The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

“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.