The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

“Come now,” I said overheartily, trying to hide the fact that my hands were trembling. “We must make plans. I am going from here to the ruins where I first met you because the men who attacked me on the road would have taken me there.”

“Dindindaroo,” she said, blinking in the firelight like an owl. “That’s the name of the place, or once was. Dindindaroo, the cry of the fustigar. It is said the place was once a main habitation of Immutables.”

“Truly? Why was it abandoned?”

“A flood, I think. And a great wind which laid waste to the land about there. At any rate, it was abandoned some three generations ago, perhaps eighty or a hundred years. We used to find old carvings and books when we were there. Himaggery spoke of sending a party of Rancelmen to explore, but he never did.”

“So the Immutables once occupied this place, Dindindaroo. Well, some villainy is centered upon it now, and I must go there in the guise of the Pursuivant to see what I can find. After that, however, if no sign of Quench has been found, why should I not go with you to the northlands? Windlow’s vision sees us there together, and the song directs us there. Let us go.”

She agreed hesitantly. “I must take Jinian to the court of the Dragon King at the Dragon’s Fire purlieu. He and another Ruler, Queen someone¾I’ve forgotten her name¾set up a Rulership there, a kind of King-Demesne. Having no sisters, he chose to build his strategy around sons rather than upon thalani, but all his sons save one were eaten in Game over the years. He has only one left, at school in Schooltown, Havad’s House, I believe. He is desirous of children to replace those lost.”

I remembered out of dim mists having heard that name. “Ah. So the Queen died. Or was lost in Game?”

“Died. Of too much childbearing to too little purpose, some say. Now he desires a strong young Gameswoman to bear him sons.”

“Who will also die of too many babies?”

She smiled a secret smile at me. “No. Our students learn better than that. We may teach them covert game, Peter, but we teach them to survive at it and their children as well. Jinian will not over-bear.”

I did not pursue the matter, though I thought with a pang of the girl who had given me that long, level, understanding look at the dinner. She had not looked like one who would go uncomplaining into such a life. Well. Who could say.

Silkhands went on: “It will be a few days before we are ready to leave. You have your own trip to make. How shall we combine our journeys later?” She looked at me, hopeful and luminous in the firelight. I would have promised to combine a journey with her to the stars, and she seemed to know that, making a pretty mouth at me in mockery. I gestured hopeless and resigned acquiescence, and we spent the remainder of the evening talking of other things. I think both of us thought then that we would become lovers. No. I think she thought it and I hoped it. We did nothing about it except stargazing. There seemed to be time, and no reason occurred to either of us to think time would run out. I can still remember the shape of her in firelight, half of her lit with a soft melon-colored light, the other half in darkness.

So the morning after that found me back in the inn with Chance. The Invigilator had come around to some extent. He would sit up when told, and walk, and eat, and relieve himself. He would do nothing at all unless told to do so, and the strange cap had been on him only one full day. When Didir looked into his head she found an emptiness. “As though untenanted,” she said. I was sorry then that we had put the thing on him. “Perhaps if it had not been on him so long,” whispered Didir, “the effect would have been less.”

We thought this likely. My assailants could not have wanted to make me witless. What good would I have been to them in that condition? I could not even have served as bait. No, the Invigilator had simply been caught in his own trap, but I mourned nonetheless that his body lived while his mind was gone.