by Ron Glick
This question shook the priestess far more noticeably, her face flushing in response before she could turn her head to hide the shock. It was well known that priests of the New Order adopted new names when they took to their preachings. It had something to do with separating their worldly selves from the bodies through which their Gods worked. Nathaniel's question breached the formal etiquette of a meeting with a priest entirely. By asking her given name, it lessened Brea's stature as a priestess, and suggested a more familiar privilege than that which a common man might be entitled.
“Li-Lillian,” the young woman stumbled awkwardly as she turned her face again to look into Nathaniel's. She was apparently unused to using her own name, which suggested she had been a priestess and only a priestess for some time. Even more unusual was that she had answered at all, since priests of the New Order rarely acknowledged having a past before taking up their stations. In truth, Nathaniel had anticipated her avoiding the question, but as she had answered, he intended to use her forthcoming to keep the young woman off balance.
“Lillian.” Nathaniel sounded the name. “You should not have changed it. That name suits you better, I think.”
Brea was flustered, uncertain how to respond and shaken visibly by the comment. Finally, her face blushing even deeper, she said simply, “You flatter me.” The words lacked any strength of conviction.
“If you say so.” Nathaniel paused, waiting upon the woman to speak next.
Brea shuffled from foot to foot in the awkward silence, averting her eyes like a shy school girl. Her reaction did not escape Bracken's attention, either, as he shook his head in silent disbelief. Nate had always had a peculiar effect upon women, able to woo even the least receptive to his side if he wished to. Since he had married, Bracken had not seen the man exert his charm and the dwarf would have thought the talent gone. Yet here was the same giddy, uncomfortable demeanor he had seen so often in the town's womenfolk whenever they had dealings with Nate Goodsmith.
This was a strange response even for Nate's unfathomable allure, though. Clergy of the New Order did not fawn over young country boys, no matter how charming. There was always the predictably stoic mannerisms, the adherence to proper form and function in everything they did publicly. Although Bracken knew firsthand that clergy folk were just as prone to the vices he offered through his establishment as any other customer, these were always pursued in privacy, out of the public's eye. A priest may practice the crudest deviancy behind closed doors, but to the public, they were always prim and proper, above reproach.
Lady Brea had been in town the better part of the eight day week and she had not diverted from practiced formality, as far as Bracken could have seen. And considering she stayed at the inn, he had seen her at all hours, and knew what went on, or rather what did not go on, behind her closed door at night. She was clean of all the common vices, even alcohol! No, she had remained prim and proper in all aspects during her entire stay. Until now, that is.
Well, she either be high on somethin' she picked up ou' there now or Nate 'as gotten a bit better at wha'ever it is he does wit' women, thought the barkeep.
“I, uh, I seem a bit... unclear... as to why you would feel the need for such flattery,” managed Brea at last, trying to regain her composure while coyly looking at Nathaniel out of the corner of her eye. Unconsciously, her fingers ran along the collar of her silken robe, ever so lightly touching the skin of her neck.
“No need,” answered Nathaniel. “Just speaking the obvious as I see it.”
“You... you would not be trying to... turn my eye, good sir? You should know that I am no common wench you can bed and...”
Nathaniel held up his hand, bowing his head slightly. “I am spoken for, milady. I have a wife and child, and would never stray. I assure you, I meant nothing of the sort.”
Brea stiffened as though struck, her hand jerking away from her neckline. Obviously, she had been entertaining some rather specific thoughts and Nathaniel's rebuff, however polite, was not what she had expected. “You would make a fool of me.” Her voice had lost its momentary gentleness, her eyes taking on a cold chill as she glared once more at Nathaniel.
“Not at all,” Nathaniel responded, sincerity and surprise evident in his voice.
Brea walked up to the man until her face was mere inches from his own, her hand resting upon his chest, nails extended against his shirt. She actually stood several inches shorter than Nathaniel and it was only the distance allowed by their differences in height that separated them at all; she had left no space between their bodies.
“I could have you, if I wanted to, wife or no.” She spoke softly enough that she had obviously intended only Nathaniel to hear. She had not accounted for Bracken's acute dwarven hearing, who by virtue thereof heard the whole exchange.
“I could annul your marriage, take you as my own. I could even brand your wife heretic so none would ever again welcome her at their door, much less their bed. You would be wise to not spurn me the next time you play at rousing my attentions!” To emphasize her words, she lightly drew her nails across his chest before turning and moving purposefully across the room to the stairwell there. In short order, she had disappeared into the upper story, where a short while later a door could be heard slamming closed.
“I do no' be thinkin' I 'ave ever seen a priest o' the Order so flustered afore!” scoffed Bracken. “But I would be mindful o' her words. She could do everythin' she says an' worse. Religious types 'ave free run o' the land these days an' none woul' stop 'er if she took a mind ta do as she says.”
Nathaniel smiled wistfully as he stared after the priestess. “She did act oddly, didn't she? I wonder why...”
The dwarf silenced the man's inquiries with a slap on his back. “Ya always wonder an' the answer's always the same! She 'ad an itch for ya, Nate, an' I do no' think ya 'ave seen the last o' her either. I would no' take her for the quittin' type an' she di' no' act much like she woul' put ya out o' her mind soon as she left!”
Nathaniel turned to his friend. “You don't honestly think she would harm Mari and Geoffrey?” The look of alarm reminded Bracken of the real fear his human friend lived with every day. This was the reason Nate lived in the wooded lands and not in town. He had lost his mother to a fanatic and he could not bear the thought of losing yet another loved one to the New Order's madness.
Bracken could only shake his head. “I honestly could no' say, though if I were ta lay a wager 'pon it, I would favor her lettin' the matter drop afore it reached such a point. A' least so long as nothin' 'appens ta stir the pot an' twist the knife deeper. Ya stung her, whether ya meant ta or no, and she still be a flesh an' blood woman under those robes. She is likely ta carry a grudge, an' I'd aim true methinks if I were to say she would still be willin' ta try again to persuade ya ta bed down wit' her. But to go further? I'd be thinkin' if ya played it safe and avoided a meetin' wit' her again, ya'd not have much more to worry 'bout.
“Which brings up the matter o' of how long ya do plan on stayin' in town this time?”
Nate sighed. “No more than a couple of hours, if it can be helped. I really had not planned to come into town today at all. But I was restless...”
“An' Mari sent ya to town to get some peace an' quiet,” Bracken finished. He motioned Nathaniel to a seat at a table near where they had been talking, and then took the seat opposite. Mornings were usually slow and the dwarf could typically spare some leisure time away from his chores. This morning had so far been little different. Aside from Nate and Brea, he had had only two other patrons, only one of which still lingered in the back of the room.
“Something like that,” admitted the taller man. “I did have some furs to barter. The trapline's been doing really well lately. I even managed to catch a swampcat, though the Old Gods... I mean, Fate only knows why it had wandered so far afield. The nearest bog has to be a hundred leagues away.”
Bracken gave a knowledgeable nod. He had been through the marshland in question long ago, on his
journey to Oaken Wood, though he did not feel it important to mention it to Nate. A dwarf guarded jealously the entrances to his domain, and detailing the path by which he had come to this town would have breached that tradition. Some habits, even those towards a people he no longer lived among, came hard to break.
“'Tis peculiar, no doubt. Yet its rarity will likely fetch ya more than a fair price.”
“Yes,” Nathaniel nodded. “Ren has always treated me fairly on the pelts I've sold him in the past, and this time was no exception. He often jokes that I'm a cornerstone of his trade, and it'd put him out of business if he didn't treat me fair and I went elsewhere. And he always does seem to pay me honestly, as if I might really take my furs elsewhere if he paid me less, even if there were another barter in the valley or within a handful of leagues, for that matter.”
“Be tha' as it may, ya 'have always 'ad good fortune in whate'er ya put your hand to, Nate. And many are the local boys what 'ave eyed yer good fortune wit' envy. I 'ave 'eard talk that ya might be some kind o' warlock wit' magic aidin' ya, but I do no' think anyone puts much real stock inta such things.”
“Fortune, huh?” Nathaniel looked off to some point unseen in the distance as he reflected inwardly. “I'm not so sure I would call it fortune. I've lost my fair share and I've certainly never gained wealth no matter how good my luck turned at any given time.”
“Fah! There are other kinds o' wealth aside from coin an' stone, Nate, and ya fair ta overflow in the bounty o' it, whet'er ya woul' admit ta it or no!”
“Perhaps,” the dwarf's companion shrugged. “But I've a bad feeling that something's coming that's going to change all of it. And good fortune or not, I don't see that I'm going to be able to escape the hard times to come...”
“An' wha's tha' supposed to mean?” queried the barkeep. It was not like Nate to talk this way and it set Bracken's nerves on edge to hear it. “Does this 'ave somethin' to do with why yer so restless today? Why ya 'ave come into town ta see me?”
Nathaniel was silent before he responded. “I had a dream last night,” he said at last. “I was in darkness. I could somehow sense I was underground, buried beneath a tree with only my feet above, and that they were covered with leaves. Don't ask me how I knew any of this, I just did. Then someone came and pulled me up like I was a wooden board. I could not move, but I could see that there were three men there and that I was somehow now between someone and these other three. Somehow the three men could not find this other man so long as I was there, even though the man was right in front of them. Again, don't ask me how. When the three stopped looking for the man I was hiding, the one who was holding onto my feet, he said something... important.”
Nathaniel paused and Bracken realized how intently he had been hanging on every word of his friend's recital. “Well, wha' was it 'e said?”
Nathaniel sighed. “He said, 'One. So, if you're the first, how many others are there like you in the world, I wonder?'”
“Eight,” came a response from the back of the room where Bracken's other patron had sat all but forgotten while Nathaniel and Bracken had conversed. As the two looked to the sound of the feminine voice, they could see the figure lightly riffling through a deck of cards.
Bracken seemed visibly startled to lay eyes upon his solitary guest, as though he had not known she were there at all. His wooden gawking left it to Nate to respond to the interruption. “Your pardons, milady,” said Nathaniel. “Were you saying something regarding our conversation?”
Something had chilled Nathaniel to the quick as the strange woman had spoken. He could not deny that. Perhaps it had been only an off-handed comment about a card in her deck, yet somehow the word was so perfectly timed as to be anything but coincidence. It was as though Nathaniel somehow knew the answer already and the words from the stranger only echoed his own deeply buried memory. Somehow, this stranger had reminded him of some detail, some element of his dream perhaps, which he had not recalled until that very moment. The response had just seemed right, remarkably and inarguably the absolute truth.
“There are nine such swords in total,” spoke the woman as she flipped the top card from her deck, looking at it casually. “So the answer as to how many others there are is eight.”
“Swords...?” Again, the woman's words struck a chord of familiarity deep within Nathaniel's breast. “A sword... Held by the feet...”
Bracken recovered himself enough to clear his throat, his eyes now diverted to the cards the woman flipped through. “An' how woul' ya be knowin' such a thing?” he asked through gritted teeth.
The woman sat somewhat in shadow, so her immediate features were not immediately visible. However, the smile that crossed her features could not be hidden. “You play, do you not?”
Bracken flinched. “Ya be meanin' what by that, madame?”
The woman looked up, her face still masked in shadow, though the brights of her eyes shown clearly enough to pierce Bracken through his core. “Why, the Game, of course.” In response, the woman flipped the card in her hand across the room with a precision that seemed to defy her slight hand. The card flew through the air with an accuracy that appeared unworldly and came to rest on the floor at Bracken's feet. “The Game, sir dwarf. You do play, do you not?”
Bracken swallowed uncomfortably. He did play, of course. And now that the card rested on the floor at his feet, he even recognized the stylized backing of the card.
This was not just a game; it was as the strange woman called it, simply “the Game”. Its origins were unknown, its rules intricate and impossible to some, easier to others. And yet, despite the idea that no one seemed to ever know from whence the Game had come, few there were that could avoid at least knowing of it.
The Game, according to lore, had originated some few hundred years ago. It was a human convention, something Bracken had never seen nor heard of before coming to reside upon the surface. Some attributed the first Game's printing to an anonymous printer somewhere on the coast. Others claimed it was a divine gift of the Gods, though which set of Gods was anyone's guess. Still others thought it an elaborate machination of politics, instituted by some now-deceased ruler designed to keep the minds of his subjects diverted. The only thing known for sure of the Game, in truth, was that no one really knew anything about where it came from, neither in the past nor the present.
The oddest element about the Game was that there were always new cards entering circulation. The cards would depict current rulers, elements in history, sites and communities from across the world. For many, the Game was the single source of knowledge that such places even existed, though none doubted that if they appeared on a card that they did in fact truly exist somewhere. Some cards were fairly easy to acquire, others rarer and consequently more valuable. Many a merchant was said to have lost a fortune upon seeking out and purchasing the more exotic cards of the Game, in time abandoning the profit-based source of their livelihood in favor of the compulsive need to track and collect the different cards that could be found.
Many were the errant who had tried to trace the origins of the Game, yet none had ever prevailed that Bracken knew of. Where one may have followed rumors to the coast, another would follow a path leading far inland or even across the sea to uncharted territories. Yet no matter how far and wide one traveled, the answers were always the same – no one knew where the cards came from.
Bracken himself had made an erstwhile attempt in his younger days to track down a card that actually depicted a dwarven hero, Stelk Rockcruncher. This was before he had actually learned to play the Game, and his sole interest in the beginning was to learn how humans had acquired such intimate knowledge of dwarven history. He purchased the card from a player, and followed the man's tale to contact the one from whom he had acquired the card. But of course, by the time his quest was completed, Bracken had been lured into actually learning the Game himself, and he was an avid player by the time he reached the final branch in his path. He managed to track the card back along a chain of
seven individuals before he encountered a dead end, the final player just saying he had found the card on the street one day.
This, if anything, was the most consistent origin story that could be derived – the cards were “found”, implying that someone unknown was out there losing the cards and others were finding them. Not that this was the only story, but it did seem the most common.
Regardless the method of their creation or distribution, the cards seemed to be in enough abundance to be actively played in all major communities. Bracken had acquired a taste for the game during his time tracking Rockcruncher's card, and even here in Oaken Wood, he acquired the occasional new card from players who wandered through. Though he had yet to find one just lying upon the ground, he still had a fair selection of cards to play with and prided himself on his Game strategies.
The unique factor of the Game was that no two games were ever the same. The cards were not set and one player's deck of cards rarely resembled another's. Bracken had often wondered, with the popularity of the Game, why no one had ever tried to operate a business to profit full-time off of the Game, aside of course from the seemingly unprovoked reactions some representatives of the new Order had towards the Game. Yet, somehow, this idea never seemed to catch on the few times Bracken had witnessed it tried. There seemed an almost divine will to sabotage any one person who tried to capitalize off of the Game. And yet, in absence of profit, it was beyond Bracken's understanding how the creator of the Game, whoever that had been or currently was, could afford to continue to produce new cards to be played. And even more mysterious was how a card quality could be produced so that cards could endure for as long as they did. Some people claimed to have inherited cards from as long ago as their great grandsires! Surely not an inexpensive process...
Bracken had taught Nathaniel how to play when he was younger and the young man had proven an apt pupil, not to mention a challenging opponent. Yet despite his success with the Game, Nathaniel had never desired cards of his own. He played with his own deck created from Bracken's unused collection, but he had no desire to own a deck of his own. And as far as Bracken knew, he had been Nate's only opponent.