The End of the Game (16 page)

“Still time,” old Tess murmured. “Not yet the shadow.”

“Not yet the shadow, Tess,” said Cat. “Why, see, there is light there yet, swimming in forever. Never fear, old friend. We’ll balance it yet, we Wize-ards.”

Then Tess shivered, cried out a little cry, and leaned back, her hand to her chest. They all rushed to help her, leaving me frozen over the little pool. Something had moved there, but I was the only one who saw. The only one who saw the shadow start at one edge of it and swim across the whole thing, black as char, deep as night, leaving at last only a thin, tiny edge of light. From inside that darkness, something flapped within the pool and seemed to look out at me.

I blinked, unsure of what I was seeing. The shadow flicked away. Then the dams were all around, picking up their pieces, putting them away, putting Tess’s fragment in her hand.

She died that night with the fragment held tight. When I went in to kiss her good-bye, I saw it was only a bit of metal, gray and dim, with neither light nor shadow in it. Without Tess, we were six again. None of us could look on the pool we carried until we were seven. We had been seven for a very short time.

There was no way to verify what I thought I had seen. I was sent back to classes. My study group had spent most of the time I had missed on Index review, and as I already knew the Index very well, I didn’t miss much. We had a new Gamesmistress, a Healer named Silkhands. She seemed very pleasant, not much older than most of the students, but with a weary air about her that intrigued me. We started to make friends. I could do that now that Dedrina-Lucir was gone. Without her, things were comparatively peaceful.

In the nights immediately following my return, however, I several times woke myself with muffled screams, starting straight up in bed, sweating and cold at once, thinking I had heard the horrid hissing of Basilisks or the sly flapping of watchful shadows.

14

The fourth or fifth night I wakened deep in the dark hours, I was reminded of myself as a child, bearing Mendost’s abuse and deciding I would rather die. Perhaps it would be better to die now than to wake in this terror at the sound of flapping. My room was high in one of the towers. Perhaps the sound had a cause; perhaps something was really there. Wrapped in a heavy robe against the cool of the night, I left the room silently and went up the cupped stones of the winding tower stairs to the roof.

As I climbed, I became convinced the sound had not been merely a dream. Dream, yes, but not merely that. Dream grafted upon reality, perhaps, as the gardeners of the House graft blooming stock upon hardy roots, the lesser reality upon the greater. This was a muddy thought, and I took time to untangle it, lost in metaphor, hardly realizing the sound I heard was a sound as real as my own heartbeat. Flap, flap, hiss. Not the hiss of Basilisks; the hiss of wind on feathers. It came from above me, and I turned face up to see giant wings fleeing across the stars.

“I am here,” I called, as I had called once before in the forest, not loudly, fearful, yet not fearful enough to be silent.

Wings lifted and folded. The flitchhawk stooped, down, down, wingtips canted to guide its flight, talons stretched before it. Just as it would have dropped upon me, the wings scooped air, and the giant came to rest before me, opening its beak to let out a rush of air scented with the breath of pines.

“What is it you eat to have a breath so sweet, flitchhawk?” I said, almost in a whisper.

“What is it you eat to have words so sweet, Star-eye?” and there came the puffed, creaking sound of hawk laughter.

“I told the Dervish about you, flitchhawk.”

“We knew you would.”

“What is it you want now?”

“You promised the forest, girl.”

“I promised to do what I could, when I knew what to do, flitchhawk. I haven’t any idea, yet. They have made me a Wize-ard, and I’m no wiser than I was.”

“Then you must do out of ignorance, girl. You must help the forest.”

“I said I would, when I knew how, but there’s been no time.”

“No time,” agreed the flitchhawk in his creaky voice. “No time, Jinian Footseer. Now. Now is the time. This moment.”

He reached for me with one talon. I stamped my foot, really angry. “I will not be dangled,” I said. “I was dangled last time. It has caused me no end of embarrassment, and I will not be dangled again.”

He stepped back. If a beak can be said to express astonishment, then the beak on that bird face did. However, the eyes were not angry. Reflective, perhaps. Amused, perhaps, but not angry. “What would you suggest?” he asked. “I cannot have you on my back, for there is no room between my wings on the upstroke.”

“Wait,” I cried, moved by sudden inspiration. “One moment:” I ran down the stairs again, peeling off the robe and gown as I went, covering half the last corridor bare as a willow twig. There were stout boots in my room and leather trousers, a heavy jacket and some tunics not woven of the thistledown we usually wore. My knife and pack were there as well. I left a message.

“Take this message to Murzemire Hornloss, house at the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. “Murzy, the flitchhawk has come for me and will not delay. I will return. Make my peace with Vorbold’s House.””

There, I thought. That ought to cause some consternation. I could imagine its being well read by Vorbold’s House before ever it was taken to Murzy. Still, she would get it in time. Someone had to explain to King Kelver and Joramal. I thought Queen Vorbold would duck that duty if she could.

Then back up the stairs, stopping at the end of the corridor for one of the great woven baskets that collected our dirty bedclothes and towels. It had long straps because the men who gathered them up carried them on their backs down Laundry Street, amid all the steams and smokes and sounds of washerwomen shouting. I thrust the thing before me onto the tower roof to find the flitchhawk stalking this way and that, peering over the edge from time to time like an owl seeking some small prey. The thought made me shiver. I was the prey in this case.

“Here,” I told him. “I can sit in this, and you can carry the straps in your claws. It will be easier for both of us.” And it would. The high sides of the basket would allow me to breathe, at least, which I could not remember having done during the trip to the tower dangled from those same claws.

“In, then, Jinian Footseer,” he creaked, and I plunged down into the basket, thankful there were already a few sheets in the bottom to soften it. The thing jerked, swayed, soared, and I was flying once again high above Xammer, above the towers, the walls, looking down on the ancient bridges, the quiet streets. I could see the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. There were lights in the windows. So late? Were their faces at the window? How could there be? Still, I leaned from the basket at risk of my life and waved. Perhaps they knew, or had been told by their mysterious informant who seemed to know everything.

Then the town was behind us and we moved south along the river, then west toward the heights. They loomed before us. Flitchhawk began to circle, catching some warmer air from time to time, though he labored with his wings to climb and I knew it was more difficult at night than when the sun warmed the earth and made great updrafts to carry him. We crossed the wide expanse of Middle River, silver glinting on its waves. Lake Yost gleamed to the north. Then came the soft, velvet depths of Long Valley and at last the cliffs, falling away like a sweep of carved wood, gleaming under the knife of the stars. There the forest was before us, trees taller than any I had ever seen or imagined. Leafy tops shifting. Smaller wings circling. A scented breath rising, like the flitchhawk’s breath: field mint and pine; bergamot and rose; webwillow and shatter-grass. Sweet, spicy, catching the breath in one’s throat with memories of lost childhood among the grasses at the brookside. “Chimmerdong,” I cried, unable to help myself. “Chimmerdong.”

“Jinian,” I imagined the forest calling in return. “Jinian.”

The flitchhawk folded his great wings and took hold of a treetop, rocking there. “Here,” he creaked. “Here. The ladder is beneath you in the tree.”

I had climbed out onto the branch and was taking inventory of myself, somewhat windblown but otherwise intact. “See here,” I said, “you’ve got to tell me something. I’ve been dragged from housedoor to cellar, from kingpost to rooftree without a word of explanation. Now, what’s going on here, and what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Daggerhawk Demesne is killing the forest. You’ll know what to do, Jinian Footseer. Use your eyes, your ears, your feet.” His wings came down, knocking me flat on the branch as usual, and he was up and gone. Far off at the edge of the world I saw the rim of the sun and knew he had not wanted light to disclose him upon the forest roof. Nor did I want to be seen there. I plunged into the leafy wilderness, scrambling about until I found the ladder. It carried me down as it had carried me up. No immediate course of action presented itself. The first thing to do would be to find out what was going on. Perhaps the next thing would be to talk to the forest again. If I could. If it could. If the shadow would allow. Hows and perhapses kept me thoughtful the entire journey down, and I was utterly unsurprised to find both a bunwit and a tree rat at the bottom of the ladder waiting for me. My same ones or other ones? My same ones, I thought. They sat there propped on their hind legs the way they do, bunwit with his pointy ears and tree rat with his round ones, bunwit gray and white, tree rat black and copper, both with round, curious eyes fixed on me as though I had answers. “I’ve got no answers, beasts,” I told them. “But if you know where something is going on, I suggest you show me.”

Tree rat started for me. I picked up a branch. “Just for the record, rat, if you bite me even a little, even one time, there will be one dead rat.” He backed off, surprised. I still had teeth marks on my rear from last time.

They looked at each other, conferring, I thought. Perhaps they did. At any rate, we went off through the trees at an easy pace, one or the other scouting ahead, then coming back to be sure I still followed. It was not long before we heard a sound. Both of them came back, close to me, pressing against my legs.

“That it?” I asked. They pressed closer, ears cocked toward the noise. It was a whuffling, snorting, growling noise, with crashes and smashes in it.

We were on a rounded hill with an abrupt rocky ledge above a clearing. We peered between the rocks, seeing nothing but shrubs and grasses. The noise was near, perhaps behind a screen of trees. Nothing. Then a glitter, as of sun on polished bone. Then again. Crash of branches. Gouts of soil and turf flying, a small tree toppled, snorting, and then ...

I said, half to myself, “What in the name of the Hundred Devils is that?” The beasties only pushed closer to me, not answering.

The thing had come into the light. Great snout over curved tusks. Little pig eyes. Sharp pig hooves. It came and kept coming. Three pairs of legs, four, five. I counted silently, in awe, not even aware I was counting. When I got to fifty, I stopped counting. The thing had at least a hundred legs, like a centipede. “Centipig,” I breathed to my cowering beasties, watching the turf fly in solid, muddy slabs. Champing and whuffling, the centipig ravaged its way out of the clearing and down the hill. “By Dealpas, the Doleful,” I hissed to myself.

Familiar voices followed the pig-path into the clearing. Porvius Bloster. In a moment he was beneath me, he and another man, both carrying tanks with hoses and tubes. We use similar tanks in the Stone-flight Demesne to spray the sammit seedlings with water. Both carried outlandish, pig-snouted masks in their hands.

“Give it a year,” Porvius shouted, waving his hands at the destruction around him. “Give it a year and it will have flattened half of Chimmerdong.”

“It would be faster and surer if you had more than one,” the man with him said. At first I had not recognized him, but then I realized it was the pursuivant who had corne to Vorbold’s House seeking Dedrina-Lucir. Cholore? If he were Reading, he would find me. Not likely, though. Who would expect Jinian to have left the luxury of Vorbold’s House to return to this muddy, tangled place? I eased up one eye, peering through a crack.

“The price for this one was high enough. It was expensive. Twelve little girls from the Demesne, two of them offspring of my own. Plus much ore from the hills, as well as fruit and herbs and rarities. Still, the Magicians will make me another if needed.”

“It is mechanical, then? A device?”

“No, it lives. The Magicians make such things in their secret place to the west. Monsters. In their monster labs. That’s what they call the place, you know. A monster lab.”

“And when the monster is finished with Chimmerdong,” said the Pursuivant in an insinuating voice, “how do you get rid of it? I would not want that roaming the edges of the Daggerhawk. It is long since you have repaired the walls.”

Porvius shrugged, a trifle uncomfortably, I thought. “Oh, they will give us a thing. Perhaps another plague, like the forest edge plague. The monster will not cross that plague. They will give us something to kill it with.”

“And then another thing to kill the thing that kills it, no doubt,” said the Pursuivant in his sly voice. “For another dozen girl-children from the Demesne. For more ore. For more herbs and rarities. Oh, I have heard of these Magicians. Gifters, aren’t they? If one can survive their gifts.”

“No one has died of the forest plague,” Bloster said. “I told you it was perfectly safe to use.”

“You told me, Bloster. Just as you told Bankfire, the Sentinel, and Warlock Wambly. And the family who farmed at the northern fringes. Still, they’re all dead, aren’t they.”

“Disease. Some disease, is all.”

“A disease the Healers couldn’t fix. Oh, I’ll help you spray your forest edge plague, Bloster. It hasn’t killed you, yet. But don’t ask me to stay about where it’s been.”

The two of them went off, we three quiet creatures sneaking along behind. We came to the edge of the forest quite soon. Here the mushy, fungus look of the forest edge had been encroached upon by a lively green. Bloster and the Pursuivant put on their masks and began to spray something from the tanks upon the new growth, something oily, glistening, which settled in a deadly film on the green, smoking slightly, turning it black in the instant. When they were done, the two of them turned back the way they had come. I didn’t follow. Instead, the bunwit and I approached the sprayed places and sniffed at them. It was a dead smell, acrid as burned metal. All the places they had sprayed smoked thinly, and the forest trembled at the edge as though wounded.