Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

Which was, in truth, fair enough.

Another careful stab with the chopstick provoked no additional reaction. Horn laid the utensil aside and reached for the ivory box. The monk had handled it without incident, after all.

Something clicked slightly as he lifted it. The weight and balance of the box shifted. It was only a container, not a thing in itself.

Looking over it in his hand, Horn saw how an inner box could be made to slide out the end of the carved shell. It was no different from the card boxes that soldiers and sailors sometimes carried in their kits.

Card boxes…

“You people,” he breathed. “This is the Deck of Many Things.”

“Fate in your hand.” The monk was positively grinning now. “Your choices are your own. Everything lies before you. Every path is in your hands.”

“Bastards,” Horn said.

The old men laughed at him before wandering off into the dusty shadows of their temple home. He heard the fading echoes of their mirth for a while.

Consequences

Horn racked his brain for whatever he might have read or heard about the Deck of Many Things. The monks had never shown him a library-they were obsessed with their map, and with listening to the wind-so even if he found one, he doubted it would contain much to aid him in understanding such an item.

Everyone knew the general gist, of course. The Deck of Many Things was a campfire favorite, for storytelling and idle boasting. Most people wouldn’t know what to do with a magic wand or a flaming sword or a crystal ball or many of the other legendary magic items and artifacts that supposedly littered the world.

But cards? Everybody understood cards. A metaphor for life, how the king ruled all but the knave snuck in beneath the queen, and the ace at the bottom could trump the very top. Colors and numbers and a swift flick of the hand could turn the fate of your last piece of silver, or make you a rich man indeed on a hot, lucky night.

He had to admit it: cold fear blew through him. All magic was balance. Who needed reincarnation to believe in karmic debt? Unwise or unlucky wizards learned fast enough how much one paid for one’s mistakes. One sometimes paid more dearly for one’s successes.

What he could recall of the Deck of Many Things strongly suggested a balancing act between bright blessings and arrant curses. What would he draw if he opened the ivory box? The keys to a kingdom? Or just as likely his own ruination.

The other piece of lore that came bubbling upward was the idea that he must commit to a number of draws from the Deck before he began. Horn wasn’t certain that was a rigorous rule, or simply a sensible rumor.

He’d never been a great risk taker. Study and practice had always been his way. That and careful planning. But what had he expected from these monks? Mystical guidance?

One could not plan for this. The Deck was worse than that time when he’d sought vengeance on behalf of the dying goddess Karrehein. It was wild power in his hand.

If Horn had been a praying man, he would have prayed. If he’d thought for a moment that the monks might give him practical advice, he’d have gone begging for their words.

But this was for him.

A day later, his chest still weak, he went to the top of the Path of Ten Thousand Steps and looked out across the ocean. Bottle-bright and the color of polished glass, it heaved and sparkled as only a great mass of water can do. No ships were visible, just water to the horizon. Great, swale-bellied clouds passed slowly overhead.

Behind him the volcano stank and muttered. The winds of the world came here. He could find no better place to seize his fate in his hands.

Feeling both foolish and very much in danger of his life, Horn raised the ivory card box toward the sky.

“I shall draw down three cards,” he said in a firm voice before prising open the little ivory drawer.

They lay within. Pasteboard, like any card, but slick and firm and overwhelmingly solid in appearance. Freed of their ivory enclosure, the cards positively reeked of magic.

Horn picked at the deck, flicking out a card from the middle.

He turned it in his hand.

The world changed.

Throne

A villa, overlooking the Bight of Winds. Technically a castle, though without moat or curtain wall, and it would not stand up to much attack at all. At the foot of his patio was a drop to pounding surf. Horn was well supplied with pliant servants and fine wines from distant islands. He was happy there, and everyone loved him.

The only thing that gave him pause was the ivory box he always carried in a silk sling beneath his robes. What the Deck had given, the Deck could take away. Horn still had two more draws, though now he wished he’d stopped at one. Was he supposed to just hold onto the deck like this? Or should he have simply drawn the three cards in a fan?

No answers came to him, and life was good, so Horn tried not to worry overmuch. He lived at the villa for several years. The weather was kind. Ships called at his dock just often enough to bring news and goods. Horn sent for his wealth, stashed in banks and strongrooms scattered across a dozen ports, and from time to time considered either hiring himself out or going adventuring.

It should have been boring, but was not. Rather, the villa was pleasing to the eye and soul. He eventually grew accustomed to the well-earned rest from his labors.

One day a cockleshell boat with an ivory hull and a single lateen sail the color of a dead man’s eyes made his dock. Horn watched it a while from the patio, a slim stemware glass of wine in his hand. He did not recognize the ship but felt vaguely disturbed by its color and form. Eventually Moneo his majordomo approached him.

“Sir, you have a visitor.” After a pause, the man added, “A lady, sir.”

Horn knew his staff would have approved if he’d taken a wife and become a true lord of the estate. This stretch of coast along the Bight of Winds was a wild country, dotted with a few small fishing villages. No king or prince extended a writ along these particular waters or shores. The villa itself was safe largely in its isolation-there was not sufficient trade here to attract pirates or bandits. He could have raised a flag, bred some strong sons, and founded his own ruling line. Raiders might have been a problem for his grandsons.

So a woman caller was of interest to Moneo and the other servants. A woman caller was worrying to Horn, however.

“Show her in,” he said. “I will receive my guest here on the patio. And tell Cook to lay on a feast fit for a prodigal.” He had an uneasy notion just who was come to visit.

She came walking out, short and thick-bodied in the manner of the people of the coast here, but her eyes were the color of the inside of a lime, and her robes were dyed in patterns, colored purple, dark blue, and black.

Horn knew her immediately. “You came to me once, when I was sick unto dying in a distant port.”

“Yes.” She nodded, and he felt wind upon his back and buzzing in his ears. “You seek what does not belong to you.” Despite her appearance, the woman once more spoke the hillman’s language of Horn’s birth.

“Not a sending,” he said, remembering their conversation before. “Always present.”

“Always.” She cocked her head, and he had never seen a more beautiful woman, for all her common looks. “Yet you tempt me.” A blunt finger tapped at his chest, clicking against the ivory box beneath his own robes.

“It is time for me to draw another card, is it not?”

“Far past time.” She smiled, and he felt the stars shift in their courses. “With age comes wisdom. Or at least experience.”

Realizing he would not be a guest at his own feast that evening, Horn took out the ivory box. He tugged open the tiny drawer to turn another card from the center of the deck.