The End of the Game (11 page)

It knocked me down. There was a great “Keeraw!” and the wing the feather belonged to moved aside. Golden eyes the size of washtubs looked down at me, and one great talon moved to hold me tightly to the branch. It was not necessary. I was holding quite tightly on my own.

The thing—the thing was a flitchhawk, really. One the size of a small keep or a large barn, with wings like roofs flapping. The thing reached out with its left foot and grabbed at a passing cloud, then the same with its right foot. Then again. Remember the old story I told you of, the one Tinder-my-hand had learned from a woman in Betand, many years ago, and told to me? The one about Little Star and the flitchhawk? I couldn’t help it. I had to say, “What are you doing, flitchhawk, grimbling and grambling that way?”

And the flitchhawk said, “Grimbling and grambling to find the Daylight Bell, Little Star.”

Well, what could I do? I mean, the story was what the story was. The next line was what it was, and so I said it. “Well then, let me help you, flitchhawk, and I’ll grimble and gramble, too.” So I stood up on that branch and grabbed for the clouds that went by, left hand, right hand, and as soon as I was standing up, the flitchhawk grabbed me.

“Now I’ve got you, Little Star!” it screamed. Well, it certainly did. Of course, he’d had me the whole time, so to speak, so I went on with the story as though it had been a nursery play, trying not to remember how far down was.

“Now why did you do that, old flitchhawk?” I cried, giving it the next line. “Just when you grabbed me, I caught sight of the Daylight Bell right there, behind that cloud.” My voice trembled terribly, but the flitchhawk didn’t seem to notice.

“Where? Where?” he cried, just as though it wasn’t exactly what he was supposed to say. “Let me see,” as he sat me down on the branch. Well, I had no rope, no nothing to tangle him in, and he was too big for that anyhow, so I took the star from my neck and wrapped the thong around one talon, shouting at the top of my lungs, “Now I’ve got you, flitchhawk. Daylight Bell in treetop can’t be. Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie, now give me boon or else you die!” Which was about as silly a thing as I have ever said under any circumstance. This whole thing was not sensible. I was quite aware of that, even at the time. One might have thought it was a kind of magic, perhaps, with the exact words having some esoteric meaning, but that was not the sense of it. It was rather more like a play in which the players are required to know the cues and give the correct responses before they can move on to the next act. So, I merely went on with it in a kind of delirium, not learning until a long time later that it made a terrible kind of sense if one only knew what was really going on.

“What boon will you have, child?” asked the flitchhawk, and it sounded to me similar to the voice of the forest, rather sorrowful and very quiet. It had quit grimbling and grambling and was standing very still, great wings outstretched, the sun coming down through them. He didn’t need to ask me twice.

“Please, sir or ma’am,” I begged, “will you take me out of here and save me from Porvius Bloster and the Basilisk?”

Which explains how I came to be delivered to Vorbold’s House in Xammer in a manner that made my life there somewhat a problem for the next several years.

8

As Murzy said to me from time to time, “A little pomp is no great matter, but ostentation should be avoided.” And then you will recall her counsel on the matter of invisibility. And finally, you may know something I did not of the nature of girls. I met girls for the first time at Xammer.

I was delivered at dusk on the roof of Vorbold’s place by the giant flitchhawk. Because it was dusk and because it was the roof, only a few people saw it. One was the gatekeeper, who came lurching up the stairs, out of breath and furious, to berate the person responsible for such an outrage. Such deliveries were improper. During her attempt to say so, she was knocked down by a departing stroke of the flitchhawk’s wing. She then dragged me before Queen Vorbold herself, who demanded to know the name of the Gamesman—Dragon or Colddrake, she presumed—who had broken custom by Gaming, that is, Shapeshifting, in the town of Xammer.

I told her honestly that so far as I knew, the creature that had brought me to Xammer was only itself, a pure flitchhawk of giant kind, no Gamesman in Shifted shape. When she pursued the question, I told her something of my adventures—leaving out quite a lot, including anything about the forest asking for my help, as I realized even then she would not understand it and would much resent that fact. I did leave in some parts about Porvius Bloster. That could be checked. The College of Heralds keeps a record of every official challenge, and the business between and among Porvious, Mendost, and Dorto of Pouws should have been open, public, and official enough for anyone’s notice.

Seeing no diminution of the disbelief in her face, I thought to give her a convenient way out. “Of course, Gameswoman,” I said, “someone may have taken that shape without my knowledge. I am only an ignorant girl. That could have been possible, but if so, it was without my knowledge.”

Since she could think of no other questions to ask, she drew herself up and demanded, “Where is your baggage?”

I’m afraid that made me disgrace myself by crying. It was precisely the right thing to have done, for unlike girls who arrived in flitchhawk talons at the supper hour, girls who arrived in tears without baggage were familiar ground to Queen Vorbold. She arranged for me to have clothing and a room at once, and for a message to be sent to King Kelver and another to Joramal Trandle.

So far, no occasion for dismay. However, my arrival had been seen by one or two others, and from them rumor spread throughout the School. Jinian had been delivered by Dragon from Dragon’s Fire Demesne, King Kelver disdaining the customs of Xammer. Jinian had been delivered by a tame beast from a circus, since she was actually the daughter of a pawnish acrobat by some Gamesman of note. She had been dropped out of a cloud by a Wizard, reason unspecified. It didn’t matter what the story was. Whatever story was told made me an object of speculation, something bizarre and questionable. Any such thing could be either interesting or suspect.

They would have been even more interested had they been present to hear the words of the flitchhawk as it set me down. “This has been a small boon, child,” it said. “I will owe you another. The ways of the sky are mine, treetop and cloud, sunlight and starlight, wind and rain. If you have need there, call on me.” Whatever the girls of Vorbold’s House might have said of my arrival, they had not heard that. I was not sure I believed it myself.

At any rate, that was the way in which I entered Vorbold’s House.

What can I tell you about the place? It was quite luxurious. We were pampered with good food and clean laundry, excellent wines and occasional entertainment. The classes—well, compared to what the dams had been teaching me, the classes were not much. After only a few days, I realized they were not supposed to fit us to take any major part in Game.

We were taught crafty things, calligraphy and flower arranging; costume design and stitchery—we needed to be able to supervise the making of all the clothes needed in a Demesne, including all the Game costumes involved—and then how to walk and sit in the costumes we had designed. And conversation. Hours and hours of conversation. We spent ages learning to make graceful compliments, and I was reminded of Cat Candleshy drilling me before my talk with Joramal.

We learned precedence and protocol, who would walk first in procession, who would sit by whom at dinner. We learned the Index. We learned a lot of cartography, the names and locations of Demesnes, which ones were allied with which and which should be avoided. (At all costs stay away from the Dukedom of Betand, the High Demesne, and a new Demesne northeast of Betand ruled by the Witch Huldra.) We learned a good bit about contracts, since most of us would be contracted for in one way or another.

There was a class called The Way of Prudence, which I assumed to be something literary (we were encouraged to read books, since it kept us out of trouble) but found to be the study of all the various ways one might duck for cover. Things like determining whether a dangerous level of tension existed and getting oneself out of it—excusing oneself to go to the privy, for example. And how to appear so stupid and generally inadequate that enemies would pay no attention to one. And how to set up a ransom fund for oneself as part of a contract, just in case prudence didn’t work. Part of this class was dedicated to things like stopping bleeding or fixing broken bones temporarily until a Healer could be found.

And, surprisingly, we had a class in babies. I hadn’t thought of such a thing at all until I came to Vorbold’s House, but it made as much sense as many of the other things we learned. Queen Vorbold got the babies from the town around. I very quickly adopted one for myself whom no one else wanted. He reminded me of Grompozzle in a way—that same sad-animal look to his eyes. I think his own mama whapped him entirely too much for his good, but we got along quite well. It was expected we would all have babies as part of whatever alliance we had, so we were taught some few useful things about that—including an absolute prohibition against using midwives. Midwives can see into the future of the babies they deliver, and those who will not get a soul, they do not allow to live. The great Demesnes do not care much for souls; they care more for power. I marked that down to ask Murzy about. If I had a child who would never have a soul, I think I’d not want it to go on living, contract or no contract. I determined to use a midwife if the need arose, prohibition or not.

None of it was very ... well, intellectually challenging. I wanted to know about the dangerous new alliances, and who Huldra was, and what we might choose to do if we didn’t make an alliance for ourselves. I was politely hushed and told none of that was relevant to my future. It was no wonder the girls occupied themselves with silliness. There was certainly nothing very serious for them to talk about. None of it was the kind of thing the dams were teaching me. That had reach to it. Even the easiest kinds of magic have oddly curled edges to them, places where the understanding goes away into some other dimension and one has to intuit meaning and draw similarities from complexity. This is called simply “connecting”, and it is anything but simple.

Some of the girls, whatever they may have heard about my arrival, offered me politeness, which I respected. None offered friendship, which I understood. Most of these girls had been in school since they were four or five. They had no experience of the world at all. Their ideas of reality were oddly at variance with the world I knew, sometimes more romantic and notional, other times more brutal. All their opinions were formed by others, not by themselves, and so they suspended their attitudes toward me, waiting for someone to tell them whether I should be accepted or not. None of them decided for themselves. They were in Xammer to remove them from the Game until some good alliance could be made, and each of them would take her own positions eventually through some Gamesman or other. So, all their intelligence was bent on capturing or holding the interest of a major Gamesman, and the talk of the powers of this one or the Talents of that one and the wealth of some other one occupied all their time and attention. Some of them had Talents of their own, which they were forbidden to use in Xammer and discouraged from making much of wherever they might be, for most Gamesmen would value them as subject allies or breeders but would reject them as Gameswomen. Still, many of them had Talents. I had none. It did not make me feel any more secure.

I didn’t realize all this at once or even very soon after arriving. Much of it I did not put together until much later when I was older. It was all strange, this place, and I knew nothing at all. I was gauche. I broke the custom every time I opened my mouth or took a step. I asked “why” in class instead of “who”. I said things were “interesting” rather than “potent”. (That was a favorite word at Vorbold’s House that year, “potent”.) I ate because I was hungry, whether or not the foods being served were in fashion. I refused a taste of a dream crystal that Banila of Clourne offered me—she had a case of them, all colors, which had been given her by a kinswoman. It seemed to me then, and now, a dangerously stupid gift for a girl, but then, Banila was a dangerously stupid girl. And once the novelty of having clothes of my own wore off, I couldn’t maintain much interest in the narrow distinctions of dress that the girls occupied themselves with. I couldn’t make myself believe it was important to wear stockings that were embroidered with names of prominent Gamesmen! Or draggle my hair over my ears in rattails. I thought it made them look like fools, but they all did it.

I might have been considered merely an oddity who was not worth cultivating. However, my gauchery was not the reason—or not the whole reason—the first half year in Vorbold’s House was very lonely.

That was occasioned by the arrival, soon after my own, of Dedrina-Lucir, daughter of a Demesne I must have passed closely in approaching Chimmerdong Forest. It lay just east of the Tits (which were called, according to Dedrina-Lucir, Mother Massif) and a little north of the route I had taken. I had never heard of it before. Daggerhawk Demesne, it was called. Its device was a flitchhawk impaled by a blade. The manner of my arrival came to Dedrina-Lucir’s attention early—I had some reason to suppose that she had arrived already aware of it—and she remarked that in Daggerhawk they saw fit to make flitchhawks the prey rather than the other way ‘round. “Rather than be dangled like a dead bunwit,” were her exact words. This led to some interesting nicknames for me, ending at last in the one everyone adopted, “Dangle-wit”. My place of origin was called “Dangle-wit Demesne”, and my betrothed’s place was known as “Dangle-fire Demesne”.

Needless to say, Dedrina-Lucir never put a foot wrong. She knew instinctively what utensil to use at table, which wine to praise and which to deprecate—or, if she did not, everyone preferred what Dedrina preferred, so it made no difference. What Dedrina wore became the fashion, and what Dedrina said became the rule. Dedrina, I soon learned to my anger and confusion, had ruled that Jinian was to be the butt of all their little jokes and pranks. Jinian was the enemy. They were “us”, and Jinian was “her”.