The End of the Game (15 page)

At last it trembled, as a tree might tremble in the tiniest breeze. “Your name?” it whispered. This time it was a question.

“Jinian Footseer,” I said.

The figure before me started. “Footseer? Explain?”

So I explained, about the blind runners, and the honey cookies, and running on the Old South Road when I was no more than a baby hardly.

Then nothing, nothing.

Then,” Jinian Footseer, you may go.”

I went.

I went very quietly down the stairs, and very quietly along the corridor to the rooms we occupied, and very quietly in to curl up on the cot and wait. I heard the third bell ring. Not long after that, Cat and Margaret came in. And just after the fourth bell rang, Murzy came.

“Oh,” she said. “You’ve seen one of them.”

“Not merely one,” said Cat. “I think it was Bartelmy.”

“Bartelmy of the Ban? The one who ... ?”

“Yes. That one.”

I heard her, but I didn’t move. I didn’t ask, “The one who what?” even though later I was to wish I had. After a time they went away. Later they came back, bringing a mug of something hot and strange tasting. I drank it. My insides began to settle somewhat, though they still felt twisted.

“It....she ...”I said.

“The Dervish,” prompted Cat.

“The Dervish did ... something to my insides.”

“No. Really not, Jinian. It may feel like that, but the Dervish really didn’t. And you may say ‘she”. All Dervishes are female. Sort of.”

“Then what made me feel that way?” I asked, beginning to recover. “I felt sick, and dizzy, and as though I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere.”

“You’ve been looked at, very thoroughly, is all. Rather as a Healer might, but with more attention to mental things.”

“That’s exactly it. Someone’s been rummaging through me!”

“Don’t say rummage.” Cat smiled. “Not about a Dervish. One of them would never do anything so disorderly. Well. How do you think you did?”

“Did what?”

“Do you think you told her something new? Something that will earn you initiation? As a Wize-ard?”

I had no idea. There was that tiny shiver, and when I told them about that, they seemed almost excited. About that time, a bell rang, and they all went off to hear something new about the Eesties, or maybe about the Shadowpeople, I’m not sure which. I curled up again and went to sleep and didn’t wake up until they roused me for evening porridge. By that time, my name had been posted as approved for initiation, which pleased them, and me.

“What would you have done if I’d not passed?” I asked, half-teasing, certainly not expecting the answer I got.

“There are Forgetters here,” said Margaret. “You would not have remembered anything at all about the place. And we would have sought another seventh. That’s all.”

That was quite enough.

13

The Forgetter I was introduced to at my initiation took my hand and said, “I hope you will never be brought before me, Jinian Footseer. Hold your tongue and keep your memories—for now—dedicating them to the wize-art.” The threat was explicit.

Which was neither here nor there. My initiation was quiet, almost private. There was one Dervish present, the one who ... or some other one. There was the Forgetter, and the dams as witnesses. And there was the tall, frightening presence of a male Wizard in full regalia, a friend of Murzy’s, who administered the oaths. Then we walked in still procession down endless ramps and stairs to a place hidden in the secret heart of a cavern lit by a thousand candles. At the center of these lights was a circular pool with a raised, star-shaped curbing. Very still, that pool, like some forest ponds I have seen when there is no wind, full of milky, silvery stuff. We knelt around it, all of us, staring at it. At first I thought nothing was there, but then I saw the bits of shadow, coalescing, separating, coiling. And bits of light. Shaping, unshaping. In endless motion. Within the pool. Still ... so still. I know my head fell forward, because Murzy reached out and touched me to bring me to myself.

“The shadow grows,” whispered the tall Wizard, his voice twisting off into the cavern to raise a flock of sibilant echoes, like restless birds in the dark.

Those assembled said, “And yet there is light,” in firm, comforting unison.

The Wizard took a pair of long, curving tongs into his hand. The Dervish held out a shallow bowl. Everyone breathed in, a quiet kind of gasp.

He took a grayish flat fragment of something from the bowl, holding it up in the tongs so everyone could see before dipping it in the pool, carefully not touching the pool with his hands.

There was a thin, high singing when it touched the pool. Then he drew the fragment out and laid it on the curb before me.

“Take it,” whispered Cat.

I picked it up, feeling it slip into my fingers like a knife into a sheath, a flat, triangular piece of something with one curved edge, about as long as my middle finger. Then we all stood up and proceeded out of the place in absolute silence. The whole ceremony had taken only a little time. When we got back to our rooms, Murzy gave me a kind of locket to put the fragment in so it would hang safely around my neck. “Or you can carry it wrapped in a cloth in your boot, or sewn into your garment,” she said. “Just so it is always by you and you never lose it.”

“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.