The True Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I felt as though someone had told me I was not quite guilty of some grave crime. The face was not Windlow's face, the body not Windlow's body, but in those memories Windlow still lived. Except-he lived alloyed with another. Silver melted with tin is still silver, and yet it appears in a new guise. One cannot call pewter silver with honesty, and yet all the silver one started with is contained therein. Unless, I thought, the mix was rather more like oil and wine, in which case the oil would rise to the top and the wine lie below, seething to be so covered. Was he silver, Windlow, or oil? Or was he wine? Did it matter, so long as he lived? For a time.

  For it would be only for a time. Until what he knew and thought became no longer relevant or necessary and was forgotten. But that was the same with all of us. We were only what we were for a time, at that time. Then our own silver began to mix with the tin of our future to change us. I knew this to be so and grieved for Windlow while I grieved for me. In time I would not be this Peter, even as now I was not the Peter of two years ago who had grieved for Tossa on the road to the Bright Demesne. Yet that Peter was not lost. So Windlow was not lost, and yet he was not Windlow, either.

  Silkhands took me by the hand and led me away, shaking her head and murmuring to herself and me. She had loved him, too, perhaps more than I had done, and I wondered if she felt as oddly torn as I did. We did not speak of it just then. Instead, we sat beside the fire, drinking tea and looking into the flames as though to see our futures there, my head feeling like a vacant hall, all echoing space and dust in the corners. We heard Queynt and Barish-Windlow come up out of the place, so we went below to raise up Trandilar and Sorah. If what was to come was wreck and ruin upon us all I did not want them lying helpless under the stones.

  There was some milling about when they were all raised up, with much talk, before Hafnor flicked himself away to the north, hoptoad, to see what moved against us. Night was coming, the second night since we had raised up Thandbar. I had spent two days and a night below, and the morrow would be the third day since Huld's host had left Hell's Maw. I warmed my hands at the fire while hoping Himaggery and Mavin would reach us before Huld did, even though I feared it unlikely. There was nothing much we could do in the dark. I told Thandbar of my meeting with the Bonedancer outside Three Knob, and he chuckled without humor. "Grole, eh? Well, I've done that, or something like. It'll take time to grow big, though, so I'll go back among those rocks when we have eaten. I relish the taste of these birds more than the flavor of stone." He had been hunting, as I had done a few days before, in the guise of a fustigar.

  So we sat eating and warming ourselves, thinking small thoughts of old comforts and joys. I kept remembering the kitchens in Mertyn's House and the warm pools at the Bright Desmesne. In the hot seasons, one does not often remember how delicious it is to be warm, but beside this fire in the high, windswept wastes, I thought of warm things. Jinian sat down beside me to take my cold hand in her own and rub it into liveliness. I used it to stroke her cheek, feeling I had not seen her for days. Across the fire, Kelver did something similar with Silkhands and smiled across the coals at me in shared sympathy. Queynt was talking to the krylobos, freeing them from their harness so that they could leave us. They stalked away over the wasteland, into the darkness, making a harsh, bugling cry. "They do not like those who feed upon the shadowpeople," Queynt said. "They will bring some help for us from among the krylobos and gnarlibars. I do not expect it will amount to much, but they will feel better for its having been tried. I wish there were some of the eesty here, though they would probably refuse to interfere…"

  Dorn talked of laying bones down again which another had raised, telling stories of the long past and the far away. Some, I am sure, were not meant to be believed, but only to cheer us. Some were funny enough to laugh at, despite the plight we found ourselves in. Then Trandilar took up the storytelling, stories of glamour and romance and undying love, turning the fullness of her Beguilement on us so that we forgot the bones of Hell's Maw, forgot Huld, forgot the cold and the high wastes to live for a time in such lands and cities as we had never dreamed of. And all this time Sorah and Wafnor passed the food among us, saving nothing for the morrow, thinking, I suppose, that we would be too busy to eat then and glad of anything we had eaten tonight. So it was we were all replete, and so Beguiled by Trandilar that danger had vanished from our minds, and we were calm and still as a day in summer, lying close together in our blankets, to drift into sleep. I think Trandilar probably walked among us all night long, softly speaking words which led us into pleasant dreams, for when we woke in the morning, it was with a sense of happy fulfillment and courage for the day. Now it was Barish passed the cups among us, but I saw him gathering the herbs he put into them from the rock crevasses, and the way he searched them out and bent above them, the way he crushed them and brought them to his nose, all that was Windlow. The brew was hot and bitter, but it brought alertness of an almost supernatural kind. We had just finished it when Hafnor returned to tell us our fears were less than the truth.

  "This Demon Huld, whom you have made so effectively your enemy, must have been recruiting Necromantic Talents for a generation or more. He has Sorcerers as well, aplenty, and such a host of bones and liches as the world may collapse under. They stretch from horizon to horizon, across the neck of the wastes from the gorge of the Graywater to the valley of the Reave."

  "What of the Gamesmen within that host of bones?" asked Jinian. "Talents which are useless against bones may be used against the Gamesmen."

  "If one can get at them through the host of bones," replied Hafnor. "You will have to see it for yourself. The Gamesmen are within the bones as a zeller stands in the midst of a field of grain. You cannot get to them without scything what stands in between."

  "I have found chasms full of brush," offered Buinel. He was not quite so odd in person as I had pictured him, still fussy and inclined to procedural questions, but he seemed to have grasped the danger we faced and be trying to make sensible suggestions. "When the bones cross them, they will cross a river of fire."

  "And I will seek out Huld among the hosts of bones," said Tamor. "He comes from the north, which means I can come at him from out of the sun. If my hands have not utterly lost their cunning in these long centuries." He bent his bow experimentally, heard the string snap, and bit back a curse. "Well, I have others. Lords, what a time and place to awaken to." A little later I saw him go out with his bow strung.

  Didir had spent some time with Barish. I saw her holding his hand, leaning her head against his, face puzzled and remote. She had loved him, I had heard. Now he was no longer the Barish she had known. I pitied her; Windlow was her stranger as Barish was mine. Neither of us quite knew our old companions. She stood up beside him at last, laid her cheek against his, then moved away. "I will do what I can to let you know what is in Huld's mind," she said. "Though it is probable that we know exactly what is in his mind now. He will overrun us in order to demonstrate his strength to those allied with him. He says he seeks Barish, but that is probably only pretense. He seeks to overrun the world, and this will be his first trial." She moved off to some high place, striding with great dignity but, I thought, a little sadness. Barish looked after her, the expression on his face one of remote sorrow. I turned from them both, for it hurt to see them.

  Trandilar announced her intention of going down into the cavern, with Sorah and Dealpas, and staying there until needed or wanted by someone. "We will be out of the way," she said. "You need no Beguilement. If Visions will help, we will bring them to you. If a Healer is wanted, call down to Dealpas."

  Hafnor had gone back to spying on the host. Wafnor had placed himself near a pile of great boulders. Shattnir was standing in the sun, arms wide, soaking up all the power she could to help us all. This left me, Peter, among the Wizards-Barish, Vulpas, Jinian. King Kelver stayed with them also, but I thought I would emulate Thandbar and become a grole once again.

  I had barely time to engrole myself and gain size before I f
elt the tickle in my head which said Huld was seeking his prey. Long and long I had leaned upon Didir's protection in such cases, and strangely enough it did not forsake me. I remembered the pattern of her cover and dipped beneath it as I went on chewing at the stone. He could not find me. With Didir on watch, I thought it unlikely he could find any of us.

  I had set myself in a high notch between the flat plateau he marched across and the tumbled stone we were hidden in. Stone lay above me as well as below and to either side. I made eyes for myself for, though groles were blind, I chose not to be. I needed to watch for Himaggery. I needed to see Huld's approach. It was not far to see, not far at all, for he came upon us like a monstrous wave, a creeping rot, a fungus upon that land, white and rotten gray with the brilliance of banners like blood in the midst of it. I could not see individual skeletons, only the angular mass of it, as though a heap of white straw blew toward me in a mighty wind, all joints and angles, scattered all over with white beads which were the skulls of those which marched. I could not see the Gamesmen. I only knew where they were by the shimmering of the banners, for the bones carried nothing but themselves. Within that mass somewhere were drummers, for we could all hear the brum, brum, brum which set the pace of the bones. Perhaps the Bonedancers marched near the drums, to keep their time from the far west of the great horde to the far east of it, coming in an unwavering line. Brum, brum, brum. It sent shivers through the stone I rested upon, louder and louder as they came nearer.

  First into the fray was old Tamor, though he had not been so old as to warrant that name when he laid down to sleep. He was younger than Himaggery by a good bit. I saw him come toward the host out of the sun, saw his arrows darting silver, then a retreating streak as he fled away before the spears which came after him. Huld's Tragamors were alert. I did not see him again for a time, then caught a glimpse of him, glittering and high, just before another flight of spears. This time the spears arched higher, and I thought I saw him lurch and fall, but he did not come to the ground. I felt Demon tickle, then Didir's voice in my head. Evidently she knew me so well she could speak to me easily even now. "We see him, Peter. Kelver and Silkhands are working their way around to the west where he came to the ground. There are birds here who will carry them…"

  So. Yittleby and Yattleby had returned, their recruitment done, to help us as best they could. Well, at least Silkhands would be out of the battle. At least she and Kelver would have some time to themselves, to share what had been growing between them all this long way from Reavebridge. If Tamor were not seriously injured, perhaps all three would survive. For a time. Looking at the army marching toward us, I thought there was little hope for any survival longer than a season or two. Huld would not stop with overrunning us. As Didir said, we were only an excuse to try his strength. If he had truly wanted Barish, he would have come with fewer and cleverer than he had brought. No, this was to be warning to the world, a flexing of his muscle. I hated him in that moment, hated him for all he cared nothing about-for love and honor and truth and a word he had never heard: justice.

  The bones had come closer. They were approaching a great chasm now, a canyon brimmed with thorn. The bones leapt across it, light as insects, not even brushing the branches. They came in dozens and hundreds and thousands, then the Gamesmen behind them, Bonedancers lifted over the tearing thorn in Armiger arms.

  The chasm went up in flame, all at once, a sheet of fire leagues long and tower high. I was too far away to hear the Bonedancers screaming, but I saw them fall in fiery arcs into that towering pyre. The bones kept coming, piling in and burning, falling as the thorn burned away to make room for more. They never stopped, not even for an instant, but went on scrambling across like spiders. Somewhere inside my great grole shape Peter puzzled at what he had seen. Why had the bones kept coming when the Bonedancers died? Other Bonedancers back in the host? Or simply one of those special cases in which things once raised went on of themselves? If that were so, then whatever we might do against the Gamesmen themselves would not help us.

  "Some are gone, Buinel," I whispered to myself. "But there are more coming than all the thorn in the world can burn."

  The rock beneath me throbbed; boulders began to heave themselves up from the hillside to launch away in long curves toward the center of the host. They were aimed at Huld, surely, but his Tragamors deflected them. They flew aside, bowled through acres of bones, crushing a hundred skulls or more to leave the fragments dancing, a shower of disconnected white, like a flurry of coarse snow. The first great stone was followed by others, and the center of the host milled about, slowed for a moment. What did Huld intend? Would he merely overrun us, smother us under that weight of bones? Or were some among that host seeking us, seeking Barish, making an excuse for this Game, Great Game, the Greatest this world had ever seen?

  Still they came on. We had done nothing to slow them, not with Tamor's arrows or Wafnor's great stones. I had seen no evidence that Dorn had tried to put this host down, and having seen the size of it, I did not blame him. It would have been like calming the sea with a spoonful of oil. Far to my right I saw the first files of bones entering the defile where Thandbar waited. "Good appetite, kinsman," I wished him. He was not far from me. Even as I made my wish for him, the first of the horde poured onto the flat before me, threading between the mighty Wind's Bones, the huge star-shaped skeletons of this world, bones arranged like my own grole bones. I settled myself, scrunching into the rock, mouth open.

  Didir called in my head. "Peter! Sorah has Seen… Seen…"

  Gamelords, I said to myself. What matter what she has Seen. They are about to overrun us, bury us, sift us out with bony fingers and take us away to the horrors of Hell's Maw. Far out on the field I saw the rush and flutter of krylobos attacking the fringes where some Gamesmen stood. Run, kick, and run away. A few bones fell, a few liches stumbled, nothing more. Big as they were, the big birds were not large enough to afflict this host.

  And now a circlet of banners came toward me, Huld in the midst of his Gamesmen, Prionde at his side, borne on the shoulders of his minions, Ghouls posturing in tattered finery around him. Was that Dazzle among them? Oh, surely not. And yet, given Huld's purposes of terror, why not.

  And, as I had done for two years, over and over, I reached for the Gamesmen of Barish, for comfort, for kindness, for safety, for reassurance-and found them. All. All with me in my great grole body with its star-shaped skeleton, all with me in my great this-world shape, looking out at the threatening horde where it poured like water among the Wind's Bones…

  Between me and the marching skeletons a leg bone loomed, half buried, stone heavy, not stone, so obviously not stone I gasped to have thought it stone so long. These were not Wind's Bones. These were not carvings done by wind and water. These were old bones, real bones, true bones, this-world bones of some ancient and incredible time. I cried to Dorn and Shattnir in my head, screamed at them to help me raise that bone up, to feed me the power to raise that bone up, screamed to Wafnor to break the soil at its base, to all of them to look, see, join, move, fight. I saw the mighty bone heave, the rock around it cracking and breaking to spatter away in dry particles. It came out of the ground like a tree, growing taller and taller, lunging upward from its hidden root, one great shape, and then another linking to it, then another and another yet, the five link bones and then the arching ribs, the neck, the monstrous skull armed with teeth as long as my legs, the whole standing ten man heights tall at the shoulder, moving toward the skeleton host who came on, unseeing, into fury.

  The Wind's Bones went to war, to war, and not alone. Others sprouted from the soil of the place, a harvest so great and horrible no Seer would have believed it. They came out of the rock in their dozens and hundreds, sky tall, huge as towers, flailing, trampling down with feet like hammers of steel, the pitiful human skeletons falling before them like scythed grain to be trampled and winnowed by prodigious feet and by the wind. Particles of bone went flying on that wind, west and north, away and away
in an endless, billowing, powdery cloud.

  Before me the first monster had overstepped Huld to leave him behind with a few of his Gamesmen, a Bonedancer or two thrown into panic, a Ghoul, and yes-Dazzle. They looked about them wildly. I heard Huld screaming at them, threatening them for having raised up these giants. Were they to retreat? Of course. Away, away from the horrors they thought they had raised, away from the creatures who had owned this world before they came, away from this justice they had not sought, into the defile where they might find a way out, but did not.

  You must believe me when I tell you that I shut the grole maw upon them and merely held them there in that rock hard prison of myself while I thought long about justice and goodness and all those things Windlow had often told me of. I did not grind at once. I waited. I waited, and thought, and listened to them within, for they could speak and pound upon my walls and threaten one another still, though they did it in the dark. I tried to remember any good thing Huld might have done. He had played a part in Bannerwell, pretending shock and remorse at his thalan's terrible plans and as terrible deeds, but that had all been pretense. It had been his way of doing what he pleased while pretending not to be responsible for it; thus he could continue for a time in the respect and honor of the world. His true self had been seen in the cavern beneath the mountains of the magicians, and in Hell's Maw, for though I had not seen him there, I had heard enough to make me sure of him. What was he, the real Huld, the true man?

  And after a time, I answered my own question.

  He was not. true man at all. He was only aberration, beast, hate and hunger, without a soul. If the Midwives had delivered him, he would not have lived past his birth. As it was, he did not deserve to live further. So. Then the grole bore down and gained out of him what good there was in him. In return for the terror you brought Silkhands, and the pain you brought me, and the horror you brought the world, I bring you peace, Huld. So I thought.