Lyndon Hardy - Riddle of the Seven Realms

"But why fight at all?" Astron asked. "What motivates you against these you call the reflectives?"

"Their symmetries are most foul," the first of the warriors spat. "They are invariant under reflection whereas ours remain the same when subjected to rotations instead. And as the fifth protocol states-victory is total, only one of two will be left. It is the duty of every rotator to resist reflectives wherever we can, to strive to eliminate them until none are left to poison the beauty of the true symmetries that we will build when they are gone."

"I don't understand any of this," Kestrel said. "It must be some sort of threadbare dream-scattered oases in a vast desert linked by geometrical designs, warriors engaged in mathematically obtuse campaigns. What of women and the crops that supplement these few fruits? Who weaves the clothes you wear on your backs and from where do the woolens come?"

"Most of your words make no sense whatsoever," the first warrior said. "Our lives are to fight the reflectives until either we receive mortal wounds or have totally won. The fruit of the trees provide us subsistence; our armor protects us from blows. Of these other things we have no need."

"But replacements," Kestrel persisted. "What happens when some of your number are indeed struck down?"

"Replacement?" the warrior echoed. "I do not comprehend. We fight the reflectives until one of us is victor. If some of my comrades fall, we recompute the symmetries for the numbers remaining, so that we have freedom of movement about the subnodes, as you see we have done here. There are no replacements. There never have been since the beginning of time."

Kestrel looked quickly about the oasis and noted that the warriors were deployed in what appeared to be a random fashion onJy at first glance. Closer examination revealed that the subgroups by each tree were different in many distinct ways from all the rest. Each had a different number, and the heights and weights were well distributed as well. The camp tasks they had undertaken were all unique and the identical weapons were stacked only where other differences outnumbered the similarities.

Kestrel glanced at Phoebe's almost vacant stare and Nimbia's listless shell hunched next to her. He looked back out onto the featureless desert. All that he could see was no more than the creation of one of the fey, he realized. It all had come into existence only by the force of thought-just like a scribe transcribing flights of fancy for the sagas, leaving out all nonessential detail. One could not really expect any more.

And they were marooned! The words boomed through his mind. Marooned in a universe in which all life apparently had to offer were the few simple rules of a game.

KESTREL looked across the new oasis at Phoebe and forced his face into a smile. He had lost track of the number of nodes to which they had been transported, but it would do her spirits no good to show how low his own had sunk. Far better it would be as well if they could share the same subnode, but the rotators, with their rigorously balanced deployments, insisted that they be kept apart.

Nimbia on occasion seemed a little more alert, but most of the time she still dozed in her stupor at the base of the tree to the right of Phoebe's. Although Astron was at Kestrel's side, the demon again was occupied with learning about some obscure detail of the realm. Kestrel was alone with his thoughts.

More than he feared, the life of a rotator was one of almost complete ritual. In a rigid sequence they would plan, eat, sleep, and then, simultaneously with everyone else in the realm, rush over the sands to a new node that looked almost exactly the same as the one they had left behind. Then, if the new node were unoccupied and there were no battle, the cycle would begin again. Plan, eat, sleep, move-they were merely playing pieces on a complex board, jockeying for position without ceasing.

Kestrel looked at the six fruit-bearing trees that ringed the small pond of water and then out over the featureless desert, trying to channel his thought in a more productive direction. He kicked at the sand at his feet, barely missing another shaft of ornately carved metal.

"Abel, what are these things?" he called out to the commander of the warriors. "Half of the oases we have visited seem to have them protruding from the ground."

One of the warriors looked up from where he had been conversing quietly with two others over the small portable table covered with the maps of the nodes. His complexion was slate gray like the rest, but streaks of black ran through his hair. His eyes were steady and unblinking in a face not creased by either smile or frown.

"They are the devices of the chronoids," Abel said with disgust in his voice, "the machines of beings of another realm-another realm just the same as yours. In our haste, we do not bury them as we might. They are a violation of the protocols."

"Another realm." Astron looked up from the scroll he had been studying intently. "We are not the only visitors you have seen?"

"Indeed not," Abel said. "Ever since the reflectives seized the origin, the visits have been most frequent. The chronoids look much as we do and they engage in some great struggle not so very different from our own. But their weapons are not similar in the least and they are difficult for us to understand."

"What kind of weapons?" Kestrel said, suddenly interested. "Something that would give you an advantage if you had them instead? Do they by chance involve the use of fire?"

"We would not use the devices of the chronoids." Abel pursed his lips. "The reflectives do so only at great peril, since they work so imperfectly in a realm different from which they were intended." The commander stopped and looked at Kestrel intently. "More importantly, they are not part of the tradition that stretches back to the memories of our creation. Only the reflectives would think of trying something so base to gain advantage."

"But where are-"

"Perhaps it is worth the effort to show you one of the foul things," Abel said. "Then you might better understand." He gestured to one of the other gray warriors. The second began to protest but Abel's stare cut short the words. The warrior spat at the ground at his feet and then began digging into the sand. Shortly he retrieved an oblong box of metal and brought it forward for the others to see.

"Why, it looks like a clock," Astron exclaimed as the object drew closer. "A device for measuring the passage of time. See the three ornate bands of metal pivoted at the center of the circular face with symbols about the rim."

"These devices do much more than merely count the swings of a pendulum," Abel said. "Just as our realm is governed by the symmetries of space, so is that of the chronoids ruled by the symmetries of time. With these clocks, as you call them, they manipulate the order of events in strange ways.

"Here, in the realm of the reticulates, the devices behave in manners even more bizarre. The manipulations of time are somehow transformed to ones of space instead. In battles where the reflectives possess them, I have seen entire moves undone against our wills, even though we held the advantage-whole squads of men exchanged with those of our enemy so that we were outnumbered, rather than the other way around."

"How did this clock come to be here?" Kestrel asked,

"Somehow the reflectives have found a way to communicate between the realms, exchanging men with the chronoids for weapons that aid their own cause. Recently the reflectives seem to have increased the frequency of their contacts. The artifacts are more and more abundant. Ten thousand moves ago, we would find them only at one node in a score; now we see them at virtually half."