The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

“Well, and what if the Healer cannot? Or you cannot? Then she must live or die with what is, as we all must. It will not lie upon your shoulders, Peter. If blame be found, let it be found on Nap’s hands.”

“You could go further back than that,” I said bitterly. “To the Shifter who sold Izia when she was only a child. She could not have been more than seven or eight then. Taken from Game knows where; sold for Game knows what reason.”

“Do not say ‘Shifter’ in that tone,” Swolwys demanded. “It could have been a Seer, or a Tragamor, or a pawn, for all that. Each plays his Game, and Games eat men. They eat children, also, but it is the Game does it, not the Gamesman.”

“Some Gamesmen do,” I said, thinking of Mandor, and Nap, and the fat Duke of Betand. Swolwys was right, though. I did tend to think ill of Shifters, both because of Schlaizy Noithn and because of … Yarrel. What brought Yarrel to mind? I had not seen him since he walked away from me outside Bannerwell, giving up our friendship, turning his back on me. His face swam into my mind, dark hair, level brows, large-nosed and generous-lipped. I pressed my hands to my face and shook myself. Now was not the time to indulge in this bitter­sweet nostalgia. I went into the cave.

“Let me try Dealpas,” I said to Mavin. “Though it may not work. Silkhands the Healer told me that tissue, once dead, cannot be healed.”

Mavin had uncovered Izia’s legs and was studying them as I spoke. The boots had come high upon her thighs, almost to the crotch, and there was a line around her thighs there, healthy pink glow of flesh above, gray scabrous hide below, like a dis­eased lizard. “I do not think the tissue is dead,” she said. “I think the boots did not really burn at all, but acted directly upon the nerves. This flesh is abnormal, but it lives.”

“Well, let us hope Dealpas will know.” I reached into the pocket to find the little Gamesman. I had to search among them. Dealpas did not come into my hand readily. My fingers chased her among the other pieces, catching her finally against my flesh. She came reluctantly, slowly, with infinite regret. “I thought I had left all this,” I felt her say. “Pain. Suffering. I thought I was done with it.”

“There is never an end,” said Didir.

“Never,” echoed Dorn. And from the others within I heard agreement, according to their natures. There was Wafnor’s sturdy cheer, Shattnir’s cold challenge, Trandilar’s passion. And among them Dealpas stood as one weeping.

I was firm. “Come, there is work here.”

“There is always work.” But she came, regretfully, until I laid my hands on Izia’s flesh, and then she was as a rushing stream. I could not follow what it was she did. It was like Shifting in a way, for filaments seemed to flow from my own hands into the flesh of Izia. It was like Moving, in a way, for once there the filaments stretched and tasted and smelled at things, chased down long white bundles of fiber, paddled through blood, marched unerringly along great columns of bone. It was easy to find the wrongness, less easy to set it right. Expeditions went out into far-flung territories of gut and fluid, into intimate halls of gland, bubbling hotly in wrinkled caverns, to return with this and that thing, to pump and build and stretch, to open cell walls and herd things, as a herdsman his flock, which twinkled and spun like stars, to clamp upon sparkling nerves so that no hint of pain could move past the place it originated. I watched, sniffed, tasted, and was one with Dealpas. I learned. I would have to have been witless not to have learned, but withal that learning I could tell there was a universe she knew and I never would.

Until, after a long time, she separated herself from me and became what she had been, a withdrawing presence, a mind which demanded to be let alone, to rest, to sleep, never to be wakened.