The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Edward W. Robertson

  "That doesn't involve punching, stabbing, or us being jailed."

  "I can't think of any."

  Dante took a long drink to hide his smile. He couldn't think of anything less convoluted, either, but in point of fact, he wanted to play. He'd been allured by the Nulladoon from the moment Mourn mentioned it, and hearing its rough details had hooked him all the harder. It was clearly a game you could get lost in, endlessly variable, with strategies within strategies, all of which might be compromised or annihilated by the wrong stroke of luck, leaving you angry yet determined, obsessed to play again and prove that when the game is fair you cannot be beat. He looked forward to studying its facets and depths with an intellectual eagerness he hadn't felt since discovering the Cycle of Arawn.

  After several complaints he was hardly an expert, Mourn relented and agreed to teach him. Mourn arranged the map in one of its simplest variants, led Dante through a quick overview of piece selection (just as customizable as the maps), then proceeded through what he warned was a dumbed-down game. Though it was clearly an expository match, with Mourn constantly pausing to explain a rule and its limitless permutations, exceptions, and contingencies, it nonetheless drew a steady stream of onlookers, many who seemed as interested in the fact a human was learning their game as in the outcome of the halting match itself. Mourn had no trouble enlisting a trio to arbitrate the scoring of their debates.

  And those were the stumbling block. Dante grasped the core combat at once—a rock-paper-scissors-style system of engagement with just enough intrinsic complexity to allow for in-depth strategy in every situation. By their second game, several of his gambits drew appreciative nods and chuckles from the crowd. Yet each skirmish—every single godsdamn one—resulted in the loss of a unit, territory, or both, overcome by modifiers from Mourn's cards or his victories in debate. Dante simply didn't know enough. He knew most of the key players, Josun Joh and his host of brothers, cousins, and enemies, and when it came to philosophical concepts, he was easily Mourn's better. Yet he didn't know enough of norren theosophy to marry the general to the specific. It was beyond frustrating.

  Gala returned in the middle of their third match. "She plays."

  "Finally some good luck," Blays said.

  "Not really. They all play."

  "Told you," Mourn said. He advanced his swordsman. After a brief exchange of modifiers, Dante removed his ice-drake from the board.

  After his third loss, Dante dropped from his oversize seat to go update Orlen on their situation (Gala had arranged a note-drop under one of the piers) and warn him it could be days or even weeks before they moved on. He penned a letter of aid to Perrigan, too, alerting him Dante believed they'd secure his tapestry soon enough but that he'd first need access to as many libraries of norren-lore as Perrigan could get him into.

  He resumed play. Mourn's style was plodding and defensive, advancing his pieces with stubborn deliberance until his advantage was too overwhelming to break. His style of debate mirrored it, carefully laying the groundwork and initial conditions (that history showed Josun Joh was in Canwell on the third day of the third year) before unleashing his conclusions in an ironclad case (and thus couldn't have been the father of Kandack, whose mother had, on the day of the boy's conception, been across the land in Merridan). Dante tried a range of guiding strategies before settling on his standard, a deceptive style that appeared cautious yet relied on massive risks taken right under Mourn's oversized nose. These efforts panned out often enough to turn the tables more than once, but by the time the two of them were too tired to go on, Dante still hadn't won a single match.

  Letters of recommendation arrived from Perrigan the next day. Dante split time between the two banks of the river, playing Nulladoon in the east and reading norren scripture in the west. On the third day of play, Dante retreated his main force to a steep hill, leaving a contingent of swift, light-hitting drakes trapped behind Mourn's infantry wall, doomed before the next turn.

  But during that turn's debate, Dante tricked Mourn into a confession that the traditional sacrifices to stall Ferrow's wrath weren't rams, they were deer. Using that as the hinge for his conclusion that Ferrow's domain was not with herding nomads but instead among wild hunters, Dante racked up enough conditionals to send his lone remaining swordsman into a berserk fury. Mourn lost three units before the berserker fell, along with the center of his line. Peppered by Dante's hilltop archers, harassed and ensnared by the hit-and-run drakes, Mourn removed the last of his pieces from the board four turns later.

  The audience applauded and whooped. Significant fun was made of Mourn's loss to a scrawny human outlander. Mourn's smile was as slow as his advance across the battlefield.

  "Good move," he said. "Now why don't you play someone who actually knows what the units with the spiky things are called."

  Dante slouched back in his chair, heart thudding. "But I don't have any nulla to wager."

  "You're so dumb you'd probably forget what food is for," Blays said. "You're the best healer in town. Bet with that."

  Despite the potential for humiliation at the hands of a human, when it came to Nulladoon, the standard norren suspicion of outsiders evaporated altogether. Within minutes of announcing he was looking for a match, Dante had enough appointments to fill out the day. It wasn't simply the novelty factor, either. Word had somehow spread that he'd healed several members of the Clan of the Nine Pines after a ferocious battle, and that his healing-nulla could cure anything short of death itself. In a city as mean, pestilential, and backbreaking as Dollendun, challengers lined up like he were passing out free wine.

  He lost, of course. The first game was a war of attrition; he couldn't keep up with his white-haired foe's subtle modifiers and wily wisdom during disputes. He played his second game against a young woman, but the match collapsed in less than twenty minutes when Dante's opening charge (intending to attain an initial strength advantage he could then leverage murderously through strangulating conservatism) died on enemy spears. The third match lasted right until midnight, however, a back-and-forth tilt that saw him and his rival switch not just tactical but geographic position several times, a game of reversals and re-reversals so captivating that the pub's owner began to complain his patrons had forgotten how to drink. When Dante's final piece—a battered sorcerer—finally dropped, there were as many sighs as cheers. Dante's opponent, a middle-aged potter, immediately bought him three beers.

  But it didn't matter that he lost, except for the time he lost when winners cashed in their nulla-writs and called him away to soothe a sister's pneumonia or heal a father's broken wrist. Dante didn't resent the lost time. He didn't need to become the best. Not after he figured out how he could cheat.

  While card-play was a single dimension of the game, it could provide a big enough advantage to overcome many slips of tactics and strokes of poor luck. If Dante could see his opponent's hand—through his connection to a dead fly on the wall, say, or better yet, a lizard, something small enough to escape notice but which at least shared his basic senses—he could overwhelm that field of the game, flushing out the opponent's hand while strengthening his own, anticipating their movements and preparing his counters moves in advance. In one private test with Mourn (Blays acting as a hapless arbiter), it worked so well it was nearly too obvious. They tried again, with Dante playing his cards with just enough deliberate mistakes and oversights to pass muster.

  He continued playing, reading, analyzing, discussing. He won his first competitive match, earning a minor nulla from a silversmith, which he cashed in for the forging of a unique Nulladoon piece: a thin, unimposing sorcerer, one outstretched hand painted with charcoal shadows. Gala poked into Worring's playing habits, learning the weaver participated in at least one match a week and sometimes binged for several straight days.

  It was absorbing. Engrossing. Addicting. Some part of him wanted to forget the Quivering Bow existed, to give up his very council seat in Narashtovik to continue matching wits in the smoky taverns of Do
llendun's norren shore. This was a fantasy, of course. Across town, the Clan of the Nine Pines waited in their tents. Somewhere in the heart of Gask, the Clan of the Green Lake waited in their chains.

  Within a week, he won as often as he lost. That achieved, he began to cheat, at first a single glance at their starting hand through the eyes of a spider hanging from the wall, and in later games continuous looks at their changing cards. Still, he didn't win every game. But he took most, and many easily. It earned him many nulla, too, of all stripes and shapes—a smallcask of homebrewed beer, a wavy-bladed dagger, labor from carvers of wood and stone, which he promptly turned in for more figures for his expanding Nulladoon set.

  But victory robbed him. When his opponents clicked their pieces into their wooden boxes, frustration or sad self-disappointment creasing their bearded faces, he had to turn away or risk blurting his deception. When norren recognized his face, called him by name, and bought him drinks and meals, his stomach turned with inward disgust. He had to end it.

  Two weeks from the night Mourn had won their first match, he issued his challenge.

  He had no doubt Worring knew his motives, or at least what he would ask if he won. But denying a public challenge was a disgrace, one that could lessen the perceived value of the denier's crafts or skills (were they afraid they made unworthy gifts?) and thus the social standing of the denier themselves. Worring accepted. She set a date for Wednesday night, three days hence.

  "What happens if you lose?" Mourn asked that night. They'd headed upstairs to Dante's room to unwind and go over the ins and outs of Worring's standard strategy. Pieces and cards littered the board, scattered between chipped beer mugs.

  Dante shrugged. "Convince her to see reason."

  "She won't."

  "Then I'll keep coming back."

  "She won't see you," Mourn said.

  "Then I'll make myself look very, very scary." Dante lifted his palms. "What do you want me to say? Maybe there won't be anything I can do."

  "Well, I just wanted to know if you'd considered that possibility. I think it's an important one for everyone to spend some time thinking about." The norren knocked an unpainted wooden archer on its side. "Lots of time, to be quite frank. It's always less disappointing that way."

  "What's your nulla, anyway?" Blays said from his seat in the window.

  Mourn glanced over. "What?"

  "Your nulla. You all have one, right? So what's yours?"

  "Oh." Mourn cupped his hands together, forming a box, then peeked inside, as if expecting to find the answer. "Well."

  Dante frowned. "I thought you guys start in on your calling before you learn how to shake a rattle."

  "The thing is, the quality of my work doesn't yet match up to my personal standards."

  "Oh, come on." Blays shoved off the window sill and refilled his mug from a pitcher on the table. Foam spattered the board. Mourn scowled and toweled it up with his sleeve. Blays look a long swig, foam mustaching his lip. "We're all friends here. If I'm going to mock your lack of skills, it'll be to your face."

  The norren rubbed his beard. "Arrowheads."

  "Fletching? That's great. Nothing badder than a man who makes his own weapons."

  Mourn shook his head. "Just arrowheads. There's a lot to them, you know. For instance, you humans favor metal heads exclusively, but obsidian arrowheads are frightening. Sharp as a razor but they'll break off inside your gut if you try to pull them out the wrong way. On the other hand, rock isn't what you'd call malleable, and I for one think the entire arrowhead industry is conservative to the point of absurdity. Why are we so locked into the triangle? What about a crescent shape? Much better for attempting to sever distant ropes, I say. And what if you shaped them so they whistle in flight? There'd be no need to carry a bulky old horn onto the battlefield."

  Blays nodded thoughtfully. "I'd make my nulla sex."

  Mourn reddened beneath his beard. "It doesn't work that way!"

  "It can be anything, can't it?"

  "It has to be something tangible. Something you can hold."

  "Oh, there'd be something to hold."

  Mourn snatched his mug from the table. "It can't just be an experience. Other people have to be able to see it."

  "What about poems?" Dante said.

  "What about them? You can write them down, can't you?"

  "That seems like a cheat. Most poems are recited."

  "I don't see what's cheating about it."

  "What if I give you a drawing afterwards?" Blays said.

  Mourn glared into his beer. "You're not taking this seriously."

  "How about dancers?" Dante said. "You said dances could be nulla."

  "Those are public. Other people can see and confirm the value of what you're receiving."

  "Look," Blays said. "If I've dedicated my whole life to sex, I think I'll be good enough at it that it'll be no issue to throw a sheet across the plaza and—"

  "I don't think they would appreciate a solo performance," Dante said.

  Mourn rose, swaying. "I'm going to bed."

  Three days came and went like the boats at the piers. It was time. Worring didn't care about the venue, so Dante had arranged to hold it in the pub where he'd learned to play; he was comfortable there, and the playing-stations lined the back wall, providing ready perches for a spying spider. Worring arrived alone, seating herself opposite Dante. The crowd closed in behind her, pointing at specific positions on the table despite the fact not a single tile had yet been laid. Worring withdrew a glossy teak box from a purple velvet sack. The case's latches snicked. She arrayed her pieces, soapstone warriors and beasts dressed in minutely sewn clothing: leather armor, cotton trousers, and brown boots laced with single lengths of thread.

  Finished, she gazed at him over the table. "I hear you're among the best human players of your generation."

  He shrugged, stacking tiles with wooden clicks. "When the right cause inspires me, I'll see it through at any cost."

  "What cause led you to pushing toy soldiers around a fake map?"

  "One of those casual injustices that has been going on for so long that speaking about it in polite company brands you a fanatic."

  "Ah. That narrows it down."

  They agreed on a map (Lakepatch, a common terrain where the many ponds funneled action into the killing fields of open meadows), piece allotment (standard-three, a skirmisher-heavy default, which they modified with an allowance to swap out any two units), and the terms of the nulla.

  "A tapestry," he said. "Choice of subject decided by me."

  Her brown eyes met his. "It's said you're a healer."

  "Once you cause enough wounds, you get a pretty good idea how to fix them."

  "My father was enslaved for debt a few years into my apprenticeship. They worked him in the fields. One day they were short of oxen, so they made him pull the plow. He tripped in a gopher hole and broke his leg." She laid her first tile, holding his gaze. "They didn't bother to set it. He still can't walk."

  "Old wounds are harder work," he said. "But if I can, I will."

  The arbiters—to reduce the risk of rogue decisions stripping him of victory, Dante had insisted on three of them—introduced themselves and sat. The audience placed bets of drinks and money and sometimes small nulla of their own. Mostly, they watched with open grins as the final piece was placed and Worring opened, drakes zagging along one side of the board while her archers and gnomes ducked in and out of cover. Dante advanced to intercept, his forces aligned in a shifting sickle, striking from both points of the blade as Worring rearranged her defenses from one side of the field to the other.

  She gave a small smile. "You fight like a human."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I have no damn idea what you think you're doing."

  He smiled back, then played a run of cards. By the time he completed the side game, he'd depleted twice as many of her cards as he'd spent, snagging a crucial modifier to his sorcerer's armor. The figure was a tentpole of h
is strategy, obliterating anything that came too close, yet it had already been bloodied to dangerous levels by the regular pelting of her archers, who fired behind the safety of lakes, clad in nothing stronger than their brown cotton robes.

  "Take a break?" he said an hour later. Their forces were on the verge of a critical, all-out melee. For the last several moves, her gnomes had harried his norren frontliners, dancing forward to the very point of overextension before drawing back into the protective range of her archers. He'd withdrawn his sorcerer early on to preserve it as he maneuvered his bear-cavalry to block those damned gnomes. Recognizing his ploy, she'd arranged her troops into jagged yet subtly intricate lines of defense that could snap shut like a cougar's jaws.

  "No running off for advice from your friends," she smiled.

  His own smile was as tight as her deployment. "Just for a drink. Want one?"

  "A beer." She tipped her head at the laughing throngs, foam drying on their beards. "If there's any left."

  He shouldered through the crowd, face brushed by bulging bellies and sweaty arms. It stunk like men who've spent too long working, playing, or both. He smiled at strangers' encouragement, their playful taunts, and returned from the bar with two heady mugs.

  Play resumed. A discussion of the moral implications of Lord Jonn abdicating his throne (and thus abandoning his responsibility to his subjects) to save Lady Herren from the underworld resulted in a rhetorical stalemate—Dante argued his duty to his war-threatened kingdom outweighed his duty to his wife, while Worring argued that a man who won't attempt to save that which is dearest to him is unfit to rule a kingdom in the first place. On the board, Worring advanced and retreated methodically, rhythmically, her drakes weaving among his lines like a shuttle through the loom. At times her forces showed patterns with no identifiable strategic goals, as if she were playing more for the aesthetics than for the thrill of the challenge or the nulla-favors earned from victory.

  Dante leaned back in his chair.

  Until now, he had been thinking of the game purely in the abstract, analyzing it within the strict rules of its own internal logic. Position his spearman just so, as to block the enemy's drakes. Keep his slingers in motion, reducing oppositional accuracy. Play his card of Blood Debt on the same turn the bulk of his norren swordsmen were in position to strike. On some level, he'd realized the game must have emerged as a way for citybound norren to settle disputes their earlier, wilder, free-ranging ancestors had settled (and still did, in the case of the Nine Pines and others) through blood and steel under harsh and silent skies. But there was another level to Nulladoon, too. It wasn't just a practical game. It was a game of the norren's own spirit, a celebration of their talents, their skill with their hands and their sheer love of fun for its own sake. A chance to express one's own being and witness another in similar expression. And then, in victory or defeat, to give or receive something tangible, if only the memory of a wonderful dance or song, and so appreciate each other all over again.