The man was young, but his hairline had started receding at the first chance it got. His glasses weren’t thick, but they were tall and wide. His beard was shaved short, his narrow body suggested he wasn’t eating too regularly.
The man was accompanied by Diana. She cowered a little. Reserved, years younger than Jeremy. The house’s interior was darker, almost amorphous. His servants lingered in the background, standing by to serve if it came down to a fight. What little light existed cast their features as they truly were.
A frightening place for a child.
“Nathan seemed upset,” Doug commented, his voice gentle. “He didn’t have much to say.”
“His god rejected him in favor of me. The upstart.”
“Ah,” Doug said. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Jeremy said, meaning it.
Doug made a face, an apologetic half-smile. “I’ve come to answer your challenge. Been a few years for me. I believe the standard approach is to negotiate the form the challenge takes?”
“Yes. You can name a facet of the game, or take something off the table. We narrow down the choices to a compromise. If we can’t compromise, the spirits will decide the game, and they’ll be upset with the two of us for forcing them to make the effort.”
Doug nodded.
You know this, Jeremy thought. Are you asking just so I can get my bearings?
His own hands were shaking just a little. He stilled them.
“If I may,” Doug said, “I’d like to propose a board game.”
Jeremy nodded. “Okay. For every piece that’s taken, a shot.”
Doug smiled, “That takes Go off the board, for safety’s sake, or a ko situation. Too bad. Morabaraba?”
“That’s, ah, Twelve Men’s Morris?”
Doug smiled wider. “You know it. Fantastic. Let’s make it Eleven Men’s Morris, to avoid the messy draw. No accidents that lead to the capture of a dozen stones like we might see in Go, but there’s room for the decisive play, with plenty of space for forfeit.”
Jeremy frowned. The game was a complicated variant of tic tac toe. Placing stones. Achieving three in a row meant one could permanently remove one of their opponent’s. Once all of a player’s pieces were set down, they could be moved, to the same ends, aiming to create three in a row. The game scaled up from threes to twelve, with complicated board arrangements.
“Is that a problem?” Doug asked.
“No, just… my mentor taught it to me. He taught me most of the usual games… Deal.”
The board appeared between them.
Jeremy didn’t look particularly happy.
“How about you play Diana in my stead?” Doug asked. “I’ll take the shots for every piece she loses. If I pass out, or she gets too worried about me, we’ll forfeit. She won’t be impaired, but she’ll be concerned for me, it should balance out.”
Jeremy gave the man a curious look.
“It’s good practice for her, and I’d rather walk away with goodwill for the two of us than a proper victory.”
“I suppose you have that goodwill then,” Jeremy said.
“I wouldn’t be so fast to agree,” Doug said. “She and I have played this quite a bit. She’s good.”
He put his hands on Diana’s shoulders, urging her forward to face the board. He leaned in close to confide, to whisper an encouragement.
She nodded.
“Can I ask?” Jeremy asked.
“It’s only a chance to play someone new,” Diana said. “The stakes aren’t high.”
“And if you win?” he asked.
“You don’t take revenge, and on three occasions, we can ask you to stand down from attacking, buying us a day’s protection. Fair?”
“Fair.”
He was the challenger, Diana and Doug the challenged.
The challenged put their first stone on the board.
The game was swift. Diana took the better position at the start, but that was an astrologer’s prerogative.
As he took more shots, he felt his mind grow receptive to his god.
A glimpse of what he needed to achieve… a particular board position, and however good Diana’s position was, she didn’t yet look enough moves ahead.
Had he done this two years later, or played against Doug, his opponent might not have been so young that they’d fail to look far enough in the future. Once the board was arranged so he could move one stone between two rows of two stones, completing one after the other with each turn, he had Doug reeling.
“I forfeit,” Diana said, in lieu of making her next move.
It wasn’t his usual nature, but Jeremy offered a hand for her to shake.
She shook it, then offered Doug a shoulder to lean on.
An easy one, a gimme. He had only three shots in him.
Diana and Doug weren’t gone for five seconds before the Sphinx entered the building.
He felt a moment’s trepidation.
“You understand that I’m not particularly fond of your god?” the Sphinx asked.
“I do.”
“I hear your challenge and answer it,” she said.
“Then I challenge you to combat,” he said. No tricky word games, no tests of knowledge, and no riddles.
“By rights, as challenged, it’s my choice first,” she said.
I know, but you like things ordered, and I have to put you off balance somehow.
“Fine,” he said.
She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “You’ll have your challenge of combat. I can’t demand your god stay out of it, that would just invite you to demand I forego my power and strengths, but I can make this between you and me alone. Your new soldiers stay out of this, and you don’t bring any outside weapons into this.”
“Deal,” he said. He could feel the buzz from the shots, giving him courage where it might have failed.
He watched as the Sphinx became a proper Sphinx. Wings unfurled, black cloth became black fur.
Claws extended.
Jeremy bowed his head. “I call upon loud-roaring and carousing Dionysus, primeval, two-natured, three-times-born, Bacchic lord…“