The End of the Game (19 page)

The cave trembled and I within it, as the pig strove mightily with the stones that composed it, grunting a paean of adoration for my beauty. “Love,” grunted the pig. “I will prove my love!” His great boar’s prick waggled as he rooted at the stones. Already most were rolled away, soon the others would follow ...

And I woke. From far off in the woods came the sound of the trapped pig, squealing at the sky, demanding his love with brute virility. I sat up, screaming. “Come,” I called to the beasties beside me. “What one potion can do, another can undo.” And I ran into the darkness, they after me, before I realized I would need a torch to find what I needed and returned shamefaced to get it.

It was only after the pig was dead that I began to shiver and vomit, sick at heart and soul, eventually exhausting myself. And only as I drowsed toward sleep did I consider why Murzy had said, “Never for anything small, chile. Never for anything small.” Then to remember with revulsion the decision I had made long before as I’d left Schooltown after a Festival. I had thought, then, if he did not love me, I would make him love me.

I gagged on hot bile, choking on it.

However else I might win the love of the mysterious boy, it would not be with a potion. How dishonorable and vile the creature who would force love from another. I had looked on the face of that kind of love, a pig love which cared not what it did to that it loved.

How could it? How shameful and sickening to have one’s affections raped away. I would not be that low and would not bring that kind of shame upon him. And so resolved, the horror in me quieted at last and I slept.

16

I dreamed again. I was very ill. Murzy was holding me in the rocking chair. Someone said, “Either she’ll get well or she won’t. That’s all one can expect.”

Murzy said, “Nonsense. She’ll get well just as soon as she knows how sick she is. She’s only moving out of habit.”

There was a sound then. In the dream it seemed that the foundations of my world were being destroyed, and I woke in the chill day of Chimmerdong to a continuing blast of muttering thunder rolling ceaselessly out of the sky.

The dream remained, a clear reminder of my illness, even as I climbed a tall tree in lethargic spasms of effort, getting above the lower roofs of Chimmerdong to peer toward the west. Pillars of vasty cloud and needles of lightning played there in fitful dark as the sound beat upon us. I clung raglike to the branch, limply absorbing the fury of the sky, growing soggy and droopy with it, climbing down at last to lie at the foot of the tree like an overfull sponge, oozing resentment at having been wakened, too weary for surprise, too depressed for wonder.

“Something happened there,” I said to bunwit. “Some very large thing.” That was all I could manage. Later, of course, when I learned what had happened, that the lair of the Magicians had been destroyed in that one monstrous cataclysm, I felt sorry not to have known, not to have cared. At the moment, however, there was no energy with which to care. I crawled back into bed to sink into my dark core of sleep. There are animals that sleep in that fashion, spending a whole summer, a whole storm season, lost in kindly darkness. I wanted to sleep that way, so deeply that no dreams would come at all, so well that nothing could wake me. I could no longer ignore the sickness that had come upon me. After the forest visited me. Before the pig was trapped. Between those two events some essential link within me had been corroded by this creeping disorder, and I could not repair it. I did not even know it had been eaten away.

The sleep would not last, however. In a time I awoke, suddenly, preternaturally alert, as though by some efficacious drug that sharpened sight and sound and intellect and energy, all in one dose. This was more of the same illness. This wild energy was no less abnormal than the lethargy that had preceded it. Briefly, I wondered what the name of this cyclic disorder might be. It was a passing wonder.

I rose, jigging in place, feeling the tingle on my bare feet which said remnants of the Old Road were there beneath my toes. With no motivation at all beyond a need to use this hectic excess of enterprise, I began to walk along it, here, there, first in one direction then another. Sometimes the road was there and sometimes not. Parts were buried under mountains of mud and rock with huge trees grown up in it. In some places a river ran where the road should run, and wherever the road entered the slime it simply disappeared. I couldn’t tell whether it was underground or gone. It gave no sign of being there, and even digging down a little—oh, what a stench when that ground was dug into—disclosed nothing. Reason said perhaps the road was still there, but eyes, ears, fingers, feet said nothing.

From the northernmost edge of the forest, when I reached that point, I could see Daggerhawk Demesne squatted like a toad on the top of a rock, glaring down at me from a dozen glassy eyes. It was hypnotic, that place. I found myself staring at it, open-mouthed, without moving while the sun slid over the sky. I shook myself, muttered angrily, only to begin staring at it again. They were there, the Basilisks, the mother and mother’s sisters of Dedrina-Lucir, probably De-drina-Lucir herself, the vengeful, the threat to my safety, to my life. Porvius Bloster was there, my enemy, my captor, my adversary. Those who hated me and opposed me were there, all there, and I felt a red glow of anger kindle deep inside at the sight of the place.

Eventually I left it there to wander a nearby path which wound among groves of green-trunked trees to end in a stretch of meadow around a house.

A house. I had been alone in the forest for a long time, aware of no other occupant, yet now I stood in baffled confusion, confronting someone standing before a house.

“My dear,” called the person, “I did hope you’d feel free to stop by. Do bring the darling animals and come in.”

He—she? It? This stout, much painted and powdered person, with rosy circles drawn upon its cheeks and long diamonds of black paint drawn vertically through its eyes; this clown, acrobat, actor, pawnish performer of some kind or other, invisible within its robes and makeup; this incredible visitant posed in the door of the dwelling and beckoned to me as some merchant might summon reluctant custom from the street. Thoughts of wicked Witches, of the Ogress of Tarnost, of Trolls, and Ghouls, came to mind and were discarded. Whatever this person was, it was not precisely that. There was menace, but a menace more subtle than that; terror, but a terror more insidious. Had all my will not been paralyzed by the strange illness that had come upon me, I would have fled. As it was, I approached, mouth gaped like any simpleton at a fair.

“I wanted to thank you, my dear, for disposing of the pig. Monstrous great thing. I can’t imagine what they were thinking of. Daggerhawk, I mean. They’ve never been known for sensitivity, but releasing a thing of that magnitude into a closed system—and I’m sure you’d be the first to agree that Chimmerdong has been most dreadfully closed of late—simply begs for disaster.”

“I think that was their intention,” I said, mouth going on where wits were absent. “They seemed determined upon destruction.”

“No! You don’t say so. Well, Porvius Bloster was a nasty little boy who always picked his nose at parties, but I didn’t think he’d grow up to be like that. His sister, of course, we used to call—behind her back, I do assure you, my dear, she’d have been livid—the Lizard Duchess because of her cold, reptilian nature (one duplicated, so I understand, in her daughter), but I did think Porvius had a hint of warmth to him.”

The person fanned itself for a moment, looking off into the distance with a smile in which satisfaction and a certain cynicism were blended. Then it turned to me with its false, painted smile.

“Oh, my dear, I’m forgetting my manners entirely. Just see what a little stress will do to normally well-behaved people. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Oracle. Not only am, but have been for the remembered past.” It gestured toward the door. “Please. Do come in. You must be very tired after all that road trotting, and I have some soup warming on the fire.”

I had already smelled it. It was the one thing that could have tempted me into the house. I told myself a rogue and devil might mimic good humor and kindliness, and most of them do, but surely no one could connive the smell of good soup. For a moment the smell lifted my depression, taking me back to the good smells of kitchens when I was a child. We went in, bunwit, tree rat, and I, and the Oracle seemed not unkindly disposed toward any of us.

That person was now standing against a wall of its room, taking bowls from a cupboard and wiping them on a corner of its fantastic robe. This was made up of straps in bright colors, purple and blue and gold, all depending from ornamental strips that went from wrist to shoulder, across over the ears and head, and down the other side. Except for the long, pale hands, the creature was totally covered with fabric or paint. “I haven’t met an Oracle before,” I said, struggling to be polite, to make conversation. Even this minor effort was almost beyond me, and I silently cursed the dangerous extent of my debilitation. I had a brief, petulant vision of myself reduced to permanent catalepsy, unable to move at all.

“Well, my dear young person, I should think not,” it said in astonishment. “I may be the only one at all. In fact, that is entirely likely. It is certain there is no Oracle in the Index. I’ve had the matter looked into. That has been, in fact, part of the problem. They have their Seers by the dozens, all with the pretty little mothwinged masks, available on any street corner. Why should they seek an Oracle! Hmm! I ask you. And, of course, I’ll answer you, too, my child. Because the Oracle really knows. That’s why. Tell them that, and what do they say? They snort, or mock. So. I’ve given up talking to them at all. I know. That’s all. Let them fumble.” It declaimed this last, waving the soup spoon with sufficient force to throw droplets around the room. One landed on my lips, and I licked it up. It was, indeed, very flavorful soup.

“Do you really know?” The endless whirl within me spun into silence. Oh, to have answers, to have the realities. To hold in one’s hands the keys, the cure! “Everything? And could you tell me?”

“Well, of course I could. Will I? That depends, doesn’t it. On whether you have the price. No freebies. Doesn’t do to dispense freebies. Persons of consequence don’t respect you. High prices mean high respect. Would your bunwit like some soup as well?”

I mumbled something about the bunwit liking anything leafy, or one of the fruits I could see on the table. It took a proffered vegetable, munching away watchfully while the Oracle gave me soup and bread with soft yellow cheese.

“You see,” I said at last, driven to it by the silence and the desperate need to fasten upon some subject, some perception of actuality. “I’ve been asked to rescue the forest. And I really have very little idea how to be successful at it ...”

“Well, of course you will do it, my dear. Quite unmistakably. You’re the heroine type. A survivor. When it comes to matters like that, one always wants a heroine type.”

“Well, this heroine type doesn’t know how to proceed,” I gritted between my teeth, wanting only to be away from there, curled on my leafy bed in the ruin. Not thinking of anything. I bit my lip until the blood came, ashamed to show this incredible weakness. “How come you stay in the forest, here, by the way? You can’t get much company.”

It shrugged, blinking its diamond-painted eyes so they squinched into four-pointed stars, then opened again. “At one time there were quite enough. That was before Bloster’s forebears decided to cut the forest off, of course. Stupid men. I don’t know what they thought they were doing.”

“You don’t?” I asked. “An Oracle should know, shouldn’t one?”

It waved a spoon at me in mock chastisement. “Silly girl. I don’t mean I don’t mean I don’t know, I mean to make conversation. I mean, conversationally, that it seems ridiculous for them to have done so. Doesn’t it?”

“Not from what I know about Bloster and his kin, no,” I replied, struggling to set words together. Whatever the creature was before me—and a good cook was certainly part of it—it was no giggling schoolgirl, much though it talked like one. “It seems entirely in keeping with knavery and lying and bad Gamesmanship. Bloster took me captive when I was a student, not even Gameable. Then he switched Game to me when I evaded him. Then he sent his thalan, a Basilisk named Dedrina-Lucir, to kill me, a task which she failed, in Xammer, a Schooltown which had been held free from Game by every Referee ever. Exactly the kind of man who would kill off a forest for the sheer joy of it.” My words dwindled away into silence, the spoon falling from my hand.

“Oh, my dear child, how you have suffered,” it said, seeming to push its top lip down under its lower teeth in that expression of sympathy which I detest. “Such a brave little girl.”

“Nothing of the kind,” I whispered. Though I had been thinking exactly that. Some deep, sad vein had been opened to bleed exactly such suffering thoughts. I was choking on them. I could not admit it. “Annoyed little girl. Increasingly angry little girl, if you like.”

“Well, yes,” agreed the Oracle with irrepressible gaiety. “That, too.” It offered me more bread and cheese, which I refused. “I wonder if you could come up with my fee. It might be worth it to you, considering the way you’re feeling.”

“How much?” I murmured. “How much, Oracle? In what coin?”

“Well, it would depend on how many questions, wouldn’t it. How many do you think you have?”

I sighed. All my gut turned and tumbled in that sigh, nausea moving with it, sickness rising like a tide. I sat very still, tasting the bitterness of bile, willing it away. “One,” I said, beginning the enumeration, “why did my mother love me so little that she cared not whether I died? Two: Why did my brother Mendost share this dislike of me? Three: Why am I here, alone, faced with some task I do not understand? Four: How may that task be accomplished?

“Five: Who is it directs Porvius Bloster to Game against me to the death? Six: How could I be sure to make someone love me without using potion or spell?”