The End of the Game (79 page)

Then, when we had done with the turnips what we could, the seven began its work together with Himaggery and Queynt. Nine of us Wize-ards—Wizards, trying to dam a flood or block a hurricane. We set spells and protections and traps, trying to feel they would apply to shadows, though we had no idea whether shadows were subject to the art or not. We were not sanguine about our future.

Down in the city, however, Sorcerers were storing power from the Demesne linkage. It was as though new blood had run into the city. The depression lifted somewhat. The workers felt more energetic. If the city was a focus of infection (as one of the Healers said), then the Bright Demesne was a healthy body that fought that infection.

At evening we went up to the hills, all of us Wize-ards, and Peter, and all the Great Gamesmen who could take time from their tasks in the city. As darkness began to fall, came the first assault.

We saw it as a low, breaking wave upon the hills, flowing toward us, dark under the emerging stars and the light of the half-made moon overhead. Upon the wave, the Oracle’s brethren danced, ribbons fluttering, fantastic silhouettes against the sky. They howled as they came, not loudly, so that first we thought it was only our blood singing in our ears. Even the howling was mockery, war cries but in treble—ironical tones, odd words stressed. We were to have no dignity in this battle. They would mock us into the jaws of hell, and I wondered, not for the first time, what they would do with themselves when Lom was dead. I wondered if they were all as insane as the Oracle itself, busy feasting upon our deaths when our deaths meant their own, mad for destruction, avid with hate.

We had set fire spells upon the closest rim of hills, fires that blazed forth in fountains of white sparks when the shadows came near. Their structures broke before these jets of flame, broke and flowed around and reassembled again. We had set traps within the valley, triggered when the shadow came near, and these, too, were tripped when the shadow neared, broke, flowed out and around and on.

“So much for that,” murmured Murzy. “I hadn’t thought it would work, but it was worth a try.”

“Where do you think Ganver is?” Peter asked me. “Why isn’t Ganver here?”

“Because,” I said, counting the possibilities off on my fingers, “Ganver is in the Maze, recalling better times to Lom. Or Ganver has gone back to the grave, to die there. Or Ganver is meeting with others of his kind and they have reached no agreement. Or Ganver has been found by Mind Healer Talley and is being used as a guide. I am as perplexed as you are about Ganver, Peter, and oh, I wish Ganver had acted against the Oracle long and long ago.” I knew in my heart why it had not. I could not find it in me to blame the old Eesty too much, even now.

The shadow came on, tickling at us, advancing a little, then retreating, the Oracle’s followers dancing along, watching every movement, continuing their whooping and calling, yip-yip-yip, a high, teasing call.

“I wonder if I could Beguile them,” said Trandilar from my side. “Beguile the shadow?”

Cat shook her head. “No. There is nothing there to be Beguiled, great Queen. Can one Beguile nothingness?”

Then they reached the line of turnips. Now, for the first time, they were slowed by something. The shadow-eaters began to suck them up, making a keening noise as they did so. The Oracles leaped and danced, calling words of encouragement to the shadow, piling it higher, higher and higher. . . .

“By the old gods,” Murzv gasped, “the shadow’s burying the creatures.”

It was true. The shadow piled around them, over them, making great lumps and protrusions of black over which the further shadow flowed as over some hilly road. We stood below them now, and nothing stood between them and us.

Then the bell sound.

For a moment I thought it truly was the Bell. For a moment I forgot we had not cast the Daylight Bell. For a moment I believed in miracles. Then I saw it was Peter, Peter Shifted into a great, brazen shape and donging out the sound, so near to the real sound I could not tell the difference.

And the shadow fled, fled away from the shadow-eaters, away from the dancing Oracles, leaving them upon the hillside still prancing, still leaping, under the pale cold light of the growing moon. And another sound under the bell sound.

Laughter.

The Oracle, high upon the hillside, laughing.

“Oh, very
pretty,
“ it called to us in a voice of whetted steel. “Very
clever,
little Shifter man. And it will work, once. Perhaps even twice. But not more than that.

“And we will be back, loves. We
will
be back!”

* * * *

We stumbled down into the camp, exhausted. Behind us the line of shadow-eaters lifted a shrill complaint into the dark.

“We can’t hold them away from the city,” said Dodir.

“No,” Murzy agreed. “We can’t hold them. The shadows left when Peter made the bell sound, but only because it suited the Oracles to let them leave. The Oracles are playing with us.”

In the foundry the furnace glowed red, a strong, ruddy glow that brought us toward it like bait, as though we hungered for honest fire. “How long?” asked Himaggery.

“We’ll pour at dawn,” said the foundryman, his eyes distant and possessed of some vision. I knew at once he was right. The Daylight Bell must be cast at dawn. Beside him the great cauldron seethed, ruddy now, lightening as it grew hotter. “We found all but the one piece, but some of the metal will stick to the sides of the crucible. There won’t be enough to fill the mold. We have to have more metal.”

Trandilar took off her bracelets, dropping them into the crucible. Murzy looked long upon the glowing metal, then she took the pool fragment from her locket and dropped it in. The others did the same. Except for me.

I stood there, hypnotized, drawn into the glowing surface of the metal. It wanted something else, more. Pool fragments, yes. Bracelets, yes.

I reached into the neck of my blouse and drew out the star-eye pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me all those years ago. The most precious thing I had, really. Next to life and Peter. With death so close, precious things could not be kept. I dropped it onto the surface of the molten metal and it lay there, shining with a light brighter than the sun. I had to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, it had vanished, melted.

“For luck,” I said, and the foundryman smiled, taking note of the level of the metal.

“Enough,” he whispered. “Barely enough.”

“The star-eye held a power you might have used,” said Cat, not belligerently but matter-of-fact.

I shook my head at her. “I have not understood the lessons Ganver tried to teach me, Cat. If I had understood those lessons, I could have used their power without the amulet. In the cavern of the giants, the Oracle mocked me, saying the star-eye was only a sign, a symbol. In saying that about the pendant, it was right. The true meaning of it is more than that, but I do not understand it any more than the Oracle did.”

It was warm there. The others wandered away. Peter still stood by me in the light of the furnace. After a time he led me back into the ruined Tower, against the wall which the furnace had warmed from the other side. There was no one else there. From beyond the wall we could hear the muffled voices of the workers pumping the bellows and putting fuel onto the fire. Across the pool, Mavin’s profile stared upward at the moon. In that strange light, she appeared to be smiling. Peter was wearing a great, heavy cloak, and he spread it on the smooth floor against the warm wall near the pedestal with the lamp. We lay down upon it, covering ourselves with my own cloak, and he turned my face toward him for a kiss.

Before he kissed me I would have said we were too weary for feeling. After he kissed me there was nothing else but feeling.

Peter came to his skin much more easily than I. He merely Shifted the clothing away. I, bound about by laces and thongs and ties and belts, came to it more gradually. Still, it was not long until we lay skin to skin between the warm cloaks, forgetting where we were, not hearing the workmen from behind the wall, not seeing the cold moon staring from the sky top. My oath was over, that day or some previous day, but over.

But  I did not think of that. Nor of the shadows. Those thoughts teased at the edges of my mind, but Peter drove them away. There were his hands upon me, gentle and inexorable. His strong, velvet-skinned legs moving against mine. A sweetness between us, down the whole length of us, like a pouring of honey, and him sliding into me as though a hand into a glove. . . .

A Shifter. Until that moment I had not understood the lovemaking implications of that. Human bodies are designed for many things, love-making among them, but there are elbows and knees and awkwardnesses.

But with a Shifter there is—there is nothing left undone. There can be no awkwardness. When a Shifter loves, he . . . he Shifts to a shape for that alone. There is no part left uninvolved. There is—

There is what we had.

When I opened my eyes, the moon had moved from the top of the sky. Beside us on the pedestal the lamp glowed with its own light, softly lambent, and I knew it had drawn from us a light that could not be dimmed, as it had drawn a light from the city in times long past. Dawn crept into the east. On the far side of the wall the men called encouragement to one another, and we heard the long, falling hiss of molten metal flowing into the Bell mold.

And as I lay there looking into Peter’s eyes, I understood what it was Ganver had been trying to teach me. It did, yes, have something to do with lovemaking. What was it Ganver had called it
^,
“A following of perfection.”

“How long before we can use the Bell?” I asked.

He shook his head, stroking my hair back from my forehead. “A day or more, I think, Jinian love. It must cool.” And then he laughed. “As I think I must.”

“Not for a day or more, surely.” I pressed my mouth into the hollow of his throat.

“Not that long, no.”

I did not explain. The night would come soon enough. I would have to use what I thought I understood then, but I said nothing about it, merely smiling up at Peter in anticipation of what he might do next.

Which was a surprise, for he suggested breakfast.

Along about midmorning, I left him and went with the rest of the seven to the hills. Everyone in the city and outside it had been wandering about, brave smiles on their faces, making kind speech to this one and that one, just as I had done. We knew general Wize-ardrv wouldn’t work. We knew the shadow-eaters couldn’t stay the monstrous flow that would come at us. And those who had been shadow bit, like Himaggery and me, had been at some pains to tell others what it was like, leaving it to them whether to face the shadow or take their own lives. Not one of those in the city had suggested flight. Not one Armiger. Not one Elator. Whoever had selected the hundred thousand in that long-ago time had done well.

“You’ve learned something,” said Cat to me, observing me closely, perhaps noting the little smile I wore.

“Yes,” I said. “But I won’t talk of it, Cat. It’s too tenuous yet. Too uncertain. It has to do with love and children and parts contained in the whole. It has to do with weeding a garden without destroying the good plants in it. It’s coming, slowly. I’m letting it come.”

She nodded, not badgering me. Evidently they understood very well what this kind of feeling was, the notion that one knows something but cannot yet put it into words. “I’ll need your help, though. Come night and the Oracle again, I’m going to try the final couplet.”

“Jinian,” Murzy breathed while Dodie looked white-eyed at me. “Dangerous.”

“And fatal not to,” I said, still smiling at them all.

“It can only be used once in a generation,” said Cat in her most pedantic voice.

“Has it been used in mine?”

She shook her head at me, pursing her lips. “No. No, Jinian. So far as I know, it hasn’t been used in centuries.”

I laughed at her, at Murzy. “Then there are many uses stored up to use now. Don’t fret, Murzemire Hornloss, nor you, Cat Candleshy. We will or we won’t, and fretting won’t help either outcome.”

The things needed to invoke the final couplet were many, varied, involving all of us in a daylong search for this and that. It would have been easier if the land had been alive and verdant. To find certain herbs among the ash and choking smokes, amid the dead trees and fallen branches—that was more difficult than we liked. It was not until after dusk we came back to the city to find the shadow-eaters spread into their circle, not shrilling now, not making any sound, as frightened as the rest of us. It had occurred to them perhaps for the first time that we were all mortal, they and we, that they, too, could be eaten into nothingness. Thus I was not surprised when I crossed their line to hear a soft sound like a tiny growl coming from the ground.

“Courage,” I whispered. “Perhaps you will have help tonight.”

We mounted to the hilltop above Himaggery’s camp and began our preparations in a glade beside a fall that came down from the higher mountains beyond. Peter came and sat on the grass behind me.

“You’ll be more comfortable below,” I told him. “With the others.”

“I am more comfortable here,” he said. “With you. No matter what comes.

I shut my mouth, remembering what I had asked him to do for me if the Oracle came too close. Of course he must be here. By me. I went to him and knelt there, my cheek against his. “Is the mold of the Bell cooling?”

“Not noticeably.” He made a grimace. “The foundrymen say it takes days sometimes. They dare not crack the mold until it is cool.” Then, pulling me close, “Have you seen the lamp?”

I stood tall to gaze down into the valley. The lamp in the ruined Tower glowed, shone, setting all the broken stones into silver and shade. “Did we do that?”

“Seemingly. We. Or perhaps Mind Healer Talley. Someone did.”

“There’s still the Bell and the book,” I said. “The book was long ago eaten by mice, I’m sure. Used by bunwits to line their nests.”

“It wasn’t really the book,” he said, holding me even closer. “It was the music from the book. The Shadowpeople’s singing.”