The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “What is it?” I demanded. “What’s it for?”

  “It’s a symbol. It shows you have been initiated. It puts some of the life of the pool in a form you can carry always, to remind yourself who you are.”

  “But what is it? What is the pool?”

  “Nothing we’ve made,” said Cat. “The pools were here before men came, you may be sure of that. Large ones and tiny ones. The large ones are rare, and hidden. Some say they are eyes which look into the heart of the world. Some say they are eyes which look out. And we say as long as the light moves in the star-eye, the shadow has not conquered.”

  “Religion?” I asked doubtfully.

  “One might say,” said Cat.

  We stayed two days more while all of us went to “lectures”, which were actually kind of story-telling sessions given by people who thought they might have learned something new. The procedure is to tell an Auditor first (someone like the Dervish who heard me) and then, if the Auditor agrees, tell all the Wize-ards who are interested. Since I was new, they did not ask me to tell about Chimmerdong and the flitchhawk, but Murzy said the Dervish had done so. It was all so new to me, I didn’t remember very much of what I heard, and note taking was not allowed as it was in Xammer. One listened and one remembered. I listened as best I could, but there were no hooks in my head to hang much of it on.

  Then we were leaving, taking off the robes and hanging them up, going silently away down the canyon until we came to the plains once more. Sarah was waiting with the wagon. She and Bets had been trading days to come wait for us, and we all got aboard. Only when I was settled into the wagon did I realize how exhausted I was. I felt beaten, and old, and as though I had run thousands of miles.

  “Well,” said Murzy when we were all settled, “it’s time to tell you what happened with the Basilisk, Jinian. Now don’t interrupt me with questions until I’m finished. I know you, and you can’t keep your mouth shut for anything.”

  So challenged, of course I had to be absolutely still, even though it griped me immensely.

  “We had some men from one of the farms dig us a pit, right in the curve of the Old Road,” she began. When you ran, you swerved, but the Basilisk didn’t. It was a deep, straight-sided pit, the Basilisk fell directly into it, and we backed a wagon over it at once, so it couldn’t get out or be seen.

  “Then we began asking the Basilisk certain questions. It hissed and snarled and didn’t answer, of course, but our Demon could Read the answers ...”

  “Demon!” I couldn’t stop myself. “Where did you get a Demon?”

  Murzy just looked at me, pressing her lips together until I subsided, then she turned and nodded at Cat. “That’s our Demon, fool-girl ... Always has been.”

  Cat! A Demon! I thought suddenly of the times I had congratulated myself that I was Gamecaste and they were merely pawns and was suddenly hideously embarrassed. Were the rest of them ... ?

  “We’ve all got Talents of one kind or another,” said Cat. “We don’t play with them, that’s all. We don’t Game. So far as the world knows, we six are pawns only. We say so for our own protection. Some of the Wize-ards choose to call themselves Wizards, some call themselves other things, and some call themselves nothing at all. It’s all in what one is trying to accomplish. And we couldn’t tell you until you were one of us. Listen now, and don’t interrupt.”

  “Our Demon,” Murzy went on unperturbed, “learned that the Daggerhawk Demesne has a very ancient rule of enmity against Chimmerdong Forest.” She let me think about that for a moment, seeing I was about to explode. “They call themselves the Keepers of Chimmerdong. Since the giant flitchhawk is a ... What would you say, Cat? Resident? Numen?”

  “Perhaps numen,” said Cat. “Friend. Guardian. My own guess is, it’s one of the old gods. It is certainly a being which is interested in the forest, which cares about it. You hinted at that, Jinian, when you said the voice of the flitchhawk sounded rather like the voice of the forest. The Dervishes agreed that it was an interesting possibility for investigation.”

  “Yes. It was that which got you initiated, Jinian. They didn’t know either of those things, not about Chimmerdong and the flitchhawk or about Daggerhawk Demesne.

  “Well, we asked our questions, received no answers, but got our answers anyhow. The creature was down below the wagon in the dark, so it couldn’t Beguile us with its eyes. It tried with its voice, but we’re old birds, well schooled against Beguilement.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said, annoyed. “If it hadn’t been for Surefoot rearing, I might not have run in time.”

  “Well, chile,” she said, “if you hadn’t run in time, you wouldn’t have been one we wanted for a seventh, would you?”

  That shut me up, in several ways.

  “We found, also, that those at Daggerhawk have bonded themselves in service to some northern power. Dedrina-Lucir did not know much about this; it seems to be a covert kind of arrangement. Her thalan, Porvius Bloster, and her mother, Dedrina Dreadeye, are the ones through whom the orders came. Dedrina-Lucir had the idea that this liege of theirs, whoever it may be, was also interested in your discomfiture or death. So—you have Porvius as an enemy because you witnessed his embarrassment at the hands of Mendost and then escaped from him; you have the Daggerhawk Demesne because of your friendship with Chimmerdong; and you have this unknown northern power for some unknown reason.

  “When we had found out everything the Basilisk knew, we were going to let it loose, telling it we would act against it if any harm came to you, Jinian. However, when we arrived to turn it loose, we found it gone. It had dug its way out one end of the pit. Since the body they found had Basilisk bites on its hands and arms, we assume it was so enraged during the digging that it bit itself and died of its own venom—though Basilisks are somewhat immune to their own bites. When it was dead it must have changed back to human shape ...”

  A sudden terror hit me, and I shivered. “No,” I said. “I think not.”

  “I saw the body,” said Cat.

  “Did you notice whether the third fingers were as long as the middle fingers?” I asked. “Dedrina had odd hands. I watched her enough to know.”

  They looked at each other uncertainly.

  “You might try to find out,” I said a little bitterly. “The body won’t have reached Daggerhawk yet. Is there an Elator among you?”

  There wasn’t.

  “There’s at least a possibility she’s still alive,” I said. “I feel she is, somehow. Who the dead woman is, I doubt we’ll ever know. Some trader, perhaps. Some pawn from the town. We could ask around, see if anyone is missing.” I had no real hope for this. People came and went all the time.

  “Gamelords,” said Murzy. “If she’s still alive, she’s back at Daggerhawk by now, and she may know who we are and that we’re on to them. We won’t only have her to contend with, but her mother and aunts as well, and there’s a plague of them, you may be sure. Basilisks are clanny and poisonous. I don’t like this.”

  “Be wary, Jinian,” said Cat. “Simply be wary. They are not particularly subtle Gamesmen, and in the beast form they lose intelligence, though they may fool you. It should be good enough simply to be very careful where you go.”

  I had no intention of going anywhere. “I’d like to know what all this is about!”

  “It’s difficult even to make a guess,” said Cat. “Of course, no one is supposed to enter Chimmerdong except the Keepers. No one ever does. They’ve circulated all kinds of stories about it to frighten people off. They don’t want anyone wandering around who has been in Chimmerdong. Not only have you gone in, but you’ve communicated with the forest and come out again. Oh, I don’t know how much that has to do with it, but it has some part. Of that I’m sure.”

  I remembered then, and started to tell her; what Bloster had said to the Basilisk in the forest, but just then we drew up at the house in Xammer and Bets came running out to tell us that Tess was much worse. We all went to her bedroom, where Tess Tinder-my-hand
was lying, looking very old and sleepy, though peaceful. “Ah, chile,” she whispered. “So you’re our seventh. I’m glad. I would look upon the pool once more.”

  Murzy put her hand on my shoulder, keeping me from saying anything. All around the room the others were finding their fragments, digging them out of hems or out of boots. I took mine out of the neck of my tunic, laying it on the table as the others did. Tess leaned from her bed, trembling, to put her own there. She had been holding it in her hand.

  Then each of the six pushed her fragment into alignment, points together, curved line on the outside. Together, they made a circle. When only one wedge was empty, I pushed mine in as well and the separate fragments suddenly became a pool, seeming as deep as the one in the cavern, as round though smaller, flicking with the same light and shadow. Murzy helped Tess out of bed and we knelt there, peering down into the pool where the lights and shadows swam.

  “Still time,” old Tess murmured. “Not yet the shadow.”

  “Not yet the shadow, Tess,” said Cat. “Why, see, there is light there yet, swimming in forever. Never fear, old friend. We’ll balance it yet, we Wize-ards.”

  Then Tess shivered, cried out a little cry, and leaned back, her hand to her chest. They all rushed to help her, leaving me frozen over the little pool. Something had moved there, but I was the only one who saw. The only one who saw the shadow start at one edge of it and swim across the whole thing, black as char, deep as night, leaving at last only a thin, tiny edge of light. From inside that darkness, something flapped within the pool and seemed to look out at me.

  I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing. The shadow flicked away. Then the dams were all around, picking up their pieces, putting them away, putting Tess’s fragment in her hand.

  She died that night with the fragment held tight. When I went in to kiss her good-bye, I saw it was only a bit of metal, gray and dim, with neither light nor shadow in it. Without Tess, we were six again. None of us could look on the pool we carried until we were seven. We had been seven for a very short time.

  There was no way to verify what I thought I had seen. I was sent back to classes. My study group had spent most of the time I had missed on Index review, and as I already knew the Index very well, I didn’t miss much. We had a new Gamesmistress, a Healer named Silkhands. She seemed very pleasant, not much older than most of the students, but with a weary air about her that intrigued me. We started to make friends. I could do that now that Dedrina-Lucir was gone. Without her, things were comparatively peaceful.

  In the nights immediately following my return, however, I several times woke myself with muffled screams, starting straight up in bed, sweating and cold at once, thinking I had heard the horrid hissing of Basilisks or the sly flapping of watchful shadows.

  14

  The fourth or fifth night I wakened deep in the dark hours, I was reminded of myself as a child, bearing Mendost’s abuse and deciding I would rather die. Perhaps it would be better to die now than to wake in this terror at the sound of flapping. My room was high in one of the towers. Perhaps the sound had a cause; perhaps something was really there. Wrapped in a heavy robe against the cool of the night, I left the room silently and went up the cupped stones of the winding tower stairs to the roof.

  As I climbed, I became convinced the sound had not been merely a dream. Dream, yes, but not merely that. Dream grafted upon reality, perhaps, as the gardeners of the House graft blooming stock upon hardy roots, the lesser reality upon the greater. This was a muddy thought, and I took time to untangle it, lost in metaphor, hardly realizing the sound I heard was a sound as real as my own heartbeat. Flap, flap, hiss. Not the hiss of Basilisks; the hiss of wind on feathers. It came from above me, and I turned face up to see giant wings fleeing across the stars.

  “I am here,” I called, as I had called once before in the forest, not loudly, fearful, yet not fearful enough to be silent.

  Wings lifted and folded. The flitchhawk stooped, down, down, wingtips canted to guide its flight, talons stretched before it. Just as it would have dropped upon me, the wings scooped air, and the giant came to rest before me, opening its beak to let out a rush of air scented with the breath of pines.

  “What is it you eat to have a breath so sweet, flitchhawk?” I said, almost in a whisper.

  “What is it you eat to have words so sweet, Star-eye?” and there came the puffed, creaking sound of hawk laughter.

  “I told the Dervish about you, flitchhawk.”

  “We knew you would.”

  “What is it you want now?”

  “You promised the forest, girl.”

  “I promised to do what I could, when I knew what to do, flitchhawk. I haven’t any idea, yet. They have made me a Wize-ard, and I’m no wiser than I was.”

  “Then you must do out of ignorance, girl. You must help the forest.”

  “I said I would, when I knew how, but there’s been no time.”

  “No time,” agreed the flitchhawk in his creaky voice. “No time, Jinian Footseer. Now. Now is the time. This moment.”

  He reached for me with one talon. I stamped my foot, really angry. “I will not be dangled,” I said. “I was dangled last time. It has caused me no end of embarrassment, and I will not be dangled again.”

  He stepped back. If a beak can be said to express astonishment, then the beak on that bird face did. However, the eyes were not angry. Reflective, perhaps. Amused, perhaps, but not angry. “What would you suggest?” he asked. “I cannot have you on my back, for there is no room between my wings on the upstroke.”

  “Wait,” I cried, moved by sudden inspiration. “One moment:” I ran down the stairs again, peeling off the robe and gown as I went, covering half the last corridor bare as a willow twig. There were stout boots in my room and leather trousers, a heavy jacket and some tunics not woven of the thistledown we usually wore. My knife and pack were there as well. I left a message.

  “Take this message to Murzemire Hornloss, house at the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. “Murzy, the flitchhawk has come for me and will not delay. I will return. Make my peace with Vorbold’s House.””

  There, I thought. That ought to cause some consternation. I could imagine its being well read by Vorbold’s House before ever it was taken to Murzy. Still, she would get it in time. Someone had to explain to King Kelver and Joramal. I thought Queen Vorbold would duck that duty if she could.

  Then back up the stairs, stopping at the end of the corridor for one of the great woven baskets that collected our dirty bedclothes and towels. It had long straps because the men who gathered them up carried them on their backs down Laundry Street, amid all the steams and smokes and sounds of washerwomen shouting. I thrust the thing before me onto the tower roof to find the flitchhawk stalking this way and that, peering over the edge from time to time like an owl seeking some small prey. The thought made me shiver. I was the prey in this case.

  “Here,” I told him. “I can sit in this, and you can carry the straps in your claws. It will be easier for both of us.” And it would. The high sides of the basket would allow me to breathe, at least, which I could not remember having done during the trip to the tower dangled from those same claws.

  “In, then, Jinian Footseer,” he creaked, and I plunged down into the basket, thankful there were already a few sheets in the bottom to soften it. The thing jerked, swayed, soared, and I was flying once again high above Xammer, above the towers, the walls, looking down on the ancient bridges, the quiet streets. I could see the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. There were lights in the windows. So late? Were their faces at the window? How could there be? Still, I leaned from the basket at risk of my life and waved. Perhaps they knew, or had been told by their mysterious informant who seemed to know everything.

  Then the town was behind us and we moved south along the river, then west toward the heights. They loomed before us. Flitchhawk began to circle, catching some warmer air from time to time, though he labored with his wings to climb and I knew it was more d
ifficult at night than when the sun warmed the earth and made great updrafts to carry him. We crossed the wide expanse of Middle River, silver glinting on its waves. Lake Yost gleamed to the north. Then came the soft, velvet depths of Long Valley and at last the cliffs, falling away like a sweep of carved wood, gleaming under the knife of the stars. There the forest was before us, trees taller than any I had ever seen or imagined. Leafy tops shifting. Smaller wings circling. A scented breath rising, like the flitchhawk’s breath: field mint and pine; bergamot and rose; webwillow and shatter-grass. Sweet, spicy, catching the breath in one’s throat with memories of lost childhood among the grasses at the brookside. “Chimmerdong,” I cried, unable to help myself. “Chimmerdong.”

  “Jinian,” I imagined the forest calling in return. “Jinian.”

  The flitchhawk folded his great wings and took hold of a treetop, rocking there. “Here,” he creaked. “Here. The ladder is beneath you in the tree.”

  I had climbed out onto the branch and was taking inventory of myself, somewhat windblown but otherwise intact. “See here,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me something. I’ve been dragged from housedoor to cellar, from kingpost to rooftree without a word of explanation. Now, what’s going on here, and what am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Daggerhawk Demesne is killing the forest. You’ll know what to do, Jinian Footseer. Use your eyes, your ears, your feet.” His wings came down, knocking me flat on the branch as usual, and he was up and gone. Far off at the edge of the world I saw the rim of the sun and knew he had not wanted light to disclose him upon the forest roof. Nor did I want to be seen there. I plunged into the leafy wilderness, scrambling about until I found the ladder. It carried me down as it had carried me up. No immediate course of action presented itself. The first thing to do would be to find out what was going on. Perhaps the next thing would be to talk to the forest again. If I could. If it could. If the shadow would allow. Hows and perhapses kept me thoughtful the entire journey down, and I was utterly unsurprised to find both a bunwit and a tree rat at the bottom of the ladder waiting for me. My same ones or other ones? My same ones, I thought. They sat there propped on their hind legs the way they do, bunwit with his pointy ears and tree rat with his round ones, bunwit gray and white, tree rat black and copper, both with round, curious eyes fixed on me as though I had answers. “I’ve got no answers, beasts,” I told them. “But if you know where something is going on, I suggest you show me.”