Past Imperative [Round One of The Great Game]

by Dave Duncan

  "What sort of arguments?” Piol was interested now.

  "Oh, one school of thought considers him an aspect of Astina, as she is goddess of warriors. But no one will argue that in Suss. So Tion pipes and Gunuu comes on stage and speaks! A god can summon one of his own avatars, can't he?"

  Piol stared at her as if she was crazy. “I never heard ... Visek preserve me! Side by side?"

  "Why not?” Eleal laid down the sword. “I think D'ward would make an ideal god of courage, don't you? He's a born actor!"

  "And you're a born playwright!” The old man was staring blankly into space already. Recognizing the signs of genius at work, she crept quietly away to let him concentrate. She was glad to have that settled! Not that she'd been in any doubt how the conversation would turn out. It was written in the prophecy: D'ward shall become Tion, D'ward shall become Courage.

  The amphitheater was a natural hollow on the cliff edge outside the walls. It was not as large as the one at the temple, but Eleal thought it had better acoustics, and there were two shacks in the bushes for the cast dressing rooms. The arena at the temple had only one dressing room.

  Members of the troupe moved around with the money bowls as the audience trickled down the path. Later she overheard Gartol Costumer wondering how D'ward had managed to collect twice as much as he had. The play began at sunset, with Klip blowing a fanfare on his trumpet. The first act was played in twilight. The bonfires were lit during the intermission and again players went around with the bowls. This time everyone was interested to know how the play was being received, and again D'ward had collected the most.

  In the second act Eleal made her entrance as the herald and said her line. She had played in Suss for the first time in her life! As she walked off into the shadows, wielding her staff so her limp would not show, someone began to clap, and then the whole audience followed, and that really did sound like the biggest applause of the evening. She had a strong suspicion that it had been D'ward who had begun that clapping, but she couldn't be sure, and of course she was too proud to ask.

  At the end, as the audience trooped out under the moons, the actors offered the bowls again, and then some people did put real gold in D'ward's, exactly as Eleal Singer had predicted. He had not even had a part in the play, but he had such a nice smile!

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  56

  THE NEXT DAY THE TROUPE MOVED TO MORE RESPECTAble quarters and the meals improved considerably.

  Before that, though, Ambria announced that she was going to the temple. Her expression suggested that everyone ought to go to the temple. There were a few grumbles, but most people nodded to show they thought this was a good idea. Eleal knew that she should go, to thank Tion for returning her safely to her family, certainly D'ward should. Obviously he did not want to.

  "I shall not,” he said firmly. “And I should be very grateful if you would not mention the Liberator in your prayers. Do you need someone to stay behind and look after your baggage?"

  Ambria disapproved, but she could hardly force him to go to the temple against his will, and even she was not proof against his smile. Piol announced that he had some work to do, so he would stay behind also. Everyone else went.

  Nothing special happened. Eleal thanked the god for rescuing her from Narsh, and from the reapers, and restoring her to her family. She did not mention D'ward, although it was very hard not to think about him while she was praying. And nothing special happened! She limped when she departed just as much as she had limped when she arrived. Perhaps she was being presumptuous in hoping that her efforts would be rewarded with a miracle—or had she not finished her task? She had not actually brought D'ward to Tion's temple.

  Later the troupe moved into the Suss hostelry, which was a very good one. Piol Poet disappeared. Eleal found him in the attic, writing busily. She was confident then that he was working on a new speech for the Tragedy of Trastos. She left him alone and later, when Halma was looking for him, she said he had gone to the market.

  It was wonderful to be back with her family again. They all told her how much they had missed her; she thought they appreciated her more now. Perhaps she even appreciated them more. That very afternoon, to her complete astonishment, Trong took her aside and sat her down and told her all about her mother, Itheria Impresario. It was a very sad story, and they were both weeping before it was finished.

  An hour later, when Eleal was helping Ambria hang out washing, the big woman said, “Did Trong speak to you?"

  Eleal nodded. She should have guessed whose idea that had been.

  "Don't be too hard on him,” the big woman said gruffly, standing on tiptoe to peg things on the highest rope. “He has never forgiven himself for letting you fall out the window when he was supposed to be looking after you."

  "What has that to do with my mother?"

  "Well, nothing, I suppose. He shouldn't have made us keep that a secret from you. It is still very difficult for him to talk about."

  "But,” Eleal said loyally, feeling her eyelids start to prickle all over again, “if it was a god who, er, I mean ... Well, if she fell in love with a god, then that really wasn't her fault, was it?"

  "You mean it was the god's fault?"

  Um! “Well, yes. It must have been."

  "That's what Trong finds so hard to talk about. Be careful with that blouse, now!"

  D'ward was becoming quite fluent in Joalian and everyone was very careful to speak clearly and correctly around him, so he would not pick up the terrible local growl. He asked Eleal to give him reading lessons, too, and of course she graciously consented to set aside some time for this. He wanted to find a copy of the Filoby Testament and practice on that, but she explained that it was written in Sussian, and would be bad for him.

  "How about some of Piol's plays, then?” he asked.

  "No!” she said firmly. “They're in classical Joalian. If you try speaking that in the streets people will think you are very odd."

  He smiled. “That speech I recited from Kingharry was like that."

  So they went with Uthiam to a secondhand bookstore. Eleal picked out a famous romance, but D'ward refused it and instead chose an exceedingly dull book about the moons and stars. Teaching him to read with that awful thing was not nearly as much fun as she had expected. He seemed amazed to learn that Trumb went through his phases in only four and a half days, making solemn-faced jokes that Trumb wasn't really a big moon, therefore, only close to the Earth. He was even surprised to learn that the fortnight came from Ysh, who took exactly fourteen days to go from eclipse to eclipse. He spent hours studying Kirb'l and became almost surly in consequence. He claimed he had not known that there were three hundred sixty-four days in a year! At times, the Liberator was definitely strange.

  She was not the only one to have noted his smile. Olimmiar Dancer was making a perfect fool of herself, following him around like a lapcat and blushing every time he looked at her, until Eleal wanted to scream. The married women were almost as bad. If their husbands noticed, they did not comment. Everybody knew that D'ward was an honorable man.

  Piol produced his ode to courage and Trong started rehearsing the Trastos, although the Varilian was still drawing full houses every night.

  Eleal sat down with D'ward to help him learn his speech. He had trouble working out exactly what it said, of course, and then he seemed very unhappy with it.

  "It's all, er—what do you call a thing that says something everybody knows already?"

  Eleal wasn't sure, so they called over Golfren, who said the word was “platitude."

  "This is all platitudes!” D'ward announced.

  Golfren read over the speech. “Yes, it is. But isn't most poetry like that? It isn't what it says that matters, it's the way it says it."

  D'ward pondered, then laughed and agreed.

  He was absolutely horrified when Gartol Costumer produced his costume.

  "You mean I have to go out in front of hundreds of people wearing only that? But there w
ill be ladies present!"

  "It's traditional,” the old man said, “and the ladies will love it."

  D'ward looked very shocked and turned red.

  He was interested in all sorts of things—politics and customs and geography and business. Especially, though, he was interested in the gods. One day Eleal actually overheard him ask Trong which were the good gods and which were the bad gods.

  Trong, of course, was horrified. “The gods are good and know not evil, my son!” he said, which was a line from The Judgment of Apharos, although D'ward would not know that.

  "So where does evil come from?"

  "Evil comes from mortals, when they do not obey the gods."

  "Then you approve of what women must do in the temple in Narsh?” D'ward sounded more puzzled than impertinent.

  Trong growled, “Certainly!” and stalked away.

  The very next day, D'ward took Piol Poet off to a corner of the dining area and started writing something. It so happened that Eleal was helping Uthiam hunt for an earring she had lost, and while she was looking under a nearby table she chanced to hear some of what was being said. Piol seemed to be listing all the gods and goddesses he could think of, and D'ward was writing them down. Actually, he only wrote down some of them, and later he left the list lying around where anyone could pick it up and read it. There was no pattern to the ones he'd chosen: P'ter, D'mit'ri, Ken'th, D'ward, Alis.

  He'd spelled most of them wrong anyway. And his handwriting was terrible.

  Another day, when they were rehearsing in the park under the bridge and D'ward was sitting with Dolm in front of some bushes, Eleal just happened to pass by on the other side of the bushes.

  "I know T'lin Dragontrader,” Dolm was saying, “but only by sight. He's probably spying for someone, maybe both sides, maybe four or five sides. Most traveling merchants do. The Vales are always conspiring—Joalia, Thargia, Niolia, and all their vassal states."

  "How about traveling actors?"

  "Of course. When we return to Jurg in the fall, Ambria files reports with the Niolian ambassador."

  Eleal had not known that! She moved to a more comfortable position, a little closer.

  "Political spying?” D'ward said. “Do the gods play the same sort of game among themselves?"

  "Likely they do, some of them."

  "I suppose one tries everything in a few thousand years?"

  Dolm chuckled. “I expect so. I was required to report to Zath if I ever learned anything that might interest him—a war brewing, or a plague, for example. I only had reason to do it once, and that was in Narsh last fortnight."

  "How did you? Do you write reports to gods?"

  "I had a ritual, of course."

  "Explain that, please."

  How typical of D'ward, not to know what a ritual was!

  But Dolm did not laugh. “A ritual is a procedure decreed by a god. A priest will sacrifice a chicken in a particular way for a foretelling, another way for a blessing or a healing, right? It works because the god has arranged it so."

  "So it's sort of like writing a name and address on a message? When you do certain things in a certain order, the god knows he's being called and what's expected of him?"

  "I never thought of it that way, but yes, it must be."

  How like D'ward to see things in a way nobody else did!

  Dolm continued. “I had been given a ritual to summon the god in person. Obviously that is not something one undertakes lightly, especially when one's personal god is Zath. Parts of the ceremony had been made deliberately unpleasant, but of course that is to be expected.” He laughed nervously. “Fortunately he approved of my presumption, and I must admit that he rewarded me well."

  "May I ask how?"

  Dolm sighed. “With rapture, mostly. But he also cured the wound I had inflicted on myself as part of the ritual. Otherwise I would have bled to death."

  D'ward asked the question that was making Eleal want to burst: “What does Zath look like?"

  There was a long pause before Dolm answered. “Hard to say. He wears a reaper gown with a hood. I never saw him properly, not really."

  "This was what Eleal saw?"

  "She saw the ritual, at least. I'm sure she'd run away before Zath arrived, or she would not be around now. I never met anyone one quarter as snoopy as that child!"

  How dare he call her a child!

  D'ward had not finished with his questions. “Why did you call Zath that time?"

  "Because of what happened in the temple. Trong sacrificed to Ois. The priest was extremely surprised by the portents. Minor rituals like that are normally routine, so I knew the goddess was taking a personal interest. Thinking she objected to my evening activities, I reported to my master. Zath knew what was happening, though. He said Eleal was the problem, and I could leave her to the goddess."

  There was a silence, then, broken only by Trong's rantings in the distance.

  Dolm chuckled. “You look worried. What else do you want to know?"

  "This story about Eleal's mother."

  Eleal bristled. It was not polite of them to discuss her when she wasn't there! Or not supposed to be there, at least.

  "Is it a common event—a god raping a mortal?"

  "Not raping!” Dolm protested. “She would have submitted very willingly. It's not exactly common. But I don't think it's truly rare, either. You know the athletes from the festival here always spent a night at Iilah's grove? There's a common belief that at least one husky young man will always have an interesting experience that night."

  "It sounds like rape to me, if the victims can't resist. And when it's a god and a woman—do the women always kill themselves?"

  "No. But men or women, they're never much good for anything else. They never speak of it, but how could they ever be happy again, after having known the love of a god? Excuse me. I've got to go. My cue's coming up."

  D'ward just sat there then, by himself, thinking. Eleal crept away.

  He was accepted as one of the troupe. Even Klip could not dislike him. If he had a fault, it was that he would persist in regarding Eleal as a mere child. For example, one afternoon when he was in the kitchen, helping Uthiam Piper make supper—he was peeling blueroots, Uthiam baking bread...

  "I am worried about Eleal,” he said, and again that was very rude of him to discuss someone who was not there.

  Uthiam laughed. “Why on earth are you worried about her?"

  "Well, I'm grateful to her for what she did for me, of course. I should certainly have died without her help. I am very grateful to all of you, also, but I was brought here against my will. Somehow I must find a way to go home again and ... attend to certain important duties."

  "We shall miss you. We enjoy your company. You more than pay your way with the collections—I wish I knew how you did that! But what has this to do with Eleal?"

  "She seems to think she owns me! I can't stay with you forever, and I don't want to hurt the child's feelings."

  Child? Eleal fumed.

  "I am sorry for her,” D'ward continued. “She is so convinced that she will be a great actor when she grows up! Can she? With that game leg? She won't be able to compete in the Tion Festival or—"

  "You needn't worry about that small hussy,” Uthiam said. “I would back her against the entire Sussian militia any day. In fact, if you were to peek around that door, there, right now, I suspect you would find a pair of very sharp ears, attached to the sides of Eleal Singer's head."

  Eleal took off along the corridor as if Zath himself were after her.

  Following six well-received performances of the Varilian, the Trong Troupe announced The Tragedy of Trastos. In the smallest print on the playbills, D'ward Scholar was mentioned in the role of Gunuu, god of courage. Rehearsals had not gone well. D'ward seemed very wooden and not at all the fiery young man who had played Kingharry for the troupe.

  "Bigger, bigger!” Trong told him, over and over. “It's almost dark, remember! You're standing in firelight, not sun
light. Exuberate! Wave your arms! Declaim!"

  But D'ward continued to play the part in the same dull way, almost as if he hoped they would cancel his appearance.

  Even on the morning of the first performance, Trong was doubtful. Piol insisted it would be all right on the night, and even if it wasn't it would not spoil the show.

  Eleal was sure it would be all right.

  It was more than all right. It was spectacular.

  Eleal had no costume to worry about in the Trastos because she sang her gods’ messenger part offstage. She did it very well, but she won no applause. Nobody was being applauded. The collection at intermission had been pitiful. In backstage whispers, the actors agreed they had never met a harder audience. The trouble might be that Trastos was a historical villain in Suss, so Sussians did not enjoy seeing him portrayed as a tragic hero. Piol had bent tradition too far.

  D'ward's scene came near the end. Eleal slipped out through the bushes to sit on the edge of the crowd and watch. The doomed Trastos, having defied the gods’ command to abdicate in favor of a democracy and then challenged the rebels to send forth a champion to meet him in single combat, had now learned that this champion would be his own son, Daltos Liberator. Trong proclaimed his despair in a long soliloquy, crumbling by stages to the grass. He ended lying prone, howling out the cue: “Gods, send me courage!"

  Golfren entered, wearing the golden loincloth that identified him as Tion. Even in Narsh, the audience had reacted a little to this dramatic confrontation. The Sussians sat in stony silence to hear what the god might say to rescue the evening from disaster.

  "I will send you courage!” Golfren announced, and began to play. Eleal heard a few angry whispers near her. Golfren, too, sensed the crowd's displeasure, for he shortened his solo, raising the music swiftly to the rallying call that was D'ward's cue.

  "I am Courage!” D'ward Scholar strode into the light of the fires, tall and lean, wearing an identical costume and holding a symbolic lantern high. How handsome he was! Surely every woman in the amphitheater must have felt her heart quicken at the sight of him! Surely every man would identify with his youthful bravado? The spectators gasped to see a god and one of his own aspects on stage together.