Some nights he sat vigil in the high caverns. Some days he hunted alongside the young men with their tagalong brothers and cousins, for the sheer joy of the chase and the kill. Some evenings he found a high rock and looked down upon the plains that led toward the coast, and recalled Purpure, High Canton, the Lost Island of Ee, and so many other places his feet had touched.
But always he went back to his hut. There Margaine, his green-eyed foreign wife, awaited him after her own days of seeing to the sick or wounded, and teaching the little girls.
It was enough.
As for the card he’d never turned, it hung on the wall of his hut in a leather bag. Some nights it twitched, or even glowed—magic trying to escape. If he’d not been a wizard of some power in his own right, he would have been overwhelmed years before.
The barmaid had laughed when he’d palmed the card and slipped it into his vest. Then she’d left with him. The ivory card box remained behind, innocent trap for the next man. Nothing more had been said about cheating, or what belonged to whom. He was never sure if she retained the aspect of the Raven Queen, but Margaine’s eyes always sparkled that curious color.
Some day he would turn the card. Some day he would know what fate he had removed from the Deck of Many Things.
Just not today.
Today, his path was his own. Today, the mansions of his memory gleamed once more. Today, he would not flip the last card.
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2011 books are Endurance from Tor Books, and Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh from Prime Books. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
Untold Adventures: A Dungeons & Dragons Anthology Page 35