The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Tree rat started for me. I picked up a branch. “Just for the record, rat, if you bite me even a little, even one time, there will be one dead rat.” He backed off, surprised. I still had teeth marks on my rear from last time.

  They looked at each other, conferring, I thought. Perhaps they did. At any rate, we went off through the trees at an easy pace, one or the other scouting ahead, then coming back to be sure I still followed. It was not long before we heard a sound. Both of them came back, close to me, pressing against my legs.

  “That it?” I asked. They pressed closer, ears cocked toward the noise. It was a whuffling, snorting, growling noise, with crashes and smashes in it.

  We were on a rounded hill with an abrupt rocky ledge above a clearing. We peered between the rocks, seeing nothing but shrubs and grasses. The noise was near, perhaps behind a screen of trees. Nothing. Then a glitter, as of sun on polished bone. Then again. Crash of branches. Gouts of soil and turf flying, a small tree toppled, snorting, and then ...

  I said, half to myself, “What in the name of the Hundred Devils is that?” The beasties only pushed closer to me, not answering.

  The thing had come into the light. Great snout over curved tusks. Little pig eyes. Sharp pig hooves. It came and kept coming. Three pairs of legs, four, five. I counted silently, in awe, not even aware I was counting. When I got to fifty, I stopped counting. The thing had at least a hundred legs, like a centipede. “Centipig,” I breathed to my cowering beasties, watching the turf fly in solid, muddy slabs. Champing and whuffling, the centipig ravaged its way out of the clearing and down the hill. “By Dealpas, the Doleful,” I hissed to myself.

  Familiar voices followed the pig-path into the clearing. Porvius Bloster. In a moment he was beneath me, he and another man, both carrying tanks with hoses and tubes. We use similar tanks in the Stone-flight Demesne to spray the sammit seedlings with water. Both carried outlandish, pig-snouted masks in their hands.

  “Give it a year,” Porvius shouted, waving his hands at the destruction around him. “Give it a year and it will have flattened half of Chimmerdong.”

  “It would be faster and surer if you had more than one,” the man with him said. At first I had not recognized him, but then I realized it was the pursuivant who had corne to Vorbold’s House seeking Dedrina-Lucir. Cholore? If he were Reading, he would find me. Not likely, though. Who would expect Jinian to have left the luxury of Vorbold’s House to return to this muddy, tangled place? I eased up one eye, peering through a crack.

  “The price for this one was high enough. It was expensive. Twelve little girls from the Demesne, two of them offspring of my own. Plus much ore from the hills, as well as fruit and herbs and rarities. Still, the Magicians will make me another if needed.”

  “It is mechanical, then? A device?”

  “No, it lives. The Magicians make such things in their secret place to the west. Monsters. In their monster labs. That’s what they call the place, you know. A monster lab.”

  “And when the monster is finished with Chimmerdong,” said the Pursuivant in an insinuating voice, “how do you get rid of it? I would not want that roaming the edges of the Daggerhawk. It is long since you have repaired the walls.”

  Porvius shrugged, a trifle uncomfortably, I thought. “Oh, they will give us a thing. Perhaps another plague, like the forest edge plague. The monster will not cross that plague. They will give us something to kill it with.”

  “And then another thing to kill the thing that kills it, no doubt,” said the Pursuivant in his sly voice. “For another dozen girl-children from the Demesne. For more ore. For more herbs and rarities. Oh, I have heard of these Magicians. Gifters, aren’t they? If one can survive their gifts.”

  “No one has died of the forest plague,” Bloster said. “I told you it was perfectly safe to use.”

  “You told me, Bloster. Just as you told Bankfire, the Sentinel, and Warlock Wambly. And the family who farmed at the northern fringes. Still, they’re all dead, aren’t they.”

  “Disease. Some disease, is all.”

  “A disease the Healers couldn’t fix. Oh, I’ll help you spray your forest edge plague, Bloster. It hasn’t killed you, yet. But don’t ask me to stay about where it’s been.”

  The two of them went off, we three quiet creatures sneaking along behind. We came to the edge of the forest quite soon. Here the mushy, fungus look of the forest edge had been encroached upon by a lively green. Bloster and the Pursuivant put on their masks and began to spray something from the tanks upon the new growth, something oily, glistening, which settled in a deadly film on the green, smoking slightly, turning it black in the instant. When they were done, the two of them turned back the way they had come. I didn’t follow. Instead, the bunwit and I approached the sprayed places and sniffed at them. It was a dead smell, acrid as burned metal. All the places they had sprayed smoked thinly, and the forest trembled at the edge as though wounded.

  I walked aside from the place and plopped myself down on a green hillock. “Well now,” I advised the beasties, they being the only audience I had. “We have one hugeous pig. We have some stuff that’s been sprayed at the forest edges. Forest is hurt, no question of that. The stuff at the edges holds the forest in, eh, bunwit? That’s clear. It makes an edge. A dam. A dike. Hrum te dundun.”

  The problem seemed to have no corner I could get a finger under. Kill the pig? Possible, I supposed, but then what? Porvius Bloster would merely come again with another pig, a longer pig, a millipig, perhaps. He would sell a hundred little girls from his Demesne (and at this thought I shivered, well able to imagine myself one of them, sold into some unknown horror at a tender age) to buy another, more monstrous creature.

  Could one kill Porvius Bloster? Possibly. It would not solve the matter, however. The Basilisks of Daggerhawk would, presumably, send someone else. Their reasons would still be unknown, their motivations—for pig and Bloster both—dim and uncertain. In this same forest a year before, Bloster had said there was Game against me, personally, directed by another than himself. Who might that be? And why? I wondered if it had anything at all to do with the forest.

  I needed more understanding of what was going on here. The flitchhawk had not been helpful. The dams had told me nothing of reasons—indeed, I doubted they knew any. Someone, somewhere, knew more. Of this I was certain. That person had not helped me, however. Perhaps that person did not know I needed help. Or knew and did not care. Or knew, I said to myself, and cared, but was prohibited from helping me.

  “Oh, Jinian,” I said to myself, annoyed with this endless round of speculation. “What matter who knows what? They, whoever they are, are not here and Jinian Footseer is. Now get on with it.”

  The question was, what? Even if I were to figure out something to do, I could not be certain it would be the right thing or a good thing unless I knew more. Even as I told myself this, I had no doubt at all that the forest knew what needed to be done, if the forest were allowed to speak.

  Well now, what did I have to use? Eh? Door magic. Window magic. Bridge magic. Herbary. Summoning. Come now. I sat in the midst of the forest and could not think of a thing. No doors. No windows. No bridges. Herbary all around and simply not useful. Summoning, yes. I could use Where Old Gods Are. Assuming that category applied to the forest. That could be done, but I needed something to control what answered the summons and keep the shadow out. Window magic once again?

  “Was ever a dwelling in this forest, bunwit? Eh? Castle, keep, lodge, stable? Ever any dwelling here, great or humble? Any bridge, any structure? Eh? Two stones on top of each other?”

  Bunwit had his head cocked as though listening. Since he couldn’t be understanding me, he must have been getting his information from elsewhere. Not about castles or keeps, no. About whereness. Abruptly he turned and began hopping away through the trees, so quickly it was hard for me to keep up.

  “Easy, bunwit,” I called. “I’ve only got two legs,” at which he gave me an astonished look. I’d forgotten,
so had he. At least, only two used to hop with. We whipped off through the trees, up slope and down, underbrush tangling my legs and ferns crushing in my path. We came to a place. It had that look about it, you know, as though something had been there, that slightly unnatural look as of ancient stones, buried. I knelt to scrape at the surface, disclosing pale stones beneath the moss. The pile stretched away on either side, higher at the center.

  What had it been, once? I walked around it, in it, on it, feeling a kind of tingle, not unlike the feeling in my feet when walking the Old Road. I lay down in the middle of it and shut my eyes. Tingle. I listened. I half shut my eyes and peered at it and out of it at other things.

  There was a very minor magic to use in cases like this. Taking a deep breath, I turned myself in the proper whirl, made the proper gestures—catching a glimpse of astonished bunwit in the process—shut my eyes, and did the ‘deep look”. I wasn’t very good at deep looking then. I got better later on. Margaret was the best among us seven. She could see inside mountains to the ore, Murzy said. Well, no matter. I deep looked, tilting the look backward the way Bets Batter-eye had tried to show me, back, back ...

  To catch a glimpse, only a glimpse, of a strange building, doors wider at the top, high-domed, with sweet-smelling smoke rising inside, and a long wing under the trees where travelers might rest, and funny ... funny-looking travelers coming and going ... not people. Others.

  It was gone. What had I seen? A kind of temple? An inn? An inn, perhaps. Nothing inimical, certainly. Nothing hurtful. A restful place. A quiet one. So.

  The pile of earth-covered stone before me was low, long, obviously deep-buried. I had no idea whether I could move enough of it to see the structure. The beasties seemed to have some understanding of what I needed, so I tried that. “Bunwit, I need help. I need diggers. Builders. Handy creatures. Do you think you could find some?”

  He had his head cocked again, listening. One could have thought he understood me, so intense was his appearance of concentration. However, he did not offer to go find several Tragamors for me. I estimated it would take three or four, at least, to get the stones moved. With a Sorcerer or two standing by to hold power for them.

  Sighing, I turned away and began to shift uncovered stones. Many of them were too large for me to move at all, but I could lever the smaller ones where I wanted them, and each one moved away gave access to others beneath. In order to use window magic to control Where Old Gods Are, there would have to be at least two standing walls and a window. Actually, four walls would be better, and it would need a roof. Window magic, even with ruined windows, required the sense of enclosure, a thing built that opened upon a world not built. There are more Wize-ardly words to describe it, but the sense of it is that. With everything tumbled, moss-grown, and earth-covered, it was very difficult to find corners.

  Bunwit had gone. They are not notable for their building skills, though they are good diggers. Perhaps he was tired, or hungry. I went on moving rocks. I thought I had found a corner hidden under a tumble of shards that looked as though a heavy roof of tiles had fallen in.

  Then I heard sounds around me. I wiped sweat out of my eyes and looked at them, a dozen furry bodies at the center of the ruin, pushing and shoving with many heaves and grunts. Flood-chucks! Great, fluffy flood-chucks, moving earth for all they were worth.

  “Flood-chuck a chuck a chuck,” I called to them, bowing. All of them stopped what they were doing with a chuckle of appreciation, lining up to bow in return. Then we got back to work. They watched what I did and did likewise, digging out stones and earth from the old rooms, uncovering the old walls. Bunwit sat on the top of an earth pile, supervising. I waved a thank-you at him and went on working.

  About midafternoon we stopped digging and wandered about the place, peering through the openings. We had found half a dozen rooms and doors. One of them had an almost complete fireplace as well, with an intact hearth and three walls half-standing around it, so we had concentrated on that. The chucks were experimenting with dry stone courses to raise the walls higher. One of the walls had a window, almost complete, with sill, sideposts, lintel. It looked out one side of the ruin onto a quiet glade where lily flowers bloomed. We were unlikely to do better.

  “Here,” I called, gesturing around me. “Here. Roof. Walls. Floor.” Gesturing, sketching with my hands. Bunwit squeaked and ran to get out of the way.

  The flood-chucks built the walls higher, cursing in their own grunting tongue as they worked, telling jokes to one another, pausing to laugh and scratch their bellies, like fat women who had just taken off tight clothing. They grinned at me when I thought so, showing two great chisel-blade teeth. When the walls were high enough, they gnawed small trees down and dragged them over the walls to make the roof. Tree rat came down with several friends to weave thatch. I’m not sure how raintight it might have been, but it looked very roofish when they were finished. The flood-chucks cleared the room down to the stone floor, and I swept that with a bunch of straw bound to a stick.

  I rigged a sapling rod above the window and hung my rain cape on it as a curtain. For a time, I thought we would have to build a door, but bunwit found one buried under a section of roof, virtually dry and un-rotted. We propped it in its place and gathered armloads of wood to pile beside the hearth. Then the flood-chucks bowed at me, and I at them, and yet again, while bunwit fidgeted on his mound, until at last, surfeited by these courtesies, they departed, chatting with one another as they went.

  I had been surprised—and, admittedly, annoyed—when I had learned that much of any magic is simple hard work. Muscle and sweat, no different from any pawn digging in a field to grow grain. “All magics must have a starting place,” Murzy had admonished me. “Did you think it an easy thing?” I had thought it an easy thing and was ashamed to admit it. Wize-ardry in all the old tales seems a fine and effortless exercise, like the soar of a flitchhawk, without labor and certainly without sweat. During those early years, I had assumed a day would come when I could stand back from the work and say to myself, “Now the fun begins.”

  Not so, according to Murzy. “All magics build upon something, one’s own work or the work of others,” she had said in that firm, unequivocal voice. “’Wall, window, door, roof, bridge or floor, garden or field, each has its yield.’ So we say, we Wize-ards. And we do not destroy what we find already built for our use. There are those who will destroy the work—or the lives—of others to make their own magics, but we do not speak of them unless we must.”

  Well, though I’d received some help, I’d done a great deal of it myself and destroyed nothing in the process. I had earned my window magic and summoning.

  Dusk had come and I was starved. Bunwit arrived with a cheekpouch full of fruit and nuts. Tree rat showed up with more, and they cheeked at each other about who should feed me. Finally, dark came and they went off into it, leaving me alone.

  “All right, forest,” I whispered to myself. “Let’s give it a try.”

  Leaving the curtain open, I built a fire upon the hearth. Certain things from my pack were laid out there, in a certain form. A pattern was drawn on the windowsill. Then I leaned from that sill and called, “Come into the light, the warm. Come into comfort. Come where fire is. Come where no shadow may come. Come in such guise as you choose, such shape as you will. Come, forest, come. Where Old Gods Are, a suppliant waits.”

  Then I sat down to feed the fire. The summoning was done. It was not long before something began to gather at the window. I fed the fire and kept very still. It was something pale, I think, and tremulous. Something a little clammy, like the night. Something twiggish, leafish. Which reached across the sill and found purchase in the room. Which entered. Which shook itself into shape and stood up, a little taller than I. Twiggish. Yes.

  Staying very quiet and calm, I went past it to the window and closed the curtain carefully, closing every gap, laying small stones on the bottom of it to hold it in place.

  “Come nigh the fire,” I whispered. �
��Yet not too nigh.” It sat down near me, cross-legged, holding its hands to the fire in imitation of mine. “You are the forest,” I whispered. “Aren’t you?”

  “Forest,” said the twiggy thing in a breeze voice, scarcely articulated. It turned its leafy head to the window behind it. If it had had eyes, it would have looked at the curtain there.

  “By the law of dwelling, the shadow cannot enter here.” It was true. Only what was summoned might enter dwelling when fire was present if windows and doors were shut and the proper words pronounced. So all the Wize-ards of the world believed. So I trusted. “Gathers,” it said, moving its hands as windtossed branches move. “Out there.”

  “Out there, Not here.” It was silent for a time, then said, “Hears.”

  “No. It cannot hear.” I was less certain about this, but it seemed logical. I had laid a closure upon the window when the curtain was closed, a closure upon the roof when the tree rats had finished with it, as well as one on the door when we had propped it in place. “No. It cannot hear.”

  Still the thing sat, shifting its shape slightly as its leaves moved, as its parts moved. It was one thing mostly, but could easily be another. And it did not speak. When I had been here last, the forest had spoken clearly. Why, now ... ?

  As though it read my thought, it pointed to itself. “Small,” it said.

  I nodded. Yes. It was small. It had to be small to avoid notice, perhaps.

  It pointed at the window. “Large, out there.”