The End of the Game (64 page)

It was silent, then, for a very long time. I did not want to interrupt its thoughts. Finally, Ganver shivered and turned to and fro, as though shaking its head. “I will take you now where you may be safely hidden while I lead the Oracle away .”

I shook my top end. “Before we do that, Ganver, there’s something else we can do.”

“Do?” it asked, as though “doing” anything were foreign to its ability. Well, in a sense, I suppose that was true of Eesties. They had never really “done” much except buzz about carrying messages. At least those of Ganver’s generation hadn’t.

“There are a great many things which might be done,” I said, not wanting to give it any time to think the matter over. “The first one that comes to mind concerns how memory works. From what you’ve said, I don’t suppose Lom is remembering everything all the time, simultaneously. At least my mind doesn’t work that way.”

“No,” said Ganver stiffly, not unbending but condescending to explain. “As we messengers move through memory, Lom remembers. Part of the duty of the Eesties is to move through memory, wandering, dancing through every part, recalling all past time to Lom’s consciousness.

“Well, since you’ve been holed up in your grave there, Ganver, who’s been doing the remembering? Don’t tell me. I already know. The Oracle and his friends, right?”

It nodded. If an inclination of the top three points can be considered a nod, that’s what it did, and it did it in that superior manner that made me very angry.

I stamped one point of me. “You know,” I said in a conversational tone, “mankind is no great shakes in the holiness department. I think the Shadowpeople have it all over us, quite frankly. But I’ll stack us against your people any day, great Ganver. Half of you are fanatics and the other half are quitters.”

This was not really a very diplomatic thing to say, nor was it at all kind. I repented of it immediately but was angry enough to go on in dogged fashion, “If the Oracle is in the Maze with its brethren, Ganver, we can take it for granted it is circulating repeatedly among the worst possible memories. It is undoubtedly recalling everything it can of destruction. Of pain. Of the fall of the Bell. All that. And while that is going on, how many of you elder Eesties are sequestered away, not doing anything?”

“Too many,” the Eesty said. It was said so humbly I was ashamed of myself for the outburst. “It seems even one is too many.”

“Well, the point is, of course, that if there are enough of your generation—enough who aren’t ‘Brotherhood’—I’d suggest a thing you might do immediately is to start circulating among the pleasanter events of history. Recall to Lom’s memory some pleasanter times. Cheer it up a bit.”

Ganver did not reply. Even I had to admit to myself that when talking about an entire world, “cheering up a bit” did sound undignified. “And another thing,” I went on stubbornly, “is to figure out whether any particular memory can be destroyed.”

“Destroyed!” The Eesty was aghast. You’d think I’d suggested murdering its entire race.

“Yes, damn it, Ganver. The memory in which the Bell is destroyed. If we could just get rid of that one! If Lom didn’t remember it was gone—don’t you see, if it didn’t know the Bell was gone, it might act as though it weren’t.”

“But the Bell is gone!”

“Where did it come from in the first place? Lom made it, didn’t it? Constructed it
^,
Eesties didn’t make it, did they? I thought not. I think it’s like newts, I really do.”

“Newts?” Ganver evidently didn’t know the word. Well, why should the Eesty know about newts? Nevvts aren’t exactly prepossessing, and they certainly aren’t native to this world because they have tails.

“Newts. If you cut off a newt’s foot, it grows another one. I think it’s because a newt is so stupid it doesn’t know the foot is gone, so another one just pops out. Somewhere inside the newt is the idea of footness, and footness takes over when it is needed. You cut off my foot, on the other hand, and I know very well it’s gone, so another one just doesn’t grow. Well, if Lom didn’t know the Bell was gone . . .”

“You think another one might pop out?” Ganver sounded exactly like Murzy, that same tone of slightly outraged elder dignity.

“I think it’s worth the chance, whether it does or not. Even if another Bell didn’t pop out, it would make Lom feel better not to remember the actual act of destruction.”

The thing I was remembering really had nothing to do with newts. It had to do with that time in Chimmerdong when I had grodgeled with the D’Bor Wife, pretending to find the Daylight Bell, only to see the Bell itself, golden and glorious, sinking beneath the waves of the lake. That was the idea of the Daylight Bell, I knew it. The idea, the model, whatever. If I had seen a Daylight Bell in that distant lake, there might be more or could be more than one. If I had seen another, it must mean that Lom could make another, several, many, If it felt like it. If it felt better!

“And if Lom felt better, maybe it would stop making those yellow crystals that are killing everyone,” I finished, knowing I had not been particularly persuasive. Ah, well, it was mostly hunch, intuition, not reason. Still, to do that would be better than doing nothing.

“How?” asked Ganver, much to the point.

“I’m not sure whether it would work or not, but I’d start by getting some flood-chucks in, and we’d cut all the hedge away from the outside until we got to the place the memory is, then we’d tunnel underneath and collapse it and dig it all out and carry it away. I mean, Ganver, I don’t know how Lom’s mind works, but I do know that part of it is material. Real. Lom-flesh, so to speak. So if we take the real flesh part away, then the memory will have to go with it, won’t it?”

Ganver did not indicate comprehension. I decided to try again. “Look, sometimes a Gamesman will get whacked on the head. After which, at least once in a while, that Gamesman forgets things because part of its brain has been injured or destroyed. So if Lom’s memory is at all like other creatures’ memories, and if we’re very careful about it, why couldn’t we remove just this one memory?”

Ganver breathed a word that I could only translate as “Sacrilege,” though what it said was, “Corruption of the holy reality greatly to the discomfiture of those whose job it is to maintain the status quo.”

Really, this old Eesty did make me peevish. “Well, the real sacrilege was when young Oracle and his friends brought the Bell down, Ganver. After that, anything else that is done can’t be called anything but helpful. If we could find Mind Healer Talley, she might have a better idea, but short of that, I don’t know what else to do.”

“We could go to that place, to that time,” it said with a certain chill reserve. “The Oracle would not expect to find us there soon again.”

“Yes, let’s go there. Let’s go outside the Maze, onto the road. I’d like to have my own shape back and eat humanish food.”

It took me to the road below the Dervishes’ Pervasion, standing silent at the edge of the trees while I in my Jinian shape built a fire and made myself tea. I was fully clothed, as though I had never changed, with my pack still on my back. While I drank, it stood. While I toasted bread, it stood. Finally, it said, “This thought of yours. This destroying of memory. It could do great damage.”

“It could. Yes. But quite frankly, I can’t think of anything which would make things much worse. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s shadow all over the hillside behind us.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” it replied, “but the forest on the mountain to the east is dead. It would have been alive when you entered the Maze.”

Ganver was right, and so was I. I wondered how much time we had actually spent in the Maze. I remembered there had been widow’s bush in bloom back at the little lake when I called up its dweller. If I wanted to hike back there, I could see how far it had come toward setting seed, which would give a measure of the time. If it hadn’t merely died. Hardly worth it. It didn’t matter how much time; the fact was sufficient unto itself. There had been enough time for a forest to die. Enough time for shadow to come flowing along in a gray carpet.

“I can’t think of any good reason not to,” Ganver said at last, sounding almost personlike.

I got out my things. A summons. An easy, any-first-year-Wize-ard-can-do-it summons. I couldn’t. It took me three tries before I could even remember the words. “Gamelords,” I whispered. “Something terrible is happening.”

“Of course,” Ganver said gently. “As Lom dies, so all our senses and skills die. Both yours and ours. Remember.”

Well, of course then I remembered. Remembered, gritted my teeth, and did the summons. Did it right, too, even though it was like wading through deep mud. Every word was an effort. This close to the bad memories, this close to the shadow, the life-force had to be at an absolute minimum.

In a few minutes, however, I heard a chirruping call from the top of the hill and saw three worried-looking chucks threading their way down the path, staying well clear of the shadow. We bowed halfheartedly. I began talking. They were the ones who had been given the blue crystal before, so they understood at once what I was talking about. Still, they conferred for a long time before agreeing. One of them went back up the trail, even more carefully, for the shadows were thicker than ever, and returned after a long while with six or seven more of them. Meantime, I’d gone back into the Maze and found the edge of the memory place.

The chucks and I decided to clear all the growth between the road and the path so we could get at the edge of the memory place. I explained carefully that they must not get onto the path itself, and if that accidentally happened, they were to stay very still in one place and I would come in after them.

They set to work. I would have liked to help, but I had brought no tools at all, and my teeth were not up to the job. By nightfall, they had all the brush cleared along the edge of the path, cleared and carried away. I asked if they could bring gobblemoles on the morrow, and they said yes, After which they went carefully away while Ganver took me somewhere else for the night. I don’t know where, and it didn’t matter. I was asleep by the time we got there.

The next day we dug out the memory. That is, I think we dug it out. The gobblemoles went under the path from the cleared space, tunneled it all out underneath, then let it collapse. After which Ganver and I went in at the other end of the path, watched the ship arrive, watched the moon fall, and then ducked into the crevasse, which should have brought us out into the Temple of the Bell just in time for the destruction. Instead, we came out in the bottom of the gobblemoles’ pit. No destruction of the Bell.

Which might have meant it was gone. Which might have meant it had moved. Which might have meant nothing except that
we
had no access to it anymore. I thanked the creatures, explaining as much as I could, and they departed.

Coincident with their departure, we heard a threatening sound, rumbling, like a mutter of thunder. “The Oracle knows we’re here,” breathed Ganver, scooping me up. I heard the sound again. A fluttering roar. Above Ganver’s shoulder I could see the slope behind it. The shadows rose from it like a flock of monstrous birds. It was their fluttering we heard. “They are
controlling
the shadow,” Ganver said, horrified. “No one has controlled the shadow before. . . .”

They were around us before Ganver could move. It did something, a kind of shifting of space. The gray, formless place was all around us, but some of the shadows had come through as well. Ganver dropped me, spun, roared, picked me up, and did the thing—whatever it was—again. We were somewhere else, only a few shadows now, fluttering madly. One of them brushed by me, so closely I felt it and shuddered, remembering being shadow bit from that time in Chimmerdong.

“Pfowgrowl,” snarled Ganver. “Would that I had a dozen of the Gardener’s shadow-eaters and I would teach these shades to leave Eesties alone.” We fled once more, Ganver muttering as we went. “I’m going to leave you, Jinian, Dervish Daughter. Stay until I come for you. If you would know the meaning of the star-eye, watch and learn.”

The Eesty dropped me again; I felt it go, the shadows in close pursuit. Anger burned behind them like a lightning track through the gray. I was alone in a place, making a great crackle of broken shrubbery as I picked myself up.

A quiet glade. No sign of anything dying, not here. Dark stone buildings half-sheltered by the trees. Zellers grazing on the sward. Evening? Dawn? Lamplight in the windows of the place. A door opened and someone, evidently attracted by the noise I was making, called into the half-light, “Hello? Hello? Can we help you?”

I stepped out onto the meadow, adjusting my pack and keeping a pleasantly neutral expression on my face as I approached. “Hello. Yes. I seem to have lost my way.” It was a young woman in a smock, hair drawn back in a sensible braid. Something about her reminded me of Silkhands.

I said, “My name is Jinian.”

“Jinny. Do come in. I was just about to put the kettles on for the children’s wash-up, and for our tea, of course. Come into the kitchen.” She bustled off ahead of me, down a stone-floored corridor. The ceilings of the place were low, no more than a foot or so over her head. A tall man would have had to stoop. Perhaps there were no tall men here. The place looked clean enough, and yet there was a smell . . . like a latrine. A urine smell. I twitched my nose and tried to ignore it.

She opened a heavy door, closed it behind me, and gestured me to a chair as she began filling heavy kettles with water and hanging them on hooks above the fire. There were dozens of them, great iron things that looked heavy. She grunted when she heaved them, and I went to help her, curious. “Are you doing this all alone?”

She smiled at me, a tired smile. “Well, it’s all part of the dedication, isn’t it. Part of the saintly work. Thank you for your help, though. Since I’ve had this flux, it’s been hard to lift them.” Her hands on the kettle handle were raw, with chapped, bleeding places.

There was a smaller kettle hung closer to the flames. I laid more wood upon the fire as she filled it, wondering who it was who cut all that wood. If she heated so much water every morning, it would take a forest full of trees to provide the heat. Before long the small kettle began to steam, and she poured water into a teapot, setting a cup before me. “We’ve time for a cup before wash-up.” She sighed. “Now, what brings you to the Sanctuary?”