Sheri Tepper: Wizard’s Eleven

“Silkhands is there, Chance.” I didn’t mention the blues which were the ostensible reason for my trip.

“Well, except for her there’s nothing.”

Right enough. Except for her there was probably little, but between the blues and old Windlow the Seer, I had reason for going.

The Bright Demesne had been like a nest of warnets since Mavin, Himaggery, and I had returned from the place of the magicians in the north. Those two and Mertyn had great deeds aflight, and all the coming and going in pursuit of them was dizzying. They had been horrified to learn of the bodies of great Gamesmen stacked in their thousands in the icy caverns of the north and had resolved to reunite those bodies with the personalities which had once occupied them, personalities now scattered among the lands and Demesnes in the form of blues, tiny Games-pieces used in the School Houses in the instruction of students. Mavin had appointed herself in charge of locating all the blues and bringing them to the Bright Demesne, though how she planned to reunite them with the bodies was unknown unless she was depending upon the last of the magicians, Quench, to make it possible. In any case, uncertainty was not standing in the way of action. Pursuivants were dashing about, Elators were flicking in and out like whipcracks; the place was fairly screaming with arrivals and departures.

Coincident with all this was a quiet search for my enemy, Huld. We were all eager to find him, accounting him a great danger loose in the world and ourselves unable to rest in safety until he was in some deep dungeon or safely dead.

And, of course, there was still much conjecture and looking into the matter of that mysterious Council which was rumored to be managing or mismanaging our affairs from some far, hidden place of power. Anyone not otherwise occupied was trying to solve that enigma. Meantime, I traveled about, collected blues, spent little time at the Bright Demesne. Standing about under the eyes of an eccentric mother, a father who kept looking at me like a gander who has hatched a flitchhawk chick, and of my thalan, Mertyn, who persisted in treating me like a schoolboy, made me short-tempered and openly rebellious in a few short days. I said as much to the three of them, but I don’t think they heard me. They considered me a treasure beyond price until it came time to listen to me, and then I might as well have been a froglet going oh-ab, oh-ab, oh-ab in the ditches. I would like to have been involved at the center of things, but — well. It would have done no good to talk to Mavin about it. She was a tricksy one, my mother, and though I would have trusted her implicitly with my life, I could not trust her at all with my sanity. Matchless in times of trouble, as a day-to-day companion she had remarkable quirks. Himaggery and Mertyn were preoccupied. Chance was courting the widow in Thisp. There were no other young people at the Bright Demesne — all locked up in School Houses. What was there to do?

Given the state of my pockets, I had decided to go swimming. During my travels in Schlaizy Noithn, I had learned to do without clothing most of the time, growing pockets in my hide for the things I really wanted to carry about. When one can grow fangs and claws at will, it is remarkable how few things one really needs. Well, pockets in one’s skin sound all very well, but they accumulate flurb just as ordinary pockets do, and accumulated flurb itches. A good cure for this is to empty the pockets, turn them inside out and go swimming in one of the hot pools with the mists winding back and forth overhead and the wind breathing fragrance from the orchards. All very calm and pastoral and sweetly melancholy.

Well, enough of that was enough of that in short order. I sat on the grassy bank with the contents of my pockets spread out, sorting through them as one does, deciding what to do with a strange coin or an odd-shaped stone. While I was at it, I dumped out the little leather pouch which held the Gamesmen of Barish.

There had been thirty-two of the little figures when I had found them. Only eleven had been “real.” The others were merely copies and carvings made by some excellent craftsman in a long ago time in order to fill out a set of Gamespieces. The ones which were only carvings were in my room. The eleven real ones were becoming as familiar to me as the lines in my own hand.

There was Dorn, the Necromancer, death’s-head mask in one hand, dark visaged and lean. I could almost hear his voice, insinuating, dry, full of cold humor, an actorish voice. There was voluptuous Trandilar, Great Ruler, silver-blonde and sensual, lips endlessly pursed in erotic suggestion. There was Didir, face half hidden beneath the Demon’s helm, one hand extended in concentration, the feel of her like a knife blade worn thin as paper, able to cut to inmost thoughts and Read the minds of others.

There was stocky Wafnor the Tragamor, clear-eyed and smiling, his very shape expressing the strength with which he could Move things — mountains, if necessary. He had done that once for me. There was Shattnir, androgynous, cold, menacing, challenging, the most competitive of them all, the spikes of her Sorcerer’s crown alive with power. Beside her lay the robed form of Dealpas the Healer, tragic face hidden, consumed with suffering, her they called “Broken leaf.” And, last of those I knew well, Tamor the Armiger, Towering Tamor, poised upon the balls of his feet as though about to take flight, Grandfather Tamor, strong and dependable, quick in judgment, instant in action. I knew these seven, knew the feel of their minds in mine, the sound of their voices, the touch of their bodies as each of them remembered their own bodies. I could, if I concentrated, almost summon the patterns of them into my head without touching the images.

There were four others I had not held. Sorah, the Seer, face shadowed behind the moth-wing mask, future-knower, visionary. There was fussy Buinel, the Sentinel, Fire-maker, much concerned with protocol and propriety, full of worry, holding his flaming shield aloft. There was Hafnor, the Elator, wings on his heels, quicksilver, able to flick from one place to another in an instant. And, lastly, there was Thandbar the Shifter whose talent was the same as my own, tricksy Thandbar in his beast-head helm and mantle of pelts. They lay there, the eleven, upon the grass.

And one more.

One not disguised by paint as the Gamesmen were. One icy blue. Windlow. I had not taken him often into my hand, and there was reason for that, but I took him then beside the warm pools and held him in my palm out of loneliness and boredom and the desire to be with a friend. He came into my head like good wine and we had a long time of peacefulness during which I sat with my legs in the water and thought of nothing at all.

Then it was as though someone said “Ah” in a surprised tone of voice. My mind went dreamy and distant, with images running through it, dissolving one into another. My body sat up straight and began to breathe very fast; then it was over, and I heard Windlow saying inside my head, “Ah, Peter, I have had a Vision! Did you see it? Could you catch it?”

And I was saying, to myself, as it were, “A vision, Windlow? Just now? I couldn’t see anything. Just colors.”

“It is difficult to know,” he said. “Your head does not feel as mine did. It doesn’t work in the same way at all. How strange to remember that one once thought quite differently! It is like living in a new House and remembering the old one. Fascinating, the difference. I could wander about in here for years — ah. The vision. I saw you and Silkhands. And a place, far to the north, called — ’Wind’s eye.’ Important. Where is Silkhands?”

“You and Himaggery sent her to Xammer.” This was true. It had happened well over a year before, after the great battle at Bannerwell. Though Silkhands had long known that her sister and brother, Dazzle and Borold, were kin unworthy of her sorrow, when the end came at Bannerwell which sent Dazzle into long imprisonment and Borold to his death — for he had died there at the walls, posturing for Dazzle’s approval to the very end — it had been more than Silkhands could bear. She had cried to Himaggery and to old Windlow (this was long before Windlow had been captured by the traders and taken away) and they had sent her off to Xammer to be Gamesmistress at Vorbold’s House. She had gone to seek peace and, I had told her at the time, perpetual boredom. I had given her a brotherly kiss and told her she would be sorry she had left me. Well. Who knows. Perhaps she had been.