"Sheri S Tepper - The End of the Game_txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

I began to write this account upon the Wastes of Bleer, by firelight as others slept, sure I would die upon the morning. I was there because of love, and my own youthful foolhardiness. Even now, thinking back on it, I would not have wanted to be anywhere else.

I had come to that place with PeterЧand with Silkhands and King Kelver of the DragonТs Fire Demesne, with Chance and Vitior Vulpas Queynt. Six of us. Upon that barren height Peter had raised up the Gamesmen of BarishЧhe had carried them in his pocket for several yearsЧembodying them once more in their own flesh. Eleven of them, plus Barish himself. We were eighteen.

And against us was coming a horde, a multitude, a vast army of living and dead, live flesh and dead bone, which none among us thought we could withstand. Seeing our fear, Queen Trandilar had beguiled us with tales of glory so that our apprehension was allayed. All had fallen asleep except me.

It wasnТt my battle. I had not sought it except that I had sought Peter, determined to be with him no matter what should come. It would be fair to say I didnТt care much about the battle. Huld, the monster, was nothing to me. I had not been harassed and tortured by him as Peter had. HellТs Maw was nothing In me. I had not seen it. I was sixteen and in love and about to die. The one I loved was asleep, snoring gently, his face like a childТs in the dim light of the fire. SoЧI took pen and paper and began to write, thinking perhaps that someone might find the pages, long afterward, and remember me for a moment. A tenuous kind of immortality, but the best I could hope for then.

No.

That is not entirely true.

There was more to it than that. I know the story of my life up until then was no stirring account of battles and quests as PeterТs was. I had not sought adventure; I had merely fallen into adventure of a dirty, laborious kind with little glory in it. Still, when my labor was done and my taskmistresses satisfied with the result, I had more than calluses on my hands to show for it. I had a great, world-terrifying mystery by the tail, a mystery I thought not many others had any inkling of. It was more important than I was. Someone had to know. I knew PeterТs family would come after the battle and search for our remains. His mother was Mavin Manyshaped. She would come. Or the Wizard Himaggery, his father. And my account would be there for them to find. One of them, I thought, would go on where I had left off. They were that kind of people.

So, I wrote, almost until dawn. And later, when we did not die in that battle (as you know, if you have read PeterТs account of it), I went on writing, adding to the account as time went by.

I am called Jinian Footseer by some. By some, Jinian Star-eye. And by some, the Wizard Jinian. One or two call me Dervish daughter. But I think of myself most often still as merely Jinian, an unloved daughter of Stoneflight Demesne, who found love later in a strange way. It is that Jinian I wrote of first, there in that horrid night, and that Jinian I must write of at last.

1

When I was quite young, not more than five or six, my older brother Mendost used to amuse himself by making me wet my pants. He had come into his Talent of LevitationЧFlying, as we sayЧsome years before, and he thought it fun to pick me up by whatever appendage offered itself and haul me a few manheights into the air before threatening to drop me. He was, I suppose, twenty or so at the time: a big, brutishly handsome man with red, wet lips. HisЧourЧfather, Garz, sometimes observed these occasions with bellowed laughter and loud advice as to which cobble-stones Mendost might best drop me on. Garz and Mendost were not unlike in nature.

One afternoonЧI will never forget it, not the smell of the air or the way the wind curled down the low hills to rise about us or the crazy spinning of the courtyard below where the cobbles waited to splatter meЧas 1 was about to faint from combined fear and fury, something snapped. Something cold and old sat up inside my head and remarked, It may be better to die than to live like this. I went limp, then. No more screaming, struggling , grabbing at him. I simply went limp with my eyes wide open as I waited to die. My treacherous sphincters stayed shut. Mendost jounced and hollered as he always did, but I simply hung there, waiting for the end. After a time he tired of it and put me down. There were only a few attempts after that, each ending in sulky yelling on his part, УDead body Jinian, dead ass, dead ass.Ф Soon he gave it up and let me alone.

All Demesnes have some pensioned-off oldsters about, Gamesmen or pawns useful for running errands or watching babies. There was one old womanЧMurzemire Hornloss, her name wasЧwho had come to Stoneflight Demesne from someplace to the north when I was a babe. She pulled me over to her after Mendost put me down that first time, wiping my hot face with a bit of rag and patting my hand. УThТart a Wize-ard, chileФ she said. It was the first time I had heard the word, the first time anyone had said anything to me indicating I was more than an unnecessary impediment to the business of the Demesne. I never forgot it.

Mendost was the oldest of us children, all of the same mother but with varying inheritance from male progenitors. Mother, Eller of Stoneflight, was scarce more than a child, fifteen or so when she bore him. One father begat Mendost and meЧfirst and last, as Mother used to say (and I had my doubts about it, even then)Чbut Garz had been absent for many years in between and at least two other men begat my three brothers, Jeruval, Poremy, and Flot. I donТt believe we ever knew which man begat which brother, and since both Gamesmen had gone elsewhere in the lands of the True Game, it didnТt much matter. MendostТs father, who was also supposed to be mine, was an Armiger, a Flyer, as Mendost was. The other two had been an Afrit and a Pursuivant. Mother, though of Gamesman caste, seemed to have no Talent of any kind. She was so beautiful she did not need to be anything else. I hid sometimes behind hangings or in the orchard when she was sunning there, just to look at her. I thought I would look like that when I grew up, and did not much consider that she had no Talent else. I fully expected to become an Armiger in my time, like Garz. It seemed a logical expectation. Though I was the only girl in the family, it never occurred to me that the matter of sex would make any difference, and I made no separate prognostication on that account.

There were many other children in the Demesne. Bram Ironneck, MotherТs oldest brother, and her other brothers had fathered a number of them. Their mothers occupied various apartments in and around the place, and I had plenty of opportunity to observe them and the children. I formed the conclusion that while most mothers behaved with remarkable similarity toward their offspring, that is, with a certain baffled forebearance masking a persistent affection, this rule simply did not apply to my own mother.

Mother had very limited forebearance and seemed to have no affection for me at all, though her attitude toward Mendost bordered upon idolatry. As younger siblings sometimes do, I attributed this to the fact he was oldest. Oldest, and a son, and GarzТs child to boot. Though I was supposed to be GarzТs child as well, and that fact earned me no rides on the Festival Horse. Even Garz seemed unaware of it, never calling me УchileФ orФ JinianФ. I was always УherФ or УthingyФ to him. УSend thingy down to the stables with a message for Flitch.Ф

УTell her to get out of here with that mess.Ф On the few occasions he addressed me directly, it was likely to be with a kick and a pointed finger. УOut.Ф

As a result of this treatment, I learned early to escape the Demesne whenever things looked to get stormy among the inhabitants. I had a pony, Misquick, so called for her habit of stumbling when she tried to hurry, and a long-legged, neutered fustigar named Grompozzle, Grommy for short. Both of these creatures were mine by virtue of the fact that no one else wanted them, and looking back upon their propensities, I can quite see why. It was our habit when the dayТs schooling was doneЧBram insisted we know written language and calculating in addition to cartography and the Index, one of the few sensible things he insisted uponЧand when not otherwise occupied or forced into uncongenial labors by older relatives, to take ourselves as far from Mendost and Jeruval as possible.

Poremy and Flot were never as pernicious as the older boys, but at that time I never sought their company, though much later we were to become fairly good friends. If departure seemed prudent and there wasnТt time to ride away into the hills, there were other places where one could hide successfully.

If I wasnТt going off somewhere by myself, someone else might take me. It was almost a season after Mendost stopped tormenting me that the same old woman, Murzemire, came to me one evening as I was hiding in a rainhat bush along the stream, listening to the water and throwing windfall berries to hear them splash. She asked if I would come with her on an errand to the village. I recall going along happily enough. There was a sweet-shop in the village, and also the house of a wood carver who made toys for children. Even if it were not a Festival day, one could watch him carving the toys and think about receiving one, perhaps, when a Festival day came along, though that had never happened to me in the past.

The village was part of the family Demesne, of course, but quite outside the walls of the family place. It was not a fortress. It was a strong Demesne, since motherТs three brothers were all in residence and Garz lived there as well. Bram Ironneck, an Elator, had recruited still others to our banner, making the place secure and well founded. We had plenty of pawns on the land and in the village and had never felt the need for walls. Anyway, old Murzy took me along with her into the village, and we went a twisty way. I donТt remember ever seeing before the house we came to. It was a simple cottage, with a paling fence in front and a garden full of herbs. The door was painted blue, as many doors are in our part of the world. It is supposed to be a color favored by the old gods and much avoided by ghost pieces.

Inside the house were three or four old women not unlike Murzy herself. They gave me cookies, and honey-sweetened tea, and talked to me about many things. They asked me odd questions, too, which were exciting to think about, and I was sorry when Murzy told me we must go back to the family place. As we left, one old dam, Tess Tinder-my-hand, handed me a silvery trinket on a bit of thong and told me to keep it by me. I have it still. It is a pendant in the shape of a star with an eye in its middle, the pupil and cornea of the eye set in black and green stones, the whole polished flat. I heard the old woman telling Murzy to keep an eye on me (at the time I supposed the eye that was to be kept on me was the one they had given me) and bring me back from time to time to see whether the wize-art would come to me. I overheard this and asked Murzy about it, УWill it come to me, will it?Ф not knowing what it was that was to come.

She told me to be patient, that it was a slow gift, long in the coming. I escaped to that cottage hundreds of times over the succeeding years, but after the first few times tried to put the whole business of the gift out of mind, resolved not to ask again whether it would come for fear the asking might queer the gift, slow or not.

2

Once I had decided I would rather die than care what Mendost did to me any longer, it was not long before he stopped bothering me much. It was no fun for him if I did not scream or beg. Thus, once I had stopped fighting him, he soon stopped lofting me high above our Demesne, and it was only two or three times more I got to see the world from above. I suppose Armigers get used to it and no longer see the wonder of flight. I know that the day I realized I would not be an Armiger was bitterly sad for me, for I had hoped to see the world often as a bird sees it.