The End of the Game Read online

  I guessed they might have something to do with the old gods. In our part of the world, Murzy said, the evidence of them was often found, here and there, though mostly among ruins. Then I realized that “roones’ were “ruins”, and that this was the ancient city I had often heard of but never seen before, Old South Road City.

  If this were Old South Road City, then the people in it were the blind runners, and this brought a new kind of fear. The blind runners were said to eat children. That virtue was claimed for them by every nursemaid who ever was, and every harassed mother as well. “Be still, now, or I’ll have the blind runners come eat you up!” I’d heard it over and over until I was old enough to leave the nursery. I think children hear it still, all over the world, whether their minders have ever seen a blind runner or not. As I was only about nine years old, it occurred to me that I might still be of an appetizing age.

  They did not immediately offer to eat me, however, and by the time I thought of it again, it was obvious they ate mostly fungus and roots and giant wheat. They did not even gesture a sharp stone toward Misquick, and she was fat and juicy as any animal ever was.

  They sat me down among them, Misquick beside me and Grommy at my feet, while they garbled and howled as though they had been wranglebats. It was some time before I perceived the howling to be melodic and the garbling intelligible, but once it came to me that they were singing, I recognized the intent well enough. They were singing “On the Road, The Old Road,” which is a children’s jumprope song, or a song to go with playing jax, or even a much-tag song. One of the younger ones fingered the amulet I had been given by Murzy’s oldsters, crying out some “looky here” or other, and then they were all staring at my front, where the little star hung, its green-and-black eye peering back at them.

  “Footseer?” one asked of another, and the next thing I knew they were blindfolding me and taking off my shoes. Then I was whirled and whirled, as in a game of blind man’s grab, and set down in a sudden silence. I felt a tingle in one toe and reached tentatively toward it, setting my foot down on something hard that tingled more—not in pain, you understand, but a tickly, pleasurable feeling.

  I went toward it, until both feet were on it, and found that by continuing to move, the tingling would go on, though if I simply stood still, it stopped after a moment. So I wandered myself, quite happily, humming as I went, until a great cry went up from the assembled crowd, “Footseer!” and they took the blind-fold away. I had been following a line of half-buried stones, part of an ancient roadway, and had done it without seeing it at all.

  After that we had some food and drink with much garbling and good cheer, and one of them took me back to a road I knew. I went to find Murzy to ask her about them, and she said they were the blind runners—blindfolded runners—indeed, those who looped through all the lands of the True Game on the Old Road. Old South Road City was the place they began from, and while not all the runners lived there year round, it was there they gathered to begin the journey.

  “Chile,” she said in the comfortable nursery dialect she always used with me then, “it’s as well tha came on them when tha did, for they are more or less sane this time of year. When the time of storms comes, then looky out. They begin to foam and fulminate on the road, blind as gobblemoles, stopping for no man nor his master.”

  “Why do they do that, Murzy?” I asked her. The ones I had seen had been sane enough, certainly, and not bad hosts, either. They had a kind of seed cake made with honey that was as good as anything from our kitchens.

  “Story is, chile, they’ll run the road until they find the tower. Tower, if tha sees it, sucks tha up by the eyes. Tower, if tha sees it, eats tha up. So, they go running, running, thinking they’ll run into it full tilt, blind and safe, and rescue the bell from the shadows.”

  “What bell is that, Murzy?”

  “The only bell, chile. D’tha grow big and get the wize-art and tha’ll maybe find what bell. ‘Tis the one bell, the two bell, that cannot ring alone. The old gods’ bell.” And that was all she would say, no matter how I begged.

  “Why did they look at my star and call me a footseer?” I asked, dangling it before her on its string.

  “It’s a seer dangle, sure enough, and no secret about that, with the eye on it plain as plain. But don’t flourish it out for the world to see.” So I tucked it into the neck of my shirt, abashed, not knowing why. She had not understood my question.

  After that, I would often go off into the woodland to the line of stones that marked the Old Road, shut my eyes, and walk along the roadway, feeling it in my toes. After a time, I was able to run full tilt along the way, never losing it for a moment, rejoicing in the thrumming tingle, a kind of wild, exhilarating feeling which grew wilder and better the faster I ran. When the Season of Storms approached, however, Murzy told me to stay away from the road. “They care not who they trample, chile, or what. Tha or tha pets or tha kin Mendost would all be the same to them.” So I took to hiding in the trees and watching. Sure enough, they began to come running by, bunches and hundreds of them, all running with their hooded heads up, as though in answer to a summons no one but they could hear. If one crept close to the Old South Road City, one could hear them howling—singing, as it were—through the dark. “On the road, the Old Road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone.” When we jumped rope to that, two would come in at the “cannot ring alone” and jump, counting together, hands on waists. “Shadow bell rings in the dark, Daylight Bell the dawn. In the tower hung the bells, now the tower’s gone.” At “gone” one would run out of the rope, leaving it slapping behind, and then to and fro through it, on the swing, as many counts as one could do. That’s only one rope tune, of course. There’s one about the first Eleven, and one about Larby Lanooly and a dozen more. Now that I am grown, wherever I go in the world, I hear children winging jax tunes or bounce-ball tunes or jumprope tunes, and they are the same in a dozen different tongues, the same all over the world.

  Stories, too. They used to tell me stories, the old dams. Especially Murzy. The one about Little Star and the Daylight Bell. She learned it when she was a girl from an old dam in Betand, but that story is told everywhere. How Little Star went wandering? You remember? And he came to the gobblermole, draggling in the earth. And he asks the gobblemole what he’s druggling for, and the mole says, “I’m druggling for the Daylight Bell.” Then when Little Star starts to druggle, too, Mole catches him and binds him up. And Little Star tricks him into getting loose, and binds him up, and demands a boon to let him go again. Remember the story? After the mole, he meets a d’bor wife grodgeling the water, and then a flitchhawk grimbling and grambling the air, and each of them is tricked into a boon. I loved that story. All children do.

  It was soon after the visit to the blind runners that I got sick. Cat Candleshy, one of the dams, said later it was probably some disease the runners had among them that our people had no resistance to. After a day or two of it, with me no better, and the fever burning hotter with each passing hour, old Murzy demanded a Healer be sent for. Through the haze of fever and pain, I remember Mother standing at the foot of my cot, her hair wild and lovely in the light from the window, saying impatiently, “There’s no need, Murzemire. She’ll get better or she won’t, and that’s all anyone can expect.” When they had shut the door behind her, Murzy cuddled me tight and said to hold on, she herself was going to Mip for the Healer. It seems she did, going completely on her own and sneaking the Healer back with her. She, the Healer, said she’d been fetched just in time. My lungs wheezed and sucked, and I couldn’t get air into them. She put her hands on me and reached down inside—I could feel it—to twist something or untwist it, whichever. It hurt. I remember yelling, partly from the pain, partly from the relief at being able to breathe again.

  She had to do it again, the day after, and it hurt again, but then I began to improve and the Healer merely sat by my bed, telling me stories about bodies. She told me of bones, and how the hear
t pumps the blood ‘round, and of the network of nerves from toetop to headtop, with tiny Elators flicking on the network to deliver messages. “Electrical,” she said, shaking her head in wonder at it all, “and chemical. Like lightning.”

  I remember sleepily asking her what they were called, the little Elators. She shook her head, laughing.

  “I call them nerve transmitters,” she said. “You might call them nerve Elators, if you like.” After that, I often thought of the little Elators in me, swift as storm, carrying their messages between my head and my fingers or toes.

  During my slow recovery, I remembered what Mother had said to Murzy. “She’ll get better or she won’t, and that’s all anyone can expect.” There was nothing unusual in her attitude or tone, neither more nor less interest about me than might have been there at any time previously. It was just then, every sense sharpened by the fever and the pain, that I understood the meaning of it. The meaning was, “Jinian will die or she won’t, and who cares?”

  I think I cried over this. There’s a vague memory of Murzy holding me on her lap in the rocking chair—me, a big girl of nine or ten—as though I were an infant. Later it didn’t seem so important. It was just the way things were, as thunder is loud or lightning unselective. No point arguing with the thunder or threatening the lightning. Just seek cover and wait. That’s probably how many young ones survive childhood. Seek cover and wait.

  The next thing I remember especially is when Murzy look me on an expedition. All the old dams were going out to pick herbs and fungi, bitty here, bitty there, to last us the cold season when nothing would be growing. Our teacher was off on a trip to visit his relatives up near Harbin. The boys were off into the hills, and when Murzy suggested to Mother I be let go with them, she said, “Oh, take her, Dam Murzy. Take her for heaven’s sake. Now if Garz and Bram would get themselves off, we’d have some peace around here.” Considering Mother was the one who usually disturbed whatever peace anyone else might have, I thought this was a bit overstated and started to say so. I hadn’t been disrupting anything and was in a mood for considerable self-justification toward this woman who had not even cared whether I died. Murzy, however, caught me by the back of my jerkin and bore me out of the room on a flood of “Thank you, ma’am’s”. Next thing I knew I was in the wagon with six dams and the horses clattering us off down the road to the forest.

  It’s a bit difficult to tell just what happened next, because it was and it wasn’t much. We went on for a bit on the road, with the old ones singing the funny song about two lovers in a briar patch and all the odd rhymes to the last line, “And he scratched it!” Then we turned into the forest road and they fell quiet. Three of them got down from the wagon. We came to the forest bridge.

  Forest bridge is a small high wooden one, curving up from one rocky mossy wall to another rocky mossy wall over the tinkly torrents of Stonybrook. There are ferns in the walls, and a cool, wet smell even on hot afternoons. So ...

  One old woman, I think it was Tess Tinder-my-hand, whispered something into the air, then set foot on the bridge, stamping her foot, so, just a little. Bridge drummed, bowom. Second old woman whispered, set her foot, bom bom bowom. Third old woman set foot on the bridge, bom bom bowom wommmmm. And then quiet. Horses quiet. Wagon quiet. All the old women quiet, waiting. I crept down from the wagon, bunwit still, sneaky, crept out onto that bridge. Old women set their feet, bom bom bowom wommmm, and just when the echo was starting to come up from below I set my foot down quick, and the echo came wom wom bawom bom bom with a sound of laughter in it. I kept right still then, listening while the laughter went on. There was something living down there, under the bridge. Then the old women began singing about Larby Lanooly, and old Murzy shook up the horses to come over the bridge, in a rum-a-rum-a-rum of hooves, and we got back in the wagon and that was that.

  When we came to the groves, though, old Murzy look me by the hand to each of the old women, putting my hand in each one’s old hand, saying, “Welcome our sister, our child, for today she begins upon the Way.” When I’d done it with all six of them, she took me aside, speaking to me for the first time without the baby-talk “tha’s, as she would to a grown-up person. “Jinian, girl,” she said, “you’ve the wize-art. In part, at least, and none know whether the whole will come until it comes. Now you must promise me something or the sisters and I’ll be gone come night and come not nigh you again.”

  “Where will you go?” I remember I asked this, more curious about that than about what she might say next.

  “Away,” she said flatly, and I believed her. “Now listen. What we tell you is secret. What we teach you is secret. What you learn from us is secret. You do not talk about it. Not to your mother, not to any in the Demesne. Not to your lover, come that time, or your husband or child, come that time as well. To one of us, yes, if you see the star-eye and hear the proper words. Otherwise, never.”

  Well, I had no lover, that was sure. And I wasn’t inclined to tell anyone at the Demesne anything important, nor Mother anything at all, important or not. So I gave her my hand and promised, she putting the little star into it as I did so.

  “Always keep this safe, Jinian. It is a sign to tell any Wize-ard anywhere that you are one of us, a sister in the Way, but most times you don’t go dangling it out where the world can see it and ask questions. Long time ago it was called the Eesty sign, and some still call it that. So, if one of us asks are you Wize-ard, or are you star-eye, or do you carry the Eesty sign, it all means the same thing. Do you hear me, Jinian?”

  I said I did. It made Tess’s gift more precious than ever, and I took to polishing it every night on my nightgown when I went to bed. However, just then I wanted to know about what had just happened.

  “What was it, there at the bridge?” I asked.

  “Bridge magic, child. Calling up the deep dwellers. One of the ten thousand magics, and not the simplest. We learn a simpler one today, herbary, and see you pay attention.”

  I did my best. I certainly never forgot what they taught me that afternoon. Rainhat root, pounded with the seeds of shivery-green, when the seeds are still in the pod and the root taken on the same day, will bring a sleep no power is proof against—no, not even Healing. “A day, a drop,” said old Tinder-my-hand. “Two days, two drops. Drink a flagon of it, and a man will sleep a year and starve while asleep, for in this sleep he will not swallow nor shit nor pee nor aught but barely breathe, girl.”

  “It sounds ... dangerous,” I said.

  “It sounds useful,” she corrected me. “May come a time you’d like Mendost to be asleep for a few days? Well? But never for anything small, girl. We don’t use the wize-art for small things.”

  So I learned the formula for sleep, and another very complicated one for making people or creatures fall in love—that one had sixteen ingredients that had to be mixed in the right order and the right quantities—and yet another for reducing temper. Murzy caught my eye and reminded me, “Not for anything small, Jinian. Put that thought right out of your head,” so I stopped thinking of putting it in Mother’s tea. Still, it would have been an improvement.

  Herbary isn’t really secret. There are books, often not even hidden away, where you can find out about it. So it doesn’t matter if I say some things about it. You’ll notice I don’t tell what the sixteen ingredients are. Murzy says it wouldn’t be wize at all. But I can tell the story without telling the truly secret things. Besides, some of them aren’t truly secret anymore since the changes.

  After that, I spent a great deal of time with the sisters. Murzy. Tess Tinder-my-hand. Margaret Fox-mitten. Bets Battereye. Cat Candleshy. And Sarah Shadowsox. And Jinian Footseer. Seven of us, which is the usual number. I have talked of them as though they were all equally old, but Tinder-my-hand was oldest, white-haired and frail, forgetful a bit at times and at others so quick it surprised you. Murzy and Bets were next oldest, alike enough to be sisters, both full of bustle and no-nonsense. Cat was dignified and knife sharp, dark hair drawn up in a
braid crown. Sarah had wild red-brown hair and eyes like a mountain zeller, all soft caution. They were about middle-aged, I suppose, thirty or so. Margaret Foxmitten was tall and thin as a whip and not much older than Mendost, and she could be more beautiful than Eller when she chose, but there was something forbiddingly elderly about her, for all her soft skin and shining hair. When she sat in the dust of the courtyard, husking fruit or chopping grain, no one would have looked at her twice. It was a kind of disappearing, of invisibility, and Murzy suggested I would do well to learn it. I seemed to be disturbingly visible whenever I was present, and I decided I was just too young to bring it off.

  Time went on. Jeruval got his Talent—I‘ve honestly forgotten what it was. Pursuivant, I think. He went off, then, to Game with some Demesne or other until he got tired of it or got killed. Poremy still had a year or so to go before he could expect to get his Talent, if any, and Flot perhaps two years. It comes, usually, around the fifteenth or sixteenth year, though I’ve been told Witchery comes earlier than that and Sorcery much later. I was about thirteen years old, just getting my breasts and woman-times. That’s when Murzy told me to get myself ready for a trip.

  I heard her talking to Mother.

  Overheard.