“The nature of the artificer is to make things complex, not simple,” he said, his mouth frowning at me while his eyes smiled. “We invent different labels for things which are not different and so we distinguish among them. I have read that in the utter past people did this with groups of animals. One would use a different name for each type of animal. It persists still today. We say, ‘a coven of crows’ or ‘a follow of fustigars.’ It makes us sound learned. We who are Gamesmen wish to seem learned in all aspects of the Game. So, we use the proper titles for the risks we run. It is more dramatic and satisfying to say, ‘Sorcerer’s Power Nine’ than it would be to say, ‘I’m about to smash your Sorcerer…’” We laughed. He asked if we understood. I told him solemnly that I understood well enough. King’s Blood Four meant that the King was not seriously threatened, but that some other Gamespiece might be.
“Oh, yes,” he shrugged. “There are always throwaway pieces. Talismen. Totems. Fetish pieces of one kind or another. Pawns or minor pieces used as sacrifices because the Game requires a play and the Player is unready or unwilling to play a major piece. And then there are Ghost pieces…”
“I thought they were only stories,” said Yarrel. “To scare children…”
“Oh, no. They are real enough.” The old man rearranged the blanket around his shoulders, shifted to a more comfortable slouch in the woven basket hair.”After all, when Necromancers raise up the dead, the dead were once Gamesmen. They would be Ghost Gamesmen, with Ghost talents.” At which point, just as we wanted to ask a hundred questions, he fell asleep. Before he woke to continue our lessons, the tower Sentinel cried warning to the House, and we looked up to see a cloud of dust on the long road down from the forest edge through the valley. I was standing beside Windlow when the cry came, and he woke suddenly, his eyes full of pain and deep awareness.
“The High King, Prionde, has sent these men,” he said. “He has been made deeply suspicious of us. Someone has come to him bearing tales of guilt and treachery. Guardsmen come to take us all prisoner.” I saw tears in his eyes. “Poor Prionde. Oh, pitiful, that my old student should come to this.”
Silkhands, who had been sitting beside him, holding his hand as she did for hours each day said, “Dazzle. Dazzle and Borold. They are the ones.” She said it with enormous conviction. It was not Seeing, of course. She had no Talent of that kind, but she knew, nonetheless. We all heard her and believed her, and we were not totally unprepared when the dusty guardsmen rode in to gather us up as though we had been livestock, handling the old man with no more courtesy than a sheep, and shut us within the Tower to await some further happening. Silkhands spoke softly to one of them, asking if a Priestess had come to the High Demesne. Yes, one said. A very beautiful Priestess with her brother, a Herald and a group of pawners had come to the Demesne the day before. This was enough for Silkhands. She sat in a corner and wept away the morning.
“But all they need to do is send a Demon to Read us,” I protested. “They did it often enough when we were there! They know we have no plots against the High King.”
Old Windlow spoke softly to us from the cot where we had laid him. “My son, be schooled by me. If your people taught you when you were a child that there are monsters in the wood, you would have believed them. Then, later, if a woodsman had come and said to you, leading you among the trees, ‘See, there is nothing here but shadow and light, leaf and trunk, bird and beast. See, I show you. Look with your own eyes.’ Though you would look and see nothing, still you would believe there were monsters there. You would believe them invisible, or behind you, or hiding beneath the stones, or within the trees somehow. No matter what the woodsman said, you would believe your fear. Men always believe their fear. Only the strong, the brave, the curious — only they can overcome their fear to peer and poke and pry at life to find what is truly there…
“Prionde believes his fear. His Demons tell him we are harmless to him, but he is afraid we have discovered some way to fool the Demons, some way to avoid the Seers, some way to trick the Tragamors. He believes his fear…”
There were tears in the old man’s eyes, and with both Windlow and Silkhands mourning, Yarrel, Chance, and I did not know what to do except be still and let the day wear out. The guardsmen did feed us and bring us wine and a chamber pot, which we did not need for there were old closets built into the wall of the tower, unused for many years.
The day diminished. We lit the lanterns and sat in the fireglow of evening as the stars pricked the sky above the lightning bugs in the meadow. We grew very bored and sad. There was a gameboard set into the top of an old table in the room where we all were, and I thought it might make things more bearable to play an old twospace game with Chance as we had done when I was a child. I took the pouch from my belt and set the pieces and the little book out, quite forgetting what Himaggery had said about them. After all, I was among friends. Chance was curious at once, full of questions about where I had found them. After a time, Windlow got up and tottered over to have a look while I went on chattering about the ancient room in the ruins. Something in the quality of the silence elsewhere in the room made me look up, words drying in my mouth. Everyone was looking at Windlow, and he at the table, face shining as though lit from within. Perhaps it was a trick of the lantern light, but I think not. He shone, truly.
He touched the carved Demon. “Didir,” he said. Then he lifted the Armiger. “Tamor.” He laid a trembling hand upon my shoulder, leaning to touch the Elator. “Hafnor,” he said, “Wafnor,” as he laid his finger upon the Tragamor. He named each of them, “Sorah, Dealpas, Buinel, Shattnir, Trandilar, Dorn.” Last he picked up one of the little Shapeshifters and said, “And Thandbar and his kindred. How wonderful. How ancient and how wonderful.” I mumbled something, as did Silkhands, and the old man saw our confusion. “But don’t you understand? It is History! The eleven!”
Yarrel said, “We are stupid today, Sir. We do not understand what is special about these eleven.”
“Not these eleven, boy, or those eleven. The eleven. The eleven Gamesmen who are spoken of in the books of religion. The first eleven…” We looked at one another, half embarrassed, not sharing his excitement. Yes, there had been eleven mentioned in the books of religion. Yes, there were thousands of types of Gamesmen, each mentioned in the Index, each different. What did it matter that these tiny, carved figures were of the first eleven. As we watched him, his wonder turned to caution. He said, “Who knows of these?”
I replied, “Only those of us here, and Himaggery. I showed them to him, and the book as well…” I put the little volume into Windlow’s hands, half hoping to distract him from this strange passion, for he looked very distraught. It did not have the desired effect. It was only a little glossary, directions for a Game, I thought, written in an archaic lettering, much faded. I had not paid it much attention. Windlow, however, took it as though he took the gift of life from the hands of a god. He peered at it, opened it, caressed the page, raised it to his face to smell of it. He leafed through it, leaning so close to the lantern I thought he would burn himself.