Sheri Tepper: King’s Blood Four

“No, No, Mandor. It’s not…not courteous…” The hand, my hand, was slapped away by an armored glove, struck so violently that it lay bleeding upon the table before drunken-Peter while the other me watched, watched.

The King called again. “Is it not forbidden to call challenge during Festival or in a Schooltown, Mandor? Have you not learned it so?

Answered by crowing laughter. “Many things are forbidden, Mertyn. Many things. Still, we do them.”

“True. Well, if you would have it so, Prince — then have it so. I move.”

And from behind one of the crystal fountains which had hidden him from us came that lonely Sorcerer I had wondered at, striding into the light until he stood just behind the King, full of silent waiting, clear as glass, holding whatever terrible thing he had been given to hold.

Drunken-Peter felt Mandor stiffen, saw the armored hand clench with an audible clang. Drunken-Peter looked up to see sweat bead the Prince’s forehead, to see a vein beating beside a glaring eye. From the Sorcerer below light began to well upward, a force as impersonal as water building behind a dam. Peter-who-watched knew the force would be unleashed at the next move. Drunken-Peter knew nothing, only sat dizzy and half sick before the puddled wine and remnants of the feast as Prince Mandor stooped above him to say:

“Peter…I do not wish to be…discourteous…” The voice hummed with tension, cracked with strain. With what enormous effort did he then make it light and caressing? “Go down and tell Gamesmaster Mertyn I did but…jest. Invite him to have wine with us…” Peter-who-watched screamed silently above. Drunken-Peter staggered to his feet, struggled into a jog past the tall Demon, imagining as he went an expression of — was it scorn? on that face below the half helm, then down the long flight of stairs toward the garden, lurching, mouth open, eyes fixed upon Gamesmaster Mertyn, onto the red-washed pave, hearing from above the cry of frustrated fury, “Talisman…to King’s Blood Four.”

Peter-above saw the power strike. Drunken-Peter cried as he fell, “No. No, Mandor. You would not be so false to me…to me…” before the darkness fell.

I woke in a tower room, a strange room, narrow windows showing me clouds driven across a gray sky. It hurt to move my head. At the bedside Chance sat, dozing, and my movement wakened him. He hrummed and hruphed himself into consciousness.

“Feel better? Well then, you wouldn’t know whether you do or not, would you? You wouldn’t even know how lucky you are.”

“I’m not…dead. I should be dead.”

“Indeed you should. Sacrificed in the play, like a pawn, dead as a pantry mouse under the claws of the cat. You would be, too, except for this.”

He picked my ragged jacket from the floor, holding it so that I could see what the rents revealed, a tracery of golden thread and silver wire, winking red eyes of tiny gems set into the circuits of stitchery in the lining.

“He bade Nitch sew this into your jacket. Just in case.”

“How did he know? I don’t understand…”

“It would be hard to understand,” said Chance, “except by one long mired in treachery. Ah. But Mertyn is not young, lad. He has seen much and studied more. He saw those ribbons, and he knew. Oh, if they’d been a few colorful tilings such as any friend might give, he’d have understood. A love gift, after all. But those you had? Nothing else like them in the town? What purpose a gift like that?”

“I thought he gave them to me so that he would know me among all the other maskers…”

“Then you saw deep, lad, and didn’t know it.”

“Did he mean to play me, even then?” I cried in my belly, a hard knot of pain there which hurt more than the fire beneath the bandages on my face and arms.

Chance shrugged, leaned to smooth my pillow. “Do you students know what you will play before the game begins? You set your pieces out in the game box, all shining, the ones you think you’ll play and the ones you hold in reserve. Maybe he brought you along to see him win. But, he wasn’t strong enough to win against the King, and he wasn’t brave enough to stand against the move and bear the play as it came, so he threw you into the game like a bone to a Fustigar.”

I think I cried then, for he said nothing more. Then I slept. Then I woke again, and it was morning, with Mertyn in the chair beside my bed.

“I am sorry you were hurt, Peter,” he said. “Perhaps you would rather be dead, but I gambled you would not feel so a year from now. Had I the skill with shields and deflectors I do with other strategy, I would have saved you these wounds.” For a long time I simply looked at him, at the gray hair falling in a tumbled lock across his forehead, at the line of his cheeks and the curve of his lips, so much like my own. There was nothing there unkindly, and yet I was angry with him. He had saved my life, and I hated him. The anger and hatred made no sense, were foolish. I would not repay him with foolishness, therefore I could not repay him.

He stared at his boots. “When you were put into play, Sorcerer struck. An Imperative. Nothing I could do. The screen in your jacket was not perfect. There was considerable splash, and you caught a little of it. Mandor caught most.”

I had to ask. “The Prince? Gamesmaster Mandor?”

“I do not know. His players carried him away. They do not know at Havad’s House. Likely he is lost in play. He had provoked me more than once, Peter, but even then I did not call for that Game.”

“I know.”

He sighed, very deeply. “I am sending you away from Mertyn’s House. Shielding you was forbidden. When we do things that are forbidden, there is always a price. For me, the price will be to lose you, for I have been fond of you, Peter.” He leaned forward and kissed me, forbidden, forbidden, forbidden. Then he went away. I did not see him again.

For me, the price was to be sent away from everything I had ever known. It was hard, though not as hard as they could have made it, for they let Yarrel and Chance go with me. We were to become an Ordo Vagorum, so Chance said. I had put myself in another’s hands, truly and completely. I had learned why that is foolish. Never mind that it is forbidden. It is foolish. They did not forbid me to play the Game — someday.

I was no nearer to being named. There were wounds on my face which would make scars I would always carry. They said something about sending us to another House, one far away, one requiring a very long journey. I got over being angry at King Mertyn. Each morning when I woke I had tears on my face left over from brightly colored dreams, but I could not really remember what they were.

I REMEMBER ONLY ODDS AND ENDS about the time that followed, pictures, fragments as of dreams or stories of things that happened to someone else. I remember sitting in a window at harborside, water clucking against the wall beneath me, the blue-bordered curtain flapping in the wind, flap, flap, striking the bandage on my head.

The border was woven with a pattern of swans, and I bore the pain of it rather than move away. Chance and Yarrel seem to have ignored me then as they went about the business of readying us for travel. The piles of supplies in the room behind me grew larger, but I had no idea what was in them.

I remember Chance reading the let-pass which had been issued by Mertyn’s House and countersigned by the Council of Schooltown, a pass begging the indulgence of Gamesmen everywhere in letting us go by without involving us in whatever might be going on. It was only as good as the good nature of those who might read it, but Chance seemed to take some comfort from it, nonetheless. Chance spoke of Schooltown as built remote from the lands of the True Game and warded about with protections in order to “keep our study academic and didactic rather than dangerously experiential.” Yarrel mocked him for sounding pompous, and he replied that he merely quoted Gamesmaster Mertyn. That sticks in my head, oddly.