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Chapter XI
A Game of Gen

Restormir: Autumn 25

The gilded halls were lined with mirrors, reflecting fragments of other mirrors, and then other layers of gold. The effect dazzled and bewildered. The air was close, thick, and heavy with perfume, overlaying a reek of feverish, rank sweat.

Kindrie knew that he was not alone. At first, however, he saw nothing but his own reflection seen from so many fractured angles, looking so scared.

Where am I? How did I come here?

Somewhere out of sight something shuffled and grunted, distorted sounds that seemed to come from all directions at once. Something moved in the mirrors. Even seen piecemeal, it was obese, clad in a golden dressing gown that trailed at its bandaged heel. Oh, the stench that rolled from the latter’s folds.

Huh, huh, huh. Oh, I am so great. My very musk enriches the air. Who is not intoxicated by my grandeur?

Kindrie thought he caught the flicker of a reflection, or was it a real figure? Whichever, it was huge—a statue, he thought, poised in portentous thought, heavy brows furrowed over small eyes. It seemed to feed on the knuckles jammed against its pursed mouth. Munch, munch went its golden teeth, feeding on themselves. In the statue? In the mirrors?

Now, what was I thinking of? the figure seemed to say with ponderous deliberation. Nothing. Why should I bother to think at all? Image is everything. So am I.

Reflected in the nearest mirror, the statue seemed heroic, muscular. Up close, it was lumpy. Fat sagged in folds on bones. One thick leg and foot were wrapped with bandages.

Other shapes lumbered to one side, to the other. In the mirrors? In the molten flesh?

One raised a swollen hand to acknowledge unheard cheers.

Yes, I am your savior, breathed the air. Forget the impotent Highlord, that silly little man. Cleave only to my divine mass.

Another opened its arms to bless unseen worshippers.

“Cal-DANE, Cal-DANE . . . !” came the ghostly whisper of an adoring chant. Thousands bowed to him. Millions. The whole world loved him. It was inevitable.

And here in multiple reflections a mighty warrior bestrode the broken forms of his vanquished foes. Their flayed skins wrinkled under his feet, topped with elaborate Merikit braids. Among them, Kindrie barely made out the smashed form of Torisen, face trodden to pulp, limbs shattered. Caldane’s feet had left a mere smear of him.

Huh, huh, huh . . .

Jame lay beside her brother, recognizable only by her spill of black, braided hair. Her burst body disgorged organs like so many red and purple fuzzy toys, to be stuffed back into their skin and trampled again every night. Oh, how Caldane enjoyed that. Never think how her defiance had humiliated him. Never. Never. Never.

Whose eyes watched him from the corner, though? That tilted gaze, that dark sardonic smile. Sheth, always Sheth.

Destroy me, the randon murmured, and you destroy yourself.

Why? Kindrie asked himself, bewildered. Commandant, Sharp-tongue, what does your lord fear from you?

“Aaiieee!”

A figure plummeted from the ceiling, all swirling saffron robes and flailing limbs. Though it continued to fall, it never hit the floor. Rather, it seemed to swim precariously in mid-air, now right side up, now upside down, always with its white braided beard streaming after it. Kindrie felt as if he was falling beside it.

“You have strange dreams, young man,” the Tishooo said. “I’ve visited them before.”

Kindrie remembered, although when he woke he always forgot, until the next time.

“Falling Man, why are you here?”

“Why am I anywhere? Curiosity. You and your cousins intrigue us. We don’t know what to make of you. Torisen seems like a pleasant chap, but Jamethiel is terrifying. Earth, air, fire, and water, what is this world to make of you?”

“Creation, destruction, preservation. We three to you four, Kencyrath to Rathillien. You should ask Jame. I wouldn’t even know who you are if she hadn’t told me. I still don’t really understand.”

The Tishooo pouted. “Then why am I talking to you? But you should get out of this place, young man. It isn’t healthy.”

Sunlight struck Kindrie’s closed eyes, red against purple veins, and he woke with a start.

A dream, he thought, panting, clutching his coverings. Only a dream, within a dream, within a dream. But were they his or Caldane’s, and what had been that odd flash at the end? The latter faded, except for the memory of a streaming beard and the sensation of falling. Always falling.

The dreamscape was like that.

What he really feared, though, was Lord Caineron’s soul-image, which mirrored the gilded reception hall in Restormir’s Crown, or so he supposed. He hadn’t yet worked up the courage to engage with it directly by touch. Caldane would be strongest there, his will nearly overwhelming. The white flowers in Kindrie’s own soul-image, that of the Moon Garden, were already tinged with blight from mere dream contact. If they succumbed, how long could he maintain his precarious health?

The wall before his face bore his nail marks, over seventy straggly scratches to match the crawl of time. Had it really been so many days since he had tried to creep past Restormir on the way to Tagmeth and been captured by Tiggeri’s patrol?

“So you’ve decided to accept my lord’s offer after all,” Tiggeri had said, smiling. In a way, he was handsome, but with so many large white teeth and with such cold eyes.

“Please, let me go.”

“Why should I do that? My father needs a healer. You swore to him once. You owe him now. And if you fail who, pray tell, will miss you?”

He had told Kindrie that his cousin Jame had passed by Restormir at midsummer without bothering to ask about him. The implication was that she didn’t care. Kindrie suspected that she hadn’t known that he was here. Still, it hurt.

Why had no one noticed that he was missing? Kirien, at least, should have, but he hadn’t told her where he was going. Where did she think he was now? Did she care?

Someone gave a perfunctory knock to the door, then shouldered it open without waiting for a response.

Tiggeri, thought Kindrie, his heart lurching in his chest, and he struggled out of his nest of blankets. His quarters in the tower’s Crown were luxurious, but he only occupied a corner of them. To do more would have been to recognize Lord Caineron’s hospitality, such as it was.

Gorbel entered, bearing a tray.

“I met your servant on the threshold,” he said. “This must be your breakfast.”

It would be lumpy oatmeal, the same thing, day after day, with the same results. His stomach clenched at the thought.

Tiggeri had some pretense to good looks, no doubt due to his mother. His younger half-brother had none. Rather, Gorbel’s features were small, crowded into the middle of a round face under a heavy brow and a prematurely receding hair line. Kindrie’s first impression had been that he was brutish and stupid. Then he had learned, to his surprise, that this squat hulk with his scowling continence and perennial gravy stains was not only a newly minted randon officer but also a friend of Jame’s.

“I come to do her a favor,” he had said that first time he had appeared at Kindrie’s door, glaring, resentful of the obligation, “although she may never learn of it, and there’s my thanks. Besides, everyone else here is a moron.”

Now he looked unusually disheveled, as if he had spent another night up drinking with his would-be cronies. Everyone knew that he was the Caineron lordan, Caldane’s heir. Some took him seriously as such while others did not, especially his brother Tiggeri, their father’s current favorite. The other older six brothers might have districts of their own at Restormir, but beyond that they hardly counted.

“Let us see which matters more,” Tiggeri had said, with a confident smirk. “Their seniority, your rank, or Caldane’s love.”

Now Gorbel belched and rubbed the small, bloodshot eyes of a massive hangover.

“G’ah, wake me up before I die of boredom. A game of Gen?”

Beside the tray he had brought a board tucked under his arm, a sack of stones, and a pack of hazard cards. Kindrie had only recently learned how to play this game thanks to Gorbel, which he understood to be popular among the randon for the training that it gave in strategy. Gorbel was a master at it. That he put up with such a novice as Kindrie at all surprised the healer. He supposed, however, that Gorbel was starved of occupation here at Restormir. Lordan he might be, but his father didn’t trust him with any significant work, and one could only eat so many meals a day.

Gorbel set down the tray and produced the board. When set up, it had forty markers on each side, flat black river pebbles here, white there. On their base, concealed, was the worth of each one: a commandant at thirty points; three ten-commanders at ten points each; three five-commanders at five; twenty-four common cadets at two; four hunters at one. In addition, there were four hazards and one flag. These latter didn’t move. The idea was to capture an opponent’s flag or, failing that, to have the highest score of surviving pieces when the game ended. The trick was that each player not only had to remember where all of his own markers were but also to guess the location of his opponent’s, especially of the flag.

Gorbel chose black; Kindrie, perforce, chose white.

“It goes with your hair,” the lordan had said. Kindrie still wasn’t sure if that was a sneer or an acknowledgment of his Shanir nature.

Gorbel advanced a pebble from his front rank. Was it a mere cadet or an officer? Both moved only one square at a time, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. It could even be a hunter, whose progress in a straight line was unlimited.

Kindrie moved a five-commander.

Soon the board was busy with sliding pebbles and players intent on their game.

Gorbel attacked one of Kindrie’s pieces by moving into its square. “Ten,” he said, indicating his ten-commander.

“Two,” said Kindrie. A cadet, now forfeit.

“Ten takes two.”

He lost several more cadets in rapid succession, then two five-commanders, then a ten to Gorbel’s commandant. At least now he knew where that crucial piece was, but where was Gorbel’s flag? His own huddled in a corner behind his commandant and a shield of tens.

Timid, he thought, ruefully. Kirien had implied as much about his conduct in general, in remarks that still stung.

You say you may be becoming That-Which-Preserves. Destruction and Creation are active forces, yes, but must preservation always be passive? How can it, if it is to survive?

So far, here at Restormir, he was playing merely on the defensive, and where had that gotten him?

A straight path opened across the board. Recklessly, he sent a hunter down it against an immovable black pebble.

“Hazard,” said Gorbel, putting a thick finger on it.

He drew out his deck of cards, each lovingly illustrated and very personal. These he spread face down before Kindrie. Kindrie drew one. Golden vestments, a board smiling face remarkably like his son Tiggeri’s . . .

Kindrie stared at it.

“Lord Caineron,” he said. “You too?”

He knew at once that he had broken a cardinal rule of the game: hazard cards were secret until drawn, and now he had betrayed one in his own deck.

Gorbel grunted and took back the card. “Forget that you saw that.”

He picked a breadstick from the tray and bit off one end. When he started, absentmindedly, to scoop up porridge with the other, Kindrie stopped him.

“Why?”

“It’s treated with autumn crocus. Your father has a savage case of gout.”

“So?”

“His herbalist tends to overdose, not least because he’s jealous of me. There are side effects. Nausea, for one, and loss of appetite. Also diarrhea.” At the thought of which, his bowels stirred. “Luckily, I can control those. Most of the time. But I can’t get your father to stop eating rich meat or drinking wine to excess.”

Gorbel slapped the table, sending pebbles flying. “When my father gets drunk, he passes his hangover on to his followers. I’ve seen it. That’s led to many recent suicides. Likewise, are you expected to suffer while he gains the benefits? You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” He caught both of Kindrie’s wrists in one fist. His strength made the healer wince. “Otherwise, does it work?”

“Not that way,” said Kindrie with a crooked smile. “Next, though, he may decide to smash my feet.”

Gorbel rose and paced.

Kindrie shrank back in his seat. Gorbel had considerable power of his own, although he didn’t often express it. Caldane might respect him more if he did. What would it take for him to break free?

What, for that matter, would it take for Kindrie to do the same?

“The sins of an honorable man should be his own, likewise the cost,” Gorbel snarled over his shoulder. “Have we learned nothing from Gerridon? He thought everyone should pay except for him. That was the heart of his bargain with Perimal Darkling, wasn’t it?”

No argument there.

“Are you equating your father with the Master?”

Gorbel turned on him. “Did I say that? Do I mean it? I don’t know. You tell me.”

Kindrie might have. He, after all, was Gerridon’s true son, although few knew it and he was hardly proud of the fact. Here, he thought, was his spiritual half-brother, in doubt, in pain.

“So,” he said, “what do we do about such a hazard to continue the game?”

Gorbel threw up his hands in disgust. “Trinity be damned if I know. I think . . . I think that sometimes he lies. That should be the death of honor. But we ask ourselves: what did he mean? Did he believe what he said? Who heard him? Who repeated it and how accurately?”

“You could oppose him.” Kindrie leaned forward. “I say that he is insane, and getting worse. You know it.”

“Huh. He is a powerful Shanir. What he says, others perforce believe. It only makes him and his grip on our house stronger. And that you know.”

True.

“But you still won’t help me escape from Restormir.”

Gorbel’s shoulder’s slumped. “Caldane is my father and my lord,” he said. “Where is honor due, if not to him? And yet . . . and yet . . . he strains the bond.”


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