The End of the Game (52 page)

Onto the Wastes of Bleer. It was as I had seen it last, barren and cold and dry. Full of thorn and devil’s spear. Heaped with wind’s bones, which were not wind’s bones at all but the bones of the ancient creatures of this place. Coming toward me out of the eastern sky was a glowing ball of flame. No sound, only this ball, hurtling toward me. “Jinian. Quickly, to your right, and down into that little empty crevasse.” I did not like the look of the doom approaching so made quick work of the directions; half a dozen steps to my right and down ...

Into a hall, vast and gray, where my footsteps echoed whispering down corridors of pillars. From a high window came a crowd roar so threatening I turned instinctively to flee.

“No!” cried the voice in warning. “Turn again. The other way! Beside the pool.” Resolutely I turned back, stumbling across a fallen pedestal, kicking a silvery lamp that lay there in my path. I caught myself. Another pedestal lay across the way, the book it had held flung against the far wall. I walked beside the low coping of a pool, coughing as a fitful draft blew smoke into my eyes, so that I stepped blindly...

Onto a road. Cernaby was beside me. “Here,” Cernaby said, stepping in a certain direction. I followed. We stood outside the Maze on the path we had left only moments before. High on the ridge the tall stones brooded above us.

“What is it?” I asked. “I can’t believe it!”

“Who can? One time long since, Mind Healer Talley came here to confer with the Dervish paramounts. She spent long hours within the edge of the Great Maze and left at last, saying the places within it were memories.”

“Memories?”

“She did not explain. We did not ask, for at that time we were greatly concerned with another thing. The Maze, we then felt, was not the greatest mystery of Lom. There are many things about Lom we do not understand.”

“Lom, Cernaby? Is that what this district is called?”

“Lom. The world. This world. We took it from the language of the Shadowpeople, whose word for the soil is “lom”.”

I realized suddenly it was so. What had the little people called to me when I’d released them in Fangel?

“Lolly duro balta lus lorn.” Walk well upon the lovely land. I turned to examine the leafy walls of the Maze behind me. “You say the band marched through that? How could they?”

“They hired a guide. The only guide. They put on blindfolds and marched to the music. They didn’t turn. At night, the guide would stop them in some relatively safe place until the morning, when they were blindfolded again. It’s the only way.”

“But you …”

“But I know a few short ways in and out. Not to the center. No one does, except the guide. Perhaps not even the guide. No, I know only a few short ways.”

“How did you learn them?”

“Oh, step on step. One step in, turn and take one step, take that step back. Turn and take another. Take that step back. And again. Each time returning to the same place, building the chain longer with each try. In that first short chain you walked, there are many other ways out to other places.” Cernaby made the amused sound once again. “I don’t know what good it does to know that. Except to show a Dervish daughter what to be wary of.”

“Who is the guide?” I already knew but wanted it verified. Who else could it be?

“Bartelmy tells me you have met it. It calls itself the Oracle.”

“The Oracle!” I spat. “It has probably had no time for guiding recently. It is too busy giving comfort to giants and distributing death crystals to the unwary!”

“We know of the death crystals. One more reason why we are gathered in the pervasion now, to talk of this.” We went up the last little way to the ridge. At either side the great stones peered down at us, an electric tingle between them. Had I been alone, I don’t think they would have let me pass. Cernaby stopped, looking downward. “And we have arrived at the pervasion.” We looked down on a long clearing through which the road ran, bulging at the center into a wide oval, then narrowing once more to continue over the next rise. To either side were small houses. No, I thought after a moment, not really large enough to be houses.

Small, one-room places perhaps two manheights square, neatly made, but little more than sheds. They reminded me of the small outbuildings in which domestic zeller are shut at night to protect them from prowlers.

Outside each of these stood a Dervish, still as a tree.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Thinking. Practicing. Becoming.”

“How long will they stand like that?”

“Some days, perhaps. Some for a season. Or until the next obligatory takes place in which they must join. There is an obligatory going on now in the next node.” The Dervish led on, between the rows of silent figures.

I sensed that the very air around her was under tension. It vibrated like the string of an instrument, full of silent harmonics. I could hear them, could have sung them had I the voice for it, and it seemed that the soil sang in this same way. Soil. Trees. Air. We moved over the next small rise.

Again the road bulged into an oval, paved space, this time occupied with silent ranks of Dervishes, all moving together like a wind-waved field of grain.

“An obligatory,” whispered Cernaby.

Below us the Dervishes spun and stilled, advanced, retreated, twisted with outstretched arms, then fell into pillar quiet. From somewhere music came, at times insistent, at others almost lost among the sounds of the trees. It was the previous music made manifest, and it was some time before I realized it came from the Dervishes themselves.

“They dance their dedication,” whispered Cernaby.

She laid her hands over my eyes, revealing the pure blue flames in which the Dervishes moved. It reminded me of something, an elusive thought that came and slipped away.

“Shhh,” whispered Cernaby. “They are almost at an end. We will wait until they finish.” The dance went on for some time, making me wonder when it had begun that so long a time was considered “almost at an end”. Still, my impatience faded as I watched. The surging movement was hypnotic, relaxing, like watching waves move around rocks on a quiet shore. This relaxation troubled me.

Deep inside, I chafed against it.

At last the music faded into silence, the dance into immobility. This, too, was part of the obligatory, for they stood still in silence for some time before the Dervishes moved away toward their huts.

“It is likely Bartelmy has arrived,” said Cernaby. “We will go to her cell. We have arranged it so that you may stay there as well, though this is never done once a child is past babyhood.” That sound of amusement. “We are a solitary people. Perhaps we have carried our reclusion too far.”

Bartelmy was waiting for us beside one of the whitepainted huts, a silver pillar beside the weathered gray of the door. She said, “I said I would come to you, and you to me. So we have come. Welcome, Jinian Footseer.”

“Call her rather Dervish daughter,” said Cernaby, a note of admonition in her voice. “She calmed herself into the green, Bartelmy, and stood for half a day of the obligatory.”

“Would we have expected less?”

“Yes, considering how she was reared. I was doubtful, Bartelmy.”

“I was not.” The pillar turned a little, as though to examine me more closely. I heated a bit at this, at their talking of me as though I could not hear them.

I smiled nonetheless. “Is this to be another game without a name, Bartelmy? Like the one in Chimmerdong?”

The pillar shook itself, a negation. “No, Jinian. Except that you are one always eager for answers, and there are not always answers. If we have an answer, we will give it to you. If we do not give it, you will know we do not have it to give.”

They did not know I had come to give them answers. Not yet, though. “You expected me!” It was half a challenge.

“Murzemire Homloss told me long since you would come here at this time. Yes. We expected you.”

“But you do not know why I came?”

“No. Murzemire saw you. She saw Storm Grower. She saw Dream Miner. She saw shadow. She saw the Daylight Bell, broken. And when she had seen all this, she told us it might mean nothing much.” Cernaby laughed. “Nothing much.”

I realized the laughter had grief in it. Perhaps they had seen something of the truth. “Nothing much.” The words spun among us in the quiet clearing, without reverberation, without echo, and yet without end. “Nothing much.” Said humorously. Said without consequence. Said without anger. Said in the blue, my heart said; said in the blue they so much cultivated. In me fury bloomed like red flowers. “Nothing much.” This calm interchange had the very flavor of Dervishes in it. I shook away the spell the dance had put me under, demanding concentration from myself. It would not do to fall under their sway, their patience, their strangeness. There was too much patience among Dervishes. The time for patience had passed.

I had not planned what I did next. I had never done it before. It came out of my belly, out of my lungs, my heart, all at once full blown. Before I knew what I was doing, my hands were out and I was making that gesture which the seven called “Eye of the Star”. It was an Imperative. It allowed no choice. Though I did not know its meaning—might never, so the seven had said—I put all my fury behind it, all my red flame. I felt it going out of me like a shout, a summons, a demand.

They stared at me from behind their fringes. Had anyone ever evoked the Eye of the Star upon them before? There was only one spell stronger than this; one I would probably never know enough to use.

“Nothing much?” I said. “A little more than that, I think. Storm Grower sat in a cavern making moonlets fall upon this world, destroying cities. Dream Miner sat there as well, corrupting the messages of the world into filthy intent and evil consequence. Hell’s Maw was his doing, and the corruption of Pfarb Durim, and they only a few among many. Even now his will speeds south to be spread among our kindred there. The giants are dead, but their evil lives.

“Knowing nothing of this, I came north. I came, to be with Peter. Nothing seemed as important as that. As we traveled, we began to find dead people, men, women, children, even babies, all along the roads, all with yellow crystals hung upon them or sucked away to shards. Peter saw it, but it did not seem to tell him anything. Queynt saw it. Him, it troubled, but he did not see in it what I did.

“We came to Bloome, and Bloome led us to Fangel, where the Dream Merchant was—with guests. Huldra. Valearn. Dedrina Dreadeye. And with captives. Sylbie, a girl Peter had known in Betand, and Sylbie’s baby, Peter’s baby. And two people from far over the Western Sea, people Mavin Manyshaped had known years ago. Beedie. Roges. And with them a creature so strange I can scarcely believe it...”

“Come inside,” said Bartelmy with enormous effort. It took much for her to break the Eye, but she did it. “Cernaby also. We will forget the eremitic laws. We will sit together, drink together, talk together...”

The pillar that was Bartelmy was shivering in the effort of control. I knew why. Dervishes were not constrained by others. I had evoked the star-eye upon her. I was being allowed this presumption only because I was Bartelmy’s daughter, but if we went inside, all urgency would be set aside. Oh, I longed to be patient, quiet, to put decision aside, to take time ...

I made the gesture again, even stronger. “There is no time,” I said in my Dervish voice, cold and demanding.

From the edges of my eyes I saw a multitude gathering about us, a thousand silver pillars upon the hillside, turned toward me. There was fury there, barely withheld. They had felt my summons. Their resentment was a palpable menace. Bartelmy wanted to save me.

Too late. I could not be saved.

I said, “All the time we might have spent talking has been wasted away. Listen to me, Dervishes! The pissyellow crystals come out of this world—this Lom, as you call it. A kind of milk secreted in pockets of stone, and out of this milk a crystal grows. Little tubes run from the crystal pockets down into the earth, deep into the rock. The giants beneath the earth sent their messengers out to find who made these things. We have traveled league upon league wondering who made these things. You nave gathered here to discuss who it is who makes these things.

“They are not made!

“They are not made by man or by any other creature. They come from the world itself. The woman from over the sea calls them message crystals. The little old man at the crystal mine says there are no more blue ones, no more green ones, only these yellow ones, only these death ones.”

“We know.” Bartelmy’s voice, hushed hesitant, plaintive, beating my will away. Was she begging for my life from her kin? “We would talk of this matter, Jinian. Consider it.”

“There is no time to consider it! When Beedie told me what the crystals are called over the sea, I knew then. These are not dreams which the world dreams. These are messages which the world sends. To itself. To all parts of itself. To bunwit and tree rat, to gobblemole and d’bor wife. To Shadowman and gnarlibar, krylobos and pombi. To Eesties. To mankind. And there is only one message now. Death. Peace and a final contentment and death.”

She cried at me with the last of her strength. “Why does the world want its creatures dead? We have known this for some time. But we do not know why.”

“Listen to me!” I stamped my foot in my frenzy then, knowing I must be blazing red to their perception, seeing them shiver in an agony of what? Anger? “Listen. You’re not understanding me. The messages are not to the creatures. The messages are to all parts of itself.

“Do not ask me why the world wants its creatures dead! Ask why it wants itself dead!” Stillness then. A thousand Dervish pillars standing around me, not moving. The fringes did not shiver but merely hung, still, as though extruded of some hard metal. The anger was gone as suddenly as it had come.

Nothing moved, and yet I felt something go out from them, a hard blow, a wave of... something. Pain? No. More a question. I looked up to see them there in their thousands. I stood at the center of an ominous circle, so silent, so utterly silent.

I made the gesture of release.

“Itself,” said Bartelmy at last. “Sisters. Dervishes. Could we have been mistaken?”