The End of the Game (10 page)

“Person,” said a voice, whispering. “Person?”

“Child?” asked the—another?—voice, also whispering.

“Child person?” said the first. “Star-eye?”

It would have been impolite not to answer. “I am here,” I said, leaving it at that. Least said, Murzy often told me. Least said, least promised.

All this time, I was looking about for the source of the voice or voices, up and down, peering into the shadows. The starlight was very bright, the shadows very dark. When I saw the face at last, I didn’t believe I was seeing it. Then the lips moved, and I heard the whisper.

“Are you there?”

“Yes,” I breathed, open-mouthed, staring at the face. It was made up of leafy branches against the sky. Each eye had a star reflecting in it. The lips were two twisty branches. It was all there, even a cascade of leafy hair above and to the sides. Each time it spoke, the mouth moved, the eyes blinked. “Can you tell me what you are? If it’s not impolite to ask?” I whispered.

“I ...” whispered the voice.

“We ...” whispered another one. I looked over my shoulder to confront another face, then saw that I was surrounded by them. There were at least a dozen. “It!” asserted a third. “All,” said a fourth. “Forest.”

“This forest?” I asked. “I ...”

“We ...”

“Every ...”

“All forest,” the first repeated. “Broken. All, all forest.” The stars that reflected its eyes glittered in dark, leafy hollows. It was through these eye hollows I saw the shadow come like some great sea creature, all tentacles and flow, reaching out of the dark, covering the stars, covering the light. Suddenly the face was obscured, the stars of its eyes put out. The face vanished. Its component parts were still there, but it was like a cloud face which vanishes when you look away, all the subtle modelings changed, deranged, lost.

“Help ...” I heard a whisper, so softly I could hardly hear it, the forest vanishing in shadow.

“Hellllp ...” A last, faint hiss of the leaves, crying such sorrow that I wanted to weep.

The shadow flowed, coiled, sent its tentacles down searching for something. At which point I lay down, rolled up in my rain cape once more, and pretended to be any tiny, furry thing that came to mind. The small trees picked up my moss bed and slithered it between the giant trunks, up the slope, and into the more ordinary forest. Behind us in the hollow, I could feel the shadow gathering, darker than dark, filling the hollow, looking for something. For me? For whatever had spoken from the forest?

The forest had wanted to talk to me. Something else had prevented it.

Now what would a Wize-ard do about that? The very young Wize-ard, me, did nothing at all until morning. I fretted a bit, but only a bit, because the shadow kept lurking about and it seemed safer not to think at all. Considering water instead of thinking put me to sleep. When morning came, the shadow was gone, but so was any sense of the forest presence that had been there the night before. I ate my boring breakfast and thought very hard.

Something here. Something I’d never heard of. Something vast and ... well, helpless. Helpless. Unable to help itself. Well now.

If I were unable to help myself, needing someone else to do something for me, it would be to do something I could not do myself. Self-evident. Right? Right, I assured myself. Now, what could one young person—child person—do that a forest could not? A forest that could move its own branches and make waves in its own streams. I thought about that, lying there on my back, staring up at the sun dapple. All around me was growth and green. All around me was birdsong and rustle as little things moved here and there. The tree rat sat on my foot to beg crumbs. Seeing this, a gray bird wafted over on silent wings and demanded a share, which the bunwit disputed. He and tree rat owned me. No mistake about that. Crumb sources were not that easy to come by. All about me was bright, growing, green—and sad. Overlaid with a terrible melancholy that was almost more than one could bear.

What could I do?

I could leave. I could move out of the forest and go elsewhere. I could go away, taking the knowledge with me that something here needed help. After lengthy consideration, that was all I could come up with.

I said, moderately loudly, “I’ll do what I can to help, but you have to realize, I’m not sure what’s needed, and it may take a long time.” I waited.

The hush was unbroken. Sighing, I got up, put on my pack, and turned eastward once more.

7

A brown bird gave the warning, erupting from their path before I heard them myself. First a bird scream, then feathers diving past me to make me stop right where I was, hardly breathing, then the sound of voices and something large blundering about in the woods.

“Fine tracker you are,” growled a voice. Porvius Bloster.

“I am not a tracker,” hissed the other. Oh, what a cold hiss. “As you know. No Pursuivant was available.”

“Basilisk, then,” Porvius said unwillingly. “Fine Basilisk you are. Here we are, lost in this wilderness, and you keep saying the girl is here. Where? We’ve been wandering for a day!”

Another voice, this one recognizable. One of the three men who had been with Porvius when he’d captured me. “No trail down that way, Bloster. Want me to try up the stream?”

“Well, Basilisk?” Porvius sneered. “Shall he try up the stream?”

They were separated from me by a screen of trees, close set, their branches tangled together with briar. I stayed frozen in place, not thinking, only listening, letting myself be as silent and invisible as possible. Basilisks have the Talents of Reading, Beguilement, and Shifting. I have heard the Reading and Beguilement are strongest when the creature is in its lizard shape, and strongest of all if it can fix you with its eyes, but that did not mean it could not Read me now if it stopped arguing with Porvius and scanned the area around. Away past the men several tree rats started a violent quarrel, throwing nuts and chittering at each other. Under cover of that noise, I slipped to the ground and lay there imagining I was vegetation. “Yes, try up the stream,” the Basilisk hissed. “And you, Kinsman Porvius, put sweeter words in your mouth or I’m back to the Demesne to have a few words with your sister while letting you hunt your quarry on your own.”

“So far I might have done as well,” said Bloster. “ ‘Twas you said the girl was not with her brother Mendost. I still think we’ll find her there.”

“The farmwife had seen someone like her,” the Basilisk hissed. “Seen her not long before. And in the child’s mind the picture was clear of the girl riding east toward this forest. And in the woodman’s mind the memory of a loose horse, coming from this direction. What more would you, Porvius Bloster? A map? A chart? The creature is here.”

“Then why haven’t we found her?”

“Because all around is a confusion of thought, small things, animals, birds, a constant commotion. Once we find a quiet glade, once night comes and the small creatures sleep—why, then we will find her. Then I will enjoy the hunt.” I could imagine the thing licking its lips.

By Towering Tamor, I could not help thinking, but they must have been on my trail only hours after I had gone if Bloster had had to get himself to some Demesne to find this Basilisk, then backtrack the way I had come. They had not dallied! He must want me very badly to have ridden so hard, I thought. While I was ambling along the side of Longbow Mountain, he must have been lathering his horses to get somewhere. “Why bother with her?” one of the men asked, echoing my thought. “It’s Mendost you’re after.”

“Mendost was my Game,” he growled. “Mine and no others. But when I returned to the Demesne, I found a message awaiting me there concerning this Jinian. It seems she has become larger Game than I knew. There are those—we will not mention names—who want her dead. They want her gone. They want her head sent up to them to verify I tell them no tales. There are those—still nameless—to whom I have sworn certain allegiances, let us say.

“Even if this were not so, I would have sufficient cause for personal enmity. If you are asked why, say because she poisoned me!”

He lied. I had done no such thing, though I could have killed him while he lay there. Had he thought of that? Certainly not! I heard the Basilisk draw a hissing breath and realized I had been thinking—clearly, angrily.

Consider water, I told myself desperately. Limpid, cool, gently sloshing to and fro in a pool, slosh, ripple, slosh, cool, sliding, slosh.

“I thought for a moment I sensed her,” the creature said, “but it was only some fish ...” And then they moved away, up the stream, where I knew the forest had opened a path for them. Lovely forest, trying to protect me. How far could it go in doing things without drawing the shadow to investigate? Little as I wanted to fall to that Basilisk, still less did I like the idea of that shadow.

I learned how far the forest would go when the voices retreated past hearing. There was suddenly a daft bunwit at my side tugging at me, whumping off a few paces, then turning to tug at me again. As clear a game of follow-me as had ever been played. This was my own, crumb-fed bunwit; I had no fear of him nor any now of the forest, but much fear of that creature which had gone hissing off up the rivulet, so I followed. We went back toward that same deep, hidden hollow of huge trees, this time me on my own two feet struggling down the slope. “Murzy,” I mumbled, “I wish you were here.” She would have some commonsensical thing to tell me that would make things go more smoothly. Tess Tinder-my-hand would give me a little lecture, possibly irrelevant. Cat would be silent and urge me to be the same. Bets and Sarah would argue about what to do next. And Margaret Foxmitten would smile a secret smile. It was my own style to grumble, so I grumbled. I can admit it now. The grumbling covered fear. Even when Mendost used to threaten to drop me from great heights, I had been no more afraid than of that Basilisk.

The hollow bottom was no less mysterious by day. The trees were great towers, lunging upward until all their tops drew to one point, a tiny circle of distant sky. Giant rocks stood among them, tilted centerward like heads of listeners, and dark lay deep and gentle among them all.

Tug, went bunwit. Tug, tug, hop. We went between two of the large rocks, turned left, and found ourselves confronted with a ladder. Very neat it was, sides straight as string, little steps all in a row, fading upward into invisibility, becoming no more than a spider’s web against the great trunk far above. Bump, went bunwit against my bottom. Up, it was saying. I couldn’t believe it.

Resolving to be unafraid when hauled aloft by Mendost and one can do nothing about it is one thing. Resolving to climb a ladder that looks like spidersilk into a height so monstrous even an Armiger might take fright is something else again. I stood where I was, unmoving. Bump, went the bunwit again, impatiently. I stood, mouth open.

Far back in the forest a noise was building, loud shouts and calls, rather the sound of men on a hunt. I knew the Basilisk had caught scent of me somehow. Perhaps some mental trace I’d been unable to cover. Perhaps they had blundered across a place I had actually been, and from there it would be like a fustigar trailing prey. Part of me knew this. The other part stood at the foot of the ladder, paralyzed. Bump, went bunwit yet again, frantic.

Far up the trunk a speck emerged from the foliage and began to run down the trunk toward me. When it came very close, I saw it was a tree rat, running head downward as they do, all its teeth exposed as it chittered at me. It bit at my hair, tugged upward, growling angrily between its teeth. The bunwit pushed once more from below, desperately, and near in the forest came the sound of a horn.

The paralysis broke. I scrambled for the ladder, realizing it would be far better to fall to a splattery death than into the hands of the Basilisk—or of Porvius Bloster. Below me the bunwit leapt into the circling trees, and I heard him blundering away, thrashing about, making a great deal of noise. Above me the tree rat chittered and growled, tugging from time to time, moving below me to nip my behind when I seemed to lag. We approached the first limb, and I foolishly looked down, only to lean into the ladder, clasping it like a lover, mouth open and dry. The tree rat would have none of this. It bit me, quite hard, and cursed at me in an almost recognizable language. In another moment we came to a hollow in the trunk, and I was urged within. There was a slithery, scraping noise, and the ladder moved in front of the hollow, going up. When the bottom of it reached the level of my feet, it stopped.

It was no mechanical thing, that ladder, but something grown by the forest itself. Even while I lay in the tree hollow, panting, heart thubbing away like a drum, I knew the forest had grown the ladder for some purpose of its own. Then the sound of shouts came up from below, and I risked a peek over the edge, half-masked by a leafy spray. Setting his mighty claws into the bark of the tree was the Basilisk. Even from this distance I could see his long tongue dart out to taste the air. He tasted me. Those red, burning eyes were looking up, here, there, wanting me to look into them so he could Read me, Beguile me, bring me into his jaws ... I started to go out and climb down.

The tree rat bit me again. It was getting to be a game with him, or he had acquired a taste for me. Chittering, he threatened me onto the ladder and we climbed once more, this time the ladder moving up with us on it, a slow, easy glide into the heights. After a time I merely clung, too tired to climb, the tree rat deciding it, too, preferred to ride. We ascended together, branches and leaf clusters passing us by: great, pale bunches of flowers circled by flimsy green-winged flying things, rising into view and then dropping below. From far, far down the trunk shouts rose up, then a great howling hiss. “Zzzt,” said the tree rat, beginning to climb again. Evidently the Basilisk had gained the bottom branches.

At last we came to the end, a place where the ladder curved over and disappeared into a hollow in the tree, presumably dropping its incredible length down inside. We moved onto a branch that zigged, and another that zagged, climbing upward always, toward the sun. The wind was making gusty noises. I realized this for some time before noticing that the gusts did not move the leaves. The tree rat prudently fell behind, nipping at me to show I was to go on. There was no earth any longer, only this cloud of leaves with the sky above. A gust came again, loudly, and I thrust my head above the leaves to be buffeted over the head by a feather.