“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 goes who 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 this¾this 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.