The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

“It knew someone was here,’’ whispered Didir within. “But it did not know where you were.” I slid down the wall to lie in a puddle at its base, a puddle in which the little pouch which held the Gamesmen of Barish seemed the only solid thing.

“Pull yourself together, boy,” said Didir sternly. “Give me a shape I can think in!” She slapped at me, a quiver of electric pain which cared nothing for the shape I was in. I struggled into the form of furred-Peter, placed the Gamesmen in my pocket and waited. Far off and receding came the clamor of the great doors. I eavesdropped then upon a conversation among ghosts. Dorn and Didir, Wafnor and Shattnir, with Trandilar as an interested observer, all talking at once, or trying to, as I tried to stay out of my own head enough to give them room. It went on for a long time, too long, for down the echoing corridors the sounds of the doors returned.

“Enough,” I snapped, patience worn thin. “None of you is listening to the others. Be still. Let me have the use of my head!” There was a surprised silence and a sense almost of withdrawal, perhaps amused withdrawal. I didn’t care. Let them laugh at me as they would. It was my body I needed to protect.

I set out my findings as Gamesmaster Gervaise had once taught me, high in the cold aeries of Schooltown, setting out the known, the extrapolated, the merely guessed. “Didir finds no mind in this place. If there were a mind, Didir would find it, therefore, there is no mind here. Nonetheless, we are in a place which shows evidence of intelligence, of design, a place which probably did not occur by accident or out of confusion. Therefore, if there is no mind now, at one time there was. If it is not here, it is gone—or elsewhere.” I waited to be contradicted, but those within kept silent.

I went on obstinately, “Despite all this, there is something in the place, something primordial and evil, which allows outsiders to come in but will not let them out again. It is a trap, a mindless trap, inhabited by what?”

“A devil?” The voice was Wafnor’s, doubtful.

“What are devils?” asked Didir. Silence.

“What is left when the mind dies?” This was Dorn, thoughtful. “If the body were to go on living, after the mind were dead.” I thought. Beneath Bannerwell, in the dungeons there, after the great battle, we had found several Gamesmen with living bodies whom Silkhands the Healer had cried over, saying they should be allowed to die for their minds were already dead, root-Read, burned out, leaving only what she called living meat. They had breathed, swallowed, stared with sightless eyes at nothing. Himaggery had let her have her way, and she had sent them into kind sleep. Didir read my memory of this.

“What mind does the lizard have upon the rock?” she asked. “What mind the crocodilian in the mire? Mind enough to eat, to breathe, to fight, to hold its own territory against others of its kind—of any kind. So much, no more. No reason, no imagination.”

“How long,” breathed Dorn. “How long could it survive?”

“Forever,” whispered Didir. “Why not? What enemies could stand against it?”

“So, I questioned them, ‘‘the creator of this place is … dead? Perhaps long dead? But something of … it … survives, some ancient, very primitive part?”

Outside the room the hissing began, the door began to open. I flowed across the wall once more, quickly, for it entered the room in one hideous rush of fury. I sensed something which sought the intruder, something ready to rend and tear. This time it stayed within the room for a long, restless time, turning again and again to examine the room, the surfaces of it, the smell and taste of it. Terrified time passed until at last it flowed away again, out the other door, away down the corridors of the place.

“How do we stop it?” They did not answer me. “Come,” I demanded. “Help me think! Was the place built? Or is it rather like that hillside I sat upon which spoke to me? Are we within the body of a Shifter?”