The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

We walked as on a road of glass. The appearance of fire was only reflection from the geysers and fountains to either side. Rivers of fire ran beside us. Heaped mountains of half molten stuff built into fantastic shapes. From these came heat as from a furnace, but upon the road we walked it was cool. We seemed to be crossing a narrow neck of the fiery land between two towering heights crowned with spouting smoke which boiled upward toward the bloody cloud, hideous and heavy with ash and rain. Before me the little ones began to run, gamboling from side to side of the way. “Chirrup, chirrup, Peter, eater, ter, ter.”

An answering call came from ahead. We ventured between the last flaming fountains to emerge upon a hillside, green and cool, with a steady wind blowing the heat away and a glint of water showing among the trees. The little ones leapt on, me laboring after them, wishing I had taken time to pack properly and roll my blankets so they would not fall around my feet. As it was, I arrived in a shambling rush, half tripped up by trailing bedstuffs, red-faced from the heat and the hurry, to fall on my face before the one who awaited us. She did me the discourtesy of laughing rudely.

“Rise, Sir Gamesman,” she said, sneering at the tumbled stuff around me. She turned away to hold a multi-syllabled conversation with the quadrumanna which seemed to much delight them, for they giggled endlessly and rolled upon the ground clutching at themselves.

“I have asked them,” she said, “if you are one of the mythical tumble-bats who roll themselves endlessly through the world not knowing their heads from their tails. They are inclined to believe this, though they say you are a good provider and are, possibly the one whose travel was arranged for by Mavin Manyshaped. Are you indeed he?”

“She is my mother,” I said wearily.

“Ah. Well then, you are he. Mavin has not so many sons that we would mistake one of them for another. Your name would be Peter?”

“Yes. And yours?”

“You may call me Thynbel, or Sambeline. Or anything else you would rather.”

I grasped at the last name. Sambeline. “Did my mother arrange for you to meet me?”

“Indeed, no. She arranged for me to meet the people of Proom to pay them for their trouble in guiding you here. Though they say they are already well paid since they have your horse.”

“My horse? What will they do with my horse?”

“It may be they will sell him, but I think they will eat him.” I could think of no reply to this. It was not a horse I had loved or cared for, but still, it was a good horse. A well-trained horse. A horse which had served me well. “If you pay them, would they consent not to eat the horse?”

“It may be. Or I may pay them and they may eat the horse regardless. But I will try for you.”

So she did, engaging in a lengthy and intricate argument, full of words which echoed themselves endlessly. At last the little people giggled a final round, held out their hands for their pay, and had put into those hands a wealth of silvery bells and metal flutes, bright as the sun. They clasped my legs, slapped my sides, called me “Peter, eater, ter, ter” one last time and went capering back down the trail of false fire into the distant dawn.

Sambeline waved at them, turned to me, saying, “They say they will turn the horse loose in the meadows until you return. Peter. They may do that. They may forget. They may do it and then forget and eat it later. They forget a lot, those little ones. They forget where they put their bells and flutes. They lose them by the dozens. So they are always eager for more and are willing to be paid. If they did not lose things, they would not work for us at all. Now they will have music for a time and sing many long songs of their trip to the firelands with the son of Mavin Manyshaped.”