by John Brunner
“What?” Fellian leaned forward, scowling. “Say you that a man on whom Lady Luck smiles so long and so often is to be injured by some stupid peasant, by some village boor? Or is it that you neglected to disarm them?”
Seeing his newfound fortune vanishing any second, Achoreus replied placatingly, “My lord! There was hardly a weapon in the whole of Wantwich, save rustic implements whose names I scarcely know, not having truck with country matters – scythes, perhaps, or hatchets … Which, naturally, we deprived them of! But all of those we brought are able-bodied, and hence remain possessed of feet and fists.”
“Hmm!” Fellian rubbed his chin. “Yes, I remember well a gladiator whom Lord Yuckin set against a champion of mine in years gone by, who lost both net and trident and still won the bout, by some such underhand trick as clawing out his opponent’s vitals with his nails.” He gave an embarrassed cough; he hated to refer to any wager he had lost. “Well, then, bring them up, but keep a guard around them, as you say.”
Relieved, Achoreus turned to issue the necessary orders. Accordingly, in a little while, to the music of their clanking fetters, a sorry train of captives wended its way out of the grand courtyard of the palace, up the lower slopes of the ramp leading to the gallery – which were of common granite – and stage by stage to the higher levels, where the parapets were of garnets in their natural matrix, and the floor of cat’s-eye, peridot, and tourmaline.
Refused food on the long trudge from Erminvale to Teq to discourage the energy needed for escape, granted barely enough water to moisten their lips, they found the gradual incline almost too much for them, and their escorts had to prod them forward with the butts of spears.
At last, however, they were ranged along the gallery, out of the shade of the dragon-hide awning, blinking against sunlight at their new and unlooked-for master. At one end of the line was Leluak, his left eye swollen shut from a blow and testifying to his vain resistance; as far distant from him as possible, Viola, nearly naked, for her struggle against Achoreus had caused much ripping of her clothes. And between them, every villager from Wantwich barring Granny Anderland, from grey-pated patriarchs to babes in arms.
Accompanied by the proud Achoreus, Torquaida passed along the line peering into face after face, occasionally poking to test the hardness of a muscle or the flab of a belly. He halted before one bluff middle-aged fellow in a red jerkin, who looked unutterably weary.
“Who are you?” he croaked.
“Uh …” The man licked his lips. “Well, my name’s Harring.”
“Say ‘so please you’!” Achoreus rasped, and made a threatening gesture towards his sword.
Harring muttered the false civility.
“And what can you do?” Torquaida pursued.
“I’m a brewer.” And, reluctantly after a brief mental debate: “Sir!”
“You learn swiftly,” Achoreus said with mocking approval, and accompanied Torquaida onward. “You?”
“I’m a baker – sir.”
“I? Oh, a sempstress!”
“And I’m a bodger, turner, and mender of ploughs.”
The answers came pat upon the questions, as though in naming their trades the captives could reassure themselves they still retained some dignity by virtue of their skill. At Torquaida’s direction a clerk made lists of all the names and crafts, leaving aside the children under twelve, and finally presented them with a flourish to Lord Fellian.
Scrutinizing them through his diamond lenses, the lord addressed Achoreus.
“And of what standard in their callings are these louts? Competent? Shoddy?”
“As far as I could judge, sir,” Achoreus answered, “they might be termed competent. Of course, their criteria fall far short of our own; still, their houses seemed sturdy, they kept their fences mended, and their byres and folds were sound enough to keep their livestock in.”
“I see.” Fellian scratched the tip of his nose with the facets of a gemstone ringed to his left middle finger. “Then there might be something to be said for keeping them instead of staking them. We have no brewer in the palace that I know of. Some scullery drab or turnspit would be less useful than that man – what’s his peasant’s name? Harring? Therefore do thus, Torquaida: take away their brats and put them to nurse or be apprenticed, then sort the rest and for each one you judge worth adding to my staff select one servant we already have, who’s lazy or sullen or deformed, and set him at my disposal to be staked tonight. Hah! Was this not an inspiration that I had?” He rubbed his hands and gave a gleeful chuckle.
“Oh, how I long to see the faces of those dunderheads when I wager fifty servants against each of them! I simply cannot fail to gain by this affair! If they win, which Lady Luck forfend, they will merely clutter up their households with extra mouths to feed, while I have acquired new useful tradesmen, and should I win – which I don’t doubt I shall – I’ll have plenty of spare overseers to cope with the servants those two stake! Ho-ho! We must do this again, Achoreus.”
Achoreus bowed low, and once more stroked his mustachios.
“Take them away,” Fellian commanded, and leaned back in his throne, reaching with fat pale fingers for the mouthpiece of a jade huqqah nearby on a lacquered table. An alert slave darted forward and set a piece of glowing charcoal on the pile of scented herbs its bowl contained.
Frightened and angry, but too weak to resist, the folk of Wantwich turned under the goading of the soldiers and filed back to the courtyard. Fellian watched them. As the tail of the line drew level with him, he snapped his fingers and all glanced expectantly towards him.
“That girl at the end,” he murmured. “She’s not unhandsome in a rustic way. Set her apart, bathe, perfume and dress her, and let her attend me in my chamber.”
“But – !” Achoreus took a pace forward.
“You wish to comment?” Fellian purred dangerously.
Achoreus hesitated, and at last shook his head.
“Let it be done, then.” Fellian smiled, and sucked his huqqah with every appearance of contentment.
VI
Furious, Achoreus turned to superintend the final clearance of the captives from the gallery, and thought the task was done, but when he glanced around there was one stranger remaining, who certainly was neither a household officer nor a slave: a man in a black cloak leaning on a staff.
“Achoreus!” Fellian rasped. “Why have you not taken that fellow with the rest?”
Staring, Achoreus confessed, “I have not seen him before! He was not with the villagers when we assembled them – Ah, but I have seen him, not at Wantwich. Now I recall that when we were on the outward leg from Teq he stood beneath a tree to watch our army pass, having that same staff in his hand.”
“And he’s come to join the captives of his own accord?” Fellian suggested with a laugh. An answering ripple of amusement at what passed for his brilliant wit echoed from his sycophants. “Well, then, we shall not deny him the privilege he craves!”
Faces brightened everywhere. Fellian was a capricious master, but when he spoke in this jovial fashion it was probable that he was about to distribute favors and gifts at random, saying it was to impress on his retinue the supreme authority of luck.
“So, old man!” he continued. “What brings you hither, if not the long chain linking those who have been here a moment back?”
“A need to know,” said the traveller in black, advancing across the multicolored floor.
“To know what? When the gaming-wheel of life will spin to a halt for you against the dire dark pointer of death? Why, you may ask that face to face of Lady Luck, and she will tell you instanter!”
At that, certain of his attendants blanched. It was not good taste – or wise – to joke about the Lady.
“To know,” the traveller responded unperturbed, “why you sent armed raiders to the village Wantwich.”
“Ah, yes,” Fellian said ironically. “I can see how a stranger might put a question of that order, lacking proper comprehension of t
he priorities in life. Many think that all they need ever do is act reasonably, meet obligations, pay their debts … and then some random power intrudes on their silly calm existence, perhaps with a lash, perhaps with a sword, and all their reasoning is set at naught. That then is their opportunity to learn the truth. Not sense but luck is what rules the cosmos, do you hear me? Luck!”
He leaned forward, uttering the last word with such intensity that a spray of spittle danced down to the floor.
“See you that idiot who turns a gaming-wheel for me? Ho, you! Bring the creature here!”
Retainers rushed to obey. Fellian peeled rings from his fingers, decorated with stones that might bring the price of a small farm or vineyard, and flung them on the soiled hem of the idiot’s robe.
“Turn her free! Luck has smiled her way today!”
“Not so,” contradicted the traveller.
“What? You gainsay me – you gainsay Fellian?” The lord was popeyed with horror.
“Say rather I see two sides of this good fortune,” the other murmured. “Is it not great luck for an idiot to be fed, housed, and clothed by a rich lord? Is this not worth more to her than to be given some pretty baubles and left to fend alone? Where is the benefit if next week she starves?”
Fellian began to redden as the validity of the point sank in, and he glared fiercely at someone to his right whom he suspected of being about to giggle.
“You chop logic, do you?” he grunted. “You’re a schoolman, no doubt, of the kind we take to gaze on Lady Luck, who thereupon die horribly!”
“Which event,” the traveller remarked mildly, “puts a term to the possibility of persuading them to share your views. The dead are not the easiest persons to convert; their attitudes tend to be somewhat rigid …” He shifted his staff from one hand to the other, and continued.
“Let me see if I understand these views of yours. You maintain, I believe, that life is one long gamble?”
“Of course it is!” barked Fellian.
“In that case, why should one wish to make more wagers? Is not any other, compared to the wager that embraces the whole of life, too trivial to be worth attention?”
“On the contrary. It is the gamble of life that must prove ultimately trivial, since none of us can win at it forever. …” Fellian sounded uncomfortable at making the admission, and proceeded rapidly to a more agreeable aspect of the subject. “What lends spice to the period of awaiting the inevitable is winning other wagers. And in myself I constitute an irrefutable proof of the correctness of my opinion. You see me sitting here – is it not plain by that token that I’m as much a winner in the game of life as anyone can hope to be? I staked my very survival on the right to be a Lord of Teq, and my present eminence proves that the Lady on the tower smiles my way!”
The traveller cocked his head sardonically. He said, “Call yourself a great gambler, a great winner, whatever you like. But I can name a bet you’ll not accept.”
“What?” Fellian howled, and all around there were cries of shocked dismay. “You think you can insult a Lord of Teq with impunity? Guards, seize and bind him! He has offered me a mortal affront, and he must pay for it.”
“How have I affronted you – how? To say that I can name a bet you will not accept is not to insult you, unless you can but will not match my stakes!” The traveller fixed Fellian with a piercing stare.
“Am I to bet with a nobody? I bet only against my peers! It takes uncounted wealth to bet with me!” Fellian snorted. “Why, were I to treat you seriously, any bumpkin could come to me and say, I wager my rags and clogs, all I possess, against all that you possess – and that’s a match!’”
“But there is one thing any man may bet against any other,” said the traveller. “For no man can have more than one of it.”
There was silence for the space of several heartbeats. “My lord,” Torquaida said at last in a rusty voice, “he means life.”
Fellian went pale and licked his lips. He blustered, “Even so! A life that may have fifty years to run, like mine, against one which may snuff out tomorrow, or next week?”
“Regrettably,” Torquaida creaked, “that is fair stakes. However” – and he gave a tiny dry smile and wheezing chuckle – “it’s over-soon to name the stakes before one knows the bet, is it not?”
Fellian flashed him a grateful grin; this was the outlet he had failed to spot himself. He said loudly, “Yes, a crucial point! What bet is this that you seek to make with me, old man?”
“I bet you,” said the traveller amid a general hush, “that the face of Lady Luck is turned away from your throne.”
There was an instant of appalled shock. But with great effort Fellian forced a booming laugh.
“Why, that wager’s lost already!” he exclaimed. “I’ve said as much already: it’s proof of the Lady’s favor that I enjoy unparalleled riches.”
“They are what you awoke to today,” the traveller said. “Tomorrow is yet to eventuate.”
“Why stop at tomorrow?” Fellian countered. “Next week, next month, next year if you like, when I have won still more bets against Yuckin and Nusk, we’ll hoist you on a tall pole that you may look on the Lady directly and see that she does smile towards me. Meantime, enjoy the hospitality of my dungeons. Ho, guards!”
“Thank you, I am in no need of lodging,” said the traveller. “Moreover, a week is too long. Less than a day will suffice. I will see you again tomorrow; let us say at dawn. For now, farewell.”
“Seize him!” Fellian bellowed, and two soldiers who had remained behind, on Achoreus’s signal, when the party of captives was led away, darted in the direction of the traveller. But they went crashing against one another, as though they had sought to arrest an armful of air.
VII
In the great cavelike kitchens of the palace, a cook sweated with ladle and tongs at a cauldron of half a hogshead capacity. The fire roaring beneath scorched his skin, the smoke blinded his eyes with tears.
From the dark corner of the hearth a voice inquired for whom the savory-smelling broth was being prepared.
“Why, for Lord Fellian,” sighed the cook.
“But no man can engulf such a deal of soup. Will he have guests?”
“Yes, so he will.” The cook grimaced. “They’ll eat two ladlefuls apiece, or maybe three.”
“And you then will enjoy what is left over?”
“I, sir?” – with a rueful chuckle. “No, on my soul, I wouldn’t dare. What my lord leaves in the dish goes to his hounds! Tonight as ever I shall sup off a dry crust, with cheese or moldy bacon-rind. Still, hounds have no taste for wine, so if I’m quick I may claim the goblet-dregs from the high table, and liquor will soothe my grumbling belly long enough to let me sleep.”
Among the fierce ammonia stench of guano, a falconer worked by an unglazed window, tooling with gnarled yet delicate hands a design of rhythmical gold leaf on the hood and jesses of a peregrine.
“This leather is beautiful,” said a soft voice from over his shoulder. “But doubtless you put on far finer array when you sally forth of an evening to enjoy yourself at a tavern?”
“I, sir?” grunted the falconer, not turning around; the light was wasting, and he was forbidden the extravagance of lamps or candles. “Why, no. I’m in the service of Lord Fellian, and have no time to amuse myself. And had I time, I’d be constrained to wear what you see upon me now – old canvas breeches bound with fraying rope. Besides, with what would I purchase a mug of ale? A scoop of fewmets?”
In the stables, a groom passed a soft cloth caressingly over the fitments of a stall; they were of ivory and jacinth, while the manger was filled with new sweet hay, fine oats fit to have baked bread, and warm-scented bran.
“Palatial,” said a voice from behind the partition. “This is truly for a horse?”
“Aye,” muttered the groom, declining to be distracted from his work. “For Western Wind, Lord Fellian’s favourite steed.”
“By comparison, then, I judge you must tak
e your repose on high pillows stuffed with swansdown, beneath a coverlet of silk, or furs for winter.”
“I sleep on straw, sir – do not jest with me! And if I have time to gather clay to stop the chinks in my hovel against the cold of night, I count myself well off.”
Beside a marble bath, which ran scented water from a gargoyle’s mouth, a slender girl measured out grains of rare restorative spices onto a sponge, a loofah, and the bristles of a brush made from the hide of a wild boar.
“With such precautions,” a voice said from beyond a curl of rising steam, “your beauty will surely be preserved far past the ordinary span.”
“Think you I’d dare to waste one speck of this precious essence on my own skin?” the girl retorted, tossing back a tress of hair within which – though she could be at most aged twenty – there glinted a betraying thread of silver. “I’d be lucky, when they detected me, to be thrown over the sill of that window! Beneath it there is at least a kitchen midden to afford me a soft landing. No, my entire fortune is my youth, and it takes the powers of an elemental and the imagination of a genius to spread youth thin enough to satisfy Lord Fellian from spring to autumn.”
“Why then do you continue in his service?”
“Because he is a winner in the game of life.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Why,” sighed the girl, “everyone says so.”
In the high-vaulted banquet-hall, as the sun went down, the rival lords Yuckin and Nusk came to feast with their respective retinues at the expense of the current greatest winner prior to the onset of the night’s gambling. They had come to his palace too often of late; there was no friendly chat between them. Gloomily – though displaying fair appetite, because their own kitchens did not furnish such delicacies – they sat apart, growing angrier and angrier as platters of gold succeeded those of silver, goblets of crystal replaced those of enamelled pottery … and often recognizing items they had owned and lost.
Lord Fellian should have been in high spirits at the downcast mood of his adversaries. Instead, he too appeared depressed and anxious, and the talk at his long table was all of the strange intruder in a black cloak who had proposed so disturbing a bet.