The End of the Game (40 page)

Next a row of fan-horns, shattering the air with dissonant blasts to announce Valearn, gray hair standing in great spikes around her ravaged face, eyes like dead coals, black and lightless, and the skeletons of children rattling on the wheels of her wagon. It should have sickened me. Instead, I felt anger, hot and horrid. Queynt put a hand on my arm, hissed at me.

Then came a row of men bearing huge wooden spirals that emitted a blood-chilling hiss when stroked, endless and chilling. Dedrina Dreadeye, mounted upon some great lizardish form that none of us had seen before, its monstrous tail heaving back and forth as it waddled down the avenue, head swinging left and right, as did its rider’s, left and right. At her side on a blindfolded horse rode Porvius Bloster, looking old and ill. This time it was I who turned my face aside. I felt the Basilisk’s attention on the crowd. She looked exactly like Dedrina-Lucir except for age, and seeing her was like peering back into time. I had already killed three who looked like this. Daughter and two sisters of this one. I had killed them with the Dagger of Daggerhawk Demesne. On my leg, that same Dagger burned and throbbed.

The head of the procession had come around full circle and moved into the grounds of the residence, musicians, guards, and animals moving off to the left, honored guests to the right. The girl and her child went to the left. I asked Queynt, “Do we have a better chance during the reception, Queynt? Or after it, when all visitors are presumed to have left Fangel?”

“After, Jinian. After,” he whispered. “My suggestion is that you depart northward now. I am expected to leave by the south gate when this affair is over. Is there a path from north to south outside the walls of this place?”

“Dungcart Road,” answered Chance. “Along the western wall. Shall we wait for you then, Queynt? Outside the north gates?”

“Wait for me there. Except you, Peter. You might slip along Dungcart Road and offer me help, if needed. Hard to say how many there’ll be in company when we leave. I’ll have to get away from them somehow.”

Thus quickly were we determined. Two of us three putative Zinterites began hitching the birds while one talked with highly irritated krylobos. “We’ll come back, Yattleby,” I kept saying. “If we stay now, it will attract attention, and some of your kin may end up getting killed. If we leave, they’ll all go to sleep thinking there’s no danger. Wait until dark. Come on, now. Take the harness and quit kicking. We won’t leave your kinsmen—ah, kinsbirds behind.” Eventually the giant bird agreed, though I knew very well he wouldn’t go far from the walls. His eyes were red and furious. I had never seen them like this before. He was too angry even to talk to me.

Queynt went to the residence, nimbly bowing and smiling, full of quirky gestures and fulsome words, echoing the universal greeting. “All honor to the Duke of Betand.” I know from him what he learned there and will tell it here.

Inside the gate he encountered Willome once more, and they made their way to the tables where liquid refreshments were provided. “Will we be introduced to the guests of honor?” Queynt asked offhandedly, seeming to pay attention only to the spitted chime birds he had been offered.

Willome shook his head. “I think not. Hoorah for Valearn. They have not done so on any occasion heretofore. We are here to fill the grounds, I think. As is proper.” He bit a crisply toasted bird in half, spluttering bone fragments in all directions. “Hail Huldra.”

“Hail Valearn,” said Queynt. “I must find a place to relieve myself.”

“ ‘Round back,” said Willome. “Near the stables.” But it was to the residence itself that Queynt repaired, carrying with him, so he said, the worried look of a man seeking a necessary with a view to immediate utilization. He carried the expression only so far as the deeply carpeted corridor leading to an ornate audience chamber he had located from outside. Here, sheltered from the glow of midday but visible to the mob on the terraces, the guests of honor and their more highly placed attendants eddied to and fro in a swirling slosh of sidling waiters. Here, hidden from observation behind heavy portieres of gold-crusted velour, Queynt came to rest, poised on one foot to flee if necessary, ears pricked and one eye applied to a judiciously located crack between the hangings.

The Dream Merchant, seen only at a distance that morning, was less than a manheight away, his long face still as a carving, the looming upper lip immobile as stone, undisturbed by the words that sprayed from its foot.

“Well, Betand! Tho you have come to Fangel at latht.”

“Well, Merchant! So I was invited at last. Little wonder I came.”

“Invited for what, I wonder. Has the Backleth Throne determined upon thome action? Ah?” The Merchant regarded his guest with suspicion. “Thtorm Grower and Dream Miner, my lovely parenth? Have they told you why you are thummoned?” The Duke belched lovingly, threw bones over his shoulder which struck the hangings before Queynt’s nose, almost startling him into betraying movement.

“Have they told me? Come now, Merchant. Do they write me letters? I got this!” And he waved a bezel-mounted crystal in the Merchant’s face. “This. As did those three crones with me. Give it a lick and you’ll know everything I do. We’re off to That Place, higgypiggy, as may be, and Devils take him who lingers. I am much bewitched in this endeavor, may I tell you, Merchant, with three such ugly dams as you have yet to dream ill of. I will tell you that Valearn is enough to give a child nightmares for all his life, whether she threaten to eat him or no, and the lovely Dedrina does the same for me.”

“And yet, even in thuch company, you go?”

“Do you hear me preaching rebellion? There is profit in following the Backless Throne. They suggest this alliance, and so we ally. I do well by the Throne and they by me. I have always felt well paid.”

“And you are taking all thith entourage with uth?”

“Unlikely, Merchant. That lizard of Dedrina’s is only something Huldra called up and will as easily let go. The others ... well, when I go hence tomorrow night, I will leave most of the traps and booty here in your charge until I return.”

“Not in my charge, Betand. I am to go with you. I am thummoned ath well.”

“We will be six, then. Valearn will go, and that Witch, and the serpent queen, Dedrina Dreadeye, with her lackadaisical brother, Bloster. He wants only a minor catastrophe to kill himself over, so depressed he is. Well. We will go and find out what’s wanted and then return.”

“I take it you have not been there before,” said the Merchant, sulky and offended at the Duke’s offhand tone. “If you knew what you will find there, you would thound leth casthual. I have not been there for a very long time, but I do not ekthactly look forward to the vithit.”

“So much the better for us, to have your company. Though I am told some visitors don’t come out as well, I suppose we need not fear that. So long as they need us to distribute the crystals they send.”

“They require enough of that,” he replied sulkily. “More and more crythtalth, more and more every theathon.”

The Duke turned at this, piggy eyes burning into the Merchant’s face. “And what do the new ones require, Dream Merchant? More of the same? A little perversion there? A little treachery here? Self-interest in odd quarters? Subversion and deceit? Or is there something new?”

“They will tell uth when they are ready for thomething new. They thay they are not ready for the latht thingth, not yet. And I mutht thit here until they are.” They were interrupted by the close approach of another guest, that woman who had been so curious upon the streets of Fangel. She simpered toward the two men, curtsying and nodding like some doll on springs, face creased like a nut in a hundred sycophantic puckers.

“Sweetning Horb, Your Grace. I’ve been busy among the visitors to Bloome, as I was bid. I thought you might want word of them—though there’s little enough to tell.” The three drifted away from the portieres, leaving Queynt straining his ears. He could hear only fragments. “Say they’re Zinterites ... got their names in case you want them ...”

Queynt watched as they turned away, then drifted out onto the lawn once more, thoughtful, breaking his concentration from time to time only to utter the obligatory “Hail to Valearn.” Meantime, we three had departed through the northern gate, where the guardsman referred to a list, checking us off as we went. They were careful to be sure all visitors who came in also went out. It made me nervous, this great care. What had there been in Fangel we had not seen? “Pleasant journey,” the guard wished us. “Hail to Huldra.”

“Hail to Huldra,” snarled Peter, no happier than were the krylobos.

Poor thing. Wasn’t he caught in a dilemma? It was Sylbie, and he had no doubt of it. It was his baby, and he’d no doubt of that, either. Perhaps he had even known that she was pregnant when he’d left Betand.

Evidently he had taken some steps to provide for her, yet here she was, unprovided for. And here was Jinian. Not saying anything. He watched me from the corner of his eye. I didn’t help him, though it would have been kind to do so. He knew I had not missed any of it and knew well what he was thinking.

“Oh, shit,” said Peter, muttering. “Pombi piss. Hell and damn and may the Hundred Devils dine on my gizzard.” He did not need to have invoked them. Seemingly he was feeling as though they already were.

The road continued upward for a short distance before entering the jungle which had climbed to meet it. Out of sight of the walls of Fangel it began its twisting descent toward Luxuri. Here we left the wagon, unhitching the birds.

“I think reconnaissance,” I said to Peter, keeping things quiet and emotionless. “They took the captives off to the left after they were inside the gates. Also, we will need something to cut chains if we’re to free the birds.”

“That’s my metal saws,” said Chance. “All neat and nice in the tool box, sharp as a file can make ‘em. You goin’ to have a look around?”

“Yes,” said Peter in a surly voice. “Julian. Jinian?”

“You’d best go,” I said. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it. Or perhaps it was, but I wasn’t willing to do so.

He went. Under cover of the jungle he laid the Zinter clothing aside and changed it for a fustigar’s hide. Once at the walls, he would change again. For now, however, he gave his soul some peace by growling hugely, setting up echoes that ran along the distant valley.

“He’s upset some,” said Chance.

“That was his baby with the girl,” I said calmly.

“Well, happen I know a bit about that. It wasn’t any love affair, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. He did it to remove a curse from the city of Betand, and that’s the truth.”

“Unlikely.” In a fatalistic mood, I was not allowing myself to accept logical explanations.

“I don’t care how unlikely, it’s true. Some Necromancer or other had raised up the spirit of someone yet unborn and set it to haunt the city. So, all the travelers had to beget when they went through. Tryin’ to get the unborn born as fast as possible, that’s what they were doin’.”

“He remembered her name.”

“Well, it wasn’t that long ago and likely it was his first time, lassy. That kind of thing sticks with you. Mine’s name was Barbra. Barbra Queet. She ran an alehouse in Sabistown, beside the Southern Sea. She took pity on a lustful young squinch with two left feet and ‘nitiated me. Ever’ now and then I say a prayerlike thank-you for Barbra Queet.”

I did not reply. It was not from lack of sympathy, but from seeing likely what was going to happen. It could hardly fail to happen. Not given Peter, as Peter was, and me as I was, and Sylbie—heretofore unknown but now known all too well. “Never mind, Chance. I’m not blaming him for anything. I’ve got to go settle the birds down.”

“Why don’t you just say ‘talk to ‘em,’“ said Chance, miffed. “We all know you can.”

I know that I flushed. There were no secrets. Silly to imagine there could be.

Dusk was falling when we saddled the birds.

“Slowly,” I counseled both Chance and Yattleby. “We want to arrive outside the northern walls under cover of darkness, not fly over it while it is yet daylight.” We got there shortly after dark, well enough, only to wait about in increasing impatience and worry, waiting for Peter and Queynt. By the time they arrived, it was almost midnight.

“Gamelords, what a mess,” moaned Queynt. “There were a full dozen of us left the southern gates all at once, and nothing would do but that we travel together. Willome had a grip on me like a vice. I tried everything I could think of to break up the group. Finally, Peter had to Shift to gnarlibar shape and stampede the horses. Mine went with them, but I fell off. Luckily. I don’t think they’ll be back to look for me.”

“Had to take on bulk to make the gnarlibar,” said Peter, “and it took me a while. Before that, I did find out where the captives are, though. Sylbie’s in a kind of dormitory right against the residence walls, along with some other captives. The krylobos are in a barn alongside that. The Shadowpeople are in the barn, too, in a cage. The krylobos are the only ones chained up, but it’s the kind of chain that runs through a metal loop on a metal cuff, so we’ll only need to cut one link. That’ll leave them with the cuffs on, of course, but we can deal with that later.”

“Did you get a chance to speak to her?”

“Sylbie? No. I was in the shape of a snakey thing, and I didn’t want to scare her to death. She has no idea I’m a Shifter. When I knew her, I barely knew it myself.”

We stood there, looking at the walls, no one moving, as though we were all equally reluctant to go over. “Queynt and me can take care of the north gate,” said Chance at last. “You do the rest, and we’ll have it open by the time you get back.” We agreed. It seemed the best plan.

Yittleby and Yattleby bounded over the wall. Peter Shifted into a huge, spidery shape with long, taloned feet and lifted the rest of us over. Queynt and Chance sneaked away into the darkness toward the north gate as we crept through the silent streets to the residence. Something about those streets set my teeth on edge, no less in the dark than it had in daylight, a kind of watching terror, as though something hugely ominous were held on a fragile leash which might break at any moment. Do you know that dreadful dream feeling? Walking up by the lair where the dragon is probably asleep. Stepping through the swamp while the Basilisks are probably away. In Fangel I always had the feeling that probably something awful was about to get loose.