The End of the Game Read Free Page A

blind man’s grab, and set down in a sudden silence. I felt a tingle in one toe and reached tentatively toward it, setting my foot down on something hard that tingled more—not in pain, you understand, but a tickly, pleasurable feeling.
    I went toward it, until both feet were on it, and found that by continuing to move, the tingling would go on, though if I simply stood still, it stopped after a moment. So I wandered myself, quite happily, humming as I went, until a great cry went up from the assembled crowd, “Footseer!” and they took the blind-fold away. I had been following a line of half-buried stones, part of an ancient roadway, and had done it without seeing it at all.
    After that we had some food and drink with much garbling and good cheer, and one of them took me back to a road I knew. I went to find Murzy to ask her about them, and she said they were the blind runners—blindfolded runners—indeed, those who looped through all the lands of the True Game on the Old Road. Old South Road City was the place they began from, and while not all the runners lived there year round, it was there they gathered to begin the journey.
    “Chile,” she said in the comfortable nursery dialect she always used with me then, “it’s as well tha came on them when tha did, for they are more or less sane this time of year. When the time of storms comes, then looky out. They begin to foam and fulminate on the road, blind as gobblemoles, stopping for no man nor his master.”
    “Why do they do that, Murzy?” I asked her. The ones I had seen had been sane enough, certainly, and not bad hosts, either. They had a kind of seed cake made with honey that was as good as anything from our kitchens.
    “Story is, chile, they’ll run the road until they find the tower. Tower, if tha sees it, sucks tha up by the eyes. Tower, if tha sees it, eats tha up. So, they go running, running, thinking they’ll run into it full tilt, blind and safe, and rescue the bell from the shadows.”
    “What bell is that, Murzy?”
    “The only bell, chile. D’tha grow big and get the wize-art and tha’ll maybe find what bell. ‘Tis the one bell, the two bell, that cannot ring alone. The old gods’ bell.” And that was all she would say, no matter how I begged.
    “Why did they look at my star and call me a footseer?” I asked, dangling it before her on its string.
    “It’s a seer dangle, sure enough, and no secret about that, with the eye on it plain as plain. But don’t flourish it out for the world to see.” So I tucked it into the neck of my shirt, abashed, not knowing why. She had not understood my question.
    After that, I would often go off into the woodland to the line of stones that marked the Old Road, shut my eyes, and walk along the roadway, feeling it in my toes. After a time, I was able to run full tilt along the way, never losing it for a moment, rejoicing in the thrumming tingle, a kind of wild, exhilarating feeling which grew wilder and better the faster I ran. When the Season of Storms approached, however, Murzy told me to stay away from the road. “They care not who they trample, chile, or what. Tha or tha pets or tha kin Mendost would all be the same to them.” So I took to hiding in the trees and watching. Sure enough, they began to come running by, bunches and hundreds of them, all running with their hooded heads up, as though in answer to a summons no one but they could hear. If one crept close to the Old South Road City, one could hear them howling—singing, as it were—through the dark. “On the road, the Old Road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone.” When we jumped rope to that, two would come in at the “cannot ring alone” and jump, counting together, hands on waists. “Shadow bell rings in the dark, Daylight Bell the dawn. In the tower hung the bells, now the tower’s gone.” At “gone” one would run out of the rope, leaving it slapping behind, and then to and fro