Ardneh, like Orcus, has a substance "only partially subject to the laws of matter." But he was born of benevolent technology as the consciousness of a defense system that "damped the energies of nuclear fire" and "freed the energies of life." (His home base may have been SAC Headquarters in Omaha.) Although he is the actual author of the Change that transformed the world, he denies being a god. Perhaps a more appropriate title for the Archdemon's counterpart is Archangel like an angelic power, Ardneh "is where he works." By sacrificing himself to annihilate Orcus, he brings victory out of defeat while the Western army retreats to win the day.
This paradoxical resolution recalls major triumphs in the berserker wars and even the Pascal mystery. It is, the capstone of all the paradoxes and ironies that shape the story. Draffut destroys Som the Dead by trying to heal him. Blows wound the one who struck them; spells rebound on the one who cast them. Tiny flaws widen and small kindnesses expand to undermine the mightiest citadels of evil. The weak can prove surprisingly strong and the strong, shockingly weak.
Westerners, even Ardneh himself, resist temptation but Easterners sink ever lower in depravity by freely chosen stages. Refusing one shameful order pivots Chup against the East. The Western cause draws persons together but the East, that "society of essential selfishness" is hopelessly divided against itself as each member scrabbles for more influence. Absolute dominion as an end in itself brings scant satisfaction to him who wields it. At best, Ominor finds mild distraction in sadism.
The white-clad supreme tyrant is "the most ordinarylooking" of the nine 'Unworthies' who sit on his council. His manner is as banal as his first name and his capital on the site of Chicago is nothing like Sauron's, its charm being marred only by a few impaling stakes among the flowerbeds. Sheer untiring wickedness has raised this apparatchik above the direst demons in malignant force.
Exotic Lady Charmian, on the other hand, is supernally fair but eventually boring as she slithers from bed to bed. Her monotonous scheming inevitably brings about the very opposite of what she sought to achieve, at her father Ekuman's court, in Som's stronghold, and among the leaders of the East. Although she is mired in her rut of malice, her husband Chup still claims her. The same stubborness that saved his own integrity may yet undo the effects of her childhood pledging to the East. Chup's regeneration stands for the transformation of his troubled world. But the future of that world belongs to Rolf and his kind. As in The Lord of the Rings, the major figures on both sides disappear, leaving the world to men and to powers they can control. However, magic will not entirely vanish here, although technology will slowly revive. Having won the contest for mastery, men can now make of their lives what they will, whether by sorcery or science — or both.
But what happens to that bright-seeming future? It develops its own kind of darkness. Two thousand years after Empire, power games continue in The Book of Swords. But "game" is no metaphor here for plot turns are actually stages in a formal game being played by beings who call themselves gods and simultaneously fit into a wider contest between entities that may be playing through these gods. That action begins in the Ludus ("Game") Mountains signals the artificiality of all that follows.
Game-oriented sf has almost become a sub-genre of storytelling. Saberhagen has written some himself, such as those berserker stories cited earlier and his novel Octagon (1981) which focusses more on the players than the game being played. (A version of the latter is now commercially available.) Original games that act both as story subjects and symbols appear in Philip K. Dick's Solar Lottery (1955) and The Game Players of Titan (1963) and in Samuel R. Delany's Fail of the Towers (1970) and Triton (1976), to cite but a few examples. Other sf writers incorporate familiar games such as chess. In "The Immortal Game" by Poul Anderson (1954), a computer activates robotic chesspieces but The Squares of the City (1965) by John Brunner moves real human beings around on a sociopolitical grid. Andre Norton's Quag Keep (1978) is based on Dungeons and Dragons while Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes (1981) brings an adventure game to life and The Saturn Game by Poul Anderson (1981) demonstrates the risk in playing an improvised mental game too passionately. Many sf stories have been converted to role-playing simulation games, for instance, Starship Troopers, adapted from the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Several periodicals including Ares, Dragon Magazine, Sorcerer's Apprentice, and The Space Garner serve the sf gaming audience.
However, The Book of Swords intends to pioneer new territory. Aside from the reading pleasure it gives, this trilogy is being written to provide the data base for an intricate new computer game that will uniquely combine both adventure-text and interactive features for play on a microcomputer. As of this writing, the designing has not yet begun. Until it is marketed, interested readers may amuse themselves by analyzing the "playable" elements of the story. (For example, the chase scene in the Maze of Mirth obviously lends itself to rendering in computer graphics.) The quick reversals of luck, the brisk introductions, removals, and translations are appropriate for a game scenario. The tendency for the characters to draw together in small teams suggests multivalent strategic possibilities in the war for possession of the enchanted swords.
"The swords made by the gods are beautiful things in themselves," observes one character, "Whatever the purpose behind them may be." They are also wonderfully versatile plot devices. The ease with which they can be confused and the restrictions on their use multiply dramatic possibilities. (Saberhagen shrewdly builds drawbacks as well as benefits into his magic.) Although the full Song of the Swords inventory may not be destined to actually appear in the trilogy's text, a dozen artifacts is an ambitiously large group. (Series that use as many as six talismans are rare, one example being Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising pentalogy.) Nevertheless, twelve is the traditional number of completeness and is thus an appropriate count for a pantheon.
Although Saberhagen categorically denies a schematic purpose, by curious coincidence, his list matches twelve major divine powers. These can be most conveniently discussed under their classical Greek names.
Coinspinner, giver of blind luck, belongs to Tyche, the fickle goddess of fortune. Its natural opposite, Doomgiver, the instrument of all-seeing justice, belongs to Zeus in his role as universal judge.
Dragonslicer, exemplifying the heroic use of force, fits Apollo, slayer of the monster Python. (Celestial heroes who kill cthonic dragons are common in both Indo-European and Semitic myth, for instance, Thor versus Midhgardhsormr or Baal versus Yam.) But Shieldbreaker expresses purely brutal might and thus belongs to Ares.
Farslayer is as futilely vengeful as Hera raging over the infidelities of Zeus. On the other hand, the Sword of Mercy suits Demeter, the Earth-Mother who presided over the deathand-rebirth mysteries of Eleusis.
The Mindsword that beguiles the inner self recalls triple-faced Selene/Artemis/Hecate, stern Lady of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. However, Sightblinder's deception of the senses is one effect Dionysus produces while wandering the world unrecognized. (The ecstatic god is a more sophisticated version of the crude, conniving Trickster who looms so large in African and Amerindian myth.)
Despair, constraint, and utter sterility surround Soulcutter as they do the dead-god Pluto. But Wayfinder elates, liberates, and enlightenment as does cheerful Hermes in his capacities as god of travellers and master of occult wisdom.