Tepper, Sheri S - Wizard's Eleven


Table of Contents

  Book 3 - Wizard's Eleven
  A Few Helpful Hints 
  Chapter 1 - Wizard's Eleven 
  Chapter 2 - Xammer 
  Chapter 3 - Dindindaroo 
  Chapter 4 - The Great North Road 
  Chapter 5 - Three Knob 
  Chapter 6 - The Grole Hills 
  Chapter 7 - Reavebridge 
  Chapter 8 - Hell's Maw 
  Chapter 9 - Nuts, Groles, and Mirrormen 
  Chapter 10 - Wind's Eye 
  Chapter 11 - The Gamesmen of Barish 
  Chapter 12 - The Bonedancers of Huld 
  Chapter 13 - Talent Thirteen 


A FEW HELPFUL NOTES
The Gamesmen of Barish


      1. Dorn, Necromancer      Talent: Deadraising
      2. Trandilar, Ruler             Talent: Beguilement
      3. Shattnir, Sorcerer          Talent: Power Holding
      4. Wafnor, Tragamor        Talent: Moving
      5. Didir, Demon                Talent: Mind Reading
      6. Dealpas, Healer            Talent: Healing
      7. Tamor, Armiger            Talent: Flying
      8. Hafnor, Elator               Talent: Traveling
      9. Buinel, Sentinel              Talent: Firestarting
      10. Sorah, Seer                 Talent: Seeing the Future
      11. Thandbar, Shifter         Talent: Shapechanging


In addition, the Immutables were reckoned to have Talent Twelve, and Peter was 
found to have Talent Thirteen. The Talent of Wizards is never specified. 
"Strange are the Talents of Wizards."


Notes on the Fauna of the World of the True Game


The animals, birds, and water creatures originally native to the world of the 
True Game lack a backbone and have evolved from a vaguely starfishshaped 
creature. The basic skeleton is in the form of a jointed pentacle, or star, 
often elongated, with the limbs and head at the points of the star. Despite this 
very different evolutionary pattern, the bioengineers among the magicians 
succeeded in meshing the genetic material of the new world and that from which 
they came. Among the creatures now native to the world of the True Game are:


BUNWITS: Any of a variety of herbivorous animals with long hind legs and flat, 
surprised-looking faces under erect, triangular ears. Like all animals native to 
the world, bunwits are tailless. They eat young grasses and the leaves of 
webwillows.


FLITCHHAWKS: Swift, high-flying birds which prey mostly upon bunwits of the 
smaller varieties. Noted for their keen eyes.


FUSTIGARS: Pack-hunting predators, some varieties of which have been extensively 
inbred and domesticated.
GNARLIBARS: A huge animal which lives in the high wastes below the Dorbor Range. 
It feeds upon anything it can catch, including old or ailing krylobos. The 
gnarlibar has a ground-shaking roar which has earned it the name of "avalanche 
animal." Gnarlibars always pack in fours, two females and two males; females 
always bear twins, one male and one female. A set of Gnarlibars is called a 
"leat" or crossroads, because of their invariable habit of attacking from four 
directions at once. It is thought that the gnarlibar is the descendant of a 
prehistoric race of animals so prodigious in size as to be considered mythical.


GROLE: A long, blind, legless animal with multiple rows of teeth which lives by 
burrowing into soil, stone, or other inorganic materials, utilizing the light 
metals in its metabolism. The teeth are of adamant and can be used as grinding 
tools. The so-called "sausage groles" are not related to rockeater groles but 
are smaller creatures of similar configuration which eat only organic materials, 
notably the meat of the ground nut.


KRYLOBOS: A giant, flightless bird with well-developed wing fingers, capable of 
very high running speeds. The krylobos dance contests are among the most 
exciting of spectacles for adventurous zoologists, as the birds are extremely 
agile and powerful.


POMBIS: Carnivores distinguished by clawed feet and the ability to climb tall 
trees or nest in virtually inaccessible locations. Pombis are irritable and have 
a reputation for unprovoked belligerence.


THRISPAT: A small omnivore which bears its young alive, lives in trees or upon 
precipitous mountain slopes, and mimics the calls of other animals and the human 
voice. Small thrispats are favorite pets in the jungle cities where breeders vie 
in extending the vocabularies of their animals. A good thrispat can speak up to 
a hundred words and phrases with some indication of understanding their meaning. 
Thrispats are particularly fond of ripe thrilps, whence the name.
WARNETS: A stinging, flying insect of minuscule size and legendary bad temper, 
which lives in hordes. Called "saber-tail" by some. It is said that krylobos 
will take warnet nests and drop them into the nests of gnarlibars during 
territorial disputes.


Native Peoples


At least two peoples are known to occupy the lands around the area of the True 
Game.
SHADOWPEOPLE: Small, carnivorous (omnivorous when necessary) nocturnal people 
delighting in music and song. They are extremely fond of festivals, dance 
contests, song contests and the like and have been seen to assemble by hundreds 
within sound of the annual contests at the Minchery in Learner. While 
Shadowpeople eat bunwits of any size, it is notable that they do not attack 
krylobos and are not attacked by pombis, gnarlibars, or warnets.


EESTIES: A people said by some to be aloof and withdrawn, by others to be 
friendly and helpful. Seen most often as solitary individuals. Native language 
unknown. Habits unknown. In appearance, star-shaped, moving as Armigers do or 
rolling upon the extremities.



1
Wizard's Eleven




MAVIN MANYSHAPED, my mother, had told me that when a Shapeshifter is not 
Shifting-that is, when he is not involved in a Game-it is considered polite for 
the Shifter to wear real clothing and act, insofar as is possible, like any 
normal Demon or Necromancer or Tragamor. I like to humor Mavin when I can. The 
proper dress of a Shifter includes a beast-head helm and a fur cloak, so I had 
had a pombi-head helm made up, all lolloping red tongue and glittering eyes, 
with huge jowls and ears-fake, of course. A real pombi head would have weighed 
like lead. My fur mantle was real enough, however, and welcome for warmth on the 
chill day which found me midway between the Bright Demesne and the town of 
Xammer. I was mounted on a tall black horse I had picked for myself from 
Himaggery's stables, and Chance sulked along behind on something less 
ostentatious. We were on our way to visit Silkhands the Healer, not at her 
invitation and not because of any idea of mine.
Chance was sulking because he had recently learned of a large exotic beast said 
to live in the far Northern Lands, and he wanted me to Shift into one so that he 
might ride me through the town of Thisp near the Bright Demesne. It seemed there 
was a widow there ...
I had said no, no, too undignified, and wasn't Chance the one who had always 
urged me to be inconspicuous? To which he had made a bad-tempered reply to do 
with ungrateful brats.
"If she had seen you mounted on a gnarlibar, Chance, she would never have let 
you in her house again. She would have felt you too proud, too puissant for a 
plumpish widow."
" 'Twould not be too warlike for that one, Peter. She's widow of an Armiger and 
daughter of another. Great high ones, too, from the telling of it."
"But she has no Talent, Chance."
"Well. That's as may be. Boys don't know everything." And he went back to his 
sulks.
Whoops, Peter, I said to myself. Chance is in love and you have been 
uncooperative. Thinking upon the bouncy widow, I could imagine what Talents she 
might have which Chance would value. I sighed. My own history, brief though it 
was, was mainly of love unrequited. I resolved to make it up to him. Somehow. 
Later. Certainly not before I found out what a gnarlibar might look like. This 
rumination was interrupted by more muttering from Chance to the effect that he 
couldn't see why we were going to Xammer anyhow, there being nothing whatever in 
Xammer of any interest.
"Silkhands is there, Chance." I didn't mention the blues which were the 
ostensible reason for my trip.
"Well, except for her there's nothing."
Right enough. Except for her there was probably little, but between the blues 
and old Windlow the Seer, I had reason for going.
The Bright Demesne had been like a nest of warnets since Mavin, Himaggery, and I 
had returned from the place of the magicians in the north. Those two and Mertyn 
had great deeds aflight, and all the coming and going in pursuit of them was 
dizzying. They had been horrified to learn of the bodies of great Gamesmen 
stacked in their thousands in the icy caverns of the north and had resolved to 
reunite those bodies with the personalities which had once occupied them, 
personalities now scattered among the lands and Demesnes in the form of blues, 
tiny Games-pieces used in the School Houses in the instruction of students. 
Mavin had appointed herself in charge of locating all the blues and bringing 
them to the Bright Demesne, though how she planned to reunite them with the 
bodies was unknown unless she was depending upon the last of the magicians, 
Quench, to make it possible. In any case, uncertainty was not standing in the 
way of action. Pursuivants were dashing about, Elators were flicking in and out 
like whipcracks; the place was fairly screaming with arrivals and departures.
Coincident with all this was a quiet search for my enemy, Huld. We were all 
eager to find him, accounting him a great danger loose in the world and 
ourselves unable to rest in safety until he was in some deep dungeon or safely 
dead.
And, of course, there was still much conjecture and looking into the matter of 
that mysterious Council which was rumored to be managing or mismanaging our 
affairs from some far, hidden place of power. Anyone not otherwise occupied was 
trying to solve that enigma. Meantime, I traveled about, collected blues, spent 
little time at the Bright Demesne. Standing about under the eyes of an eccentric 
mother, a father who kept looking at me like a gander who has hatched a 
flitchhawk chick, and of my thalan, Mertyn, who persisted in treating me like a 
schoolboy, made me short-tempered and openly rebellious in a few short days. I 
said as much to the three of them, but I don't think they heard me. They 
considered me a treasure beyond price until it came time to listen to me, and 
then I might as well have been a froglet going oh-ab, oh-ab, oh-ab in the 
ditches. I would like to have been involved at the center of things, but-well. 
It would have done no good to talk to Mavin about it. She was a tricksy one, my 
mother, and though I would have trusted her implicitly with my life, I could not 
trust her at all with my sanity. Matchless in times of trouble, as a day-to-day 
companion she had remarkable quirks. Himaggery and Mertyn were preoccupied. 
Chance was courting the widow in Thisp. There were no other young people at the 
Bright Demesne-all locked up in School Houses. What was there to do?
Given the state of my pockets, I had decided to go swimming. During my travels 
in Schlaizy Noithn, I had learned to do without clothing most of the time, 
growing pockets in my hide for the things I really wanted to carry about. When 
one can grow fangs and claws at will, it is remarkable how few things one really 
needs. Well, pockets in one's skin sound all very well, but they accumulate 
flurb just as ordinary pockets do, and accumulated flurb itches. A good cure for 
this is to empty the pockets, turn them inside out and go swimming in one of the 
hot pools with the mists winding back and forth overhead and the wind breathing 
fragrance from the orchards. All very calm and pastoral and sweetly melancholy.
Well, enough of that was enough of that in short order. I sat on the grassy bank 
with the contents of my pockets spread out, sorting through them as one does, 
deciding what to do with a strange coin or an odd-shaped stone. While I was at 
it, I dumped out the little leather pouch which held the Gamesmen of Barish.
There had been thirty-two of the little figures when I had found them. Only 
eleven had been "real." The others were merely copies and carvings made by some 
excellent craftsman in a long ago time in order to fill out a set of 
Gamespieces. The ones which were only carvings were in my room. The eleven real 
ones were becoming as familiar to me as the lines in my own hand.
There was Dorn, the Necromancer, death's-head mask in one hand, dark visaged and 
lean. I could almost hear his voice, insinuating, dry, full of cold humor, an 
actorish voice. There was voluptuous Trandilar, Great Ruler, silver-blonde and 
sensual, lips endlessly pursed in erotic suggestion. There was Didir, face half 
hidden beneath the Demon's helm, one hand extended in concentration, the feel of 
her like a knife blade worn thin as paper, able to cut to inmost thoughts and 
Read the minds of others.
There was stocky Wafnor the Tragamor, clear-eyed and smiling, his very shape 
expressing the strength with which he could Move things-mountains, if necessary. 
He had done that once for me. There was Shattnir, androgynous, cold, menacing, 
challenging, the most competitive of them all, the spikes of her Sorcerer's 
crown alive with power. Beside her lay the robed form of Dealpas the Healer, 
tragic face hidden, consumed with suffering, her they called "Broken leaf." And, 
last of those I knew well, Tamor the Armiger, Towering Tamor, poised upon the 
balls of his feet as though about to take flight, Grandfather Tamor, strong and 
dependable, quick in judgment, instant in action. I knew these seven, knew the 
feel of their minds in mine, the sound of their voices, the touch of their 
bodies as each of them remembered their own bodies. I could, if I concentrated, 
almost summon the patterns of them into my head without touching the images.
There were four others I had not held. Sorah, the Seer, face shadowed behind the 
moth-wing mask, future-knower, visionary. There was fussy Buinel, the Sentinel, 
Fire-maker, much concerned with protocol and propriety, full of worry, holding 
his flaming shield aloft. There was Hafnor, the Elator, wings on his heels, 
quicksilver, able to flick from one place to another in an instant. And, lastly, 
there was Thandbar the Shifter whose talent was the same as my own, tricksy 
Thandbar in his beast-head helm and mantle of pelts. They lay there, the eleven, 
upon the grass.
And one more.
One not disguised by paint as the Gamesmen were. One icy blue. Windlow. I had 
not taken him often into my hand, and there was reason for that, but I took him 
then beside the warm pools and held him in my palm out of loneliness and boredom 
and the desire to be with a friend. He came into my head like good wine and we 
had a long time of peacefulness during which I sat with my legs in the water and 
thought of nothing at all.
Then it was as though someone said "Ah" in a surprised tone of voice. My mind 
went dreamy and distant, with images running through it, dissolving one into 
another. My body sat up straight and began to breathe very fast; then it was 
over, and I heard Windlow saying inside my head, "Ah, Peter, I have had a 
Vision! Did you see it? Could you catch it?"
And I was saying, to myself, as it were, "A vision, Windlow? Just now? I 
couldn't see anything. Just colors."
"It is difficult to know," he said. "Your head does not feel as mine did. It 
doesn't work in the same way at all. How strange to remember that one once 
thought quite differently! It is like living in a new House and remembering the 
old one. Fascinating, the difference. I could wander about in here for years-ah. 
The vision. I saw you and Silkhands. And a place, far to the north, 
called-'Wind's eye.' Important. Where is Silkhands?"
"You and Himaggery sent her to Xammer." This was true. It had happened well over 
a year before, after the great battle at Bannerwell. Though Silkhands had long 
known that her sister and brother, Dazzle and Borold, were kin unworthy of her 
sorrow, when the end came at Bannerwell which sent Dazzle into long imprisonment 
and Borold to his death-for he had died there at the walls, posturing for 
Dazzle's approval to the very end-it had been more than Silkhands could bear. 
She had cried to Himaggery and to old Windlow (this was long before Windlow had 
been captured by the traders and taken away) and they had sent her off to Xammer 
to be Gamesmistress at Vorbold's House. She had gone to seek peace and, I had 
told her at the time, perpetual boredom. I had given her a brotherly kiss and 
told her she would be sorry she had left me. Well. Who knows. Perhaps she had 
been.
"Ah. Then she is still in Xammer. Nothing has changed with Silkhands since 
I-passed into this state of being."
It was a nice phrase. I knew he had started to say, "Since I died," and had 
decided against it. After all, one cannot consider oneself truly dead while one 
can still think and speak and have visions, even if one must use someone else's 
head to do it with. "She is still there, Windlow, so far as I know. You're sure 
Silkhands was in your vision?"
"I think you should go to her, boy. I think that would be a very good idea. 
North. Somewhere. Not somewhere you have been before, I think. A giant? Perhaps. 
A bridge. Ah, I've lost it. Well, you must go. And you must take me along ... 
and the Gamesmen of Barish."
I asked him a question then, one I had wanted to ask for a very long time. 
"Windlow, why are they called that? You called them that, Himaggery called them 
that. But neither of you had seen them before I found them. "
There was a long and uncomfortable silence inside me. Almost I would have said 
that Windlow would have preferred that I not ask that question. Silly. 
Nonetheless, when he answered me, he was not open and forthcoming. "I must have 
read of them, lad. In some old book or other. That must be it."
I did not press him. I felt his discomfort, and laid the blue back into the 
pouch with the others, let him go back to his sleep, if it was sleep. Sometimes 
in the dark hours I was terrified at the thought of the blues in my pocket, 
waiting, waiting, living only through me when I took them into my hand, going 
back to that indefinable nothingness between times. It did not bear thinking of.
Now, since I had never told anyone about having Windlow's blue, I could not now 
go to them and say that Windlow directed me to visit Silkhands. A fiction was 
necessary. I made it as true as possible. I reminded them of the School House at 
Xammer, of the blues which were undoubtedly there, of the fact that Silkhands 
was there and that I longed to see her. At which point they gave one another 
meaningful glances and adopted a kindly but jocular tone of voice. Besides, said 
I, Himaggery always had messages to send to the Immutables, so I would take the 
messages. I could even go on to a few of the Schooltowns farther north, 
combining all needs in a single journey. What good sense! How clever of me! I 
would leave in the morning and might I take my own pick from the stable, please, 
Himaggery, because I have grown another handswidth.
To all of which they said yes, yes, for the sake of peace, yes, take Chance with 
you and stay in touch in case we find Quench.
Which explains why Chance and I were on the frosted road to Xammer on a fall 
morning full of blown leaves and the smoke of cold. We had been several hours 
upon the road, not long enough to be tired, almost long enough to lose stiffness 
and ride easy. The ease was disturbed by Chance's whisper.
"'Ware, Peter. Look at those riders ahead."
I had seen them, more or less subconsciously. Now I looked more closely to see 
what had attracted Chance's attention. There was an Armiger, the rust red of his 
helm and the black of his cloak seeming somehow dusty, even at that distance. 
The man rode slouched in an awkward way, crabwise upon his mount. Beside him I 
saw a slouch hat over a high, wide collar, a wide-skirted coat, the whole cut 
with pockets and pockets. A Pursuivant. Those who worked with Himaggery had 
given up that archaic dress in favor of something more comfortable. Beside the 
Pursuivant rode a Witch in tawdry finery, and next to her an Invigilator, lean 
in form-fitting leathers painted with cat stripes. What was it about them? Of 
course. The crabwise slouch of the Armiger permitted him to stare back at us as 
he rode.
"Watching us?" I asked Chance. "How long?"
"Since we came up to 'em, lad. And they wasn't far ahead. Could have started out 
from the hill outside the gate, just enough advance of us to make it look 
accidental like."
"Why?"
"Why?" He snorted under his breath. "Why is sky blue and grass green. Why is 
Himaggery full of plots. Why is Mertyn bothered about a Shifter boy with more 
Talent than sense. 'Tisn't me they're bothered over."
"Me?" I considered that. Ever since I had left Schooltown I had been pursued by 
one group or another, on behalf of Huld the Demon, on behalf of Prionde the High 
King, on behalf of the magicians. Well, the magicians were probably all dead but 
one, so far as I knew, but both Huld and Prionde were alive in the world. Unless 
I had attracted another opponent I knew nothing of.
If someone had put the group together to win a Game against methe me I appeared 
to be-then they had selected well enough. Both the Pursuivant and the 
Invigilator had Reading, though not at any great distance. Both the Armiger and 
the Invigilator could Fly. Both the Invigilator and the Witch could store some 
power. In addition, the Pursuivant would be able to flick from place to 
place-not far and not as quickly as an Elator would have done, but 
unpredictably-and he would have limited Seeing. Add to this the Witch's ability 
as a Firestarter (her Talent of Beguilement didn't worry me) and they were a 
formidable Game Set.
I wondered how much they knew about me. If Huld had sent them, they knew too 
much. If Prionde had sent them, they might not know enough to cause me trouble. 
And if someone else? Well, that was an interesting thought.
" `Their aim, what Game?' " I quoted softly for Chance's ears alone.
"No Game this close to Himaggery, boy. Later on, it'll be either kill or take, 
wouldn't it? Why Game else?"
"I wonder what I should do," I mused, mostly to myself, but Chance snorted.
"You went to School, boy, not me. Fifteen years of it you had, more or less, and 
much good it did you if you didn't learn anything. What's the rule in a case 
like this?"
"The rule is take out the Pursuivant," I replied. "But no point chopping away at 
them if they're only innocent travelers. I'd like to be sure."
"Wait to hear them call Game and you'll wait too long." He shut his mouth firmly 
and glared at me. He did that when he was worried.
"There's other ways," I said. Under cover of the heavy fur mantle, I reached 
into the pouch which held the Gamesmen. I needed Didir. She came into my fingers 
and I felt the sharp dryness of her pour up my arm and into me. Lately she had 
dropped the formality of "speaking" in my head in favor of just Reading what she 
found there. I let her Read what I saw. A moment went by.
Then, "I will Read the Witch," she whispered in my brain. "Small mind, large 
ego, no Talent for Reading to betray us. Just ride along while I reach her...."
So I rode along, pointing out this bit of scenery and that interesting bird for 
all the world like a curious merchant with nothing more on his mind than his 
next meal and the day's profits. Covertly I examined the Witch in the group 
ahead. Shifters have an advantage, after all. They, and I, can sharpen vision to 
read the pimples on a chilled buttock a league away. I had no trouble seeing the 
Witch, therefore, and I did not like what 'I saw. She was sallow, with bulging 
eyes surrounded by heavy painted lines of black. Her mouth was small and 
succulent as a poison fruit, and her hair radiated from her head in a vast 
frizzy mass through which she moved her fingers from time to time, the 
finger-long nails painted black as her eyes. The clinging silks she wore 
revealed a waistless pudginess. Overall was a Beguilement which denied the eyes 
and told the watcher that she was desirable, wonderful, marvelous.
"Pretty Witch," I said to Chance.
"Beautiful," he sighed.
Oh, my. She was using it upon both of us, not knowing my immunity to it. Or, 
perhaps knowing my immunity but testing it? The possible ramifications were 
endless.
"She's a Witch, Chance," I said sternly. "A perfect horror. Black fingernails as 
long as your arm, frog eyes, hair like a briar patch and a figure like a 
pillow."
His mouth dropped open a little, but he was well schooled to the ways of 
Gamesmen. "I'll keep it in mind, Peter," he said with considerable dignity. "Be 
sure I'll keep it in mind."
"But if you act like you know," I added sweetly, "she'll know I told you. Better 
pretend you think she's gorgeous."
He gave me a hurt look. "I'm not a fool, boy. Had that figured out for myself." 
And he went back to staring at her with his mouth open. If I had not known about 
the widow back in Thisp, I would have sworn he was smitten.
It wasn't long before Didir spoke to me again. "They seek to take you, Peter, as 
agents for some other. The Witch does not know for whom. The Invigilator has 
something dangerous in his pocket, however, something to make you helpless. Be 
careful." And she was gone once more. The Gamesmen did not stay in my head. I 
wondered, not for the first time, if this was courtesy or discomfort. Did they 
refuse to invade me out of kindness or because my brain was unpleasant for them? 
As conjecture, it served to keep me humble.
"The rule is to take the Pursuivant out, Chance, but we will break the rule, I 
think. Since we are warned, let them move first. I'll see what the Demesne feels 
like. I think the Witch intends to move soon. Can you carry on a flirtation at 
this distance?"
"Game is announced, is it?" He mumbled something I couldn't hear, then, "Well, 
if she makes a beckon at me, I can manage to stir my bones in motion." And 
nodded, satisfied with himself. Old rogue. He was right. Game was announced.
In a formal Game, Great Game, the announcement had to be done in accordance with 
the rules of Great Game, by Heralds calling the reasons and causes, the 
consequences and outcomes. In Great Game everyone knew who was Gaming, for what 
reasons, and what quarter might be given. Then there were Games of Two which 
were almost as formal. Game would be called by one and responded to by another 
before their friends and compatriots. Then there was secret Game, covert Game, 
but even there (if one played according to the rules) Game had to be announced. 
The announcement, however, could be part of the Game. If the opponent were a 
Demon, the announcement might be merely thought of. If the opponent were a 
Rancelman, then the announcement might be hidden. If the opponent were a Seer, 
then deciding upon the Game was considered announcement enough. A true Seer, it 
was reasoned, would See it in his future. The variations were endless. In this 
case the Armiger had called attention to himself and the Witch had thought of 
the Game. Announcement enough. The only question in my mind was whether the 
group ahead knew that I could do what Didir had just done. Oh well, trala. Game 
is announced. On with it.
We continued our journey, the group ahead moving only slightly slower than we so 
that we gained upon them as the leagues went by. The Witch was closer and closer 
yet, and Chance looked in her direction ever more frequently. We were not within 
Reading distance by the Pursuivant and Invigilator yet, and I wanted the first 
encounter over before they tried to Read me and failed. Chance and I stopped and 
made as if to go into the bushes on personal business, watching them from cover. 
When the distance had widened a little, we came after them, all innocence. If 
they really intended to use the Witch, she would make her Move soon.
And she did.
We watched them pull up, saw the broadly acted consternation as the Witch 
searched through her clothing, miming something lost. My, oh, my, what had she 
lost upon the road? Something important. Oh, yes; wide gestures of loss and 
concern; equally wide gestures to the others to go on, go on, she would ride 
back and then catch up to them. "Watch her," I said to Chance. "She'll head back 
toward us pretending to search the road for something lost."
"What did you say she looks like?" panted Chance.
"Black nails, black painted eyes, body like a bolster and hair like wires. 
'Ware, Chance. She'll eat you."
"Up to you to prevent it, boy."
When she was a hundred paces from us, she turned to us, smiling, blazing. Lord, 
she was beautiful. My mouth almost dropped open, but then I felt around for the 
pattern that let me see clear even while my fingers fumbled for Wafnor in the 
pouch. Far ahead on the road the Armiger's horse was now riderless. I trusted 
not, tra-la. The Witch pouted, prettily.
"Oh, Sir Shifter, I beg your assistance. I know that Shifters can make their 
eyes keen like those of the flitchhawk to see a coin dropped in a canyon from a 
league away. Can you find for me the bracelet I dropped along the way here, 
perhaps at the edge of the trees?"
Then she turned to Chance, casting that smile on him like the light of a torch. 
Almost I saw him melt, but then I caught the tucks in his face where he had his 
cheeks between his teeth, biting down. "Pawn," she said, "would you help your 
master find my bracelet by walking along the trees. What he can see, you can 
retrieve, and have my thanks as he will...."
Chance's eyes were out a finger's width, and he gave every appearance of being 
about to fall off his horse. Meantime, I smiled, bowed, and oozed desire in her 
direction while I called up Didir to sit in her head and tell me what she 
planned. I knew the Armiger was above us, somewhere, ready to fall upon us when 
we came within the trees. I gave a gulping prayer that I had enough power to do 
what I intended, then turned my eyes to the grassy verge of the road as the 
Witch came nearer. Under my fingers Wafnor came alive and reached up into the 
branches. I worked my way almost to the forest.
"Oh, lovely one," I called. "Here. Could it have caught on a branch? See the 
sparkling there where the sun catches it, not so bright as your beauty, but able 
to adorn it...."
Witches are, for the most part, stupid. They tend to come into their Talent 
early, and this early accession to beguilement gives them too easy success in 
their formative years. At least so Gamesmaster Gervaise was wont to say. This 
particular Witch could have served as an object lesson. She came into the trees 
after me, still glittering and beguiling for everything she was worth. I was 
reminded of Dazzle, and, yes, of Mandor, and when I turned toward her she must 
have seen it in my face, for she flew at me with a scream of rage and those 
black nails aimed for my eyes.
There was no time for thought. I grabbed her wrist, ducked, twisted, and felt 
her fly over my head to land with a whoosh of expelled breath on the 
leaf-littered ground behind me. Then Didir did something quick and clever inside 
her head and the Witch lay there unconscious. Physical combat is not something 
we ever learned in a School House, but Himaggery believed in it. He had pawnish 
instructors giving classes every afternoon in the Bright Demesne. I hadn't seen 
the sense of it until now.
Chance looked at her where she lay. "Ugly," he said.
"I told you," I muttered.
"What now?" Chance always asks me what now when I have no idea what now. I shook 
my head, put my finger to my lips, concentrating on what Wafnor was doing. 
Fingers of force fluttered the bright leaves above us. The noise would be the 
Armiger. I could feel Wafnor searching, then there was a harsh "oof" as though 
someone had been roughly squeezed. I felt a shaking in my head, then Wafnor 
speaking in a ,cheerful grumble. "Stuck. Got him between two branches, and he's 
stuck!" One of the tree tops began to whip to and fro as Wafnor continued 
growling cheerily. "Won't come loose. Stupid Armiger..."
"Whoa," I said, weary of the whole thing. "Chance, hold the horses while I climb 
the tree."
I found the Armiger hanging by one badly bruised foot in the cleft of a tallish 
tree. Wafnor assisting me, we thrust one limb aside to let the Gamesman fall, 
none too gently, into the forest litter. He lay there beside the Witch, the two 
of them scruffy minor Gamesmen, not young, not well fed. The idea of killing 
them did not appeal to me. They were not players of quality. I said as much to 
Chance.
"They haven't the look of Huld about them somehow. He has more sense than to 
send such minor Talents."
"Maybe, lad. And maybe they were hired as supernumeraries by those up ahead. 
Hired fingers to touch you with, see if you sizzle."
Chance's remark had merit. I explored with Didir a possibility which would allow 
us to let them live, something she might plant in their heads which would take 
them away. After a short time the Witch and Armiger picked themselves up, dusted 
themselves off, and limped away to the south leading the Witch's horse. "They 
will believe they are going to meet others of their company," whispered Didir. 
"The notion will leave them in a day or two, but by that time they will be far 
distant from this place."
"Now," I said, "we can ride in a wide circle south which will take us around 
those two ahead. We'll leave them behind us...."
"Oh, lad, lad," sighed Chance. "Go around 'em and they're behind you. Lose a 
Pursuivant and he'll find you. What are you playing at?"
I sighed, pulled up my boots, looked at the sky, sucked a tooth. He was right. 
One doesn't "lose" a Pursuivant easily, and the trick of sending the other two 
away south wouldn't fool anyone long. Besides, if Chance's notions were correct, 
the two ahead of us were the real threat and came from a real opponent. The more 
I thought of it, the more I wondered if Huld was behind it. It didn't feel like 
Huld, but undoubtedly Huld would have to be dealt with sooner or later. I struck 
Chance a sharp blow on one shoulder. "Right you are, Brother Chance. Well then, 
it's back to the road, ride on, and let them wonder."
Which we did. The Pursuivant and the Invigilator had moved on a little, leading 
the Armiger's horse. I went through a dumb show of waving as though taking leave 
of someone hidden in the trees. They wouldn't believe it, but it might confuse 
the issue still further.
We were a moving Demesne, the Game was not joined. Between the two men ahead of 
us on the road were five Talents and not inconsiderable ones. This reminded me 
of my own depleted state, and I fingered Shattnir, feeling the warmth of the sun 
beginning to build in me. I might need all I could get. The two ahead might be 
as shoddy as the two just defeated, but they might be the real foe, the true 
opponent, the True Game. If so, then what? What did I want to happen?
"Young sirs," Gamesmaster Gervaise had often said. "When you confront True Game 
in the outmost world, remember what you have been taught. Remember the rules. 
Forget them at your peril." Well, so, there was time during this slow jog along 
the road to remember the rules.
Game had been announced in two ways. By the Witch thinking of it and by the 
Armiger riding awkwardly. The Witch would have thought what she thought whether 
ordered to do so or not, but the Armiger would have ridden in that fashion only 
to attract attention. Therefore, the announcement was directed to one who would 
see the announcement with his eyes, not Read it. So presumably they had 
announced Game to a Shifter-which was, after all, what I seemed to be.
Now the Armiger was gone. Presumably, therefore, they knew that their opponent, 
the Shifter, had played. They knew I was in the Game. I knew they were in the 
Game because of what Didir had Read in the Witch's head, but they did not know 
that I knew what was in the Witch's head, therefore ...
"I never had any head for covert Games," I complained to Chance. "Whenever I get 
to the third or fourth level of what I know and they know, I lose track."
"Look, lad. They know you're a Shifter. They're expecting that. They may have 
been told you're something else as well, but nobody knows exactly what, so they 
can't expect everything. Just be original and surprising. My granddad, the 
actor, used to say that. Original and surprising."
"Follow the rules." I sighed again. The rule was to take out the Pursuivant 
first, because he had the power to change place in an instant, and one might 
find him behind one with a knife before one could take a deep breath. Two of the 
Gamesmen of Barish and I had a little conference, waiting for a turn in the 
road. It might have been quicker to use Hafnor the Elator, but I had never 
'ported from one place to another. The thought made me queasy, like being 
seasick. Besides, I didn't know the area ahead, and those with that Talent could 
only flick to places they could visualize. Which was another reason they were 
moving ahead of us. They had seen the road we traveled, but we hadn't seen the 
road they were on. No. I would use Tamor and Didir. I was used to them. And 
Shattnir, of course, to provide power, which she'd been doing for the last hour 
or so. It was moving toward evening before the road set as I wished it to.
We were moving between close set copses, dark trunks still half masked in drying 
leaves. One could not see far into them, a few paces perhaps. Just ahead of us 
the road swung around a huge rocky outcropping to make a loop to the left. 
Shortly before the riders ahead of us reached this place, Chance and I began a 
conversation which turned into a loud argument-Chance's voice much louder than 
mine. Old rogue. He was an actor as much as his granddad had ever been. As soon 
as the two ahead had ridden out of sight, I grasped the figure of Tamor and flew 
up from my saddle, darting away through the trees like an owl among the close 
trunks while Chance's voice rose behind me in impassioned debate. From time to 
time a softer voice would reply, Chance again, but those ahead would have no 
reason to think it was not me, Peter the Shifter, riding along behind them.
I had to intercept them before they had any opportunity to become suspicious. 
The trees were close, too close for easy flight, but I came to the edge of the 
road silently only a few paces behind them. I drew my knife and threw it, 
launching myself at the same moment, Shifting in midair. The Pursuivant went 
down, skewered, even as my pombi claws swept the Invigilator from his saddle. 
Then I sat on him. Beneath me he screamed, struggled, tried to fly. I let him 
struggle while I drooled menacingly into his face. He screamed a little more, 
then fainted. At least Didir said he really fainted, sure I was going to eat 
him. Shattnir drained him of any power he had left, and then we tied him up 
after going through his pockets. I found the thing almost at once. It was 
another of those constructions of glittering beads and wires like the one Nitch 
had sewn into my tunic in Schooltown, like the things Riddle had shown me 
outside Bannerwell. It was rather like the thing Huld had used against me in the 
cavern of the bodies, away north. It was shaped like a hood or cap, with a strap 
to go beneath the chin.
"What does it do?" asked Chance.
Didir sought in the Invigilator's unconscious mind even as I started to say I 
did not know. The man stirred in discomfort. She was not being gentle with him. 
I repeated to Chance what she told me.
"It guarantees docility," I said. "If they had put it on my head and fastened 
the strap, I would have obeyed anything they told me to do." I stood there for a 
time, thinking, then asked Didir to search further. Did the man know who sent 
him? Once I was "docile," where would they have taken me?
Whispering, she told me, "There are some ruins near the river which bounds the 
land of the Immutables. Old ruins. North of here. He would have taken you 
there."
Ah. I knew the place. I had found the Gamesmen of Barish there. Dazzle and 
Borold and Silkhands had stayed there. Well, I would go there. It would be 
original and surprising.
"Put the cap on him," I told Chance. "I'm going to get into the Pursuivant's 
clothing." So much for my fine fur cloak and my pombi head, lost in the mad 
flight through the trees. I stripped the Pursuivant and put his clothes on, 
sorrowing for him as I did so. I had not intended to kill him. The knife had 
turned in flight. When I had done, I carried him into the woods and laid him in 
a shallow scrape and covered him over with leaves before we rode away.
In a little timee three men rode on: an Invigilator, very silent, the strange 
cap hidden beneath his leather garb; a Pursuivant, whose clothes fit none too 
well; and a pawnish servant who rode along behind leading two extra horses.
"Do we go on to Xammer, then?" the servant asked, humming to himself.
The Pursuivant, I, merely nodded. We were indeed going on to Xammer, to meet 
Silkhands, and then we were going farther on to those ruins I had visited once 
before. Behind us in the forest the real Pursuivant's body was food for ants, 
and before us was food for thought. I hoped it would not give me indigestion.



2
Xammer




WE RODE INTO XAMMER, each taking a part in our little play. Chance was playing 
the grieving servant for all he was worth. The Invigilator, wearing the 
mysterious contrivance, played himself, though with only such verve as we 
ordered him to display. I, Peter, played the part of the Pursuivant, trying to 
convey with every attitude the heartfelt regret I felt at having killed the 
young Gamesman, Peter, during some unspecified and unfortunate occurrence upon 
the road. If we were being observed, this bit of acting should have gone further 
to confuse the observers. We took a room at an inn on the edge of town. I 
changed aspect and clothing in our rooms and sneaked out the back way, having 
been able to think of no good excuse for a Pursuivant to visit Silkhands the 
Healer. Chance was happily immured with a supply of wine and a perfectly 
biddable audience to listen to his reminiscences. He could have been happier 
only if the sportive widow from Thisp had been present, so I felt no need to 
hurry.
It was as well. The town of Xammer may be unique among Schooltowns. There was 
much to observe.
There are no Festival Halls in Xammer. Vorbold's House is one which specializes 
in teaching the daughters of the powerful, daughters of Queens and Sorcerers who 
have risen to first rank, of eminent female Armigers and Tragamors. They are 
taught how to play their own Games at Vorbold's House, the game of survival and 
reproduction. No Festivals for them, to be impregnated by nameless pawns or bear 
young at random. No. These maidens are the prizes of alliance and are as 
protected within the walls of Vorbold's House as they might be within a fortress 
guarded by dragons.
So much I knew, for it had been discussed at the time that Silkhands was sent to 
the place. I had not considered the implications of it, however, and it was 
these which made the town unique. It was full of shops, shops dealing in 
luxuries which were purveyed to the School House and to those who visited there. 
It was full of inns, not scruffy roadside inns but hostelries built with 
magnificence as the objective. It was full of travelers, powerful travelers 
entering the town under death bond that no Talent would be used within the 
walls. It was full, therefore, of courtesies and veiled malevolence as Gamesmen 
pursued their strategies through earthbound Heralds forbidden to Fly and a 
pawnish class of merchants who called themselves negotiators and arbitrators. I 
had never heard so much talk, not even in Himaggery's council hall.
I had known enough to bring proper dress, a little ostentatious and overdone, 
and was received with some courtesy for that if for no other reason when I 
presented myself at Vorbold's House. It had a high graceful gate leading into a 
sunny courtyard where a cat and kittens made endless play through the flower 
pots. I expected to be invited into the School but was instead shown to a small 
audience room off the courtyard and told to wait. The time was made less onerous 
by the arrival of a pretty waiting girl who brought wine and cakes and lingered 
to flirt with me. This was enjoyable for both of us, so much so that I almost 
regretted the sound of Silkhands' step on the tessellated pavement. That is, 
regretted until I saw her.
She was-yes, still Silkhands, but something more. At first I thought she had 
somehow Shifted herself to become so lovely, but then I saw it was only a matter 
of a little more flesh smoothing her face and gracing her neck and arms, a 
little more sleep in a softer bed than the campgrounds we had shared, less worry 
and stress and sorrow, a little more silk against the skin to replace the rough 
rub of traveling clothes. She did not even notice the retreating servant 
girl-nor did I-but came straight into my arms as though I had been some long 
lost love. "Peter," she said, "I am so happy to see someone from Home. How is 
Himaggery? Did they finish the new swimming pool in the orchard? Is your thalan 
still at the Bright Demesne? How is your mother? I heard about Windlow-ah-" and 
she was suddenly crying on my neck. I could feel the warm trickling wetness of 
her tears.
I felt as though two years had disappeared and we were traveling from the ruins 
where I had found her to the Bright Demesne once more. The best I could manage 
was a mumbled, "You haven't changed at all, Silkhands," while my body and my 
mind jigged with the notion that she had changed entirely, utterly. Of course, 
it was not she so much, but I figured that out later.
She asked if I were alone, and I told her that Chance and another fellow were at 
the inn, giving no details beyond that at first. She asked if I wanted to stay 
in the Guest House of Vorbold's, and we talked of that. I murmured something 
about the place being secure, and she looked at me slantwise, a look I 
remembered from the past.
"I see you have something to tell me, Peter. Well, the Guest House of Vorbold's 
is as secure a place as exists in all the purlieus and demesnes. We have guards 
against trifling as you would be astonished at. So. Will you go to the inn for 
your baggage, or shall I send for it?"
I thought it best to sneak in and out and to tell Chance myself. It was as well 
I did so, for the Invigilator had fallen into some kind of a trance, and Chance 
could not make him move or speak. We took the wicked little cap off of his head 
and put him to bed, bent up as he was in a sitting position. I told Chance to 
tie him and gag him loosely if Chance left the room, just in case the fellow 
came around, but otherwise to do as he pleased for the day or two I would spend 
at Vorbold's. "Tell anyone who asks that your Pursuivant companion suffers from 
a flux," I suggested, "and if this fellow hasn't moved in a day or two, I'll ask 
Silkhands to take a look at him." I could have called forth Dealpas, of course. 
She was preeminent among Healers, but she was so tragic and sorrowful that it 
was a pity to wake her. The fellow was breathing well enough, and his heart beat 
steadily. I thought a day or two would not change him greatly if he were kept 
warm and quiet.
And then I went back to Vorbold's House to find a guest's room made ready for me 
(not in the House itself) and a servant standing ready to unpack or clean or 
press or whatever I chose. I was glad to have brought clothes with me and 
thanked Mavin for so directing me. I had thought of traveling without any. The 
man advised that dinner would be served in the Hall at the evening bell, and he 
took himself off. I luxuriated in my bath, listened to the music from the 
courtyard, and tried to shake off the very uncomfortable feelings Silkhands had 
stirred up in me. After the bath I leaned in the window to watch the musicians. 
Vorbold's House collected artists, musicians, and poets from all the lands and 
demesnes. A representative group of them were gathered in the courtyard below 
me, all demonstrating their skills. The poets wore their traditional ribbon 
cloaks, looking something like boys let out of School for Festival, though more 
ornate and grand. There is some controversy about musicians and artists. Some 
hold that they are Talented, while others hold that it is merely a skill. In any 
case, they are not under bond in the town as the more ordinary Talents are. They 
may use whatever it is they have in a Schooltown or anywhere else, and it is not 
considered proper to Game against them.
Below me a musician played short phrases of melody over and over while a poet 
set words to them, and across the yard another poet declaimed a long verse, 
phrase by phrase, while another musician set notes to that. It seemed there was 
to be a song contest in the evening on a subject assigned by Gamesmistress 
Vorbold herself the evening before. In Mertyn's House, where I was reared, we 
would have disdained such trifles, and I formed the intention of twitting 
Silkhands about it. That was before I saw the great Hall.
It lay in the area to which guests are admitted, one ceremonial entrance for the 
guests, one even finer opposite which led into the School. I found my assigned 
seat and sat back to watch the spectacle which had aspects of Festival and of a 
bazaar. The guests were almost all male. Many were there on their own behalf, 
but others were there as agents. The products which they bargained for sat at 
other tables, on low daises of ivory hued stone, young women clad in silks and 
flowing velvets, each table of them with a Gamesmistress at its head. Silkhands 
sat at a table near my own. I could look across the glossy heads between and 
wink at her. Somehow the intensity of the atmosphere around me-though it was all 
covert, glances and sighs and whispers-made a wink seem improper. I satisfied 
myself with an unsatisfactory smirk and bow. I was, by the way, clad most 
sumptuously and wearing a face not entirely my own. I had cautioned Silkhands 
against knowing me too well or obviously in this public place. She bowed in 
return, I thought more coldly than was necessary.
The evening's entertainment began with welcoming words from the Lady Vorbold, 
Queen Vorbold. She wore the crown of a Ruler, but her dress was much modified. 
As I looked about the room I noted that all the women of the House were clad in 
light delicate gowns under robes of heavier richer stuff; that all the young 
women who were of an age to have manifested Talents wore appropriate helms or 
crowns or symbols, but all reduced in size and bulk to the status of mere 
ornaments. The heavy silver bat-winged half helm of a Demon might be expressed 
as a mere bat-winged circlet, airy as a spray of leaves. I saw a Sorcerer's 
spiked crown, tiny as a doll's headdress, and a Seer's moth-wing mask reduced to 
a pair of feathery spectacles drawing attention to the wearer's lovely eyes. It 
was as though they sought to make the Talents less important than the women who 
wore them. Well. In this House that was probably the case. Why did I suddenly 
think of the consecrated monsters which Mavin and I had seen in the caverns of 
the magicians? Was it some similar blankness of eyes? I did not quite identify 
the thought.
The song duels began, one against one, the musicians playing and singing in turn 
while the poets sat at their feet. At the conclusion of each song, the diners 
tapped their silver goblets upon the table to signify praise, and the judges-a 
table of elderly Gamesmistresses-conferred among themselves. I heard one of the 
phrases I had listened to from my room, woven now into a complete fabric of 
song. The singer was young and handsome, and his voice was pure and sweet. I 
thought of the singers among the magicians, lost now under the fallen mountains, 
and grew sad. The song was one which evoked sadness in any case. He finished in 
a fading fall of strings and was rewarded by a loud clamor of goblets upon wood. 
He took the prize. It was fitting. His was the most melancholy music of the 
evening. All the ladies loved it.
After this entertainment came an intermission during which the young women 
circulated among the tables to talk idly to the guests. One elegant girl wove 
her way to the table where I sat, body like a willow waving, garments swaying, 
face showing that smiling emptiness I had noted before. We greeted her, and she 
sat to take a glass of wine with us. She was obviously interested only in the 
tall chill Sorcerer who sat with us. He asked her politely what she was 
studying.
"Oh, ta-ta." She pouted. "It is all about Durables and the Ephemera, and I 
cannot get it in my head. It stays about one instant and then goeswho knows 
where."
The Sorcerer smiled but said nothing. Thinking to fill the silence, I said, "My 
own Gamesmaster gave us a rule which made it easier to remember. If a Talent is 
continuous, as for example it is with a Ruler or a Sorcerer, then the Gamesman 
is one of the Greater Durables or Adamants." She smiled. I went on, "Those in 
whom the Talent is discontinuous but still largely self-originated are among the 
Lesser Durables. Seers, for example, or Sentinels."
She cocked her head prettily and looked up into the face of the Sorcerer. Still 
he said nothing. She made a little kiss with her mouth. "The Ephemera, then? 
What is their rule?"
"Those Gamesmen who take their Game and power from others, sporadically, are of 
the Greater Ephemera," I said. "Demons, for example, who Read the minds of 
others but only from time to time, not continuously. And finally there are the 
lesser Ephemera, those who take their only value from being used by other 
Gamesmen. A Talisman, for example. Or a Totem."
"I see. You make it sound so interesting." She gazed up at the Sorcerer again 
after a quick ironic glance at me, and in that glance was all I had not 
understood until then. It was not that she failed to remember, not that she 
lacked interest in the subject. She knew, perhaps better than I, but had been 
taught not to show that she knew. I caught a sardonic smirk on the face of the 
Sorcerer and turned away angered. There was not that much difference between 
these, I thought, and the consecrated monsters of the magicians. I wondered how 
Silkhands could lend herself to this-this whatever it was. There might be time 
to ask her later, but now the intermission had ended and we were to be granted 
another song by the evening's champion.
He stood among us, smiling, relaxed, not touching his instrument until all 
present had fallen silent. When he touched the strings at last it was to evoke a 
keening wind, a weeping wind which focused my attention upon him and opened my 
eyes wide. He faced me as he sang, coming closer.


            "Who comes to travel Waeneye
            knows what makes the wild-wind cry.
            Whence the only-free goes forth,
            shadow-giant of the north,
            cannot live and may not die,
            sorrowing the wild-wind cry."


The wind music came again, cold, a lament of air. He was very close to me, 
singing so softly that it seemed he sang for me alone.


            "Wastes lie drear and stone stands tall,
            signs are lost and trails are thinned,
            abyss opens, mountains fall,
            Gamesman, Gamesman, find the wind...."


Then he moved away, walking among the tables, humming, the music reminding me of 
night and bells and a far, soft crying in caves. He was standing next to 
Silkhands as he sang:


            "Who walks the Wastes of Bleer must know
            what causes this ill-wind to blow.
            Shadowmen play silver bells,
            krylobos move in the fells,
            gnarlibars come leat and low,
            listening to ill-wind blow."


He looked up to catch my eye again, sang:


            "Mountains mock and mystify,
            hiding Wizard's ten within.
            One more walks the world to cry,
            `Healer, Healer, heal the wind.' "


The music ran away as a wind will, leaving only a dying rustle behind it. There 
was a confused moment, then a barely polite tapping of goblets upon the table. 
They had not liked it. At once he struck up a lilting dance song with a chorus 
everyone knew. Within moments virtually everyone in the room had forgotten the 
wind song, if they had ever heard it, except Silkhands and me and a young woman 
who sat at Silkhands' table and now regarded me with an expression of total 
comprehension. She had large dark eyes under level brows, a pale face with a 
slightly remote expression, and a tight controlled look around her mouth, like 
one cultivating silence.
I, too, had found the song disquieting, though I could not have said why. All 
the evening's entertainment had done nothing but leave me irritated and cross. 
When Silkhands came to my room in the Guest House later, this irritation 
remained and I made her a free gift of it, not realizing what I was doing. I was 
speaking about the girl who had come to our table, about what I presumed to call 
her "dishonesty." Silkhands disagreed with me.
"Ah, Peter, truly you expect too much. Who was it came to your table? Lunette of 
Pouws? I thought so. Her brother wishes to establish an alliance with the Black 
Basilisks at Breem. So he seeks to interest Burmor of Breem in Lunette. She is 
his full sister, and she is no fool. She seems like to manifest a Talent which 
will fit her well enough among the Basilisks; however, Burmor wants no 
competitor in Beguilement at the Basilisk Demesne. Thus she plays witless before 
those he sends to look her over. What would you have her do? Stand upon her 
dignity and Talent, as yet unproven, and so cause her full brother annoyance and 
grief? If she goes to Burmor, she will be of value there as symbol of the 
alliance. She will be protected, and there will be time for her Talent to 
emerge."
This argument did not sit well with me, and I said so with much reference to the 
"consecrated monsters" I had seen in the place of the magicians. "They, too, 
were taught to be passive, or were so changed in the hideous laboratories that 
they could be nothing else. They, too, existed for nothing except to breed 
sons...."
"You may recall," she said, "that Windlow once told us of the rules of the Game? 
How those rules had been made originally to protect; how those rules came to be 
more important than what they protected; how those rules came to be the Game 
itself! Well, those rules were made by men, Peter. Lunette chooses to make her 
own safety and her own justice within the Game. It is her choice."
She was so annoyed with me that I thought it wise to change the subject. "Who 
was that minstrel who won the prize? Did I mistake him, or did he sing to you 
and me alone of all that crowd?"
"Ah, one of my students, Jinian, thought the same. He has sung this wind song 
before. It seems to follow me wherever I go, into the orchards, the gardens. His 
name is Rupert of Theel, and he is well known among the musicians. Yesterday in 
my bath I heard 'Wild-wind weeps and illwind moans. Has the wind an eye? A hand? 
Has the wind sinews or bones? Healer, Healer, understand.' It so infuriated me I 
leaned naked from the window and told him to cease singing `Healer' or `wind' in 
my hearing."
"Well, last night he sang `Healer,' but he also sang 'Gamesman,' "I commented." 
He sang to me as well as you if he sang to either." We wondered at it a bit. 
What was there in it, after all? A song. There was this much in it: it linked 
the two of us together as did Windlow's prophecy. Musing on this I reached out 
to take her into my arms. She sighed upon my shoulder and we sat there for a 
long time in the candle shine and starlight, lost in our own thoughts. When she 
drew away at last, I began to tell her what had brought me to Xammer.
Thus Silkhands learned about the blues, and about Windlow's blue, the only 
person besides myself who knew of it, the first person beside myself to know the 
sorrow of it.
"I take the blue into my hand," I whispered. "Windlow comes into my mind, a 
gentle visitor, gentle but insistent. Silkhands, he struggles there. I feel his 
struggle. He inhabits my mind as a man might inhabit a strange house-no, a 
strange workshop where nothing is in its accustomed place. I feel him search for 
words he cannot find, seek explanations for things which are not 
there-connections and implications which might have been obvious to Windlow in 
the flesh but which he cannot find in me. He struggles, and it is like watching 
him drown, unable to save him."
"Not your fault," she soothed me. "Not your doing."
"No," I agreed. And yet it was my doing. "If I do not take him up, then he lies 
imprisoned in the blue, a living intelligence imprisoned as intelligence is 
imprisoned in these students of yours who must hide it to protect themselves. 
Oh, Silkhands, worst of all is when he wants me to read to him."
"Read? As a Demon Reads?"
"No, no. Books. A book. He wants me to read the little book, the one he called 
the Onomasticon, over and over. As though there were something in it he needs to 
know and cannot find. Oh, he is gentle, kind, but I can feel the sorrow like a 
whip."
At that she came into my arms again to comfort me, and we lay there upon the 
wide windowseat staring at the stars until we fell asleep. When I woke, stiff 
and sore, it was morning and she had gone. I went out to the necessary house 
behind the Guest House. (A silly place to have it. We had toilets near our rooms 
at the Bright Demesne.) The singer was there, Rupert, and I thought to find out 
about the wind song, perhaps find why it disturbed me so.
"I am interested in the song you sang," I said politely. "The one about the 
wind?"
"Better you than I, Gamesman," he said, making a face. "Would I could forget the 
thing."
I evinced surprise, and he laughed a short bark without amusement. "I heard it 
first at the Minchery in Learner. They make shift there to train artists up from 
childhood, and there is a summer songfest at which many of us assemble to lend 
encouragement and judge the contests. There are always new songs, some written 
by students, some brought in from the Northern Lands. Many are of a caliginous 
nature, dark and mysterious, for the students love such. Well, this wind song 
was one of them. I heard it, and since have been unable to get it out of my 
head. I find me singing it when I eat, when I bathe, when I ..." he gestured at 
the necessary house behind him.
"The places mentioned in the song? Waeneye? The Wastes of Bleer? Where are 
those?"
"Oh." He seemed puzzled. "I do not know that they exist, Gamesman. I took them 
for more mysteries. They may exist, certainly, but I know nothing of them." He 
smiled and bowed. I smiled and bowed. We took leave of one another. I believed 
he had told me all he knew. Considering how the song ran in my own head, I could 
believe it had haunted him.
When I saw Silkhands. later in the morning, I asked, "Have you a cartographer at 
the School?"
"Gamesmistress Armiger Joumerie," she said. "A good Gamesmistress. A difficult 
person."
"Difficult or not, I would like to see her."
And I did see her that afternoon in my room at the Guest House, for no male may 
enter the School House. As the girls there were much valued for their ephemera 
they were much protected against its premature bestowal.
I asked the Gamesmistress whether she knew of a place called Bleer, or one 
called Waeneye. Also did she know of Learner, or of any place where creatures 
called krylobos or gnarlibars might live. I had heard, I said, that gnarlibars 
lived in the north, but that might have been only talk.
"Bleer, Bleer," she mumbled to herself, stroking her upper lip with its 
considerable moustache as an aid to concentration. She was a big woman, larger 
than many men, and her face had a hard, no-nonsense look about it. "Yes. That 
jostles a memory."
"Possibly a mountainous place," I offered. The song had mentioned mountains and 
stone, an abyss, fells.
"No help, Gamesman," she said tartly. "If one excepts the purlieus around the 
Gathered Waters and Lake Yost, virtually all the lands and demesnes are 
mountainous. You are not untraveled! Surely this has struck you. How much 
flatland have you seen?"
I had to admit having seen little. The valley of the Banner was fairly flat, as 
were the valley bottoms leading into Long Valley in the southwest. Other than 
that I could think only of that vast, tilted upland which lay above the River 
Haws and south of the firehills and Schlaizy Noithn. I would not speak of that 
to the Gamesmistress, but the thought had reminded me of something. 
"Shadowpeople!" I said. "Where are shadowpeople said to dwell?"
"Find me a place they are said not to dwell," she replied. "They live in the far 
north and west, in the southern mountains below the High Demesne, in the lands 
around the Great Dragon purlieu far east of here. No, that is no help to you, 
Gamesman. Give me a bit of time and I will find it for you. The name Bleer 
echoes in my mind. I have seen it on a chart before." It echoed in my mind, too, 
but I could not remember where I had heard of it. Had I asked the right 
question, I would have had quicker answers.
As it was, Gamesmistress Joumerie returned to me that evening to say she had 
found the place.
"The Wastes of Bleer," she informed me, licking her lips at the taste of the 
place, "lie to the north. A highland, the canyons of the Graywater to the west, 
the vast valley of the River Reave to the east where lies Learner or Learners, 
called variously. If you intend to go there, I could recommend the road to 
Betand and the eastern route from there over Graywater. There is a high bridge 
there at Kiquo, the only one for many leagues. Or, River Reave is navigable as 
far as Reavebridge, or even Learner in season. There are trails into the high 
country from there."
"What Games, Gamesmistress?" I asked her. "Is there any troubling there? What 
Demesnes are active?"
She snorted. "Wary are you? You are young to be so wary. My latest charts show 
little enough. The Dragon's Fire purlieu lies north on River Reave, but there is 
no Game there currently or presently expected. Who knows what hidden Games may 
be toward? Or games of intrigue or desperation?" She fixed me with an eye yellow 
as a flitchhawk's. "If you are that wary, lad, best enter my School House here 
and learn to dissemble as these girls do."
I flushed at that. She went stalking away to the door, making the floor shake. 
In the doorway she stopped to speak more kindly, seeing she had hit me fair. 
"There is a cartographer in Xammer, in Artists' Street, by name one Yggery. He 
is honest, so far as that goes, by which I mean he will not put anything in a 
map he knows to be false nor leave out anything he knows to be true. This means 
his maps are rather more blank than most. Still, if you have treasure enough, 
buy a map from him before you go north. And if you take Silkhands with you (for 
I can see the tip of my nose in a mirror in a good light), care for her. She has 
had more of Gaming than many of us, and has burned herself in caring for 
others."
I had not honestly thought of taking Silkhands with me until that moment. I had 
not thought she would want to leave Vorbold's House. Testing this notion, I 
asked her and was surprised to hear her say she would have made a trip north in 
any event.
"I go north to escort Jinian, my student," she said. "I need a time away from 
Vorbold's House. There are some here who turn their eyes from the students to 
the Gamesmistresses, and I am ... weary of that."
"Have you been molested?" I was angry and therefore blunt. I should have known 
better, for she laughed at me.
"In Vorbold's House? Don't be silly. Of course not. I have been sent proposals 
at intervals, and I have had to listen to a few representatives for the sake of 
... diplomacy. The offers have not been ... unflattering." She fell silent, 
thinking of something she did not share with me, then,
"Save to those like us who do not value flattery. I know I do not, and I presume 
you have not changed."
The expression on her face as she uttered this last was one I knew she used in 
the classroom, alert, polite, both encouraging and cautionary. I could hear her 
speaking thus to her students, "Now, young ladies. We do not value flattery...." 
I giggled at the thought.
She stared at me for a moment as though I had lost my wits, then giggled with 
me. We ended up rolling onto the carpet to end in front of the fire, heads 
pillowed on various parts of our anatomies as we talked it over.
"I did sound properly Schoolhousy, didn't l?" she asked. "Well, being 
Gamesmistress does that to you. Perhaps I am too young for it. I am only 
twenty-one after all. Many of the students are older than I." She did not 
consider this remark at all important, but to me it came as a revelation. Only 
twenty-one. I was seventeen, almost eighteen, and she was only four years older? 
I had thought of her as ... as ... well, older-sisterly at least. I was suddenly 
aware of her thigh beneath my head and of a quickening pulse in my ears. I sat 
up too hastily, dumping her.
"Come now," I said overheartily, trying to hide the fact that my hands were 
trembling. "We must make plans. I am going from here to the ruins where I first 
met you because the men who attacked me on the road would have taken me there."
"Dindindaroo," she said, blinking in the firelight like an owl. "That's the name 
of the place, or once was. Dindindaroo, the cry of the fustigar. It is said the 
place was once a main habitation of Immutables."
"Truly? Why was it abandoned?"
"A flood, I think. And a great wind which laid waste to the land about there. At 
any rate, it was abandoned some three generations ago, perhaps eighty or a 
hundred years. We used to find old carvings and books when we were there. 
Himaggery spoke of sending a party of Rancelmen to explore, but he never did."
"So the Immutables once occupied this place, Dindindaroo. Well, some villainy is 
centered upon it now, and I must go there in the guise of the Pursuivant to see 
what I can find. After that, however, if no sign of Quench has been found, why 
should I not go with you to the northlands? Windlow's vision sees us there 
together, and the song directs us there. Let us go."
She agreed hesitantly. "I must take Jinian to the court of the Dragon King at 
the Dragon's Fire purlieu. He and another Ruler, Queen someone-I've forgotten 
her name-set up a Rulership there, a kind of King-Demesne. Having no sisters, he 
chose to build his strategy around sons rather than upon thalani, but all his 
sons save one were eaten in Game over the years. He has only one left, at school 
in Schooltown, Havad's House, I believe. He is desirous of children to replace 
those lost."
I remembered out of dim mists having heard that name. "Ah. So the Queen died. Or 
was lost in Game?"
"Died. Of too much childbearing to too little purpose, some say. Now he desires 
a strong young Gameswoman to bear him sons."
"Who will also die of too many babies?"
She smiled a secret smile at me. "No. Our students learn better than that. We 
may teach them covert game, Peter, but we teach them to survive at it and their 
children as well. Jinian will not over-bear."
I did not pursue the matter, though I thought with a pang of the girl who had 
given me that long, level, understanding look at the dinner. She had not looked 
like one who would go uncomplaining into such a life. Well. Who could say.
Silkhands went on: "It will be a few days before we are ready to leave. You have 
your own trip to make. How shall we combine our journeys later?" She looked at 
me, hopeful and luminous in the firelight. I would have promised to combine a 
journey with her to the stars, and she seemed to know that, making a pretty 
mouth at me in mockery. I gestured hopeless and resigned acquiescence, and we 
spent the remainder of the evening talking of other things. I think both of us 
thought then that we would become lovers. No. I think she thought it and I hoped 
it. We did nothing about it except stargazing. There seemed to be time, and no 
reason occurred to either of us to think time would run out. I can still 
remember the shape of her in firelight, half of her lit with a soft 
melon-colored light, the other half in darkness.
So the morning after that found me back in the inn with Chance. The Invigilator 
had come around to some extent. He would sit up when told, and walk, and eat, 
and relieve himself. He would do nothing at all unless told to do so, and the 
strange cap had been on him only one full day. When Didir looked into his head 
she found an emptiness. "As though untenanted," she said. I was sorry then that 
we had put the thing on him. "Perhaps if it had not been on him so long," 
whispered Didir, "the effect would have been less."
We thought this likely. My assailants could not have wanted to make me witless. 
What good would I have been to them in that condition? I could not even have 
served as bait. No, the Invigilator had simply been caught in his own trap, but 
I mourned nonetheless that his body lived while his mind was gone.
Before leaving Xammer, we went to Artists' Street to buy the chart Gamesmistress 
Joumerie had suggested, and also to the Gamehall to hire a Tragamor. Silkhands 
had arranged for the few blues held at Vorbold's House to be packed and 
delivered to the inn. The Tragamor, escorted by an Armiger, took them off to the 
Bright Demesne along with a message from me.
"I am going north," I wrote, "to stop at the ruins of Dindindaroo. Thence to the 
land of the Immutables to leave the messages entrusted to me by Himaggery, and 
thence on the Great North Road in company with Silkhands, traveling to the 
Dragon's Fire purlieu. Word may be sent to me in the care of the Gamehalls on 
the way. Let me know if you find Huld, or Quench. I have found something odd I 
think Quench would know about." By which I meant the cap, of course, a thing 
made by magicians or techs, if I ever saw one. I sealed the letter, then 
unsealed it and added a postscript. "All affection to Mavin Manyshaped and to my 
thalan, Mertyn."
I thought privately that it was a good deal easier to feel affection for them 
both when I was a good distance from them.



3
Dindindaroo




WE RODE OUT OF XAMMER with me in the guise of the Pursuivant once more. He had 
been a man with lines in his face all crisscrossed from scowling, hard round 
cheeks and eyebrows which slanted upward over his nose to give him a falsely 
mournful expression. It was not a face which pleased me nor on which a smile fit 
easily, and after a time Chance told me to quit twitching it about and settle on 
something more comfortable for travel. "You can always gloom it a bit when we 
come to the ruins, lad," he said. "No sense making me the benefit of it while 
we're on the way." The Invigilator had no comment. We were still having to tell 
him when to drink and when to go into the bushes to pee, but Didir said there 
were glimmers of personality deep within which were beginning to emerge again. 
Evidently the evil little cap had done the same thing a devilish Demon might 
have done, wiped out all the normal trails in a brain to leave it without any 
tracks at all. My conscience still bothered me about that. There are worse 
things than being dead, and this might be one of them.
Once my face smoothed out into my own once more, it was a more comfortable trip. 
The ruins-Dindindaroo-were not far from Xammer, a short day's ride, no more. 
There was a lot of traffic on the road, too, for the comings and goings to and 
from Xammer were constant. Not only by emissaries of alliance hunters, either, 
but by merchants who found Xammer a profitable stop and a convenient place to 
buy luxuries for shipment farther north. One day I would go north on the road, I 
resolved, and see the jungle cities. Meantime, we amused ourselves, Chance and 
I, identifying Gamesmen in the trains. I saw a pair of Dragons, the fluttering 
cloaks painted with patterns of wings and flames and the feather crests snapping 
in the breeze. They nodded to us as they trotted past, hurrying away somewhere 
north, perhaps to the Dragon's Fire purlieu which was known for its population 
of air serpents. There were a good many exotic Gamesmen. I saw a Phantasm, gray 
and blue, faceplate faceted like a jewel, and a bright yellow Warbler who 
caroled a greeting at us as he passed, the subsonics and supersonics shivering 
our horses and making all the fustigars in the forests howl. There was a troop 
of brownclad Woodsmen, a common Talent among the Hidaman Mountains where they 
are much valued to fell timber and fight fires because of their ability to 
foretell where fires will happen and move earth and start backfires of their 
own. Though I had heard of a Woodsman taking his troop halfway down the range in 
pursuit of a fire he had Seen which was accidentally caused by his troop only 
after they arrived. Even old Windlow had said that Seeing was not dependable, 
and I considered it a good part flummery. Perhaps it was this opinion which made 
me reluctant to call up Sorah as I felt it would not make her think well of me.
We saw a Thaumaturge and a Firedancer and a Salamander and then about evening 
came to the fork in the road where the winding trail led away to Dindindaroo, 
overgrown with weeds and not appearing to have been traveled at all for many 
seasons. I did not want to come upon the place in the dusk, even with Didir in 
my pocket telling me she could not Read any minds at all in the place. So we 
camped, Chance, the idiot Invigilator, and I, with me doing the cooking. Chance 
amused himself by having the Invigilator make the fire and gather firewood. I 
think he was making a pet of the creature. Come morning we were up and on the 
trail at early light, me with my face carefully shifted into a good likeness of 
the Pursuivant. I felt my Shifting slip away even before we saw the ruins 
swarming with men. Chance said, "Immutables," and I knew at once he was right. 
Well, Riddle might be among them, and he knew Chance, and it probably didn't 
matter that I could not hide my own face. Let me go as myself and tell part of 
the truth.
The men working on the ruins had it marked out with pegs and string and were 
busy digging and hauling loads away in large barrows. We stopped a distance away 
from the turmoil, waiting to be decently noticed, and a man came down the pile 
toward us, wiping his forehead and looking oddly familiar to me. When I told him 
who I was, he started a little and gave me an extremely curious glance which I 
put down to his not having expected a Gamesman to visit. I took pains to be 
polite, coming down from the horse and making no extravagant noises.
"Would Riddle be here?" I asked. "I have a message for him from the Bright 
Demesne."
The man went back up the tumulus, peering at me over his shoulder in a way that 
reminded me unpleasantly of the way the Armiger had ridden ahead of us on the 
road. Still, that feeling left me when Riddle himself came from some hideaway 
and stopped to peer at me nearsightedly as though he couldn't believe what he 
saw.
"Peter? You? In Pursuivant's dress? But-what does this mean?. .."
I saved him his puzzlement, not wanting him to start thinking about my Talents 
or lack of them. He had turned quite pale in his confusion. "We had a bit of 
trouble on the road," I said. "A Pursuivant was among our attackers. He is dead 
now, poor fellow, and I put on his clothes to confuse those who had hired him. 
Whoever it was, they should have been here. So said this Invigilator." I pointed 
the man out, explaining his lack of interest in what was going on. "He's not 
very useful at the moment. He had a kind of cap thing in his pocket, a thing 
like those you showed me at Bannerwell. Well, we put it on him, and it's had 
this awkward effect...."
Riddle was nodding and nodding at each thing I said, looking very uncomfortable 
and grim, which I thought still might have been caused by my appearing thus 
suddenly in the guise of another Talent. At any rate, he collected himself and 
asked what brought me. I repeated what I had said before, that I had expected to 
find whoever plotted against me in this place. "Haven't there been any Gamesmen 
about, Riddle? Have you seen anyone lurking?" To which he mumbled and said 
something or other about having been too busy to have noticed.
It was obvious he was preoccupied, so I gave him the messages Himaggery had sent 
(something to do with the search for Quench, in which some Immutables were 
assisting Himaggery) and told him I would stay in the vicinity for a day or two 
in case Himaggery sent a message for me. And, finally, he managed to shake off 
his discomfort, from whatever cause, and become hospitable.
I asked him what they were doing, and he offered us tea while explaining. "We 
are growing more and more crowded in the purlieu, Peter. Our councilmen decided 
we should expand our territory, and this ruin marks the southern edge of the 
lands our people once occupied. They called it Dindindaroo, after the sound of 
the fustigars who den in the canyons and forests. At any rate, my own 
grandfather was the leader here in his time. It is our intention to build here 
once again."
"Wouldn't it be easier to build to one side of this ruin? Why all this digging 
and delving?"
He hemmed and hawed for a time before saying, "Oh, there may be artifacts here 
which are of interest to our archivists and historians. We thought it a good 
idea to take a little time to salvage what might be left from a former time." 
Then he changed the subject. His explanations sounded weak to me. They did not 
seem to be salvaging. They were searching for something particular. At any rate, 
Chance drew me away to speak privately.
"There seems to be no Gamesman here now, lad, no one to do you harm. So it 
seems. But there is nothing to keep someone from coming in the night, and even 
if no Talent may be used with all these Immutables about, still there are knives 
and arrows that can do a good bit of damage. I'd like it better to be 
inconspicuous."
I humored him. We took our leave of Riddle and rode away to the east. Once under 
the cover of the trees, however, Chance insisted we turn in a large circle which 
ended us west of the ruins. We found a cavelet well hidden behind tumbled stone, 
and when we had found the place, Chance asked that Didir look around us to see 
if anyone lurked. She reported only beast minds and bird thoughts, and I 
privately thought Chance must be among them to be so concerned. He disabused me 
of that notion.
"I had a suspicion," he said when we had settled down. "We came to that place 
expecting to find one there who Games against you, Peter. No one was there but 
that Riddle and his Immutables. So what if that Riddle had not been a so-called 
friend of yours? What would we think then? We'd think, well, here is the one who 
set that Game on us. So what I want to know is, how do we know he didn't?"
"Riddle? Ridiculous."
"Well, how so ridiculous? I dare say those Immutables have reasons and purposes 
of their own. Can't you imagine some reason he might want you all quiet and 
obedient to his will, for him to use some way?"
I could not. I tried. Riddle knew me as a Necromancer. What need or use could he 
have for me which I would not have fulfilled for him gladly at the asking? I 
thought of all possible combinations and alliances and strange linkages which 
could have come about-Huld, Prionde, the Council, Quench, the techs, Riddle, 
even the minor Gamesmen such as Laggy Nap and his like. Nothing. I said so. 
Chance was not satisfied.
"Well, just because we can't think of what it might be doesn't mean it isn't. 
Would you give me that, lad?" I said yes, I could give him that. He went on, "So 
'ware what you say. Don't go telling everything you know about where we're going 
and what we're about. Say we're going along with Silkhands to that Dragon's Fire 
purlieu because you and she are-well, give him that idea."
In the lands of the Game it did make sense not to trust too much. The only thing 
that bothered me was thinking of Riddle as a Gamer. Somehow, because he had no 
Talent, I expected him to be simple. When I said this to Chance, however, he 
corrected me with a hoot of laughter.
"Out on the sea, lad, where I spent many a season, we'd know a man by what he 
proved to be, not by what his mouth claimed for him. A man could be a devil or a 
good friend, and sometimes one and another time the other. Some Gamesmen are 
honest enough, I don't doubt, though they have the power to be all else without 
any to say them no, and some Gamesmen are evil as devils. So I doubt not the 
Immutables have their good and their bad, their complex and their simple. Well 
for you to suspect so, anyhow."
And with that, he left me to lie there, aroused by the puzzle but too weary to 
stay long awake. We went back to Dindindaroo the next morning to see if a 
message had come from Himaggery and to take leave of Riddle, for if he was what 
he pretended to be, a simple and honest man, then he would think more kindly of 
me for the courtesy. And if he was not what he pretended-well. We found him down 
in a hole, pale and frustrated of face, and he showed such discomfort at my 
arrival that I thought perhaps Chance was right. I dissembled. For all Riddle 
could have told, we were still his dearest friends.
"What are you doing down there, Riddle," I demanded. "Burrowing like a grole? 
Have you lost something? Or found it?" Even as I said it, I realized that the 
hole he was in was probably the same hole I had fallen into some several seasons 
ago when I had found the Gamesmen of Barish and the book Windlow called the 
Onomasticon. I gave him my hand to help him out, and he blinked at me as he 
brushed dust from his coat.
"I thought for a time we might have found some valuables left here by my 
grandfather," he babbled. "All the inhabitants of the place fled, leaving 
everything. There was great loss of life, a flood, a great wind...."
"What exactly are you looking for?" I asked him, all polite interest and bland 
lack of concern. "Would it help to raise up the dead here and ask them?" Aha, I 
thought. If you do not want me to know what you are doing here, then you will 
not accept this offer.
And also aha, said a quiet voice in my head. If Riddle had wanted you to raise 
up the dead in this place without knowing what you were doing, might he not have 
arranged for you to be put into that strange cap the Invigilator carried? Hmmm? 
Chance gave me a look, and I turned away as Riddle shook his head and fussed and 
said no, no, the only one who had known was his grandfather and his grandfather 
was said to have died elsewhere, and besides, he doubted a Gamesman could raise 
Immutable dead. I nodded my acceptance of this while privately thinking that I 
could do it if I chose. Whatever it was that made them immune to Talents, I 
wagered it went away when they died.
I shook my head for the benefit of those standing about. "It is probably just as 
well, Riddle. The longer they are dead, the less they remember of life. They 
hunger for life more the older they are, but they remember less. How long ago 
was the destruction?"
He thought some eighty years. His father had been a young man at the time.
"Well, you have waited a good time to seek what was lost," I said, all kindness 
and concern. "A good long time."
He mumbled something. I think the sense of it was that if he had known earlier 
what was lost, he would have come earlier to look for it. And this told me much. 
Riddle had lately learned something new. So. I was not of a mind to hang about 
making the man sweat. There would be better ways to find out. Besides, I was 
without Talent in this company and had only one man to stand beside me. It could 
be less dangerous to be elsewhere. I gave Riddle my hand and bade him farewell, 
putting the Invigilator in his care.
"He will dig for you, if you put the shovel in his hand," I said. "And if any 
Gamesmen come here who seem to know him, I would be grateful if you would send 
word to the Bright Demesne." I did not want Riddle to think I suspected him of 
anything. In truth, I still did not know that I did suspect him of anything. All 
I could believe was that Chance was wiser than I, and that I would be wiser-far 
wiser to be more careful. If only I had remembered that later.
We rode away without talking, both of us preoccupied with our own thoughts. 
After a time I turned to Chance and said, "I don't necessarily believe it."
"Well, don't then," he said. "But it'd be smart to act as though you do."
"You know what he was looking for back there." I made it a statement, not a 
question.
"For those things you found, I guess. I notice you didn't offer them to him."
"The thing I noticed was that he said his grandfather left them there. How carpe 
his grandfather by them? And why did Riddle not know of them until recently? For 
I will bet my lost fur cloak that he did not."
Chance shrugged, mumbled to himself. Finally, "Would anyone else among those 
Immutables know? Or is it only Riddle who knows? What about his family?"
"He had only a daughter," I said. Then there was a long pregnant silence of such 
a quality that I looked back to find Chance's eyes upon me, brooding and hot. 
"Oh, no," I said. "I will not."
"She's buried nearby," he remarked. "Almost in sight of the ruins."
"I couldn't do that," I said flatly. It was true. I could not even think of 
raising the ghost of Tossa. It would have made me feel like a Ghoul, and I said 
as much.
"I didn't say you should take her with us," Chance said in mild reproof. "I 
didn't say you should drag her around."
I swallowed bile at the thought. Ghouls did raise certain kinds of recent dead 
and drag them into a kind of fearful servitude of horror, a thing which no 
self-respecting Necromancer would think to do. There were others who raised 
ghosts-Thaumaturges, for example, or Revenants, or Bonedancers. If what old 
Windlow and Himaggery had told me was true, full half of all Gamesmen would have 
some Talent at Deadraising. Full half of all Gamesmen would share any one 
Talent. If so, it was not a Talent generally used in the way Ghouls and 
Bonedancers used it, and I felt unclean at the thought.
"No," I said. "She died, Chance, without ever knowing she was dying. Often the 
dead do not know they are dead until we raise them up." In that instant I 
thought of Windlow with a kind of stomach-wrenching panic, then sternly put that 
thought down. "The ancient dead are only dust; they have forgotten life and 
possess only a kind of hunger which the act of raising gives them. I do not feel 
thus about the ancient dead. But the newly dead-ah, Chance, that is a different 
thing. With Tossa, she would know herself dead, and it would hurt her."
The memory of Mandor's ghost was recently with me. I was prepared to be as 
stubborn as necessary, but Chance only said, "Well, then we'll have to think up 
some other way to find out. How about someone dead for eighty years or so?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Do you think you could raise an Immutable?"
"You're thinking of Riddle's grandfather? Riddle said he didn't die in the 
ruins."
"Riddle said a lot of things. Don't know whether I believe him or not is all."
So we rode along while I thought about that. Riddle was digging in Dindindaroo. 
He had recently found out that something lay in the ruins which he needed? 
Wanted? Someone else wanted? Well, which he cared enough about to go to some 
trouble over, put it that way. Where had he found out, and when? Perhaps on that 
northern journey he and I had started to make together, when he had turned off 
toward the east just above Betand? Or in his own land? Perhaps someone had told 
him? Who? Or he had found old papers?
After a time Chance interrupted this line of thought to say, "You know, these 
Immutables are just like the rest of us. They drink a little and they talk. Get 
a little jolly, they do, and they talk. Pawns travel through their land on 
business. You and me, we could travel there."
Which was an answer, of course. We would need to disguise ourselves. Riddle knew 
me as a Necromancer only, or so I believed. Chance and I had been seen together 
once before in the Land of the Immutables, but only briefly. So suppose we went 
into that land as two pawns, traveling on business. What business? I put this to 
Chance.
"Well, as you left me to my own devices in that town of Xammer, boy, and without 
a hello, goodbye, how was your dinner, I got into a little game or two."
"Chance!"
"Now, now. Mustn't react hasty-like. A quiet game with honest folk is always 
good fun. Anyhow, I took my winnings in various small bits and pieces. A little 
gold, some gems, fripperies and foolishness. Thought I might turn a profit, up 
north."
"So that's what's in your saddlebags. I thought you were heavy loaded for having 
no pack beast."
He nodded to himself happily. I never knew what pleased Chance most-winning a 
game of cards or dice, finding a woman who was a good cook, or locating a wine 
cellar put together by a master vintner. Whatever else the world offered, he 
would choose one or more of those three.
He instructed me: "Enough in the bags to make us legitimate, lad. If you can 
change your face some and get out of those dusty black clothes. Wouldn't hurt to 
change horses, too. As may be possible not far from here."
Which was possible with Chance in charge of the trade. He went away leading my 
lovely tall black horse and came back with a high-stepping mare of an unusual 
yellow color with nubby shoes such as they use along the River Dourt, or so 
Yarrel had once told me. It was not an inconspicuous animal. However, he had 
obtained a pack beast in the trade and had done something to his own face while 
away from me, stuffed his cheeks to make them fatter and darkened his hair. He 
looked a different man, and it was easy to disguise myself as a younger version 
of the same. When we were done with this switching about we turned west to cross 
the Boundary River into the Immutables' own Land. We had decided to be the 
Smitheries, father and son, and Chance told me to ride one stride behind and 
mind my manners toward my elder, which so amused him in the saying he almost 
choked.
So that night I sat in a tavern and learned a lesson in gossip. Chance talked of 
the sea, and of horses, and of trading in general, and of the goods he had 
picked up in Xammer, and of the young women in that city and elsewhere, and of 
how the world had changed not for the better, and of a strange wine he had 
tasted once in Morninghill beside the Southern Sea, and of an old friend of his 
in Vestertown, and of a man he had known once who used to live in Dindindaroo.
"Oh, that makes you a liar indeed," said an oldster, sucking at a glass of rich 
dark beer which Chance had put into his hand. "If you knew such a one, he was 
old as a rock. Dindindaroo has been wreck and ruin this hundred year."
"Not a hundred," interrupted another. "No, Dindindaroo was wreck and ruin in the 
time of my mother's father when my mother was a girl, and that was no hundred 
year."
"Oh, you're old as a rock yourself," asserted the first. "For all you're chasing 
the girlies like a gander after goslings, which you will never catch until the 
world freezes and Barish comes back. If it were not a hundred, it were near 
that."
"Ah, now," said Chance. "The man I knew was old indeed. Old and gray as a tree 
in winter. But he said he was there when ruin came down on the place, he said, 
like the ice, the wind, and the seven devils. Caught a bunch of the people, the 
ruin did. Or so he said."
"Oh, it did. Aye, it did. Caught a bunch of 'em."
"Caught old Riddle's grandfather, I heard," said Chance. "That's what the fellow 
told me."
"Oh, so I've heard. Free and safe he was, out of the place, then nothing would 
do but he go back for something he'd left there, and then the ruin came. That's 
the story. Buried in it, they said. Buried in it when the flood came down, and 
no sign of him and his contrack after that. Oh, a man'll do strange things, 
won't he, when ruin comes."
"He will, indeed he will," agreed Chance, nodding at me over his beer. At which 
I nodded, too, and agreed that a man will indeed do strange things.
"What was it he went back for, do you suppose?" asked Chance, as though it 
didn't matter at all.
"Who knows, who knows," murmured the second oldster, who was growing very tipsy 
with the unaccustomed quantities of free beer.
"His contrack," the loquacious oldster said. "That's what I heard. Was his 
contrack from the long ago time of Barish. That's what they kept at Dindindaroo. 
Charts and books and contracks to keep 'em safe until Barish comes back for 'em. 
That's what." And he hiccuped softly into his glass before looking hopefully to 
Chance once more who bought another round and changed the subject. They got into 
an argument then as to whether Salamanders are really fireproof. After that was 
a good deal of calling on the seven hells and the hundred devils, after which we 
went to bed to lie there in the swimming darkness talking.
"So he died there in the ruins, Chance. I have no bad feeling about calling him 
up. I didn't know him, and he's dead this eighty years, but Dorn himself 
couldn't call anyone up with all those Immutables about. All of them would have 
to leave."
"As they may do," suggested Chance, "if they heard that the thing they're 
looking for had come to light elsewhere."
"Elsewhere?"
"Somewhere far off. Leave it to me, Peter. We'll spend one more night here."
The which we did. And there was more buying of beer and more talk, and this time 
Chance made the circle of acquaintances larger so that there were more listeners 
to what was said. Middle of the evening came, together with jollity and general 
good feeling, and into a pause in the noise, Chance dropped his spear.
"You know, it was odd your mentioning Dindindaroo last night," he said to the 
oldster at his side.
"Odd? Was it? Did I? Oh, yes. So I did. What was odd?"
"Oh, only that I met a man in Morninghill, not a season gone, and he told me 
he'd dug up treasures around Dindindaroo."
At this there was general exclamation and interest. Chance turned to me for 
verification, and I said, "Oh, he said so, Father, yes. Dug up treasures, he 
said, and was selling them moreover."
Chance nodded, said nothing more, waited. The questions came. What had the man 
found? The Smitheries, father or son, did not know. Something small and 
valuable, they thought. Something wonderful and rare, for the man was a famous 
dealer in such. Old things, certainly. Then, when interest was at its height, 
Chance led the conversation away from the subject onto something else. I saw two 
dark-cloaked men leave the place immediately thereafter, and when I went to the 
window for a bit of air I could hear the pound of hooves going away south.
We slept there that night, and on the morning went out of the Land of the 
Immutables, riding publicly east toward the Great North Road. Once out of sight, 
we turned into the forests and began the circle which would bring us into the 
cover of the trees nearest the ruins of Dindindaroo.
We spied upon the place, I with my Shifter's eyes, keen as any flitchhawk's, and 
Chance with a seaman's glass he carried with him. Sure enough, there were two 
dark-cloaked men talking with Riddle, the three of them standing upon a mound of 
crumbled stone and soil, Riddle gesturing as though he were in a considerable 
turmoil. Troubled he was. His face was white with frustration. After a time they 
settled down, and by noon they had reached some decision, for many of them went 
away north into their own land while others, Riddle among them, rode south. So. 
He was going to look around in Morninghill, and a long weary journey that would 
be.
We waited until early evening, until the westering sun threw long golden spears 
across the tumbled stone, and then we came to the ruins and walked about on 
them. The industrious diggers had changed them about somewhat. Still, the 
crumbling walls were there where Dazzle and Borold had sheltered to watch the 
fire dance, and so was the high slit window where I had hung my shirt to 
counterfeit a ghost. I stood, looking at it, feeling that deep brown emotion 
made of dusk and smoke and sorrow which is so piercing as to be sweet beyond 
enduring. Then I shook myself and took Dorn into my hand.
"Well, Peter," he said to me in my mind. "Here lie many dead. Would you have us 
raise them all?" He knew what I had thought of, but he was ever courteous, 
treating himself as a guest. Besides, in clarifying for him, I made clear to 
myself as well. "A name," he said. "Did you neglect to learn the man's name?"
I uttered an oath, disgusted with myself. If we were to draw out one from among 
so many, a name would be needed for we did not know precisely where he lay. 
"What was his name?" I growled to Chance. And he answered me, soft as pudding, 
well Riddle of course, same as his grandson. So we went with that.
I began to sense the dead about us, the feeling of them, the luxuriant quiet of 
them. They were at peace in the long slow heat of summer and the long slow cold 
of winter, the ageless waft of the wind and the high cry of the hawk upon the 
air. In them the leaves moved and the wavelets of the river danced. In them 
sorrow had no place; time for sorrow had gone with the turn of the seasons and 
the fall of the leaves. "Pity," said Dorn, "to disturb this peace."
Still, he called the name of Riddle into the quiet of the place, drawing out and 
up, and at last we saw a little whirlwind of dust turning itself slowly upon the 
tumulus before us, spinning and humming a quiet sound into the twilight. Through 
this whirling dust the sun fell, turning it golden, so that we confronted a 
shining pillar and spoke as with a Phoenix, for so those Gamesmen whirl into 
flame and are consumed before rising once again.
We asked, and asked again. This revenant was not so old as those we had raised 
in the caves beneath Bannerwell, so we had created no monster of dust which 
hungered for life. Neither was it so short a time after death as the raising of 
Mandor, so there should have been no remembered agonies. Despite this, it seemed 
disinclined to speak with us, resisted being raised. I was about to give up when 
I heard Didir within, unsummoned, feeling-was it excited? Surely not. Impetuous. 
"Let me." She reached into that whirling cloud and seemed to fumble there as 
though Reading it, making some tenuous connections of sparkling dust.
Then the humming cloud took the shape of a man, a wavery shape, still resistant, 
not unlike Riddle in appearance, looking at something I could not see.
"I see Dorn," the phantom said. "Barish promised us immunity, Gamesman. He 
promised, but I am raised from the dead by Dorn. Ah, but then, I broke my 
pledge, my oath to Barish. All unwitting, all unwise. Forgive and let go...."
Chance and I looked at one another, a hasty, confused glance. This was not what 
we had expected. I stuttered, reaching for a question to clarify. "Riddle, tell 
me of your pledge to Barish."
"Barish ... Barish. He gave us immunity from your power, Gamesman, for us and 
our children forever, immutable throughout time, so he said. And in return we 
must keep his body safe, keep the bodies of his Gamesmen safe where they lie, 
north, north in the wastes, north in the highlands where the krylobos watch. We 
must keep the Wizard safe, and the Wizard's eleven. But he went away and did not 
return. I brought the Gamesmen here, Barish's book here, thinking to find him 
somewhere, find him and return them, but the waters came, the waters came and I 
died...." The figure writhed, became the humming cloud once more. From it the 
voice came in prayer and supplication, "The contract broken, all unwitting ... 
and Barish's promise broken as well for I am raised by Dorn to suffer my guilt. 
Ah. Forgive. Let me lie in peace...."
It was not my voice that said it, and not Dorn's. I thought it was Didir, though 
I could not be sure. "You are forgiven, Riddle, faithful one. Go to your rest."
The cloud collapsed all at once and was gone. The sun lowered itself below the 
undulant line of hills. Dark came upon the tumulus and in the forest a fustigar 
howled, to be joined by another across the river. A star winked at me, and I 
realized that I saw it through brimming tears. Something had happened. I was not 
sure what it was, or why, and the Gamesmen in my pocket did not know either. It 
was as though they and I had listened in upon some conversation from another 
time, a thing familiar and strange at once-familiar because inevitable and 
strange because I could not connect it to anything I knew. Chance was watching 
me with a good deal of concern, and I shook my head at him, unable to speak.
"Well," he said when I could hear him. "What went on there?"
I tried to tell him. All I could get out was that the answers to all our puzzles 
seemed to lie in the Wastes of Bleer.
"Riddle's grandfather brought some things here from the Wastes of Bleer," I 
said.
"I think it would help us if we stopped talking around and around," he said 
thoughtfully. "Let's not say `things.' What was brought here was those little 
Gamesmenyou found and the little book you gave Windlow."
"I have it with me," I said. "There may have been other things as well."
"No matter. What was lost was the Gamesmen and the book. Now did this Riddle 
fellow steal them?"
"No!" I was shocked. "No. He was supposed to have them. Supposed to keep them 
safe-them and the ... bodies."
The light that engulfed me then seemed to be around me in the world, but it was 
only inside my head. The bodies. Didir's body. Lying in the northlands, waiting 
for her. Her. Her I had in my pocket, not merely a blue, not merely a 
Gamespiece, but a person awaiting ... what? Resurrection? Awakening? Tamor, 
there in the northlands, Tamor who had saved my life more than once. And tragic 
Dealpas. And Trandilar. Oh, Gamelords, Trandilar! Voluptuous as boiling cloud 
and as full of pent energies, erotic, beguiling Trandilar. And Dorn. Dorn who 
was almost my elder brother in my head, lying there in the northlands, awaiting 
his renewal.
And all the while that part of me thought yes, oh, yes they must be found and 
raised up, awakened, another part of my mind said-no. No. They are mine, mine. 
My power comes from them. My Talents. I will not give them up. And the first 
part of me recoiled as though a serpent had struck at me inside myself so that I 
gasped, and gagged on the bile that rose in my throat. I struggled while Chance 
shook me and demanded to know what was wrong, what was wrong. Oh, Gamelords, 
what was wrong was me!
And then, somehow, I managed to thrust the conflict 'away, to stop thinking of 
it. I knew, knew it was there, but I would not think of it. Not then.
"Riddle's grandfather had a covenant with Barish," I choked. "But Barish 
disappeared, didn't come back. So Riddle's grandfather brought some things 
here-maybe hoping to find Barish. Maybe for safekeeping. Only wreck and ruin 
came on Dindindaroo."
Chance objected. "The covenant couldn't have been with Riddle's grandpa only." I 
shook my head. Obviously not. The contract must have been with the Immutables, 
father and son and grandson, generation after generation. Chance went on, "Those 
bodies have been there how long?"
I was careful not to think when I answered. "A thousand years. More or less. And 
do not ask me how Barish survived or came and went during that time for I don't 
know, Chance. It does not bear thinking of."
"So now what's our Riddle searching for? What's he up to?"
"Duty," I replied. "The covenant. The contract. The pledge his forefathers made 
to Barish. Oh, Chance, I don't know. I can't think of Riddle as anything but 
honorable. It's too confusing."
"Well, lad, don't get into an uproar over it," he said, giving me a long 
measuring look. "Whatever we don't know, we do know more than we did."
"Not enough more," I mourned, thinking of the hundred questions I should have 
asked the ghost. I could not call him up again. Would not. He had been given 
absolution by someone, and I would not undo it. I felt tears slide down my face.
"Maybe not enough more," Chance agreed, "but some more." He built a fire then 
and gave us hot soup, then some wine, and then an interminable story about 
hunting some sea monster during which I fell asleep. When I woke in the morning, 
I was able not to think about the disturbing thing, and the day was sharp-edged 
enough to live in.



4
The Great North Road




I TOLD CHANCE ABOUT THE SINGER in Xammer who had sung about wind to me and 
Silkhands. A mere song seemed a foolish reason to go exploring the northlands, 
and I hoped Chance, who was never loath to declaim upon foolishness in general, 
would say so. This would give me reason not to go, but I did not ask myself, 
then, why I wanted such a reason. Instead I made excuses. Himaggery and Mavin 
would need me, I said to myself, waiting for Chance to say something to give 
substance to my rationalization.
But he said, "What was it made you think the singer sang to you?"
"Only that he sang of the far north," I said without thinking, "and in the 
Bright Desmesne a Seer told me my future lay there ... with Silkhands." I did 
not say the Seer was Windlow.
"Well then, that's twice," said Chance. "And Riddle's grandpa is three times. 
Remember what I always said about that. Once is the thing itself, twice is a 
curiosity, but three times is Game."
I did remember. It had always been one of Chance's favorite sayings, 
particularly when I had committed some childish prank more than twice. "Whose 
Game? Who would be pulling me north?"
"Well, lad, there's pulling and there's pushing. The ghost was lamenting the 
loss of those things you carry. And maybe those things you carry are lamenting 
the loss of their bodies. I would if it was me. Maybe it's them want to get back 
where they came from."
So Chance was no help, no help at all. The knife of conscience twisted, and the 
serpent of guilt writhed under the knife. Was it possible? Could they be pushing 
me without my knowing? I tried to say no. "They have to use my brain to think 
with, Chance. They are only-what did old Manacle call it-patterns of 
personality. They are whatever they were when they were made. Didir comes into 
my head always the same Didir. She uses my mind, my memories to think with, but 
she does not carry those memories back into the blue. They stay in my mind, not 
hers. What I forget, she cannot remember. They couldn't pull or push without my 
knowing!" I said this very confidently, but I was not sure. "And I'm not sure 
that Silkhands and I ought to go north for such a reason. It's probably very 
dangerous."
He looked at me in astonishment. "And what do I hear? Peter talking about 
dangerous? Well, and the daylight may turn pale purple and all the lakes be full 
of fish stew. I thought never to hear such stuff after Bannerwell. If we are not 
here to seek out mysteries and answer deep questions, why are we?"
"Why, Chance." I laughed uncomfortably. "You're a philosopher."
"No." He rubbed his nose and looked embarrassed. "Actually I was quoting 
Mertyn."
I might have known. Oh, Gamelords, I could not turn my back on this thing 
without feeling cut in half. I could at least pretend to go wholeheartedly, even 
if I were torn. Why not follow the scent laid down for me as a fustigar follows 
a bunwit, "Head high and howling," as Gamesmaster Gervaise was wont to say. 
These agonized thoughts were interrupted.
"Where did you and Silkhands arrange to meet?"
"She will be leaving Xammer soon, tomorrow or the next day. I thought it better 
not to travel together so close to the Bright Demesne. If someone is watching 
and plotting, let them work at it a little. I told her we would meet her below 
the Devil's Fork of the River Reave, at the town there. Here, let us see."
I burrowed out the chart we had been at such pains to buy, spreading it upon the 
ground with stones at the corner to keep it flat. It was well made, on fine 
leather, the lettering as tiny and distinct as care and skill could make it. I 
found where we were, between the ruins and the Great North Road, then traced 
that road north with my finger to the place it split below the fork in River 
Reave. The town was there. Reavebridge.
"Well," I said, "we can go in disguise, on the road or off it; or in our own 
guise, on the road or off it. You are the wary one. I leave it to you."
"Then let us continue as Smitheries, father and son," he said. I agreed to that, 
and we packed up our things to ride away northeast where stretched the Great 
North Road.
The river which the Immutables call the Boundary came out of the northeast, and 
we followed it through the pleasant forests and farmlands north of Xammer. Ahead 
of us we could see the frowning brows of Two Headed Mountain, two days' ride 
away, which cupped the Phoenix Demesne at its foot. Farther north were the bald 
stone tops of Three Knob, hazed with smoke from the foundries there. These were 
both landmarks I remembered from my years at Schooltown, though I had never yet 
seen either of them much closer than we saw them on our way. Behind Three Knob, 
between it and the rising range of eastern mountains, was said to be what 
Himaggery called a Thandbarian Demesne made up of Empaths, Mirrormen, Revenants 
... I couldn't remember the other four Thandbarian Talents by Himaggery's scheme 
of Indexing. His scheme depended upon listing all the Talents which shared 
porting as a Talent, first, then all those left which shared Moving, then 
Reading, and so on. I wasn't sure it was any easier to remember than the old 
Indexes which listed each Talent as a separate thing, unique of its kind. One 
didn't seem to make any more sense than the other. There were still thousands of 
different Gamesmen. If the Talents were evenly distributed, said Himaggery, then 
half of all Gamesmen would have any one of the Talents. Still, Himaggery was 
attached to his scheme, and according to him there were seven Thandbarian 
Talents and over a thousand Elatorian ones. And no Necromantic ones at all 
except for Necromancers themselves. Which was idiotic, because there were 
Necromantic ones, Ghouls and Bonedancers and even Rancelmen.
Oh well, and foof. Still, since I'd been thinking about them, I asked Chance if 
he'd ever seen a Mirrorman (I never had), and he gave me a look as though he'd 
bitten into something rotten. "Yes, lad, but don't ask about it. I was a time 
being able to sleep at night again, after, and I don't relish the memory." Well. 
That was interesting.
It was less than a day's ride to the Great North Road where it crossed the 
Boundary River over a long sturdy bridge which had a look of Xammer about it, 
the railings being turned and knobbed like the balcony railings I had seen in 
the town. Its building had undoubtedly been commissioned by the town leaders in 
order to make travel-and trade-easier. Past the bridge was a campground, a place 
with a well and toilets and a place providing food and drink and firewood. The 
night was warm, so we bought food ready cooked and sat in a quiet corner of the 
place to eat it. Since we had chosen to sit fireless, our eyes were not flame 
dazzled and we could see who came in. Who came in was a Bonedancer, black and 
white, helmed with the skull of some ancient animal long extinct. He had either 
left his train of skeletons outside the place or currently had none, for which I 
was grateful. Bonedancers have enough Talents, including Necromancy, to raise 
dry bones and make them dance-or to do other things if moved to malice. Mostly 
they prey upon pawns in remote villages, telling fortunes and threatening 
horrors. I wondered how they could do it, wondered if they were ever reluctant 
to do it, wondered if perhaps there were many Bonedancers who simply did not 
exercise their Talents at all just as some Ghouls refused. Still, having the 
Bonedancer there did not upset me much. At first.
Then, however, came three more together: an Exorcist, a Medium, and a 
Timereacher. Chance drew in breath in a long, aching sigh as the three joined 
the Bonedancer, all at one fire, all talking together. "Game toward," he 
murmured. I was inclined to agree with him. Why else so many dealers with the 
dead in this one place?
"What is it Timereachers do?" I asked. "See the past?"
"It's said so," he whispered to me. "Mediums as well. A combination of Seeing 
and Deadraising? So I've heard."
"Exorcists too," I said. "Seeing, Healing, Deadraising. Able to settle ghosts, I 
recall, and perhaps to See where a ghost may trouble before it actually begins 
haunting. Still, to have all three, plus a Bonedancer? Someone means to raise 
something great, and he wishes to be sure he can put it to rest again. Who do 
you think?" The four were taking no notice of anyone around them, but there was 
something almost familiar about one of the figures. What was it made my skin 
crawl?
"Do you wish we were away from here?" I whispered.
"Enough to get away from here," he murmured in reply. It needed no discussion. 
He stood and walked away to the toilets, merely another one in a constant stream 
of toing and froing. After a moment, I went the same way. We met at the picket 
line, loosed our horses, and led them quietly into the night. Inasmuch as we had 
prepared no food for ourselves, nothing had been unpacked. When we had led them 
far enough for quiet's sake, we mounted and rode northward again, seeing the 
yellow glows of the little fires dwindle behind us in the dark. I was thinking, 
suspecting, wondering about the Gamesmen we had seen, the way they had moved and 
walked, the order of their arrival. Four. A Bonedancer, an Exorcist, a Medium, 
and a Timereacher. Three with Seeing; two with Healing; one to hold Power; one 
to raise Fire; and all four to Raise the Dead. I groped for Dorn in my pocket 
and read him this list.
"If such a four can find a battlefield," he whispered in my mind, "or the site 
of a great catastrophe in which many died, not so long that bones have fallen to 
dust yet long enough that flesh has left the bones, why then, were I Gaming, I 
would guess those four will raise a multitude and will seek, thereby, to do some 
evil work. . . ." I waited for him to go on. After a long time, he said, "A 
Healer may Heal. Know also a Healer may Unheal. Do not let the Medium or 
Exorcist lay hands upon you...."
I had already learned that in School House, the unwisdom of letting those with 
the power of the flesh (another name for Healing) lay, hands upon one. An 
Exorcist could lay hands on one and leave a bloody handprint where he had broken 
every little blood line in one's flesh. It was said, among boys, that Mediums 
could raise the dead and set them on your trail, and that they would follow 
forever. I asked Chance if he believed that.
"Well, there are haunts set, lad. You told me you put down one such in Betand. 
And there are Ghostpieces."
"I have yet to hear one straight word about Ghostpieces," I said with 
considerable asperity. "Windlow mentioned them once, and others have talked of 
them. I have never learned what it is they can and cannot do. Perhaps in your 
wide travels, Chance, you've learned the answers to all this." I was being 
sarcastic.
He became very dignified at once. "Lad, don't get all exercised at me. So 
there's Deadraisers on the Great North Road, and so you think they have 
something to do with you. Well, I'm not ringing any great bell to tell them 
where you're hid. I don't know a midgin more about Ghostpieces than the next 
one; what we've heard is all. We've heard of things raised up which could not be 
put down again. We've heard of things that turned on those that raise 'em. 
Himaggery would say to put your reason to work on it, and I can't say better 
than that."
When Chance got offended like that, there was no use trying to get anything out 
of him, so I rode along feeling ashamed of myself. Reason said that anything 
raised had to take power from somewhere. Reason said that, and so did 
experience, for when Dom had raised up the dead under Bannerwell, I could feel 
the power flowing from him-me. But then once they were raised up, they went on 
their own-at least those in Bannerwell had. It had been like pushing a wagon 
from the top of a hill, a hard push to get it started, then it rolled of itself. 
So at least under some conditions things raised up would move on their own. 
Well, reason had not led me far. I would have to think more on it.
Meantime, we had come so far on the road that the Phoenix Demesne stood due east 
of us. It was time to rest, for us and for the animals. Here and there in the 
flat farmland, crisscrossed by a thousand little canals which flowed down from 
the east fork of the River Reave, were small hillocks covered with trees, 
woodlots left to provide fuel for the farms. In one of these copses we took 
cover for what remained of the night, tethering the animals so they could not 
wander out to be seen from the road. I went to sleep in discomfort and 
foreboding. Gamelords know what I dreamed, but I was so wound up in my blankets 
that Chance had to help me out of them in the morning, and the sweat had soaked 
them through.
We breakfasted over a small fire, built smokeless and quickly extinguished when 
the first travelers appeared on the road. We lay behind a shield of dried fern, 
peering through. There was an hour or so of usual travel, farm wagons, a herd of 
water oxen, a girl leading three farm zeller by the rings in their noses, their 
udders swinging full before milking. Then came a burst of travelers from the 
south, all riding speedily without looking around them, then another three or 
four, then a space, then a bunch riding with eyes ahead as though intent upon 
covering the leagues. There was another little space, then two men riding hard 
and whipping their animals. After them, the bones.
They came in a horde, a hundred, perhaps more, complete skeletons, so loosely 
joined that the arms and legs might go off dancing on their own, jerking and 
rattling, only to come back to the other bones and accumulate once more into 
more or less complete sets, the grinning skulls bouncing and lunging at the tops 
of the backbones as though on springs. Behind this clattering aggregation rode 
the Bonedancer on a shabby black horse, and behind the Bonedancer the Exorcist, 
the Timereacher, and the Medium-No! It wasn't a Medium. In the firelight the 
night before I had seen only the dark gray cloak pulled forward, hiding the 
face. Today the cloak glittered with gold spiderweb embroidery and the hood was 
thrown back to reveal the magpie helm beneath. A Rancelman-same Talents as a 
Timereacher, but with Reading added. I sharpened my Shifter's eyes to see more 
clearly, then muttered an oath as I saw more clearly than I liked.
"It's Karl Pig-face," I said. "A Rancelman!"
"No!" Chance fiddled with his glass, easing it through the dried fern so as not 
to betray us where we lay. "So it is! But what's wrong with his face? That isn't 
the Karl you knew!"
I looked again, more carefully. It was Karl Pig-face, right enough, but the face 
was ... empty. Pale. Dry, rather than sheened with sweat as I had always seen 
it. At that instant, his head began to turn toward me, and as his head turned 
every skull in that endless train of bones began to turn also. Without thinking, 
I reached for Didir, felt her flow into me, and made my own mind dive down like 
some depth-dwelling fish to let her shield me. Through my eyes, I felt her watch 
the skeleton heads swing restlessly to and fro, like pendant fruit, the 
wormholes of the empty eyes seeking me. Then Karl's head faced forward once 
more, and they went on, on to the north. I did not move or speak until they were 
vanished in dust, beyond even a Shifter's ability to see them.
"That one sought you, Peter," whispered Didir. "Sought you out of hate, malice, 
and because he is forced to do it. He wears a cap, like the other one you are 
remembering. He felt you, Peter."
"But he did not tell them. . . ." I replied wonderingly.
"They are fools," she said. "Whoever wears the cap will do only what he is told. 
They told him to find you, not to tell them he had found you. So he found you, 
lost you, and went on seeking. Their stupidity has saved you, this time."
"Who?" I breathed.
She did not answer. I had not thought she would. Karl had not known who sent 
him, and for her to attempt to Read any of the others would have been to signal 
our presence.
"So we are behind them now," said Chance.
"Behind them," I said. "But who knows how many have been set on my trail. It 
began the minute we left the Bright Demesne. I am not such a fool as to think 
these boneraisers are the end of it. Someone has gone to considerable trouble."
"Ah," said Chance.
"Huld!" I said. I was certain of it. It had all the marks of Huld, all his 
energy, his relentless malice, his fascination with the mechanisms of the techs. 
Who else could have learned from Mandor that Karl Pig-face was my enemy? Who 
else would have known of my association with Silkhands ... Silkhands! "Silkhands 
is in great danger," I said. "Huld would not let the chance pass to use her 
against me. He will take her when she leaves Xammer, depend upon it, and she is 
all unwary of this."
"Well, lad, I wouldn't let him do that if I were you."
Curse the man. No sympathy. No hooraw and horror, no running about squawking. 
Merely "don't let him do that." Tush. Xammer was more than a hard day's ride 
south, and she might be leaving at any time. Or have left already.
"There's that Hafnor," said Chance, fixing me with his beady little eyes. "In 
case you've forgot."
Damn him. Of course I hadn't forgotten. The idea made me sick to my stomach was 
all. Stopping existing in one place. Flicking away to another place. Starting to 
exist there. All in an instant. It was worse than the bones. I felt my inner 
parts lurch and sway, a kind of vertiginous gulping of the guts.
"No other way I can see," said Chance, still staring at me.
With no sense of volition about it at all, I reached into the pouch to find 
Hafnor, knowing him in the instant by the unfamiliarity of him. I clenched my 
hand around him and took a deep, aching breath, only to have my mind filled with 
a gust of mocking laughter. "Well, and where are we here?" I felt someone using 
my eyes, my nose, my tongue to taste the air, my other hand to feel the ground 
beneath me. I saw the shape of every tree, the volume of the leaves against the 
sun, felt the texture of the dried grasses. "That's here," said the laughing 
voice. "Where do we want to go?" I tried to explain about Silkhands, about 
Xammer, but felt only a mad, laughing incomprehension and impatience. "Where, 
where, where? What walls? What smell of the air? What floors? What doors leading 
in and out? What windows? Draperies? Furniture? What landmarks seen through 
those windows? Where, where?"
All I could think of was the room in the Guest House, and I tried to remember it 
in a way that would suit Hafnor. Sudden memories surged up, ones I had not known 
of, the color and sound of the fire, the feel of the woolen carpet on my hands, 
the smell of the polish used on the furniture. The memories assailed from every 
side, and I dropped the tiny figure of Hafnor in panic, to stand heaving like an 
overridden horse. When I had panted my way back to a kind of sanity, I said to 
Chance, "If I go, and if I am gone when night comes, then go to ... to Three 
Knob. Get rid of that yellow horse and his strange shoes. Tell anyone who seems 
interested that the young man who was with you has gone away ... to Vestertown, 
or Mominghill. But you go to Three Knob and wait there, however long it takes 
me. We'll meet you there, Silkhands and I."
He did not argue or make any great fuss about it, merely watched me, nodding the 
while, as I took Hafnor into my hand again. I summoned up the memories of that 
guest room and saw them take visible shape before me, as though framed in a 
round window. From the corner of my eye, I saw another window which looked out 
onto a flame-lit cavern, and another which showed the attics of Mertyn's House 
in Schooltown, and another which showed the long, half-lit corridors of the 
magicians' lair beneath the mountains. I spun, seeing these windows open about 
me, as though I stood at the center of a sponge or a great cheese, all around me 
holes reaching away to every place I had ever been or known of. "Where?" 
whispered Hafnor, and I turned to the hole which showed the guest room in 
Xammer, stepped through it, and stumbled upon the rug before the cold fireplace 
to fall sprawling.
When I had stopped shaking and had time to get up and brush myself off, for I 
was still covered with half dried grasses from that hill beside the road, far to 
the north, I sneaked down to the courtyard and appeared there to the first 
person I could find from Vorbold's House. It was Gamesmistress Joumerie, who 
looked me over curiously and answered me words I did not like.
"Silkhands? Why, no, Gamesman. She rode out this morning with young Jinian and 
several servants and two Armigers for safety's sake, riding to King Kelver's 
purlieu, away north. They will not move over fast, not so far you may not catch 
them up, ride you swiftly."
I left her with scant courtesies to find a hidden corner and take Hafnor into my 
hand once more. "What do I do now?" I begged. "I must find her, but I don't know 
the road well enough to. .."
"Hoptoad, lad," came the laughing voice with more than a hint of malice at my 
discomfiture. "Hoptoad. Do you look far ahead, keen as your eyes will go, and I 
will do the rest." That is what we did. I looked as far down the road as I could 
see, sharpening my vision to the utmost, spying the place ahead, the trees, the 
canals, whatever might be about, bit on bit, and then we flicked, and I was in 
that spot. Then I did it again, and flick, and again, and flick, each time 
scanning the road between to be sure we did not miss her. Until we saw the 
confusion and heard the screaming and flicked to find ourselves among a crowd, 
all shouting and running about near the unconscious body of one Armiger and the 
bleeding, perhaps dead, body of another.
I shook one of the bystanders and demanded that he tell me quickly what had 
happened. He pointed a trembling finger at the forest edge. "Ghoul," he 
whispered. "Came with a horde of dead out of the trees. The Armigers tried to 
fight them, but you can't fight that. The Ghoul took the women. Dragged them 
away into the trees."
Though obviously frightened, he had kept his wits about him. I ran for the 
forest, knowing that Hafnor could not help me there. It would take Grandfather 
Tamor, swift flyer, to lift me up where I could see. So it was. He caught me up 
like a feather, moved me like a swooping hawk to peer this way and that, seeking 
the movement of leaves or the rustle of undergrowth below, quartering again and 
yet again, hearing only silence, working slowly westward, a little faster than a 
man might run.
It was the cold first, then Silkhands' voice which led me to them. The Ghoul 
could not stop her chatter any more than I had ever been able to do, and her 
voice went on resolutely, almost as though she knew someone would be searching 
for her. I came into a tree top to watch them. The Ghoul dragged them along, one 
on either side of him, his host of dead following in a shamble of rotting flesh. 
Ghouls do not move clean bones; they have the Talent of Moving, of Power, of 
Raising the Dead. How much power did this one have? Plenty, it seemed, and was 
drawing more, for the place was icy as winter. I hung above them judging the 
distance.
Then as he passed below I stooped upon him, screaming as I flew, "Ghoul's Ghast 
Nine, I call Game and Move!" as I snatched the two girls from him and launched 
myself upward toward another tree....
Only to know in one hideous moment that I had played the fool, the utter, 
absolute and unGamed fool. I had called a risk play, an Imperative, unwise and 
unready as I was, and the Ghoul would not ignore it. I hung there in the tree, 
the girls reaching out to cling to the branches as the strength left my arms. 
There was no power in the place to draw and I was weak ... weak. I was in the 
Ghoul's Demesne, and he had drawn it all. Such power as I had I had expended 
prodigiously in the flick, flick, flick of Elator's hunt in finding them, in the 
reckless flight and swoop and call. Now there was no more strength in me than 
enough to move myself away a few yards, thyself only, and no way to get more. I 
gasped, unable even to think what might be done.
I saw him reach for his power. He had more than I would have guessed, for two of 
the rotting liches staggered to the tree where we clung and began to climb, 
clotted eyes fixed upon us. They climbed awkwardly, leaving parts of themselves 
stuck to various small twigs and branches, but they came higher by the moment. 
Beneath them, others assembled, waiting, lipless mouths gaped in silent grins of 
amusement at the fruit about to fall into their hands and jaws. I heard 
Silkhands whimper, saw the girl, Jinian, glaring down at the Ghoul while 
rumbling curses in her throat. I wanted to close my own eyes, half dead as I was 
with cold and terror. I could fly myself away to another place, me, alone, with 
no burden. Or move Silkhands away without me. No more than that, and the place 
cold, cold.
Below me the Ghoul laughed and screamed into the quiet forest, "Armiger's Flight 
Ten, fool flyer. Armiger's Flight Ten." He was calling my death and the death of 
those two with me, and I knew it as did they.
I wondered if I would have the strength to move Silkhands away. My hand clenched 
in my pocket, clenched, and then gripped again as I felt that other unfamiliar 
shape in my fingers. Buinel. Sentinel. Firemaker. He came into my mind like a 
bird onto an unfamiliar nest, fussing and turning. I felt the thousand questions 
he was about to ask, anticipated the lengthy speech he was about to make. Oh, 
something within me recognized him, knew him for that Buinel whom Windlow had 
called Buinel the flutterer.
The branch under my foot swayed. I looked down into the face of one of the 
liches as it fastened a partly fleshed hand upon my boot. I kicked wildly, and 
the thing fell away as Jinian shouted shrilly at my side.
"Buinel," I cried silently. "Fire. Or we die, you die, we all die. Forever."
"Who?" he fussed. "Who speaks? What authority? What place is this? Who is that 
Ghoul? What Game?"
"Buinel," I shouted at the top of my voice, startling a flight of birds out of 
the trees around us, "if you do not set fire to the Ghoul and to all the liches 
in this tree, we are dead and you with us."
Something happened. I think it was Tamor, the pattern of Tamor, though it may 
have been Hafnor. Some pattern in my head issued a command, said something harsh 
and peremptory to the pattern which was Buinel, and the tree behind the Ghoul 
burst into flame, all at once, like a torch. The Ghoul turned, startled, but not 
too startled to begin storing the power of flame. Shattnir was in my hand in the 
instant drawing from the same source. "More," I demanded. "By the ice and the 
wind and the seven devils, Buinel, more fire. Burn these liches at my feet." For 
another of the corpses had reached to lay hands upon me. The cerements on the 
creature began to smoke, the very bones began to glow and it dropped away 
silently as other trees went up in explosive conflagration. Meantime, Shattnir 
and the Ghoul fought it out for the available heat. There was more than was 
comfortable.
The Ghoul sent up a clamor, "Allies, allies!" into the roar of the flames. I 
thought I heard a Herald's trumpet away somewhere and turned to catch a sudden 
dazzle of light reflected off something, but I could not see it and could not 
wait. I had enough power by then to lift the women and flutter away, through the 
columned forest like a crippled bat, bumping and sliding across branches in a 
search for water. Behind me I could hear the Ghoul screaming, and I muttered 
"Ghoul's Ghast Ten," to myself. "Move and Game." I had never planned to die as 
Armiger's Flight Ten in a strange wood, eaten by liches. But it had been close.
We found a little islet in a pond, and there Silkhands Healed our burns. I drew 
more power and Searched as the fire burned in all directions, wider and hotter. 
It would stop at the river on the south, and there were only flat fields to the 
east, but it would burn long to the north and west unless some sensible 
Tragamors brought in clouds and wrung them out. I could do nothing about it 
alone, chose not to in any case, for I wanted to see who ran before those 
flames. Twice I caught that dazzle of light, but I could find no one. Whoever it 
might have been had flown away. At last I gave up and returned to the women.
They had made a couch of grasses behind some fallen trees. All three of us lay 
there in the late afternoon sun to let it quiet us. Later I was to think it 
strange that I did not inquire what Talent the girl, Jinian, had. Silkhands had 
not mentioned the matter in my hearing. If she had had any headdress, it had 
been lost in the attack. In any case, I did not ask and she did not offer. She 
did ask to borrow my knife in order to set a snare, but I told her I would 
furnish a meal before I left them to go away and arrange our farther travel. I 
did it by Shifting into pombi shape and murdering some foolish farm poultry who 
had wandered into the woods to brood. While the fowl popped over the flames, we 
spoke of alternatives. I could have gone back to Xammer to procure horses, 
supplies, a replacement carriage, even guards and servants. We chose not to do 
so. Instead, when we had eaten, I Shifted myself into a middling ordinary human 
shape and went off to find some settlement where goods and beasts would be 
available.
After that was only a weary time of looking and bargaining and going elsewhere 
for this thing and that thing which no one, ever, would have thought of having 
when and where it might be wanted or convenient to any other thing which might 
have been wanted. The evening spent itself into night and the night into 
morning. It was noon the following day before I led Silkhands and Jinian out of 
the trees to see what I had accomplished.
"By the pain of Dealpas," said Silkhands reverently, "I have never seen such a 
tumbletrundle in my life."
I nodded, pleased. The wagon did look as though it might fall apart at any 
moment, but it would not. I had fixed certain parts of it myself. The animals 
hitched to it were probably mostly water oxen, though the parentage of either 
could have been questioned. They were large, ugly, and looked too tough to tempt 
hunters, too rough to tempt thieves. The clothing in the wagon was of a kind 
with the rest, ugly and boring.
"No one would want it," said Jinian. I cast her a quick look, thinking it a pity 
she was so plain-looking, for she had a perceptive mind. "Exactly," I said. "Now 
we must make sure that no one would want any of us, either."
I believed that we succeeded. Time would prove, the occasion would tell, but we 
had certainly changed the conditions of our travel more than a little. No one 
would be interested in the old man or either of the two mabs at his side. All 
three had dirty faces and gap-toothed smiles. The girls' teeth were blackened 
out with tar; from an armslength away they appeared to be missing. When evening 
came of this day after I had left Chance, we were on the Great North Road once 
more, only a little north of the Boundary bridge. Looking back at it, I sighed. 
We had spent much time and effort coming a very small way, and there were still 
twenty leagues between us and Three Knob.
I had only one real satisfaction. The episode with the Ghoul had decided me 
firmly and finally that Huld was responsible. The earlier episode with the Witch 
might have been Riddle's doing, but it was Huld who set Bonedancer and Ghoul 
upon my trail. He had made a fool's call once, in the ice caverns. He had called 
Necromancer Nine on me, but he could not Play to fulfill it. Now, he was 
determined to fulfill it, to fulfill it in a way I could not mistake, using 
Ghoul and Bonedancer, Rancelman and Exorcist-all of them with Necromantic 
Talents. I had used the dead against Mandor and Huld; now he would use them 
against me to the death. He had underestimated me before and again this latest 
time, though not by much. He still did not know what I was or could do.
It was rare to find Gamesmen who did many things well. Sometimes there are 
children born who, when they reach puberty, seem to have bits and pieces of many 
Talents. Often they turn into ineffectual idiots who sit in the sun playing with 
themselves, endlessly moving one stone atop another or floating a handswidth 
above the earth or porting tiny distances around a circle to the accompaniment 
of loud laughter. Having more than four or five different abilities seemed to 
carry destruction with it. Minery Mindcaster was sometimes called a twinned 
Talent. The way we had all learned to think about Talents made it easier to 
accept her as being a combination Pursuivant and Afrit than simply as having 
seven separate Talents. I, who had all eleven chose I to use them, would not be 
thought of as a possibility by Huld. Not yet. He had known me first as 
Necromancer, and he was stuck with that notion for some time. Perhaps he knew me 
as Shifter, but I thought not. He had seen me fly in the ice caverns, but did he 
think it was my own ability or that some Tragamor lurked out of sight and Moved 
me? When I blasted out the barrier Huld had set across the exit to that place, 
did he know I had done it, or did he think some Sorcerer was involved? If he 
thought I had done it, then he was judging me as an Afrit, for these were the 
Afrit Talents.
However, he was not a fool. He might be misled for a time. His Bonedancer and 
his Rancelman had not found me on the road. His Ghoul was dead. Nonetheless, 
Huld was an implacable enemy who grew stronger and more clever with time. Could 
I lay all my powers down in the northlands and confront him with nothing ... ? 
Nothing but myself? Inside me I whimpered and cowered until at last I was 
sickened at myself. I had been more courageous at Bannerwell than I was being 
now, and I reflected that a little taste of power could take a reasonably 
sensible person and make some kind of groveling, cringing thing of him.



5
Three Knob




I HAVE SAID that the land to the east of the Gathered Waters is flat. It was no 
less flat and unenlivening the second time I traveled it in the space of a few 
days. The pace of the water oxen may have been as much as a league an hour, when 
they hurried, which they were inclined to do only toward evening when it grew 
cool and they sensed water ahead. I had coached both Jinian and Silkhands in the 
use of jiggly rhymes or songs should any Demon or other Talent with Reading 
skills come by, and I had set myself a persona, Old Globber, in expectation of 
some such event. As a matter of fact, one Demon did ride by toward dusk of the 
second day. So far as I could tell, he cast not even a passing look toward us. 
We were, indeed, very unattractive.
Boredom began to oppress us early. In midafternoon of the second day, Silkhands 
and Jinian began to share confidences concerning their emotions and feelings 
toward those of my sex, and I found myself alternately titillated and 
embarrassed by their frankness, finally being made so uncomfortable that I 
sought some way to change the subject. Some idea had been fluttering at the back 
of my head for several days, and I thought the little book in which Windlow had 
set such store might net it for me.
"Jinian," I said, thrusting my request into a brief niche in their conversation, 
"I have something I've been studying, a little book. Would you read it to me?" 
She said she would, though I could tell that she was surprised at the request. I 
dug out the Onomasticon and gave it to her. My hope was that hearing it in 
another voice might let the words fall into some pit of comprehension. Thus 
Jinian, and when she tired, perhaps Silkhands.
"Shall I start at the beginning?" She was doubtful, having dipped into it and 
found little sense there.
"Pick a page," I said. "At the beginning, or anywhere. There is supposed to be 
some deep meaning or content in these pages, so an old friend of Silkhands and 
mine thought. However, I've been unable to find the key to it. Perhaps you'll 
find it for me."
She began. " `When the Wizard returns for the ninth or tenth time, there will be 
much work to do.' " She stared at the page, then turned to me. "Which Wizard is 
that?"
"Barish, I suppose," I said. "You've heard it. So have I. People saying, `When 
Barish returns.' I heard one codger in a market say he would drop his prices at 
the twelfth coming of Barish."
She nodded thoughtfully and went on. " `The greater power these Gamesmen have, 
the more they are corrupted ... yet there are still some born in every 
generation with a sense of justice and the right ... so few when compared to the 
others. I would that they become many!' And I say so-be-it to that," said 
Jinian. "I would there were more like you, Peter, and Silkhands, and fewer like 
that Ghoul."
I think I may have flushed, conscious as I was of my own struggles to perceive 
and do the right. Gamelords! It is not hard to risk your life when you have 
nothing to live for, but it is a hard thing when life is sweet. I tried to catch 
Silkhands' eyes, hoping for a lover's glance from her, but her eyes were closed 
and she breathed as though asleep. Jinian went on reading, unaware.
" `In the meantime, Festivals will provide opportunity for reproduction by young 
people ... School Houses will protect them ... I fear that those at the Base 
have lost all touch with reality. They are breeding monsters in those caverns 
and they do not come into the light....
" `I have met some of the native inhabitants of this place. How foolish to think 
there were none. They leave us untroubled in this small space but will not do so 
forever....
" `I have set this great plan ... a thousand years in the carrying out ... 
centuries of the great contract between us and the people we have set to guard 
us 
"Read that last part again," I said to her.
" ` ... a thousand years in the carrying out. It will depend upon a hundred 
favorable chances, the grace and assistance of fate and those who dwelt in the 
place before we came, and the perpetuation through the centuries of the great 
contract between us and the people we have set to guard us.' "
"Nothing ponderous about that," I said in an attempt to be witty. "Lords, but 
the man took himself seriously."
"What man? Who wrote this? I thought at first it was printed, like some books, 
but someone wrote it by hand in tiny printing in old style letters. In places 
it's all smudged, as though the person was tired or confused." She thrust it at 
me, pointing with one strong finger, and I saw what she meant. Over the years 
the ink had faded and the paper discolored to make the whole monochromatic and 
dim. Her question triggered that evasive thought which flickered at the edge of 
my mind. It was too late; we were too weary. I could hardly see the road verge, 
much less the pages in the failing light.
"I believe Barish wrote it," I said. "A kind of diary of his thoughts? Though 
why such a diary should now be considered so important is beyond me. Windlow the 
Seer searched for this book for decades and read it constantly once he had found 
it, searching in it for-what? Right now I believe the Immutables are searching 
for this book. Perhaps others search for it as well. Oh, it's an important book, 
I'm sure. If I could only find out why. I thought hearing it in your voice might 
help, but the solution won't come...."
And then, while Silkhands dozed, I told Jinian all that I knew or guessed about. 
this book and about the Gamesmen of Barish while she asked sensible, penetrating 
questions in a manner which reminded me much of Himaggery on his better days. In 
the dusk her face had a pale, translucent quality, a kind of romantic haziness, 
and I remembered I had thought her plain before. Though what was it Chance 
always said? Any hull looks sound in the dark? Well, her hull was sound enough, 
dark or light.
"Windlow said something about words changing their meaning over time," I told 
her. "He said that if we knew the words, then we would know what things once 
meant-or words to that effect. He mentioned, for example, that in this book the 
word `Festival' meant `opportunity for reproduction,' and he said that was 
important. I don't know why."
She was a sober little person, very serious and intent. When she considered 
things, two narrow lines appeared between her eyes and her mouth turned down as 
though she chewed on the idea. It made me want to laugh to see her so earnest 
with the dirt on her face and her teeth blacked out. It was as though she had 
forgotten how she looked. Silkhands had not. Every time she wakened, she made 
some petulant remark about it.
"It is true that powerful Gamesmen are careless of the lives of others," Jinian 
offered. "We all know that, of course. It's part of the Game. So if we did not 
have School Houses, then young people without Talent yet, or those who don't 
know how to use their Talents, would be eaten in the Game in great numbers. And 
if they were shut up always in School Houses, then they would not have babies. 
We were taught at Vorbold's House that it is easiest for women to bear children 
when they are youngthe women, I mean, not the babies. So, when women are young, 
they are in School Houses, and if they must have babies then, we must have 
Festivals. Otherwise there would be few babies and everything would stop." She 
sighed. "If Barish wrote this, he is saying that School Houses and Festivals are 
necessary, and further he is saying that he, personally, has invented both. 
But-that was so long ago. It is a very old book."
"Very," I murmured. "Very old. What was that bit about the native inhabitants?"
She did not answer for some time. I thought she had gone to sleep. I thought of 
going to sleep myself. The water oxen were now plodding along in starlight, and 
we had to give serious consideration to stopping for the night so they could 
browse and we could eat and sleep, preparatory to our mad gallop into tomorrow 
behind the faithful team. When Jinian spoke at last it was conversation extended 
into dream.
"Did you ever hear the story of faithful-dog?" she asked. I nodded that I had. 
It was a nursery tale. "Did you ever see a dog?"
"It's just another word for fustigar," I said sleepily.
"No it isn't," she said. "In the story of faithful-dog, the dog wags his tail, 
his tail, you know? Remember? Fustigars can't wag their tails. They don't have 
tails."
"Well, maybe at one time they did," I objected. I had never thought of that, 
though indeed the old story did have a wagging tail in it. That was the point of 
the story for children, for it was the wag of our bottoms as we acted it out 
which made it fun.
"Pombis don't have tails," she continued. "Cats do. Mice do. Owls and hawks do, 
but flitchhawks don't. Horses do. But zellers don't." "We don't," I said.
"I know. That's what's confusing, because I think we belong with cats and horses 
and faithful-dog. But we don't have tails and they all do. Anyhow, it's as 
though there are two kinds of animals and birds and creatures, one kind from 
here and one kind from somewhere else. Only I don't know if we're the kind from 
here or the kind from somewhere else. Do you?"
In the place of the magicians, I had learned an answer to this. "We're from 
somewhere else." She accepted this, as she did almost everything I said, very 
soberly. "The shadowpeople are from here, however. And they have no tails."
"Have you seen them?" She was as excited as a child seeing the Festival Queen 
for the first time. I told her I had seen them, and what they were like, and she 
laughed when I told her of their songs, their flutes, their dances, their huge 
eyes and wide, winged ears, their appetite for rabbits (which have tails) and 
bunwits (which don't). I told her of their language, the sound of them crying 
"Peter, eater, ter ter ter," in the caverns of the firehills. The water oxen had 
found a convenient wallow at the side of the road where a canal spilled into a 
little slough, and they refused to plod another step. I shook Silkhands awake, 
and we burned charcoal in the clay stove I had bought to heat our food. 
Somewhere to the north of us a shuddering growl came out of the earth, and we 
felt the vibrations under us. "Groles," said Silkhands. "Have you ever seen 
them, Peter?"
I told her I had not, though I had heard the roar often as a child when I had 
lived in Mertyn's House.
"Sausage groles?" asked Jinian eagerly, and both Silkhands and I laughed.
"No. Rockeaters. From Three Knob. For sausage groles, one must go on up to 
Learner, where the Nutters live. Only rockeaters make that noise, and there will 
be no fustigars or pombis within sound of it, for it drives them away."
"Do they have tails?" This from Jinian, so sleepily that I knew she would not 
hear the answer. And she did not, making a little sighing noise which told me 
she was asleep. I covered her with a blanket and let her lie where she was. The 
ground was at least as soft as the wagon bed, and probably cleaner. I didn't 
know whether groles had tails or not. I thought not. I went to sleep making an 
inventory of all those birds and beasts with tails, thinking how odd it was that 
I had learned this from Jinian when none of my Gamesmasters seemed to have known 
or thought anything about it.
On the morning, we composed ourselves to ugliness once more and got back into 
the wagon. If the water oxen could be kept to a steady pace, we would arrive at 
the Three Knob turn off by midday. I hoped Chance had arrived there safely, and 
I wondered what guise we might travel in as we went farther north which would 
not betray us to the Boneraisers. I had no doubt they still searched for me, and 
I had not yet thought of any convenient way to go through the minions which had 
been sent against me to reach Huld, who had sent them. It would do no lasting 
good to Game against mercenaries. Huld could wear me to a nubbin sending bought 
men against me. So, thinking this and thinking that, we rolled along. Almost I 
missed seeing the skeleton train ahead, but Jinian thrust a sharp elbow into my 
ribs and began to sing. Silkhands picked up the song, and they two began nodding 
their heads in time to their hushed la, la, la as I dived deep and grasped Didir 
to cover me.
"Larby Lanooly went to sea," they sang. "Hoo di Hi and wamble di dee. Did not 
matter he would or no, did not matter the winds did blow, put him into the boat 
to row, Oho for Larby Lanooly." There were at least thirty verses to the song, 
and Silkhands knew them all. While I drove, letting Didir manage Peter while 
Globber held the reins, the skeleton train came toward us, back down the road 
from the north. Old Clobber was terrified, as he should have been. He clucked 
and cried and drove the wagon off the road, almost into a canal. He sat there 
and shivered in his socks while the bones danced past him, the two women next to 
him clinging together and singing under their breath, "Larby Lanooly went to 
farm, Hoo di Hi and wamble di darm. Did not matter he knew not how, put him 
behind an ox and plow, he'll do well or not enow, Oho for Larby Lanooly."
If Karl Pig-face had been wearing the strange cap before, he was not wearing it 
now. His face was red again, shiny with sweat, and he tugged angrily at a cord 
which bound him to the Bonedancer on one side of him. As they passed, Didir 
heard one of them say, "If you will not do as you are told, we can put the cap 
back on you, Rancelman."
"I've told you," blustered Karl. "When you had that stupid cap on me, I thought 
I felt him down the road here. But I couldn't tell you. You need no cap, nor no 
cord to bind me. Pay me, as you'd pay anyone, and I'll seek Peter Priss to the 
end of the lands and purlieus for you. No love between him and me, and I'm glad 
to do it."
"Earn our trust, Rancelman. Earn it if you can, and no more sneaking away in the 
night. Now, stop tugging at the binding and lead us to the place it was you say 
you felt him last." And they went on by us, not looking at us at all. It was 
many a long moment before Globber got himself together to drive the oxen back 
onto the road. Meantime we had taken Larby Lanooly from farm to shop to mine to 
devil-take-it.
"If they have anyone in that group who can track," I said at last when the 
Boneraisers were gone and we were plodding northward once more, "we may see them 
again. I doubt not that Chance left readable tracks when he came north from the 
copse."
"Three days' traffic on the road?" asked Jinian. "Would that not cover?"
I clenched my teeth, trying to remember. So far as I could recall, only the 
yellow horse had had distinctive shoes, nubby ones such as they use along the 
River Dourt, but the yellow horse should have been sold or traded or simply set 
loose long since. "Perhaps," I said. "Though I would feel better about it if 
there had been rain and a bit of wind."
"Well, that may happen soon enough," said Silkhands. "Watch the sky west of us 
where the black clouds gather and pour. I doubt not we'll have more rain than is 
comfortable before nightfall."
"Before nightfall, we'll be at Three Knob," I promised them. We kept that 
schedule with time to spare, for the sun stood short of noon when we came to the 
turnoff to the right which led away toward three bald stone hills grouped above 
the foundry smokes. Stone pillars marked the turn, and we drove between lines of 
long, low brooder houses where they hatched the groles. There were few of the 
creatures about during the day, most of them being down below ground, gnawing 
their way through the stone with their adamant teeth, chewing the rock into 
gravel and packing it into their endless gut. At night they would digest it, 
roaring the while, and on the morn the dung gatherers would wash the night's 
gravel for powder of iron and nuggets of occamy and silver, less only the light 
metals which the groles had nourished themselves upon. As we drove, we began to 
see large groles feeding on piles of broken stone and bone and charcoal. These 
were the toothlings, just growing their teeth of adamant, soon to be promoted to 
work in the mines. Handlers stood beside each, stroking the creatures with long 
iron-tipped staffs, crooning grole songs to them. I shuddered. Imagine a great 
gut, as wide as a man is tall, as long as five men laid end to end, with a dozen 
rows of teeth and no eyes, and that is a grole. Still, how would we have metal 
for our axles and weapons did we not have groles?
"Stop," said Jinian. "I want to pet one."
I pulled up the wagon, amazed, and she hobbled over to one of the beasts, 
staying in character the whole way, to feel its huge side. Nothing would do but 
that I come as well, and Silkhands, to feel the stony hide of the beast and 
wonder at its size. The handlers seemed well accustomed to such marveling from 
travelers, almost uninterested in us.
Then we got back into the wagon and Jinian surprised me further. "You are 
Shifter, are you not?" Well, of course I had told her I was. "I thought it wise 
for you to lay hands on the creature. That is how it works, does it not? You 
must lay hands on it? So I have heard?"
So she thought it wise, did she? She must have seen something of my irritation, 
for she flushed, then shrugged. "If I have misunderstood, forgive me." She had 
not misunderstood. That was how it worked, or at least one way it worked. But 
Shifting into something like that! The bulk, alone, would take hours to build. 
One could do it by starting small, eating rock and converting it to bulk, then 
more and more. I thought the process out, step by step, lost in it, and then 
blushed, embarrassed, to catch her eyes on me. She knew very well what I had 
been thinking.
"No need for forgiveness," I said. "It is an interesting thought." As it was. I 
did not ever intend to do anything about it, but it was interesting.
The mines and many small foundries were scattered along the gulches and upon the 
ridges around the three mountains, but Three Knob itself lay cupped among them 
like a child's toys spilled upon a dish. I chose not to ride into the town as we 
were. Instead we would engage in further deception. We found a twist in the road 
behind a long, crumbling wall, unharnessed the water oxen and drove them away 
down the slope of the meadow toward a distant line of trees which marked a 
stream. Then I took the hammer I had brought for the purpose and beat the wagon 
into several pieces, separating these from the wheels. When stacked along the 
wall, it looked like what it was. Wood fit for the fire. Perhaps a wheel or two 
worth salvage by some desperate wagoner. Our rags were buried beneath the wagon, 
and we cleaned the dirt from our faces and the tar from our teeth before walking 
into Three Knob as a middle-aged buyer of something or other and his two 
daughters. I hoped I would not have to look far for Chance.
As it was, I did not have to look far enough. The yellow horse I had told him to 
get rid of was cavorting in a paddock near an Inn, nubby shoes and all. Chance 
was toping wine, red of nose and bibulous, full of good cheer and unresponsive 
to my annoyance.
"Why, my boy, the Bonedancers are all long gone on ahead. He's a good horse. No 
need to trade him off just yet."
"They're behind us again, Chance. Behind us. They passed us on the road. Karl 
Pig-face, with his nasty little mind hunting me, and he did feel me back there 
when you and I lay up in the copse and watched him. Further, he knows you!"
I wasn't getting through to him at all until Silkhands reached out to take his 
hand with an intent expression. She was doing something intricate and intimate 
to his insides. I saw the flush leave his face and gradual awareness seep in to 
him. "Ah. Ah, well, lad. I'm sorry about that. Truly, I had not thought they 
would return. And they may not have one among them who can track."
"Rancelmen do," said Jinian. "They have a skill for it. We must think quickly 
what to do, for they could be on the start of our trail and back here by 
evening."
Silkhands nodded agreement to this sadly. Her face was quite drawn, and I felt a 
quick pity. The way had been hard on her. I could not help her, however, and 
Chance interrupted the thought.
"It was my doing, so fair it be my undoing. I'll take the animal with much 
hoorah and ride off on the back roads. Once far enough along, I'll get rid of 
the animal and continue so far as Reavebridge. You all lay by here until you're 
rested-Silkhands needs a night's sleep in a bed-then come on north to meet me. 
Have you barter enough for new mounts, lad?"
I told him truthfully that I did not. The last coin I had had been spent on the 
wagon and water oxen. So he dug down and gave me a pouch which seemed well 
filled. Part of his gain from Xammer, no doubt, and he did not deny it. He was 
generously quick to offer it, and I knew he felt guilty. At the moment, I was in 
no mood to forgive him, though no great harm had been done if he would ride 
swiftly away. We had all been talking quietly, so we separated ourselves from 
him as would any travelers who had made casual talk upon the road and busied 
ourselves finding lodging. Meantime Chance gathered his string of animals 
together, and got himself gone with much loud joshing and suchlike, to draw 
attention.
As for the rest of us, we found two rooms adjoining, upstairs above the stable 
yard, and set about having a bath in deep tin tubs before the fire. Afterwards, 
wrapped in great, rough towels, we sat in the window to sip warmed wine and 
watch for the Bonedancer, hoping he would not come. It was after dark that he 
came, he and his colleagues, but come he did. They did not leave. The bones lay 
in a drift against the stable wall. The residents of Three Knob cowered in their 
homes. The Boneraisers, including Karl Pig-face, sat in~ the common room below, 
eating and drinking with much cheer. We, Jinian, Silkhands and I, stayed in the 
rooms above, quiet and inconspicuous.
As for me, I was hung between two pillars. On the one side, I was as angry as I 
have ever been, angry at Karl Pig-face for sitting below in the common room, 
undoubtedly eating and drinking his fill without any need to hide or sly about. 
On the other hand, I remembered clinging to that tree while the Ghoul pranced 
beneath me, as close to death as I have ever come. I felt no desire for 
audacity, but I hungered for vengeance against Huld and all his minions. Across 
the room from me Jinian sat, staring at me, the fire dancing in her eyes. 
Silkhands slept. I do not know where I got the idea that Jinian knew what I was 
thinking. There was no Demon tickle in my head, and it wasn't that kind of mind 
reading anyhow. I simply thought that she knew. I was certain of it when she 
said, "They don't know me at all. If they ride out tonight, I could lend them a 
lantern to light them through the dark ... tunnels."
I was not at all sure I liked her knowing what I thought, but it would work 
better if she did help. "Tonight would certainly be best," I agreed.
"They must be encouraged to leave soon, then," she said. "Perhaps they would be 
so encouraged if they heard that the horse they are following is soon to be sold 
or traded? If they heard this from someone?"
"Someone being you?"
She smiled. "Oh, I don't fear the Bonedancer. I am not pretty enough to attract 
that kind of attention, either. I can try."
"They may Read you."
"I think not. I will do it simply. But not until you are ready."
I thought about that. "Midnight, then. Or earlier, if it looks like they are 
going off to sleep." Privately I thought it fairly risky, but better than doing 
nothing. I slipped out the back way, walked at the side of the road Chance had 
taken, able to see the prints of the nubby shoes even in the light of the 
lantern I had brought with me. The road wound and climbed back into the gullies 
above the town, dodging behind this bank and that hillock. I had not gone far 
before I found what I was looking for, a narrow defile where the roadway cut 
through a bank. I put out the lantern and got to work.
As I did so, I visualized what was undoubtedly going on back at the Inn. 
Silkhands would stay quietly asleep. As a former Gamesmistress of Vorbold's 
House-to say nothing of her being a Healer-she might be known to someone in the 
place. Jinian, on the other hand, would be only an anonymous girl, of Gamesman 
class by her dress. She would go into the common room to the place the Innkeeper 
sat in the corner adding up his accounts and keeping an eye on the man who 
poured the beer and wine. She would wait for a lull in the conversation, then 
say, "Innkeeper? The man who left this afternoon, the one who owned the pretty 
yellow horse with the nubby shoes? Do you know if he is coming back? He said he 
intended to sell or trade the horse at once, and I thought I might offer for 
it."
The Innkeeper would say something about the horse, or about Chance. They would 
talk of his having ridden north on the back road. Jinian would evince 
disappointment. "Well, the man will have traded the horse by the time I could 
catch up to him tomorrow. Ah, well. I will not worry on it further." And then 
she would take herself off upstairs.
Behind her in the common room, the Bonedancer would snarl at Karl Pig-face. 
Then, if all went as I thought it might, they would decide to ride out after the 
man and the horse with the nubby shoes to catch him before the trail was lost. 
If they hurried, they would say, they might catch him as he slept somewhere, and 
find they had captured Peter without further effort. I went over this scenario 
in my head several times, finding it both likely and satisfying. Some time went 
by. I began to doubt and fidget, never ceasing to chew away at the work I was 
doing. The moon rode at my back, curved as a blade. In the dim light I saw the 
shadows at the turn of the road, then heard the clatter, clatter of the bones as 
they rounded the corner. They had a lantern, for the Bonedancer led them in a 
puddle of yellow light, Karl trudging sullenly beside him with the others. Then 
Karl's head came up.
"I Read him," he whispered excitedly. "Petey Priss. I Read him. Not far off. 
Near us. Oh, what a fool to go sleeping by the road! He's close ahead of us."
"Well then, walk quiet, little Rancelman," a whispered reply from the 
Bonedancer. "At the end of this tunnel here we'll spread out and seek him. Then 
you'll be paid as promised and a good job done." I saw the gleam of moonlight in 
their eyes, then lost the light as they entered the tunnel, Gamesmen first, 
bones after.
Only then did I shut my mighty grole mouth and let the grole innards grind. In 
the two hours which had passed, I had managed to add enough bulk to grow a man 
and a half high and nine men long. I had made a believable tunnel. One without 
an end, unfortunately for those who entered.
I lay there in the darkness, a great, black bowel in the night, trying to decide 
whether I felt sadness over Karl Pig-face. I decided that he ,was more 
digestible to me dead than alive and hunting me. When I had finished the light 
metal in the bones (delicious to a grole-they taste with their stomachs, I 
learned) I pulled the net and gave up bulk, having first heaved myself out of 
the defile and onto a broader patch of ground. What was left was only a long, 
vaguely cylindrical pile of rock and some powdered ores. So much for one more of 
Huld's reaches in my direction. I was not fool enough to think it was the last 
or the strongest. Next time would not be this easy.
Next time, I thought, he may send a Game I cannot win.



6
The Grole Hills




SINCE JINIAN HAD ALREADY SPOKEN to the Innkeeper about buying horses, it was she 
who went to the beastmarket the following morning to get mounts for us once 
again. Silkhands assured me it was wisest in any event, for Jinian had been 
reared at the southern end of River Jourt, where horses are a religion and a way 
of life. The whole town was talking of the Bonedancer, visits from such Gamesmen 
being unusual in Three Knob, and it took her some time to accomplish her 
business. Meantime, Silkhands and I finished our breakfast, and I taxed her with 
being a mope and poor companion. Truly, she had been growing quieter and sadder 
with each step of our journey.
"Oh, Peter," she sighed. "This traveling about is worse than I remembered. I 
have grown used to luxury at Vorbold's House. The beds are soft, the rooms warm. 
There are good cooks in the kitchens there, and excellent wines in the cellars. 
It is a quiet, interesting life, and one need not fear being taken by Ghouls or 
pursued by monsters. I have grown soft and unwilling to bruise myself upon 
stones."
"Well," I said heartily, "you'll get used to being rough upon the road again. It 
will not take long."
There was no enthusiasm in her answering smile. She did not dispute me, but it 
was plain to see she had no heart for it. The look of her gave me a quick, half 
despairing sense of loss, and I kissed her. She returned the kiss, but it was 
more sisterly than our kisses had been in Xammer. I could hardly tax her with 
not being loverlike when she had never signified she intended to be, so I 
satisfied myself by swatting her behind. Not, I suppose, the best way to convey 
the depth of my feelings. Later I thought of that.
When Jinian returned with the horses, she went over them point by point with me, 
full of enthusiasm, with sparkling eyes and a quickened voice. She pointed out 
their rough coats, good, she said, for the season, and their common shoes. "They 
are sturdy, not fast," she said, "as we may travel back roads. What do you think 
of our going to Reavebridge by way of the Boneview River? I looked at the map 
last night while you were ... busy, and if we go overhill from Three Knob to the 
northeast, we will come into the river valley. Once there we can go west to 
parallel the Great Road some little way before we must cross it to come to 
Reavebridge."
Her face was smudged. I had a witless desire to wipe the smudge away. She seemed 
so eager that I thought, well, why not. It would be easier going on the North 
Road, but we might be bothered less if we went by back ways.
The women had lost everything they carried in their encounter with the Ghoul, so 
we had next to replace some garments and cloaks, though Silkhands said there was 
no selection at all in a place like Three Knob. Well, by judicious use of 
Chance's winnings, we refitted ourselves for travel. When Silkhands saw the 
horses, she gave a rueful rub to her backside, and I knew she was regretting the 
light carriage they had lost on the road. I put my arm around her. "Don't be 
despondent," I said. "There will be luxury enough when we come to Reavebridge. 
Chance will have won another fortune, and we will all live on his luck for a few 
days."
She laughed. "When Chance wins, it isn't luck. No, I am not that concerned at 
having to lie on the ground for a few nights, Peter. It is this wild, dreamy 
feeling I have. I woke last night and went to the window for air, only to dream 
that I saw a misty giant moving across the stars as though he strode at the edge 
of the world. And the wind song haunts me. And I cannot settle at anything."
Over her head I could see Jinian, watching us and listening intently. I smiled 
at them both, trying to be light and unconcerned. "Well, that is the way with 
prophecies. I was told in the Bright Demesne we would go north, and the wind 
song sings of the north, and in Dindindaroo a ghost spoke to me of the north. 
Wild and dreamy, indeed, and reason enough for sleepwalking."
"Three times," said Jinian, surprising me with this echo of Chance. "Three times 
is Gaming. Who Games against you?"
I shook my head. "The minstrel learned the song in Learner. Perhaps there we'll 
find the root of it." Jinian frowned at this, as though she might weep, and I 
could not think why she should be so unhappy at the thought of Learner. Later I 
asked Silkhands, and she replied.
"King Kelver is to meet us in Reavebridge. He will take Jinian north from there, 
so she will not be able to go to Learner with us. She is undoubtedly 
disappointed at being left out of the mystery and its solution-if there is one." 
She sounded very offhand about it, as though it did not matter what Jinian 
thought. I thought it did matter. If Jinian were disappointed, so was I.
We traveled back through the Grole Hills, leagues of twisty road over which 
little black tunnel mouths pursed rocky lips, with gravel everywhere. It was the 
waste product left by the groles after men washed out the heavy metals which the 
groles don't use. Hooves on the gravel made an endless, sliding crunch, a 
monotonous grinding sound. There were a few dirty trees in the valley bottoms, 
so many gray dusters along the scanty water courses. Occasionally a bird would 
dip from one tree to another with a tremulous, piping call. The air was still, 
with no smell to it. Men called to one another across the valleys, long echoing 
sounds fading into silence, and we rode along half asleep with the endless 
crunch and jog.
Then, all at once, a shadow moved across us from the south, a chilly shade which 
removed most of the sound and color from the world. The crunch of gravel was 
still there, but far away as though heard through multiple layers of gauze. The 
call of the birds became dreamlike. We rode in a world of distance, 
of-disattachment. Something moved past us, around us, toward the north, and we 
heard a shred of music and a voice speaking inside us saying, "Kinsman, help." 
As soon as we heard the words a whip of air struck, and the quiet was gone. Dust 
swirled up around us, and we coughed, for the air was suddenly cold and smelled 
of storm.
Jinian gasped, "That was a wild, ill wind," leaning over the neck of her horse 
and trying to get the dust from her throat.
All three of us had tears running down our faces, all of us were crying as 
though utterly bereft. The voice we had heard had had no emotion in it at all, 
and yet we had heard it expressing a horrible loneliness and despair. It took us 
an hour or more to stop the tears, and I cried longer than the women did, almost 
as though the voice had spoken to me in a way it had not spoken to them. I was 
not sure I liked that idea or Jinian's compassionate glances toward me. That 
young woman seemed to understand too much about me already.
It was not long after that the dusk came down, soft and purple. Bird piping gave 
way to the oh-ab, oh-ab of little froggy things in the ditches. I heard a 
flitchhawk cry from the top of the sky, a sound dizzy with the splendor of high 
gold where the sun still burned. He made slow, shining circles until the 
darkness rose about him, and then it was night and we could go no farther. We 
talked then of the music, the voice, the wind.
"We must be sensible," murmured Jinian. "Things do not occur without purpose, 
without order, without Gamesense."
"If it is a thing which has occurred," said Silkhands, "and not some mindless 
ghost."
"A mindless ghost who calls us kinsman?" Jinian doubted. "Kinsman to us all," I 
said, "or to only one? And which one?" "And asking our help," brooded Jinian. 
"How can we help?"
"We can do nothing except wait," I said. I did not even bother to seek the 
advice of Didir or the others-not even Windlow. I simply knew that whatever it 
was, it would return, and no amount of cogitating or struggling would make 
anything clearer. I knew.
So we ate the food which had been packed for us in Three Knob, and let our talk 
wander, and grew more and more depressed.
"All day I have thought of Dazzle," Silkhands said. "When the Ghoul came with 
his train, the death's heads reminded me of her. Reminded me she may still be 
alive, there beneath Bannerwell in the ancient corridors. But she is likely 
dead, young as she was. There are so few old ones of us, Peter. Windlow was old, 
but he is gone. Himaggery and Mertyn are not old. There are so few old. I was 
thinking I would like to be able to grow old...."
I tried to make her laugh. "We'll grow old together, sweetling. When you are so 
old you totter upon your cane, I shall chase you across the hearth until you 
trip and roll upon the rug." It was evidently not the right thing to say, for 
she began to weep, the same strong, endless flow of tears we had experienced 
earlier.
"Will any of us come to that time? Life in Vorbold's House is sweet! Need I lose 
it in some Ghoul's clutches, be arrow shot by some Armiger at Game? I think of 
all I knew when I was a child, and so few are left, so very few...."
After that, I could only hold her until she went to sleep, then roll myself in 
my blankets and do the same, conscious all the while of Jinian's silence in her 
own blankets across the fire. I knew she had heard each word. And in the morning 
she told us that she had.
"I did not mean to intrude," she said, flushing a little. "But I have keen 
hearing, and a keen understanding of what is going on. We are all feeling 
terribly sad, lonely, and lost. We began to feel so when the whatever-it-was 
happened yesterday. We must not make the mistake of thinking those emotions are 
our own."
She sounded very like Himaggery in that instant. I was amazed.
Silkhands shook herself like a river beast coming out of the water, a single 
hard shudder to shed a weight of wet. "You're right, Jinian. Always good for the 
instructress to be taught by her student. Well. It is wise and perceptive of 
you, no doubt, and good of you to tell us so firmly. I am beginning to melt from 
my own misery."
"You and Peter and I," said Jinian, pouring herself more cider and taking 
another crisp, oaty cake from the basket, "feel the same, but I know my only 
reason for sadness is that the two of you have planned to share something in 
which I was to have no part, that you would go on to an adventure without me. 
Well, so I have decided I will not let you go on without me. I have heard your 
story, read your book, felt your wind, heard your music. I know as much of all 
this as you do. So I will not be left behind."
"But King Kelver will be in Reavebridge," objected Silkhands.
"So," said Jinian. "Let him be in Reavebridge." And we could get nothing further 
from her, even though Silkhands tried to argue with her several times that 
morning.
All day we waited for something to happen, another silence, another voice. 
Nothing. We rode in warm sunlight, bought our noon meal from a farmwife-fresh 
greens, eggs, and sunwarm fruit just off the treesand came down to the banks of 
the Boneview River at sunfall. We were grubby and dusty, and the amber water 
sliding in endless skeins across the pebbles could not be resisted. We were in 
it in a moment, nothing on but our smalls, pouring the water over us and 
scrubbing away at the accumulated dust, when it happened again.
First the silence. River sounds fading. Bird song softening to nothing. Then the 
fragment of melody, tenuous, fading, at the very edge of hearing. Kinsman, help.
Just there the river ran east and west in a long arc before joining the 
northerly flow. We were near the bank, looking down the glittering aisle of 
sunset beneath the graying honey glow of the sky. Against that sky moved the 
shape of a man, moving as a cloud moves when blown by a steady wind, changing as 
a cloud changes. Time did not pass for us. We watched him against the amber, the 
rose, the purple gray, the vast swimming form filling the sky until stars shone 
through its lofty head, arms and legs moving in one tortuous stride after 
another, slow, slow, inexorably walking the obdurate earth toward the north. 
Fragments of mist shredded the creature's outline only to be regathered and 
reformed, again and yet again, held as by some unimaginable will, some remote, 
dreaming consciousness expressed as form and motion. The idea of this came to 
all of us at once so that we turned in the direction it moved, toward the north, 
to stare beyond the lands of the River Reave to the mighty scarps of the 
Waenbane.
"A god," whispered Silkhands.
I thought not. Or not exactly. Something, surely, beyond my comprehension, and 
yet at the same time something so familiar I felt I should recognize it, should 
know what it was-who it was. There was something tragic about it, pathetic for 
all its monstrous size. We were silent, in awe for the long time that darkness 
took to cover it. Then
"Are we going there?" demanded Jinian. "Where it is going? North?"
"Peter and I," began Silkhands wearily.
"All of us," said Jinian. "I won't be left out, Silkhands. I won't." "King 
Kelver. ..."
"Devils take King Kelver. I'll spend my whole life weaving an alliance for King 
Kelver, warming his bed, bearing his children, but not until I've done something 
for myself. I won't be left behind."
She brushed aside Silkhands' expostulations as though they had been cobweb 
concerns of no matter. I stifled laughter to see her, so sturdy and independent, 
so determined not to be left out. Oh, I understood well enough that feeling of 
being shut up in others' lives. "Let be, Silkhands," I said. "King Kelver will 
no doubt wait."
"He is to meet us in Reavebridge," Silkhands retorted, obviously annoyed. "He 
will not be pleased. Nor will your brother be pleased, Jinian. I have heard of 
the black rages of Armiger Mendost."
"Leave Mendost to me," Jinian said. "He knows how far he may push me and how far 
he may not. He has no other sisters, but I have other brothers who are fond of 
me and not overfond of Mendost. They know his black rages, too, and have reason 
to undo him if he proves unreasonable."
I thought, Aha, she is not so manipulable as I had assumed. And this led me to 
other thoughts and wonders about Jinian so that for a moment I forgot the giant, 
forgot the mysteries of our journey, only remembering it all when we had dressed 
ourselves and gathered at our fire. Then it was only to search the starry sky 
and wonder whether the misty form still walked north beneath its cover or 
whether it had come to rest in some far, high place-and in what form. Across the 
fire, Jinian sat crosslegged with the little book tipped to catch the light of 
the flames. She was so deep in it that I had to speak to her twice before she 
heard me.
"What are you finding there, student? You look like a newly named Thaumaturge, 
trying to figure your life pattern from perusing the Index."
She thought seriously upon this before answering me. "It is not unlike that, 
Peter. I am taking what you have told me, and what is in this book, and what I 
have seen and heard, and making an imagining from them."
"A hypothesis," I said. "That is what Windlow called it. A hypothesis; an 
imagining which might be true."
"Yes." She chuckled, a little bubble of amusement. "Though I had thought of it 
rather more like a stew. A bit of this and a bit of that, all simmering away in 
my head, boiling gently so that first one thing comes to the top then another, 
with the steam roiling and drifting and the smells catching at my nose." She 
wrinkled that nose at me, making me think of a pet bunwit. "A tasty stew, Peter. 
Oh, I am eager to go north and see what is there!"
"The song spoke of danger, Jinian. You have been at risk of life once on my 
account already."
"Well, but it was exciting in a sort of nasty way," she said. "And very 
surprising. I think I'm more ready for it now, knowing that wonderful things are 
toward. And, if danger comes, well, it is no little danger to bear children, 
either. And no one much concerns themselves about that."
Silkhands had retreated into an aggrieved silence which I did not interrupt. 
When we had lain down to sleep, I did ask, "Will those of Vorbold's House hold 
you accountable that Jinian chooses to make King Kelver wait upon her pleasure?"
She sighed, turned, and I saw the firelight gleaming in her wide eyes. "Not 
they, no, Peter. King Kelver himself may spend annoyance on me, but who am I to 
tell Jinian she must do this or that. The negotiations were complete; she 
agreed; now she says yes-but-wait-a-while. Who knows who will hold any of us 
accountable. Do not let it worry you." And she closed her eyes.
When we dropped off to sleep, we were three blanket bundles around the fire. 
When I woke in the morning, I sat there stupidly, unable to count fewer than 
four, startled into full wakefulness by a harsh cry from the riverside. There 
were two monstrous birds drinking from the ripples, spraddle-legged, long necks 
dipping. Birds. Yes. Two man heights tall from their horny huge feet to the 
towering topknot of plumes which crowned them, screaming greeting to the morning 
like some grotesque barnyard fowl, and the fourth blanket bundle across the fire 
had to be whoever-or whatever-brought them. I began a surreptitious untangling 
of arms and legs only to be greeted by a cheerful, "Ah, awake are you?" and a 
small round man tumbled out of the fourth roll of blankets to stand above me, 
yawning and stretching, as though he had been my dearest friend for years. I saw 
Jinian's eyes snap open to complete awareness, though Silkhands made only a 
drowsy umming sound and slept on.
He was good humored, that one, bearded a little, almost bald, dressed in a 
bizarre combination of clothing which led me in one moment to believe he had 
been valet to an Armiger, or that he was a merchant, or perhaps a madman escaped 
from keepers and let loose upon the countryside. His boots were one purple, one 
blue, his cloak striped red and yellow (part of an Afrit's dress) and he wore a 
complicated hat with a fantastic horn coming out the top, all in black and rust, 
Armiger colors. Aside from these anomalous accoutrements, he wore a bright green 
shirt and a pair of soft zellerskin trousers, an aberrant combination, but 
perhaps not insane.
"Allow me to make myself known to you," he said, stooping over me where I lay in 
the tangle, taking my hand in his to pump it energetically. "Vitior Queynt. 
Vitior Vulpas Queynt. I came upon the fading gleam of your fire late in the 
night and thought to myself, Aha, I thought, Queynt, but here is company for 
tomorrow's road and the day after that, perhaps. Besides, who can deny that 
journeys move with a speed which is directly proportional to the number 
traveling? Hmmm? Four move at least one third faster than three, isn't that so? 
And a hundred would move like the wind? Ah, hmmm. Ha-ha. Or so it seems, for 
with every additional traveler is more to distract one from the tedium of jog, 
jog, jogging along. Isn't that so? Ah, to be alone upon the road is a sadsome, 
lonesome thing, is it not? Well, I'll get breakfast started."
Still talking about something else, he turned away to pick up a pot and take it 
to the river for water, to return, to build up the fire and put the pot to boil, 
never stopping in all that time his talk to himself or the birds or the river 
running. I struggled out of my blankets at last and set myself to rights, 
deciding I did not need to shave myself after a quick stroke at my jaw. I joined 
our odd visitor at the fire.
"Those ... birds?" I asked. "Are they ... I mean, what kind are they?"
"Ah, the krylobos? Surely, surely, great incredible creatures, aren't they? One 
would not think they could be broken to harness, and, indeed, they have their 
tricks and ways about them, pretending they have broken a leg, or a wing-not 
that they use their wings for much save fruit picking and weaving nests-and 
lying there thrashing about or limping as though about to die, and then comes 
the predator with his hungry eyes full of dinner, and then old krylobos pops 
upright with plumes flying and swack, swack, two kicks and a dead pombi or 
whatever. I've seen them do gnarlibars that way, be the beast not too mature or 
fearsome bulky. Ah, well, the one on the left is Yittleby and the one on the 
right is Yattleby. I'll introduce you later so they know they cannot pull any 
tricks on any friend of old Queynt's. How do you like your egg?"
He had an egg, only one, between his square little hands, but that egg looked 
enough to feed us four and several fustigars beside.
"They-they laid that?" I asked, awed.
"Oh, not they, young sir, no indeed, not they. Why, Yattleby would be ashamed at 
the allegation, for he is a great lord of his roost and his nest and would not 
bear for an instant such an imputation. No, it is Yittleby who lays the eggs, 
and Queynt who eats them, from time to time, except when Yittleby goes all 
broodish and demands time to hatch a family, which is every other year or so and 
during that time old Queynt must simply do without his wagon, hmmm? Nothing else 
for it but do without. How do you like your egg?"
I suggested to him that I would be happy to eat egg in any form he cared to 
offer it, and then I went off into the bushes to think a bit. I sensed no danger 
in the man, no hostility, but Gamelords, what a surprise! I thought of calling 
on Didir, but rejected the idea. Was he Gamesman or not? Might he detect-and 
resent-such inquiry into his state of mind? Better leave it for now, I decided, 
and wandered back to the fire, stopping on the way to look at the wagon he had 
mentioned, peaceably parked beneath the trees and as odd a collection of 
derangement as the man himself. It had a peaked roof and wheels as tall as my 
shoulder, windows with boxes of herbs growing beneath them, and a cage hung at 
the back with something in it I had never seen before which addressed me gravely 
with "has it got some thrilp? some thrilp?" before turning head over tailless 
behind to hang by one foot. No tail, I thought. The krylobos had none, either. 
Nor, of course, did Queynt, which told me nothing at all.
Jinian was waking Silkhands, murmuring explanations in her ear as I rejoined 
them. The krylobos were picking nuts from the trees with their wing fingers, 
cracking them in the huge, metallic-looking beaks which seemed to have some kind 
of compound leverage at their hinge. Pop, a nut would go into the beak, then 
crunch, as the bird bit down, then crrrunch as it bit down again and the nutmeat 
fell into the beak or the waiting fingers. "Kerawh," said one of them 
conversationally to the other. "Kerawh, whit, herch, kerch."
"How do you tell them apart?" I asked Queynt, unable to see any difference 
between Yittleby and Yattleby at all.
"Ah, my boy, one of the great mysteries of life. How does one tell a male 
krylobos from a female krylobos? No one knows. Oh, but they manage to do it, the 
krylobos do. Never make a mistake. A female will tell another female across a 
wide valley and challenge just like that, but she'll let a male come into her 
very courtyard, as it were, without a threatening sound. And what's to see in 
difference between them? Nothing. That's the honest truth. Not a thing. Isn't it 
so?"
"But you know them apart. You said Yittleby was on the left?"
"Ah, my boy, when they drink or eat or talk with one another, Yittleby is always 
'pon the left, indeed yes. When they are hitched to the wagon, Yittleby is 
always 'pon the left. Yes, indeed. And when I find an egg, it is always 'pon the 
left, my boy, certainly, which is how I know it is Yittleby. But if they were 
not properly arranged, why then, my boy, I could not tell Yittleby from Yattleby 
or either from the other. And if there were more than two, why, my boy, I would 
be totally lost among them. Indeed I would."
Thereafter, I watched them, and it did seem that the same one of them was always 
to the left, the other to the right, though I could not be sure. Nor could I be 
sure that the two incredible creatures did not know exactly what I was thinking 
and were not laughing at me the entire time without opening their beaks.
We had the egg scrambled. Somehow we managed to eat it all, and it was very 
good, with a mild, nutty flavor. I began to gather our gear, wondering what 
would happen next, but Queynt soon clarified that. He summoned Silkhands to ride 
beside him on the wagon seat, holding up the harness so that Yittleby and 
Yattleby could thrust their long necks through it and pull the traces taut. They 
were hitched separately, one to each side of the wagon, the harness running 
across their prodigious chests. I thought it would be a strange, whipsawing way 
to travel, but when they strode off it was a matched stride, varying not a 
finger width between them as they went down the road chatting with one another 
in an endless whit, kerawh, whit, while Queynt lounged on the wagon seat talking 
to Silkhands who, for the first time since I had known her, could not get a word 
in edgeways. Smooth as ice they moved along, Jinian and I following, coming up 
beside when the road widened, falling well back when it was narrow and dusty. So 
we went, west along the Boneview River toward the Great North Road. When we saw 
it ahead of us, I suggested to Silkhands that we turn north, avoiding the Great 
Road and its possible dangers, but she and Queynt forestalled me.
"Why, my boy, this young lady is too weary to go ahorseback another step, not a 
step will I allow, no, not at all. She may go inside the wagon and the other 
young lady as well, if you think it necessary which I do not, for as I 
understand it, no one knows her at all, and as for you, you can Shift a bit not 
to seem so familiar to any who may be hunting you, and with Yittleby and 
Yattleby to carry us along, we will go leagues and leagues on the Great North 
Road in less time than you can imagine."
If Silkhands were minded to trust this strange one enough to confide in him, 
which angered me a good deal, then what could I say against it? I would not 
leave her and turn aside with Jinian, though the thought did go through my head 
all in an instant. No, if I Shifted a little, we could ride on the Great Road in 
some safety, I concluded. The wagon and the birds were so outrageously 
unfamiliar that no one looked at the riders along of it. None who passed failed 
to turn and stare at the great birds, and to each Queynt called out with a 
greeting or a jest, all full of words and empty of much sense. The hours went 
by. Queynt gave us fruit and bread from the wagon, come noon, and we rode on, 
the birds striding tirelessly, the tall wheels turning, and it was not yet 
evening when we began to see scattered nut plants and the spires of Reavebridge 
shining across the silver of River Reave which had been drawing ever closer to 
the road with the leagues we had traveled.
"We'll make for the Tragamor's Tooth," Queynt told us when we came up beside 
him. "A fine hostelry with excellent food and a stable which I am happy to say 
both Yittleby and Yattleby have found to their liking. We have never before been 
so far south as during this season. We must seem very strange to all these 
people, who, I must say, seem not far traveled by the looks of them. Why, I'll 
wager not one in a hundred has been north to the Windgate nor upon the heights 
of the Waeneye or upon the Waenbane Mountains. 'Windbone,' you know. That's the 
'Windbone' Mountains, so called because the wind has carved great skeletons of 
stone up there, ribs and fingers reaching into the sky as though the very 
mountain had lain down and lost its flesh upon those heights. Ah, one must go 
there by way of the Wind's Eye, Waeneye as they say in these parts, if one is to 
see krylobos which put these two to shame for smallness. There are krylobos 
there, mark me, which would make you shiver in your boots to see, half again as 
tall as these, and able to kick gnarlibars to death I have no doubt."
"Wind's Eye," said Jinian. "That's the prophesy you heard in the Bright Demesne. 
Wind's Eye."
She had remembered it before I had, but her words brought back the sound of 
Windlow's voice in my head. "You and Silkhands. A place, far to the north, 
called Wind's Eye." I dug out the memory of the other things he had said. "A 
giant? Perhaps. And a bridge. You must take me along ... and the Gamesmen of 
Barish. " A giant. Perhaps a giant of mist, of cloud, of sadness, a giant seen 
at dusk who begged for help of his kinsmen. I raised my eyes to the towering 
scarps which loomed to the west of Reavebridge. Sharpening my Shifter's eyes, I 
could see the curved spires and organic shapes which Queynt had spoken of, as 
though some great, unfamiliar beast had laid himself upon those heights to leave 
his bones.
And behind those bones the outline of a giant, misty and vast, striding, 
striding to the north. I heard Jinian catch her breath, heard the man, Queynt, 
fall silent only for an instant before his voice went on in its ceaseless flow. 
When I turned, it was to find his eyes upon me, insistent and eager, measuring 
me as though for a suit of clothes-or a coffinwhile he told us about the town of 
Reavebridge and all that lived therein in greater detail and to a greater length 
than anyone of us could possibly have cared to know.



7
Reaverbridge




BEFORE WE ARRIVED AT THE TRAGMOR'S TOOTH, Silkhands busied herself in Queynt's 
wagon, making herself beautiful. I noted that she did not suggest Jinian do 
likewise. I put it down to vanity. Silkhands was a little vain, only a little, 
and not in any sense which was improper or false. She simply liked to appear at 
her best, and who could argue with that. Jinian, on the other hand, seemed 
determined to make the King as little sorry for the delay as possible. Knowing 
that he awaited her at the Tragamor's Tooth, she had drawn her hair, which was 
plentiful and brown as ripe nuts, back into a single thick braid and had 
neglected to wipe the road dust from her face. Also, she was dressed for travel 
and looked as though she had slept in her clothes, which she had. She looked 
very good to me, very staunch and dependable, but she would have won no prize 
for style, that one.
So we arrived at the Inn with Silkhands looking a vision, Queynt appearing no 
less fanciful than he had done at dawn, and Jinian and me, the followers, dirty 
and sweaty and caring not who cared. Someone must have been watching for 
Jinian's arrival, for the King, a lean, elegant man, with a curly red beard and 
eyes that gleamed with intelligence and humor, appeared as we were having our 
things taken to the rooms we had hired. He came to the place Silkhands stood and 
called her by Jinian's name, offering his hand and smiling. When she disabused 
him of the mistaken identity and introduced him to Jinian, his face changed no 
one whit though his eyes did. I saw a flicker of disappointment there, and 
Jinian saw it as well. She made her courtesies in a well-schooled manner, 
however, and her voice was all anyone could have wished, soft and pleasant, 
without the whine of weariness or rancor at the mistaken recognition.
"I greet you, King Kelver," she said. "Many kind things have been said on your 
behalf, and though I do not merit your courtesies, I thank you for them."
He bowed, perhaps a little surprised at her calm and poise. She was not at all 
girlish, as I have remarked heretofore. I myself sometimes found it surprising.
"I greet you, Jinian. If you have received any courtesies on my behalf, then be 
assured they were given freely and in pursuance of continued friendship between 
your people and my own." It was delicately put, and I found myself liking the 
man. He was telling her that he had not presumed to buy her, that he had only 
tendered an offer of friendship and the final decision was still hers. Jinian 
smiled at him, and I saw his eyes lighten. She has a wonderful smile.
Queynt bustled in. "Ah, well then, ladies, young sir, so all friends are met, 
are they? Good, good. One does not like to stand upon ceremony at the end of a 
long ride when dust and the day conspire to rob one of whatever youth and 
spirits one may have hoarded long ago in the dawnwhen the skin cries for the 
waters of the bath and the throat yearns for the marvelous unguents of the 
vintner's art. Ah, sir, forgive these weary travelers for the moment, and I who 
have come with them this lengthy way, until we are refreshed and cleansed 
sufficient to be a credit to the honorable company which you so kindly bestow 
upon us...." And Queynt bowed us away from the King, who stood with mouth open 
to watch this aberration lead us to the stairs and whip us upward with the lash 
of his tongue. "Go now, Peter, to the room at the head of the stairs where a 
bath will soon be brought, and you, ladies, to the second room where a bath even 
now awaits, and these lack-a-daisy pawns swift as flitchhawks rise, rise with 
your burdens that my young friends be not inconvenienced at the lack of any 
essential garment or lotion or soothing medication which might be contained 
therein. Ah, when all is sweet again, and pure as the waters of the Waenbain 
which plunge in eternal silver from the heights, then let us return to this good 
King Kelver to partake with him of those viands his generosity and foresight 
cannot but have prepared."
This last faded into silence, and I risked a glance over the banister at that 
same King to find him with mouth still open but with a laughing look around the 
eyes. Well then, he was not offended.
I had scarce got into the room before hearing a quiet tap-tap at the door behind 
me which, when I opened it a crack, disclosed Chance in the get-up of a cook 
looking for all the world like a major servitor of some proud Demesne. He 
slipped into the room before I could greet him, stopped my mouth with his 
fingers, and hissed, "Who is this fellow with you? This clown? Where did you get 
him?"
I explained that I had not got him, that rather Queynt had got me; that, thus 
far, the man had done us no harm.
"Harm's known when harm's done," he said portentously, throwing himself into a 
chair and fanning himself with a towel. Indeed, he looked very hot and harried, 
and I guessed that the cook's garb was not a disguise. He affirmed this. "Seeing 
I caused such a hooraw there in Three Knob, I decided to be a little less 
obvious in future. So, come the outskirts of Reavebridge, I put the mounts in a 
stable and came into town like any pawn looking for work and well recommended."
"Well recommended?" I didn't mean to twit him, but it did come out that way.
"Well recommended," he announced in a firm voice. "I had foresight enough to 
have Himaggery and Mertyn write me letters of reference and leave the as-what 
blank so I could fill it in myself. You'll be pleased to know they recommend me 
highly as a chef, and chief chef I am in this place since their last one got 
himself riotous during a recent family observance and hasn't got himself on his 
feet yet. May not, from what I hear. Terrible stuff, this Reavebridge wine, when 
drunk with grole sausage, which is mostly how they drink it." He went on fanning 
himself, pausing only to open the window behind him and lean out to take a deep 
breath. "I was beginning to give up on you."
"We came the back way," I said.
"Thought you must've come by way of the moon."
"Along the Boneview River, Chance. It was there that Queynt joined us. He's 
strange, all right, but it seemed less harmful to come along with him rather 
than make a fuss."
"Silkhands looks tired," said Chance. "Who's the girl?"
"Jinian? A student of Silkhands'. Promised to King Kelver by her brother, 
Armiger Mendost. However, she's not eager to be given to the King. Wants to come 
along with Silkhands and me to find the answers to the mystery."
"Oh, ah," said Chance, patting himself all over before finding the crumpled 
paper he was looking for. "Speaking of mystery, here's a message came by Elator 
from Himaggery. Says the blues are coming in from all over and they've found 
Quench...."
"It's directed to me," I said mildly, seeing it was opened.
"Well," he said and shrugged, "you took a time getting here. Himaggery might 
have wanted an answer."
I unfolded the message, already ragged where Chance had ripped it, to read 
Himaggery's message. They thought they had found Quench-with the Immutables. 
"Gamelords," I snarled to myself. "That's why the fellow looked so familiar. It 
was Quench, Quench all the time."
"Who's that?"
"The fellow who came to meet us at the ruin, the one who went to get Riddle, the 
long-faced fellow. I'd never seen Quench without that square black hat the 
magicians wore and the long black robe and mittens. That's who that was: 
Quench."
"Well, that tells you what that hooraw was on the road. Must have been Quench 
trying to get you there without your knowing."
I didn't answer him. I was too angry with myself. I went back to the message. 
Riddle and Quench were being brought to the Bright Demesne together with some 
others of those who had escaped from the holocaust of the magicians. Riddle had 
decided he needed help of some kind, and so on and so on. Peter was to feel free 
to go on to the north if he liked. They sent their affectionate regards.
"Why," I grated at Chance, "why did Riddle do that to me? I would have helped 
him if he'd asked me. Why! I can't believe he's an evil man."
"Well, if you won't believe him evil, then think up a reason why he's not."
That was Chance. Think of a reason. Before I had a chance to think of anything, 
we heard someone outside the door and Chance eased himself out with vague words 
about breakfast as Queynt oozed himself in.
"Well, young sir, so quick to place orders among kitchen staff? Hardly an 
instant, and breakfast ordered already? Ah, but what it is to be young! Isn't 
that so? Enormous energy, enormous strength, eat like a fustigar and sleep like 
a bunwit when one is young. One might ask why not wait to order breakfast until 
supper has been consumed. One might ask that, but Vitior Vulpas Queynt will not. 
No! Queynt has learned that each man has his oddities, oh, my yes. Ha-ha. 
Oddities, which if not questioned can be safely overlooked, but if mentioned 
must be dealt with, considered, judged! Isn't that so? Now, your tub, young sir, 
and me off to mine in the instant. Below us, supper soon awaits our pleasure."
He beamed at me and was gone, giving way to three struggling servitors, one 
bearing a tub on his back like some kind of half metallic turtle, the other two 
laden with tall ewers of water, one hot, one cold. All was set down and poured 
into and arranged to my satisfaction (to my annoyance, rather) before they 
trooped out to be succeeded by others bearing towels. I had never been so 
overserved in my life. Whether King Kelver was responsible or Vitior Queynt, I 
desired most heartily that all of them would leave me alone for a time.
But when I was scarce out of the tub-which the same servitors had come to haul 
away with much gesticulation and pour with loud shouting down some drain or 
other-the door was again tap-tapped and Jinian opened it a crack to whisper 
whether I were dressed or not. I told her I was not, but she came in anyhow. I 
was decent enough in the towelmore decent than we had been together several 
times on the road.
"My, you are in a temper," she said, seating herself on the bed and arranging 
her flounces. "Silkhands made me dress up. She said otherwise would be an 
affront to the King."
"I am not in a temper," I growled. "I am perfectly all right."
She widened her eyes, played with her hair with one finger, fluttered and 
pouted. "Oh, ta-ta, Gamesman, but if you go on in this way, I will think I have 
offended you." She laughed, a high, affected little titter, then spoiled the 
effect by sneezing with laughter. I could not help it, but laughed with her.
"No," she went on. "You are in a temper. Do you know why?"
"Not really," I growled, "except that Queynt is too sudden an addition to our 
journey, and Silkhands seems too ready to trust him. She has told him too much, 
I think. He knew I was a Shifter, though I am not dressed so. He knew we were 
being hunted. How else did he know but Silkhands told him? She knows better!"
"Put not yourself in another's hands," agreed Jinian. "But she may not have 
done. You know, Peter, I don't think Silkhands wants to, go on with you to 
Waeneye."
I felt my face turn red. "Nonsense. Of course she does. She's a little tired 
just now, but Silkhands would not let me go on alone to solve this thing."
"I think you're wrong," she said, her voice breaking a little at sight of my 
face. "She would rather not go."
"I have known Silkhands for years," I said, stiffly, and even more angrily. "I 
don't think it's appropriate for you to attempt to tell me what my friends would 
or would rather not do as it concerns me. If Silkhands did not want to go to 
Waeneye, she would tell me. She has not told me. Has she told you?"
"No. Not in so many words."
"Not in any words," I asserted, slamming my hand down on the sill and hurting 
the thumb. This made me angrier still. "You are very young, Jinian. I'm afraid 
you do not understand the situation at all." The last person I had heard use 
these honeyed tones was Laggy Nap, trying to poison me.
She did not answer. When I turned at last, it was to see a tear hanging on the 
fringe of her eyelashes, but she still regarded me steadily, even though her 
voice shook a little. "No. Perhaps I don't." And she turned to leave the room. 
In the door, she turned. "However, Peter, it was not that I came to talk to you 
about. I came to say it is easy to stop listening to Queynt. He talks so very 
much, to so little purpose. One stops hearing him. However, it would be wise for 
us to listen to him carefully at all times." And she shut the door behind her, 
leaving me with my mouth open.
Oh, the ice and the wind and the seven devils, I said to myself. Now why did you 
do that?
You did that, I answered me, because Jinian is right. Silkhands does not want to 
go to Waeneye. Moreover, she does not want to journey like this at all. 
Moreover, her eyes when she looks at King Kelver are calm and considering, like 
the eyes of a cook choosing fresh vegetables for a banquet on which his 
reputation will rest. And the time when you and Silkhands might have been lovers 
is gone, Peter, and that is why you are angry.
That, at least, had the virtue of being true, whether I liked it or not, and I 
did not. Still, Windlow had seen me in the northlands with Silkhands. So what 
would she do now?
I could not make my face happy when I went down to the supper which King Kelver 
had arranged. I bowed to Jinian and apologized for my bad temper. Her lips 
smiled in response, but there was something distant and dignified in her eyes. 
So. We went in to dinner.
We had sausage grole, of course. Anyone within fifty leagues of Learner will eat 
sausage grole. I do not remember what else we ate. I do remember Chance being 
much in evidence, in and out of the room, directing this or that servitor; 
platters, in, soup bowls out, flagons in, dessert bowls out. There were candles 
on the table. I saw Silkhands' face, dazzled in the light, rosy, laughing eyes 
turned toward the King. I saw Jinian's as well, hearty, simple, regarding me 
from time to time under level brows. Then we were drinking wineghost from tiny, 
purple vessels which were only glass though they could have been carved from 
jewels the way they broke the light, and the King was speaking.
"We are all well met, new friends all, and I have a wish that this friendship be 
not cut short without good reason. Therefore, as you go toward Learner on this 
journey you have set yourself" (and I wondered what Silkhands had told him), "we 
of the Dragon's Fire Purlieu beg your consent to accompany you." He smiled 
directly at me. "You will not forbid me, young sir?"
I nodded my courteous permission, gnashing my teeth privately. If there had been 
any better kept secret, the whole world seemed to know of it now, and it would 
be difficult to do anything secretly with such a mob gathered about us. Not to 
be outdone in courtesies, Queynt was talking.
"Ah, how generous an offer, King Kelver. How generous an offer and how kind an 
intent! Why, I have not seen such courtesy since the time of Barish, when 
courtesy was an art and sign of true refinement. Things change throughout the 
centuries, isn't that so? But courtesy remains the same, today as in any century 
past."
I would not have heard him except for Jinian's warning. As it was, only Jinian 
and I did hear him. He had not seen such courtesy since the time of Barish, eh? 
And where had he been in all that time? Was he a dreamer? Madman? Mocker? Or a 
Gamesman with a deeper Game than we knew? His eager little eyes were upon me, 
and I let my face seem as slack and wine-flushed as the rest.
The next morn I hired Chance away from the Tragamor's Tooth with much noise and 
many objections on the part of the innkeeper. We left the town, having seen none 
of it, to move in slow procession onto the road to Learner, along the deep, 
silent flow of River Reave. It took the King out of his way, but not greatly. He 
could go on north of Learner and then cut across country to the Dragon's Fire 
Purlieu, did he choose. Queynt set the pace for us, slower than I would have 
liked, with Silkhands riding beside him once more and King Kelver on a prancing 
mount alongside. Two of his Dragons followed behind, mounted, saving their 
Gaming and displaying for some better time. Far to the rear to avoid the dust 
came Jinian and I, with Chance and the baggage beast bringing up the tail.
"The King seems willing to follow you to Waeneye," I said to Jinian.
"The King isn't following me," she replied in a steady voice. "Though he is an 
admirable Gamesman. I had been ready for anger or threats, but he made neither. 
He is too wise for that. If our agreement is kept-or rather, if his agreement 
with my brother, to which I assented, is kept-he wants no memory of anger to 
stain the bed between us."
Hearing her talk in this way put me in a temper again, though I was uncertain 
why. If it was Silkhands he was courting, why did Jinian's speaking of him thus 
upset me? It should rather have pleased me as though to say Kelver would not 
long be seeking Silkhands' company. Looking back on it, it seems that it should 
have pleased me, but the truth is it did not. I was flustered with myself, eager 
to fight with someone and ashamed for feeling so. So, we jogged and jogged until 
the silence grew tight and I sought to break it somehow.
"Have you made your stew yet?" She looked at me with incomprehension, forgetting 
what she had said on the road from Three Knob. "The stew you said you were 
making up, your hypothesis?"
"Oh," she said. "That. Why, yes, Peter."
We went on a way farther.
"Are you going to tell us what it is?" I asked, keeping my voice as pleasant as 
possible. She was very trying, I thought.
"If you like, though it is only to tell you what you already know."
"I? I know too little," I said, sure of it.
"Perhaps. But you know what you are going to find on the top of the Waenbane 
Mountains. You are going to find Barish's place, his Keep, his hideaway. You 
will go to find the bodies matching the blues you carry."
"Yes, I suppose so," I gloomed. That much seemed unavoidably clear. "So much we 
learned from a whirly ghost," said Chance. "Of that much we may be certain."
"Is there more?" I asked.
"Some more," she said. "I believe I know what plan it was that Barish had, what 
he intended should be the result of all this mystery and expense of time. We 
shall see if I am right."
"You think we'll find Barish then?"
She shook her head. "Everything indicates he was awakened last in the time of 
Riddle's grandfather. He left the northlands then, and he did not return. In 
which case, we will not find Barish himself. Only the eleven. Your Gamesmen."
"The eleven," I murmured. "Barish's eleven. And a machine to resurrect them." I 
clutched at the pouch in my pocket. Perhaps, I said to myself, the machine is 
broken. Perhaps it cannot be used. The other ones, those the magicians had, were 
broken. If it is there at all, it will be centuries old. Rust and corruption and 
rot might have spoiled it. The serpent coiled cold upon my heart, and I thought 
of Windlow.
"Logic says it should be there," she said. "If it was used to wake Barish at 
intervals, it will be there, where he was."
"And what then?" asked Chance, eager for more mystery.
"And then," she said, serene as the moon in the sky, "we will do whatever it was 
Barish would have done if he had returned."
That one struck me silent in wonder at her audacity in saying it, even more at 
her colossal arrogance in thinking it.
"Barish was a Wizard." I laughed at her, the laughter fading as she turned cold 
eyes upon me.
"Well, certainly, Peter," she said. "But then, so am I."



8
Hell's Maw




ONE OF THE EARLIEST THINGS they had taught me at Mertyn's House in Schooltown 
was that one does not meddle with Wizards. Himaggery was the only one of the 
breed I had known, and I couldn't say that I knew or understood him well. 
Strange are the Talents of Wizards, so we are told, and I could not have told 
you what they were. Had anyone other than Jinian made claim to Wizardry, I would 
have laughed to myself, saying "Wizard indeed!" I did not laugh. Jinian did not 
joke about things. If she said she was a Wizard, then I believed her. 
Surprisingly, all I could feel was a deep, burning anger at Silkhands that she 
had not told me and had let me play the fool.
Oh, yes, I had done that right enough. I had said to Jinian that she was very 
young, that she did not understand. One does not say to a Wizard that the Wizard 
does not understand. I must have muttered Silkhands' name, for Jinian 
interrupted my anger with a peremptory, "Silkhands did not know, Peter. Does not 
know. I would prefer she not. You keep my secret, I will keep yours."
"I have none left," I muttered. "Silkhands has given them all away."
"I think not," she said. "Queynt knows what Queynt knows, but not because 
Silkhands has told him." Then she smiled me an enigmatic smile and we jogged our 
way on to Learner.
So, in the time it took me to consider all this, to feel alternately angry and 
guilty and intrigued, let me stop this following of myself about in favor of 
telling you what was happening elsewhere. I did not know it at the time, of 
course, but I learned of it later. What I did not hear of directly, I have 
imagined. So, leave Silkhands on the wagon seat beside strange Queynt; leave 
King Kelver and his men trotting along beside, full of courtesies and graceful 
talk; leave Jinian there upon the road, calm as ice; leave Chance-Oh, how often 
I have left Chance; leave Yittleby and Yattleby in their unvarying stride, their 
murmured krerking. Leave me, and lift up, up into the air as though you were an 
Armiger to lie upon the wind and fly toward those powers which assembled against 
us and which we knew nothing of.
Go up, up the sheer wall of the Waenbane Mountains, high against that looming 
and precipitous cliff to the place where they say the wind has carved monstrous, 
organic forms which they call the Winds' Bones. Do not look north to Bleer. We 
will travel there soon enough and stay longer than we would wish. Instead, cross 
the mountain scarp and the high desert to come to that gorge the Graywater has 
cut between two highlands. There is Kiquo and the high bridge, narrow as a knife 
edge, and the steely glint of the river, then high cliffs once more and another 
highland north of Betand.
Find the wide roadway there which leads into the northlands, see the strange 
monuments built along it, the greeny arches which hang above it. In spring, it 
is said, they glow with an undomainish light and have been known to drive 
travelers mad. Follow this road as it approaches the gorges of the River Haws 
and along the edge of that gorge to the town of Pfarb Durim. Hanging there high 
above Pfarb Durim, turn your head back toward the east and notice how all the 
lands between this city and the Wastes of Bleer lie flat and without barrier. A 
man might walk from one place to the other in two or three days, an Armiger fly 
it in much less time. Yet it is true that Peter did not think, nor Jinian, nor 
any in that company of the place called Pfarb Durim along the River Haws.
Look down now at that city. Come down to Pfarb Durim. The walls are high and 
thick and heavily manned. What do they defend against? What are these mighty 
gates closed against? Why do the balefires burn upon the parapets of Pfarb 
Durim? The city seems of an unlikely antiquity. Where else are these strange, 
keyhole-shaped doors found? Where else these triangular windows which stare at 
the world like so many jack-o-faces cut into ripe thrilps? Well. Leave it. Go 
aside from the walls and walk down the road which cuts the edge of the gorge, 
down to an outthrust stone where one may see what lies below-the place called 
"Poffle" because the people of Pfarb Durim are afraid to say its name. The place 
which is Hell's Maw, held now by a certain Gamelord, Huld the Demon.
Let us be invisible, silent, insubstantial as a ghost, to slide down that road 
to find the truth of what is there.
We will go down a twisting track, graven into the cliffside, sliced into that 
stony face by the feet of a myriad travelers over a thousand yearsmore, perhaps. 
Perhaps the city, the trail, Hell's Maw were there before the Gamesmen came. The 
trail winds down, deepening as it goes, until it is enclosed by stony walls on 
either side, shutting off any but a narrow slice of sky. Walk down this 
darkening gash until the rock edges above close to a silver's width of light; 
find that dark pocket of stone which nudges the path with a swath of shadow; 
step in to find yourself at the upper end of a cloaca which bores its echoing 
way into the bowels of Hell's Maw.
It is dark, and the dark clamors, but as silent feet edge forward, sensible 
sound intrudes upon the cacophony of echo, and voices converse there in the 
terrible dark, voices of skeletons fastened to the walls with iron bands and the 
voice of their warder in hideous conversation.
"Take this torch, old bones. Pass it along there, pass it along. Some one of the 
high-and-mighties will be along that path soon, and they'll want light whether 
we need it or not." The warder may have been a Divulger. He is dressed as one, 
but flabby jowls droop beneath the black mask, flesh wobbles loose on the naked 
arms protruding from the leather vest. His eyes are blanked almost white with 
blindness, and he feels the end of the torch to know if it is alight. Behind him 
in the dark another Gamesman lies stretched upon a filthy cot, dressed black and 
dirty gray, a Bonedancer, empty face staring at the stone ceiling as acrid 
numbing smoke pours from his nostrils. "Hey, Dancer," the warder calls. "Kick up 
the bones there. They're slow as winter!"
The voice, when it comes, is full of sighs and pauses, long unconscious and 
unwitting moments. "Slow. Always slow. Well, why not? Bones should lie down, 
Tolp. Lie down. Slow and slow in the summer sun. Summer sun. I remember summer 
sun."
"I remember summer sun," cries a skeleton from the wall, waving the torch wildly 
before its empty eyes. "Summer sun. Winter cold. I remember pastures. I remember 
trees."
"Shush," says the warder, mildly. "Shush, now. Remembering is no good. It only 
makes you careless with the torches, Bones. Don't remember. Just pass the fire 
along there, pass it along to the end so the highand-mighties can see their 
way."
"Who?" asks an incurious voice from the dark. "Who is it using the way to Hell's 
Maw, Toip? They came yesterday, I thought. The legless one and the skull-faced 
one and the cold one...."
"Came and went and will come again," replies Tolp, lighting yet another torch. 
"Legless one is a poor Trader, Laggy Nap. They put boots on him, he said, and 
sent him into the world. When the mountains blew up, so did the boots, and now 
he has no legs...."
"No legs, no pegs; no arms, no harms...." the bones sing from the dark wall. "No 
ribs, no jibs. .."
"Shush. Cold King came yesterday, too. Old Prionde. Not liking what he sees here 
much. Well, he's not far from bonedom hisself.".
"And the Demon, Demon Master, Huld the Horrible?" The Bonedancer laughs, a sound 
full of choking as the miasma pulses in and out of his cankered lungs.
"Went out, will come in again. Always. Since he was a child. For a while he was 
in Bannerwell with his pet prince, pretty Mandor, but Mandor's dead so Huld is 
here now, almost always. Hell's Maw has been Huld's place for a long, long 
time...."
The Bonedancer sighs, coughs, sits up to spit blood onto the slimed floor. 
"Huld's been here forty years. Old Ghoul Blourbast brought him here first when 
Huld was a child, before he was even named Demon. You remember him then, Tolp. 
Used to help you in the dungeons." The Bonedancer laughs again, a hacking laugh 
with no joy in it. "Liked the hot irons, he did, specially on women."
"Oh, aye. I remember now. Forgot that was Demon Huld as a child. Mixed him up 
with Mandor. Well, Huld's only been here really since Blourbast died in the year 
of the plague in Pfarb Durim. He sent all the way to Morninghill for Healers, I 
remember. Caught some, too. I got them before he was dead."
"Healer, healer, heal these bones," sing the skulls from the wall. "Call the 
Healer, broken bones, token lones, spoken moans... A clattering echo speeds down 
the line of them into the mysterious, endless dark.
"Hush," says Tolp. "Hush now."
"Wish I had one now," says the Bonedancer. "Any Healer at all." "There's some up 
there with flesh power," says Tolp. "One came through here not more'n two days 
ago."
"Flesh power! That's how I've come to this pass, letting those with flesh power 
lay hands on me. They may be able to Heal when they're young, Tolp, but when 
they've laid bloody hands on a few, they forget how to Heal. All they can do is 
make it worse. No. I mean a real Healer."
"Been long," answers Tolp, "since a real Healer set foot in Hell's Maw. Those I 
Divulged for Blourbast was the last."
"Those you killed, Tolp. Say what's true. You tortured them and you killed them 
because Blourbast wanted vengeance on them. They wouldn't Heal him. You killed 
them, and no Healer will lay hands on you ever because of it. Nor on me. Nor on 
any who's come here of their own will."
"We could go away," says Tolp. "Travel down to Morninghill ourselfs. They 
wouldn't know us there."
"They'd know." The Bonedancer lies down with a gasp, takes up the mouthpiece 
once more to suck numbing smoke and release it into the dank air. "Don't know 
how they'd know, but they'd know. Soon as they touched you, they'd know. Left a 
print in your bones, somewhere. Any time you hurt a Healer, they leave a sign on 
you. Even if they can't get at you right then, they lay sign on you. I always 
heard that."
"Lay sign," sing the bones. "Pray shrine, weigh mine...."
"Hush," says Tolp. "They're coming. I hear them at the end of the tunnel."
And the light comes nearer as skeleton fingers pass the torch from fleshless 
hand to fleshless hand keeping pace with those approaching. First legless Laggy 
Nap on the shoulders of a bearer, a loose mouthed pawn wearing one of the 
jeweled caps of obedience; then cadaverous Prionde, tall crown scratching the 
rock above him, deep set eyes scowling over bony cheeks as he draws his robes 
fastidiously about' him; then Huld in trailing velvets which his followers must 
leap and jitter to avoid. Followers-a Prince or two from the northern realms; a 
monstrous Ghoul from the lands around Mip; three or four Mirrormen in the guise 
of other persons; lastly a scarred Medium who drags a limp body behind. Tolp and 
the Bonedancer crouch in the redolent dark, drawing no attention. Huld does not 
look at them when he passes, merely calls into the swampy air, "Let this body be 
hung with the others." To which the hideous Medium grunts a response as he lets 
his burden fall. Then they go on down the tunnel, the torches following them 
from bone to bone until they pass from sight and hearing.
"Now it'll stink again," says the Bonedancer. "Stink for days. If he wants bones 
on the wall, why can't I take them from one of the bone pits? Why put bodies on 
the wall while they stink?"
"This one isn't even a body, yet," says Tolp. "Still alive." He turns the lax 
form over with one foot to peer blindly down into a child's unconscious face. 
"Isn't even grown. What'd he bring us this for?"
"So you can hang him on the wall and listen to him scream and then cry, then 
whimper, then sigh, then beg, then die," says the Bonedancer in a husky chant. 
"Then rot, then smell, for he's come to Hell...." "Why? I just asked why?"
"Because he's Huld," replied the Dancer. "Because this is Hell's Maw." Silent 
under the pulsing smoke, he reflects for a time and then speaks again. "I think 
it would be good for you to take the one who isn't dead yet out of here. Up to 
Pfarb Durim, maybe. Leave it on their doorstep."
"You out of your head, Dancer? Huld'd roast me."
"Huld's got lots on his mind. Might not even think of it again." "Might not! 
Might not! And might, just as well. You stick to keeping your bones moving, 
Dancer. Leave the hanging up to me. Might not!
Devils take it."
The Bonedancer shakes with another long spell, half cough, half laugh. "Oh, old 
Tolp, you'll be hung on that wall yourself, don't you know? You and me. Besides, 
I'm not keeping the bones moving. Haven't had the strength for that for a long 
time now. . . ." His words are choked off by Tolp's horny hands upon his throat.
"If you aren't, then who is, Dancer? Who is? Tell me that? Whose power?"
The Bonedancer's head moves restlessly from side to side between the choking 
hands. When Tolp draws away, growling, the Bonedancer only mumbles. 
"Ghostpieces, maybe. Who knows whose power?"
"Abuse power," cry the bones. "Blues devour. Choose hour."
Down the black gut of stone the bones cry, gradually subsiding into restless, 
voiceless motion, finger bones endlessly scratching at the wall, heels 
clattering on the stones, a ceaseless picking at the iron bands and chains which 
hold them. One day a skeleton finger will find the keyhole of the lock which 
binds them, will fiddle with it until the simple pins click and the lock falls 
open. Until that time, they remain chained to this stone. Pass it by. Go on 
beyond the last, small skeletons to the oozing stairs. So much I, Peter, have 
imagined from what I later saw and what Tolp was still able to say. What follows 
we have been told is true.
At the top of the stairs an anteroom opened to an audience hall, shadow-walled, 
its ancient stones dimming upward into groined darkness. Many powerful Gamesmen 
feasted at the lower tables. Huld and Prionde were seated upon a dais, Huld 
listening to Prionde with a semblance of courtesy, though his impatience could 
be judged from the hard tap-tap of a finger upon the arm of the massive chair.
"What meat is this?" asked the King.
"The animals are called shadowpeople."
"You eat them?"
Huld gestured at the raised hearth, the fire, the spits, around which were 
littered the woolly feet and wide ears discarded by the feasters. "Why should I 
not? There is no flesh forbidden to me, Prionde. Nothing is forbidden to me. Is 
it forbidden to you?"
"It seems near to human," said the King doubtfully. "Very near to human, in 
appearance at least."
"Why should that matter? When I hunger, I eat. Meat is meat, human or otherwise. 
It is all fuel to my fire, Prionde. I think it can be fuel to yours as well."
The King stirred the delicate finger bones on his plate with a finger of his 
own. Indeed the ones on the plate did look very kin to the finger which stirred 
them. "Why do you roost here?" he asked at last. "Why in this place, Huld?"
"Because it chills you," the Demon sneered. "You, and any who come here, and any 
who hear of it. It is the age old place of terror. It was terrible when I was a 
child and Blourbast brought me here. Mandor found it terrible, and fascinating, 
as I had in my time. It is the place of ultimate pain and horror, ultimate evil. 
From what better place may we strike terror into the minds of all? Our task will 
be easier when the world knows we move upon them from Hell's Maw. This is the 
place of atrocity, and power!"
"And yet your Ghoul did not return."
Huld shrugged, rubbed his greasy hands upon his velvets in complete 
indifference. "He was not expected to return. The Phantasm who flew in the trees 
and observed what happened, though, he did return," and Huld made a gesture of 
command to one of the Gamesmen sprawled in half drunken abandon in the hall 
below, a summons which the Phantasm was quick to obey. He knelt at Huld's feet, 
head bowed, the lantern light flashing from the faceted mask he wore.
"Tell the King what you have reported to me."
The Phantasm began: "I waited as I had been ordered to do, in the forest near 
where the Ghoul made his foray against the women on the road. When the Ghoul 
brought them into the forest cover, I followed, staying ahead of him and hidden 
in the boughs. He had not come far before someone came through the trees behind 
him. I heard the person cry Game and Move upon him, a risk call. I could not 
stay hidden and see clearly, but I heard the Ghoul cry out in triumph, as though 
the pursuer had played Gamefool.
"Then there was a cry from the pursuer, as though to some other Gamesman, words 
I could not hear clearly. Then a fire came up, all at once, as though a Sentinel 
had been present. I came closer to see, but the smoke and fire drove me away. I 
heard someone blunder away through the trees, and it was not the Ghoul. I did 
not let myself be seen, but came away as instructed to do." The Phantasm 
remained bowed down, awaiting the King's pleasure. Huld gestured him away.
"The point is," said Huld, "that the pursuer, Peter, arrived too quickly to have 
Flown. We must assume he Ported. Also, the fire came about because of him."
"What is he? I thought he was Necromancer named?"
"He was named Necromancer inaccurately. It misled me for a time. I believe him 
to be a twinned Talent. We have seen their like in the past. Minery Mindcaster, 
for example, was a strong twinned Talent, Pursuivant and Afrit. In my youth I 
knew of another, Thaumaturge Mirtisap who was, I know, both Thaumaturge and 
Prophet, though he denied it. Some say they start as twins in the womb, but the 
stronger swallows the weaker and is born with both Talents. Perhaps Peter is 
twinned Afrit and Archangel. When I encountered him in the caverns, I thought he 
was merely Afrit, but Afrits do not have a skill with Fire."
The King sneered beneath his beard, narrow lips curling in a mockery of humor. 
"You have forgotten that he seemed to have Beguiled Mandor's people at 
Bannerwell. I never learned that an Archangel has a skill with Beguilement."
Huld waved an impatient hand. "Churchman, then. Churchmen have both Fire and 
Beguilement. I do not intend to search the Index to find what combination of 
Gamesmen he is, or what obscure name is given to such a combination. He may be 
called Shadowmaster for all I care. Enough to know that now we know it, he will 
not escape me again. No, he will lead us as the arrow flies to that place we 
want to go, to obtain that which we want to obtain...."
"Which you believe is . . . "
"Barish, King Prionde. Barish of the ancient times. Barish with his knowledge of 
the old machines, the old weapons, before which the knowledge of the magicians 
is as nothing. Barish who lies there in the northlands somewhere. Where we have 
not been able to find him, but where Peter can lead us."
"And how do you know all this, Demon? Whose head have you rummaged it out of?"
Huld chortled, a nastiness of tongue and mouth as though eating something foully 
delicious. "No person's head, King. I have put it together out of books, old 
books, books which lay unread in the tunnels of the magicians. Out of books, 
legends, and common talk. Out of things Nitch told me before he died, his 
intellect o'erleaping his pain to find things to tell me. I had an advantage 
Nitch had not. I saw the machine. I saw how the tiny Gamesmen are made! I saw 
the bodies stored away in caverns like so many blocks of ice. Well, they will 
not come to life again. The machine which could have brought them to life once 
more is dead and broken and blown to atoms."
"Assuming you are correct, then how will Barish be brought to life again? If the 
machine is gone, buried under the mountains?"
"I think the machine beneath the mountains was not the only one. There will be 
another, alike or similar, where Barish lies."
"And what is it makes you think Peter will guide you there? What is he that he 
should do this thing? What interest has he? His aim, what Game?"
"Only that he was mind-led by the old Seer of yours, King. Windlow the Seer was 
searching for the same thing I have been searching for, I'm convinced of it. 
He'd found something. He knew something, or had a Vision of something. Why else 
does Peter go north now, into the lands of mysteries?" He laughed, a victorious 
crow. "Why else does he go north, now, in company with my man? Mine!"
"Nothing more than that? It is all so indefinite and misty, Demon. I would 
hesitate to commit my men on such a Game had I nothing more than what you have 
told me. Perhaps it is not Barish who lies hidden in the north. Perhaps it is 
the Council."
Huld mocked. "There is no Council save ours, King Prionde. When I had worked my 
way into the confidence of old Manacle, the fool, and his lick-heels, I asked 
how long it had been since they had heard directly from this Council. Not for 
seasons, he told me. The machine which brought the words of the Council no 
longer spoke. And so I told them I brought messages from the Council, and they 
believed me. So judge for yourself."
"You think if the Council still existed, it would not have let its communication 
be interrupted. Nor would your representations have gone so unquestioned."
"Exactly. Whoever, or whatever, the Council was, its last member has gone, or 
died, or found something else to play with. No, we are the Council, Prionde. I 
regret only that we have no more magicians to do our work for us. I found only 
those few tens of techs, scattered among the valleys." Huld gestured at a far 
wall where a few forms huddled in sleep. "I would like to find the one who led 
them, Quench. He knew things others did not. I would not have been surprised to 
learn that he knew of Barish, that his many times great forefather had passed 
some such knowledge along to him. Well, we may find him in time....
"And meantime we build terror, Prionde, and utter despair. And when Peter has 
led us where we want to go, we will descend upon him in horrible power. I do not 
think he will withstand us. Even a twinned Talent is not immortal."
And so they went on feasting and drinking, while the people of Pfarm Durim kept 
watch upon their walls lest more innocents be swept up and chained in the 
endless tunnels of Hell's Maw where Tolp, even then, fastened the iron bands 
around the kidnapped child. In the blackness, the Bonedancer coughed his life 
away and lay quiet. When he had not moved for several days, Tolp fastened his 
body beside that of the child.



9
Nuts, Groles, and Mirrormen




THERE HAD BEEN SOME DISCUSSION during the ride between Reavebridge and Learner 
as to the route we might take to reach the top of the Waenbane plateau which 
hung above us in the west. Certainly, it would not be up the eastern face, a 
wall as sheer as that of a jug, almost glassy in places. My map showed the long 
notch coming into that tableland from the north, the way they called Winds' 
Gate, leading up into Winds' Eye, Waeneye. Queynt said he had been there, but I 
was not that trustful of Queynt.
When darkness came up and we had set camp only a league or so outside Learner, I 
decided I would ride on into the town and make some general inquiries. It had 
the advantage of getting me away from Jinian as well. Something in our 
relationship now made me rather uncomfortable. As I left, I saw King Kelver 
riding away with a stranger, the King looking very angry and disturbed. I 
thought to call out, offering assistance, then told myself he had able 
assistance from his own Dragons if he wished help. I often have these good ideas 
which are as often ignored. So it was in this case, and I let him go. The 
results were unpleasant, but then, that's yestersight, which is perfect.
My way led down quiet lanes through the nut orchards. We were well into Nutland 
by then, so called because of the orchards which pimpled the flats along the 
river. The ground nuts bulge out of the ground like little hillocks, at first 
gray-green and shiny, a ring of flat, hairy leaves frilling their bottoms. As 
they grow wider and higher, the shells turn brown and dull and the leaves 
squeeze out into multiple ruffles. Some nuts are round, some elongated. When 
they have ripened, the orchard master drills a hole near the ground into the 
shell and feeds up to a dozen sausage groles into the hole. This is done at 
dusk. When they emerge at dawn, as they always do for some obscure reason of 
their own, their heads are lopped off and a lacing run through the skin of the 
neck. This is grole sausage, to be smoked or dried or otherwise treated to 
preserve it. Sausage groles are rather small as groles go, thick through as my 
thigh and a manheight long or more. Their teeth are formidable, however, for all 
the small size, and grole growers have terrible tales to tell about being caught 
inside a nut with unmuzzled groles. At the side of the road were piles of sawn 
nutshells, stacked like so many great bowls. I asked a nut sawyer what use would 
be made of his odd shaped pile.
"Why, Gamesman, these go down river to Devil's Fork, then up river again to the 
very top of the East Fork of Reave, then over the hill to the upper reaches of 
the Longwater and from there down to the Glistening Sea. We grow the best 
boatnuts here grown anywhere. It's a special strain my own granddad worked on to 
get it so long and narrow."
"I knew they made houses of them," I said. "I had not seen boats before."
"Oh, for housenuts you go over the West Fork to the orchards in the north of 
Nutland. People around there won't live in anything else. Warm and dry and 
smooth to look at, that's a good housenut. I saw one over there big enough to 
put three stories high in, five manheights it was, ground to top. There's vatnut 
groves along the river there, and one fellow had a tiny strain he calls hatnuts. 
Novelty item is what it is. Merchants buy them. But then, they'll buy anything 
to sell up north. Well, good evening to you, Gamesman."
And with that he shouldered his nutsaw and walked away into the dark. I smiled 
at the notion of a hatnut and then stopped smiling as I thought how light it 
would be in comparison with a metal helm. Nutshells were said to be tough as 
iron.
I went first to the Minchery, the school for musicians and poets, run by a 
sensible group of merchants on the same lines as a School House is run, except 
that the students are pawns, not Gamesmen. Except for that, it was much the same 
in appearance. The young are very much the young, no matter where they are. 
Which was not quite true. Mertyn's House had never been so melodious as this 
place sounded.
I had thought out my story well in advance. A certain song, I said, had won a 
prize at a Festival in the south. The prize was to be given to the songwriter. I 
hummed a bit of it, sang a few words, and was taken into a garden to be 
introduced to a frail, wispy girl whose eyes were misty with dreams and songs. I 
put the gold into her hand and told her the same tale, glad I had thought of it 
for it brought her great happiness.
"Did it come to you all at once?" I asked, careful not to seem too interested. 
"Or did you compose it over a long time?"
"Oh, truth to tell, Gamesman," she piped, "I dreamed it. The tune was in my head 
when I woke one morning, and the words, too, though they took some working at to 
fit into the music. It is almost as though I dreamed them in another language."
Well, there was nothing more to be got there, so I thanked her, complimented her 
skill, and went away to find some place where merchants and traders gathered. It 
was not difficult. Learner lies upon the main road between all the fabled lands 
of the north and south. I came soon enough to a pleasant-smelling place, went 
inside and sat me down beside a leather skinned man with smile marks around his 
eyes. He was not averse to conversation, and by luck he had been up the Wind's 
Gate.
"Curiosity is what I did it for, Gamesman. Nothing up there to buy or sell, far 
as I knew, nothing to trade for, no people, no orchards, no mines. Curiosity, 
though, that's a powerful mover."
I told him I thought that was probably so.
"Well, so, I'd traveled along this road between Morninghill and the jungle 
cities for thirty years, boy and man. Saw these cliffs every time I came this 
way. Saw those old bone shapes up there. So, one time there wasn't any hurry 
about the trip south, and when we came to the notch there, the one they call the 
Wind's Gate, I said, well, fellows, we'll just turn in here and go up this notch 
to see what's there."
He seemed to expect some congratulations for having made this decision, and I 
obliged him with another glass and a hearty spate of admiration for his 
presumption.
"Well, Gamesman, there's a kind of road in there. No real trouble for the wagons 
save a few stones needing moving where they'd rolled down off that mountain. 
Little ones, mostly. We moved and we rolled and moved and rolled, and the ground 
began to go up. Now I'll tell you, Gamesman, there at the end of that notch the 
ground goes up like a ramp. Like it had been a built road. You'd think it would 
all be scree and fallen stuff, loose and slidy, but it isn't. It's hard and sure 
underfoot, just as though somebody put it there and melted it down solid.
"We didn't want to wear out the teams. We left them at the bottom and went on to 
the top, me and some of the boys. Right up where those bone shapes are, and 
aren't they something? I'll tell you: Unbelievable until you see them close and 
then more unbelievable yet. Wind carved, so they say, and that's hard to 
countenance. Well, we looked around. There's nothing there. Waste. Thorn bush 
and devil's spear. Flat rock and the Wind's Bones. That's it. Then, not far off, 
we heard that krerking noise the krylobos make, and a roar like rock falling, 
and one of my old boys says, `Gnarlibar,' just like that, `Gnarlibar.' Well, we 
hadn't seen one, but we'd heard about 'em, and we weren't about to stay up there 
and wait for a foursome to show up, so we turned ourselves around and .came back 
down quick as you please."
"What have you heard about gnarlibars?" I asked. Perhaps I might find out, at 
last, what the beasts looked like.
"Big," he said. "And bad. Low, wide beasts they are. They come upon you four at 
a time, from four directions. Always hunt in fours, no such thing as a single 
gnarlibar. Contradiction in terms, so I've heard. Well, who knows. Somebody told 
me they're born in fours, twin ones to each female of a four, so every four is 
always related. It may be storytelling for all I know. We didn't stay to see." 
And he laughed over the limits to his vaunted curiosity.
I thanked him sincerely and left. There was no traffic at all on the road when I 
returned, guiding myself by our campfires which gleamed lonely against the dark 
bulk of the mountain. I found the place quiet, Silkhands busily talking to 
Queynt. I asked her where Jinian was, and she told me Jinian had ridden out a 
little time past in company with someone who had brought her a message from her 
brother Mendost. I went on to the separate_ fire where Chance squatted over his 
cookery, readying a bowl for me.
"Well, lad, did you find our way to satisfaction? Did some keen eyed merchant 
tell you the truth about our journey?"
This led to chaffing him at some length about gnarlibars and his former desire 
to have me Shift into such a beast. "They come in fours," I said. "You would 
have been riding an anomaly had 1 Shifted into a mere single beast, Chance. Your 
widow would have despised you for lack of knowledge."
"Ah, well, Peter, since you say it's a wide, low beast, it's as well you didn't. 
There's plenty of tall, dignified beasts what don't require all that company."
I chewed and gulped and gazed across the fire to the one where Silkhands sat. 
There, riding into that light was King Kelver, returning from his errand, face 
bleary and ill-looking as though he had been stricken with some disease or had 
been drinking since he left us. Chance saw it, too.
"Ah, now he doesn't look like he's feeling crisp, does he?"
"He doesn't," I agreed. "I wonder what the problem is?" And then, noting her 
absence, "I wonder why Jinian hasn't returned?"
Chance struck his forehead a resounding blow and fished around in his clothing 
to bring out a sealed message. "Fuss me purple if I didn't forget it in all this 
talk of gnarlibars. She left you this message and said give it to you soon as 
you returned."
"Chance! I've been sitting here over an hour!"
"Well, you got so stiffy about my opening the last message for yourself that I 
didn't open this one. What I don't know the contents of, I can't be 
overconcerned with, can l?" He was getting very righteous, and I knew he was 
angry at himself.
As well he might. The message read, Peter, if I have not returned, it is because 
I cannot. This is a fool's errand, but I must find out. Say nothing to Kelver. 
Find me quickly, or likely I am dead.
For a moment it did not enter my mind as making sense, then I screamed at 
Chance, "Which way did she go? Tell me at once! Which?"
"Which way? Why, lad, I wasn't watching! Somebody came and said they were from 
Armiger Mendost, and she should come along to the person carrying the message. 
Though that doesn't make sense."
It did not make sense. If her brother Mendost had sent a message, it would have 
been delivered to her in the camp. No need to ride elsewhere. "That was all a 
trap, a snare," I hissed at him. "Somewhere this minute she may be dying. Did 
anyone else see her?"
"They paid no more attention than I did, Peter. They were talking among 
themselves, Silkhands, Queynt, the Dragons."
"Not the King?"
"No. He'd gone away with some messenger before."
I was frenzied, not questioning the frenzy, not questioning why my heart had 
speeded or my mouth gone dry. I was lost in a panic of fear for Jinian, not 
thinking that a Wizard should be able to take care of herself.
It was very dark. No one could follow a trail in this dark, and yet she had 
said, "Find me quickly." To find her at all was beyond me. "How?" I demanded of 
him. "I must find her."
"A fustigar," suggested Chance. "Trail her?"
I had never tried to follow scent, was not sure I could. In any case, the 
fustigar hunts mostly by sight. I shook my head, frantically thinking. Could I 
use one of the Gamesmen of Barish?
"Not Didir," I mumbled aloud. "No one here knows where she is. She misled them 
herself, purposely. Not Tamor. Who. .." Even as I spoke, I fumbled among them. 
Oh, there was Talent enough to move the world, if one knew what one wanted to 
do, but I didn't know where, or how, or when....
"If I had only seen which way she went," mourned Chance. "If I'd only seen ..."
If he had seen. If I could See. I did not much believe in Seeing. It seemed 
unreliable at best, so much flummery at worst. I had never called upon Sorah, 
but what choice had I else? I could not find her with my fingers, so dumped the 
pouch onto the firelit ground, hastily scrabbling the contents back into it 
before Chance saw the blue piece among the black and white. Sorah was there, at 
the very bottom, the tiny hooded figure with the moth wings delicately graven 
upon her mask. For the first time, I wondered how it was that the machine had 
made blues dressed as Gamesmen when, to my certain knowledge, the bodies they 
were made from often wore no clothing at all? The question was fleeting. I gave 
it no time. Instead, I took Sorah into my hand and shut my eyes to demand her 
presence.
At first I felt nothing. Then there was a sort of rising coolness as though calm 
flowed up my arm and into my head and then out of it-outward. I seemed to hear a 
voice, like a mother soothing a fractious child or a huntsman a wounded 
fustigar. I could feel her stance, arms straight at her sides, shoulders and 
head thrown back, blind eyes staring into some other place or time, searching.
"What is she like?" the voice asked. "Think for me. What is she? Who is she?"
Likenesses skipped. Jinian in the river pouring water over her head, face rosy 
with sunset and laughter. Jinian speaking to me seriously on the wagon seat, 
telling me things I had not thought of before. Jinian angry and chill, turning 
in my doorway to instruct me. Jinian bent over a book; Jinian beside me laying 
hands on the great grole; Jinian ...
Within me, Sorah turned and bent and reached outward once more. Evocation ran in 
my veins. A net of questions flung outward toward the stars. Jeweled droplets 
ran upon this net, collected at the knots to fall as rain. An imperative upon 
the place. "World. Show me this!" Jinian a composite, a puzzle, breaking light 
like a gem.
And I saw. Jinian, held tight between two men. Dusk. Hard to see. They were 
beside a ground nut, taking out the plug, thrusting her within. I could hear 
groles inside, grinding.
Where? High to the west one bright star hung in an arch of Wind's Bones, fainter 
stars to left and right, above a close, high line of cliff. Around me only 
scattered hillocks of nuts, stones, wasteland ...
The vision was gone. Sorah was gone. I dragged Chance off with me to the horses, 
and we two mounted to ride away. No one called after us to know where we went. 
It was as well. I do not think I could have answered. I could barely get the 
words out to instruct Chance what to look for as I sharpened my own Shifter's 
eyes to scan the rimrock silhouetted against the stars. "North," I hissed. 
"Closer to the cliffs than here." We galloped into the dark like madmen, our 
horses stumbling and shying at things they could not see.
I almost missed the arch of bone shapes upon the height. They were smaller than 
they had seemed in Vision, a slightly different shape seen from the side. Also, 
the stars had fallen lower against the rimrock but were still unmistakable. One 
bright, two fainter neighbors. We slowed to pick our way farther north. The nut 
orchards around us had given way to drier land, the plants themselves were 
sparse, scattered, oddly misshapen. When I saw the right one, my eyes almost 
slid over it before noticing the plug. Only that one had a plug cut.
We thundered toward it, dismounted at the run, and hammered at the side of the 
plug until I thought myself of pombi claws and Shifted some for the job. Then 
the plug fell to the ground, and I leaned into the dank, nut-smelling dark to 
call, "Jinian! Jinian!"
There was an answering cry, faint as a breath and hoarse. We began to climb in, 
but I heard the gnawing of the groles. They cared not what they ate. They loved 
the taste of bone. I thrust Chance to one side, muttering fiercely at him. "Stay 
out of here. Do not come in! But, keep calling. I need to hear her to lead me to 
her." Then I had crawled into the place, all tunneled through with grole holes 
like the inside of a great cheese, and Shifted.
Do you care to know what it is to be a sausage grole? It is an insatiable hunger 
coupled to an unending supply of food. It is a happy gnawing which has the same 
satisfaction as scratching a not unpleasant itch. I began as a rather 
generalized grolething. Within moments, I encountered a real nut grole, and my 
long, pulsating body slid over and around that of my fellow in a sensuous, 
delightful embrace, half dance, half play. After that, I was more sausage grole 
than before. I heard a shouting noise somewhere, another one somewhere else. 
Neither mattered. Nothing mattered except the food, the dance.
I suppose it was some remnant of Peter which brought me out of this contented 
state, some artifice or other he had learned to use in Schlaizy Noithn, perhaps, 
or the touch of the Gamesmen from within. At any rate, after a little time of 
this glorious existence, the grole-I-was began to make purposeful munching 
toward the screaming inside the nut. Groles have no eyes. I remedied this lack. 
There was no light. I remedied this as well, creating a kind of phosphorescence 
on my skin. I saw her at last, high on an isolated pillar of nutmeat, crouched 
beneath the curve of the shell, three groles gnawing away at her support. In 
light, she might have been able to avoid them. In the dark? I doubted it.
So there was Jinian atop the pillar; there was Peter in shining splendor below. 
What did one do now? She solved the problem by half falling, half scrambling 
over the intervening bodies and onto my back where I grew a couple of handholds 
and a bit of shielding for her. It was no trouble, and I was pleased to think of 
it. We got out in a writhing, tumbling kind of way, over and under, and I was 
still not quite full of nutmeat when we slithered out of the shell and I gave up 
all that bulk to become Peter once more. It lay behind me, steaming in the night 
air, and I wondered what the grole growers might make of it when they returned 
at dawn.
Only then did I realize she was crying. I put my arms around her and let her 
shake against my nakedness, gradually growing quiet as I grew clothes. I did not 
release her, merely stood there in a kind of unconscious, not un-grolelike 
content, stroking her hair and murmuring sounds such as people make to small 
animals and babies.
"I was frightened," she said. "It was dark, and I was afraid you would not come. 
I was afraid you would not come in time."
I gave Chance a look which should have fried him into his boots, and he had the 
grace to mumble that it had been his fault. I told her I had used Sorah.
"I knew you would do something," she said. "I knew you would find me because you 
are clever, Peter, though you often do not seem to know it. But so much time 
went by, and I became terribly afraid." After which we murmured nonsense things 
at one another and did not move very much until Chance harumphed at us.
"All well and nice, lad, lass. I'm sure it's gratifying in all its parts, but we 
don't know who put you there, do we? Or why? What's next? Will they be coming 
back to find out whether you're sausage or what?"
She stepped away from me to leave a cold place where warm content had been. "It 
would be better if they think I'm dead, Chance. We must find some place to hide 
me. Queynt's wagon, I think. The ones who took me must think they succeeded, at 
least until we find out what's going on!" And she directed us to replace the 
plug as it was when we found it, turning the pombi-scarred place to the bottom.
She told us what had happened as we rode back. "I saw King Kelver leaving the 
camp. I thought there was something odd about it, about the way he looked, or 
the men with him-something. Well, perhaps foolishly, I decided to follow him. 
After all, it is Kelver I am promised to-if, indeed, he still cares about that 
promise, which I have doubts over. I followed for a time, then lost them. I 
searched, quartering about, and was probably seen doing it. I gave up and 
returned to camp.
"Then in an hour or so, came a fellow saying he came from Armiger Mendost with 
words I should hear about King Kelver. I knew that was a lie. Mendost sends 
messengers, but never yet sent any except Heralds or Ambassadors or others in 
full panoply. Mendost is too proud to do else.
"But I thought even lies lead to the truth, somewhere, if one knows them for 
what they are, and a lie announces a Game as well as many a truth. So I left 
word with Chance and went with the fellow. He had another hid nearby, and the 
two of them bagged me and would have fed me to the groles surely had you not 
found me in time. As it is, I never saw what Gamesmen they were."
"And all that merely because you followed King Kelver?" I asked, thinking it did 
not seem like much.
"For no other reason," she said. "Something is toward there, Peter, and whoever 
Games wants no one to know of it. So I must hide and you must find out what goes 
on."
She thought to hide in Queynt's wagon. I didn't trust the man. We argued. She 
won. She thought she could hide even from Silkhands, though Silkhands rode upon 
the wagon seat all day. Well. What could I do. We hid her away in some brush 
near the camp, and I returned with Chance. At first light I sought out Queynt 
and took him aside as quietly as the man would allow me to do so.
"Consult with me, young sir? Ah, but I am flattered that such a proud young 
Gamesman-for surely pride goes with honor and ability, isn't that so?-would have 
use for such an old and traveled body as myself. Advise, I often do. Consult, 
indeed, I often do. Though when advice and consulting are done, who takes any 
serious regard for the one or puts any faith in the other-why, it would surprise 
you to learn how seldom words are given even the weight of a fluff-seed. Still, 
I am flattered to be asked, and would lie did I pretend a false and oleaginous 
humility ..."
"Queynt," I said in a firm voice. "Hush this nonsense and listen." His jaw 
dropped, but I saw a humorous glitter in his eyes. It went away when I told him 
someone had tried to kill Jinian, that we wanted to find out who, that she 
needed to hide in his wagon. "No one must know," I said. "Not even Silkhands. 
And, Queynt, it is Jinian's thought to trust you. I don't. So, if no one knows 
but you, and anyone finds out or harms her, I will consider my suspicions 
justified."
He coughed. I thought he did it to hide laughter which was inappropriate for 
there was no matter of laughter between us. "I will guarantee to hold her beyond 
all possibility of discovery, young sir. The word of Vitior Vulpas Queynt is as 
highly valued as are the jewels of Bantipoora of miraculous legend. Say no more. 
Wait only a bit and then bring her to the camp. I will have sent all eyes to 
seek another sight that she may come unobserved."
"Queynt," I replied, "I will do so, but I tell you that you talk too much."
"But on what topics, Gamesman? Ask yourself that? On what subjects do I talk not 
at all?" He smiled at me and went away. In a little time
Kelver and Silkhands and the Dragons rode away toward Learner. Queynt opened the 
wagon door at the back of the vehicle, and we brought Jinian to be lifted in. It 
was a well-fitted place, almost a small house, with arrangements for food and 
sanitation. "A technish toilet," said Queynt. "Something I obtained from the 
magicians long ago, when I used to trade with them." He greeted my incredulous 
stare with equanimity. Jinian took his words at face value.
"Thank you, Queynt," she said. "I will treat your property with respect. If I 
may lie up within for a few days, we can perhaps discover who means us ill." She 
gave him her hand, and he bowed over it, eyes fixed sardonically on me. I left 
them, hoping she would have sense to shut the door in time. I need not have 
worried. When Silkhands and the others rode back from their expedition to the 
orchards, the wagon was shut tight. Silkhands, however, was in a fury. She came 
to visit me and Chance.
"That little fool Jinian. The King tells me she has left us! Without a word to 
me! Mendost may Game against me, or against the House in Xammer because of this. 
She did not even tell me goodbye."
Chance blinked at me like an owl and went on stirring as I feigned surprise. 
"King Kelver told you this? When was that?"
"This morning. Queynt suggested we might like to see the grole sausage made, so 
we rode over to the orchards. We had gone no distance at all when the King told 
me she had gone. Gone! It seems she told him she did not like the bargain she 
had assented to and intended to return to her brother's Demesne."
"The King must be mightily disappointed," I said carefully. "He looks very ill 
over it."
"I know." She dabbed at her eyes where tears leaked out. "He does look ill. I 
reached out to help him, Heal him, and he struck my hand away as though I had 
been a beggar. He is very angry."
"Ah, the King did not want you to help him." I cast another long look at Chance 
who returned it with a slow, meaningful wink. "I will tell the King we share his 
distress," I said, rising and walking off to the other fire.
Once there, I bowed to the King where he sat over his breakfast, the bowl 
largely untouched before him. I murmured condolences in a courteous manner, all 
the time looking him over carefully beneath my lashes. Oh, he did indeed look 
very unwell. The crisp curl of his beard was gone, the hard, masculine edges of 
his countenance were blurred, the lip did not curl, the sparkling eyes were dim. 
The man who sat there might have been Kelver's elder and dissolute brother.
I returned to our fire, comforted Silkhands as best I could, and waited until 
she rejoined Queynt upon the wagon seat before saying to Chance, "It isn't 
Kelver."
"Shifter?" he asked.
"No, I think not. Few Shifters can take the form of other Gamesmen. Mavin can, 
of course. I can. Most of Mavin's kindred probably can. It isn't easy, but those 
of us who can do it at all can do it better than it has been done here."
"Perhaps someone less Talented than Mavin's kindred, but more Talented than most 
Shifters?"
"I think not," I said. "Instinct tells me not. Is there not some other answer?"
Chance nodded, chewing on his cheeks as he did when greatly troubled. "Oh, yes, 
lad, there's another way it could be done right enough. I like it less than 
Shifters, though, I'll tell you that."
"Well? Don't make me beg for answers like some child, Chance. What is it?"
"Mirrormen," he said. "Never was a Mirrorman did anything for honorable reason, 
either. When you find Mirrormen, you find nastiness afoot, evil doings, covert 
Game, rule breaking. That's always the way with Mirrormen."
I cast frantically back to my Schooldays for what I could remember about 
Mirrormen. It was little enough. Something ...
"They will need to keep Kelver close by, and unharmed," I said. "They will need 
to take his reflection every day or so, so they cannot harm him or keep him at 
any great distance."
"Oh, that's true enough, so far as it goes," said Chance. "If by `harmed' you 
mean maimed or ruined permanent. They'll have done something to him, though, to 
prevent his using Beguilement on them. He's a King, after all. He can be pretty 
discomforted, let me tell you, and still give a good reflection."
"There must be two Mirrormen," I said, remembering more from my Schooldays.
"Two," he said. "That's right. One takes the reflection, which is back wards, 
like seeing your own face in a mirror. Then the second takes the reflection of 
the first, which makes it come out right. That's what makes it a bit blurry, 
too. They can't usually get it very crisp. Well, wherever Kelver is, he isn't 
far from here."
So we made it up between us to find King Kelver as soon as dark came once more. 
Meantime, since we had been up through the whole long night, we slept in the 
saddle throughout the whole long day, nodding in and out of wakefulness as the 
day wore on. Learner vanished behind us, the road went on north, and at last we 
came to the fork where we could look back to the southwest to see the huge notch 
in the highlands and feel the warm wind rushing out of it into our faces. 
"Wind's Gate," said Chance.
"Wind's Gate," called Queynt from the wagon seat. "A great and marvelous sight, 
gentlemen, Healer, where the highlands slope into the lowlands and the wind 
travels that same road. Oh, many a traveler's tale could be told of the Wind's 
Gate, many a marvelous story woven. See how Yittleby and Yattleby stride lorth, 
eager to see their kindred upon the heights. Oh, you will be amazed, sirs, 
Healer, at the wonders which await you there."
There was no real reason for King Kelver to accompany us, now that Jinian was 
gone. Some spirit of devilment in me called him to account for his presence.
"It was courteous of you, King, to accompany us thus far in our journey. We 
understand that it was courtesy offered to young Jinian, promised to you as she 
was, and that you might feel reluctant to withdraw that courtesy now that she is 
gone. However, may I express all our thanks and willingness that you feel no 
obligation to continue. Indeed, sir, you have done enough and more than one 
might expect." There, I thought. That's out-Queynting Queynt himself, and find 
an answer to that, Mirrorman.
He hemmed and hawed, reminding me of the way Riddle had fumed and fussed when I 
had called him to account similarly. "Not at all, Gamesman," he finally managed 
to say. "I am led by curiosity now. Having come so far, I will not go home again 
without having seen the heights." And he smiled a sick, false smile at me which 
I returned as falsely. Devil take him.
When we started into the notch, Chance told me to watch to the rear with my 
Shifter's eyes. "They have to bring the real King along near," he said. "They 
couldn't try to bring him anyway but by this road-there is no way save this road 
unless they fly. So you look back there for dust. That'll tell us how far they 
are behind."
We had gone on for several hours before I saw it, far behind, just then turning 
at the fork. I could not have seen it had the land not sloped down behind us so 
that we looked upon the road already traveled. Even then, no eyes but a 
Shifter's would have seen it. I did not make any great matter out of peering and 
spying. It was well enough to know that the true King was probably behind us 
several hours upon the road, which distance would likely be decreased under 
cover of dark.
So when evening came we built our separate fire once more, and Chance and I made 
much noise about weariness, how we had not slept the night before out of worry 
over Jinian and how we must now go early into our blankets. I made up a 
convincing bundle and slipped away into the dark. Behind me Chance conversed 
with my blankets. Once away from the light I Shifted into fustigar shape and ate 
the leagues with my feet, carrying with me only one thing I thought I might 
need.
I found them without any trouble at all. There were two of them and a closed 
wagon, not unlike that which Queynt drove. One of the men was an Elator, a cloak 
thrown over his close leathers against the night's chill. The other was 
Mirrorman, right enough, got up in King's robes and a feathered hat like 
Kelver's.
The wagon was shut tight. I had no doubt Kelver was in it. I would learn all I 
needed by waiting for the other Mirrorman, the false Kelver, to return to his 
allies. I lay behind a rock and watched the two as they ate and drank, belched 
and scratched themselves. Finally the false Kelver arrived, riding in out of the 
darkness, and they unlocked the wagon. I saw where the key was kept, crept close 
behind them to peer through the crack of the door. The true King was bound and 
gagged, lying upon a cot. When they took the gag from his mouth, he swayed, 
obviously drugged. He could not bestir himself to anger, mumbling only.
"You are dishonorable, Gamesmen. Your Game is dishonored. Who Games against me?"
One of the Mirrormen struck him sharply upon the legs with a stick he carried. 
"Silence, King. Our master cares not for your honor or dishonor, for rules and 
forbiddings. You may keep your life, perhaps, if you cause us no trouble. Or you 
may lose your life, certainly, in Hell's Maw."
I had heard Hell's Maw mentioned a time or two, by Mertyn, by Mavin, both with 
deep distaste and horror. I knelt close to the door crack, not to miss a word.
"Hell's Maw," the King mumbled. "What has Hell's Maw to do with me?"
"Hell's Maw has to do with the world," said the Elator. "Our Master, Huld, moves 
from the mastery of Hell's Maw to the mastery of the world. You are in the 
world. Therefore, you are in his Game. Now be silent."
The first Mirrorman took up his position before the true King, stared at him 
long and long. I saw his flesh ripple and change. When he turned, his was the 
King's face, but reversed and strange. Now the second Mirrorman, the false King, 
stared at the first in his turn, the flesh shifting slightly along the jaw, 
around the eyes. What had been a blurred, sick looking image became slightly 
better, not unlike King Kelver. Still, while all who knew the King would have 
accepted this face, they would have thought the King very ill, for it was not 
the face of health and character which friends who knew the King knew well. They 
gagged Kelver once more and left him there. I saw where they put the key.
They talked, then, of Hell's Maw. I learned much I would rather not have-known, 
of Laggy Nap and Prionde, of many powerful Princes from the north. I heard of 
the bone pits and the cellars, the dungeons and bottomless holes. These three 
talked of all this with weary relish, as though they had been promised some 
great reward when the ultimate day arrived. Finally the Elator flicked away, was 
gone a short time, then returned. There were a few further instructions for the 
false King. He was to signal the Elator if Peter left the others, signal if 
anything was discovered. The Mirrorman mounted and rode away toward the camp he 
had left some hours before. Only then did I move after him to take him unaware 
in the darkness. When a Mirrorman meets a pombi there is no contest between 
them. The pombi always wins.
I returned then to the Mirrormen's camp, the false King trailing behind me, 
obedient to the little cap I had brought with me. I had said to him, "You are 
King Kelver, the true King Kelver. You will hear no other voice but mine. You 
will lie quiet in the wagon, drugged and quiet. You will say nothing at all. You 
are the true King Kelver, you will hear no voice but mine." Then I laid him 
behind a stone to wait while the other two drank themselves to sleep.
Then it was only quiet sneaking to get the key, to open the wagon, untie the 
King, hush his mumbling. "You must be silent! Hush, now, or I'll leave you here 
tied like a zeller for the spit!" At which he subsided, still drooling impotent 
anger into his beard. I put the false Kelver in his place, cap fastened tight 
under the feathered hat the King wore. Before we left, I reinforced his orders 
once more. I intended to come back the following night, perhaps, to take the cap 
from him before he lapsed into emptiness as the Invigilator had done in Xammer.
When we had come the weary way back to camp, the night was past its depth and 
swimming up to morning. I took him straight to Silkhands and told her all the 
story, after which it was only a little time until she had the poison out of him 
and he sputtering by the fire, angry as a muzzled grole.
"The Elator will probably spy on us," I said. "We must decide how to keep them 
from knowing."
"They will know in any case," said the King. "When I do not return tomorrow for 
my reflection."
I snapped at him. "Nonsense. Of course you will return. They will expect to see 
a Mirrorman come in the likeness of the King, and you will come in the likeness 
of the King. If you do not, I must, and that is too many Kelvers entirely even 
for this group." He seemed to be chewing on this, so I gave him reason. "The 
false Kelver will simply lie there, thinking he is you. The other Mirrorman will 
do what Mirrormen do, no different. Surely you have guile enough for this? To 
keep them unsuspecting? To feed information back to Hell's Maw which may be to 
our liking? If for no other reason, to work vengeance upon them for what they 
would have done to Jinian."
I was angered that he did not seem as concerned as I about what they had almost 
done to Jinian.



10
Wind's Eye




HE MAY NOT HAVE BEEN CONCERNED enough about Jinian, but his concern knew no 
bounds for Silkhands. When I quoted to all of them the words I had heard from 
the mouth of the Elator concerning Huld and his desire to master the world, 
Silkhands turned away retching. Kelver went to her, held her, and she cried 
between saying that Huld had come to her often while she was captive in 
Bannerwell, had threatened her, invaded her mind, set such fear in her that she 
had not dared think of it again. Now she was drowning in that same terror. King 
Kelver began to burn, hot as fire, swearing vengeance against those who had hurt 
her, mirrored him, Gamed against any of us. "Your enemy is mine," he swore, 
putting his hand on mine. "We stand allies against those foul beasts."
I had heard more of the Elator's talk than he had, more than I had repeated to 
any of them. I was glad of any who would stand against terrors I was uncertain I 
could face myself. We put Silkhands in the wagon with Jinian to let them comfort 
one another as to what had been misunderstood between them. I needed no further 
proof that Kelver was no longer interested in Jinian or that Silkhands would 
never be more than my friend. So I drank with the King and shared objurgations 
of all enemies with him until we slept at last from inability to do anything 
else.
On the morning we climbed farther to the endless chattering of the krylobos. 
Queynt clucked at them indulgently. I asked if he feared to return to the place 
he had found them, and he shook his head. "It is impossible to say. It was all 
so very long ago."
"How long ago?" I asked.
"Ummm." He grimaced. "A very long time ago. I was searching for a place. There 
had been a great catastrophe, and my maps proved useless. You have heard of the 
cataclysm, flood and wind, storm and ruin? It caused great destruction the 
length of the River Reave."
"The same catastrophe which destroyed Dindindaroo," I said. "I have been told 
that was flood and windstorm. Do you know what caused it?"
"Most certainly. When we come to the top, you will see for yourself. A moonlet 
fell from the heavens, blazing with the light of a little sun. It thrust into 
the top of this tableland like a flaming spear, causing the ground to shatter 
for a hundred leagues in all directions, breaking natural dams and letting loose 
the pent floods of a thousand thousand years, sending forth a hot, dry wind 
which spread from this center to blow forests into kindling. You may see the 
destruction in Learner yet, in certain places.
"Many ancient things were uncovered. And perhaps many other ancient things were 
covered past discovery." He was quiet then for a little time, loquacity 
forgotten, before he said, "Perhaps it is only that the signs were lost, the 
trails thinned...."
If he had been attempting to astonish me, he succeeded. "I have heard a song 
sung to that effect," I managed to choke.
"Ah, young sir, so have I. It was that song brought me all the way south almost 
to the Phoenix Demesne searching for a Healer and a Gamesman to whom that song 
might mean something."
"Our meeting was no accident then," said Silkhands, entering the conversation 
from her wagon seat. "No accident at all!"
He flushed a little, only a touch of rose at the lobes of his ears. "No, my 
dear. Not totally accident. But intended for no evil purpose for all that."
It was too much. I was not assured of his honesty and could not fence with him 
further. I waited until Chance came up to me, then spent a league of our journey 
complaining about mysteries, Gamesmen in general, an education which had ill 
fitted me for the present circumstances, and other assorted miseries including a 
case of saddle chafe.
Chance ignored me, cutting to the heart of my discomfort. "He's a one, that 
Queynt," he said. "Says more than he cares about and knows more than he says."
"Spare me the epigrams," I begged him. "Can I trust the man? That's all that 
matters now. He has not seemed to hurt us in any respect, but he has been far 
from honest with us...."
"As we have been with him," said Chance. "I suppose he's wondering if he can 
trust us. I would if I was him."
My own honor and trustworthiness was not a topic I chose to think upon. Not 
then. I could only go on with the journey by not thinking of it, and so I 
whipped my horse up and rode ahead of all the rest to the top of the notch, 
seeing the monstrous bone forms edging the rimrock on every side so that I 
dismounted to stand in amazement while the others caught up to me.
Queynt jumped from the wagon seat to stretch and bend himself, puffing a little 
in the high air. "They were not here," he said, "these bone forms were not here 
before the cataclysm. They were buried deep, buried well, buried for a thousand 
thousand years. When the moonlet fell, the soil which covered them was blown 
outward to fall upon the orchards of Nutland or was carried by the wild winds to 
the edges of the world."
The huge shapes were all around us, north, south, west as far as we could see. 
They were indeed like the skeletons of unimaginably prodigious beasts, pombis or 
fustigars perhaps. Here and there the shapes were pentagonal, star shaped, like 
the skeleton of any of our tailless animals, so like a pombi's that I could not 
believe them wind carved. They felt and sounded, when struck, like stone. Jinian 
came out of the wagon to lay her small square hands beside my own. The spies 
were far behind. She could risk this brief escape from the wagon. We remained 
there, staring, for a long time before turning away.
The King came to us with the Dragons. I had seen them conferring together as 
they rode, and now he came to ask my advice. "I have two Dragons here who can be 
sent as messengers. Would you have any thoughts about that?"
I had been worrying the thought of taking Hafnor in my hand and Porting to the 
Bright Demesne to ask for help. I had not done because I was not sure I could 
return, not sure I could visualize clearly enough the surroundings where we 
traveled. This offer was welcome, and I thanked him for it, suddenly wishing 
most heartily for Mavin and Himaggery, but most of all for Himaggery's host.
"If and when word reaches Huld that we have found what h0 is seeking," I said, 
"he will come. We could give up the search and go away. But Huld would move 
against the world and us, sooner or later. We may find what we may find and keep 
it secret. But Huld will come, sooner or later. The Elator who follows us says 
that there_ are bone pits outside Hell's Maw piled so deep that no man knows 
where the bottom of them lies. Huld will come with Bonedancers and Ghouls and 
Princes of the North who share his ambitions. He will come in might with a 
horrible host. If that host could be met and conquered in this wasteland ..."
"Or even delayed," whispered Jinian. "Fewer would suffer."
"Except ourselves," said the King.
"Except ourselves," I agreed. "So while we hope for powerful allies before us, 
let us call upon whatever others we may."
King Kelver examined me narrowly. "What allies before us, Gamesman? I have not 
been told of any ... formally."
I flushed and turned from him. Had Silkhands hinted to him? Hoped with him? 
Well, probably. Behind me, Jinian said, "There may be none, King Kelver. We 
hope, that is all."
He laughed, not with any great humor, and made some remark about fools living on 
hope. Well, that was true. Fools did. My hope was in Mavin.
So it was that one scarlet Dragon sped northeast, trailing fire and pennants of 
smoke to make himself even more conspicuous while another, slate gray with wings 
of jet, fled south close upon the mountaintop, unseen, to the far off mists of 
the Bright Demesne. He carried a message from me which said, without any 
circumlocution, "Help!" Meantime Jinian dressed herself in the Dragon's cloak 
and brave plumed helm to ride alongside the wagon. If the Elator got a look at 
us, we were precisely as we should have been: one King, one Queynt, one Chance; 
one Silkhands, one Dragon, one Peter. One Jinian, gone, eaten by groles. One 
Dragon gone, flown back to the Dragon's Fire Purlieu with much noise and fire.
Having thus done what we could against the certainty of Huld's coming, we rode 
forward once more, to the north where Yggery's charts identified the Wastes of 
Bleer though it was difficult to imagine a place more waste-like than that we 
traveled already.
We crossed long lines of scattered ash which led away to the south. "There's a 
hole there that would hold a battle Demesne," said Queynt. "Where the moonlet 
fell, spewing this ash in trails across the stone. In time the thorn will hide 
it...."
Little thorn grew on the flat, though the canyons were choked with it and 
devil's spear grew thickly under shelter of the stones. Else was only flat, gray 
and drear. The farther north we went, the more fantastic the twisted stone, 
convoluted, bizarre, no longer looking like isolated bones or joints but like 
whole skeletons of dream monsters. It was like moving in a nightmare, dreamy and 
echoing. Had it not been for the wide sky stretching above us to an endless 
horizon, it would have felt like a prison beyond hope of release.
It was almost dusk when we came to the chasm, knife edged and sheer. At either 
end of it a mountain had sprawled into an impenetrable tumble of stone. "Abyss 
opens, mountains fall," sang Queynt under his breath. I knew it was not the 
first time he had seen it. "It opened at the time of the cataclysm," he said. 
"Before that time, one could have ridden on into the wastes."
"Tomorrow," I said wearily. "There is no sense worrying at it now. We have other 
things to do."
And, indeed, there was enough to do for the evening. King Kelver and I would 
make his obligatory visit to the Mirrormen, he ostentatiously, I secretly to 
guard him. With many pricked fingers and scratched arms, we hacked enough thorn 
for a fire. The King had speared two ground-running birds which we roasted and 
ate with hard bread and dried fruit. The abyss had stopped us early, so that we 
had finished our meal before dark, the light falling red behind the line of 
mountains beyond Graywater. We were gazing at the sky thinking our own gloomy 
thoughts when the giant strode into our view against the bleeding light.
He was coming toward us. As we had seen him from the gentle valley of the 
Boneview River, so we saw him again, this time from a frontal view. He strode 
toward us, towering against the sky, shredding and fraying at his edges as 
though blown by a great wind, ever renewing his outline, his gigantic integrity 
of shape and purpose. The sun sank behind him; stars showed through him as he 
stalked toward the place where we sat wordless and awed. There was something so 
familiar about him, something so close to recognition. I strained at the 
thought, but it would not come.
At last the giant came so close the shape of him was lost. We felt the cold, ill 
wind blow around us, heard that agonized voice, "Kinsman, kinsman, find the 
wind. .." and then it had gone on past. We turned to follow its progress over 
the abyss and beyond where it changed, tumbled, seethed into another shape, a 
tall, whirling funnel of darkness which poured down into some hidden pocket of 
the world.
In that instant I saw what I had not seen before, how the shredding edges of the 
great form resembled a furry pelt, ends flying, how the great shape shifted, 
Shifted ...
"Thandbar," said two voices at once. Mine, and Queynt's.
There was a long silence full of waiting and strain. Then Queynt said, "It is 
fitting I should recognize him, Peter. I knew him. Now, how it is that you would 
know him?"
I was not sure that I should answer. Silkhands gave me no help, merely staring 
at me owl-like across the fire. It was Jinian who finally said, "Tell him, 
Peter. If you cannot trust Queynt, you cannot trust any in this world and we may 
as well give up."
It was there, then, in the dusk of the Waeneye, beside a dying fire that I set 
the Gamesmen of Barish upon a flat stone, reserving only the blue of Windlow to 
my secret self. They stood under the eyes of all, but it was only Vitior Vulpas 
Queynt who leaned above them with tears flowing down his face as he touched them 
one by one. I wanted to strike him, wanted to seize the Gamesmen and flee into 
the dark. I could feel the serpent within, knotting and writhing. Only Jinian's 
eyes upon me, her hand upon my knee, kept me quiet as the man picked them up, 
turned them, called them by name.
Oh, Gamelords, but they were mine. Mine. Not his.
In a little time, the worst of the feeling faded, and I was able to speak and 
think again. I had to tell him I could speak with them. Read them, and he looked 
at me then with such awe I felt uncomfortable.
I tried to explain. "It is my brain they use to think with, Queynt. Otherwise 
they are as when they were made. I have been under the mountain of the 
magicians. I have seen how they are made. Have you?"
"Oh, yes, Gamesman," he affirmed, no longer joking or voluble. "I have been 
beneath the mountain. I went there last some decades ago to search for Barish."
We waited. He seemed to debate with himself whether we should be enlightened or 
not. At last it was Jinian again who spoke, as she had to me. "Queynt, we've 
trusted you. You've hinted to us and hinted to us a hundred times asking if we 
know what you hope we know. Now is time to set all mystery aside. There may have 
been reasons to stay hidden, but they are in the past. Now we must trust one 
another."
"Barish and I," he said, "were brothers."
He stood to walk to the side of the abyss, stood there peering northward as he 
talked, seeming not to like the sight of our faces. "We came to this world 
together. You know that story. If you do not, it is not important now....
"Well, let it be said. We came, Barish and I, and a host of others. We came to 
serve a lie. There were wives who were loved and children who were loved and a 
world approaching war with another world which neither would win-well. Some 
powerful persons of that world sought to send certain loved ones away to safety. 
They needed an excuse. A fiction. A lie...
"There was a woman, a girl. Didir. Some thought she could read minds. Others 
thought not. The people of her home place were afraid of her, true, naming her 
Demon and Devil. The powerful men of the place said they would send researchers 
away to another place to find out about this strange Talent she had. `In later 
time it may prove useful. However, the research may be long, so it will be 
necessary to send support staff and agriculturists and bio-engineers and 
technologists and so on and so on.' Their wives were the agriculturists and 
their children the bioengineers. Among them were a few, a very few, who really 
knew something about such matters."
"You," said Jinian. "And Barish."
"I," he admitted, "and Barish. And a few others, though most of the so called 
scientists were second rate academics caught in a strange web of vanity and 
ambition. They stayed under the mountain, caught up in their dreams of 
research-research on `monsters.' When we would not let them have Didir, they 
created monsters of their own. And we, the rest of us, came out from the 
mountain into this new, supposedly uninhabited world...."
"Supposedly," prompted Jinian.
"Well, supposedly. There were living things here. There were intelligent 
creatures here. There was material the bio-engineers could use, mixes, crosses, 
deliberate and inadvertent. Children began to be born with many Talents. The 
Talent of Didir proved to be real. Barish said it was simply evolution, a 
natural evolution of the race. I said no, it was this world, this place."
He was silent for so long after that that Jinian had to prompt him again.
The rest of us were silent, afraid if we spoke we might stop him, interrupt his 
disclosure and never learn what he would tell us.
"Well, the poor fools stayed under the mountain. The Talents began to be born, 
and to grow, and feed on one another. Some were good people. Others were truly 
monsters. Barish was always an activist. He decided to intervene, to make 
plans....
"He stole one of the transport machines, disassembled it, brought it here to the 
wastes. Then he sought out the best of the emerging Talents, seduced them with 
hope and high promises, and brought them here. There were twelve with Barish, 
the Council. They made plans. They would accumulate those among the Gamesmen who 
had notions of justice, accumulate them like seed grain, and when the time came, 
they would plant that crop for a mighty harvest."
He returned to us by the fire, shivering, though the night was not yet that 
cold. "It was not enough to plan a great future if one might not be alive to see 
it. So he asked me to work with him to develop a strain of people who would be 
immune to the Talents of Gamesmen and immutable through time. Well, we had 
longevity drugs and maintenance machines as well as the transport machines 
themselves. It gave us centuries to work. When there were enough of the 
Immutables, Barish made a contract with them. They were to find the good seed 
among the Gamesmen and communicate those names to those under the mountain. 
Those under the mountain would have them picked up, blued, and stored in the ice 
caverns. He got their agreement very simply, by playing on their fears. He told 
the `magicians' that those identified were a danger to them, a danger to be 
removed but preserved as a later source of power. They believed Barish. Everyone 
believed Barish.
"And so, the Immutables became the `Council.' Up until the death of Riddle's 
grandfather, some eighty years ago. The chain was broken then. We may never know 
why."
"And Barish himself," prompted Jinian as I was about to do so.
"And Barish himself lay down beside the eleven others he had brought up here to 
Barish's Keep. Once every hundred years the Immutables were to come and wake 
him, bringing with them some brain-dead body which he might occupy in order that 
his own not age, for he wished to save his lifespan for the great utopian time 
which was to come. And once every hundred years I met him in Learner, he in one 
guise or another, I always as Queynt, to talk of this world and its future. Once 
a century we would argue about the methods he had chosen, I urging him to waken 
his stored multitudes and learn from those who had been here before he came; he 
saying that there were not yet enough, to give him just another hundred 
years...."
"Until?" I asked, knowing the story was almost at an end.
"Until some eighty years ago I came to Learner to meet him only to find it in 
ruins. No Barish. Until I came up here to find his Keep, where I had been only 
once before, to find tumbled stone and Wind's Bones, abysses and fallen 
mountains. I went to Dindindaroo to ask Riddle-the current Riddle of that 
time-where Barish was. Dindindaroo was in ruins, Riddle dead, the new Riddle 
ignorant of the very name of Barish.
"I grieved. I went against my judgment and kept up his work. I became the new 
Council as Riddle had been before me. I sent my hundreds into the icy caverns. I 
waited for Barish. He did not return. And then, at last, a year ago the mountain 
of magicians went up in fire and I knew Barish would not come again of himself.
"He lies upon this mountain, or he is gone. I seek him. You seek him. And we 
must find him because where he lies is the only machine which can restore 
Barish's multitude to life once more. If this thing is not done, he will have 
lived and died to no purpose, and I will have been party to a very grave 
miscalculation...."
I believed him. We all did. There was no fantastic pretense in him now, no 
egregious eccentricism. He was only one, like us, driven by old loyalties and a 
sense of what could be good and right. If Windlow had been there, he would have 
taken the man by the hand and reassured him, so I did it, wordlessly, hoping he 
would understand. It seems he did, for he said, "Your purpose is like mine. If 
you have been guided here by songs, by Seers, by a giant form striding to the 
north, well-if there is anything of Barish remaining, he will be trying to reach 
me."
"As Thandbar tries to reach his kindred," I said. "His is the only Gamesman I 
have never touched. His was my own Talent, so I never called upon him."
"I never knew that any living thing or any known device could reach what lies 
preserved within the blues," said Queynt. "Though some once said that travelers 
between the stars sometimes wakened with a memory of dreams. Who knows? I don't. 
I know very little."
"Do you know how you have lived this thousand years?" asked Jinian. "While I am 
much inclined to trust you, Vitior Queynt, this is one thing about you I find 
unbelievable."
"I have lived this long by learning," he said, "from shadowpeople and gnarlibars 
and krylobos and eestnies. You have not seen eestnies, but they were here before 
we came and would teach you, too, if you asked. Barish had not the patience for 
it, so he said. Then, too, he kept thinking I would die. He will be offended I 
have not."
Well, we had enough to chew on for one night. King Kelver went back along our 
trail to appear as a Mirrorman. He retrieved the cap at the same time, and my 
help was not needed. It seemed that the Elator or the Mirrorman suspected 
nothing.
When morning came, Queynt suggested that Jinian and I take Yittleby and Yattleby 
and continue the search across the chasm. "The birds can leap the abyss," he 
said. "If the rest of us stay here or spend some time seeking a trail, it will 
delay those behind us a bit more. Perhaps we will spend a day or two searching 
off in different directions while you and Jinian go in the direction we believe 
correct." It seemed as good an idea as any other, so I Dragoned across, carrying 
Jinian, then showed myself high in the air to let the followers know that the 
abyss had been crossed by Dragon. The others were scattered among the rocks, 
seeming to seek a way through the maze. From my height, I could see several, and 
I knew they could follow us whenever they felt it wise to do so. Delay, 
obfuscation, Game and more Game. I was as weary of it as possible to be.
Yittleby and Yattleby had leaped the chasm, galloping to the very edge to launch 
themselves up and out with ecstatic cries, long legs extended before them, for 
all the world like boys vying with one another in the long jump. They were 
saddled, which surprised me, and they knelt at our approach to let us mount. 
Then it was only necessary to hang on while they lurched upright and began their 
matched, unvarying stride toward the north. They would bear no bit or bridle. 
One or two attempts to guide them taught me merely to point in the direction I 
wanted to go.
Late in the day I saw a fallen stone with a waysign painted upon it. By matching 
the stone to its broken pedestal, I could see which way the arrow had originally 
pointed, and I indicated that direction to Yittleby. She ignored me. I tapped 
her on the neck, sat back in startlement as the huge beak swung around to face 
me. "Krerk," she said, stamping one taloned foot. "Krerk."
At that moment I heard a harsh, rumbling roar as of a great rockslide. As it 
went on, rumbling and roaring, I realized it was not the sound of stone. 
"Gnarlibar?" I whispered.
"Krerk," both birds agreed, turning away from the line I had indicated. When the 
sound changed in intensity, the birds again changed direction, ascending a pile 
of rough stones. Halfway up they knelt and shook us off, gesturing with their 
beaks in an unmistakable communication. "Go on and see," they were saying. "Take 
a good look." They crouched where they were as we crawled to the top of the 
pile.
Below us was a kind of natural amphitheatre, broken at each compass point by a 
road entering the flat. Assembled on the slopes of the place were some hundreds 
of the shadow-people, their chatter and bell sounds almost inaudible beneath the 
ceaseless roaring. In the center of the place a single, gigantic krylobos 
danced, one twice the height of Yittleby or Yattleby, feet kicking high, feather 
topknot flying, wing-arms extended in a fever of wild leaping and finger 
snapping. The roaring grew even louder, and through the four road entrances of 
the place came four beasts.
Jinian clutched at me. My only thought was that this was what Chance had wanted 
me to Shift to and he had been quite mad. They were like badgers, low, 
short-legged, very wide. They were furry, had no tails, had a wide head split 
from side to side by a mouth so enormous either Yittleby or Yattleby would have 
fit within it as one bite. They came leat, that is to say, from the four 
directions at once, each uttering that mountainshattering roar. The giant 
krylobos went on dancing. Queynt's two birds came to crouch beside us, 
conversing in low krerks of approval, whether at the dance, the dancer, or the 
attack, I could not tell.
As the gnarlibars reached the center, the krylobos leapt upward, high, 
wing-fingers snapping, long legs drawn up tight to his body, neck whipping in a 
circular motion. Yittleby said to Yattleby, "Kerawh," in a tone indicating 
approval. "Whit kerch," Yattleby agreed, settling himself more comfortably.
The gnarlibars whirled, spinning outward, each counter-clockwise, in an 
incredible dance as uniform in motion as though they had been four bodies with 
one mind. The krylobos dropped into the circle they had left among them, spun, 
cried a long, complicated call, and then launched upward once more as the four 
completed their turn and collided at the center in a whirling frenzy of fur.
"Krylobos, bos, bos," cried the shadowmen over an ecstasy of flute and bell 
sounds. "Gnarlibar, bar, bar," called another faction, cheering the beasts as 
they spun once more and retreated. In the center the enormous bird continued his 
dance, her dance, wing-fingers snapping like whip cracks, taloned feet spinning 
and turning. "Bos, bos, bos," said Yittleby, conversationally. I had raised up 
to get a better view, and she brought her beak down sharply upon my head. "Whit 
kerch," she instructed. I understood. I was to keep low.
The circus went on. I did not understand the rules, but it was evidently a very 
fine contest of its kind. When the gnarlibars withdrew after an hour or so, 
roaring still in a way to shake the stones, Yittleby and Yattleby rose to lead 
us down into the amphitheatre. Almost at once I heard familiar voices crying, 
"Peter, eater, ter, ter," and my legs were seized in a tight embrace. Flute 
sound trilled, there was much shrieking and singing in which I caught a few 
familiar words of the shadow language. One small figure pounded itself proudly 
upon its chest and said, "Proom. Proom." I remembered him and introduced Jinian 
with much ceremony. She was immediately surrounded by her own coterie all crying 
"Jinian, ian, an an," to her evident discomfort.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's going on?"
"It looks rather like a festival," I suggested. "I was told once that the 
shadowpeople are fond of such things. Some here have traveled a long way from 
the place I met them."
I felt a hard tug at one leg and looked down into another familiar little face, 
fangs glistening in the light. They had never come out into the light when I had 
traveled with them before. Was it that they felt safe among the krylobos and the 
gnarlibars? Or that a time of festival was somehow different for them? Whatever 
the answer, my wide-eared friend was busy communicating in the way he knew, 
acting it out. He was going walky, walky, pointing to the north, patting me and 
pointing. I nodded, turned, walky walked myself toward the north, going nowhere. 
He opened his hands, so human a gesture that Jinian laughed. "What for?" he was 
saying. "Why?"
Inspiration struck me. I held out a hand, "Wait," then peered into the south, 
hand over eyes. The shadowpeople turned, peered with me. At first there was 
nothing as the sun dropped lower. Then, just as I was beginning to think it 
would not come, there was the giant striding upon the wind toward us once more. 
I pointed, cried out. Jinian pointed, exclaimed. All the shadowpeople chattered 
and jumped up and down.
"Andibar, bar, bar," they chanted. "Andibar!"
Jinian and I were astonished. "The sound is so very close," she said. "They mean 
Thandbar!"
"Andibar," they agreed, nodding their heads. We waited while the giant 
approached, dissolved into wind and mist around us, then went on to the north. I 
cried out to the shadowpeople, pointed, made walky, walky. Aha, they cried, 
louder than words. Aha. They were around me, pushing, running off to the north 
and returning, indicating by every action that they knew the way well. We went 
among them, propelled by their eagerness.
Ahead of us we could see the giant twist and change, flowing onto the stony 
mountain like smoke sucked into a chimney. Yittleby and Yattleby followed us, 
conversing. We half ran, half walked among the mazes of stone and Wind's Bone to 
come, starlit at last, to a pocket of darkness into which the shadowpeople 
poured like water. Jinian and I dropped onto the stone, panting. We could not 
see well enough to follow them.
They returned, calling my name and Jinian's, querulously demanding why we did 
not come. Yittleby said something to them, and they darted away to return in 
moments with branches of dried thorn. One burrowed into my pocket to find the 
firestarter, emerging triumphantly in a bright shower of sparks. Then we had 
fire, and from the fire torches, and from the torches light to take us down into 
the earth.
We needed the fire for only a little time. The clambering among tumbled stone 
was for only a short distance before we emerged into corridors as smooth as 
those I had seen beneath the mountains of the magicians. There was light there, 
cool, green light, and a way which wound deep into a constant flow of clean, dry 
air. At the end of the way was an open door....



11
The Gamesmen of Barish




THE.SHADOWPEOPLE OPENED THE DOOR wider as we approached it. The place was not 
new to them, and I had a moment's horrible suspicion that we might find only 
ruin and bones within. Such was not the case.
The pawns have places called variously temples or churches in which there are 
images of Didir or Tamor or of other beings from an earlier time than ours. I 
had been in one or two of these places on my travels, and they were alike in 
having a solemn atmosphere, a kind of dusty reverence, and a smell of smoky 
sweetness lingering upon the air. This place was very like that. There were low 
pedestals within, clean and polished by the flowing air, on each of which one of 
my Gamesmen lay.
The shadowpeople had surrounded one pedestal and waited there, beckoning, 
calling "Andibar, bar, bar," in their high, sweet voices. When Jinian and I came 
near, they sat down in rows around the recumbent figure and began to sing. The 
words were in their own language, but the music....
"The wind song," whispered Jinian. "The same melody."
Though the singer in Xammer had played it upon a harp and these little people 
upon flutes and bells, the song was the same. I knew then where the frail singer 
in Learner had heard it first. How she had translated it into our language, I 
might never know. They sang it through several times, with different words each 
time, and I had no doubt what they sang and what I had heard differed very 
little in meaning. When they finished, one very tiny one leaned forward to chew 
on Thandbar's toe, was plucked up and spanked by another to the accompaniment of 
scolding words. It did not seem to have damaged Thandbar. He was fully dressed, 
helm lying beside him, fur cloak drawn about him under a light coverlet. Jinian 
laid her hand upon him and shivered. "Cold." I already knew that. Except for the 
ceremonial setting, the careful dignity of his clothing, his body was as cold 
and hard as those in the ice caverns. And yet, something had left this body to 
pour into the evening sky, to wander the world and beg his kinsmen for release 
from this silent cold.
I walked among the others. Tamor and Didir, looking exactly as I had known them; 
Dorn, piercing eyes closed in endless slumber; stocky Wafnor, half turned on his 
side as though his great energy had moved him even in that chill sleep. Hafnor 
bore a mocking smile as though he dreamed; and Trandilar dreamed, likewise, 
older than I would have expected, but no less lovely for that. Could she Beguile 
me, even through this sleep?
Shattnir lay rigid, hands at her sides, crown in place, as though she had 
decided to be her own monument. Dealpas was huddled under her blanket, legs and 
arms twisted into positions of fret and anxiety. Buinel's mouth was half open. 
The machine had caught him in mid-word, And, finally, Sorah, the light gauze of 
her mask hiding her face. I drew it aside to see her there, calm, kindly 
looking, eyes sunken as though in some inward gaze.
And lastly ...
Lastly. I gasped, understanding for the first time the implications of what 
Queynt had told me. "Barish," I said. He lay before me, wrapped in a Wizard's 
robe embroidered with all the signs and portents, two little lines between his 
eyes to show his concentration even in this place.
"Barish," Jinian agreed. "He has a good face."
He did have a good face, rather long and bony, with dark bushy brows and a 
knobby nose over wide, petulant lips.
"I did not expect to find him here," I said.
"Only his body," she replied. "Queynt said he was awakened into different bodies 
each time."
"Perhaps he wasn't awakened. Perhaps the blue is here, somewhere."
"If it had been," she said soberly, "Riddle's grandfather would have taken it to 
Dindindaroo with all the rest."
Still, we looked. There were cabinets on the walls, doors leading into other 
rooms. We found books, machines. In a room we identified as Barish's own there 
was a glass case which still showed the imprint of a Gameboard which was not 
there. I fit the Onomasticon into a gap in a bookshelf. This was the place from 
which Riddle's grandfather had removed the treasures he had sworn to preserve.
We returned to the outer room. The machine was there, behind a low partition, a 
tiny light blinking slowly upon its control panel. "There is still power here," 
I said.
Then I said nothing for a while.
Then, "Let us go out of here. I have to think."
She gave me a long, level look, but did not say anything until we had climbed 
upward through the tumble to the open air. The little people came with us, 
chattering among themselves. When we took food from the saddlebags, they 
clustered around, and I realized there were more of them than we could feed. "I 
must go hunting," I said. "They will be happy to stay here. Their word for fire 
is 'thruf.' If you can keep one going, with their help, I'll bring back some 
kind of meat."
Then she did try to say something to me, but I did not wait to hear. Instead, I 
Shifted into fustigar shape and loped off into the stones. I did not want to 
think, and it is perfectly possible not to think at all, if one Shifts. I did 
not think, merely hunted. There were large, ground-running birds abroad in the 
night, perhaps some smaller kin of the great krylobos. They were swift, but not 
swift enough. I caught several of them, snapping their necks with swift, upward 
tosses of my fustigar head. What was it brought me up, out of mere fustigar to 
something else?
Perhaps it was the awareness of my bones, the long link bones between my rear 
legs and forelegs, the shorter link bone between the rear legs, the flat rear 
space where a tail might have been but was not, the curved link bones between 
shoulders and head, the arching, flexible ribs which domed this structure and 
anchored all its muscles....
The starshaped skeleton of this world. Unlike the backboned structure of our 
world, whatever world it might have been. This world, into which we came, 
uninvited, surely, to spread ruin and wreck. And yet into which we were 
welcomed. The shadowpeople waited beside the fire with Jinian for the feast 
their friend would bring them. They would call Peter, eater, ter, ter into the 
darkness, play their silver flutes, ring their bells, sniff the bones twice when 
they had done, and sleep beneath the stones. And they might gnaw a bit on 
Thandbar and be spanked for it.
And in Hell's Maw they were meat for Huld. So had said the Elator, laughing, as 
he ate other meat at his campfire.
Some acid burned in my fustigar throat, some pain afflicted my fustigar heart. 
Ah, well, I could not leave them behind me to flee into a darkness forever.
The animal turned itself about and ran back the way it had come, to stand upon 
its hind legs and Shift once more. Into Peter once more. Into the same confusion 
I had left.
They welcomed me with cries, of pleasure, assisted in cleaning the birds and 
spitting them over the fire while others foraged for more thorn and devil's 
spear. We ate together, bird juice greasing our chins and hands, and sang 
together in the echoing dark. I saw Jinian's eyes upon me but ignored her as if 
I did not understand. Tomorrow was time enough for decision.
"I sent Yattleby with a message for Queynt," she said.
"Ah," I replied. "A message for Queynt."
"Written," she said. "I gave it to Yattleby, pointed back the way we had come 
and said 'Queynt.' He seemed to understand."
"I'm sure he did," I said, fighting down anger. I did not need more pressure on 
me. Through the thin fabric of my Shifted hide I could feel the pouch I had 
carried for two years. Inside it were Didir and Tamor. Mine. Shattnir. Mine. 
Even Dealpas. Mine. "When I give them up," I said in a carefully conversational 
tone, "I will be powerless to confront Huld. If I had not had them, you would 
have been meat for groles instead of sitting here beside me, eating roast bird."
"When you saved us from the bones in Three Knob," she said, "it was by your own 
Talent. If you had not had Sorah to call upon outside Learner, you would have 
found another way. You need nothing but yourself, Peter."
"I do," I shouted at her, making wild echoes flee from the place. "Without them, 
I am nothing. Nothing at all. .."
She wiped her hands fastidiously, poured water from her flask to wash her face, 
turned that face to me at last, quiet, unsmiling, unfrowning, quiet. "I have 
told you I am a Wizard, Peter. I will give you Wizardly advice. Think on 
yourself, Peter. Think on Mavin, and Himaggery and Mertyn. Think on Windlow. 
Carefully, slowly, on each. Then think on Mandor and Huld. And when you have 
done, decide with whom you will stand."
Gamelords, I said to myself. Save me from the eloquence of Wizards. She sounded 
like Himaggery, or rather more like Windlow, though Windlow had been a Seer, not 
a Wizard. This abstraction called justice was all very well, but when it meant 
that one had to give up one's own power.... One considered being Huld-like.
"Jinian," I cried. "Do you know what it is you ask?"
"Of course," she said. "Wizards always know what they ask. And they ask 
everything."
I held out my arms and she came into them to hold me as a mother might hold a 
child or a Sorceress her crown. When we slept, it was thus twined together, and 
for a time I did not think of her being a Wizard. The shadowpeople let us sleep. 
They faded away in the morning light, into the deep caverns of the rock, to 
return at dusk, I was sure, expecting another feast, another song fest. Well. 
Perhaps by then we would have more guests to feed. So saying, I took Jinian by 
the hand and we went back into Barish's Keep.
"Which of them first, Wizard?" I asked. "Shall it be Shattnir or Dealpas? Buinel 
or Hafnor? I think not Buinel. He would ask us to prove our authority before 
raising the rest."
"Thandbar," she said. "It is he who has searched for his kinsmen, Peter. It is 
not fitting he should be raised first?"
I should have thought of it myself. We lifted the rigid body of Thandbar off the 
pedestal on which it rested, tugged it around the partition to the machine, and 
spent both our strengths in heaving it onto the metal plate which was precisely 
like those I had seen on similar machines under the mountain of the magicians. 
There was even the small, circular receptacle for the blue. I set it in place, 
stepped back, and thrust down the lever as I had seen Mavin do it.
Nothing happened. There was no hum, no scream, no nothing. No sound. No 
movement. Jinian looked at me with quick suspicion. I protested: "This is how 
Mavin did it! There is power here. The light is on. Perhaps it must be set in 
some way." She helped me wrestle Thandbar to the floor before I began a 
twisting, pushing, turning circumambulation of the device, moving everything 
movable upon it. I tried the lever again. Nothing.
I turned to her to expostulate, explain, only to meet her level regard, no 
longer suspicious. "This is why he never returned. Why Barish never returned."
Seeing my confusion, she drew me away to Thandbar's pedestal where we sat while 
she puzzled it out. "They would wake Barish every hundred years. They would 
bring some brain-dead but living body for him, some poor fellow brain-burned by 
a Demon perhaps, and would put the body in that machine with Barish's blue. Then 
he, Barish, in a different body each time, would go into the world to meet 
Queynt, assess the progress of his plan. He would return here after some 
years-how many? Ten perhaps? Twenty? Give up the blue again, and the attendant 
Immutables would take the body away to be buried.
"But the last time he was awakened, the machine malfunctioned? Yes. I think so. 
Something went wrong. Either during the process or right after? Yes. Otherwise 
his blue would be with the rest. That red light you see upon the device is 
probably a warning light, something to tell the operator that things are awry 
within. So Barish was no tech. Or if he was, he had no part or lacked some 
contrivance. The fact that he did not fix it means that he could not. And 
whoever or whatever Barish was, it went forth from this place knowing it would 
do no good to return."
I went back to Thandbar's body, lying on the cold floor of the place. Such is 
the contrary nature of mankind, or perhaps only of the Peters among mankind, 
that I now wished most heartily to do what I had fought before against doing. 
Now that it was impossible, I was determined to do it.
"Since you are so reasonable, Wizard," I said. "Reason us a way out of this 
dilemma."
"I will wait for Queynt," she said. "Since he may have some knowledge of the 
device. If he does not, then we will think again."
She went up out of the place. I heard her talking to Yittleby, who had remained 
behind when Yattleby went away, saying something about patience. I took some 
confidence from the impatience of the krylobos. It was better than fear. I 
walked around and around the machine. Surely there was some way it could be 
understood? Surely some way that a Shifter could understand it.
In Schlaizy Noithn, I had become a film upon a wall in a place where my very 
presence was a danger. I reached a tentative finger to the machine, flowed 
across its metal surface like oil, a thin film, an almost invisible tentacle. 
This filament poured into a crack, down through the interstices of the 
mechanism. Here were wires and crystals, hard linkages, soft pads, rollers, some 
kind of screen which scattered light, a device for casting a narrow beam and 
manipulating it. I went deeper. This is what Dealpas had done to Izia upon the 
heights of Mavin's place. Here were strangenesses which I entered and 
surrounded, tasting, smelling, creating temporary likenesses of. Where was the 
failure? Where the malfunction? No part of it ached, throbbed, was fevered. 
Should this dark crystal be alight? This cold wire, should it be warm? Who could 
tell? No network of nerve enlightened me. I flowed deeper yet.
Who were the voices crying to me? Why did Dorn cry so loud? Why did Didir sting 
me with her voice? Out? Out of where? Of what? The mysteries which lay around me 
were tantalizing. Why come out?
Was that Jinian? Silkhands? I felt hands upon me, pulling me, some inner person 
walking my veins and my nerves, hauling upon my bones. I wanted to tell them to 
let be, but it would take a mouth and lungs to do that. A mouth. Lungs.
Panic. So does one who is more than half drowned struggle to the surface of 
water, gasping for breath, unable to breathe. Someone helped me from within. 
Silkhands.
And I lay upon the floor of the place while Silkhands and Queynt hovered over me 
and screamed and cried on me.
"Fool, fool," said Silkhands. "Even Mavin would not have tried such a thing."
"Fool, fool," wept Jinian. "Oh, Peter, but you are hopeless and I love you."
I was not afraid until I knew what I had done, which was to spend the better 
part of two days trying to become a machine. Silkhands was worn and exhausted. 
She had spent the time since her arrival trying to extricate me. If there had 
been no other reason for her to come to the Wastes of Bleer than to save my 
life, I was grateful for Windlow's vision and the musician's song. It was she 
who had come into my inside out body and followed it down into madness, calling 
it out of its strange preoccupation. When I learned of her effort and my 
foolishness, I wept tears of weary frustration.
"I don't know what's the matter with it," I confessed.
"And nor do I, my boy," said Queynt. "I had little knowledge of maintenance. We 
had techs who were specially trained to do that work. It may be that the books 
are here, somewhere, and even the parts we may need, but I find Jinian's 
reasoning persuasive. If Barish could have fixed it, he would have done."
"I find it odd," said King Kelver, "that the plans of a thousand years would be 
allowed to go awry on the failure of one mechanism."
I could not have agreed with him more. However, I had no time for such fine 
philosophical points because of the news they brought. "The Elator told me last 
night that Huld is coming," said the King. "I am to betray your location to him 
when he arrives. He grew impatient and left Hell's Maw last night."
Jinian had my map upon the floor, measuring the distance with her fingers. 
"Three days," she whispered. "They will be upon us within three days. Four at 
most!"
In a few moments I built and discarded a hundred notions. I could take Wafnor 
and make a mountain fall. Buinel would burn the bones as they came toward us. 
Hafnor would flick me to the Bright Demesne where I would repeat my call for 
help. Didir would Read Huld's mind. All these wild thoughts tumbled one upon 
another until Jinian took my hand, and I knew she had followed them almost as 
though she could have Read them.
"Peter. You can manage two or three of the Gamesmen of Barish at a time. If 
worst comes to worst, you will do it and we will all pray your success. But oh, 
how much better it would be if all of them fought at our side."
She was right, of course. I leaned upon her shoulder and gave a great sigh, half 
weakness and half weariness, thinking the whole time of roast fowl. My weakness 
was simple hunger, and I said so. She remedied the lack as soon as I expressed 
it by putting a mug of hot soup into my hand and crumbling hard bread into it. 
As I ate it with a tired greediness, she went on.
"There is something we are not thinking of," she said. "Something simple and 
obvious. The song we heard in Xammer was learned at the Minchery in Learner from 
a young songsmith who dreamed it. It is the same music we heard when the giant 
strode across us in the hills behind Three Knob. It came from Thandbar, somehow, 
and Thandbar's blue is in your pocket. Somehow, Peter, the separation of body 
and blue is not as complete as we thought, for something sensible of Thandbar 
escaped, rose up from his body lying here in the cold wastes of Bleer to stride 
across the world crying for our help. There is a clue there we are not seeing, 
Peter. Help me think."
"It probably has something to do with cold," I mumbled around a mouthful of 
bread. "In the School Houses, we always kept the blues cold. They have not been 
cold in my pocket. Perhaps that has something to do with it. Perhaps it is 
natural for them to recombine, and the machine only aids that process...."
"What does the machine do, Peter?"
"Ahh," I said, remembering chill wire and hostile casing, the infinite lattices 
of crystal in which I had lost myself. "It warms the body, warms the blue, scans 
the blue and Reads it into the mind of the body. Having seen the innards of the 
machine, I can do part of what the machine does. I can Read the blue, I think, 
with Didir's help. And Shattnir can help me warm the place. But I don't know how 
to Read the thing back into a body. It seems all a puzzle...."
"I can Read the body," said Silkhands. "If you will link with me, as they linked 
in the Bright Demesne when they searched for you. As Tragamors sometimes link to 
increase their strength."
I shuddered, remembering that such a linkage was precisely what Mandor and Huld 
had demanded of me in Bannerwell-of me, or of Mavin. Still, this was to no evil 
purpose. It took me a while to work myself up to it, but once we were started it 
seemed to flow along of its own movement. It was not as simple as that sounds, 
and yet it was simpler than I would have expected.
First was Shattnir, gathering all the warmth she could from the sun to bring it 
below and warm the chamber of the Gamesmen. Then was Didir, to set her pattern 
firmly in my head, telling her what we intended, begging her to stay within and 
help me, show me the way.
Then I took the blue of Thandbar in my hand and put my arms tight around 
Silkhands as she laid her hands upon Thandbar's head. He came into my mind and 
greeted me with such joy that it burst through me in a wave, a wordless, riotous 
joy, the rapture of a prisoner released, a caged thing set free. "Only free," I 
heard him murmur in my head. "Only free." I remembered it as one of his names 
and knew in that instant what innate quality it was had enabled him to escape 
the cold room and move out across the world. His Shifter's soul could not have 
been held, had not been held. I had no time to think of it, for with Didir's 
pattern tight in my mind I began to Read him, spark by spark, shivering lattice 
by lattice, sending my warmth down the chill circuits of his being, following 
those circuits as Silkhands Read them from me and impressed them once again into 
the body before her.
Time went, seeming hours of it, days of it. Pictures fled through my head. I saw 
Schlaizy Noithn, bright in the noon light, where Thandbar walked with a loved 
one. I saw far mountains as seen from above by the eyes of a mist giant. I heard 
music, not only the wind song I had heard before but generations of bell and 
flute in the high, wild lands of the shadowpeople. I became tree, mountain, 
road, a whole legion of beasts I had never seen and knew nothing of. In 
Thandbar's day, they had lived closer to mankind. In the intervening centuries 
they had fled away.
I saw memories of Barish: Barish lecturing; Barish pounding a table; Barish 
laughing; Barish cajoling. I felt horror at the things being done by some 
Gamesmen, revulsion, anger, and felt Barish play upon that horror and revulsion. 
In Thandbar's mind, I heard Barish's voice. "We will accumulate the best, like 
seed grain. We will plant them in the ground of today, for a mighty harvest in 
the future," his voice ringing, passionate. In Thandbar's mind, I Read belief, 
then doubt (centuries of doubt), then terror at a conviction of eternal 
imprisonment. Out of that terror he had fled like mist, to walk the wide world 
calling for help from his kinsmen.
So the pictures fled across my mind as the blue melted away in my hand, becoming 
a featureless lump, a sliver, a nothing at all. The body before us stirred, 
stirred again, until at last its eyes opened, its mouth moved. "I dreamed you, 
Healer," it whispered in a voice whiskery with dust and age. "I dreamed you." 
The eyes blinked, blinked, tried to focus. I knew they saw only blurs of light, 
mute shadows. At last they fastened upon me, and the dusty voice said, "Kinsman. 
Thanks."
And after that was a long, cloudy time in which Silkhands lay upon the floor 
exhausted and I trembled in my place like a wind gong perpetually struck, and 
the others had to take us up, we two and Thandbar, to wrap us up warmly and feed 
us to the wild piping and cheers of the shadowpeople. It was night. "How long?" 
I whispered to Queynt.
"You were both exhausted when you began," he said. "You must not try any more 
tonight. Silkhands could not, in any case. On the morrow, raise up Dealpas. She 
must help you. Then Didir, for she can do what you have done if I understand it 
aright." So I slept. Bones marched against us from over the edge of the world, 
and I slept. Horror collected itself and thundered toward us with drums and 
trumpets, and I slept. If I had been condemned and upon the scaffold ready to be 
hanged, I would have slept. There was no more strength in me to stay awake, and 
morning came and moved itself toward noon before I wakened again to find 
Silkhands sitting beside me, looking a little wan but determined.
"Come," she said. "Let us waken Dealpas."
Which we did, though Barish's Healer did not wish to be wakened. She fought us 
the whole way, moaning and weeping, carrying on as though she were the only 
creature in the world ever to have felt pain. Her whining sickened us, and I was 
ready to give up and let her lie there forever, but Silkhands was not. I felt 
her do something I had never known of before: she administered a mental 
spanking-a lashing along the nerves like a snake striking-and we had Dealpas' 
attention at last. When we had her awake, she began to moan, half-heartedly, and 
Jinian came forward to shake her into full wakefulness.
"I have no patience with this Broken Leaf nonsense," she cried into Dealpas' 
pouting face. "I know not why Barish chose you as a worthy one of his Eleven, 
why he chose you from among all Healers, unless perhaps there were no others in 
your time. Well, you are not the best, by any rule, not fit to wear Silkhands' 
smalls, but you will do what you will do or by the Giant of Thandbar I will 
teach you what pain is!"
Dealpas was stung, furious, her pain forgotten. I linked with her, somewhat 
reluctantly, to raise Didir, and in that linkage I learned what had set Dealpas 
upon her course of whines and plaints. Barish had thought her pretty, had babied 
her, had petted her-the more she whined, the more petting. So it was I began to 
doubt that Barish was what I had thought him to be. Wizard, perhaps, but not all 
wise to have spoiled her so.
We did not work together as well as Silkhands and I had done, but Didir was 
helping from within to raise up her own body, so all went well and expeditiously 
in the end. She came up off the stone slab in one fluid movement, not at all 
grandmotherly, but lithe and still young. "Peter," she said to me, looking full 
into my eyes, "there will be a better time than now for thanks. Be sure that 
time will not be forgotten." She hugged me then, and kissed me as a mother might 
(as Mavin never had in my memory) and went off above to gather some power and 
settle some ancient matter between herself and Dealpas. When they returned, they 
were ready for work, and I did not hear Dealpas whine again.
The two of them began with Shattnir, who rose as she had slept, straight, all at 
once, rising as if she had lain down the night before. I saw her keen eye upon 
me, recognizing me, and was not surprised. There had been much more life in the 
blues than I had known. They had changed while with me, while within me. They 
had used me as I had used them, and I prayed as I saw her glance that she would 
consider the bargain good. Then she gave me a quick, mocking smile-nothing about 
Shattnir was ever wholly human-and went about her way.
Meantime Silkhands and I awakened Dom. Having done this once before, I did not 
need Didir's help again but was able to Read out the blue of Dorn as though I 
read a familiar book. Oh, there were surprises, particularly in his youthful 
memories; and there were terrors as he gained his Talent and learned to use it, 
but still, what I had known of him was the greater part of him, and he rose at 
last to greet me by name.
"You do know me," I mumbled.
"How should I not, Peter? Have I not walked in your head as a farmer walks his 
fields? Have we not raised up ghosts together?"
"I wasn't sure you would remember," I said weakly, remembering myself thinking 
things I had rather he not know of.
"Why shouldn't I remember a friend?" he asked me, drawing me into an embrace. I 
had never felt for Mertyn or for Himaggery what I felt in that instant for Dorn. 
I had never known Mertyn or Himaggery as I knew Dom. Perhaps he had shaped some 
essential growing in me, as a father might shape it in a pawnish boy or a loving 
thalan who knew his sister's child from infancy. What he said was true. I 
remembered him as a friend. He had never had to do me any hurt, not even for my 
own good, and so there was no taint between us.
Then Dealpas and I awakened Buinel while Silkhands rested and Didir took time to 
learn all that was happening. I felt her searching mind go forth, seeking Huld, 
I thought. It was not difficult to raise up Buinel, only boring. In my whole 
life I was never to meet anyone so relentless in putting down any spontaneous 
thought or evanescent desire as was Buinel. He wanted rules for everything, and 
he wanted them graven in bronze or cut into stone so that he could see they were 
no temporary things. Well, we persevered, Dealpas and I, she with her mouth all 
twisted up in distaste and some anger still. When we had him fairly roused he 
became deeply suspicious of us for having wakened him, so we turned him over to 
Queynt and Dorn. If they could not settle him I cared not whether we got him 
settled, though I did owe him much for having saved our lives from the Ghoul. 
Then Silkhands and Didir returned to wake Hafnor, Wafnor, and Tamor, one after 
another, each time quicker. It was true, with practice the thing became much 
easier. Wafnor gave me a glad hug, from a distance, his sturdy body creaking as 
he bent and twisted, trying to free himself in a few short minutes of the 
stiffness of centuries. Hafnor gave me a teasing wink. If he had had more power, 
he would have done something silly and boyish, I knew it, but he had to go above 
to warm himself in the sun. There was no power below except what Shattnir 
brought down to us from time to time for the work.
Then Silkhands and I were alone once more, only Sorah and Trandilar upon their 
pedestals. And Barish. I stood there looking down at him, fingering the lone 
blue in my pocket. Now that I had given up the others, it seemed an evil thing 
to keep Windlow by me, an evil thing to keep him so imprisoned. He had no body 
of his own. It had been burned and destroyed in the place of the magicians. 
Barish had no blue. It had gone into some other body, perhaps, or been destroyed 
by the machine. Why not put the two together? Then Windlow might at least live 
again, live long, and be no worse off than he was now. The body would be 
strange, but surely it was better to visit a strange place than not to live at 
all. Silkhands and I were alone in the place. The others had all gone above to 
seek for Huld or plot their strategy or discuss ways in which we might leave the 
mountaintop without condemning the rest of the world to Huld's fury.
I called her over and showed her Windlow's blue in my hand, letting my eyes rove 
over the body of Barish.
She did as I had done, looking back and forth from one to the other. "Why not," 
she said. "Let us do it now before someone comes down and makes some objection."
"He may only live a little while, to be killed in that battle which is coming," 
I warned her.
"He will at least die in reality then," she said bitterly, "not be lost in some 
rock crevasse forever, caught in neither living nor death, perhaps in that same 
terror Thandbar felt."
I nodded, took Windlow's blue into my hand and put my arms around her as she 
laid her hands upon Barish's head.
Then was maelstrom. Nothing which had gone before had prepared me for it. There 
was Windlow, surging in my mind like a flood, like a mighty stream pouring over 
a precipice. There was something else, surging to meet it as the tide meets the 
outflow of a river, battering waves which meet in foam-flecked flood to crash 
upon one another, flow around one another, mix together in an inextricable rush 
and tug and wash. Cities toppled in my head; rivers burst mighty barricades; 
millennia-old trees fell and splintered. Faces passed as in an endless parade. 
The sun made a single glittering arc across the sky, flickering between darkness 
and light as day and night sped past. Then the struggle eased, slowly, and I 
felt things rise in the flood to heave above the waves, to rock and stabilize 
themselves upon the flow like boats until all within was liquid and quiet above 
the steady roll of whatever lay below. Windlow's blue was gone. Silkhands leaned 
back within the circle of my arms, exhausted. I heard someone come into the room 
behind us, recognized Queynt's step but was too strained to turn to him as he 
gasped.
The figure before me on the pedestal opened its eyes. Someone behind those eyes 
smiled into my face and said, "Peter?" Then that same someone-or another-looked 
across my shoulder and spoke to Queynt. "Vulpas?" I felt myself thrust aside as 
Vitior Vulpas Queynt moved to
His brother's side.
His brother.
My friend.
Windlow.
Barish.
The same.



12
The Bonedancers of Huld




YOU HAD HIM ALL THE TIME!" Queynt advancing as though to strike me.
A voice from the pedestal, laughing weakly, not Windlow's voice. Not entirely 
Windlow's voice. Pattern and intonation different. Not so peaceful, not so 
kindly. "Oh, Vulpas. He didn't know he had me. Poor lad. And he didn't have much 
of me, at that, or all of me, depending upon how you look at it. He didn't know; 
Windlow didn't know."
So that Queynt turned again to that voice which seemed more familiar to him than 
it did to me. "Windlow?"
A long silence. I looked at the body on the pedestal, close wrapped in its 
Wizardly robes. It had not moved yet, seemed uncertain whether it could. One 
hand made a little abortive gesture; a foot twitched. The eyes were puzzled, 
then clearing, then puzzled once more. When he spoke it was tentatively, slowly, 
as though he had to consider each word and was even then not certain of it.
"The body they brought for me, Vulpas. The bodies were always supposed to be 
brain-burned. Plenty of those around. Every Game always left them littered 
about, weeping women, mothers crying, pathetic bodies, able to walk, breathe, 
eat-nothing else. They were supposed to bring one like that. So they did; body 
of a Seer named Windlow. Only it wasn't brain-dead-maybe half, maybe only 
stunned, sent deep....
"The machine. It had been acting strangely. Meant to go to the base and get some 
tech to come back with me and fix it. I didn't go. Why? Forget why. The time 
before, the last time I was in this body-the machine didn't separate me. Not all 
of me. Most of me was still here, in the body, cold. I dreamed....
"Dreamed I saw Thandbar go out of this place like a wind, like a mist, singing. 
Dreamed little people came in here, singing. Wanted to say `Help,' wanted to ask 
them to find Vulpas, find Riddle. Imprisoned. No movement. No voice..."
"Who was it then, who went out of here?" demanded Queynt. "Who was it Riddle put 
the blue into? That last time. When you were supposed to meet me?"
The figure on the slab moved, a supine shrug, a testing of long unused muscles. 
"Windlow, mostly. Partly me. The machine broke that time, once for all, finally. 
Screamed like a wounded pombi, like a fustigar in heat, screamed and shrieked 
and grated itself silent. The light went on. I saw it when I departed, and 
Riddle said something about not bothering to come back, there was nothing anyone 
could do...."
"But if you knew all that," I said stupidly, "then why didn't you tell me, 
Windlow? Why all the mystery? The hiding and hunting and not seeming to know 
everything there was to know about the Gamesmen and the book? Why all that?"
"Ah, lad." Whoever it was began to sit up, struggling more than any of the 
others had had to do, achingly. I moved forward to help him, and he patted me on 
the arm in a familiar way. "I didn't remember. Windlow didn't remember. It was 
all so dreamlike, so strange. How would Windlow tell the difference, Vision or 
reality? And it was then that the moonlet fell, the world shook and tumbled and 
fell apart. Then it was run and run and try to stay alive, partly Windlow, 
partly Barish, the memories all mixed and tumbled with the world, all the people 
and all the landscape. I forgot Vulpas, forgot the Gamesmen almost, forgot the 
book almost. Then later some memories came back. Were they memories? Visions of 
a Seer? How would Windlow-Barish know? And then the memories began to tease, 
began to make mysteries. Then Windlow-Barish began to search for the book, 
search for the Gamesmen, remember odd things. Did he ever come back here? Why 
would he? If he did, the way was lost I suppose...."
"What do you mean, did he?" I shrieked at him. "If Windlow is in you at all, he 
knows whether he did or not! Think him. Ask him." I was grieving. I had not 
meant to trade Windlow, whom I loved, for this stranger.
There was long silence from the pedestal, then the rustle of his cloak, the 
harsh scratch of the embroideries rubbing upon one another. His voice, when it 
came, was more as I remembered it. "Right, my boy. Of course. I did not come 
here. I did not remember this place. I did remember the book, the Gamesmen, but 
did not remember why they were important. Well, why would Windlow remember any 
such thing?"
I turned to him desperately. "Are you in there, Windlow? Have I killed you?"
He laughed, almost as Windlow would have done. "No, Peter. No. See. All of 
Windlow is here when I reach for him. I remember the garden of Windlow's House, 
the meadow you chased the fire bugs through. I remember the tower in which 
Prionde had us imprisoned, the way we escaped by creeping through the sewer...."
"You did not creep," I said. "We carried you."
"You carried me. Yes. And I came to Himaggery's place, to the Bright Demesne. 
It's all there, my boy, all the memories of Windlow's life. They may not be 
exactly as they were in Windlow's head before, but they are there."
I felt as though someone had told me I was not quite guilty of some grave crime. 
The face was not Windlow's face, the body not Windlow's body, but in those 
memories Windlow still lived. Except-he lived alloyed with another. Silver 
melted with tin is still silver, and yet it appears in a new guise. One cannot 
call pewter silver with honesty, and yet all the silver one started with is 
contained therein. Unless, I thought, the mix was rather more like oil and wine, 
in which case the oil would rise to the top and the wine lie below, seething to 
be so covered. Was he silver, Windlow, or oil? Or was he wine? Did it matter, so 
long as he lived? For a time.
For it would be only for a time. Until what he knew and thought became no longer 
relevant or necessary and was forgotten. But that was the same with all of us. 
We were only what we were for a time, at that time. Then our own silver began to 
mix with the tin of our future to change us. I knew this to be so and grieved 
for Windlow while I grieved for me. In time I would not be this Peter, even as 
now I was not the Peter of two years ago who had grieved for Tossa on the road 
to the Bright Demesne. Yet that Peter was not lost. So Windlow was not lost, and 
yet he was not Windlow, either.
Silkhands took me by the hand and led me away, shaking her head and murmuring to 
herself and me. She had loved him, too, perhaps more than I had done, and I 
wondered if she felt as oddly torn as I did. We did not speak of it just then. 
Instead, we sat beside the fire, drinking tea and looking into the flames as 
though to see our futures there, my head feeling like a vacant hall, all echoing 
space and dust in the corners. We heard Queynt and Barish-Windlow come up out of 
the place, so we went below to raise up Trandilar and Sorah. If what was to come 
was wreck and ruin upon us all I did not want them lying helpless under the 
stones.
There was some milling about when they were all raised up, with much talk, 
before Hafnor flicked himself away to the north, hoptoad, to see what moved 
against us. Night was coming, the second night since we had raised up Thandbar. 
I had spent two days and a night below, and the morrow would be the third day 
since Huld's host had left Hell's Maw. I warmed my hands at the fire while 
hoping Himaggery and Mavin would reach us before Huld did, even though I feared 
it unlikely. There was nothing much we could do in the dark. I told Thandbar of 
my meeting with the Bonedancer outside Three Knob, and he chuckled without 
humor. "Grole, eh? Well, I've done that, or something like. It'll take time to 
grow big, though, so I'll go back among those rocks when we have eaten. I relish 
the taste of these birds more than the flavor of stone." He had been hunting, as 
I had done a few days before, in the guise of a fustigar.
So we sat eating and warming ourselves, thinking small thoughts of old comforts 
and joys. I kept remembering the kitchens in Mertyn's House and the warm pools 
at the Bright Desmesne. In the hot seasons, one does not often remember how 
delicious it is to be warm, but beside this fire in the high, windswept wastes, 
I thought of warm things. Jinian sat down beside me to take my cold hand in her 
own and rub it into liveliness. I used it to stroke her cheek, feeling I had not 
seen her for days. Across the fire, Kelver did something similar with Silkhands 
and smiled across the coals at me in shared sympathy. Queynt was talking to the 
krylobos, freeing them from their harness so that they could leave us. They 
stalked away over the wasteland, into the darkness, making a harsh, bugling cry. 
"They do not like those who feed upon the shadowpeople," Queynt said. "They will 
bring some help for us from among the krylobos and gnarlibars. I do not expect 
it will amount to much, but they will feel better for its having been tried. I 
wish there were some of the eesty here, though they would probably refuse to 
interfere...."
Dorn talked of laying bones down again which another had raised, telling stories 
of the long past and the far away. Some, I am sure, were not meant to be 
believed, but only to cheer us. Some were funny enough to laugh at, despite the 
plight we found ourselves in. Then Trandilar took up the storytelling, stories 
of glamour and romance and undying love, turning the fullness of her Beguilement 
on us so that we forgot the bones of Hell's Maw, forgot Huld, forgot the cold 
and the high wastes to live for a time in such lands and cities as we had never 
dreamed of. And all this time Sorah and Wafnor passed the food among us, saving 
nothing for the morrow, thinking, I suppose, that we would be too busy to eat 
then and glad of anything we had eaten tonight. So it was we were all replete, 
and so Beguiled by Trandilar that danger had vanished from our minds, and we 
were calm and still as a day in summer, lying close together in our blankets, to 
drift into sleep. I think Trandilar probably walked among us all night long, 
softly speaking words which led us into pleasant dreams, for when we woke in the 
morning, it was with a sense of happy fulfillment and courage for the day. Now 
it was Barish passed the cups among us, but I saw him gathering the herbs he put 
into them from the rock crevasses, and the way he searched them out and bent 
above them, the way he crushed them and brought them to his nose, all that was 
Windlow. The brew was hot and bitter, but it brought alertness of an almost 
supernatural kind. We had just finished it when Hafnor returned to tell us our 
fears were less than the truth.
"This Demon Huld, whom you have made so effectively your enemy, must have been 
recruiting Necromantic Talents for a generation or more. He has Sorcerers as 
well, aplenty, and such a host of bones and liches as the world may collapse 
under. They stretch from horizon to horizon, across the neck of the wastes from 
the gorge of the Graywater to the valley of the Reave."
"What of the Gamesmen within that host of bones?" asked Jinian. "Talents which 
are useless against bones may be used against the Gamesmen."
"If one can get at them through the host of bones," replied Hafnor. "You will 
have to see it for yourself. The Gamesmen are within the bones as a zeller 
stands in the midst of a field of grain. You cannot get to them without scything 
what stands in between."
"I have found chasms full of brush," offered Buinel. He was not quite so odd in 
person as I had pictured him, still fussy and inclined to procedural questions, 
but he seemed to have grasped the danger we faced and be trying to make sensible 
suggestions. "When the bones cross them, they will cross a river of fire."
"And I will seek out Huld among the hosts of bones," said Tamor. "He comes from 
the north, which means I can come at him from out of the sun. If my hands have 
not utterly lost their cunning in these long centuries." He bent his bow 
experimentally, heard the string snap, and bit back a curse. "Well, I have 
others. Lords, what a time and place to awaken to." A little later I saw him go 
out with his bow strung.
Didir had spent some time with Barish. I saw her holding his hand, leaning her 
head against his, face puzzled and remote. She had loved him, I had heard. Now 
he was no longer the Barish she had known. I pitied her; Windlow was her 
stranger as Barish was mine. Neither of us quite knew our old companions. She 
stood up beside him at last, laid her cheek against his, then moved away. "I 
will do what I can to let you know what is in Huld's mind," she said. "Though it 
is probable that we know exactly what is in his mind now. He will overrun us in 
order to demonstrate his strength to those allied with him. He says he seeks 
Barish, but that is probably only pretense. He seeks to overrun the world, and 
this will be his first trial." She moved off to some high place, striding with 
great dignity but, I thought, a little sadness. Barish looked after her, the 
expression on his face one of remote sorrow. I turned from them both, for it 
hurt to see them.
Trandilar announced her intention of going down into the cavern, with Sorah and 
Dealpas, and staying there until needed or wanted by someone. "We will be out of 
the way," she said. "You need no Beguilement. If Visions will help, we will 
bring them to you. If a Healer is wanted, call down to Dealpas."
Hafnor had gone back to spying on the host. Wafnor had placed himself near a 
pile of great boulders. Shattnir was standing in the sun, arms wide, soaking up 
all the power she could to help us all. This left me, Peter, among the 
Wizards-Barish, Vulpas, Jinian. King Kelver stayed with them also, but I thought 
I would emulate Thandbar and become a grole once again.
I had barely time to engrole myself and gain size before I felt the tickle in my 
head which said Huld was seeking his prey. Long and long I had leaned upon 
Didir's protection in such cases, and strangely enough it did not forsake me. I 
remembered the pattern of her cover and dipped beneath it as I went on chewing 
at the stone. He could not find me. With Didir on watch, I thought it unlikely 
he could find any of us.
I had set myself in a high notch between the flat plateau he marched across and 
the tumbled stone we were hidden in. Stone lay above me as well as below and to 
either side. I made eyes for myself for, though groles were blind, I chose not 
to be. I needed to watch for Himaggery. I needed to see Huld's approach. It was 
not far to see, not far at all, for he came upon us like a monstrous wave, a 
creeping rot, a fungus upon that land, white and rotten gray with the brilliance 
of banners like blood in the midst of it. I could not see individual skeletons, 
only the angular mass of it, as though a heap of white straw blew toward me in a 
mighty wind, all joints and angles, scattered all over with white beads which 
were the skulls of those which marched. I could not see the Gamesmen. I only 
knew where they were by the shimmering of the banners, for the bones carried 
nothing but themselves. Within that mass somewhere were drummers, for we could 
all hear the brum, brum, brum which set the pace of the bones. Perhaps the 
Bonedancers marched near the drums, to keep their time from the far west of the 
great horde to the far east of it, coming in an unwavering line. Brum, brum, 
brum. It sent shivers through the stone I rested upon, louder and louder as they 
came nearer.
First into the fray was old Tamor, though he had not been so old as to warrant 
that name when he laid down to sleep. He was younger than Himaggery by a good 
bit. I saw him come toward the host out of the sun, saw his arrows darting 
silver, then a retreating streak as he fled away before the spears which came 
after him. Huld's Tragamors were alert. I did not see him again for a time, then 
caught a glimpse of him, glittering and high, just before another flight of 
spears. This time the spears arched higher, and I thought I saw him lurch and 
fall, but he did not come to the ground. I felt Demon tickle, then Didir's voice 
in my head. Evidently she knew me so well she could speak to me easily even now. 
"We see him, Peter. Kelver and Silkhands are working their way around to the 
west where he came to the ground. There are birds here who will carry them...."
So. Yittleby and Yattleby had returned, their recruitment done, to help us as 
best they could. Well, at least Silkhands would be out of the battle. At least 
she and Kelver would have some time to themselves, to share what had been 
growing between them all this long way from Reavebridge. If Tamor were not 
seriously injured, perhaps all three would survive. For a time. Looking at the 
army marching toward us, I thought there was little hope for any survival longer 
than a season or two. Huld would not stop with overrunning us. As Didir said, we 
were only an excuse to try his strength. If he had truly wanted Barish, he would 
have come with fewer and cleverer than he had brought. No, this was to be 
warning to the world, a flexing of his muscle. I hated him in that moment, hated 
him for all he cared nothing about-for love and honor and truth and a word he 
had never heard: justice.
The bones had come closer. They were approaching a great chasm now, a canyon 
brimmed with thorn. The bones leapt across it, light as insects, not even 
brushing the branches. They came in dozens and hundreds and thousands, then the 
Gamesmen behind them, Bonedancers lifted over the tearing thorn in Armiger arms.
The chasm went up in flame, all at once, a sheet of fire leagues long and tower 
high. I was too far away to hear the Bonedancers screaming, but I saw them fall 
in fiery arcs into that towering pyre. The bones kept coming, piling in and 
burning, falling as the thorn burned away to make room for more. They never 
stopped, not even for an instant, but went on scrambling across like spiders. 
Somewhere inside my great grole shape Peter puzzled at what he had seen. Why had 
the bones kept coming when the Bonedancers died? Other Bonedancers back in the 
host? Or simply one of those special cases in which things once raised went on 
of themselves? If that were so, then whatever we might do against the Gamesmen 
themselves would not help us.
"Some are gone, Buinel," I whispered to myself. "But there are more coming than 
all the thorn in the world can burn."
The rock beneath me throbbed; boulders began to heave themselves up from the 
hillside to launch away in long curves toward the center of the host. They were 
aimed at Huld, surely, but his Tragamors deflected them. They flew aside, bowled 
through acres of bones, crushing a hundred skulls or more to leave the fragments 
dancing, a shower of disconnected white, like a flurry of coarse snow. The first 
great stone was followed by others, and the center of the host milled about, 
slowed for a moment. What did Huld intend? Would he merely overrun us, smother 
us under that weight of bones? Or were some among that host seeking us, seeking 
Barish, making an excuse for this Game, Great Game, the Greatest this world had 
ever seen?
Still they came on. We had done nothing to slow them, not with Tamor's arrows or 
Wafnor's great stones. I had seen no evidence that Dorn had tried to put this 
host down, and having seen the size of it, I did not blame him. It would have 
been like calming the sea with a spoonful of oil. Far to my right I saw the 
first files of bones entering the defile where Thandbar waited. "Good appetite, 
kinsman," I wished him. He was not far from me. Even as I made my wish for him, 
the first of the horde poured onto the flat before me, threading between the 
mighty Wind's Bones, the huge star-shaped skeletons of this world, bones 
arranged like my own grole bones. I settled myself, scrunching into the rock, 
mouth open.
Didir called in my head. "Peter! Sorah has Seen ... Seen. .."
Gamelords, I said to myself. What matter what she has Seen. They are about to 
overrun us, bury us, sift us out with bony fingers and take us away to the 
horrors of Hell's Maw. Far out on the field I saw the rush and flutter of 
krylobos attacking the fringes where some Gamesmen stood. Run, kick, and run 
away. A few bones fell, a few liches stumbled, nothing more. Big as they were, 
the big birds were not large enough to afflict this host.
And now a circlet of banners came toward me, Huld in the midst of his Gamesmen, 
Prionde at his side, borne on the shoulders of his minions, Ghouls posturing in 
tattered finery around him. Was that Dazzle among them? Oh, surely not. And yet, 
given Huld's purposes of terror, why not.
And, as I had done for two years, over and over, I reached for the Gamesmen of 
Barish, for comfort, for kindness, for safety, for reassurance-and found them. 
All. All with me in my great grole body with its star-shaped skeleton, all with 
me in my great this-world shape, looking out at the threatening horde where it 
poured like water among the Wind's Bones....
Between me and the marching skeletons a leg bone loomed, half buried, stone 
heavy, not stone, so obviously not stone I gasped to have thought it stone so 
long. These were not Wind's Bones. These were not carvings done by wind and 
water. These were old bones, real bones, true bones, this-world bones of some 
ancient and incredible time. I cried to Dorn and Shattnir in my head, screamed 
at them to help me raise that bone up, to feed me the power to raise that bone 
up, screamed to Wafnor to break the soil at its base, to all of them to look, 
see, join, move, fight. I saw the mighty bone heave, the rock around it cracking 
and breaking to spatter away in dry particles. It came out of the ground like a 
tree, growing taller and taller, lunging upward from its hidden root, one great 
shape, and then another linking to it, then another and another yet, the five 
link bones and then the arching ribs, the neck, the monstrous skull armed with 
teeth as long as my legs, the whole standing ten man heights tall at the 
shoulder, moving toward the skeleton host who came on, unseeing, into fury.
The Wind's Bones went to war, to war, and not alone. Others sprouted from the 
soil of the place, a harvest so great and horrible no Seer would have believed 
it. They came out of the rock in their dozens and hundreds, sky tall, huge as 
towers, flailing, trampling down with feet like hammers of steel, the pitiful 
human skeletons falling before them like scythed grain to be trampled and 
winnowed by prodigious feet and by the wind. Particles of bone went flying on 
that wind, west and north, away and away in an endless, billowing, powdery 
cloud.
Before me the first monster had overstepped Huld to leave him behind with a few 
of his Gamesmen, a Bonedancer or two thrown into panic, a Ghoul, and yes-Dazzle. 
They looked about them wildly. I heard Huld screaming at them, threatening them 
for having raised up these giants. Were they to retreat? Of course. Away, away 
from the horrors they thought they had raised, away from the creatures who had 
owned this world before they came, away from this justice they had not sought, 
into the defile where they might find a way out, but did not.
You must believe me when I tell you that I shut the grole maw upon them and 
merely held them there in that rock hard prison of myself while I thought long 
about justice and goodness and all those things Windlow had often told me of. I 
did not grind at once. I waited. I waited, and thought, and listened to them 
within, for they could speak and pound upon my walls and threaten one another 
still, though they did it in the dark. I tried to remember any good thing Huld 
might have done. He had played a part in Bannerwell, pretending shock and 
remorse at his thalan's terrible plans and as terrible deeds, but that had all 
been pretense. It had been his way of doing what he pleased while pretending not 
to be responsible for it; thus he could continue for a time in the respect and 
honor of the world. His true self had been seen in the cavern beneath the 
mountains of the magicians, and in Hell's Maw, for though I had not seen him 
there, I had heard enough to make me sure of him. What was he, the real Huld, 
the true man?
And after a time, I answered my own question.
He was not. true man at all. He was only aberration, beast, hate and hunger, 
without a soul. If the Midwives had delivered him, he would not have lived past 
his birth. As it was, he did not deserve to live further. So. Then the grole 
bore down and gained out of him what good there was in him. In return for the 
terror you brought Silkhands, and the pain you brought me, and the horror you 
brought the world, I bring you peace, Huld. So I thought.
And after a long time there, watching what it was the great bones of this world 
did upon the wastes of Bleer, I gave up bulk and went up onto the stones to find 
my friends. Then we sat there together in wonder until the thing was done. Dorn 
was not moving them, nor was I, nor Wafnor. They drew no power from us. They 
warred because the world desired that they do so.
I saw in them giants which could have been pombis, or fustigars; things long and 
curled which might have been groles of some ancient and mightier time. Things 
with great scimitar teeth raged among the Gamesmen while the trampling of the 
bones continued. It went on well into the night. Long, long after the last of 
Huld's Gamesmen were dead or had fled away, the great beasts of the heights 
continued their battle. Only toward dawn did they begin to collapse and fall, to 
lie as we had seen them first upon the high plateau, like wind carved things, 
dead, gone these hundred thousand years. Among them ranged the shadowpeople, 
singing lustily, piping upon their flutes and calling my name and Jinian's. When 
we went down to them, they clustered about us and begged earnestly for something 
roasted and juicy. Not for them any lasting awe, thus not for me. We fed them, 
and sang with them, and in the dawn we saw Himaggery and Mavin falling toward us 
out of the sky.



13
Talent Thirteen




THEY CAME, DRAGON AND DRAGON-BACK, Mavin and Himaggery. Behind them came a small 
host of Armigers, flown not from the Bright Demesne but from some place north of 
Schooltown. One of Himaggery's Seers had told him help would be needed long 
before my message reached them. I began to be a little acid about this until 
Mavin hushed me.
"The Seer said we would not be needed during the conflict, but afterward. 
Indeed, look around you. Where are any Gamesmen standing against you? There are 
none. Not against one of my tricksy line."
She was right, of course. Somehow the battle had been not merely turned but 
decisively won. Chance was jogging about saying "Obliterated" over and over. He 
had observed the battle through his glass from a safe distance. "Obliterated." 
The word, I thought, could be applied to a number of things with equal 
pertinence. There was no time to consider it. Himaggery had to be introduced to 
Barish and to the Wizard's Eleven, he so overcome by awe and respect during this 
process as to lose all his crafty volubility for the space of several hours. 
When Mertyn arrived, the introductions were repeated, and again at the arrival 
of Riddle and Quench.
I was very stiff with Riddle. He flushed bright red and almost sank to his knees 
begging my forgiveness. "My only thought was to learn what I could, Peter. I did 
not want you to know about it, as it was a matter secret to the Immutables. 
Quench assured me the cap was perfectly safe, that it could not harm you in any 
way...." He fell silent beneath my glare.
Jinian, who stood beside me during all this ceremony, saved the situation. 
"Peter knows that you meant him no harm, Riddle. But a Pursuivant is dead in the 
forests near Xammer, and whether you meant Peter harm or not, the result was 
harm to someone."
"My fault," asserted Quench. "You must forgive Riddle, young man. I did not 
understand the complexity of all this Gaming. I did not realize that death often 
results. I was too many years in that pest hole beneath the mountains. Nothing 
was real there. All was ritual and repetitions and hierarchy and concern about 
relative positions in the order of things. Nothing was real. You must forgive 
him. Hold me responsible, for I am."
The end result of which was that I offered Riddle my hand, though not smilingly, 
and accepted his explanation for what it was worth.
"It was a year ago, Peter, that I found some old papers of my grandfather's. 
They told of an ancient contract, a promise of honor between our people and 
Barish. I had never heard of it. My father was only a child when his father 
died. I was only a child when my father died. So if there had been a contract, 
this sacred and secret indebtedness, the chain of it had been broken at 
Dindindaroo. The papers spoke of a certain place in the north. You recall 
traveling with me a year ago. I left you below Betand to go on to Kiquo and over 
the high bridge into these wastes. It was all futile. There was no guide, no 
map, nothing.
"Then, not a season gone, came this fellow Vitior Vulpas Queynt to tell me of 
this same contract. He was full of hints, full of words and winks and nods. And 
at that same time, some of our people found Quench here wandering among the 
mountains to the west. Well, Quench and I put our heads together, and it seemed 
the only way we would know anything surely was to raise up my grandfather. As I 
said, we meant no harm."
"So that is why you were burrowing about in Dindindaroo," I said. "You had only 
recently learned of this ancient agreement."
"Learned of it," rumbled Quench, "for all the good it did us. I wanted proof the 
Gamesman Huld was a villain. I wanted to know where Barish had gone, and what 
this Council business was all about. Our own history spoke of Barish, mind you, 
and Vulpas too. I wanted to know everything, real things, but you sent us 
scurrying off to the south on an idiot's quest. Well. I suppose we deserved 
being ill led for having led you ill. Let it be past and forgotten."
"When we returned," said Riddle, "with empty hands, we went to Himaggery as we 
should have done in the first place. I knew him to be honorable. We should have 
gone there first."
"It would have saved us much thrashing about," said Himaggery, who had come up 
to us in the midst of all these revelations and confessions. "We were hunting 
Quench all over the western reaches from Hawsport south, and we were hunting 
Huld everywhere but Hell's Maw. We knew it for a den of horrors, a Ghoul's nest, 
but we did not envision Huld as master of the place. He had seemed too proud for 
such dishonor."
"I believe," said Jinian, "that we will find it necessary soon to revise our 
notions of dishonor." She squeezed my hand and left me to ruminate upon that 
while the others continued their explorations into history in a mood of such 
profound veneration that it almost immobilized them.
Dorn was not among the group. I went off looking for him. He was with Silkhands, 
Tamor, and King Kelver upon a bit of high ground near Barish's Keep. Tamor had 
been healed of his wound, though not of the wound to his pride, for he had been 
the only one of us to be wounded at all. He bowed himself away after a wink at 
me, as did Kelver and Silkhands, hand in hand, oblivious of much else in the 
world. I think I sighed. Dorn gave me a sharp look which I well recognized, 
though I had not seen it with physical eyes before.
"You had plans concerning her?" he asked.
"No. And yes," I confessed. "Yes, some time ago. But no, not since Kelver came 
along."
"And Jinian came along?"
That was rather more difficult. True, she had said she loved me at some confused 
point during the last day or two. True, she had told me I was clever and that 
had proved to be marginally accurate, if the outcome of the battle was any test. 
True, parts of me stirred at the thought of her, at times. But ...
"She says she is a Wizard," I said.
"Ah," said Dorn. "That is difficult."
"I think it is hard to love a Wizard," I said. "Though it is very good to make 
alliances with them."
"Who else knows of this Wizardry?"
"No one. I was not supposed to tell anyone, but you and Didir-well, you are part 
of me. It is like talking to myself. Oh, Chance knows, for he was there when she 
told me. But she doesn't trifle with the truth, Necromancer. If she says she is, 
she is."
"Oh, I have no doubt of it. I wonder if you've thought what else she is?"
"Another Talent than Wizardry! I didn't know such was possible."
He laughed. "Peter, the young are truly amazing. In each of the young, the world 
is reborn. No, I do not mean that Jinian has any other Talent. What she is, 
other than a Wizard, is a human person, female, about seventeen years old. In my 
experience, human persons of that age-and those considerably older also-are much 
alike. Most of them love, hate, weep, lust, tremble with fear. Most of them 
fight and forgive and resolve with high courage. May I suggest, if you are 
resolved upon friendship with Jinian, that it be with the person rather than 
with the Wizard. Likely the Wizard needs no one-not even Jinian herself. Likely 
Jinian needs someone during those times that the Wizard is not in residence." 
And he patted me very kindly as though I had been some half trained fustigar.
This so gained my attention that I wandered off for several hours and did not 
talk to anyone during that time.
Chance caught me when I returned. He wanted to talk about the battle, about the 
great bones, the mightiness of them. "And they went on and on, long after you'd 
all given up raising them. So Dorn and Queynt say."
I was truly puzzled by that, but I told him it was true, so far as I knew. "The 
forces of the world," he said, "according to Queynt. Oh, there's things here we 
know nothing of, according to Queynt." He spoke proudly, not at all awed or 
envious, possibly the only person in all that company save Jinian who accepted 
Vitior Vulpas Queynt as mere man. I knew Queynt had found a follower, a 
companion, a true friend. Well, part of me said, I no longer need a child 
minder. Well, part of me said, you will miss him dreadfully if he goes off with 
anyone else.
So.
What may I tell you?
Of Mavin and Thandbar? She approached him warily, ready to become a worshipper 
if he proved to be an idol, holding reverence in readiness. When I passed them 
an hour later, Mavin was telling him some story about Schlaizy Noithn, and he 
was bent double with laughter. I sniffed. I had not thought it that amusing when 
it had happened to me.
Of Barish-Windlow and Himaggery, circling one another in mixed antagonism and 
love, Himaggery full of protest and fury at the fate of the hundred thousand in 
the ice caverns, Windlow equally distraught, Barish trying to fight them on two 
fronts, justifying his experiment on the grounds of human progress. Himaggery 
wondered what it was a hundred thousand master Gamesmen were to do, how they 
were to live when released from age old bondage; Barish overrode Windlow's 
concern to shout that he expected people to use their heads about it. I pitied 
Barish and envied him. He had too much Windlow in him to be what he had once 
been. But then, what he had once been had needed a lot of Windlow in it.
Later I saw him bend down to pluck the leaves from a tiny gray herb growing in a 
crack of the stone. He crushed the leaves beneath his nostrils and touched them 
to his tongue as I had seen Windlow do a thousand times. I went to him then and 
hugged him, looking up to see the stranger looking at me out of Barish's eyes. 
But it was Windlow's voice which called me by name and returned my embrace.
Of Quench and the techs, gathered around the machine in Barish's Keep, talking 
in an impenetrable language while some of their group scavenged among the 
bookshelves. "Fixable!" Quench crowed at last. "The machine can be fixed! There 
are spare parts in the case. We can take the thing apart and reassemble it in 
the caverns...." So he had been set on a proper track by Himaggery and Mavin, 
and I was glad to have him among the people I liked and trusted. I decided to 
forgive him for that business with the cap. He had not meant it ill.
Of Mavin and Himaggery and Mertyn when they heard that the machine could be 
fixed? Of their plans to raise up the hundred thousand from their long sleep and 
bring them all to the purlieus of Lake Yost and the Bright Demesne? They were 
determined to raise them all in one place and build a better world from them.
Windlow-Barish, hearing this, was puzzled and torn once more. He started to say, 
"Now wait just a minute. That's not the way I had planned...." But then he fell 
silent, and I could sense the intense inner colloquy going on. Then the argument 
started all over again, and this time Windlow-Barish had things to say which 
Himaggery listened to with respect.
Later, of Jinian and Himaggery.
"Will you have Rules?" she asked. "In your new world?"
"There will be no irrevocable rules," he said ponderously. "How will you live?"
"We are going to try to do what Windlow would have wanted," he said. "He told us 
that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. 
He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a 
Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. 
He told us to seek justice rather than the Game. It was the laws, the rules 
which made Gaming. It was Gaming made injustice. We can only try something new 
and hope that it is better."
She left it at that. I left it at that, thankful that the thing Windlow had 
cared most about had a chance to survive.
Of Barish and Didir, standing close together and so engaged in conversation that 
they did not see me at all.
"Well, my love," he said. "And are you satisfied?"
"How satisfied? You told me to lie down for a few hundred years so that we might 
wake to build a new world out of time and hope and good intentions. So I wake to 
find others building that world, others in possession of your seed grain, others 
planning the harvest, another inhabiting you, my love. Perhaps I should think of 
something else. Have a child, perhaps. Raise goats...."
"There are no goats on this world, Didir. Zeller. You can raise zeller." 
"Zeller, then. I will domesticate some krylobos, become an eccentric, learn 
weaving."
"Will you stay with me, Didir?"
"I don't know you. This you. Perhaps I will. But then I would like to know what 
it is that Vulpas knows. How has he lived all this time while we slept?"
"Will you stay with me, Didir?
"Perhaps."
Of Buinel and Shattnir, drinking wine in Barish's Keep.
"And my thought was, Shattnir, that he should have written it down very plainly, 
not in that personal shorthand of his, and have made at least a hundred copies. 
They could have been filed in all the temples, and certainly it was a mistake to 
confide in only one line of the Immutables."
"It doesn't matter now, does it?" Shattnir, cold, impersonal.
"It's not a question of it mattering. It's a question of correct procedure! If 
he'd only asked me, I could have told him...."
Of Trandilar.
To me. "Well, my love, and what does your future hold of great interest and 
excitement?"
I blushed. "I haven't had a chance to think of it yet, Great Queen."
"Ah, Peter. Peter. Great Queen? Gracious. So formal. Do we not know one another 
well enough to let this formality go? Do you need to think about it, really? I 
should have thought your future would have raced to meet you, leapt into your 
heart all at once like the clutch of fate."
She was laughing at me, with me. She stroked my face, making the blush a shade 
deeper, and then went on.
"You do not want to be part of Himaggery's experiment, do you? There is scarce 
room in it for Himaggery and Barish, let alone any others. You would not live 
under their eyes and Mavin's? No. I thought not." She beckoned over my shoulder 
to someone, and then rose to hold out a hand to Sorah who sat beside us, laying 
her mask to one side.
"Sister," said Trandilar, "you see before you one who is quite young and 
confused. It would help him to know where his future lies."
Solemnly, but with a twinkle, Sorah put on the mask, smoothed it with long, 
delicate fingers, held out her hand in that hierarchic gesture the Seers 
sometimes make when they want to impress a multitude.
"I See, I See," she chanted, "jungles and cities, the lands of the eesties, the 
far shores of the Glistening Sea, and you, Peter, with a Wizard-a girl, yes, 
Jinian." Her voice was mocking only a little, kindly and laughing, and I readied 
myself to laugh with her. Then, suddenly, her voice deepened and began to toll 
like a mighty bell. "Shadowmaster. Holder of the Key. Storm Grower. The Wizard 
holds the book, the light, the bell. . . ." And she fell silent.
Trandilar shook her head. "Peter, learn from me. Mock Talent at your peril. It 
is no joke." And she helped Sorah away to find a place to lie down.
Of Peter and Jinian.
"It is probably difficult to live in close association with a Wizard," she said 
to me. "I believe Mavin found it so, which is why she and Himaggery have this 
coming and going thing between them. But then, it is not easy to know a Shifter, 
either."
"A Shifter is usually the same inside," I objected.
"Usually, though not always. Do we not learn from our shapes what we are? You 
have told me of Mandor. Did he not learn from his beauty what he became? Oh, I 
do not mean that there is goodness in some shapes and evil in others, but simply 
that we learn from them to our own good or ill. So might you change, Peter?"
"Don't Wizards change?" I wanted to ask her, desperately, what the Talent of 
Wizards might be, but I was too wary of the answer I might get. "Are they always 
the same?"
She grinned at me. "Oh, we change. I was quite content, so I thought, to become 
an alliance for my brother with King Kelver, until I met you, Peter."
"Kelver is better looking," I said.
"True, but then he is older. He has had a chance to grow up to his face. You may 
do the same, in time."
"You do not think me too young for alliancing?"
She sighed. "I think we are not too young to decide what we will do when we 
leave this place. Himaggery will expect you back at the Bright Demesne. I could 
return to Xammer. Neither of us wants to do that. I said a silly thing when I 
said we would do what Barish would have done. Barish will do it. Himaggery will 
do it. It is their plan, not mine."
I shifted from foot to foot, bit my lip, wondered what to say next. Then I 
thought of Sorah's words, not the bell tolling ones, but the earlier, laughing 
ones.
"Jinian, would you like to see the jungles and cities, the eesties, the shores 
of the Glistening Sea? Queynt is going there, so he says. He would let us go 
with him."
"Oh, Peter, I would like that more than anything." So what is left?
Hell's Maw.
We went there, Dorn, Himaggery, Mertyn, Mavin, and a host. There were bones 
there wandering free, moving on their own, talking to an old, blind man who 
wandered among them with a key, trying to find the lock he had lost. Dorn put 
them to rest, large and small, in such form as they may not ever be raised 
again. There is nothing left of the place now. Every stone of it has been 
tumbled and spread by a hundred Tragamors as far away as the Western Sea. There 
I linked the Gamesmen once again, realizing for the first time that I had what 
Himaggery called Talent Thirteen. Jinian was right. I do not need anyone but 
me-and a hundred or so Gamesmen with large Talents.
So you may picture us now as we ride to the very highest point of the road 
across the Dorbor Range, that place where the road bends down toward the jungles 
of the north. Queynt and Chance are upon the wagon; Yittleby and Yattleby are 
pulling them along with that measured, effortless stride. Jinian and I are 
looking back to the south where all the lands of the True Game are spread, town 
and demesne, land and stream, tower and field, far and veiled by distance in the 
light of the westering sun. There is no mist giant now to walk the edges of the 
world. We may walk it ourselves, in time, in chance, in hope.
Who knows?