Beside me I felt Peter straighten, sigh. “Yes.”
And we three turned together to help others, even as the lament went on.
16
END AND BEGINNING
We live now, Peter and Bryan and I, in a pleasant glade above Old South Road City. We have a house there, one we are building with our own hands whenever we can find time away from the construction crew down in the city. Peter is becoming something of a stone mason. Though fancy carving is beyond him, so he says—and I think it is only that he lacks patience for it—he finds the laying of stones pleasant work, tiring work, work that exhausts him so he can sleep without remembering what used to be. Many Gamesmen these days would rather not remember what used to be.
The change has been hard for us all. I went up a hill in my blue gown able to speak the language of any bird or beast. I came down knowing only my own tongue. As for me, so it was for everyone. There was no time to adjust. There was no prior announcement. One moment we had the gifts Lom had given us. The next moment they were gone. Peter never Shifted again, and there are still nights I lie beside him while the bed quivers with his unconscious, dreaming effort to change. I see his hands clench, his muscles knot. To no purpose. He is still my Shifterish Peter, but Peter, Shifter, no longer.
For most of us it was as though we had lost our sight or our hearing. Though we rejoiced in a world that was healing and growing, still we mourned. Some, like Little Flitch, gave it no time but simply died. Some Gamesmen may mourn their lives away. Certainly many have not stopped grieving yet.
Peter and I, alone among all Gamesmen, know that the Talents had been Lom’s gift. We, alone among all Gamesmen, are able to explain what has happened. Those who know us well believe what we tell them. Some others do as well, seeing it as the only explanation that makes sense. Across the world, however, there are those who seek some magical solution, some application of Wizardry, some religion, some prophecy. Temples are springing up, I am told. Prophets are gaining reputation. How strange that the Gamesmen should need any other explanation than the true one! And yet their sense of themselves—so says Barish-Windlow—will not allow them to believe they had all that power by gift, that it was not their own by birthright.
Whatever one wishes to believe, we have all had to find other ways to live. Some of us are doing well, learning as quickly as any ordinary pawn might ever have done. We have Tragamors who are engineers; Elators who are messengers; Armigers who are guards. Trandilar has set up a school for weavers. It was her hobby in times long past, and she seems glad to take it up again. She is still beguiling, but it is only her natural self. There is no magic in it. Dorn, the Necromancer, says he is glad his Talent is gone. He has become a teacher of children, and his face is less lined than it was in the past. He rejoices to have done with the dead. The living need our attentions more, he says. Who can argue with that?
Not all Gamesmen have fared so well. There have been incidents of pawns rising up to dispose of former Gamesmen Rulers. In most cases, the disposal was just. Many old Demesnes are vacant now. Stoneflight rose up against Bram Ironneck, and Eller, who pretended to be my mother, is now the kitchen maid of a merchant-prince. So I am told, by Murzy. She is not a Seer any longer, so I don’t know how she learned this. I have not asked.
Those of us with the art fare a little differently—I will not say “better.” While the Talents were a gift from Lom, the art was largely our own learning, and it has stayed with us. The art was always a matter of respectfully invoking the power of beings larger than ourselves. If we have friends among those powers, it can be done. Peter is learning something of that, too, and bids fair to turn out a respectable hedge Wizard. This pleases Himaggery, and Himaggery says it would please Mavin as well. And Lom. We all suppose it must please Lom. Otherwise it would not be allowed. So, the sevens go on as they have in the past. Most of mine is here with me, though Cat Candleshy has gone traveling to see this new world and what it makes of itself.
As for Himaggery, he has gone back to the Bright Demesne. He says the people there are no less his people because the world has changed.
We will visit there, after the baby comes, to see him and Barish-Windlow. Barish suffered most, I think, from what happened. He had based his whole life upon a strategy that is suddenly useless. Now he is mostly Windlow, and Peter says he doesn’t know from day to day how to feel about that.
When it happened, so suddenly, I believed Lom’s recovery was due to something Mind Healer Talley had done. She says, however, that though she did what she could, Lom began to wish to live at the ringing of the Daylight Bell. She tells me that the destruction of a certain memory may have had much to do with that, and perhaps also to the fact that the Eesties—the old Eesties—had assumed their proper role of recollection once more. Perhaps it was no one thing but all of these things together. If so, I can take pride in helping, as can Peter. When we get depressed sometimes, we try to remember that.
When the Bell came from the mold, the little missing place on its rim was filled in with the sign of the star-eye, almost
