The End of the Game (62 page)

There was a rocky wall above a small stream halfway down the slope of the forest. The wall had a hole in it large enough to sleep in. We might have been in the Maze for days or for a season. However long it had been, we had not slept in that time. Now I felt the need for sleep, and something about the place reminded me of my travels in Schlaizy Noithn. As a wanderer in that strange place, needing rest and peace, I had found both in pombi shape in a hollow tree. I found both again in similar shape on this evening. A pombi with weapons on his paws and fangs in his jaws, a pombi who could fit into a hole, leaving no room for shadows.

It was warm in the hollow. The air breathed coolly upon my face. The agonies of the world slipped away in the comfort of the moment. Sleep tugged at me, but so did thoughts of Jinian. I did not want to sleep for fear I would dream of something else.

When I was young, in Schooltown, I had not much considered love. The first love I’d believed in had been Mandor’s for me, and that had proved false. The first true love I’d seen had been Mertyn’s for me, and I had not thought of it as love at all. Mertyn was my thalan, of course, Mavin’s full brother, but I hadn’t known of the relationship until after leaving Schooltown so did not much regard it when I found out. The next love I saw was the love of Yarrel for his long-lost sister, Izia, taken by a Shifter, so it was said. That I believed in well enough, for when he learned I was Shifter, too, it had cost me his friendship. In the meantime, I had lusted after the Immutable girl, Tossa, the one who had died. And after Silkhands, in a sort of brotherly way. And after Izia herself, though I think it was really Yarrel I longed for.

At last I had taken up with Jinian, without any intention of loving her at all. And yet I had dreamed about her sometimes. I dreamed she was sitting in a window, leaning down to hand me something marvelous. I dreamed she was in danger and needed me. I could not escape thinking of her. Oh, yes, she irritated me. From the first times we were together, she chivied me this way and that. But it got so I could not think of myself without thinking also of Jinian. I wanted her near. Wanted to argue with her. Wanted to touch her. Wanted to tease her. Wanted to make love to her—wanted to.

And couldn’t, of course, because of that damn oath of hers. I had come close to breaking that oath, telling myself I’d do it by force if necessary, but good sense prevailed. Mavin had said it often enough. A man who forces a woman is no true man. He is only a thing. Without soul, said Mavin. “Without bao,” I said to myself. Jinian would not love one without bao, I supposed. Better wait than woe.

So I thought, half-dreaming, letting the dream come at last. I slept, and when I woke I could not remember what the dream had been.

I came down to sit upon sun-warmed rock thinking of Jinian once more with an accustomed degree of frustration. I would go south because it needed doing, but also because Jinian said go south. I would wait in the Old South Road City because there would be work there to do, but also because Jinian had said she would meet me there. My body did not move, however, and I did not Shift wings, for I was closest to her where I was and did not want to leave her. If this is love, then love is what it is. If love is something worse than this, I do not care to know about it.

The rock wall faced east. It heated quickly under the morning sun. Shaking myself back into a sense of duty, I took that heat to change myself into a flying thing, sleek and shapely, blue below and dark above, like a fish with wings. I had a quick, unreasonable longing for Chance. “Brother Chance,” I would have said, “get yourself on my back and we’ll go find that sportive widow of yours in Mip.” Or had it been Pouws or some other place? “Brother Chance, get yourself on my back and clutch tight with your legs, because I’m scared to death.” Fine thing for a Gamesman, a Shifter, fine thing for the son of a Wizard. I was scared, and it took a bit of time before I realized it wasn’t me—or certainly not only me—I was frightened for.

At last it was the shadows that moved me. I saw them trembling beneath the trees, fluttering as though about to fly. I did not want to encounter them in the air so thrust downward with wings long warmed in the morning sun and launched myself to spiral above the stone, where an updraft lifted me higher and higher.

From above, I could see how the world died. Throughout the Shadowmarches were leprous patches of dead forest. All down the River Haws were mud slides and eruptions of red and yellow smoke, as though great pustules had broken from beneath the skin of the world. So suddenly. So long hidden, and now so suddenly the illness broke forth. And yet it is the way of some sicknesses, so Healer Silkhands used to say, to give no sign while they eat away inside, then break through when it is almost too late to do anything about them.

It was the filthy smokes that had killed the trees. Looking down from my height, I could see creatures fleeing from shadow to light, from dead to living. Tree rats in little bunches, darting like bats across clearings. Bunwits, large and small. A follow of wild fustigars and a prowl of pombis moved into my sight and away again as I circled, and even from the height I could hear the cries of birds driven from their nests by shadows.

“Brother Chance,” I said to my absent friend, “this is a rotten bad place we’ve come to.”

“Then best get out of it, boy,” he absently replied.

Which I did, winging away to the south over the blotched forests and the rising humors of decay. I’d had some practice with wings in that last trip, and a Dragon at the Bright Demesne had given me a few pointers. In my whole life, I’d done wings only briefly once or twice before. I hadn’t really understood the proper proportion of wing to body, the way wings could lift almost by themselves, the length-to-width ratio necessary for endless soaring flight. On the way back from visiting Mertyn, I’d experimented as the Dragon had suggested. This shape was a good one, one that could well have carried me over the Western Sea. Since I was not permitted to be with Jinian anyhow, I might as well have gone over the Western Sea. This thought upset me; I lost the proper structure at the ends of my wings and dropped a good part of a league before I got it right again.

I did have sense enough to stick to the places where warm updrafts gave me the lift I needed. Far ahead, jagged against the southern sky, lay the southern mountain rim of the Shadowmarches. From above those peaks I could look down on Cagihiggy Creek, upon what little was left of the Blot, on Schlaizy Noithn.

Upon the ice caverns, where lay one hundred thousand frozen men and women.

I tilted a wing to steer a little west. The cavern was the closest place where I might find someone, and whether anyone was there or not, it would make good sense to check the caverns before I went farther.

Below me the land was in ferment. Shadow bulks rose upon it, bubbling upward, subsiding once more. I circled, looking behind me. The air held roiling wings of shadow. Not near me, particularly, simply there, both high and low. I could see places that looked as though the air trembled, quivered, where a kind of grayness was. Once having seen them, I made a circle every few leagues, being sure that none of the patches was near me.

Noon came above the Shadowmarch mountains. Below, the land sloped down in a long basin, east to where Hell’s Maw had been, where Pfarb Durim still stood—unless it had vanished in the years I had been gone. I had not flown above it on my return to Jinian. West the basin bent to run both north and south; north into a cul-de-sac rumored to be the site of a Bamfug Demesne, southward to the Blot. The cavern lay north of the Blot, hidden in a curl of broken mountain, the way to it blocked by falls from the time the mountain had exploded, when the Magicians were destroyed. My doing, at least partly. And mother Mavin’s. I found myself glad that Quench and some of the other techs had escaped, but I was not generally sorry the place was gone. An evil place; based on an evil custom.

Ahead and to my right a swimming dot plunged about the sky in erratic flight. I Shifted eyes to see it, making telescopic lenses, wondering what would make any flier dodge about so.

It was the Flitchhawk! Jinian’s Flitchhawk, coming from the west, carrying something large, pursued by shadow!

It dropped and darted, dived and soared, mighty wings pumping hard as it fought to gain altitude. Behind it the shadow came, effortlessly, fluttering, dropping as the Flitchhawk dropped, soaring as the Flitchhawk soared. I beat my way toward it, hurrying, wondering even as I did so what possible help I might be, answering myself immediately that I might carry part of the Flitchhawk’s burden, for it was very heavily laden.

I came beneath it, calling to it as I came. “Flitchhawk! I will carry one of your baskets!” It had two, one in each mighty set of talons. I beat upward, slipping sideways to avoid a flicker of shadow at my side, then the other way as it closed on me. Gamelords, but this shadow was persistent, and fast.

I came just beneath the mighty bird, heard its heaving breath, heard the thunder of its heart. There was something almost like panic in its eyes.

I don’t know what made me do it. It wasn’t reasoned out at all. Just memory and instinct working together. I saw the shadow. I remembered how the Daylight Bell had driven it away, how at dusk the Daylight Bell’s sweet resonance had cleared the city. I changed the chords of my throat and cried out, cried with the voice of the Bell. .

Once, twice, and the shadows fled.

We dropped from the sky, Flitchhawk losing one of his baskets as he fell. It tumbled down and down, breaking upon the earth to shed a sapphire radiance far upon the dusty ground. When we landed, I stood near him, panting. I heard the thunder of my own heart. I had never flown so high.

“Where did you hear the Bell?” cried the Flitchhawk in a voice of heartbreaking woe.

“In the Maze,” I mumbled. “In the Great Maze, from a time very long ago.”

“I had never thought to hear it again.”

“You will hear it again,” I promised. “We will recast it in the Old South Road City. We will build the Tower once more.” I was not at all certain of this, but it seemed a comforting thing to say.

“We will build little unless we can gather up again what I have spilled,” it cried. I remembered the crystals then and began wandering aimlessly about, looking for them. There must have been thousands of them in the basket.

And as we were wandering all futile in the underbrush, trying to pick up the crystals, we heard voices coming through the trees. I faded into the shrubbery. Flitchhawk somehow vanished. I crouched.

“I heard your voice, Peter, Mavin’s son,” cried the voice. “Come out of there.”

Someone else was mumbling, a rhythmic kind of chant. It ended with four words spoken loudly, clearly. “Where Old Gods Are.” Abruptly the Flitchhawk stood forth, looking surprised, as though unable to help himself. The bushes shook at the edge of the clearing, and six women came through. Two old ones. Two middle-aged. One not much older than I, one younger. They did not need to introduce themselves. I knew at once who they were. The other members of Jinian’s seven.

“Well,” said one of the middle-aged ones with some asperity in a clear, demanding voice. “What were you hiding from? Ghosts?”

I bowed. This could only have been Cat Candleshy. “We have just escaped the shadow, ma’am. And dropped a valuable cargo in doing so.

Now we are faced with gathering up thousands of the blue crystals, scattered over leagues of earth, no doubt.”

“A well-spoken thing,” said the beautiful one, who was little older than I. Margaret Foxmitten. It had to be. “Is this flying thing really Jinian’s Peter?”

“Should you call him a thing?” This was the shy one, Sarah Shadowsox.

“Why not? It looks like a thing.” The other older one, Bets Battereye, with the no-nonsense braids across her head. Indeed I was a winged thing, so I did not take offense.

The white-haired one had said nothing as yet. When she did, I knew it was Murzemire Hornloss. Murzy. “Where’s Jinian, Peter? Is she all right?”

I nodded. “Ganver’s looking after her. She’s still in the Maze, trying to stay clear of the Oracle.”

“What was that ringing sound we heard?” This was the youngest, scarcely more than a child, still with baby fat on her arms. Dodie.

It was the Flitchhawk who answered. “That was Peter, pretending to be the Daylight Bell. For which I owe him a boon.”

“Did you really do that, Peter? How clever.” This was Murzy. “I suppose you heard it in the Maze? Is it true, as Mind Healer Talley says, that the Maze is the memory of Lom?”

“Is it true that there are guides?”

“Is it true that space and time are changed inside?”

“Is it true . . .”

I waved them silent. “Murzy. Madam Hornloss. We have a precious load scattered wide. I am no Wizard, but it seems we need help. . . .”

“Surely not,” said Murzy. “Not with a lord of the birds at your side.” She bowed deeply. “I have long known your name, but only recently your identity, great Favian.”

The Flitchhawk inclined its mighty head. “Perhaps Favian is still great lord of the birds, ma’am. If the sickness is not too close. If the shadow is not nigh.” It called into the sky and was answered in a moment by a twittering from every side. Small birds began to gather by dozens, then hundreds, hopping about, darting here and there, their bright eyes seeking, their beaks opening to pick up crystals as though they were grains of giant wheat. It was not long before the contents of the broken basket were heaped before us. Murzy shook out a tablecloth, and we piled the crystals upon it, knotting the corners, while I answered the questions they had asked about the Great Maze. They asked a great many, and it was some time before they were satisfied.

“Where are you going, Mavin’s son?” Murzy asked. “Up to the ice caverns where the Gamesmen sleep?”

I nodded, wondering how she had known about that. Mavin, Himaggery, and I had not broadcast knowledge about the caverns, though there were a number who knew of it. “I thought I would stop there, yes. Then I would have come hunting you. Jinian asked me to find you, to tell you she needs you.”