Sheri Tepper - Wizard’s Eleven

Still they came on. We had done nothing to slow them, not with Tamor’s arrows or Wafnor’s great stones. I had seen no evidence that Dorn had tried to put this host down, and having seen the size of it, I did not blame him. It would have been like calming the sea with a spoonful of oil. Far to my right I saw the first files of bones entering the defile where Thandbar waited. “Good appetite, kinsman,” I wished him. He was not far from me. Even as I made my wish for him, the first of the horde poured onto the flat before me, threading between the mighty Wind’s Bones, the huge star-shaped skeletons of this world, bones arranged like my own grole bones. I settled myself, scrunching into the rock, mouth open.

Didir called in my head. “Peter! Sorah has Seen … Seen…”

Gamelords, I said to myself. What matter what she has Seen. They are about to overrun us, bury us, sift us out with bony fingers and take us away to the horrors of Hell’s Maw. Far out on the field I saw the rush and flutter of krylobos attacking the fringes where some Gamesmen stood. Run, kick, and run away. A few bones fell, a few liches stumbled, nothing more. Big as they were, the big birds were not large enough to afflict this host.

And now a circlet of banners came toward me, Huld in the midst of his Gamesmen, Prionde at his side, borne on the shoulders of his minions, Ghouls posturing in tattered finery around him. Was that Dazzle among them? Oh, surely not. And yet, given Huld’s purposes of terror, why not.

And, as I had done for two years, over and over, I reached for the Gamesmen of Barish, for comfort, for kindness, for safety, for reassurance — and found them. All. All with me in my great grole body with its star-shaped skeleton, all with me in my great this-world shape, looking out at the threatening horde where it poured like water among the Wind’s Bones…

Between me and the marching skeletons a leg bone loomed, half buried, stone heavy, not stone, so obviously not stone I gasped to have thought it stone so long. These were not Wind’s Bones. These were not carvings done by wind and water. These were old bones, real bones, true bones, this-world bones of some ancient and incredible time. I cried to Dorn and Shattnir in my head, screamed at them to help me raise that bone up, to feed me the power to raise that bone up, screamed to Wafnor to break the soil at its base, to all of them to look, see, join, move, fight. I saw the mighty bone heave, the rock around it cracking and breaking to spatter away in dry particles. It came out of the ground like a tree, growing taller and taller, lunging upward from its hidden root, one great shape, and then another linking to it, then another and another yet, the five link bones and then the arching ribs, the neck, the monstrous skull armed with teeth as long as my legs, the whole standing ten man heights tall at the shoulder, moving toward the skeleton host who came on, unseeing, into fury.

The Wind’s Bones went to war, to war, and not alone. Others sprouted from the soil of the place, a harvest so great and horrible no Seer would have believed it. They came out of the rock in their dozens and hundreds, sky tall, huge as towers, flailing, trampling down with feet like hammers of steel, the pitiful human skeletons falling before them like scythed grain to be trampled and winnowed by prodigious feet and by the wind. Particles of bone went flying on that wind, west and north, away and away in an endless, billowing, powdery cloud.

Before me the first monster had overstepped Huld to leave him behind with a few of his Gamesmen, a Bonedancer or two thrown into panic, a Ghoul, and yes — Dazzle. They looked about them wildly. I heard Huld screaming at them, threatening them for having raised up these giants. Were they to retreat? Of course. Away, away from the horrors they thought they had raised, away from the creatures who had owned this world before they came, away from this justice they had not sought, into the defile where they might find a way out, but did not.

You must believe me when I tell you that I shut the grole maw upon them and merely held them there in that rock hard prison of myself while I thought long about justice and goodness and all those things Windlow had often told me of. I did not grind at once. I waited. I waited, and thought, and listened to them within, for they could speak and pound upon my walls and threaten one another still, though they did it in the dark. I tried to remember any good thing Huld might have done. He had played a part in Bannerwell, pretending shock and remorse at his thalan’s terrible plans and as terrible deeds, but that had all been pretense. It had been his way of doing what he pleased while pretending not to be responsible for it; thus he could continue for a time in the respect and honor of the world. His true self had been seen in the cavern beneath the mountains of the magicians, and in Hell’s Maw, for though I had not seen him there, I had heard enough to make me sure of him. What was he, the real Huld, the true man?

And after a time, I answered my own question.

He was not true man at all. He was only aberration, beast, hate and hunger, without a soul. If the Midwives had delivered him, he would not have lived past his birth. As it was, he did not deserve to live further. So. Then the grole bore down and gained out of him what good there was in him. In return for the terror you brought Silkhands, and the pain you brought me, and the horror you brought the world, I bring you peace, Huld. So I thought.

And after a long time there, watching what it was the great bones of this world did upon the wastes of Bleer, I gave up bulk and went up onto the stones to find my friends. Then we sat there together in wonder until the thing was done. Dorn was not moving them, nor was I, nor Wafnor. They drew no power from us. They warred because the world desired that they do so.

I saw in them giants which could have been pombis, or fustigars; things long and curled which might have been groles of some ancient and mightier time. Things with great scimitar teeth raged among the Gamesmen while the trampling of the bones continued. It went on well into the night. Long, long after the last of Huld’s Gamesmen were dead or had fled away, the great beasts of the heights continued their battle. Only toward dawn did they begin to collapse and fall, to lie as we had seen them first upon the high plateau, like wind carved things, dead, gone these hundred thousand years. Among them ranged the shadowpeople, singing lustily, piping upon their flutes and calling my name and Jinian’s. When we went down to them, they clustered about us and begged earnestly for something roasted and juicy. Not for them any lasting awe, thus not for me. We fed them, and sang with them, and in the dawn we saw Himaggery and Mavin falling toward us out of the sky.

THEY CAME, DRAGON AND DRAGON-BACK, Mavin and Himaggery. Behind them came a small host of Armigers, flown not from the Bright Demesne but from some place north of Schooltown. One of Himaggery’s Seers had told him help would be needed long before my message reached them. I began to be a little acid about this until Mavin hushed me.

“The Seer said we would not be needed during the conflict, but afterward. Indeed, look around you. Where are any Gamesmen standing against you? There are none. Not against one of my tricksy line.”

She was right, of course. Somehow the battle had been not merely turned but decisively won. Chance was jogging about saying “Obliterated” over and over. He had observed the battle through his glass from a safe distance. “Obliterated.” The word, I thought, could be applied to a number of things with equal pertinence. There was no time to consider it. Himaggery had to be introduced to Barish and to the Wizard’s Eleven, he so overcome by awe and respect during this process as to lose all his crafty volubility for the space of several hours. When Mertyn arrived, the introductions were repeated, and again at the arrival of Riddle and Quench.