The End of the Game (5 page)

But, of course, I didn’t see him again. I don’t remember much about Festival. We had some good food, I do remember, and there were fireworks. Most of the time I spent thinking about the boy, reconsidering his appearance and his smile, wondering what his name was and where he might be found. The morning after, we were in the wagon headed home once more, and I said to Murzy—trying hard to sound plaintive, though I was really put out that so little had been made of the whole thing—“Murzy, why did I do such a silly thing?”

“Well, chile. You’ve made some difficulty for yourself, truly. Which is something we all do, so no sense fretting overmuch about it. Take it as a lesson and profit therefrom, as Grandma used to say.” She sounded so righteous and solid. It made me angry.

I fumed about that for a time, deciding at last that it wasn’t worth getting huffy about. As one of Gamesman caste, I ranked the lot of them and could have made their lives miserable when we returned home. I considered doing this, but I knew it would end making mine worse. So, in the end I only asked, “What do I do now?”

Murzy considered this seriously. “Well, for a few years, nothing much. Keep close to us, Jinian. You’ll go on with your schooling from us this next few years. By the time you’re grown, we’ll know more. We’ll find something out ...”

And that was the total I could get out of them on that subject, however much I tried.

Later, however, as I considered the matter, I realized that when one practices the wize-art, one should stop somewhere short of the last word or phrase. Or something should be mimed rather than done. Or one must use an inert ingredient rather than an active one. It was not the very worst way to learn such a lesson—death would have been that. But it was not a comfortable way, for now I was haunted by the boy, the small, serious boy with the narrow, searching face. When I lay down to sleep, I thought of him. When I woke, I reached for the cool space in the bed as though he should be sleeping there. In the night he touched me, making me flame and start awake. When I looked into the mirror, I saw his face behind my own. We might have been brother and sister, both fair and ruddy-haired, as unlike Mendost and dark-lovely Mother as could be. As time went by, I felt more and more akin to him, to this stranger, this unknown boy, this mysterious, lost boy. Oh, he was my true love, no question about that, but it would have been better not to have known it for some years yet—until I was old enough to do something about it.

3

Margaret and I got to talking on the way home. She wasn’t that much older than I, and she seemed more sympathetic than the others, so I had someone to talk to about him. We rode along, me talking, sighing, she nodding. The thing that worried me most was that it would be a love unreturned, for such is the power of Lovers Come Calling that it will summon one who is loved but who has no feeling at all in the matter.

When Margaret had taught me the spell, she told me she had seen it happen. An Armiger came to a Wize-ard woman in the Northern Marshes—it was Margaret’s kinswoman, and Margaret was there at the time—saying he had found no maid to suit him in all his flights and wanderings, for none was so bright and pure and kind as his dream told him maids should be. So he paid well, in gold, and the Wize-ard laid out the Pattern on the doorstep of her place and summoned up who should come.

And there were noises in the wood of a horse, crippled and dragging a foot, and came from the wood a maid leading her mount, pure and pale and kindly as the sun. And it was the true love the Armiger had longed for, so that his heart started out of him and he turned blue as ice in the heat of the day.

But she was betrothed to King Froggmott of the Marshes, so said Margaret, and cared no whit for the Armiger’s pleas. And so he could do nothing but serve forever in sight of her and suffer; or go elsewhere in the wide world and suffer; or take his life and love to the world beyond, which he did, falling to his death from a great height upon her doorstep. “At which,” said Margaret, “she cared not at all except for the mess it caused the servants.”

Oh, she had used to tell me that story and we had giggled together at the foolishness of that Armiger. I did not now. I understood how the Armiger felt, and how evil a thing it would be to love in that way one who loved not at all in return. And yet, one would have to accept it at the end and do what one could to go on living.

Except, I vowed to myself as we jogged along, one could make a potion. A potion to guarantee he would love me, truly and forever. I vowed to do it if necessary, chanting to myself the list of ingredients of the love potion Murzy had taught me to make until I knew them as well as my tongue knew my teeth.

4

My thoughts on that trip home made me wonder why it was that Murzy and Margaret and the others were all pawns. When I asked Margaret, she said, “Jinian, Gamesmen are all panoplied up with their banners and helms, fringes flying and Heralds announcing them to all and his cousins. They attract a lot of attention and they die by the dozens. Stupid pawns stumble in where they’re not wanted or worse, where they are, and they die by the hundreds. But pawns who are never around when you’re looking for someone to do something dangerous; pawns who seem gray and dull and quite a bit boring, why, Jinian, no one even sees them and they live practically forever.”

I began to understand. Though I was Gamesman caste in the Demesne, there would come a time I could leave it and perhaps could become as hard to see as Murzy herself.

By the time we reached home, I had resolved to be a good student, to be invisible as the wind, and to get away from the Demesne as soon as possible. All these good resolutions merited me a great, joyous surprise. Mendost had gone away! He had gone Armigering for some Demesne north—Dragon’s Fire, Mother said—and was likely not to be back again for many long seasons. It was like Festival all over again. Without Mendost to put them to deviltry, both Poremy and Flot were fairly decent. Without Mendost to upset her, Mother was, if not exactly reasonable, at least unlikely to fly into screaming fits without any reason at all. She wandered about a lot, not seeming to see anything, and drank far more wine at table, passing into sodden sleep instead of into her rages. Garz left for some reason or other. Bram Ironneck was, as always, remote, and often simply gone. Elators have that habit, I’m told. If I could flick from one place to another, any place I had ever been or could see in my head, I would not stay in one place, either.

It was the best time I could remember in the Demesne. Everyone let me alone. I spent most of the days with one of the dams learning one or more of the magics or stories of the old gods or songs or verses or matters of practical value. At the end of a few seasons I had only dipped the tip of my tongue in the brew, as Murzy said, but it made me thirsty for great gulps of it. There seemed no end to the wize-art, and yet it went on all around us, all the time, as everywhere as air, and as little regarded.

Naturally, just when I was beginning to be really happy, something had to happen to spoil it all. Mendost came home. He came home, not alone, bringing with him a Negotiator from the Dragon’s Fire Demesne, seeking to ally our Demesnes through marriage between King Kelver and Jinian, the only sister Mendost had to offer. It did not seem to matter to him at all that I was barely fourteen years old.

Naturally, I said no.

Predictably, Mendost threatened to kill me painfully if I didn’t do what he and Garz and Mother were agreed was a good idea. Mother had a fit at what she called my “intransigent stubbornness’ and hit me hard across the face in front of the whole family and assorted hangers-on.

Murzy found me in my tower room, half-melted in tears, staring at the fancy dress I had been told to put on for the betrothal feast. Mendost must have brought it with him, for I had no such garments. Since I had no Talent yet and was a virgin girl, it was a pale ivory dress trimmed with green and purple ribbons at the waist and wrists. “Do not Game against” colors.

“I’d like to know what colors mean “Do not marry”,” I sobbed, wadding the dress into a bundle and throwing it under the bed.

Murzy dragged it out, brushed it off, and hung it neatly on a hook in my guardarobe. “Marrying tomorrow, are you?”

“Nooo,” I bellowed, sounding like a waterfox cow. “Nooo. Never would be too soon.”

Margaret Foxmitten came in behind Murzy, an expression of pain on her face. “Do be still, Jinian. You’re behaving pawnishly.”

Well, that set me up. “Pawnishly,” I said dangerously. “Well, you ought to know.”

“Stop it,” demanded Murzy. “You’re upset. Don’t compound the difficulty by insulting Margaret. You are behaving pawnishly, just when you need the wize art. Now hush. Breathe deep. Consider fire.”

Considering fire—or water—was something they often had me do when I was in a state. It didn’t mean anything, but it was very quieting. So I considered it for a while. “I’m sorry,” I said to Margaret. “But hardly anyone gets married except pawns. Why does this stupid King want to get married? And why me!”

“That’s all right, Jinian. I would probably be very upset, too, but you really haven’t time for a tantrum just now. I don’t know why the King chooses to marry, but he seems to prefer it. In fact, he has a wife now!”

“Now? Can he have more than one? I didn’t know that was ever done.” I found the idea very surprising.

It wasn’t done, at least not often, and not by Gamesmen of good repute, Margaret told me at great length. “And not without some overriding purpose. So, in order to find out what all this is about ...”

“We’ve been cosseting the Negotiator’s servants with drink and baked goods,” said Murzy.

“Nutpies.” Sarah giggled, most unlike her shy self. (I think she’d been drinking as part of the cosseting.)

“It seems King Kelver already has a wife,” continued Margaret. “Queen somebody or other. A Seer, however, has told the King she will not have a long life. She sought to keep her children by her rather than send them to a School somewhere, but the King was in one Game after another and all his children were lost but the youngest. It’s true, says one of the grooms, that she isn’t well and the Healer has told the King it is her mind that is ill, not her body. Which, since no one knows where Mind Healer Talley is, means nothing much can be done to help her. So perhaps the King looks far ahead. Far ahead, Jinian. Years, perhaps.”

“It doesn’t explain why he would want me,” I snarled.

“That’s true,” said Tess Tinder-my-hand, who had come in while I was having my tantrum. “I wonder what lies Mendost told him about you?”

Now that was a thought, one that opened my mouth and put no words in it. Murzy laughed, and Cat Candleshy actually snickered, rare for her. She was usually humorless as an owl. What had the King been told about me?

“Now that we have your attention,” said Murzy, “let’s think this out a bit while tha dress thaself.”

“We have learned the details of the contract,” said Cat. “Mendost offered you in return for ten years’ alliance. One thing we may be sure of, Mendost believes he can continue to dominate you no matter where you are ...”

“Dominate me,” I sputtered. “He can not!”

“He thinks he does,” Cat went on calmly. “Mendost is not long on thinking, but he has a clear picture of himself as he believes he is. He believes he dominates you, and your mother, and Garz. He intends to continue doing what he believes he already does. We understand why Mendost might want an alliance -any alliance. He fears King Prionde of the High Demesne, as who does not ...”

The High Demesne was southeast of us, a goodly distance by foot, but no distance at all for an Armiger or Elator. King Prionde was known as a suspicious, narrow man, who went so fearful through life he would attack first and determine enmity later. Worse, so it was said, was his sister-wife, Queen Valearn. Some years before, she had lost her eldest son, Valdon, a boy she much doted on, and this loss drove her to become an Ogress, a strange, reclusive creature from whom no child in all the southlands was safe, a beast more raging than the King himself. Oh, the nursery tales told about Valearn made the blood stop in your veins. Yes, Mendost’s desire for an alliance could be understood.

Cat was still explaining. “But the Dragon’s Fire Demesne is far to the north. Why it should want an alliance this far south and west, we do not know. Perhaps it is some Great Game King Kelver has planned—in fact, we think it likely. Nonetheless, he is willing to take you, but he already has a wife. So, you have a bit of bargaining room if you are wise ...”

“Bargaining room?” I asked doubtfully. I had never had much luck bargaining with Mendost, and as for Mother …

“With the Negotiator,” said Cat in her firm, seldom used scholar’s voice. “We all know it would do no good to talk to Mendost or Garz. We believe ...” She gestured at the gathered dams, all of whom were in my room by now, having sneaked in invisibly, by ones and twos. “We believe the King does not want you, not now. We believe he does want the alliance, and takes this way of getting it. We believe he would consider allowing you to do something else for the next few years. Perhaps School? In Xammer?”

“Xammer! It would cost a fortune!” Everyone knew that Xammer was terribly expensive. Most Schools were, of course, but Xammer!

“Not only Xammer,” Cat continued calmly, “but Vorbold’s House.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, forgetting to be respectful. Cat glared at me, and Murzy moved in with a quieting gesture.

“Now, now. Cat’s right. If tha think to ask for some thing, always ask for the best. Tha may not get it, but tha never will if tha don’t ask. And tha’ll have to be firm about it, Jinian.”

“I don’t know anything about Vorbold’s House,” I said sulkily. “It’s probably awful.”

“Well, for one thing,” said Bets, “Mendost would not be allowed to get at you there. Not ever. Which would neatly eliminate that part of his scheme, whatever it is. And Eller wouldn’t be likely to make the trip, as you well know.”

It was true. I didn’t think Mother would bother. “Neither would you,” I argued. “And my Schooling’s being done by you dams, by us seven.”