the Bright Demesne."

  The man went back up the tumulus, peering at me over his shoulder in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of the way the Armiger had ridden ahead of us on the road. Still, that feeling left me when Riddle himself came from some hideaway and stopped to peer at me nearsightedly as though he couldn't believe what he saw.

  "Peter? You? In Pursuivant's dress? But-what does this mean?…"

  I saved him his puzzlement, not wanting him to start thinking about my Talents or lack of them. He had turned quite pale in his confusion. "We had a bit of trouble on the road," I said. "A Pursuivant was among our attackers. He is dead now, poor fellow, and I put on his clothes to confuse those who had hired him. Whoever it was, they should have been here. So said this Invigilator." I pointed the man out, explaining his lack of interest in what was going on. "He's not very useful at the moment. He had a kind of cap thing in his pocket, a thing like those you showed me at Bannerwell. Well, we put it on him, and it's had this awkward effect…"

  Riddle was nodding and nodding at each thing I said, looking very uncomfortable and grim, which I thought still might have been caused by my appearing thus suddenly in the guise of another Talent. At any rate, he collected himself and asked what brought me. I repeated what I had said before, that I had expected to find whoever plotted against me in this place. "Haven't there been any Gamesmen about, Riddle? Have you seen anyone lurking?" To which he mumbled and said something or other about having been too busy to have noticed.

  It was obvious he was preoccupied, so I gave him the messages Himaggery had sent (something to do with the search for Quench, in which some Immutables were assisting Himaggery) and told him I would stay in the vicinity for a day or two in case Himaggery sent a message for me. And, finally, he managed to shake off his discomfort, from whatever cause, and become hospitable.

  I asked him what they were doing, and he offered us tea while explaining. "We are growing more and more crowded in the purlieu, Peter. Our councilmen decided we should expand our territory, and this ruin marks the southern edge of the lands our people once occupied. They called it Dindindaroo, after the sound of the fustigars who den in the canyons and forests. At any rate, my own grandfather was the leader here in his time. It is our intention to build here once again."

  "Wouldn't it be easier to build to one side of this ruin? Why all this digging and delving?"

  He hemmed and hawed for a time before saying, "Oh, there may be artifacts here which are of interest to our archivists and historians. We thought it a good idea to take a little time to salvage what might be left from a former time." Then he changed the subject. His explanations sounded weak to me. They did not seem to be salvaging. They were searching for something particular. At any rate, Chance drew me away to speak privately.

  "There seems to be no Gamesman here now, lad, no one to do you harm. So it seems. But there is nothing to keep someone from coming in the night, and even if no Talent may be used with all these Immutables about, still there are knives and arrows that can do a good bit of damage. I'd like it better to be inconspicuous."

  I humored him. We took our leave of Riddle and rode away to the east. Once under the cover of the trees, however, Chance insisted we turn in a large circle which ended us west of the ruins. We found a cavelet well hidden behind tumbled stone, and when we had found the place, Chance asked that Didir look around us to see if anyone lurked. She reported only beast minds and bird thoughts, and I privately thought Chance must be among them to be so concerned. He disabused me of that notion.

  "I had a suspicion," he said when we had settled down. "We came to that place expecting to find one there who Games against you, Peter. No one was there but that Riddle and his Immutables. So what if that Riddle had not been a so-called friend of yours? What would we think then? We'd think, well, here is the one who set that Game on us. So what I want to know is, how do we know he didn't?"

  "Riddle? Ridiculous."

  "Well, how so ridiculous? I dare say those Immutables have reasons and purposes of their own. Can't you imagine some reason he might want you all quiet and obedient to his will, for him to use some way?"

  I could not. I tried. Riddle knew me as a Necromancer. What need or use could he have for me which I would not have fulfilled for him gladly at the asking? I thought of all possible combinations and alliances and strange linkages which could have come about-Huld, Prionde, the Council, Quench, the techs, Riddle, even the minor Gamesmen such as Laggy Nap and his like. Nothing. I said so. Chance was not satisfied.

  "Well, just because we can't think of what it might be doesn't mean it isn't. Would you give me that, lad?" I said yes, I could give him that. He went on, "So 'ware what you say. Don't go telling everything you know about where we're going and what we're about. Say we're going along with Silkhands to that Dragon's Fire purlieu because you and she are-well, give him that idea."

  In the lands of the Game it did make sense not to trust too much. The only thing that bothered me was thinking of Riddle as a Gamer. Somehow, because he had no Talent, I expected him to be simple. When I said this to Chance, however, he corrected me with a hoot of laughter.

  "Out on the sea, lad, where I spent many a season, we'd know a man by what he proved to be, not by what his mouth claimed for him. A man could be a devil or a good friend, and sometimes one and another time the other. Some Gamesmen are honest enough, I don't doubt, though they have the power to be all else without any to say them no, and some Gamesmen are evil as devils. So I doubt not the Immutables have their good and their bad, their complex and their simple. Well for you to suspect so, anyhow."

  And with that, he left me to lie there, aroused by the puzzle but too weary to stay long awake. We went back to Dindindaroo the next morning to see if a message had come from Himaggery and to take leave of Riddle, for if he was what he pretended to be, a simple and honest man, then he would think more kindly of me for the courtesy. And if he was not what he pretended-well. We found him down in a hole, pale and frustrated of face, and he showed such discomfort at my arrival that I thought perhaps Chance was right. I dissembled. For all Riddle could have told, we were still his dearest friends.

  "What are you doing down there, Riddle," I demanded. "Burrowing like a grole? Have you lost something? Or found it?" Even as I said it, I realized that the hole he was in was probably the same hole I had fallen into some several seasons ago when I had found the Gamesmen of Barish and the book Windlow called the Onomasticon. I gave him my hand to help him out, and he blinked at me as he brushed dust from his coat.

  "I thought for a time we might have found some valuables left here by my grandfather," he babbled. "All the inhabitants of the place fled, leaving everything. There was great loss of life, a flood, a great wind…"

  "What exactly are you looking for?" I asked him, all polite interest and bland lack of concern. "Would it help to raise up the dead here and ask them?" Aha, I thought. If you do not want me to know what you are doing here, then you will not accept this offer.

  And also aha, said a quiet voice in my head. If Riddle had wanted you to raise up the dead in this place without knowing what you were doing, might he not have arranged for you to be put into that strange cap the Invigilator carried? Hmmm? Chance gave me a look, and I turned away as Riddle shook his head and fussed and said no, no, the only one who had known was his grandfather and his grandfather was said to have died elsewhere, and besides, he doubted a Gamesman cou
ld raise Immutable dead. I nodded my acceptance of this while privately thinking that I could do it if I chose. Whatever it was that made them immune to Talents, I wagered it went away when they died.

  I shook my head for the benefit of those standing about. "It is probably just as well, Riddle. The longer they are dead, the less they remember of life. They hunger for life more the older they are, but they remember less. How long ago was the destruction?"

  He thought some eighty years. His father had been a young man at the time.

  "Well, you have waited a good time to seek what was lost," I said, all kindness and concern. "A good long time."

  He mumbled something. I think the sense of it was that if he had known earlier what was lost, he would have come earlier to look for it. And this told me much. Riddle had lately learned something new. So. I was not of a mind to hang about making the man sweat. There would be better ways to find out. Besides, I was without Talent in this company and had only one man to stand beside me. It could be less dangerous to be elsewhere. I gave Riddle my hand and bade him farewell, putting the Invigilator in his care.

  "He will dig for you, if you put the shovel in his hand," I said. "And if any Gamesmen come here who seem to know him, I would be grateful if you would send word to the Bright Demesne." I did not want Riddle to think I suspected him of anything. In truth, I still did not know that I did suspect him of anything. All I could believe was that Chance was wiser than I, and that I would be wiser-far wiser to be more careful. If only I had remembered that later.

  We rode away without talking, both of us preoccupied with our own thoughts. After a time I turned to Chance and said, "I don't necessarily believe it."

  "Well, don't then," he said. "But it'd be smart to act as though you do."

  "You know what he was looking for back there." I made it a statement, not a question.

  "For those things you found, I guess. I notice you didn't offer them to him."

  "The thing I noticed was that he said his grandfather left them there. How carpe his grandfather by them? And why did Riddle not know of them until recently? For I will bet my lost fur cloak that he did not."

  Chance shrugged, mumbled to himself. Finally, "Would anyone else among those Immutables know? Or is it only Riddle who knows? What about his family?"

  "He had only a daughter," I said. Then there was a long pregnant silence of such a quality that I looked back to find Chance's eyes upon me, brooding and hot. "Oh, no," I said. "I will not."

  "She's buried nearby," he remarked. "Almost in sight of the ruins."

  "I couldn't do that," I said flatly. It was true. I could not even think of raising the ghost of Tossa. It would have made me feel like a Ghoul, and I said as much.

  "I didn't say you should take her with us," Chance said in mild reproof. "I didn't say you should drag her around."

  I swallowed bile at the thought. Ghouls did raise certain kinds of recent dead and drag them into a kind of fearful servitude of horror, a thing which no self-respecting Necromancer would think to do. There were others who raised ghosts-Thaumaturges, for example, or Revenants, or Bonedancers. If what old Windlow and Himaggery had told me was true, full half of all Gamesmen would have some Talent at Deadraising. Full half of all Gamesmen would share any one Talent. If so, it was not a Talent generally used in the way Ghouls and Bonedancers used it, and I felt unclean at the thought.

  "No," I said. "She died, Chance, without ever knowing she was dying. Often the dead do not know they are dead until we raise them up." In that instant I thought of Windlow with a kind of stomach-wrenching panic, then sternly put that thought down. "The ancient dead are only dust; they have forgotten life and possess only a kind of hunger which the act of raising gives them. I do not feel thus about the ancient dead. But the newly dead-ah, Chance, that is a different thing. With Tossa, she would know herself dead, and it would hurt her."

  The memory of Mandor's ghost was recently with me. I was prepared to be as stubborn as necessary, but Chance only said, "Well, then we'll have to think up some other way to find out. How about someone dead for eighty years or so?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Do you think you could raise an Immutable?"

  "You're thinking of Riddle's grandfather? Riddle said he didn't die in the ruins."

  "Riddle said a lot of things. Don't know whether I believe him or not is all."

  So we rode along while I thought about that. Riddle was digging in Dindindaroo. He had recently found out that something lay in the ruins which he needed? Wanted? Someone else wanted? Well, which he cared enough about to go to some trouble over, put it that way. Where had he found out, and when? Perhaps on that northern journey he and I had started to make together, when he had turned off toward the east just above Betand? Or in his own land? Perhaps someone had told him? Who? Or he had found old papers?

  After a time Chance interrupted this line of thought to say, "You know, these Immutables are just like the rest of us. They drink a little and they talk. Get a little jolly, they do, and they talk. Pawns travel through their land on business. You and me, we could travel there."

  Which was an answer, of course. We would need to disguise ourselves. Riddle knew me as a Necromancer only, or so I believed. Chance and I had been seen together once before in the Land of the Immutables, but only briefly. So suppose we went into that land as two pawns, traveling on business. What business? I put this to Chance.

  "Well, as you left me to my own devices in that town of Xammer, boy, and without a hello, goodbye, how was your dinner, I got into a little game or two."

  "Chance!"

  "Now, now. Mustn't react hasty-like. A quiet game with honest folk is always good fun. Anyhow, I took my winnings in various small bits and pieces. A little gold, some gems, fripperies and foolishness. Thought I might turn a profit, up north."

  "So that's what's in your saddlebags. I thought you were heavy loaded for having no pack beast."

  He nodded to himself happily. I never knew what pleased Chance most-winning a game of cards or dice, finding a woman who was a good cook, or locating a wine cellar put together by a master vintner. Whatever else the world offered, he would choose one or more of those three.

  He instructed me: "Enough in the bags to make us legitimate, lad. If you can change your face some and get out of those dusty black clothes. Wouldn't hurt to change horses, too. As may be possible not far from here."

  Which was possible with Chance in charge of the trade. He went away leading my lovely tall black horse and came back with a high-stepping mare of an unusual yellow color with nubby shoes such as they use along the River Dourt, or so Yarrel had once told me. It was not an inconspicuous animal. However, he had obtained a pack beast in the trade and had done something to his own face while away from me, stuffed his cheeks to make them fatter and darkened his hair. He looked a different man, and it was easy to disguise myself as a younger version of the same. When we were done with this switching about we turned west to cross the Boundary River into the Immutables' own Land. We had decided to be the Smitheries, father and son, and Chance told me to ride one stride behind and mind my manners toward my elder, which so amused him in the saying he almost choked.

  So that night I sat in a tavern and learned a lesson in gossip. Chance talked of the sea, and of horses, and of trading in general, and of the goods he had picked up in Xammer, and of the young women in that city and elsewhere, and of how the world had changed not for the better, and of a strange wine he had tasted once in Morninghill beside the Southern Sea, and of an old friend of his in Vestertown, and of a man he had known once who used to live in Dindindaroo.

  "Oh, that makes you a liar indeed," said an oldster, sucking at a glass of rich dark beer which Chance had put into his hand. "If you knew such a one, he was old as a rock. Dindindaroo has been wreck and ruin this hundred year."

  "Not a hundred," interrupted another. "No, Dindindaroo was wreck and ruin in the time of my mother's father when my mother was a girl, and that was no
hundred year."

  "Oh, you're old as a rock yourself," asserted the first. "For all you're chasing the girlies like a gander after goslings, which you will never catch until the world freezes and Barish comes back. If it were not a hundred, it were near that."

  "Ah, now," said Chance. "The man I knew was old indeed. Old and gray as a tree in winter. But he said he was there when ruin came down on the place, he said, like the ice, the wind, and the seven devils. Caught a bunch of the people, the ruin did. Or so he said."

  "Oh, it did. Aye, it did. Caught a bunch of 'em."

  "Caught old Riddle's grandfather, I heard," said Chance. "That's what the fellow told me."

  "Oh, so I've heard. Free and safe he was, out of the place, then nothing would do but he go back for something he'd left there, and then the ruin came. That's the story. Buried in it, they said. Buried in it when the flood came down, and no sign of him and his contrack after that. Oh, a man'll do strange things, won't he, when ruin comes."

  "He will, indeed he will," agreed Chance, nodding at me over his beer. At which I nodded, too, and agreed that a man will indeed do strange things.