“I must say, Ligne, you’ve stage-managed your triumph quite professionally,” Pelmen murmured.
“Why thank you, fool. It took me several days, but I did so want it all to be right.”
“But where are the blues?” Pelmen asked. “Kherda and I drew our pieces from the dungeon, but I thought it might be fun to assemble yours from the ranks of those dearest to you. Perhaps it will add dimension to your play to realize that every move you make risks the life of that piece.”
Pelmen gazed at her, his face as calm in defeat as if he had won. “How very fitting. For to you, it’s all a game, isn’t it? Your power, your crown just a game to while away your time.”
“And a splendid game it is.” She smiled, her teeth flashing. “Pity Admon Faye couldn’t be here to enjoy it with us. Robe Gerrig in blue,”
she ordered her servants, “and put the tri-corner on his head!”
Pelmen glanced around the game room as he took stock of his own energy level. There were some things he could do he just couldn’t guarantee the results. Shaping was dangerous in any case and weariness made it more so. Still, if he could make the act explosive enough, perhaps someone could get away.
“The round-faced one,” Ligne said, pointing at Yona Parmi. “Make him the column. And make this actress the disc,” she continued, grabbing Danyilyn’s wrist, “in appreciation of her miserable impersonation of me.”
“Of course it was miserable,” Danyilyn snarled at her, fiery to the last. “I had such a miserable subject to imitate.”
Fire would be the most compelling, Pelmen thought. He could probably empty the hall in a moment. Of course, they’d all be consumed along with Ligne, but perhaps it was worth their lives, to rid the world of this dangerous Queen…
Ligne paced across the floor toward Bronwynn and jerked the heavily bound Princess out onto the board. “I’d thought to make Naquin the cube ”
“I say,” Naquin gasped. “I’m not with the man.”
“ he is, after all, dressed in blue already and is block-headed enough.
But since you’ve so kindly brought Bronwynn to me ” She shoved the girl toward a servant. ” we’ll make her the cube instead.”
An explosion of wind? Pelmen reasoned. Blow out the ceiling and crush all the spectators. That was the trouble with magic it killed indiscriminately.
“And of course, Serphimera.”
Pelmen whipped around to stare at her, “Serphimera?” he said aloud.
“Certainly Serphimera,” Ligne snarled.
“She never threatened you.”
“She didn’t forewarn me either. Put the star on her head,” Ligne ordered. “She already has the blue robe.”
But Serphimera had told him she would walk out the gate unharmed. For the first time ali day, Pelmen brushed shoulders with hope. For if Serphimera was destined to live… “And I’m to understand that all of these will lose their lives if I fail to defeat you?” he asked.
“That is the wager.” Ligne sneered smugly.
A year before, Serphimera had prophesied that Vicia-Heinox would rip a blue-clad figure in two. She’d been right. She’d been right about two plots against Ligne ending in failure. And Serphimera had seen herself leave this castle on foot through the front gate.
Ligne made her first move, and flung the reference plank toward Pelmen.
“Play the game, fool. That is, if you remember how.”
Just then it happened again.
Pelmen always had difficulty expressing the experience in words, but he instantly knew what had happened. Erri would have understood completely, while Ligne might have laughed herself breathless at the very idea. Naquin might have comprehended, while Jagd would have dismissed it as the kind of delusion all Lamathians were subject to a simple result of their upbringing.
But Pelmen knew what it was. His spirit soared with an elation born from far beyond human experience. At the critical instant, at the moment he’d started his last desperate act of shaping, he’d heard,
“Wait.” No one nearby had said it, and the House was as silent as ever. Yet it had come, and Pelmen felt again that curious mixture of elation and terror that had seized him so many times before. No longer was he the shaper he was being shaped, and his ultimate destiny, be it life or death, seemed trivial in the face of this rushing presence.
Bronwynn saw it. Gagged as well as hobbled and cuffed, she could only smile with her eyes. But that she did. Her eyes radiated excitement.
She recognized the face that Pelmen now wore and knew its strangely compelling nature came from beyond him.
Serphimera saw it too, and it startled her. She had long denied the possibility of this happening to anyone outside her own circle. It seemed incredible she should be witnessing this transformation now but she did. And it thrilled her beyond words.
Ligne regarded Pelmen’s strained expression with a contemptuous sneer.
“Are you going to move, fool?”
Pelmen drew a deep breath and forced himself to stare at the gameboard.
This was torture. He longed to surrender to the enormous warmth that engulfed him, to slough off responsibility for himself and his friends and soak in the Power’s presence. Yet he could not. In the midst of this abundant joy, there was not necessarily any hope. The Power was shaping him, he knew but he knew as well that what he might choose might not be the choice of the Power. He fought only briefly to retain control, then acquiesced. “Very well,” he muttered quietly to the One who had made him a Prophet. “I hope you know how to play this game.”
Then he made his first move.
From the beginning, the pattern of play took on new and puzzling shapes. This game didn’t follow any of the classic forms or if it did, no one could tell. The size of the board and the rocking and whispering of the pieces prevented any real perspective. As the three players wove in and out between their brightly attired armies, guiding living pieces across the board, Ligne’s frustration level grew. She moved a disc ten feet across the floor, only to have it taken immediately by an unseen column concealed behind Pelmen’s star. “I can’t see what I’m doing,” she shouted.
“At the moment,” Pelmen told her with considerable effort, “you appear to be losing.” That wasn’t quite true. They’d both lost two pieces to Kherda’s three, and the game hung in the balance. Yet Pelmen had realized that he was playing far beyond his own capacity. He’d detached himself from the fearsome outcome of the exercise and watched his own play with objective admiration. It was a necessary mental adjustment, for the near future was too horrible to consider. Somehow, the Power helped him make it.
“What’s happening?” the spectators muttered to one another. But for all their confusion, it seemed most of them had a better grasp of the dynamics of this match than did the befuddled Prime Minister.
“Kherda,” Ligne screamed, “are you trying to make me lose?
“No, my Lady,” Kherda called back raggedly, and Pelmen almost felt sorry for the man.
The reference plank changed hands a dozen times in rapid succession, noting a dazzling exchange of blitzing moves that left everyone a little dizzy. Then it stopped, and Kherda loudly announced, “Razor.”
The crowd gasped, then cheered.
Pelmen frowned. It was uncanny the number of times this situation arose. So frequently did it happen, in fact, that the merchants had long since given this configuration its own name. Pelmen had lost Gerrig and Serphimera, and had three remaining pieces. Ligne, too, had three pieces left on the board. Kherda had lost all but one, but be had done so with the consummate skill of one who has practiced only to lose. His one piece now controlled the outcome of the game. He held the deciding position the Razor and the way it cut would determine the winner.