The End of the Game (7 page)

Several times as I rode, I saw the same rider on the western ridge. After a time, it began to make me nervous, so I left the open trail and reined Misquick into the trees where we couldn’t be seen. Where we couldn’t have been seen if I’d been wearing my old clothes. I’d forgotten the bright red cape, the red leather trews. Well. Nothing to do about that. The three of us wended our way around a little hill and down into a little valley beyond.

There was a rider east of me, on the skyline.

I didn’t know whether he’d seen me or not, nor could I tell what Talent he might have. If he were a Demon or some of that line who could Read minds, he could tell where I was easy enough. Though why anyone should want to know was beyond me. It seemed prudent to head for the Demesne, so Misquick and I turned about and made for home. I kept it slow, remembering times when Misquick had tried to hurry and ended up in trouble.

There were two mounted men waiting at either side of the trail, just inside the hollow. Two ahead of me, plus one to the west and one to the east. All of them were on tall, fast-looking horses, and it was silly to think of outrunning them. I pulled Misquick up and sat, waiting. They didn’t leave me in any doubt at all.

One of the men was larger than the others with him. He had a long face with a heavy jaw; wide, sneering lips; eyes that brooded at me from under heavy lids as though they did not see me directly but through some veil. They were not quite focused on me. I had an uneasy feeling that I was someone else to him, some different image he had already seen and dismissed.

“You’d be Jinian,” he said, getting the name right first try as he took hold of Misquick’s bridle. “Mendost’s sister.”

I thought of lying about it, but it was obvious they knew. “Yes,” I said. One thing Murzy had drummed into me was to say no more than necessary.

“Good enough,” he snorted. “Then you’ll come along with us, girl. You won’t be hurt if you don’t try anything silly.”

I had no intention of trying anything, silly or not, so I whistled to Grompozzle, who came slavering up, offering to lick the hands of my captors in his usual indiscriminating style. Then we went off to the northwest, over the ridge and away, moving a good deal faster than Misquick was accustomed to moving under the best of conditions. As we pushed under a webwillow tree, I caught a handful of twigs and then dropped all but three. The three I stuffed into the saddlebag, in the bag with my lunch. Then Misquick did just what I’d thought she would, stumble, slid halfway down a bank, and ended up mired in a mudhole. “She can’t go that fast,” I said apologetically. “She’s not very surefooted.”

“I’ll take the girl,” the large man said, the only one who had done any talking at all. “Leave the pony here.”

I objected, to which they paid no attention at all, but leaving Misquick was what I wanted to do. She would head for home as soon as she settled down, carrying the saddlebag, which the men didn’t think of taking. When Murzy saw the twigs in the pocket, she would know I was in trouble—that’s what three of anything put where it doesn’t belong means. Three stones in a shoe, three twigs in a pocket, three feathers under a saddle. Then the dams would know as much as I did. That is, if Murzy or one of the dams saw the saddlebag first. Well, I’d done all I could, so I put it out of my mind.

“Would you mind telling me who you are, or what this is all about?” I asked.

“My name is Porvius Bloster,” he said. “Tragamor. This is about Game. We announce Game against Mendost of Stoneflight Demesne.”

“But, but ...” I sputtered, “I’m a student. I’m going off to Xammer tomorrow. I’m Game exempt.”

“You’re not wearing exempt colors,” he snorted. “Which I was careful to determine before accosting you. You should have worn the dress you wore that night you were wandering around the garden talking foolishness with that friend of your brother’s.”

I didn’t want to talk about clothes. This whole thing was too silly for words. “What kind of Game is this?” I pursued the subject. The kind of Game could be very important.

“This is Death Game,” he snarled. “For I am weary of your brother’s perfidy. Twice I’ve had him challenged, and twice he’s slipped by me. He’s a dishonorable Gamesman ...” Which wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. “We have taken this step to guarantee he stands to Game.”

“You’re expecting Mendost to stand Death Game with you in order to save my life!” My honest amazement must have come through to him, however slightly.

“Of course. For the honor of the Demesne.” He was very much the mature Gamesman enlightening the child. The man took me for an utter fool.

I pleaded with him. “You’ve said yourself that Mendost is dishonorable. Worse than that, I’m not even Mendost’s concern anymore. I was betrothed to King Kelver of Dragon’s Fire Demesne three days ago!”

“You?” He burst out laughing, which didn’t make me feel any better about the whole thing. “You’re a child!”

I had never felt more the child. For a blinding moment, I wanted a Talent, any Talent, so long as it was strong and destructive and could get back at this muscle and little-wit holding on to me who did not seem to see me as a person at all. He was like a man reciting a role, uttering speeches he had rehearsed. I tried to get his attention, explain to him. “I know I’m very young. King Kelver is having me Schooled at Xammer. As part of an alliance ...” The more I tried to explain the circumstances, the more he smiled into the air, not seeing me, disbelieving me.

“You’ve a good imagination, girly,” he said at last. “A very good imagination. If you live to get older, maybe they’ll put you to work making dream crystals. Or being a Seer. Most of what they tell you they make up out of their heads. I don’t believe them, either. So, we’ll take you along to the place we’ve got ready, then we’ll send our message and wait ‘til Mendost shows up.”

“He won’t show up,” I said hopelessly.

“For your sake, girly, he’d better.”

“Would you ask ransom?” I suggested, hoping that King Kelver might see fit to increase his investment. He had already gone to considerable expense and might not mind a little extra.

“The Game is between Mendost and me,” he said offhandedly. “Why should I want ransom? Ransom will not avenge my honor. Mendost struck me without warning. He did not announce Game before striking me.”

“If he’d been drinking,” I said, “it wasn’t Game at all. It was just bad temper.”

“If it wasn’t Game for Mendost then, he must learn it is Game now,” he said, turning the horse through a screen of trees and down into a hidden hollow where a camp had been set up. “The Herald has delivered my demands by now. He was on his way to your gate when we picked you up.” Porvius Bloster sounded so self-satisfied, so pompous, I knew there would be no reasoning with him. Which is probably why Mendost hit him in the first place. If you are ever captured by someone, pray it is not a stupid, pompous man who sees the whole world through a haze of his own preconceptions. As I analyzed the situation, it seemed fairly hopeless that he would ever believe me. He was not living in the same world I was. He was simply too sure he was right.

There was a tall, greasy-looking post at one side of the camp, and I saw with alarm it had been fitted up with a tether and harness. Sure enough, they put the harness on me, hooked up behind where I couldn’t reach it, and the tether went to the top of the post where I couldn’t reach that end, either. There was a small tent nearby where I could sleep. I could get into the thicket if I needed to go. They weren’t going to torture me or anything. In fact, as they went about their business, it was obvious they weren’t very interested in me at all. I sat in the entrance of the tent, getting familiar with the camp, thinking. It seemed to me the best thing to do was to become invisible.

Now the first rule of invisibility is that you have to be where you can be seen. You sort of blend into the scenery. Never hide. If you hide, people wonder where you are and what you’re doing, so you don’t hide. You do whatever you’re doing right out in front of everyone, but it’s what you do all the time. So I began to wander around, into the thicket and out. Among the trees and out. Into the tent and out. Over near the fire to get warm, then away. Down to the little pool to get a drink. Pick up a few sticks and put them down near the fire. Pick a rainhat berry and eat it. Rainhat berry. Still walking aimlessly around, I set myself to search for shivery-green. It wasn’t common. Not nearly as common as the rainhat bush. Thinking of that, I picked a couple of leaves and put them beside the tent. If it rained, I could use them to replace the rain cape in the saddlebag Misquick had taken home.

I didn’t find any shivery-green that day. Night came. They gave me some food, not very good. They sat in the light of their fire, mumbling to one another. Porvius Bloster had a chain about his neck with a pendant on it. I had noticed it during the day several times and now it was even more noticeable in the light of the fire. He fingered it now, turning it in his fingers. When the others lay down to sleep he sat there, turning it, turning it, at last laying it upon his tongue and sucking upon it as a baby does a sugar tit.

I knew what it was then. I’d never seen one before that I knew of, though there was talk of them in the Demesne, as there is always talk of things exotic and strange. It was a dream crystal. If what I had heard about them was true, it was no wonder he could not deal with the reality around him. He had already dreamed this occasion, dreamed its progress and conclusion. Nothing I could say would disrupt the dream. Too much confusion between the dream and the reality would unbalance him completely, and who knew what he might do then.

I waited, scarcely breathing until he let the thing fall from his mouth and wandered toward the tent. The tent the men slept in was out of reach of my tether, so I couldn’t sneak in on them in the night. I could get up very, very early, however, and start my wander once more. It took until noon to find a plant of shivery-green. Only one plant of it, trembling like a little emerald fountain between the buttress roots of a great tree, with three little seed clusters nodding at the tips of the stems. So. Now the location of it was known, if one could only figure out what to do about it.

I began to be ubiquitous around the fire. When and if the rainhat roots and the shivery-green seeds were put together, the juice would have to get into their food somehow. Once they were asleep for some little time, the tether could be pounded on a rock until it frayed through. Then I could get a knife off one of them and cut the harness. King Kelver’s gift was in my pocket, the scent bottle in the shape of a frog. That would hold a lot more of the juices than was needed.

Invisible. I began bashing up some bark into strips to make a basket. Right away Porvius sent one of the men over to see what was going on, and I ignored him while threading webwillow twigs and bark pieces together. It wouldn’t have fooled a dam for a minute. Any child knows you can’t make basket of webwillow bark, for it breaks as it dries. Wet, however, it looked all right, and he went mumbling back to the fire, while I went on bashing, interrupting it from time to time to wander about and dig roots. In the late afternoon when it began to get dark, I picked the shivery-green seeds and bashed them up with the rainhat root on the same hollow rock I’d been bashing things on all day. A piece of rainhat leaf made a spoon and a funnel, all in one, and the juice went in the scent bottle, which had been previously emptied in the thicket. It made the thicket smell better, which by that time it needed.

Now there was enough juice to put them to sleep for a season, about. Well, for ten days at least, I thought, not realizing how much webwillow pulp and fragments had remained on the rock to adulterate my brew. My own ignorance saved me. An experienced herbalist might not have tried it without better equipment.

I was just getting ready to go over to the fire once more, this time to put the juice in their stew—I’d have to go without eating anything tonight myself—when there was a hail from the mountain and I looked up to see a Herald in full panoply and two people with blindfolds on. It was Joramal Trandle and Murzy, but not Mendost. Bloster was swearing in a tight, ugly voice.

Another thing Murzy had told me about invisibility. If you do what you always do when other people are distracted, they simply won’t see you. So I kept right on moving toward the fire, scent bottle in hand, reached for the stew spoon, and took a bite—burning my mouth—then dumped the juice in it as the spoon went back. All the men were watching the Herald. None of them was watching me.

“Let all in sound of my voice give heed,” cried the Herald. “Mendost of Stoneflight Demesne, Armiger, against whom Game has been called by Porvius Bloster, Tragamor, denies any interest in the person of Jinian, sister, person of Stoneflight Demesne—”

“I told you so,” I muttered.

“—and denies challenge to Game, saying let Porvius do to the person Jinian what Porvius will, for he cares not. However, on hearing of the abduction of Jinian of Stoneflight Demesne, did one Joramal Trandle, Negotiator for King Kelver of the Dragon’s Flight Demesne, assert right of interest in the dispute. I bring here Joramal Trandle and one Murzy, servant to the person Jinian.”

“That coward!” yelled one of the men. Porvius didn’t say anything. He had a confused look on his face, as though he couldn’t track what was happening. Well, I’d tried to tell him. It occurred to me then that the dams and I might have outwitted ourselves. Perhaps my private negotiations with Joramal had ruined any value I might have had to Mendost. Certainly he had wanted to use me for something, some bargaining point. Well, now it was up to Joramal.

Joramal called, a little uncertainly, “If we may have the blindfolds removed, we would Negotiate for the person Jinian.”

“It’s a bluff,” snarled Porvius, turning to glare at me.

“Truly, Gamesman, it is not,” I said, trying to look meek and inconspicuous and not worth killing. “Mendost simply doesn’t care what you do to me. He wouldn’t care if you killed the whole family.” He hadn’t sucked on the dream crystal since the night before, not that I’d seen. Perhaps the effect had weakened enough to let him deal with reality. I crossed my fingers and prayed to several newly invented deities.