The Dong loved them all. “So this is going to answer the question . . .”
“Of how the Titans fell, yes, Your Dong-ness. It will simulate mechanically what happened.”
“Is this based on strict interpretation of history and science?” the Dong demanded.
“No, sire,” Mimic replied at once. “I just made the whole thing up.”
“Good,” the Dong replied, slapping the arms of his chair with both hands. “I hate it when facts get in the way of a good story.” He tried to lean forward farther but found himself in danger of falling onto his very fat face. He restrained himself, out of respect to his office as the Dong. It was difficult, however, because he was absolutely fascinated by the little mechanical goblins.
There were thirty-six of them in all. Each held a sword in one hand that was beautifully crafted with a single black bead in the hilt.
“Rhea! Maddoc!” Galen shouted. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Rhea replied, wincing against the noise around them. Several of the mad warriors were screaming for the war to begin. Rhea held close to Maddoc. “We’re fine . . . for now, at least.”
“Where’s Cephas?”
“Cephas er here!” the dwarf cried out behind Galen, his voice shaking.
Galen had never known him to be afraid of anything. “Cephas! What’s wrong?”
“Cephas lost er is!” the dwarf moaned. “Blind and lost! Cephas the rock and dirt have lost. Ground smells different er is! Oh, blind and lost!”
“By the Claw!” Galen swore.
“What is it?” Rhea asked.
“The dwarf is lost!” he shouted back.
“I thought the dwarf was never lost!”
“It must have been the flying,” Galen said, looking frantically about them, trying to see over the heads of the other warriors. “Dwarves sense the passage of the ground under them as they walk or the sea on those rare occasions one can coax them onto a boat. They know where they are because they know where they’ve been. How far do you think we’ve come?”
“I don’t know.” Rhea glanced around. “Two hundred miles . . . maybe more.”
“The dwarf doesn’t know that; he didn’t feel the ground pass under his feet,” Galen said, then took his old friend by the shoulders. “Cephas! We’re in Enlund. We are on the Enlund Plain!”
Cephas still shuddered under Galen’s hands. “Enlund! Lost still er I but Enlund be a bad sign! Blood er is! Blood and danger, Master Arvad!”
“We’ve got to do something,” Rhea cried. “We’ve got to get away!”
“Away, yes, but how?” Galen shouted. “If we had weapons, maybe we could—”
“Always nice to be working with you, Galen,” S’shnickt said cheerfully at his side.
Galen’s eyes went wide. He reached across to his waist with his right hand.
It closed around a cool hilt of leather-wrapped steel.
“Rhea!” Galen said. “Do you have your sword?”
“Galen, they took our weapons when they—” Rhea stopped suddenly. “Yes! I do! How did you . . .”
“This sure is going to be a great war today!” S’shnickt said gaily. “You are quite privileged to be participants. I don’t know when such an important issue has been decided by one of these contests in ages.”
“Important issue?” Galen said puzzled. “What issue?”
“All the other weapons are ringing with it. The reason for the war today,” S’shnickt answered brightly. “By the gods, would you just listen to them? Some of them just won’t shut up about it, either, which is really annoying when you think about it.”
Maddoc pulled out his own sword, which had appeared just as magically as Rhea’s and Galen’s. He was jumping up and down while shouting excitedly.
“S’shnickt, what issue?”
“Well, today we’re fighting over the question of paternity. Satinka, the female dragon on northeast hilltop, wants a clutch of eggs for a new brood. Neither Vasska nor Panas want to father the clutch, of course, so the war this year is to decide who will be forced to mate with Satinka. It’s nice to know you’ll be dying for something important this time!”
“We’re fighting this war,” Galen shouted in outrage, “just to determine which dragon mates with another?”
A strange, awkward silence descended over the warriors immediately around Galen, all of whom were staring at him dumbfounded. Rhea’s mouth fell open. Cephas stuck a finger in his ear, trying to clear it, for he was sure he had heard wrong. Galen looked about him, horrified.
Maddoc turned to the warriors and shouted, “Our dragon’s gonna win!”
The warriors suddenly cheered all the louder.
“These wars are fought over all kinds of things,” S’shnickt went on. “One year it was who could fly higher than the other dragons. Another year it was over who got to eat the spoils first. At least this year you’ll be dying for something that will cause the dragons some discomfort. Dragon mating is tricky at best, dangerous at worst, and always painful to them. They haven’t made a bet like this in over five centuries.”
Galen turned to Rhea. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You can’t,” S’shnickt interjected. “Those are not the rules. You are selected to become warriors. You come to the war. You fight the war and then you die. The positions of the dead on the battlefield determine which dragon is the winner, or in this case the loser. Those are the rules. They’ve been the rules for centuries.”
Galen held the sword up in front of him in frustration, yelling at it. “No! I will not die! Not for you, not for this dragon, and certainly not today!”
He heard Rhea’s voice speaking his name.
As once before, the Elect had cleared away from him, leaving a circle of warriors. Each of them saluted Galen with their swords, their black stone pommels glinting in the morning light.
“Galen!” Cephas shouted. “Thank ye! Cephas a sword now er is!”
Galen looked at his blind friend next to him.
A sword with a black stone pommel had appeared in the dwarf’s hand.
Galen looked about him. There were thirty-two men and women standing at attention. With Rhea, Maddoc, Cephas, and himself, they made thirty-six. The magic was with them, though he wondered what difference thirty-six could possibly do against the dragons and their hordes.
“S’shnickt,” Galen said. “I think it is time we changed the rules.”
44
New Rules
Your games are meaningless, Dwynwyn,” Xian muttered as he examined a polished black stone in the shape of a cube. “Do the pieces represent anything at all?”
“That is a lie, Master Xian,” the Seeker responded, selecting her own pieces from the game case. “They are symbols that the mind may interpret as patterns.”
“You don’t see them as warriors on a great campaign?” Xian mused. “Or as birds in the air vying for food?”
“No, Master, I do not,” Dwynwyn replied, “although sometimes my inner eye assigns values to them as representative of other values. It is considered a fault in most castes, but it is a redeeming quality in Seekers.”
“Remind me, then, to associate only with Seekers.” Xian chuckled darkly. “May we begin?”
“Well, start it up!” the Dong demanded. His excitement was uncontainable. “I want to see the war!”
“Your Majesty.” Mimic nodded as sagely as he could manage. “I will do so at once. All I need is someone to play the most important part of the demonstration.”
“You need someone to play?” Dong Mahaj-Megong was puzzled.
“To participate, Your Majesty, to witness firsthand the demonstration, and not just anyone, Your Majesty!” Mimic asserted with conviction. “I need someone of undeniable honesty, bravery, and stature. In short, I need a goblin of such character, such importance, and such power that they could represent one of the Titans themselves.”
“That sounds like someone very important!” the Dong considered as thoughtfully
as was possible for him.
Mimic nodded. “Yes, indeed, Your Majesty. The more important the better!”
“But no goblin is more important than Dong Mahaj-Megong!” the Dong shouted.
“Why, that is brilliant, Your Majesty!” Mimic sounded in awe of the monarch. “I am flattered that you would volunteer!”
Dong Mahaj-Megong frowned. “I am not sure. I wonder if the Dong is too important to be a Titan!”
Mimic leaned forward and spoke under his voice. “You’ll get a much closer look at the mechanical goblins if you help.”
The Dong leaped off his throne. “Where do you want the most important goblin to stand?”
“Right over here,” Mimic said, gesturing toward the mechanisms on the floor, “near the center.”
Dwynwyn and Xian both tossed the stones at once, scattering them across the board on the table. They bounced across the field, rebounding from the sides of the game board and off each other. In moments, however, they had settled on the surface, Dwynwyn and Xian both eyeing them from opposite sides of the board.
“That’s an odd pattern,” Xian observed with a frown. “Is there something wrong with your dice? You wouldn’t be trying to cheat me, would you?”
Dwynwyn looked startled, then leaned forward, examining her pieces with a quiet intensity. The pieces, with two or three exceptions, had settled into three groups in a ring pattern. Most of Dwynwyn’s own red-colored pieces were in one group on one side of the board, while Xian’s black pieces had settled in a second grouping across from him. A third, more chaotic grouping of both red and black had rolled to a stop near the corner on Xian’s side.
“This cannot happen,” Dwynwyn replied in concern. “I have never seen such a pattern in a game before!”
Xian reached out across the board. “Well, if it bothers you, we could just toss them again—”
Dwynwyn’s hand stopped his.
“No,” the Seeker said. “We will play the game as the fates have determined for us. There is a destiny in this that I need to understand.”
Xian pulled his hand back. “I’m not even going to pretend to understand what that meant. I thought you said this was just a game?”
“It is, but perhaps you did not lie after all,” Dwynwyn said, pointing at the board. She was gazing at the pieces, but her eyes were unfocused, and her voice seemed far away. “Look! Here are three armies, great and powerful, all meeting on the field of battle.”
“I’ll be the Kyree,” Xian said smartly.
“No,” Dwynwyn said. “None of these armies are the Kyree . . . or the faeries or any of the Famadorians.”
Xian frowned. “I thought you said these pieces didn’t represent anything.”
Dwynwyn looked puzzled and confused. “They don’t, Master Xian. I mean they don’t normally mean anything . . .”
“Well, if they don’t mean anything to you, then you shouldn’t mind that they mean anything to me,” Xian said. “To me, they will be the Kyree!”
“As you will, Master Xian,” Dwynwyn replied, but her mind was racing as her eyes darted about the pieces on the board. She could see them, see them all, in the eye of her mind. It had never before been so vivid, so intense. The board of her game had become a plain surrounded by rolling, grass-covered hills. The pieces she knew only generally, but there were three that were familiar to her. The large black stone was power and flight. A smaller stone nearby was someone she had met; a man in ill-fitting robes.
In front of the black stone grouping, however, and near the center of the board, there was one stone she knew very well. It was the wingless man from her dreams. She could not take her eyes off the piece. It was he who had given her the vision to find the pearls that still hung around Aislynn’s neck. Now here he was, about to be destroyed utterly in the battle which would take place on her table.
She realized that she was playing the wrong side. If Dwynwyn won her game, then the wingless man would die, and with him the last hope she had to save her queen and her rule. If she lost, then she would be forced to give up the only power she had over Xian; her guarded truth.
What she needed was a new truth.
“I think it’s time we changed the rules!”
Dwynwyn blinked at the thought. New rules?
“Master Xian,” Dwynwyn heard herself say, “I believe there is a rule that I have forgotten to tell you about.”
Xian looked at her skeptically. “A rule . . . you forgot?”
“Yes,” Dwynwyn said, not entirely sure where the thought was coming from or what it meant. It was a new and not entirely comfortable sensation.* “It may seem like a small rule, but it is an important one. You see this piece . . . here!”
She pointed at the piece representing her wingless man.
“This is a special piece in the game,” she continued, her voice odd in her own ears. “You may, whenever you move it, change its upturned face to any adjacent face.”
“Won’t that change the strength of the piece?” Xian said. “I thought you said that the abilities were fixed once all the pieces came to rest?”
“For all the other pieces, that is true,” Dwynwyn said quickly, “but for this piece on your side you may change its abilities whenever you move it. Use it wisely, however, because if this piece is lost to you, then I win the game at once.”
“And how do I win?” Xian demanded.
“By getting that one little piece off my side of the board any way you can,” Dwynwyn replied. “Do that, and you win.”
Xian smiled. “Do that, and I get the truth from you at last.”
He reached forward and moved his first three pieces toward the center of the board.
He ignored the special piece.
The dragons on the hilltops craned their heads skyward. As one they trumpeted. The sound rolled across the field of battle, cutting through the shouts of the warriors and ringing in their ears. It was the signal to which they had been trained to respond.
“What do we do?” Rhea pleaded. “The battle! It’s begun!”
“Their battle, but not ours,” Galen responded quickly. “We’ve got to protect ourselves. Stay out of the battle until we can fight our way out! Maddoc! Get those men around us to crowd in closer! Tell them to hold here with us!”
“But the trumpets!” Maddoc looked at Galen, his face in confusion. “That’s the signal to charge! That’s how it all begins!”
The great horde around them started to move, a stampede of fury, swords, and death.
“Listen to me!” Galen shouted over the crowd running past them, charging across the plain toward the onrushing armies of the other dragons. The Circle of Brothers turned at the sound of his voice. “We are not going to blindly march to our deaths! We are not to charge! Understand?”
“What of the Aboths?” said one of the Circle. “Their dragonstaffs will force us!”
“Stay close to me,” Galen said, “and hold your ground!”
The armies of the Elect roared across the plain with a great shout. Whether they were the Elect of Vasska, Panas, or Satinka did not matter; each army charged because that was what they were trained to do. The dust rose from their anxious footsteps, their hearts quickened, and they ran headlong toward the opposing armies. Their eyes shone with zealous invincibility; they all screamed hoarsely the rightness of their cause; and their footfalls thundered across the ground, for their god stood behind them against their evil enemies.
The forces of Vasska managed to reach the Yanisir Stream first, crossing it against the screaming hordes of Panas on their left. The armies crashed into one another like the confluence of two rivers, merging with the sounds of steel and rage, each unit prodded by monks who pressed them forward or released them at the orders of their Dragonkings through the Talkers.
Satinka slowed her own forces until the armies of Panas and Vasska were fully engaged with each other. Satinka hated both of the males vying to sire her brood and would vanquish them both if she might. However, she held a particular hatr
ed for Vasska, for he had taken Mithanlas as his prize when Rhamas fell—a city she considered to be hers by right. So she held back her forces for a time, considering the flow of the battle and how she might best Vasska and humiliate him first.
It was then that her gaze fell upon a small group of warriors behind Vasska’s line of attack. This concerned her, for it was not the usual arrangement, and she considered anything out of the ordinary to be a threat. She gave the word, then, to her Dragon-Talker—a Pentach named Evabeth. Evabeth, in turn, gave the orders to her Aboth, and in short order the army of Satinka wheeled to its left. It crossed the Yanisir downstream of the main battle, engaging and pinning the flank of Vasska’s force as it fought two armies at once. Then Satinka’s warriors turned again and started a frenzied run around the rear of Vasska’s line.
Only one thing stood in their way: a small group of thirty-six warriors left standing alone on the plain.
“Aboth!” Edana shouted. “Rein in that right side! We’re being flanked!”
Tragget could hear the frustration in her voice. The battle was not going as she or, more importantly, Vasska would like. From atop the hill, they could see that the battle was fully joined at the Yanisir Stream. The Panas forces were scrambling backward with terrible losses, trying to extricate themselves from the bloody banks of the stream. Vasska was making them pay for every step, however, with their own blood. The line was weakened but holding as it advanced. The army of Satinka, however, was still unbloodied. They had delayed their engagement and now were charging around the end of Vasska’s forces.
It was then that Tragget saw them; a small group standing alone on the plain behind the lines of battle. They stood at the bottom of his hill, only about a thousand feet ahead of the line of monks controlling the battle. They had not moved forward when prodded by the dragon’s eye in the staffs.
Tragget smiled. Of course they did not move. The staffs would have no effect on them, if Galen were with them. If they could stay out of the battle, somehow, they might manage to survive.
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