Michael A. Stackpole (3 page)

“How do you know?”

“He’s letting the choice be made by this contest, isn’t he?” Geoff arched a dark eyebrow. “He is letting us choose our own representative. If he were not happy with each of us, he would have made the choice himself.”

“I think he thought you would win. You are more like father than Dalt or me. Even Dalt is large enough to command respect.” I brought my left arm up and tensed my bicep into very modest muscle. “You have a hero’s looks and skills, Dalt has a hero’s strength, and I have, well, ah …”

“You have a hero’s sense of reality. You have father’s skill at training animals.”

I shook my head. “Many heroes are lauded because their horses come when they whistle. Why, there must be a hundred bardic tales of such masterful feats.”

“Blooded on first pass, but that’s still a skill Locke, you’re already better at chess than our father ever was.” Geoff cuffed me lightly on the back of the head. “Now do you want to have our game, or shall I claim victory by default?”

“Default? I’d sooner have to fight Dalt again.” I led the way from the barn to the house and back into the little room Grandfather had set up as mine when my mother brought me to Stone Rapids from Herakopolis. A small room, the preponderance of books and scrolls and all manner of other treasure I had collected in my eighteen years barely gave me enough room for the tiny bed in the far corner. Geoff ducked his head beneath the wired-together skeleton of a bat hanging from the ceiling and removed a green toy wooden horse from a chair before seating himself.

“I can still remember when you dunked this thing in green paint.” Geoff spun the wooden wheels connected by an axle running through the front hooves. “Mother and Aunt Ethelin were very angry when you pulled it through the house, leaving parallel tracks of green everywhere.”

I shrugged and blushed. “At the time it seemed like a very sensible thing to do.”

I took my place opposite him and moved the piles of books on the table from there to my rumpled bed. The newly cleared tabletop revealed an eight-by-eight, black-and-red checkerboard and a thin layer of dust where the books had not been.

“Chaos or Empire,” I asked. Before he had a chance to answer, 1 slid the drawer open and started pulling out the pieces.

“Empire, I guess. I need all the help I can get.” Geoff started reaching for the red pieces and began setting them up on their appropriate squares. “The Emperor on his own color, right?”

“Yes. Fialchar, on the other hand, is always black.” I passed the Emperor while I put the hooded and cloaked figurine clutching a knotted staff in one skeletal hand on his square. “The Queen of Darkness goes next to Lord Disaster, then his Generals, his Wizards, and his Cavalry. Chademon Pawns go up front.”

I slid the movestone over onto his side of the board. “Chaos, of course, goes second, so the movestone is yours.”

Geoff moved the Emperor’s Pawn forward two spaces, then pushed the movestone to me. “You did a good job carving a new Emperor.”

“Do you really think so?” Carved from cedar, the Emperor piece represented a tall, slender young man whose brow was encircled by a crown. “Thetys V has only been on the throne for four months, but I thought 1 should go ahead and make one for him.” I glanced toward the book-covered desk. “I did save the Daclones figure, though.”

“Nothing wrong with that, Locke.”

“Are you certain? You know the rhyme Ethelin used to say:

Fire and silver Beat cold and night, But try to avoid evil’s sight.

When all is lost, Brave heart have you, And evil’s thrall will then be through.

I should have burned it so no one can use it to work evil on the Emperor.”

Geoff shook his head. “I think the assassins saw to it that the old Emperor is beyond much evilworking. What I want to know is how you can remember all those little things Ethelin used to say?”

1 blushed. “I think she used to say them to me a lot more than you. That one 1 used to repeat to myself every time I became scared of you or Dalt or Grandfather or the night.”

“I see. I wonder if saying something like that would help me win this game?”

Geoff fell silent as we went through a quick series of moves that developed the game from the opening to the midgame. I saw Geoff’s moves become more tentative as things went along and knew my drive to open up the Empress’s side of the board would be successful. 1 watched Geoff react to feints and successfully pinned one of his Generals in place to protect the Empress from a Cavalry charge.

Geoff moved the pinned General to set up an attack on my other Cavalry piece. He hesitated, then slid the movestone over to me.

1 frowned. “You can take that back if you want to. If not, you lose the Empress.”

“Here 1 tell you to watch the board, which is what I should have been doing.” The Warrior frowned, then shifted his expression to a sheepish grin. “Bad luck on my part.”

“Bad luck? You?” I shook my head. “You don’t have to throw the game, Geoff. Don’t you want to go to the Bear’s Eve Ball?”

Geoff sighed. “First off, I’m not throwing the game. I made a mistake. I don’t see the board the way you do. I never have, never will. I actually
do
have to look at the board, and even then I don’t see everything. But, to answer your other question: No, I don’t particularly want to go to the capital.”

My jaw dropped open. “You don’t? lust think of what you would see and whom you would meet!” I started pointing at various red pieces on the board. “You could meet the Emperor or his mother Dejanna, or the Imperial Warlord, Garn Drustorn, and …”

Geoff held up his hand to cut me off. “And someone would offer me a chance to join a sword school, or I’d be drafted into a group of Chaos Riders, or I’d be handed some commission in an Imperial Company.”

“Don’t you want that?”

“May not be fitting for Cardew’s son to say so, but, no, I do not want that. I want to stay here and learn as much as I can from Grandfather.”

“But you already know everything he can teach you. In Herakopolis you could learn from a Grandmaster.”

Geoff’s face darkened. “But I could not learn how to reopen Audin’s school and make it great again.”

All of a sudden I felt closer to Geoff than I had ever been before, and my respect for him increased incredibly. Geoff actually remembered our father and had started his sword training in the school Audin had run here in Stone Rapids. Three years after I arrived from the capital, when I became five years old and was due to start training, Audin had closed his school to make his grandsons his only students.

I swallowed hard. “You’ve seen it in his eyes, too, haven’t you?”

Geoff nodded solemnly. “He had always planned for Cardew and Driscoll to come back from their time with the Valiant Lancers to continue his sword school. When they died he decided to train us so we would never succumb to those things that killed them in Chaos.

Because he took no other students, his school has all but been forgotten, and it shouldn’t be. Deep down 1 know he still dreams of having his school continue, and I want to make that dream come true.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You and I have an alliance, little brother. I will see to it that his dream of having his school reopen is realized. I leave it to you to fulfill his dream of having another of his pupils praised by the Emperor for service as a Chaos Rider. Is this bargain acceptable to you?”

“You’re a good swordsman, Geoff, and you will be every bit as much of a hero as our father. I think the course you give yourself is more difficult than the one you give to me.” I looked down at my hands. “I want you to do what will be best for you.”

“In that case, Locke, you will execute the Empress and put me out of my misery in what, five moves?”

“Four. You missed the Wizard fork.”

“Always my bane.” Geoff reached over and toppled the Emperor. “Locke, go, see the capital. Go meet the Emperor, and even dance twice with each of his sisters—once for you and once for me. Then come back and tell me all about it.”

“You will have no regrets if I go in your place?”

“I might, I just might.” He reached out and tousled my hair. “But I’ll live knowing you’re off having the adventures that will inspire whole legions of students to come to Audin’s school again.”

2

_I

looked down from the promontory overlooking the Garik Road. Off in the distance I saw the dusty cloud that marked the approach of the caravan with which 1 would travel to the capital. All of a sudden my stomach turned itself inside out because I would be leaving home for the very first time. 1 pulled my sheepskin coat more tightly about me and looked over at Geoff and my grandfather.

“The caravan is coming.” I swallowed hard. “Geoff, you can take my place if you want.”

My older brother shook his head. “I’m a Garikman born and bred, Locke. I’m not the sort that should attend the Imperial Ball. You, being born in Herakopolis, are.”

“I may not be Garik-born, but I am Garik-bred.” I nodded to my grandfather. “I will make you proud. The Empire will have another of your students to remember.”

The old man pulled me to him and enfolded me in a hug. “I am more proud of you than you could know,

Locke.” He held me out at arm’s length and touched the sword-and-dagger badge sewn on the left breast of my jacket. “You may only be an Apprentice in ranking, but there is much more to you. You know that. Be confident in yourself and your skills, but be aware that, like you, not everyone can be defined on the inside by the rank badges they wear on the outside.”

“Thank you, Grandfather.” 1 turned to Geoff and firmly grasped his forearm. “Two dances with each princess—one for you and one for me.”

Geoff laughed, the early-morning chill turning his chuckle into steam. He reached inside his coat and pulled out what appeared, at first, to be an inlaid wooden box with a gold clasp on one side and hinges on the other. It rattled as he extended it to me. “I know it is early, but this is my Bear’s Eve gift to you. just so you won’t forget us back here in Stone Rapids.”

I took it and opened the narrow box. Inside I saw a chessboard with holes drilled in the middle of each of the squares. The rattling had come from thirty-two carefully carved chess pieces, half in red, the others black. Each had a small peg on the bottom that would fit in the holes, holding them in place. A small trough ground out at the end of each side provided a niche for the movestone.

“Geoff, this is wonderful! Now I can play while on the road, if anyone in the caravan plays.”

“You will find plenty of players, I think.” Geoff smiled openly. “Wiley, the woodwright, made it for me in return for my giving some basic fighting lessons to his sons. Grandfather has agreed to help me teach them. If they work well, we might even reopen the school.”

“Might, Geoff, might.” Grandfather frowned a bit. “I’m really getting too old to teach children.”

My brother and I exchanged a smile, then I whistled aloud for my horse. Stail’s head came up, and the bay gelding trotted over to me. 1 slipped the chess set into my saddlebag, then swung up into the saddle. “I will come back in the spring, after the mountain passes have thawed, and tell you all about everything. And I’ll have Bear’s Eve gifts for all of you.”

“Good-bye, Lachlan. Farewell.” My grandfather lifted his hand and waved. Even though I felt his eyes upon me, it seemed to me that he was not seeing me at all.

Both he and Geoff watched as I took Stail down the switchback trail and joined up with the caravan. I paid the caravan master, a man named Haskell, the five gold Imperials my grandfather had given me for that purpose, and he told me to find a place in the train that suited me. I waved up at the two of them, and they waved back, then the caravan’s dust cloud swallowed them.

Deep down inside I felt 1 had betrayed my family because I did not feel properly homesick. Over a week out from Stone Rapids and I’d not dreamed once about my home. I wanted to feel lonely and desolate, but the caravan was full of interesting people and stranger things that took my mind entirely off those I had left behind. It hardly felt appropriate for me to be happy and excited so much.

During the days I tended to spend most of my time riding beside the cumbersome wagons driven by merchants from Garikopolis. Laden with all sorts of wonderful things, from spices and crystal to delicately woven tapestries and shiny metalwork, they were bound for the capital in time for the frenzy of Bear’s Eve gift purchases. Being a native of Garik province, I felt proud about the way my people’s goods were cherished and coveted above and beyond those produced elsewhere in the Empire, but 1 restrained myself from believing all the stories the merchants told of past years in the capital.

At night, as the caravan settled down to prepare meals and let the draft beasts rest, 1 found myself drawn to the company of the various groups of guards who had hired on to protect the caravan. Some merchants had retained their own soldiers, while the caravan company itself had hired a large number of warriors to ward it. Because the private soldiers were paid better than and refused to take orders from the caravan guards, a certain amount of friction existed between the two camps. Because of my training I had more in common with the soldiers than normal folk, and the warriors tolerated me because I listened attentively to their stories.

As the caravan made camp in the Haunted Mountains, approximately a day’s journey west of the City of Sorcerers, I watched several of the guards in the employ of Kasir the gold merchant fence with each other. Stripped to the waist and using blades sheathed with leather practice covers, the two men sparred on a narrow strip between two bonfires. Others, including some of the caravan’s guards, watched the two men, offering applause, advice, and odds on victory as the battle wore on.