Past Imperative_The Great Game

by Dave Duncan

  As it neared the city gates, the road crossed a series of arched bridges spanning small tributary canyons. On one of these Dolm stopped and peered over the rail. He unslung his pack.

  “Yes,” he said. “Right first time. Down there. Rehearsing.”

  The valley below was wooded, but there was a clearing below the bridge; there two men and a woman were apparently having an argument. Other people lounged around in the shade, watching. Voices drifted up unintelligibly. The grouping was staged and unnatural.

  Dolm groaned. “By the moons! They’ve taken on that idiot Tothroom Player!” He mumbled something about women and fighting.

  Eleal was jumping up and down and clapping her hands. “Come on!” she said urgently.

  “You go,” Dolm said. “I will go back now.”

  “Come, D’ward!” she commanded.

  “You’d better not tell them who he is,” Dolm said.

  That was hardly fair play! “Tell!” Edward said. He tapped his chest. “Danger to them? Tell them.”

  Eleal hesitated, looking from one to the other.

  “Yes, perhaps you had better warn them,” Dolm said, giving Edward an odd look.

  Then he sighed and went down on his knees to her. “Eleal Singer, I want you to know that I am deeply sorry for what happened. I frightened you terribly and I intended to kill you. I do not ask you to forgive me, because I can never forgive myself, but if you could give me your blessing for the future, it would make me very happy, and very grateful.”

  Eleal was momentarily at a loss. Then she raised her chin. “Of course I forgive you, Dolm Actor!” she proclaimed magnanimously. “I pray that Holy Tion will protect you and that you will find peace.” She hugged Dolm and kissed his cheek. Then she glanced sidelong at Edward to see if he had appreciated her performance.

  “Thank you!” Dolm said, and his gratitude seemed genuine.

  “Come, D’ward!” she repeated.

  “You go,” Edward said. “Warn them. I am following.”

  She pouted at him suspiciously.

  “I must change into that pilgrim robe you made, which will always remind me of you,” Dolm said. “Then I will give D’ward my pack. He will come.”

  Edward nodded his agreement. Reassured, Eleal went skipping off to the end of the bridge, and disappeared down a steep path.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Tell me,” Edward said.

  Dolm shuddered and shook his head. “Never!” He unfastened his pack and pulled out the smock with the pentacle on it. Then he stood up and looked apprehensively at Edward.

  “Tell me!” Edward repeated. “Tell of Zath. I need to know.”

  “Need?”

  “Need! Am the Liberator.”

  Frowning, the actor leaned his lanky frame on the rail and stared down at his former friends far below.

  “I did a terrible thing,” he said quietly. “I hurt a woman, hurt her badly. I was an animal. I was drunk.” He mimed drinking and touched his groin. “Understand? Next day I learned that she was likely to die. I went to the temple of Zath and prayed that he would take my life and spare the woman—that I would die, she would not die.” He acted it out, pausing frequently to be sure that the stranger understood. “A priest said I must go to her and touch her, lay my hand on her, like this. It was dark, nighttime. Doors opened for me. Bolts slid. No one saw me. She was asleep, or unconscious. I touched her.”

  He shivered, staring out over the rail.

  “She died at once. I felt great pleasure, a rush of joy. Perhaps you don’t know yet what it is like to lie with a woman, or perhaps you do, but it was like that, only much more. Much more! I went back to the temple and was initiated. I became a reaper. At night the lust would come upon me. Not every night, but often. I would go out and walk the streets or enter into houses, and I would gather souls for Zath. They died in silence, but in fearful agony. They knew. They died terribly and I felt rapture.”

  He was weeping, his gaunt cheeks shining wet.

  “Always I would feel that joy,” he said, his voice breaking. “Especially if they were young and strong. Many, many of them.”

  Blood was pretty high on the list, Creighton had said. What could be higher than human sacrifice?

  “Not you doing this,” Edward said awkwardly. How could anyone console a man who bore such a burden? “The god was doing it, not you.”

  “But it was my crime that led me to him.”

  “Sister Ahn kill your, er…”

  “Guilt? Sister Ahn took away my guilt?”

  “Thank you. Sister Ahn took away your guilt.”

  “Yes. And gave me repentance instead. I was happy in my evil. Now I can never be happy again. I think I will kill myself.”

  “No. Sister Ahn died. You die also, her dying is no thing.”

  Dolm turned his head to stare at Edward with red-rimmed eyes. “She died for me!”

  “You die also, then Zath wins!” How, Edward wondered, had he ever gotten himself into this? He was not qualified to be a spiritual advisor. He was a sanctimonious school prefect lecturing a mass murderer. Holy Roly would be proud of him. He barely knew enough of the language to ask for a drink of water, let alone argue ethics. But he could not stop now.

  “Sister Ahn gave you back your life. You must take it. You must use it. Do good!”

  “Maybe when I have been a pilgrim and made the Holy Circuit.”

  Edward thought about that. “No. Pilgrim is running away.”

  “What else can I do?” Dolm said angrily. “I can’t act anymore!”

  Their eyes locked.

  This was Graybeard again, and the soldier at the bridge. This was Dusty Miller of the Lower Fourth, who’d broken an ankle playing rugby and been terrified to put on his studs after that. This was the First Eleven after they’d lost three in a row and were going up against the top of the league. But Edward did not have the words he had used on those occasions. All he had was baby talk. “Yes you can, Dolm. You can act. You can remember lines. You can move without tripping. Acting not changed. Nothing has changed.”

  He saw the resistance. He felt himself failing. He reached out and gripped Dolm’s shoulders with both hands.

  “You can!” he said. “I say you can!”

  Dolm’s eyes widened. Edward saw doubt rooting and pressed harder, using every scrap of conviction he could muster. “You can! I say you can. Trust me. I am D’ward Liberator! Trust me!”

  Without warning, the actor screamed. He pushed Edward away and turned, doubling over the rail, racked by sobs. Edward staggered back, appalled at what he had done. The bridge seemed to sway under his feet. A terrible weariness came crashing down on him.

  Dolm was weeping helplessly, hysterically, like a child, pounding his fists on the balustrade. He sounded as if he were choking to death.

  Edward could find no more words. I had no right to torture the poor man, so! I should have left him to do what he wanted to do and suffer as he wanted to suffer.

  Angrily he limped away. He did not try to take the pack, because he did not think he could lift it. He was only two days off his sickbed and he must have walked fifty miles. He was crushed by exhaustion. He had blisters all over his feet and his teeth hurt.

  There were too many people. He reeled down the path on jellied legs, stumbling with weakness and hanging on to trees, and when at last he had descended to the valley floor and found the clearing, there were just too many people. A dozen or more of them were clustered around Eleal’s tiny form. They were enjoying collective hysterics.

  They had not known. Dolm had not been able to tell them that Eleal had escaped from Narsh, because he dared not reveal how he knew. Now, suddenly, she had come skipping out of the bushes to join them. She was the center of attention and loving it—hugging and kissing and telling her adventures all at the same time. T
hey must know of the Testament with its mention of Eleal and the Liberator, because all Suss had been talking of it. Their god had worked a miracle for them. Their baby was back. Everyone was talking at once, men swearing oaths, women weeping. High drama!

  Were actors as superstitious on Nextdoor as they were reputed to be on Earth? She was their mascot, Edward thought, watching the reunion. They must see that! Their little crippled mascot had returned to them and now their luck would change. Or would it? The Tion presence in the temple must know of him, or would surely learn shortly. Zath’s reapers might be watching the troupe. The Liberator could bring only trouble to these humble players. He must leave now, at once, before they saw him. Too many people!

  Perhaps Dolm would have left the backpack on the bridge. With that, and the smattering of language he had attained, Edward could survive on his own somehow—couldn’t he? It was the thought of trying to climb that hill again so soon that delayed him. Then someone saw him.

  Screaming with excitement, Eleal came skipping choppily over the grass to him, the whole troupe running in pursuit. Too many people. He staggered back a few paces and leaned against a tree for support.

  He soon identified the leaders. The figurehead was the middle-aged giant with the silvery mane, Trong Impresario. He declaimed in a voice like distant gunfire. He rumbled platitudes and struck dramatic poses. The real power was his wife, Ambria, a woman taller than Edward, with steel in her eyes and a tongue like a lash. She was all bone and angles, and yet strangely reminiscent of the irrepressible Mrs. Bodgley of Greyfriars Abbey. The brains of the group might well be that little man with the stubbly white beard. Names, names, and more names…Good-looking men, handsome women, all putting on airs. Handshakes and thumps on the back and effusive gratitude for restoring their darling…

  And then came reaction and withdrawal as they realized that this youth meant more trouble in their lives, not less. He was involved with the gods in ways they did not understand and were not likely to approve if they did. He could not give a straight answer or frame a grammatical sentence. He would be one more mouth to feed and could give nothing in return.

  Excitement faded into a murk of uneasiness. The group began to break up and drift away in twos and threes to whisper.

  The big Ambria woman said something to her husband. At once he began shouting orders for the rehearsal to continue. Edward sank down on a tussock and put his head in his hands. He should curl up and have a sleep—perhaps they would just take the chance to creep away and leave him.

  “Hungry? Thirsty?” asked a voice. A woman was kneeling at his side. She was offering a clay flask and a slab of bread and cheese.

  She was the sort of girl that turned a boy’s thoughts to desert islands built for two, and her smock would have barely made one good dish towel. Edward was not accustomed to seeing so much beautiful skin—he felt daring when he caught a glimpse of Alice’s calves. He knew his face was turning redder than that wilted blossom in her hair. He nodded dumbly several times before he found his voice.

  “Thank you. Yes. Um, query name.”

  She smiled in vision of pearls. “Uthiam. Thanks to you for bringing Eleal back to us.”

  “Er, Eleal me brought! I fear I bring trouble.”

  She laughed joyfully. “Eleal is always trouble!”

  And he laughed also, and thought that maybe things might be going to turn out not quite so bad as he had feared.

  Possibly the food revived him. He sat by himself, staying out of sight and mind, and he watched the troupe’s activities with growing interest. Some of the younger folk were engaged in juggling and acrobatics, but they seemed more interested in exercise and enjoyment than in polishing their skills. The main event was a rehearsal of a drama, and everyone was intent on that.

  Trong portrayed Grastag King, a tragic, aging figure facing a young challenger. The gallant hero, Darthon Warrior, was being played by Tothroom, replacement for the failed Dolm. The newcomer clutched a script, to which he had to make frequent reference. This might be his first attempt at the role. Even allowing for such handicaps, his performance was insipid. Grastag had stolen his wife, but Tothroom was playing the role as though he had lost a hairbrush.

  At first the ornate, high-flown poetry was quite beyond Edward’s comprehension. By the fifth or sixth repetition it began to fit together. Like Shakespeare’s, the words had a music that soared beyond literary sense, so that meanings missed here and there were of no importance. At times Trong’s delivery soared close to opera, where meaning did not matter at all, only emotion. Tothroom mumbled and stuttered and barely seemed to understand his lines himself. Over and over the two men performed the same scene until Trong would roar, “Cut!” and begin bawling instructions. Then he would take it all from the beginning again.

  The problem was mostly Tothroom. He was a sallow, pinchfaced man, sadly lacking in stage presence. The plot required him to accost Grastag at his prayers. At first Grastag would respond with contempt and indignation, but then Darthon was supposed to take over the scene, to overwhelm the older man with vituperation and a catalogue of his crimes, to achieve dominance, to grind him into repentance and despair. It was not happening that way, because Tothroom was simply no match for Trong. He was a sheep trying to cow a lion. Trong was at fault also, for he did not seem able to bridle his own flamboyance. He would not lie down unless he was bludgeoned into submission.

  And whenever the action was broken off, he would scream more insults than instructions. Instead of encouraging his new recruit, he was browbeating him and threatening. Some team captain he was!

  Thinking of the Sixth Form’s Henry V, Edward began to reflect that even he might have more dramatic talent than this inept Tothroom—and at least he would understand that Trong’s ranting should be ignored. He glanced around the clearing. The melancholy expressions on all the other faces suggested that Tothroom was not going to survive the day as a member of the troupe. It was quite clear why Dolm Actor, in his guilt and anguish, had been unable to portray the arrogant swashbuckling Darthon Warrior. Given Hamlet to play in his present mood, he would have dampened every eye in Sussland.

  “You foulness clad in kingly,” Darthon said mildly. “Raiment. Earth’s bowels have never issued forth,” he remarked, “more loathsome leech to suck”—he fumbled with the script and then found the place—“to suck the merit. From the people and,” he continued apologetically, “warp their aspirations like, er, your own, too. Baseness?”

  Trong bellowed, “Cut!” and loosed another torrent of abuse that Edward was glad not to understand.

  Eleal bounced down to sit beside him. She was still flushed with excitement at being reunited with her family.

  Trong, she said proudly, was her something.

  “Query,” Edward sighed.

  “Father of mother.”

  “Ah. I see the likeness.”

  She giggled with delight, then frowned severely. “Darthon Warrior is not good!”

  “No.”

  “Sh! They’re starting again!”

  “Insolent spawn of lowborn vermin!” Trong declaimed, giving the cue.

  “You foulness clad in kingly raiment!” roared a new voice from the trees. Tothroom jumped and dropped his script. “Earth’s bowels,” Dolm bellowed, striding out, brandishing a stick with such menace that it seemed to reflect the sun, “have never issued forth more loathsome leech to suck the merit from the people and warp their aspirations, like your own, to baseness.”

  The troupe was on its feet. Tothroom’s jaw hung slackly.

  “Say you so?” Trong fell back a pace, hands raised to ward off this attack. “Easier ’tis for whippersnapper to crack the air with words and slight his betters than man to balance judgment and uphold the laws with deeds.”

  “Uphold the laws?” Dolm stormed, advancing on him and leaving his unfortunate replacement completely out of the scene. A barrage of wo
rds exploded from the newcomer, an avalanche of scorn fell on Trong. Carillons of poetry soared far beyond Edward’s comprehension, but the sense was obvious. Grastag King defied, argued, pleaded, and finally cringed, while Darthon Warrior thundered over him like a volcano.

  The scene ended when Trong fled howling into the bushes. For a moment the grove was silent.

  “Oh, that was much better!” Eleal remarked judiciously as the riot of welcome converged on Dolm. She turned to Edward with a puzzled frown. “He was never that good before. What did you do to him?”

  “I just—”

  No! No! No! Everything clicked into place and Edward could only stare at Eleal in horror.

  54

  NOW THERE WAS NO QUESTION OF THE TROUPE REJECTing Edward, for Dolm was restored to form and favor, and he was a strong Edward supporter. In fact no one gave a thought to the newcomer for the rest of the day except Eleal, who kept him advised of what was happening.

  The incompetent Tothroom having been sent packing, performances could begin as soon as arrangements were made. The big amphitheater at the temple was still being used by the Golden Book Players, who had won that year’s rose—a very inferior troupe, Eleal insisted—but the town had a smaller one just outside the walls. By nightfall, she was coaching Edward in the art of coloring placards, lettered in the strange Greek-style script. He shared his new friends’ meager meal; he slept in a borrowed blanket in the shed they had rented. It was normally used to store some sort of root crop and had a strong smell of ginger. As a dorm for fourteen people it was embarrassingly intimate, but he had been accepted as one of the band, at least for the time being.

  The next day he walked the streets of Suss carrying sandwich boards. He was still shaky and footsore, but the job was within his capabilities; Dr. Gibbs had stoutly maintained that the chief benefits of a classical education were versatility and adaptability. Edward found himself in trouble only once, when a visiting merchant asked him for directions to Boogiil Wheelwright’s.

  Suss was tightly cramped within its walls, yet prosperous. The walls themselves suggested that artillery was still unknown in the Vales, but he noted promising signs of technology. A few people wore spectacles. Stores sold printed books and musical instruments and tailored clothes, while food stalls offered a wide variety of crops. He saw very few beggars. The sewer system was underground and drinking water was piped to communal outlets. He had seen many towns on Earth less favored. He could still hold out hopes that Nextdoor had a London or a Paris somewhere.