The True Game Read online

  We went down into the kitchens, sat there in the warmth of that familiar place, eating grole sausage and cheese with bread warm from the baking. It was a comforting time, a sweet time, and it lasted only a little while. For Gervaise came bustling in, his iron-tipped staff making a clatter upon the stones.

  "An Elator has come, Mertyn," he cried. "He demands to see you at once. He comes from the Bright Demesne.."

  So we went up as quickly as possible to find an Elator there, one I knew well, Himaggery's trusted messenger.

  "Gamesmaster," he said, "the Wizard Himaggery and the old Seer, Windlow, have vanished."

  "Vanished?" It was an echo of my own voice saying that word, but this time we were not talking of Shifters. Mertyn asked again, "What do you mean, vanished?"

  "They went to Windlow's rooms after the evening meal, sir, asking that wine be sent to them there. When the steward arrived, the room was disturbed but empty. We searched the Demesne, but they are both gone…

  "Why have you come first to me?"

  "Gamesmaster, I was told by the Wizard some time since that if anything untoward should happen, I was to come to you."

  "Windlow told me," I cried. "Just before I left. That's what he meant when he said they would need your help soon. That word would reach you."

  "I warned them," Mertyn grated. "I warned them they might be next if they went on with it."

  "Next?" The word faltered in my throat.

  "Next to disappear. Next to vanish. Next to be gone, as too many of our colleagues and allies now are gone."

  "I might have stopped it," I cried. "Himaggery told me he needed me, but I wouldn't listen.

  He shook me, took me by my shoulders and shook me as though I had been seven or eight years old. "This is no time for dramatics, my boy, or flights of guilt. Be still. Let me think."

  So I was still, but it was a guilty stillness. If I had been there? If I had been willing to take up the Gamesmen of Barish and use them, use the Talents? Would Himaggery and Windlow still be there? I wanted to cry, but Mertyn's grip on my shoulder did not loosen, so I stood silent and blamed myself for whatever it was that had happened.

  The Skip-rope Chant

  Mind's mistress, moon's wheel, cobweb Didir, shadow-steel.

  Mighty wing, lord of sky, lofty Tamor. hover high.

  Night-dark. dust-old, bony Dorn, grave-cold.

  Flesh-queen, love-star, lust-pale, Trandilar.

  Pain's maid, broken leaf, Dealpas, heart's grief.

  Cheer's face, trust's clasp, far and strong is Wafnors grasp.

  Far-eyed Sorah, worshipper, many gods who never were.

  Here and gone, flashing fast. Hatñor is Trusted last.

  Chilly Shattnir, power's store, calling Game forevermore.

  Fire and smoke, horn and bell. messages of Buinel.

  Shifted, fetched, sent-far, trickiest is Thandbar.

  When all time is past, eleven first, eleven last.

  The Gamesunen of Barish, their Talents.

  Grandmother Didir, First Demon. Talent, Telepathy.

  Grandfather Tamor, First Armiger. Talent, Levitation.

  Dorn, First Necromancer. Talent, Raising of Ghosts.

  Trandilar, First Ruler. Talent, Beguilement.

  Dealpas, First Healer. Talent, Healing.

  Wafnor, First Tragamor. Talent, Telekinesis.

  Sorah. First Seer. Talent, Clairvoyance.

  Hafnor, First Elator. Talent, Teleportation.

  Shattnir, First Sorcerer. Talent, Power storage.

  Buinel, First Sentinel. Talent, Fire starting.

  Thandbar, First Shifter. Talent, Shapeshafting.

  The eleven represent the pantheon of elders, the "respected ones" of the religion of Gameworld.

  NOTE: There are short verses for every Gamesman in some issues of the Index of Gamesmen, over four thousand different titles. In some areas, skip-rope competitions are held during which young men and women attempt the recitation of the entire Index. The last person to complete this task successfully was Minery Mindcaster, in her eighteenth year, at the competition in Hilbervale.

  2

  A City Which Fears the Unborn

  At the end of the short time which followed, it was Mertyn who left me, not I who left him. I had never seen him in this kind of flurry, this Kingly bustle with all the House at his command and no nonsense about not using Talents in a Schooltown. He simply ordered and it was done, a horse, packing, certain books from the library, foodstuffs, two Armigers and a young Demon to accompany him. I did nothing but get in his way, each time trying to tell him that I would go back with him to the Bright Demesne to do what I should have done in the first place. He would have none of it.

  "For the love of Divine Didir, Peter, sit down and be still. If there were anything you could do, I would have you do it in a moment. There is nothing. Believe me, nothing. Just now the most important thing you can do is what you were intending to do anyhow, find Mavin and tell her what has happened here. Give me a moment with these people and I'll talk to you about it.

  So I sat and waited, with ill grace and badly concealed hurt. It was quite bad enough to remember that I had come away when I was needed; it was worse now to be denied return when I was eager to help. At last Mertyn had all his minions scattered to his satisfaction, and he came back to me, sitting beside me to take my hand.

  "Thalan, put your feelings aside. No—I know how you feel.

  You could not have failed to love old Windlow. All who know him do. As for Himaggery, it is hard not to like him, admire him, even when he is most infuriating. So, you want to help. You can. Hear me, and pay utmost attention.

  "For some time there have been disappearances. Gamesmen of high rank. Wizards. Almost always from among those we would call 'progressive.' Many have been Windlow's students over the years. It can't be mere happenstance, coincidence. We suspect the cause but have no proof.

  "Are those who have vanished dead? If they are, then some among the powerful Necromancers should be able to raise them, query them, find out what has happened. So, Necromancer after Necromancer has called into the dust of time, but none of the vanished rise. Instead, for some few of the searchers, it has been Necromancer Nine, highest risk, and they have vanished as well. Gone. Not dead, Or, if dead, dead in a way no others have ever died." He shivered as though cold. "If not dead, then where? Demon after Demon has sought them, and for some of them it has been Demon's Eyes Nine; they have disappeared as well. Are they imprisoned? Pursuivant after Pursuivant has searched, Rancelmen have delved. We find nothing. Those who vanish are simply gone.

  "Yet still we pursue our goal, our studies. Himaggery. His allies. Windlow's old students. Though our allies vanish, our numbers continue to grow—slowly, too slowly. I warned Himaggery to draw no attention to himself. Bannerwell was a mistake, though we had to do it. As Windlow would say, it was morally correct but tactically wrong. So it has happened. Old Windlow evidently had some foreknowledge of it; he told you I would be needed. Well, I will go and try to hold things together while you seek out Mavin because we need her. We need her clever mind, her hidden ways, her sense of strategy. You can help most by finding her, which you would have done in any case."

  I could not be so discourteous as to argue against that. He meant what he said. It was no mere sop for my comfort. I swallowed my pride and assented, sorrowing that I had refused help earlier and that it was now too late. He pulled me close, whispering.

  "Thalan, mark me. You have the eidolon of Dorn. I know you dislike using it, but if you have chance to do so, query among the dead for Himaggery and Windlow. If you—by any chance—use others of those Talents—no, don't say anything, boy—seek for Himaggery and Windlow. Even half answers are better than no answers at all."

  He kissed me and went. I was left in his place alone, among the tumble of packing, things half out of boxes, paper scattered upon his table, maps curling out of their cases, a disorder which spoke more harshly than words of his state of mind. I spent
an hour setting it right, then went to make my own preparations and to take farewell of Chance.

  It was not easy. He did not accept that I would have to go alone. He could accept only that Mertyn had so ordered, and he was as bound by that order as I. At the end he told me he would go back to the Bright Demesne to await my return. He said that two or three times, to await my return, as though by saying it he could assure it would be so. It comforted me more than it did him, I'm sure. Perhaps he intended it so. I was very uncertain of what was to happen next, so preoccupied I paid no attention at all to Karl Pig-face and by my contemptuous silence (for so he and his followers interpreted it) did his unpleasant reputation grave and permanent harm. At the time, I didn't think of him at all.

  I rode out of Schooltown at first light. It was a three-day trip to Bannerwell from the town. I made it in two, riding late and rising early, paying no attention to the scenery and eating in the saddle.

  Havajor Dike lay just east of the fortress of Bannerwell. I came upon it at evening, late, with only an afterglow in the sky where the high clouds still shed a little reflected light. A star shone above the clouds, only one, trembling like a tear in the sadness of dusk with its blue-brown scent of dark, bat-twittered and hesitant. I saw one lonely figure upon the Dike, black against the glow, and rode up to ask what housing might be available for the night. As I came closer, I saw that it was Riddle, Tossa's father, that lean Immutable who had come to Bannerwell with Chance and Yarrel at the very end of the battle, making battle unnecessary.

  It struck me when he turned to face me that he showed no fear at all. No stranger had confronted me since I had left the Bright Demesne without showing some shrinking from me. perhaps a curious, awed stare followed, more times than not, by the "ward-of-evil," by an over-the-shoulder stare as he hurried away. Riddle had no fear, but it was a few moments before I realized that he did not know who I was and that it did not matter. He was an Immutable. They did not fear the Talents of Gamesmen, not even of Necromancers.

  "Do I know you?" he asked, leaning on the wall, gaze burrowing at my gauze-wrapped face. "Have we met?"

  "It's Peter, Riddle," I said, pulling the hood from my head and running dirty fingers through my dirtier hair. "I should have spoken."

  "Peter." He gave me his oddly kind smile, reached out to touch my face as though I had been his child or close friend. "To see you dressed so. I had forgotten you had this Talent. I thought it was something to do with . . . changing shape."

  I started to say something about the Gamesmen of Barish, caught myself and said nothing. No one knew of the Gamesmen but Windlow and Himaggery, Silkhands, Chance—one or two others who would say nothing about them. Instead of explaining, I shrugged the question away. "Small reason for you to remember. I did not stay long here at Havajor Dike once Bannerwell was overthrown. Have you played jailor here alone since then?" I knew the Immutables had intended to stay at Bannerwell long enough to assure there would be no more of Mandor's particular kind of threat, but I had not expected Riddle himself to stay among them. He was said to be their leader, though I had never heard him claim any such title.

  "No," he replied. "They sent for me after Mandor died."

  "Dead? Mandor?" I could not imagine it, even though I had foretold it myself. I had known he could not long withstand the pain of a disfigurement visible to everyone, of loss of power, of the absence of adoration, not he who had lived for power and adoration and had adored himself not least among them. And yet .. it was strange to think of him dead. "How did he die?"

  "From the tower." Riddle indicated the finger of stone which gestured rudely from the western edge of the keep. "He stood there often. We saw him in the dusk, or at dawn, a black blot against the sky. Then one morning he was not there, and his body was found among the stones at the river's side. They sent for me then, and I arrived in time to learn that Huld had gone as well."

  "Dead?"

  "I fear not." He looked angry, biting off the words as though they tasted bad. "Himaggery had left Demons here, around the edges of the place, to Read if any tried to escape. They did not Read Huld. I theorize that he drugged himself into unconsciousness after hiding in a wood wagon or some such. Certainly he went past us all without betraying his presence.

  I said nothing. I did not like the idea of Huld loose in the world. I shivered, and Riddle reached out to me again.

  "So, my boy. What brings you to the Dike? Was it to meet with Mandor again?"

  I shivered once more. "Never. I have an errand away north of here, and the Dike is a convenient place to begin the northern journey. .

  "Ah. Well, you will not begin that road tonight, will you? There is time for hot food, and for a bath? Some talk, perhaps. I have not had news of the south for some time. .

  So I went with him to his camp, a sturdy stone house near the mill, once almost in ruins but reroofed and made solid by the Immutables and those pawns released from Bannerwell. We were waited on by quiet people with faces I thought I recognized from the time of my captivity. At my unspoken question, Riddle explained.

  "These were Mandor's people, yes. Once his powers were nullified by our being here, he could not beguile them any longer. None would stay. They saw him, feared him, gradually learned what he had done to them and so began to hate him, I think. He could not bear it."

  "What had he done to them?" I asked cynically. "More than any Gamesman does?"

  "More," he said. "Though perhaps it was not he who conceived it. . . . No. I will say no more about it."

  I wanted to hear no more about it, though later I was to wish I had insisted. I told him of the disappearance of Windlow and of Himaggery. He withdrew into startled silence, but then told me of other vanishments he knew of. He speculated, almost in a whisper. I drank wine and tried not to fall asleep. Others of the Immutables came in and greeted me kindly enough. They murmured among themselves while I yawned. Then we were alone and Riddle was leaning across the table to put his face close to mine.

  "I have no right to ask it, Peter, but I beg a service of you. One you may be loath to give."

  "I will do what I can," I murmured, half asleep.

  "We need to speak with Mandor's spirit."

  The sickness rose in me so that I choked on it, retching, tears pouring from my eyes as I tried not to vomit upon the table. In a moment he was putting cool water on my face, giving me a cup to drink. "How can you ask it," I gargled at him. "And why? What would you know that his ghost can tell you?"

  "We have found certain .. things in Bannerwell. After Huld had gone, our people found them and summoned me. They are .. things which some of these pawns have reason to remember with great pain. We have studied them as best we may. We need to know what they are, how used, but more important, from whence they came. Mandor would have known. We believe they belonged to him."

  "Certain things. He showed them to me. They were stored in a back room of the stone house, strange things, crystal linkages, wires, boards on which wires and crystals together made patterns full of winking lights which told me nothing. They reminded me of something . . . something. Suddenly I had it. "Riddle. Long ago-ah, not long ago. About a year. Mertyn sought to protect me from being eaten up in a Game. His servant, Nitch, sewed a thing into my tunic, a thing of wires and beads, a thing like these things. If you would know of them, ask Mertyn."

  "We have done. It was Nitch who knew the doing of it, not Mertyn. Nitch has gone, gone in the night without a word."

  "Vanished? Like the others?"

  "No. Simply gone. Have you heard of 'magicians'?"

  Where had I heard of. . . yes. "Gamesmaster Gervirnse. He said the little blue Gamesmen were made by magicians, west somewhere. I had not heard of magicians before, save as we all have. At Festivals, doing tricks with birds and making flowers appear out of nothing."

  "I do not think a Festival magician made these." He shut the door upon them and led me back to the table before the fire. I knew he would ask me again. I wanted to refuse. How could I refuse
? Oh, Gamelords, in what guise might the spirit of Mandor rise to greet the eidolon of Dorn?

  "By Towering Tamor, Riddle, you ask a hard thing."

  "I know. But it is said your Talent is great. I would not ask it, save you come so fortuitously to our need. I thought of it when I saw your mask, at first, and I would not ask not if I thought it endangered you.

  How could I tell him that it did endanger me? It sickened me, yes. Brought nightmares and horrors, but endangerment? Well, I would lose no blood nor flesh over it. Perhaps that was the only endangerment which counted. Riddle's daughter, Tossa, had lost her life in aiding me. I could not refuse him.

  "In the morning," I begged. "Not at night."

  "Certainly, in the morning," he agreed. I might just as well have done it in the dark for all the sleep I had.

  We went to the pit in the gray dawn. They had not laid Mandor with his ancestors and predecessors in the catacombs beneath the fortress, and I was thankful of that. There the ghosts were as thick as fleas on a lazy dog, and I had no wish to raise a host on this day. No, Mandor lay beneath the sod in a kind of declivity a little to the north of the walls, a place fragrant and grassy, silent except for the sigh of wind in the dark firs which bounded it. Riddle let me go into the place alone, staying well away from me in order that his own, strange "Talent" not impede mine. . . or Dorn's. As! left him, he said, "We need to know whence these things came. What their purpose is. By whom made. Can you ask these things?"

  I tried to explain. "Riddle, I have not heretofore questioned phantoms to know what knowledge they may have. Those discarnate ones I raised on this land before were ancient, long past human knowledge, only creatures of dust and hunger, fetches to my need."

  "It is said that Necromancers are full of subtlety."

  "I will be as subtle as I can." Though it would be Dorn being subtle, rather than Peter. I took the little Gamesman into my hand, fingers finding it at once in the pouch as though it had struggled through the crowd to come into my grasp. He came into me like heat, burning my skin at first, then scalding deeper and deeper, nothing wraithy or indistinct about it, rather a man come home into a familiar place. I was not surprised when he greeted me, "Peter."