Past Imperative_The Great Game

by Dave Duncan

  Eleal swung a leg hastily over the pommel plate and slid to the ground in an undignified rush, wincing as her bare feet struck gravel. She had barely rearranged her robe when Gim landed beside her, stumbled, and pitched over with a shrill oath. That was not a very dignified descent for a noble hero on what must surely be his first chivalrous exploit. He scrambled up, muttering and sucking an injured palm.

  Eleal had taken two unsteady steps toward T’lin when a portly woman came rushing out of the house with another lantern.

  “My dear! You must be frozen! Come inside quickly.” She propelled Eleal bodily over the sharp gravel and into a cozy, fragrant kitchen, brightened by no less than four candles. Swathed in llama wool blankets, Eleal was tucked into a chair close to the big iron range. The woman swung the door open and clattered a poker in among the glowing coals. Then she began stoking it with big lumps of coal from a shiny brass scuttle, using brass tongs. Shiny copper pans hung on one wall. There was a tasseled rug on the floor; painted china plates stood along a shelf so the pictures on them were visible. Gim’s family might not live in a palace like the king of Jurg, but they were wealthy compared with a troupe of actors.

  Eleal began to shiver uncontrollably. She could not tell whether that was from the change of temperature or from nervous reaction, but she felt in danger of falling apart.

  “Hot soup!” the woman proclaimed as if invoking a major god. Granting the range fire a few moments’ mercy, she knelt to bundle her visitor’s feet in her own still-warm fleece coat.

  Eleal forced her reply through chattering teeth. “That would be wonderful, thank you.”

  “Vegetable or chicken broth?”

  “No chicken please!”

  “I’m Gim’s mother, Embiliina Sculptor, and you must be Eleal Singer.”

  “Yes, but how—”

  “Explanations later!” Embiliina insisted. She was much less bulky without her coat and hood. In fact, she was slim and surprisingly youthful to be mother of a boy as old as Gim. Her features were fine-drawn, her complexion pale and speckled with millions of tiny fair freckles. Her hair was a spun red-gold, hanging in big loose curls to her shoulders. She wore a quality dress of the same blue shade as her eyes. She wore a smile.

  T’lin Dragontrader strode in, filling the room, black turban almost touching the ceiling. His weather-beaten face and coppery beard seemed vulgar and barbaric alongside Embiliina’s more delicate red-gold coloring. He began to peel off outer garments, scowling at nothing with a taut, grim expression. When he stepped closer to warm his fingers at the range, he was still avoiding Eleal’s eye.

  And the door closed behind the man who must be Gim’s father. He was of middle height and husky, although he looked small alongside the dragon trader. He clasped Eleal’s icy hand in one twice as large and rough as a rasp, studying her with solemn coal black eyes. He was as swarthy as his wife was fair.

  “I am Kollwin Sculptor.”

  “Eleal Singer.”

  He nodded. “You are younger than I imagined. If you did what I think you did, then you’re a brave lass.” He spoke with great deliberation, as if reading his words.

  “I d-d-didn’t have time to think! The honor is G-g-gim’s.”

  The dark man shook his head. “The honor is the god’s. Gim has gone to thank him for a safe return. When you are ready, you will wish to visit him also?”

  “Of course! At once.” Eleal stood up shakily.

  “Later!” Embiliina said, clattering pots. “The child’s half-froze to death and the soup—”

  Eleal had almost resumed her seat when the sculptor said, “First things first.” His voice was slow, but not to be argued with. “You will promise not to discuss or reveal the place I am about to take you?”

  That settled Eleal’s indecision—her curiosity reared like a startled dragon. “Of course! I swear I never shall,” she said eagerly.

  The sculptor nodded and turned to T’lin. “Dragontrader?”

  But T’lin had found himself a chair and spread out his long legs. He was a startling, many-colored sight in variegated leggings and a doublet of embroidered quilting. He was also a figure of menace. His long sword in its green scabbard lay by his feet, he still wore his black turban. He shook his head. “Secrets make me nervous. They are more often evil than good.”

  Kollwin’s ruddy face seemed to bunch up with shock at the refusal. “It is no great secret, a shrine to Tion. Just…private.”

  T’lin’s green eyes stared back coldly. “Then why require oaths of secrecy?”

  “Because there are valuables there and I do not want them talked around. Not everyone is above stealing from a god.”

  “Gods can afford the loss better than us poor workers. No, I shall give thanks in my own fashion later.”

  Kollwin scratched a dark-stubbled cheek in contemplation. “Has that ring in your ear some special significance, Dragontrader?”

  T’lin drooped his red eyebrows menacingly. “If it has, then it did not deter your god when he needed my assistance.”

  The sculptor thought for a moment and seemed to accept the reasoning, although he was not pleased. “Come then, Eleal Singer.”

  “Just a moment!” Embiliina barred the way like an enraged deity. “You are not to drag that poor child outside again on a night like this in her bare feet.”

  There was a minor delay while Eleal donned her hostess’s boots and fleece coat, all much too large for her. There was another minor delay when Kollwin tried to go out and came face-to-face with a dragon. Starlight, being as nosy as any of his kind, had wriggled forward to see what was going on and his head filled the doorway.

  “Try opening the drape,” T’lin said drily from his chair. “And close the door before he tries to come in.”

  That worked. The great head swung over to peer in the window, and then the sculptor was able to squeeze out past the scaly shoulder, followed by Eleal, stepping over claws like sickles.

  Ysh’s tiny disk shed her cold blue light through a gap in the clouds, sparkling like frost on the dragon’s scales. Carrying a lantern, Kollwin Sculptor led Eleal all around the dragon to reach a small shed against the wall of the yard. The door was open, but she noticed that the timber was thick and it bore at least three locks. If that was merely “private,” then what was “secret” like? The inside was cluttered with all the litter she might have expected: tools and balks of wood and oddly shaped scraps of stone or metal. More interesting than those was the trapdoor in the floor, and a staircase descending.

  The sculptor went first, lighting the way. “This is very old.” His voice echoed up eerily. “There was probably a temple here, once upon a time.”

  And now there was a shrine. The room was small and low, more like an oddly shaped volume of shadow than a chamber, a bricked-off portion of an ancient cellar. Where the walls were visible, some parts were of very rough, crude masonry, others had been cut out of living rock. The only light came from a pair of braziers standing on a rug, thick and richly colored and oddly out of place. Those were the only furniture. The air was chill and yet headily scented with incense.

  Beyond the rug was an alcove, and in the alcove stood the god.

  Gim knelt on stone in the center of the chamber, but he must have concluded his devotions, because he scrambled to his feet and turned to smile a welcome as the newcomers approached. It was the first time Eleal had really seen him. He was still bulky as a bear in his coat, but he had removed his hat, revealing a floppy tangle of gold curls, and his eyes were as blue as his mother’s. His lip bore a faint pink fuzz, which he probably thought of as a mustache. Politely disregarding that, she concluded that her rescuer could be considered a very handsome young man—how appropriate! She returned his smile. Only then did she look at the god.

  The image had not been set in the alcove. Rather, the mottled yellow stone of the cave had been dug out to leave Ti
on in high relief, exquisitely carved. He was life-size, identifiable by a beardless face and by the pipes he held. The Youth was most often depicted nude, but here he wore a narrow scarf around his loins—an impractical garment that would rapidly fall off any mortal. He was striding forward out of the rock, one foot on the floor and the other still buried in the wall. He held his head slightly bent and turned, as if he were about to put the pipes to his lips or had just finished playing, while his eyes looked out at the visitors with a curiously enigmatic smile. As the creeping flames of the braziers danced, reflections moved on his limbs, his shadow fidgeted on the back of the hollow. He almost seemed to breathe.

  “He’s gorgeous!” Eleal whispered. “You made him yourself, Sculptor? Oh, he is beautiful!” Then she took a longer look at that perfect face and swung around to stare down at Gim, who bent his head quickly.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean…Well, I did, but—”

  “I did not bring you here to admire art, Singer,” Kollwin growled, but he was fighting back a smile.

  “Oh, but…Gim? Look at me.”

  Gim looked up, redder than a bloodfruit in the dim light. He smiled a little…

  The likeness was exact! Or would be. He was not quite old enough, but the faces were already the same. Gim seemed taller only because he was wearing boots; otherwise he would be the same height as the god stepping out of the wall.

  “An older brother, Kollwin Sculptor? Or did you imagine him as he will be in another couple of years?”

  “My son was not the model. I never use models.”

  She could only stare from the god’s inscrutable smile to Gim’s scarlet embarrassment and back again.

  “Tell her, Father. Please?”

  “I carved the blessed likeness long ago,” Kollwin said in his ponderous way. “The night I completed it I thanked the god and went up to the house and was told my wife was in labor.”

  She dared another glance at Gim, and he was redder yet, but wearing an idiotic grin now.

  “Then the god?…” The god had fashioned the boy to the statue!

  “The carving is the older,” the sculptor said. “Gim takes after his mother and I was very much in love with her—and still am, of course. That may explain any resemblance you see, but we came here to give thanks, not to discuss art.”

  Eleal was about to kneel, then saw that Kollwin had more dissertations to intone.

  “I think you are old enough to keep a secret, Eleal Singer. I will risk a word of explanation, if you will swear never to carry it outside this holy place.”

  She swore, anxious to learn the purpose of a covert shrine. This was almost as exciting as escaping down a wall in the middle of the night and much less nightmarish.

  He rubbed his chin with a raspy noise. “I am not sure how much I may say, though.”

  Gim was staying very quiet.

  “The Tion Fellowship?” she prompted.

  Kollwin’s eyes glinted; his swarthy face seemed to darken.

  Error? “All I know,” she said hastily, “is that Trong Impresario and his son came, er, went to a meeting two nights ago. A mutual friend said they belonged to some club he called the Tion Fellowship. They did not mention it themselves.” But now she knew where they had come.

  The sculptor sniffed grudgingly. “The Tion Mystery is not a club! But, yes, they asked their brethren of the Narsh Lodge for aid. Of course we offered prayer and sacrifice on their behalf, both here and in the Lady’s temple. Our pleas seemed to be heard.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, looking up at the god. “We know what happened, because we had one of our local brothers in the temple anyway.”

  Doing what, she wondered? But of course special dedication to one god would not reduce anyone’s obligations to worship all the others also. The ceremony had been public.

  Kollwin smiled—a slow process like sunshine moving on mountains. “We sent along someone who would understand the ancient speech, just to be on the safe side. The priests did not reveal everything the oracle had said, but they did not distort the holy words unduly. The goddess specifically directed that you were to be taken into her clergy. She insisted you be kept locked up and guarded for a fortnight. She said the rest of the troupe must contribute a hundred stars to her temple treasury, either by donation or service, and then should be run out of town as soon as possible.

  “So it seemed that the Lady had turned aside her anger and all but one of the troupe was free to leave.” The sculptor cleared his throat harshly. “Frankly, that one seemed of very little importance to us. The youngest, dispensable…. One cracked egg in a dozen is not a disaster. We thought the problem had been solved.

  “But Holy Tion did not think so! He looks after those who serve him, as we should have remembered. It so happened—and this is what I ask you not to repeat—that my son had begun his initiation into the Tion Mystery.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “The ceremony includes a period of prayer and fasting, which concludes when Kirb’l next appears. That night the skies were clear and Kirb’l appeared.”

  “I saw him.” Eleal stole a glance at Gim. He smiled down at her shyly.

  “At the conclusion of the ceremony,” his father continued, “the initiate sleeps before the figure of the god. Here, on the floor, Gim was vouchsafed a remarkable dream, indeed a vision. Tell her, lad.”

  Gim rubbed his upper lip with a knuckle. His blue eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “I saw myself on a black dragon, riding to the temple.” His voice rose in excitement. “Just as it happened! I knew which window, and exactly what to do with the rope. It all came true! And I knew it wasn’t just an ordinary dream! I mean, I’ve never even touched a dragon before! So I told Father and—”

  The older Sculptor chuckled. “He hauled my bedcovers off at dawn! Understand: Gim was not present when the actors came! He had not been told of the oracle, or of Eleal Singer. Yet here he was babbling about rescuing a girl held against her will in the Lady’s temple! I knew then that the god had heard our prayers and issued instructions. We inquired and learned that there was a dragon trader in town, so we went to talk with him. And he did have a black dragon in his herd. And he knew you personally.”

  This was something out of one of Piol Poet’s dramas! “And?” Eleal demanded.

  Kollwin Sculptor chuckled. “And I think he should be in on the rest of the telling. Your soup must be ready. My wife will skin me. You know enough now to know who to thank.”

  “It was the god who rescued you, Eleal,” Gim said modestly.

  Yes. But why why why?

  And which aspect of Tion had answered the prayers? Dropping to her knees, Eleal took a harder look at the image that so much resembled the young man now kneeling beside her. The enigma in the smile, she decided, came from the turn of the head and eyes—lips smiling in one direction, eyes in another. He held Tion’s pipes, but a god who would steal a girl away from a goddess’s temple by sending a dragon and a boy who had never ridden one before might well be the same god who was causing that boy to grow up as an exact replica of his father’s masterpiece—Kirb’l, the Joker.

  Kollwin had somehow contrived to put her in the center. It was his shrine, so she waited for him to begin. One of the nice things about the Youth was that he spurned written texts. There were red, green, white, and blue scriptures, but no yellow.

  While she was preparing words in her head, Kollwin addressed the god. Even in conversation with mortals he sounded as if he were reading a text; his prayer was a monumental inscription. “Lord of art and youth and beauty, I thank you for the safe return of my son this night, for the trust you have shown in us, and for the chance to be of service. As always, I am grateful for the blessings of the day passed and the opportunities of the day ahead. Amen.”

  Gim said, “Amen,” so Eleal did also. This intimate sharing of religion was unfamiliar to her, but obviously it was her turn now. She
looked up at the god; his eyes smiled back with infinite patience and the same mysterious amusement as before.

  “Thank you, Holy Tion, for rescuing me from the most disgusting, degr—”

  The sculptor barked, “Careful! You must not blaspheme against the Lady!”

  Eleal took a deep breath and began again. “Then I’ll just say that I am very grateful for being rescued…. Thank you, Lord.” She paused, the others waited. “And I promise to serve, er, the lord of art and beauty as well as I can.” She thought of the festival, and tried to imagine Uthiam mounting the steps in the great temple to receive a scarlet rose from the hand of the god. “And I ask you to look after my friends, because they have suffered because of me, and, well, I’d like them to do well in your festival. To your honor, of course. Amen.”

  Gim said, “Amen.”

  His father coughed. “I am no priest, Eleal Singer—but may I make a suggestion?”

  “Please do.”

  “If your trouble was caused by some offense you committed against Holy Ois, or against Holy Eltiana herself, then you might perhaps ask Lord Tion to intercede for you.”

  “I didn’t do anything…. I don’t think it was anything I did,” Eleal said. “But yes. Please, Holy One, keep me safe from the other gods’ anger and whatever is prophesied. Amen.”

  That had not come out quite as she had intended. Again Gim echoed her amen, but there was a distinct pause before his father did—Kollwin had noted the cryptic reference in her prayer. Gim was still too stirred up by his adventure to be concerned with anything else.

  “I already spoke my thanks to Holy Tion, Father, but I will do so again if you want to hear.”

  The sculptor chuckled. “You are not a child that I need supervise your prayers, but I can understand if your heart is still full, and anything I can understand must be very obvious to a god.”

  Gim needed no more encouragement than that. He raised his hands in supplication to the image. “Lord of art, I thank you again for the opportunity to serve you and for giving me such an adventure and bringing me back safely. All I ever want is to serve you, Lord, and I especially hope to serve you by bringing more beauty into the world in art or music, but I dedicate my whole life to pleasing you in any way I can. Amen.”