No, no, not that. No window magic usable in such circumstances. Gamelords, what? Rain splashed wildly around us. Water.
“Proom, is there a river near? Any water? Anywhere near?”
“Under us, yes. lean hear it.”
Of course. There had to be a river there to carry away the filth of the giants, else they would have long since drowned in their own excretions. That was it.
I burrowed into the pack, laying out the few things needful. I did the gestures twice and didn’t get them right either time. My shoulders kept going into spasms. Oh, gods and Gamelords, but I prayed the one I was about to call upon would remember. A boon a d’bor wife had offered me. The d’bor wife, rather. One of the old gods, perhaps. At least some thought so. A boon. Call on me, she had said. Call on me. I bowed my head, thought of water for a few moments, got myself together, and then tried it again.
“All things of the sea are yours, great and small, of river and lake, of pond and stream. I call upon you, d’bor wife, for the boon you promised me.” Nothing. Only the raging of Storm Grower from the outer cavern, the stertorous breathing of Dream Miner. Nothing.
And then a rivulet running beside my feet, corning from a gap in the wall. Rock breaking free to make it larger. A moist echoing space full of the sound of waters. Salt. The smell of tidal flats. The cry of gulls and the crash of waves in my ears. And with all this the harsh music of a well-remembered voice.
“What would you have, Jinian Footseer?”
“I would have this cavern flooded, d’bor wife. Filled from top to bottom so that those creatures within may be drowned.”
“So be it, Jinian. I will fulfill the boon I promised you.” The Shadowperson had been standing beside me, watching me, seemingly unafraid. Well, this was Proom, Mavin’s friend. Proom, Peter’s guide. He had seen strange and mighty things before, this one.
“Out,” I said to him. “We’ve got to get out, and all your people as well.”
“No,” he cried, anguished. “There are things here we must take.”
Things he must take? What? There were no victims left. He pointed to the far wall, where his people were dashing about, calling to one another.
“Too late!” I pointed at the roof. A stream had broken through and was flooding down onto the sapphire heap where the Shadowpeople were at work. In the intermittent flashes, I saw what it was. A pile of blue crystals, a hill of them, millions. A shout of dismay was all I had time for, echoed by the little people. Then we were all running up the twisty stone corridors toward the light. Behind us the storm raged and the water rose.
When we came into the light, it was into the heart of the storm. Hail fell around us in great, white boulders, and the wind raged against the night, throwing huge trees across the sky like arrows. We crouched in the entrance to the cavern, me, Proom, a dozen of his people bent protectively over their sacks of crystals, all staring with disbelief into the night.
Storm Grower did not die easily. For hours the storm raged. Toward morning it began to wane.
Then, as we watched in fear, a fog spewed from the hill above us and took the form of the sending; screaming with laughter, it dwindled into the east.
“Is she drowned?” asked Proom. “Is the great giant Deviless drowned for all?”
“I think so. Drowned or eaten. One or both.”
“Then perhaps it is a good trade. Long and long ago did great Ganver send me seeking these things. Blue, he said, as a summer sky. A great thing of Lom, of the land our parent, a great thing misused and betrayed and hidden away.
“’Find them, Proom,” he told me. “Go into the world and find them where they have hidden that we may undo the wrong which had been done.” So I sought, long and long but fruitlessly, and returned to my people to find they had been abducted by Blourbast the Ghoul. Then was the song of Mavin made. She was a young girl then. And now you come. And you are the friend of Peter, Mavin’s son.”
I apologized to him, wearily, sincerely. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see the crystals were there until after I’d called for the boon. I didn’t know you were looking for them.”
“Who would have thought to look in the lair of the giants? Who would have thought the evil ones would have brought them there?” He sighed, calling to his people. The storm had almost abated. “I must take these to Ganver. Farewell, Jinian, Peter’s friend.”
“A moment, Proom,” I begged him. “Will you leave a few of the crystals with me?” He assented, pouring a small heap of them into my hands. Then he and his people ran off into the morning, leaping over the fallen trees, flitting like birds into the shelter of the forests—that of it which was still standing. There were a thousand questions I could have asked. A thousand answers he could have given me. I could talk to them. Mavin couldn’t. Queynt couldn’t. But I could. A thousand questions, Jinian, I told myself. At least that. But those I should have asked them of were gone.
CHAPTER NINE
I had no need to choose which way to go. The Duke’s party had gone back to Fangel, obedient to the instructions of the giants. Those instructions, once set in motion, would not have been stopped by the giants’ deaths. So, one must go to Fangel once more, brave that strange city once more, see what could be done to stop the amethyst crystals going south.
I wished for some way of getting there more quickly. If I had only been a Shifter. Or if Peter were with me.
“If wishes were geese, we would all have featherbeds,” I told myself sternly. “Come, girl, what is the matter with you?” The matter was I was exhausted, hungry, battered, worn. I knew the feeling well. I had felt it before in Chimmerdong and was too experienced in it to give it houseroom. I will eat as I go, I told myself. I will rest when I must. My body did not believe these promises, but the rest of me calmed down somewhat. I took time to fish out the Dagger of Daggerhawk and slit a seam from the pocket with it, returning it to a more sensible location, cursing all the leagues I had not needed the thing and could have had it in my hand, only to have needed it the one time it could not be reached.
I climbed upward from the entrance to the cavern, over tortuous drifts of fallen timber, through slides of mud and rock, around piles of hail so high they looked like snowdrifts, wondering how long I had spent in that underground warren. How far ahead of me were the Duke and Valearn and Huldra? Huldra?
Huldra. A shiver down the spine. A hard clutch at the stomach, pain behind the throat. It was Huldra who had caught me in the cavern. Huldra who had been ready for me, expecting me. How?
There had been a Seer, of course. I vaguely remembered seeing a Seer. A Seer in the employ of the giants.
Somewhere down in that underground warren right now there was a Seer, perhaps more than one, alive or dead, who had seen Jinian’s part in the battle on the Wastes of Bleer. And likely that same Seer had seen Jinian following the Duke of Betand into the cavern of the giants?
Likely, yes. And once seen, the vision had been used to trap me. When the Oracle had taken them aside, he had told Huldra of it, told her to make herself ready. Those spells had been rehearsed beforetime. The ingredients had been laid ready to make the paralyzing smoke. Certain creatures had been posted in readiness to bind me.
I dimly remembered Dedrina demanding to have me for her own. The Oracle had said no. No. The giants had wanted me for another purpose. To feel fear, panic, pain, humiliation. Was it indeed the giants who wanted me for that? Or had they been led to that thought by the Oracle itself?
I reflected on this. How they must have hated mankind, mankind who had created them so monstrously, no less monstrously than the pig I had met in Chimmerdong. How they must have fumed and plotted through the centuries; how they must have welcomed the power that came to them, slowly, the hateful destruction moving out from them like a cancer. What did they desire in the end? That all men should be enslaved? That, at least. That all men be made as horrified, as panic-stricken, as humiliated as they themselves had once been? Oh, yes. They would have left me tied to a pole a long time.
Long enough to wring every drop of agonized apprehension from me.
But, as it happened, they had left me a little too long.
Huldra believed I was dead. Still, Huldra was more than a Witch.
And I had seen Huldra’s sending go screaming back to her, out of that dripping cavern. What might Huldra learn from that?
“I hope it drops a washtub full of blood on her,” I muttered, too tired to ill wish more usefully. “She’ll be there in Fangel. Likely she is able to unspell any spell I set. Unless I can come up with something she’d have no knowledge of at all. Oh, Jinian, why did you decide to be a Wize-ard?” There was no answer to this. The Jinian who might have answered had crawled between two sheltering trees and had fallen asleep.
I woke some hours later, feeling more hopeful, able to go on. I went past the place Bleem had been.
There was nothing left of it but trash, and the remnants were awash in shadow. Where did it come from? Where had it come from so recently? Where had it lain, waiting? At least those poor unfortunates had had a chance to escape. I wondered if they had made it to safety. If any place could be called safe in these days. The farther I went, the fewer trees were fallen, the fewer landslides in the path. Storm Grower had not reached far with her destruction; she had probably been unconscious much of the time. I tried to feel some pity, could not.
The way became easier, drier. I passed a scattering of krylobos feathers.
“Back and forth,” I groaned aloud. “Back and forth. Like some backlewheep, bat, bat, bat.”
“Jinian?” The voice was disbelieving.
“Who?” I demanded, putting my back to a tree. “Who is it?”
“Jinian?” No mistaking the joy in it this time. “It’s Peter!” Something large and furry slid down the tree, encompassed me in an enormous embrace, half smothered me before beginning to Shift into a Peter shape. “I thought you were lost forever.” He kissed me; I so surprised I could do nothing about it. He shook me. I did nothing about that, either.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be on your way south, taking the blue crystals to Mavin!”
“They’re going. Queynt and Chance are taking them, with those two from oversea and their monster in the basket.”
“But you ...”
“But I wasn’t about to lose you, stupid girl. I love you, Jinian Footseer. After we found you were gone, I sat there for hours trying to convince myself it was all for the best. You’re not easy to get along with, you know ...”
“I’m not easy! I’m not!”
“That’s what I said, you’re not. Neither am I, but we both knew that to start with. It doesn’t matter, though. I love you, and that’s all. I’ll just have to make the best of it.”
“But. . . but. ...”
“I know. It would have been easier to just let you go. I know why you went. At least partly. It was my fault. Some of it. But what decided me was thinking about Mavin and Himaggery, you know. They love each other and always have. The first time I ever heard my mother say his name, I knew she loved him. The first time I ever saw him look at her, I knew he loved her. She risked her life to save him, you know. Risked mine, too, come to that, though I was a bit too undeveloped to know anything about it. But he never really said the right things to her. And she never said the right things to him. And so they spent most of their lives apart and the time they spent together they spent fighting with each other. So, I said no. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t just let you go, and when I found you I wouldn’t sit around saying nothing. Even if I said all the wrong things and had to take them back.”
“Sylbie,” I said stuttering. “The baby.”
“Oh, well, yes. There is that. Stupid girl left the wagon and followed me. I didn’t catch her at it until it was too late to send her back. Then the first time I Shifted she went all hysterical.”
“But she ... it’s your baby.”
“Yes. It’s my baby. Which was begot, you might say, in pursuance of duty. Now I’m not going to do what Mavin would, which is not talk about it. And I’m not going to do what Himaggery would, which is talk about something else. You’ve got to understand this …
“It was in Betand. They called it “the City That Fears the Unborn”. Some Necromancer had come there, got drunk, and summoned up a ghost. Instead of being a ghost of something dead, though, it was the ghost of someone unborn. So, every visitor to the city had to beget if at all possible in order to get the unborn born as soon as possible. You understand?”
“I don’t understand what an unborn could do to send a whole city so silly.”
“Well, Jinny, you’re going to have to take my word for it. The howling alone would have driven you crazy. It was a real haunting, no mistake about it. Half the people in the town had lost their minds. Well, so there I was, riding up to Betand, all innocence, trying to find out something about where Mavin was, and the next thing I knew I was in this room with Sylbie, having been instructed to beget. She was crying and carrying on, and I was scared to death. See, I’m being honest. If you don’t like that, tough.
“It was more Trandilar who did it than me. I didn’t know anything about sex at all, Jinian. Not a shred. I knew it would be awful, so I summoned up Trandilar, and she actually did all the lovemaking and so forth. Of course Sylbie fell for that. Who wouldn’t? I would have myself. Trandilar is—well, you know what Trandilar is. So, we begot a baby, which was what we were supposed to do. As it happens, it’s likely the very baby who was haunting Betand. At least, so Dorn said when we put the haunting down. He’s turned out to be a very nice baby, but I don’t love Sylbie, I never did. It would be very easy to love the baby, and that would be pleasant, but not if it means giving up Jinian. If we can work out something including Jinian and the baby, very good. What I got to thinking was, suppose the baby turns out Shifter? Sylbie will fall apart.”
“She really had hysterics when you Shifted?”
“Full-fledged, whooping and screaming hysterics. All I did was a snakey little thing to get to the top of a tree, and it set her off.”
I had seen some of Peter’s snakey little things and was not entirely unsympathetic with Sylbie. “Where is she now?”
“She’s up this trail, a league or so. In a cave which I dug for her—took pombi shape to do that, and she didn’t like that, either—until I could get back. She’s got food and water.”
I sighed, sagging back into his arms. It would be nice just to stay here, close held. Spend.the night, perhaps, cuddled in furry arms in the hollow of a tree. Too much had happened. Too much was going on.
Too much was going on. Exactly. I drew him down beside me and told him the tale.
“Giants? I never dreamed there were real giants. And Proom?” he whispered when I had done. “Really, Proom? He’s like some kind of fairy godmother following my family around. Mavin, then me, then you. Gods, those amethyst crystals. We’ve got to warn them. They have no idea.”
“None of them have any inkling at all. Not Himaggery, nor Mavin, nor any of the rest of them. But there’s more to it than that.”
I told him then what I suspected. What I’d been worrying over in my head ever since we saw the little crystal mine outside Fangel and talked to old Buttufor.
“I’m afraid it’s true, Peter. Everything the giants said only confirmed it. Up until then, I thought they might be responsible for those yellow crystals, but they’re not. They were as frightened by them as I am.”
His face was as drawn and hopeless as I’m sure mine had been many times in recent days. “What can we do?”
“I don’t know. It may be too late to do anything, but we have to try. That was the lesson I learned in Chimmerdong, Peter. No matter how hopeless it looks, you still have to try. I got a few more of the blue crystals from Proom. You’ll have to take them south with you. Warn Himaggery and Mavin and all the rest. Then suggest to them in the strongest possible way that they stop arguing and get the hundred thousand out of the cavern. And when each on
e wakes, he or she must have a sliver of this crystal in his mouth. If the ones I have here aren’t enough, then more must be found in Beedie’s land. Perhaps Mavin can get them, and perhaps some of her kindred would help.”
“You’re going with me.”
“It would slow you down. I hope you can take some shape that flies, for that’s what’s needed now. You’ve got to go south. Gamelords, how I prayed for a Shifter outside that cavern.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“You have to leave me. The warning must be brought to our people, Peter. As soon as possible, delaying for nothing at all. I’ll meet you when you return. Ah. Where? Listen, if you follow this trail down to the northwest, past where the village of Bleem was, you’ll come to a trail leading north. The trail forks. The right-hand one goes to the giants, and the left-hand one goes up over the mountain by a huge red pillar of stone. I’ll meet you there, by the red stone, with or without Sylbie. I’ll go get her. Maybe I can find someone to take care of her and the baby, bring them south to Mavin. If not, I’ll keep them with me, but they should be taken farther from Fangel. I don’t like the idea of the baby that close to Valearn.”
He wasn’t listening. But then, he hadn’t been reared on nursery stories of Valearn. “I don’t want to leave you! I’ll carry you with me.”
“I don’t want you to leave me. But you can’t carry me and Sylbie and the baby without wasting time, and we can’t just leave them here alone.” Briefly I let myself melt against him, let all the turbulent feelings I had quelled for season after season burgeon between us until a new kind of storm began to batter at me, melting me. “I don’t want you to leave me. And whichever of us gets to the pillar first is to wait for the other one—forever, if need be. I don’t want you to leave me, but I have to ask you to.”
“Jinian, I swear by all the gods and most of the new ones, if we get out of this ...”
The End of the Game Page 38