The End of the Game

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Shaggan wasn’t lying. He really didn’t know what he’d been supposed to do as a spy, so after a time he returned to duty—or, shall I say, enlisted for duty since he couldn’t remember having been on duty before. I took the time to search his cubby down in the guardsmen’s dormitory, and it had nothing in it but what one would expect. No amethyst crystals lurking in the bottom of his weapons chest or the hems of his tunics.

  It occurred to me then he might have been a decoy, someone for us to discover to keep our minds off some other, more important one. Yes. It really did occur to me. And I did little or nothing about it!

  Barish shared my suspicion, however, so the Demons kept doggedly at it, and so did I. Several days went by, and the feeling in the place grew noticeably better. Little cliques of men who had spent their time twitting one another a few days before, hands on knives and false smiles on lips, were now sitting side by side at their meals, talking over old battles and more recent conquests, laughing behind their hands. I followed one of the Demons into the bathhouse—I’d known him for several years, a good, reliable man—to ask him if he’d found anything at all, and he merely shrugged. “Nothing except what you’d expect, Peter. Many of them had bets riding on who would come out on top, Himaggery or Barish, but they’re starting to feel sheepish about it.”

  I went down to the orchard to roust Mavin out of her tree shape, which she had reassumed immediately after meeting and approving of Bryan. “Take him back now,” she’d said, “and come rouse me if anything significant happens. I’ll want to take the boy to Battlefox the Bright Day when it’s safe to do so, and I’ll wager that girl will be glad to see him go.” I wasn’t so sure of that. Sylbie seemed to dote on Bryan, though she never mentioned his Shifter Talent. It was almost as though if she didn’t admit it existed, it wouldn’t exist.

  “Himaggery’s getting ready for some countermove,” I told Mavin. “Don’t get too deep into your bark because I think they’re going to need you.” She promised to come out of tree shape each morning and evening, just to check on what was going on, and then went back to fruiting. These days, when I remember her doing that, I think it must have had some symbolic value for her. It certainly didn’t look very exciting to me, but it seemed to have some essential meaning for her.

  The next morning Barish said he felt secure enough about the men to tell them at least some of the truth. He addressed them, twenty or so at a time, in the practice yard, telling them to be on the lookout for poisonous crystals and report any suspicious activity. Aside from a little muttering, the men took it well enough. The blowup we’d been afraid of didn’t happen. No Barish follower began conniving against Himaggery; no Himaggery man started fulminating against Barish. We took a deep breath, figuratively speaking, and began to plan countermeasures.

  Himaggery had heard from me everything that Jinian or I knew about the shadow, and Mavin had undoubtedly told him long since what she knew. He did not tell me what he planned—as was probably wise. The fewer who knew the better—but I knew he and Barish had some plan to use against the shadow.

  Thus it was with a quite unwarranted feeling of security that I answered a knock at my door late that evening to find Sylbie in tears. “Oh, Peter, Bryan’s gone and I can’t find him anywhere.”

  I tisked and there-there’d, thinking the baby had turned into a gorbling haunt and would be back as soon as he got hungry enough, but Sylbie said no. “He wasn’t hungry, or tired, or wet. He just toddled off. I went in to get a hot cup of tea—we were sitting in the garden near the gatehouse enjoying the evening—and when I came out he was gone. Oh, Peter, do come help find him.”

  So I hemmed and hawed and put on a cloak against the evening chill and pulled my boots back on and went yawning off beside her, never for a moment thinking that the baby was into anything more serious than an infant’s exploration. We searched the garden, then Sylbie put her hand on my shoulder, saying, “What’s that?”

  At first I heard nothing, then a far-off whine, like a lost cat. I Shifted bat ears inconspicuously, glad of the darkness, and heard it again. It was coming from a drainage ditch that wound back under the wall to let the water from the distant Porridge Pot hot spring warm this end of the garden. It was a low, narrow ditch about Bryan’s size but certainly not Sylbie’s or mine. She started to cry, and I told her firmly to go inside.

  “I’ll get him,” I said. She said something strange about coming with me. “You can’t,” I said in a no-nonsense voice. “You won’t fit in there.”

  At which point her mouth pursed the way it did whenever she had to think of my being a Shifter, and she turned and walked off toward the gatehouse. I remember thinking at that moment that when I returned later with Bryan, I wanted to check the locks on the gate. There were parapets with watchmen on both the buttresses. Anyone approaching the gate would be seen long before he came close. Still, I remember thinking of it even as I slithered down into eel shape and entered the ditch.

  The thin whine came intermittently, strangely echoing. I wondered how the boy could have come this far. The water was uncomfortably warm, not really hot but not at all pleasant, and the ditch reeked of chemicals. Then I saw light ahead and realized he must have actually come out beneath the wall. Remarkable. Quite remarkable.

  Once out from under the wall, the ditch ran through a swale of low bushes, and I took my own shape to slog through this morass, following the sound, very close now.

  I had no idea where the smoke came from, or the chanting, or the strange lights that seemed to go off inside my head. I tried to Shift and couldn’t, tried to move and couldn’t, tried to speak and couldn’t. From behind me on the parapets I heard a guard shouting something that seemed senseless at the time: “Lady Sylbie, Lady Sylbie, do not leave the Demesne!” A sentinel’s horn went tara-tara-tara whoop-whoop-whoop, as it does to raise the alarm. A voice was chanting something about the dark betraying and the blood holding fast. The last thought I had before everything went very dark and quiet was that we had looked in all the wrong places for the real spy.

  I woke in a tent. The canvas flapped in a night wind, and little gusts of smoke came to my nose like warning signals. I lay quiet, not letting anyone know I was conscious, trying very hard to Shift the nails of my hand to claws. The hands were tied behind me. I didn’t need to see them to know that the Shift wasn’t happening. Some geas had been laid on me, some preventive enchantment or binding spell. There was a low, bubbling noise in the place, and it was some time before I realized it was Sylbie’s voice.

  “You’re sure he won’t ever Shift again,” she was saying. “You promised me he’d never be able to Shift again.”

  The voice that answered was amused, sinister. It was the Witch, Huldra. “Oh, I assure you, girl. He’ll not Shift again.”

  “And you promised he’d not see that Jinian anymore. Just me. Just me and Bryan.” Her voice was a little petulant, more than a little confused. “I’m sure he’ll not see Jinian ever again.” My heart almost stopped as the sense of the words came through. This was the Witch Huldra telling the absolute, literal truth. What had Jinian called the technique? Truth spelling! Twisting what the listener wanted to hear so that one could promise in words without promising in fact. Truth spelling. That was what had occupied Sylbie’s time on the road, why she had been so late in arriving at the Bright Demesne. She had been truth spelled into betraying me!

  Now a new voice, Dedrina, the Basilisk. “In return for our services in this matter, we asked you to find out where certain people are. You recall?”

  “Of course. I asked Peter and he told me. Mertyn is in Schooltown. No one knows where Mavin is. She went off somewhere, and no one knows how to find her.”

  Dedrina made a spitting noise.

  “It’s true,” said Sylbie. “Evidently she’s always done that. Sometimes she goes away for years. Who else? Oh, yes. Jinian is up north near the Maze. Peter doesn’t know exactly where she is now. That’s true, too. I listened outside the door when Peter was telling
Himaggery all about it, and he really doesn’t know.”

  “How did she escape from Storm Grower?” asked the Witch.

  “Storm Grower? Oh, the giants. I don’t know. Perhaps Peter told them when he was here last, but he hasn’t spoken of it this time. At least not when I’ve been able to hear. Perhaps she and Peter have had a falling-out.” Sylbie seemed very satisfied at this thought.

  “I would think you might have more gratitude to one who saved you from the hunt in Fangel.” said the Witch. “You do not seem to care much for Jinian.”

  “It wasn’t her who saved me, it was Bryan,” Sylbie answered. “Bryan gorbled the Ogress when she tried to bite him.”

  Jinian had told me of that hunt. I thought Sylbie’s account of it was rather oversimplified. Though it was true that Bryan had dispatched the Ogress, the Ogress had been only one of a considerable hunting party. If it had not been for Jinian, both Sylbie and Bryan would likely have perished along with an assortment of other prey. I sweated, snarling internal reproaches at myself. There was a new voice, a chill voice with an icy sibilance in it.

  “You were supposed to plant the amethyst crystals in the wine stores. I suppose you did that?” Dedrina’s voice.

  “No. I’ll do that when I go back. I-”

  “When you go back! What makes you think they will let you in, stupid girl?”

  “They’ll let me in,” she said doubtfully. “I’ll have to be there or Bryan will have a fit. . . .”

  “Where’s the girl Jinian?” Dedrina asked.

  “No one knows where Jinian is,” said Sylbie. “And I for one don’t care.

  “Shut your mouth, girl. You’ve done your part and are finished. Comes our part now, to use that young buck Shifter in there as bait for the girl. Then Huldra gets him and I get her.”

  “No!” Sylbie, very sharp, frightened. “I get Peter. That’s what Huldra promised me.”

  “Stupid chit. She promised you he would never Shift again, never see Jinian again. Quite true. He will neither Shift nor see when he is dead.” The Basilisk laughed.

  Silence, a wail, a tantrum wail. Though I was nowhere near I could visualize it. Sylbie throwing herself at the Basilisk, nails scratching. So a kitten might launch at a gnarlibar, hissing and scratching, and like a kitten she was thrown across the enclosure to land against the main tent pole. The canvas shivered. There was a crack, as though something had broken, and then a breathless sobbing. The voices grew nearer. Eyelids half-shut over eyeballs rolled well back, shallowly breathing, I let them come. They looked at me, kicked my presumably unconscious body, and went away again.

  Sounds outside. Shouts, the crack of a whip, a quick tuppa, tuppa, tuppa on a drum calling some work party or other. Someone came in and got me, packing me in a wagon like so much luggage, me never quivering. Lords, but I wanted to open my eyes and look. Where was Sylbie? Where was Bryan? Evidently I had not really heard Bryan, there under the wall. That had been all mockery done by Huldra and her cronies. I tried for the Shifting—nothing. Tried again, tried—nothing. Still again. Gave up trying with my whole self wet with sweat and stinking from the effort. Lay quietly, quietly, trying to think while wheels creaked and the entourage began to move away. Then I risked half opening my eyes. I could peer out the back of the wagon to see a great part of the camp trailed out behind it in the predawn gray, all making a great dust with feet and wheels as we came away north on the Great Road. At least half the besiegers were in the train. So much the easier for Himaggery and Barish. So much the worse for me.

  So, we were going away. What was it Jinian had told me? Huldra and her companions had been instructed to distribute amethyst crystals in the southlands and then to go to the Ice Caverns and destroy all there. Which was undoubtedly where we were going. They were going. Moving on to the second part of the duty, leaving the first undone. I thanked all the old gods that Sylbie had been so eager to betray me she had delayed betrayal of the Demesne. Those at the Bright Demesne were safe, at least. For a time.

  As for me, I was being taken away like a sack of roots, like a stack of wood, like nothing living or thinking, like bait for a trap. If I could have wept, I would have done so. Beside me a lumpy sack was breathing in a harsh, irregular way, gasps with too long silences between. I tried to say “Sylbie?” but my voice wouldn’t work. Still, I knew it was Sylbie. The breathing was that of someone badly injured, and I thought of Bryan, wondering where he was. Likely sleeping peacefully back in the little gatehouse. It had all been a trick and a deceit.

  The reeking smoke of the spell casting had made my head hurt quite badly. I gave up pretending to be unconscious and actually became so for a protracted time.

  When I came to myself again, it was in the tent once more. The train had stopped along the road to make camp. From where I lay on a pile of packs and rolled rugs, I could see past the tent flap to an open space with a cookfire and another tent. Shadows lay close and tight at its base. Noontime. The smell of the food made my stomach clench, and I realized I could move, though only a little. My hands and feet were still tied and no amount of Shifting did me any good. It was as though I had never been able to do it, as though I had only dreamed the Talent and it had never actually existed.

  The ropes that tied me were deadly black, wound with a thread of silver fire that glittered and flowed like water along the cords. I thought of Shifting my feet and the silver flame blazed toward my feet. I thought of Shifting hip joints and the fire spun upward, surrounding my loins in a steely embrace. So. Fire was one of the attributes of Witches, along with Power Holding and Beguilement, though I had seen no Beguilement from Huldra. Her Talent had set this fire upon me, and her Talent held it there. I preferred it to be a matter of Talent rather than of enchantment. If she had enchanted it, many lives would have been spent on it. Jinian had spoken of Huldra’s willingness to spend lives upon Sendings and enchantments.

  I was thinking so deeply of this when I raised my head to look out through the tent flaps once more that the sight there seemed only a continuation of the thought. They had Sylbie trussed up like a zeller for the butcher, lying close beside the cookfire. Her eyes were open, rolled back into her head, the whites staring at me blindly. There was blood on her forehead, probably where she had hit the tent pole. A lock of hair lay across her face, and it moved slightly with her breath. She was alive, then, though barely. I wanted to cry out, “Get a Healer for her!” but I could not speak.

  Oh, Sylbie, Sylbie, foolish, silly girl. First rule of the Game, Sylbie. Put not yourself into another’s hands. First rule. And you put yourself in Huldra’s hands completely, holding nothing back, no motivation, no emotion, nothing you could use to fight with. And you put me in Huldra’s hands as well, making me impotent to help you. Because you didn’t like my being Shifter. You destroyed us both, Sylbie, because you did not like my being Shifter.

  The waves of smoky black still came over me from time to time. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, the hair across her face lay quiet and there was blood on her chest, soaking her shirt. Beside the fire Huldra chuckled as she dropped something into her cauldron.

  “Rise Gambelor, Rise Gundegor. Rise Gurnasham!” She shrieked at the cauldron, stirring it, steam coming out of it in a great rush as though it had been one of the hot springs. “Rise Boldam, Burwar, Bass!” The steam coalesced, began to roil and eddy, making faces and forms in an endless succession, mouths that opened and shut, teeth that gaped, eyes that stared through shadow holes at the Witch, Huldra. On the other side of the fire, Dedrina sat, smiling, watching.

  “Rise Sorfut, Sarbat, Shandypas!” screamed the witch. “Bring her whose heart I fed you to do my will!”

  The horror of it clutched me. When Dorn the Necromancer had been my companion, I had seen Mandor, many days dead, rise up from his grave to answer my questions, and I had seen the ghosts of Bannerwell march to war. But I had not seen the newly dead called forth before, still grieving over life, rising from the cauldron in which her hea
rt’s blood boiled. Oh, Sylbie, Sylbie.

  She was there, weeping, shadow hands reaching out. I saw her mouth moving and could read the words on her lips. “Bryan! Bryan!” Calling for the baby she had left, her child and mine. Silently calling, “Bryan!”

  Helpless, hopeless, I swore vengeance against Huldra. “Mavin,” I pled, “if I am dead, venge me against this Witch. Himaggery, if I am gone and the world goes soon after, still requite me against this hag.” All this horror and pain while still unable to move more than a muscle, tied tight by enchanted bonds and knowing nothing of what the Witch intended.

  That was soon obvious. She beckoned the ghost, waving her hands in an endless dance, fingers making quick signs of fire, like letters in the air. Almost I thought I could read those signs. The ghost seemed able, also, for it wept and pled.

  “What are you doing?” growled the Basilisk.

  “Telling this unwilling Sending what it must do,” replied the Witch. “I tell it the child is forfeit if its mother does not do my bidding. It knows the man is forfeit if she does. So. It hangs there, quivering, in agony. Aha. Amusing, is it not, great lizard? So caught in their little feelings of goodness and badness, of love against love. Foolish, to care so much for any creature. . . .

  “Still, I remember the love of a child. I had a son once. Mandor, his name was, as beautiful as the sun itself. That one inside there, that Peter, killed him—or as good as, though Mandor took his own life in the end. My son declared Game against King Mertyn of Schooltown, using Peter as Talisman in the play. Perhaps he knew Mertyn was thalan to the boy, perhaps not. It no longer matters what he knew or did not know. There was a hidden Sorcerer in play, and Mandor was burned with Sorcerer’s fire. Even I could not bear to look at my son after that. He was hideous who had been so beautiful. Well, my vengeance has been slow in coming, but it will be all the better for that. Watch now. The Sending is ready to depart.”