Robert Hughes - The Wizard in Waiting

“She didn’t forewarn me either. Put the star on her head,” Ligne ordered. “She already has the blue robe.”

But Serphimera had told him she would walk out the gate unharmed. For the first time ali day, Pelmen brushed shoulders with hope. For if Serphimera was destined to live… “And I’m to understand that all of these will lose their lives if I fail to defeat you?” he asked.

“That is the wager.” Ligne sneered smugly.

A year before, Serphimera had prophesied that Vicia-Heinox would rip a blue-clad figure in two. She’d been right. She’d been right about two plots against Ligne ending in failure. And Serphimera had seen herself leave this castle on foot through the front gate.

Ligne made her first move, and flung the reference plank toward Pelmen.

“Play the game, fool. That is, if you remember how.”

Just then it happened again.

Pelmen always had difficulty expressing the experience in words, but he instantly knew what had happened. Erri would have understood completely, while Ligne might have laughed herself breathless at the very idea. Naquin might have comprehended, while Jagd would have dismissed it as the kind of delusion all Lamathians were subject to a simple result of their upbringing.

But Pelmen knew what it was. His spirit soared with an elation born from far beyond human experience. At the critical instant, at the moment he’d started his last desperate act of shaping, he’d heard,

“Wait.” No one nearby had said it, and the House was as silent as ever. Yet it had come, and Pelmen felt again that curious mixture of elation and terror that had seized him so many times before. No longer was he the shaper he was being shaped, and his ultimate destiny, be it life or death, seemed trivial in the face of this rushing presence.

Bronwynn saw it. Gagged as well as hobbled and cuffed, she could only smile with her eyes. But that she did. Her eyes radiated excitement.

She recognized the face that Pelmen now wore and knew its strangely compelling nature came from beyond him.

Serphimera saw it too, and it startled her. She had long denied the possibility of this happening to anyone outside her own circle. It seemed incredible she should be witnessing this transformation now but she did. And it thrilled her beyond words.

Ligne regarded Pelmen’s strained expression with a contemptuous sneer.

“Are you going to move, fool?”

Pelmen drew a deep breath and forced himself to stare at the gameboard.

This was torture. He longed to surrender to the enormous warmth that engulfed him, to slough off responsibility for himself and his friends and soak in the Power’s presence. Yet he could not. In the midst of this abundant joy, there was not necessarily any hope. The Power was shaping him, he knew but he knew as well that what he might choose might not be the choice of the Power. He fought only briefly to retain control, then acquiesced. “Very well,” he muttered quietly to the One who had made him a Prophet. “I hope you know how to play this game.”

Then he made his first move.

From the beginning, the pattern of play took on new and puzzling shapes. This game didn’t follow any of the classic forms or if it did, no one could tell. The size of the board and the rocking and whispering of the pieces prevented any real perspective. As the three players wove in and out between their brightly attired armies, guiding living pieces across the board, Ligne’s frustration level grew. She moved a disc ten feet across the floor, only to have it taken immediately by an unseen column concealed behind Pelmen’s star. “I can’t see what I’m doing,” she shouted.

“At the moment,” Pelmen told her with considerable effort, “you appear to be losing.” That wasn’t quite true. They’d both lost two pieces to Kherda’s three, and the game hung in the balance. Yet Pelmen had realized that he was playing far beyond his own capacity. He’d detached himself from the fearsome outcome of the exercise and watched his own play with objective admiration. It was a necessary mental adjustment, for the near future was too horrible to consider. Somehow, the Power helped him make it.

“What’s happening?” the spectators muttered to one another. But for all their confusion, it seemed most of them had a better grasp of the dynamics of this match than did the befuddled Prime Minister.

“Kherda,” Ligne screamed, “are you trying to make me lose?

“No, my Lady,” Kherda called back raggedly, and Pelmen almost felt sorry for the man.

The reference plank changed hands a dozen times in rapid succession, noting a dazzling exchange of blitzing moves that left everyone a little dizzy. Then it stopped, and Kherda loudly announced, “Razor.”

The crowd gasped, then cheered.

Pelmen frowned. It was uncanny the number of times this situation arose. So frequently did it happen, in fact, that the merchants had long since given this configuration its own name. Pelmen had lost Gerrig and Serphimera, and had three remaining pieces. Ligne, too, had three pieces left on the board. Kherda had lost all but one, but be had done so with the consummate skill of one who has practiced only to lose. His one piece now controlled the outcome of the game. He held the deciding position the Razor and the way it cut would determine the winner.

Ligne chuckled. “Well, well.”

Kherda smiled at her. He could take Bronwynn on this move, and Ligne would then be free to take Danyilyn three to one to one, a victory for the Queen. Or he could take one of Ligne’s pieces, and her succeeding move could not prevent Pelmen from seizing that same winning margin.

The cry of “Razor” was normally the cue for a vigorous round of negotiations between players to begin. Often the player with a Razor walked off with more gold in his pocket than the winner himself. But Pelmen felt no desire to negotiate. He had lost. He only wondered why, this time, Serphimera had been wrong.

“Go ahead,” Ligne ordered. “Take her.”

Kherda looked Bronwynn straight in the eyes and took Ligne’s piece instead!

Queen Ligne stared. The act was so incomprehensible, she could think of nothing to say. Pelmen grunted in surprise, and stared as well.

Unbelievably, he had won. He turned his head to gaze at Kherda, and found the man was looking at him. Whether or not he understood the import of the change in Pelmen’s face, Kherda remembered the befriending of the fool and Ligne’s back. Now, he’d repaid them both.

“Kill them!” screamed Ligne. “Kill them all!” Before she finished the phrase, swords were whistling out of their sheaths and armed warriors were advancing on the players.

Not only does she cheat, she’s a welcher as well! bellowed the Imperial House suddenly, and the bells on the wall broke into a horrendous clamor.

Pelmen threw back his head and laughed joyously. “I wondered when we’d finally hear from you.”

Joss did not pause an instant Already his sword was in the air, and he charged forward, intent on dispatching Bronwynn first, then the rest.

Ligne’s game had gone on far too long. It was time to restore some cold-steel discipline to this castle. “Hold, Joss!” cried someone on his right, and he whirled to see who challenged him. He stared down the blade of Rosha mod Dorlyth.

“How did you Carlad!” Joss roared, as he watched the guard sprint for the wall to tear another sword from it. The lad’s guard had proved himself a mudgecurdle!

“Yes,. Carlad cut me free,” Rosha shouted as he whirled the guard’s blade into motion above his head and leaped between Joss and the knot of players. “And Queen Bronwynn will reward him for it.”

No welcher dwells within this House! trumpeted the castle, and the room started quaking. The House was angry and it finally found the energy to express its rage.