David’s NaNo

November grows closer! I am SO psyched!

Below will be my intermittent work for NaNoWriMo.

Suggestions are welcome . . . and then some.

Champion of the Bright Sister

I, Zhedrotten, Master General of the Nahlix Legion, bear witness to these things. For I was there and privy to what the Gambiters brought about. I led the Legion to its greatest victory. And I led us here in this our bitter exile.

Some say the gods grew envious of our power. Some say the wingless Luminaries called the Dark Sister here on a bitter wind. Some say anything they are paid to say. My testimony is true, for I am true. My testimony is true, for I am Lux. My testimony is true, for I tell it to reveal truth.

In the time before our exile, we were mighty warriors on a fair, blue orb beneath a golden sun and our Bright Sister, the moon. Nine houses held sway in strict hierarchy: Ariavhrati, Diarhmavhrati, Albiavhrati, Lux, Nahlix, Quien, Aveadrastyn, Diarhdrastyn, and Nahxtolux.

Of the nine houses, two are unwinged races: the Albiavhrati and the Nahxtolux. Skinner was of the former, none is remembered of the latter. From the ninth house descended the Nahxtok and the serpentine peoples. Only Skinner remains of the Albiavhrati.

Of the winged races, only the Lux and the Nahlix are blessed with the possession of the Heaven-eye, which is the root and blossom of esoteric craft. We Lux prefer sorcery, the esoteric of the soul. The Nahlix were ever of the lower order, preferring the base powers of the material body.

Skinner has many times explained to me the crafting of the intellect he calls wizardry, and yet it remains to me the greatest of mysteries. Ratashakti, sole survivor of the Diarhmavhrati, claims to wield the powers of the ninth chakra, but my perception leads me to conclude that hers is the manipulation of energies melded from the basal and heart energies.

It is claimed that Igea Spectravarhi, half-blood daughter of a great Albiavhrati philosopher, has created a new practice based on the melding of chakras channeled through the basal chakra into orbs of magnetic and planetary influences. She calls this druidry, and it is most mysterious. Greatly effective for gardening, but otherwise thought of no particular use-until the Calamity of Orbits.

The Factor of Finukili was the first to prophecy the end of plenty. He came to the court at Synesthostra to see the Luminaries there, and he told them in certain terms and showed with his figures that the Bitchstar, Molliandra, had shifted over a period of time and was on a path to collide with our fair world.

“She is but an orb of gas and iron,” said the Luminary of highest degree. “Molliandra may come near, but we shall cause a great wind and pass straight through as though she were no more than a ghost.”

But the Luminaries were split. Some said that the Bitchstar had a heart of iron, as do all celestial bodies not stars. Others said that her strange fogs would poison all life and slay us. Others argued that this was the will of gods, and that it was meant to bring great change.

From this school of thought, Skinner came forward to posit theories considered abomination. He and I spoke often in the Garden of Glimmer Delights. We played Gambit and spoke of possibilities. That was, until Skinner and Igea began to sneak off into the hidden orchard they called Moonbolt Grove.

In the year following, I fell into company with Skinner and his comrades as we met beyond the city by a lake called Lapismere. It was a lovely spot, a bare obsidian circle on the shore. While the weather was fair, we used to swim out and collect shells, and then crush them into opalescent powder. We mixed this powder with fish spawn and the whites of eggs from the Lapis herons from a nearby swamp. This we used to paint a large and glorious Gambit board. Igea created new magics to fuse the shell into the stone. This is the board and the obsidian redoubt on which Skinner and the Southern Queen played their most glorious Gambit.

But that is not my story. My story began in those earlier days, and carries now beyond the Spektratokvrithravoxh HxotororotoxH[i]and the Gambit Endgame. I speak of that season only to explain why a Nahlix Warmaster Luminary became a Champion to Skinner Gambiter, for it was this that led to me becoming Zhedrotten, Champion of the Bright Sister.

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During the reign of Ratashakti Diarhmavhrati and Tarnanis Ariavhrati, all things were ruled from the bright city, Synesthostra. Two-hundred million citizens enjoyed the fruits of a stable empire there, and twice that many in the fertile lands round about the city . . . But to praise the glories of dead worlds is not to my liking. I tell of it that you may know somewhat my place.

The peoples of the Nine Houses are long-lived. Some claim to know the deep mysteries of immortality. I know only that I and a handful of my comrades have now seen over forty-thousand years as marked by Asper’s passing round our golden sun[ii]. Those whom I have seen pass beyond all were ceased by violent means, as I myself expect to be when Time decides my end.

Because of this long-lived condition, it became necessary to find solutions to overpopulation. Thus the Luminaries discovered means to walk beyond the stars, Gambit became a game for the Circle of Watchers, and war became the sport of despots.

In the court at Synesthostra, the Starpool became at first a threat to all who curried disfavor. Unfortunate dissidents were thrown into the Starpool before the Luminaries fully understood its uses. It was thought that the stars within the substanceless pools converged to sunder those thrown in, but Kréatha Luminary gained by his insight the knowledge that these persons were swallowed into the void between stars and vomited on unknown orbs such as our own precious world.

Thereafter, the Starpool became a reward for Gambiters and a rite of passage for over-curious youths. Those incapacitated in, or who elected to retire from, the Circle of Watchers were permitted to throw themselves into the Starpool.

After four centuries, Ratashakti had an intricate maze golden rods erected over and around the Starpool to commemorate our victory over the city-state closest to us,  Pahratasthrot. Every morning for nine-hundred and seventy-two days, she sent the prisoner of highest rank from their captured army through the maze. Forty-one walked from that maze to be enslaved to the Luminaries; it is rumored that the Luminaries used such prisoners to learn perverse esoterics in the pursuit of creating greater races.

This is why no Nahlix will lay down his arms. Only death or consumption[iii] wins victory over us. The Lux are not so brave.

The Starpool was the worst solution ever devised, but I have much to tell before that revelation. The Circle of Watchers and our habits of war are more telling. One issues from the other. But which came first is the subject for lounging Luminaries.

It is said that the gods brought Gambit to the Houses as a Writ of Order. By these rules should the nations and peoples war against each other lest Death should be as a spoiled dgrot[iv] and forever beg morsels or glut itself on all the blood in the world. This was to be the Way of balance, the Way of equilibrium.

It is also said that the gods dwell on the stars or in them.

Nevertheless. By Gambit are we trained as Warmasters. According to its strategies, we rise above our fellows or fall to lower ranks. As a Gambiter of some skill, I found my way to the good graces of the court and appointed Warmaster of the Ninety-fifth Nahlix Legion, an army of my brethren ten-thousand strong.

Gambit is a game played on a square area cut equally fourteen times this way and fourteen that. The two players, Gambiters, face each other across the board. North to south; white to black. The key figure, centered in the home row, is the Luminary or Warmaster, whose home station is of his adversaries color. The Warmaster’s entourage spreads left and right of him, staggered to appropriate colored square - white on white, black on black. Left of the Warmaster is his Secret-keeper; right of him is his General’s Concubine. Each Secret-keeper, who is wife to the Warmaster, begins on the station called the Spawning-square. Next to each side is a Drastyvhrashti[v], also called Rider. Beyond them are the Champions, and the Aeries hold the corners. In the row forward, each Gambiter has pawns of matching color and vorek[vi] on the opposing color tiles so that they are staggered-seven pawns and eight vorek.

In the tabletop version, as opposed to the Circle of Watchers version, the pieces have limited mobility and capture privilege. Pawns, roundear footmen, move one space per turn in any forward direction and may capture thus. Vorek may move in any direction one space, but may only capture from behind or beside. An enemy pawn captured by a vorek is turned and moves to that vorek’s home station, but is limited to defense. Any pawn to reach the enemy’s Spawning square is upgraded to the Gambiter’s choice of Champion, Rider, Concubine, or Secret-keeper (but only one Secret-keeper is permitted each Gambiter at any given time).

Aeries move only in straight lines, move a maximum of five squares, and cannot be replaced in any manner; they may move as many as eight squares in the Jeopardy-gambit, which must result either in the capture of an enemy directly threatening the Warmaster or directly intervening to prevent the opponent’s Gambit.

Champions may move as many as six squares in any given turn. They may bypass or replace pawns or vorek of their own, and may take as many enemy pawns and vorek as their allotment of squares allows. When capturing home-row opponents, the Champion’s turn terminates on the captured square. A rarely used and frequently neglected rule offers the option of Champion-gambit, in which the Champion and Warmaster trade squares.

Riders move in diagonals. They are allotted nine spaces per turn. They may switch back or bank to form V patterns. They may fly over any piece on the board. Riders may not capture the Warmaster unless they are able to maneuver a nine-square move with no more than one bank terminating on the Warmaster square; in such a gambit, they are not permitted to fly over any opposing piece. If the Rider uses this gambit and flies over an opposing pawn or vorek, it must return to its home station. If it attempts this and flies over any opposing home-row piece, it is forfeit.

The General’s Concubine may move up to three squares in any direction during any particular turn. She may capture from any position, but may not capture the opposing Warmaster except from behind or in defense. Should she capture the opposing Secret-keeper, that Secret-keeper is turned and goes to the capturing Concubine’s home square, from which she must defend both Luminary and Secret-keeper. The Concubine may also turn as many opposing vorek as her move allows; such vorek move to the home station of the Concubine’s allied vorek (if none is available, they are staged boardside until a space becomes available). In the event a Concubine moves into the square occupied by the opposing Concubine, both are captured and removed from the board. The Concubine is prohibited from inhabiting or moving through any square immediately adjacent to the allied Secret-Keeper.

The one exception to the prohibition against the Concubine’s moving adjacent to the Secret-Keeper is when using the Sister-gambit. In this gambit, if the Secret-Keeper and Concubine are within two spaces of a threatening opponent, both pieces are sacrificed to capture the one putting their Warmaster in jeopardy.

Each Secret-Keeper may move a total of three spaces in any direction, changing direction if needed. This piece may not move through occupied squares. She may not move, unthreatened, further than four squares from her Warmaster. Using the Wife’s Prerogative gambit, the Secret-Keeper may displace the Concubine during any turn; she takes the square occupied by the Concubine, and the Concubine is replace on the board as an opposing vorek. Secret-Keepers can capture any opposing piece, and if taking an opposing Champion from behind, turns that Champion, which takes position in the Spawning-square as soon as that square is vacant.

Gambiters seldom move their Warmasters into the general mix. This key figure moves only one space in any given turn. He may move in any direction and capture from any direction generally. The Warmaster may not capture the opposing Concubine from the front. He may only capture her from the side or diagonally if his own Secret-keeper is not adjacent to either of them. The exception is for the sake of escaping jeopardy, in which case the opposing Concubine is sent to her own home station. If the Warmaster can capture the opposing Concubine from behind while remaining at least two squares from his Secret-keeper, he turns the Concubine. A Warmaster can attain more Concubines by doing the same with opposing vorek (this is foolish and very dangerous).

I have seen no person master the game in under a dozen years of serious study and practice. There are, of course, gambits I have not included in the cursory treatment of the above rules. It is not my intention to write a book on the subtleties of Gambit, and would be foolish to attempt improvement on Skinner’s volume on the subject in any case. But it seemed necessary to explain the basics.

Having these basic rules brings us to the Circle of Watchers with a context in which to understand both the brutality and the ultimate civility of the games played for the Watchers. Most games in that arena are based in part or on the whole upon Gambit. Player pieces are chosen as often by voluntary exercise as by appointment.

Persons volunteer for many reasons, ranging from boredom to socio-economic ambition. More for the latter than the former. Although, it was common in that city to hear of ‘suicide by Circle’ in reference to those who volunteered as pawns in the hopes of being killed for whatever reason such insane persons choose to end their manifestation[vii].

Skinner, who wandered long and far after finishing his primary education, is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Albiavhrati to volunteer for the Circle. It would not shame him too deeply for me to reveal that he took on the harness of a pawn for both reasons-he meant to either end his manifestation or rise to Warmaster and win greater position in his own house.

In the Circle, capture depends as much on skill as on opportunity. For, in the Circle, the piece to be captured has the right to self-defense. It is of course unusual to see the defending piece triumph, but by no means rare. It is, however, very rare to see a pawn triumph more than once in any given match, as they have inferior weapons, reach, and armor. Armor and accoutrements, by writ of rule, are not vary for one unless for all.

This is what brought Skinner such fame at the dawning of his career. In twenty-nine games as a pawn, he defeated forty-one opponents in defense and captured nine homerow pieces. He was moved thence to Aerie, Rider, and Champion successively. At the time, he set the precedence for both the swiftness of his rise and his resilience, for he seldom walked unaided from a match for all the wounds he carried. He enjoyed ninety-one seasons as a Champion before winning his position into the Concubine’s Legion, a corps of elite warriors used by Ratashakti for what she called House cleaning, and others of us call eradication of bloodlines[viii].

Occasionally, on command, the Throne declared celebrity matches. A thin disguise for weeding out political enemies, these matches nearly always saw white as a side of professional warriors against a force of diverse persons of disfavor. The Throne chose its Gambiter, while white usually either appointed its own by vote or combat, or the white Gambiter chose among them.

His last match as a volunteer, Skinner was appointed Champion of the black and was commanded by Tarnanis to play as Gambiter as well. This came about because some drunken Warmaster lost to history made a drunken boast that he was invincible given Skinner as a Champion, and further remarking that Skinner was likely the greatest Gambiter anyone had ever seen. It is amusingly ironic that Skinner had yet to gambit his first match, and that he himself thought of himself as the greatest pawn the game ever had.

Whatever the politics, that game was the highest attended and largest grossing match on record. Seats went for five times the normal price of 38 Palms of grain, and yet the Circle sold more seats than it had. Audiences were permitted to stand boardedge-some at the cost of life or limb.

Tarnanis appointed as the white Warmaster the husband of his concubine, and appointed me as first Champion[ix] to him. Ratashakti appointed the concubine, Zhenai Albiavarhi[x], as Secret-keeper for black. It was the polite way for the Empress to rid herself of her rival; rather, it would have been had the gambit been successful.

In the end, Skinner agreed to a stalemate on the understanding that he was never again to play in any capacity within the Circle of Watchers. He did not, as some record, play a brilliant game. Skinner wasted his pieces and put himself in jeopardy far too many times. He forfeited his Concubine for the sake of saving his own Secret-keeper. He permitted me to take both his Champions and both his Aeries. He was reckless. It still astounds that he came to the point of himself and Zhenai facing only myself and the white Warmaster.

Though he confided in me that he used the Warmaster’s love of his wife against him, I have yet to make sense of such absurdity. Sentimentalism has no part in Gambit. At least, I believed this in that long ago time. Still, it confounds me. Suffice it, then, that I remark only on the result: Skinner conceded stalemate, agreed to never again gambit in the Circle, and was remanded to the Hall of Luminaries.

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For reasons still inexplicable to me, I went to visit him there on numerous occasions. He was changed, of course. The Luminaries had studied him inside and out for nearly a year before my first visit (I had taken grievous wounds at the Circle and was denied treatment due to my failure to capture the opposing Warmaster).

Where he had formerly he had been a staunch advocate of Autocracy, and the general politics of Ratashakti’s court, Skinner began to speak in progressively more dissenting tones. The Luminaries assured me that this was not their doing, but I did not believe them. I grew increasingly alarmed. For we played many hours of Gambit on a board in the dormitory where he was caged within the Hall of Luminaries.

One day, I recall it was the first day of rain after harvest, I came to call on him. The Luminaries had him in one of their laboratories, and I was obliged to wait nearly four hours. I was not idle, doing my zadubrathai[xi] with and without weapons as I waited.

“You spend too much time on the ground,” Skinner told me. I was just emerging from the trance of practice, and he sat on the edge of his sleeping platform.

“Perhaps you speak to yourself, wingless one,” I replied.

“Seriously,” he said, looking me in the eye. “For a guy with such incredible stamina and mobility with those things, you spend far too much time on the ground.”

He looked weary even then. Something iron in his eyes had gone away, replaced by a shifting of stars and magma. It is this that most drove me to my later intervention, but at that time I thought it merely weariness and maltreatment. I expected it to pass, and yet it made my core tremble in anticipation of all that was to come.

“Being in the air makes . . . certain parts,” I explained, “too vulnerable. It-”

“Go to the shores of Lapismere and watch the swallows battle dragonflies,” he mused. The glaze in his eyes made me look behind myself as though I might see them also. But only marble wall was there.

“It rains,” I shrugged. That ruffle of wings seemed to amuse him greatly. “Remind me when the warm wind rises again.”

“Watch them battle the grain-eaters,” he suggested.

“Shall we gambit today?” I tried to distract him. His far-off look troubled me then, though much less in my innocence of those days than in my present state of experience.

He flew then into the first of numerous rages. Uncanny as are the reflexes of the Nahlix, Skinner was upon me and had me on my back before I had raised a hand. It was sudden, rabid, mad . . . He was a dgrot bitch with threatened pups. And yet, when I had beaten him down, he clutched me as one clutches a dear child and wept for me. I still do not imagine why.

After this bizarre episode had passed, and he had pulled himself together, he confided in me the prophecy of the Molliandran Cataclysm. At the time, though, it seemed madness and I disremembered his rantings. He said then that the fate of our world, indeed, our world and numerous worlds beyond were in the hands of ignorant and evil Gambiters who should be scrubbed out to prevent this.

We played our Gambit match in silence. Unlike my usual wont, as Nahlix were at that time a quite guileless people, I hid my own eyes from Skinner and watched his as surreptitiously as I was able. Something in me knew that Skinner had learned to read beyond men’s eyes, and that he could perceive things that I was unable. By the time of his calling Gambit!, I had resolved that I should somehow manipulate better circumstances for him.

By my next visit, I had worked toward that goal with greater tact than I believe any other Nahlix managed before me. I had let slip to this party and that of Skinner’s growing mettle as the Luminaries augmented him with their mysterious skills and lore. Especially I worked on those whose interests it was to use Skinner to shield them against Ratashakti’s machinations.

But I spoke nothing of it to him. He seemed to anticipate me.

“Zhedrotten,” he said to me. “How is it that you move through your zadubrathai as though you had no wings?”

“Because,” I answered. “Nahlix wings are for catching drafts and thermals, and not so much for flight. This is why we have arms as well. We are ground dwellers who fly at times-especially in our beloved hive of Auriendai, though we have long since been removed from there.”

Auriendai is a plateau within the Violet Desert, where my people first grew to grandeur. We lived in the roomy vastness of its caves and swooped within the hollow mountain as well as over the hot sands outside. Tarnanis coaxed us out to serve him.

“They need not be,” Skinner told me. “If you will teach me your zadubrathai, I will teach you to modify your own such that it takes advantage of your wings as well as your arms and legs.”

To such I agreed, wanting more to teach him the skills he should have to make truth of that which I had already claimed. And so it was that we embarked on a very strange training. For some four years I taught him every nuance of my zadubrathai. He took to it well, but our time was limited by his use as a ‘model’ for the Luminaries.

By our fifth year, I was learning from him. It was greatly unexpected, but this wingless Albiavhrati was able to increase my skill nearly three-fold with his strange instincts and insights. We worked two years on perfecting this new zadubrathai before I got word from Ratashakti that she desired candidates to compete for command of the Concubine’s Legion.

“Concubine’s Legion?” Skinner looked like a puzzled bird as he asked. It did not help that he had inexplicably changed in appearance. His ears had rounded off. The pupils of his eyes grew round, and his eyes themselves lost the characteristic slant of the Albiavhrati. Most alarming, though, was the growth of hair all over his head. But such things were very slight alterations for the models of the Luminaries.

“You know them,” I reminded him. “The ranks of those thought loyal to Zhenai-the queen wants a worthy Warmaster to lead them against the Vanguard of the Taravhratra.”

“Taravhratra?” Skinner asked. “Why? We’ve been under treaty with them since-are they attacking?”

“They are,” I confirmed. “Their Luminaries have declared us shashmarai and demand that all within the influence of Ratashakti be put to the sword lest the gods send down the Bitchstar to avenge themselves on our rampant wickedness.”

“Teach your Legion our new tactics,” he offered. He shrugged his shoulders in the characteristic way he does when denying concern.

“We play Champion in this gambit,” I told him. “Shakti seeks one to take her pawns forward to answer Brovar’s challenge before he leaves his city.”

“Are we to be armed as pawns as well?” He asked.

“That army will arm as its Warmaster sees fit.”

“Then find me the means to the Circle that I may win this Warmaster’s harness,” he replied as I hoped he would.

In a shorter time than I would have thought, because our spies and Luminaries pushed for great speed, arrangements were made and Skinner won his position as the Warmaster. He was housed in an officer’s shanty and given nine days to prepare a makeshift army of volunteers only half trained as warriors.

Though it was not in my interests to do so, especially concerning my position around the court as Shakti’s Second Champion and Warmaster of a Legion, I did as much in my power to see that Skinner was able to procure what he desired for his command. We both sat in his quarters the night before his march and marveled over his accomplishments.

“On the field, I intend to segregate the vorek from the footmen,” he told me. “They will be ranked in staggered lines, so that men form the first three lines, two lines of vorek, and so on.”

“You actually gave the vorek bladed whips?” I asked. This was unprecedented. Vorek are camp girls meant more for pleasure than battle. They fight from tradition, not because they have skill. Most outfit them only with slim daggers called oustvokai[xii].

“They cost the same to produce as the xokma[xiii],” he shrugged. “I able to replace those with zhaxhriu[xiv] for my footmen by replacing their steel armor for a laminate of leather, hemp, and tin. The Overpowered did very well to ready it.”

“I was told you managed ninety ahntsudai[xv].” At this point, I was testing him as much as I was trying to confirm rumors. Already the barracks held an unprecedented four-to-one odds against Sinner’s return, and several million Palms in a pool wagering on the number of Taravhratra Skinner’s force would slaughter. It was never considered that he might return. The Concubine’s Legion was always to spend itself either to the last man, or to utterly destroy the enemy. Ratashakti had been certain to send a force so inferior that none may return.

“One hundred,” Skinner told me. “I got ten more today for a small favor to a lesser noble near Lapismere. He also gave me two-thousand vrihsuvai[xvi] on loan against whatever booty I take from Taravhradai.”

“Booty?” I asked him, appalled that he could imagine victory. “My friend, you face millions with but a force of 144,000. How can you hope to succeed?”

“I cannot be defeated,” he said to me. His eyes that moment burned with such fire I was convinced that he had not only spoken to the celestial being in the Starpools but that he had somehow been blessed and touched by them.

“Anyone can be defeated,” I pursued reason with him.

“No, Zhedrotten,” he said. “I cannot be defeated. I must not. The cost of defeat here is one I cannot bear. Our whole world rests in this hand.”

His voice resonated as though stars themselves spoke. I, who have never quaked in the fiercest battle, thought at that moment to know something akin to fear. Most shocking to me was Skinner’s admonition that any fate might rest in the hand he held forth, for it was his right hand, the weak hand, the hand of defense.

“And what shall you bear in that hand?” I was forced to ask.

“For this I need your advice, my friend,” he told me. “The blade of a Warmaster is not suited-for I am the Concubine’s Fool, and would not stain the blade of a Warmaster with such disgrace.”

“Then use the Champion’s t’kwaisuvai[xvii],” I told him. I knew of one or more that might be bartered away from other Gambiters, but at risk. “It will not be permitted, but how are they to punish you further? This is a gambit of field war, not Circle or table Gambit.”

“We invent moves all the time when they’re successful,” Skinner replied sagely. “This shall be the Xhotrotten Gambit after my return. That will both amuse our friends and confound our enemies.”

“I have one taken from a Diarhmavhrati two-hundred years ago no one will be the wiser to,” I offered.

“No,” he shook his head. “Luminary Kratovaria has agreed to aid me in forging this weapon. It will be lowered into the Starpool on a rope of braided spider silk. It must take place at the apex of tonight’s moon journey-when the green fires dance before the serpents of blue and red.”

Not until that night did I realize that he foretold of a shower of meteors. The first wave was strange in both its green fire and its squiggly pattern. After this, a wave of several hundred serpent-like balls of red shot across the sky, and crossways to them ones of blue. When I saw this, I knew that I must find a way to watch Skinner, and so arranged to do so.

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Great crowds lined the Boulevard of Egress that next morning. As war was so popular and vital to our people, everyone was eager to send off our warriors with a cheer for valor and the admonishment to “Die Well.” Even in the case of the Concubine’s Legion, the least honorable of all forces not mercenary, great crowds showed to bid them Die Well.

Skinner refused a mound and strode before his Legion as though leading them out for a morning exercise. Indeed, their copper and leather uniform cultivated a great deal of commentary. I myself recall commenting on how absurd the uniforms were, for they covered too much to permit full movement.

This was the first time, also, that footmen had ever gone forth clad with helmets. Albeit they were a similar laminate to the full armor shirts as opposed to the tempered helms of the Champions, they were shaped in similar fashion-like a bowl dipping down over the forehead.

Skinner paraded them out of the city in the usual ranks, but by the time he reached Lapismere, he pulled them in to a column of 120 wide. Six rows of footmen marched at the fore. The first was armed with xokma only. The second was armed with one xokma and one vrihsuvai each. The third through sixth rows were armed with zhaxhriu. Behind them, a line of vorek marched, armed with zhaxhriu, and also each with one cheap vrihsuvai.

Other lines were similar. In the midst of his assemblage were staggered the hundred ahntsuda conveyed by a breed of small equines the Lux raise for food-Skinner had gotten retired breeders from them to use as beasts of burden. This seemed both clever and dangerous to me, as he had little other recourse to beasts of burdens for the Concubine’s Legion, but the Keedo ponies are notoriously stubborn when led to slaughter.

But I did not stay to admire his parade. I took it on myself to look forward and scout the enemy, for I was certain that their entire garrison was sent against us. My supposition proved to be somewhat short of the mark, for the entire population of able-bodied persons were sent out to destroy us.

This put me in the worst of positions, as it was not my place to know my own knowledge. What recourse has one in such circumstance? I returned to my city not out of any sense of caution or honor. Indeed, I returned only to consult the Luminary of my own house, for such conundrums are the battle fields of Luminaries.

The Luminary had no word to tell me in the time I was willing to wait. So it was that I flew out the next morning to mark Skinner’s march. He was not pushing his Legion; if anything, he seemed to hold them to a leisurely march. This found me in a state of anxiety I had never before experienced. For Skinner, by vice of his sloth in marching, put all I knew and found pride in at risk.

It was not my place to intervene. And though it caused me distress to the point of physical and spiritual agony, I clung to honor and refused to curse my people with my ill-gotten knowledge. Instead, I returned to put my own Legion through the most rigorous exercises I could manage without raising questions, concentrating especially on the techniques we had developed with Skinner’s influence.

This went on for nine days. Though Taravhrat is only a nine-day march for a Nahlix force. On the tenth day, Skinner reached a pass between what were then the Vrihtavardai mountains. He could easily have bypassed the rugged terrain of these mountains, but went into them as though to hide.

Skinner’s hiding in these mountains galled me so bitterly that I nearly accosted him. But as I was on my way, the clarion call of Ratashakti rang through my mind like a rainbow chimed on a single silver bar. Thus I returned as bidden. For honor is the Way of the Nahlix.

“Ready the Legions,” Ratashakti told us as we gathered. “Skinner has sent back a vorek to report that Drindipahratanivashtra defiles himself by bringing every able body to bear against us.”

So it was that I was able to enlighten my own Legion and immediately volunteer as the vanguard to face whatever remnant Skinner was unable to curtail. At my insistence, Warmaster Kravenvhratai, because of his envy of my esteem in Rhatashakti’s graces, sent me to join Skinner as his reserve-pawn-gambit. Fearing reprisal, he sent my nine lieutenants along.

To our surprise, we found Skinner at the far gap of the Vrihtavardai valley. The vast armies of our enemy spread around the mountains and back toward their city-state as far as the eye could see. We pushed our way past hundreds of begrimed footmen who appeared to be digging unnecessarily long and deep latrines.

“I expected you sooner,” Skinner said, turning to face me.

It was shocking to see that he sat across a gaming table from Drindipahratanivashtra himself. For no Warmaster ever sat to match wits with the petty general of a Concubine’s Legion. Yet they were at the table, which was spread with drinks and set for a match of Gambit.

“I did not expect again to see you,” I told him.

“You know Drindi here?” Skinner introduced me to the Gambiter of our enemy. It was awkward, to say the least.

“We’ve just decided that if I beat him at Gambit, he’ll march everyone off the field who is not a soldier. But that if I am bested, I turn as Champion to him.”

“The Warmaster may not turn a Champion,” I told them. For this is the rule of Gambit.

“He has taken the Role-reversal gambit to place his Concubine as Gambiter and himself as Concubine,” Skinner told me.

The implications of such still make me uneasy, but the title of the piece is, after all, just a title. I could think of no objection. It was not against any previous rule, and so became a new gambit in the game. The Role-reversal gambit was well known, but no one had previously used it to put himself in a woman’s role. I still find it quite distasteful. But the rules permit it.

“Shakti has sent me to see that you account for yourself with Nahlix dignity,” I told Skinner.

“That shall prove quite impressive, should you manage it.”

How does one take such honor from one he must slay? I bowed as though to any of the court and saw to the needs of my men.

Once the sun went down, the match was put aside. This is how civilized beings perform warfare. During the night, the soldiers mixed and mingled. By morning, the ranks of Skinner’s command had miraculously expanded, and the match continued at daybreak.

So it went for four nights and three days. At sunset of that fourth day, Skinner declared Gambit! and it was agreed that all persons without the requisite training should leave the field. Two million persons returned from there to the enemy city-state during the night following the Gambit.

“What purpose did this serve?” I asked him later.

“How far from here do you suppose the main force is?” Skinner’s penchant for answering questions with questions somehow issued from his time with the Luminaries. It took me a very long time to cease to be annoyed by it.

“They set out the same morning we did,” I told him. It occurred to me then that his Gambit had been an intriguingly clever diversion. He had bought enough time for the main force to grow near. Indeed, they should have approached us the next noon had our own esteemed Gambiter not elected the more circuitous route.

“By tomorrow night,” he told me. “These mountains shall be infused with enough shed blood to take up their own life, uproot themselves, and move wherever they would rather reside.”

Again, I was surprised as the sun rose. For Skinner himself stood before his formations. He wore the harness of a pawn, though he retained the fearsome t’kwaisuvai as his main weapon as well as one xokma sheathed at each hip. His face was incredibly placid as the enemy approached. In the face of such incredible odds, his ranks fled up the slopes and into the protection of the rocks.

From the time the sun broke the horizon until it stood in its zenith, Skinner and the bravest struggled to hold the mouth of the valley. But by noon he was forced into the first area of his camps. It is common for Gambiters to force a noon break, but this battle was a Deathmatch. Only the annihilation of one force or the other would end the conflict. Though each had the prerogative to break off, should the opponent permit it, just as the opposing Gambiter retained the right to pursue no matter.

Skinner rallied some one hundred or so around him and formed a circle of three rows. The two inner rows thrust out with their spears over the shoulders of the front line, one from inside stepping in to take the front any time a soldier fell. In this formation, Skinner slaughtered many thousand before the circle was overwhelmed from all sides.

At the point it seemed most likely that the circle would implode, Skinner’s whistle sounded above the tumult. Suddenly two thousand vorek rose from the trenches I had thought poorly engineered latrines. Some threw javelins they had captured from the enemy, but most closed in with whip and oustvokai. Their ploy so surprised the enemy that a thousand foot soldiers surrendered and turned. Several other thousands died.

So outraged was Drindipahratanivashtra, that he sent his Champion, Kaafaal Drinsril, to capture Skinner. As Kaafaal cut his way through the foot soldiers toward Skinner, he cried out his victory song. Hearing this, Skinner whistled for me to stop Kaafaal killing our troops.

As a tactic I had taught Skinner, I called out my challenge for Kaafaal to meet me in single combat. Kaafaal thought his skill greater, and so accepted my challenge without awaiting his Gambiter’s decision. As the rules of Gambit decree on the field of battle, such a duel must take place within a protected square, and all other combats between forces must cease until the duel is decided.

“Buy me an hour,” Skinner admonished me. “An hour will refresh us and we shall grow stronger than when we began.”

He planted himself at the center of the northern side of the square. He issued orders to my lieutenants as well as to his own as Kaafaal and I squared off. Once our duel began, I knew no other thing existed.

Kaafaal was a patient duelist. He tested my guard in the usual ways, and tested my impatience by feinting lapses of guard. It is often unwise to cross blades with t’kwaisuvai, as they tend to do strange things when crossed; most often the vri, the lifeforce, within the weapons seize each other in a battle of dominance, while other times they will cause an explosion of noise and fire and the wielders will be wounded and thrown apart. But I chose this gambit.

Kaafaal noticed my attempts, and defended himself arduously from such a crossing of weapons. In the passes before I succeeded, we took no fewer than thirty minor wounds each. Blood ran from our forearms and shoulders especially. Kaafaal’s right arm was weakened by a stab he pulled through his own shoulder as he tried to pull it from my grasp.

A hundred times after that, I could have prevailed. And perhaps a dozen I tempted him to cease me. Knowing that the outcome was already determined, I applied myself to testing Kaafaal’s technique and to assimilate what was most effective in his practice. I learned much from the battle itself, but even more from the end of our duel.

After two hours of laborious dueling, I moved to cease my enemy. He saw it. He knew it was coming. And yet he made no attempt to prevent it. I drove the point of t’kwaisuvai through his heart, and stared into his eyes. Thousands of times, I had watched the light of life dim, flicker, and fail as my enemies ceased. But this time was unlike those others. Dying, Kaafaal smiled into my eyes and spoke the spell of bequeathing: Brathenverdrathol, vrit vox draventrassentor xotraartox draventavritamril[xviii].

All of Kaafaal’s memories poured through his eyes into my mind. His very being left him to meld itself to mine. This was terribly painful and confusing, both in mind and body. I struggled against it and tried to tear it loose of myself, but I had no knowing to guide me. When I had come to the end of my will and hope, I gazed upon myself within and knew that I was no longer as I had been. I was the alloy of Zhedrotten and Kaafaal. He was gone. I remain.

When I came to myself, Skinner battled viciously over me with his two swords. He spun and struck and ducked and made himself a flesh and steel net around me to protect me as the other army rushed in to avenge their Champion. Even I gaped in awe at the wall of dead flesh surrounding us.

I rose and took myself at his side. The two of us alone remained within this space against the endless legion of Taravhratra. They pressed in against us in impossible numbers, and yet the two of us held for some time in this same place. Though we took minor wounds, our weapons flashed in the orange light of the dying day and crimson rained the ground in such torrents that we were ankle deep in blood.

At some point, there was a rain of spears in a circle around us. And another. By the third hail of spears, the enemy suddenly found itself too full of fear to strive further against us. I thought at first that they had been called back to the camps for night, but they fled in such a frantic manner that I knew it was fear.

“Your skills prove adequate,” Skinner commented after he had caught his breath and the thunder of those retreating ceased.

“Your skill is Nahlix,” I complimented him. “But your tactics are more strange than Luminary tactics.”

“Why?” He asked me, relieving a groaning enemy of his agony. “Because I put myself at risk to protect my Champion? I have gambits of far greater need for which I will need you, Zheddrotten.”

We called the Overpowered to clear the field as we made our way to a new camp and were cleansed and mended by the vorek and our azhtovar-those who mend the body. After this we ate and drank to a good day of battle and took our rest.

The next morning before dawn, Skinner awoke and counted his troops. Only 2400 remained able to fight. Though unhappy with it, Skinner took the facts in stride. He set wounded pawns to the ahntsuda. As a ruse, he had two-thousand of the dead posed as though they still lived, zhaxhriu thrust forward in a ready position. All those who remained upright were equipped with two spears and three swords, except for the hundred-odd vorek who had proven the true potential of the dagger-whips.

Again, Skinner walked out at the front of his forces.

“Zhedrotten,” he called me forward. “Go back to our esteemed Gambiter and tell him that his army is no longer necessary.”

“But you face . . .” I did not know how many of the enemy remained, but I knew that it was a force many times the size of Skinner’s.

“Today I shall hold this pass,” Skinner told me, staring far away. “We have built a wall of dead the height of your wingtips. It extends one-thousand strides in either direction. Yesterday, we killed two-hundred for every one of our own who was killed.”

“That is not enough,” I tried to reason with him.

“Today we shall slay five-hundred for every one we lose,” he replied.

“Still, that is but a third-”

“Nevertheless, Zhedrotten,” he said sharply. “I shall slay every able-bodied Taravhrat, even if I must chase him to his own home. Those left behind shall become the Overcome and be thralls to the Nine Houses.”

“Not possible, Skinner. Do you hear yourself?”

“So I speak,” he said.

W          W          W

I returned as duty demanded. I reported to Ratashakti. As the Gambiter had taken an unexpected route, I was some time finding the main encampment.

“Zhedrotten, Zhenahlix of the Legion,” she greeted me. “Sit, toast, and report what you have seen.”

I sat and accepted the goblet and we made our toasts. To our glory; to our fallen; to our adversary. After this, I reported to her that which I thought necessary to report. There seemed no reason to speak of Kaafaal’s legacy, for we had no words for it then. She seemed both amused and annoyed at Skinner’s mettle and his ambition.

“Should he succeed,” she said, “I shall grant him the gambit of the Golden Maze. Should he walk free of that, he may again take his place with the Luminaries.”

Enraged as I was, I did not confront her. Her sense of honor is not that of the Nahlix. It was not my place to force my own sense of honor on her. As Secret-keeper, she was my superior. Insubordination is not the way of the Nahlix.

“If it please Ratashakti,” I made my request, “Zhedrotten would join Skinner as he was formerly charged.”

“It pleases Ratashakti that Zhedrotten should observe and record the fate of Skinner at the hands of the Taravhrat.”

Dismissed, I took only enough time to dine and wash before taking a young drastyn from the lesser drastyn. Eager to prove himself in his first battle, the young drastyn flew very fast to the western peak above the valley where I had left the struggling vanguard. But the only living things in that valley were the eaters of the dead. Every kind of creature that feeds on dead flesh and blood had gathered there to feast.

We flew toward Taravhratradai, and eventually overtook the battle. Skinner and his little army was surrounded by a force four times their size. He had pulled them into a circle again as he had previously in the mouth of the valley. Again, his circle proved enormously effective.

The drastyn and I flew forward, as I was certain more of the enemy must be grouped closer to the city. Indeed, we spotted them fleeing toward their city as though pursued by every fear ever imagined.

By the time we had flown back to reach Skinner’s dwindling force, they had evened the odds and several of the enemy were fleeing. I flew back toward the two-peaks now, trying to estimate the number of dead on the path from Skinner back to his morning’s stand. My best guess was in the range of ninety million.

At some places along the way, there were great clusters of dead where Skinner had pulled his forces into a circle. The closer I got to the place I had left Skinner that morning, the larger the groups were. What is more, I began to notice among the dead more and more often a swath through them scorched as though by lightning.

When we reached the morning’s first battle site, I set down. Chasing off scavengers, I investigated the scorching of over a hundred warriors and vorek. Not all were enemy. At the point I found the lightning to originate, I found a Champion whose t’kwaisuvai had exploded. The spear was sundered from within, as though he had struck it against Skinner’s and caused an explosion from within the heart of the weapon.

This had occurred in the first seven occasions of the charring. But in no other area charred this way could I find any evidence of cause. Dusk was falling by the time I returned to find Skinner’s troops circled again and surrounded by a larger force.

Watching from on high, I saw that the troops within the center of the circle rested for intervals so that those fighting were rotated in and out to prevent fatigue. Behind the first line of the circle was a circle of spear-thrusters alternating with whip-wielding vorek. Only 360 remained of Skinner’s forces.

Less than half an hour before nightfall, two Riders and two Champions flew in on drastyn to harry the remaining force. The drastyn were quick to slay nearly a third of Skinner’s remnant. As though in a voice of thunder, I heard him bellow even from the height at which I watched. He jammed the but of his t’kwaisuvai into the ground and lightning burst from it to consume both the riders.

Skinner left the spear and leapt on the Champions with short blades. I was certain he had lost his mind and misplayed his gambit, but shortly the Champions lay dead and the enemy fled from Skinner’s wrath.

As the battle day was over, I dropped in to greet my friend.

“Skinner,” I greeted him. “Your suvai[xix] has drunk blood enough to quench the sun.”

“You did not believe me?” He asked wearily, voice raw and rasping from the day’s strain. Indeed, he looked very weary and in need of sustenance.

“Or, did Ratashakti think me a braggart?” With this, he laughed a mirthless laugh and sat himself in the road, finding a rare spot not stained or soaked in blood.

“She tells me nothing of her thoughts,” I replied. “She merely ordered that I should watch and report your progress.”

“Stay out of my way,” he told me. He glared at me in a way that few could without the swift reprimand of my suvai. Again, some fleeting shadow of crossed my soul, and wondered if a Nahlix might learn to sense this thing men call fear.

“That is my message to the Secret-keeper’s army,” he said flatly. “It is not meant for Zhedrotten, but for all those who come from Synthestriadai.”

“She means to reward you by means of the Golden Maze,” I told him. It was not my place, but something in his fierce insistence pulled at my mind and convinced me to warn him.

“This, at least, I have to look forward to,” he replied. He sharpened his blades and spears as the Overpowered prepared his camp and meal.

“I must report back,” I told him, and departed.

W          W          W

“There is no need for this army to march further,” I reported to Ratashakti.

“Truly?” She asked.

“Truly,” I confirmed.

“Take my ghetratoxh[xx] with you this time,” she commanded.

Though I burned to shame her for questioning the truth of my testimony, it was not my place to remind her that the Nahlix have no commerce in fabrication. We speak truth, or we speak not at all.

Nevertheless, I took seven of her gelded lapdogs with me the next morning. We found Skinner where I had left him. He was asleep in a seated position the Luminaries use when chanting and dreaming. And yet he was aware before I woke him.

“She sends these?” Skinner asked, indicating the ghetratoxh.

“Who else?”

“Very well,” Skinner said, rising to his feet. “They can record for the court the fall of the Taravhratra.

“Zhedrotten,” he smiled to me. “You have done well in all things. I am moved to reward you. As I am the Warmaster of the Concubine’s Legion, it is my place to reward you.”

“I have all that I could want,” I replied.

“Take this,” he held out a magnificent t’kwaisuvai, the likes of which I have never seen before nor since. It is still my pride and ever at hand. Its haft is of black crystal. Its blade is of a musical black metal that has yet proven both incorruptible and indestructible.

“Do you not need it?” I asked, though it clung to my hands already in a way that told me the spear would never depart from me.

“I have this of my own-and these of my enemies’.”

His own was the most simply elegant. It bore no etching or carving. No ornamentation. But the blood and sweat that had soaked its steel and wood made the ideal of the form. The other two were masterfully crafted spears, strong and beautiful.

“How many remain to your command?” I asked him, hoping to move toward preparations for battle.

“Seven of us shall march in and finish this,” Skinner said. “Eighty-one vorek and twenty-seven footmen will follow to subdue the city should any resist.”

“Seven?” I asked. “Are so few of them left?”

“Not so few,” Skinner grinned now in a fiendish way. “Yet seven champions must certainly be enough to slaughter seven-thousand pawns and vorek.”

I noticed then that the other six around him were all veterans of the Circle. Each had designed for himself a Champion’s harness. Each held a proud t’kwaisuvai taken the previous day. All had lines from crown to sole where they had taken wounds old and new.

To my surprise, Skinner filled himself with a large first meal and then lounged as the sun rose. When I asked him about this, he told me that he intended them to rest until the heat grew uncomfortable. They would march through the heat of the day so that they would arrive at nightfall at the edge of the plain outside the enemy city-state.

“Tomorrow at sunrise, we seven shall begin our slaughter of the last of those warriors-unless they forfeit, which they will not. If night falls and some remain, then we shall finish the next day.”

“Why are you doing this?” The question was pointless. It confuses me even now in recalling it. For this was his duty. It was this that Ratashakti and Tarnanis had assigned him to do-though they intended that he should be destroyed first so that they might gain their own glory in doing what he had failed.

“All things change,” he replied. His eyes grew distant again in the manner of Luminaries. “Our Bright Sister is set to change in less time than we have to reason our way to survival. The Throne has set me out not as they believe-as the martyr-but instead I have made myself the Fearbringer.”

“Fearbringer?” I asked him. This was not correct speech, not correct behavior. Even for a Warmaster of the Concubine’s Legion.

“The Nine Houses shall perish completely if civilization itself does not adjust as the stars adjust. A time is coming that will make this little slaughter of mine a child’s ploy on a wooden board of Gambit.

“You know,” he looked through my eyes then into my very thoughts. “Kaafaal instructed you. You can only deny it so long. He was a Luminary as well as a Champion. And now you know all he knows, though it may take some time before experience of your own can teach you what you already know.”

“You speak know as though you had become a Luminary,” I insulted him. “And yet you are only their subject-not even a student.”

“All are students who apply themselves, Zhedrotten,” he told me. “I have learned what no Luminary has dared to learn. And I am baffled by the simplest parts of their lore.

“It matters nothing. Because this world will end to give rise to another. Only new knowledge and social innovations can bring about that which is necessary to survive beyond the Molliandran Apocalypse.”

“And how does eradication of the Taravhratra to aid you in this?” I asked him. For I did not see his gambit, did not comprehend his strategy.

“It is new,” he said simply, shrugging.

“New?” I pursued, incensed. “And this changes what?”

“It changes the fact that we have so long been unchanging,” he insisted. “It changes the face of power in the court. For it will make me the most feared figure in the world. Were it my will, I could march back and take the Throne. But that is not my ambition.”

“Is it your ambition to fall in the Starpool?” I growled, trying to recall him to the reality of the circumstances.

“It is,” he nodded firmly.

“You jest,” I said, angry. We Nahlix, as a rule, abhor humor because it is not truth and it often confuses us.

“I do not, Zhedrotten,” he said, looking me now in the eye. “I intend to return from the Starpool and become the Zheluminary.”

There is no reply to such madness, and so I took the geldings and departed to a far-off place where we could watch. Thinking over it, I decided at noon to send one of the ghetratoxh back to report to Ratashakti what we had learned.

It played out much as Skinner predicted. The only complication he had not seen was a force of three-hundred muscotam mercenaries. The muscotam care nothing for the Rules of War. They attacked Skinner during his evening meal.

Like a madman, he leapt upon them with only his eating utensils. I watched as he whirled and kicked and stabbed his way through the muscotam. He went through them with such vicious efficiency, that a third of them were killed by their own kind as they stabbed each other trying to skewer Skinner.

By the time the last muscotam fell, Skinner had lost two of his seven. He cursed long and loud over this, for he had taken great pains to surround himself with the right six veterans. The two bravest vorek approached him with soothing songs, and he calmed a little.

“You two shall fill their places,” Skinner pronounced as he stared into the flames of the small cookfire before his own tent. “Bring their harnesses. I will shape them, and you shall wear them.”

And so he did. Staying up late into the night, Skinner worked with his own hands to form the armor to his vorek. One was a tall, lithe woman of cream-white skin, raven hair, and lapis eyes. The other was a short, stout woman of dark skin and the bristly brown hair of the savages who still lived in caves there. Her eyes were emeralds, and her face was untouched by softness except when she laughed. This second was of breeder stock, and it was not easy to bend the armor to her curves.

Even when he had finished preparing these plates, Skinner was restless. I watched as he paced for some time. He knocked his leg into something that was sticking up, and when he came up from rubbing the pain from his leg, he turned to the supply tent.

I watched as he sewed throughout the night. But I had no idea what Skinner was about. I presumed that he was sewing to calm his mind, for a calm mind is more important even than a sharp blade. But when morning came, I learned that he had sewn segments of armor to cover arms and legs in the key places.

As the light grew toward dawn, Skinner fitted these one at a time to his six warriors. He started first with the shorter vorek, and then the taller. These took almost no adjustment. But it took nearly three hours to fit these to the others.

And so it was that seven warriors approached Taravhratradai from the east two hours after sunrise on that city’s final day. Skinner carried three spears and wore a pair of ixhriu[xxi] at his waist. The others each carried a t’kwaisuvai, wearing twin swords of their choice on their belts. The vorek each carried a pair of the whips, the oushriu[xxii] as well as twin ixhriu in their harnesses, and a t’kwaisuvai at hand as they strode into the city.

I cannot describe the heroic deeds of those seven warriors as they cut their way through the ranks of the enemy army. At all times they were surrounded. At all times outnumbered and overwhelmed. It seemed every moment that they would surely be overwhelmed. At times one or another fell, but always the others closed to protect the fallen. And each time the fallen did rise.

This went on throughout the morning. At noon, Drindipahratanivashtra called a truce so that the streets might be cleaned. He approached Skinner, and so I dropped from my perch and glided to a place where I might hear.

“Why do you slay all my warriors,” asked the mighty Warmaster.

“Why do you not forfeit?” Skinner challenged in return.

“It pains my soul to see my beautiful people slain,” cried the Warmaster. “Will you not relent?”

“It is not my place to cease,” Skinner replied. “I am but the Warmaster of the Concubine’s Legion. Petition the Gambiter.”

“Take my Secret-keeper,” offered the other. This gambit is not respected, though it is permissible. In the field, especially, it can be used to save the lives of many.

“I am not permitted,” Skinner replied. He was calm. Beneath the blood and dirt of battle, he seemed unmoved and unmovable. As though he had become the wind, or a storm raging impersonally through the land.

“How can I save my people?”

“You know, Drindi,” Skinner told him. A hint of sympathy, of pleading crept into his voice as much as into his deep blue eyes. “Take them all into your Starpool-or permit me to lead them.”

“This is our world!” Thundered the Gambiter. And with that, Drindipahratanivashtra turned and walked into his palace.

“Such is the nature of fear,” Skinner told the vorek stitching his shoulder together where he was deepest cut.

The seven ate and drank as much and as little as they dared. The truce would not last long. And still, the seven stood about as though nothing might move them. Even the Nahlix have seldom stood so strident in the face of such odds.

The battle lasted nearly until sundown. Near the end, another mercenary company of muscotam attacked from the east, but Skinner scattered them by crossing his t’kwaisuvai with that of the vorek to his right, causing a great chain of lightning to run through the ranks and decimate a third of the muscotam force. He did not use this against any more of the Taravhratra, only the muscotam.

At the last, several women and children sallied forth with shouts and pleas, but the warriors were inseparable from the battle at this point. One boy, a boy perhaps two years from martial age, ran into the fray. In his final thrust, Skinner spun without seeing the child and pinned him to his older brother, whom Skinner had intended to slay with this attack.

Skinner ripped the spike from the two and cried a savage cry to the stars. He sang then a song that held no meaning to me. It moved me to a longing the like of which I have never since imagined nor experienced. The sky itself seemed to darken, and then a single comet shot through to the west and a great explosion followed. Lightning struck from the clear sky in the comet’s wake, and the boy was struck. He transformed into a wingless drastyn and slithered away.

Skinner wept.

W          W          W

Drindipahratanivashtra and his court threw themselves into their own Starpool as we entered the palace. Skinner, weeping bitterly, put his hands to the eight-sided wall holding the Starpool and caused the Starpool to freeze. That is, what had seemed the strange miasma of stars became a pool of violet crystal.

Ratashakti and Tarnanis paraded into the palace two days later. They were very unhappy with Skinner, but I think they actually feared him after hearing of his deeds from the ghetratoxh. I was then appointed Warmaster of a more highly esteemed Legion, and one more distant from the court. My Legion was charged with the pillaging of the city.

It was only after we had finished this decade-long task that I learned of Skinner’s reward. He and his six were given the choice of remaining in the Concubine’s Legion or chancing the Golden Maze. They all chose the Maze, but dove from the entrance as one into the roiling nonbeing of the Starpool. None bothered to guess what it might mean when the Starpool crusted over with violet crystal during the next full moon.

I thought this to be the end of his story. As did the court, and they celebrated long and loud over the victory. That celebration might have gone on much longer, had certain of the Luminaries’ predictions not come about.

Comets and meteors became more and more common. Groundquakes began-a thing never heard of in our fair city. What is more, the weather grew harsher over the years.

Ratashakti set about righting things with the gods by sacrificing the head of each of the Houses. As this seemed to appease the gods enough for a lavish harvest, she sacrificed twenty babes from each house during the winter feast.

Dissent became the norm after this. More youths than ever chose the road of the Luminary over that of the Warmaster. Debates became a commonplace in the Circle of Watchers when no match was being played, but the Throne amended this by having matches during every daylight hour.

Twenty-eight year passed this way. More and more the name of Skinner was whispered in reverence as the Brathravarhi became a threat from the south. Their Luminaries had come time and again to consult with our Luminaries, but the Throne refused them. Even when they came with a diplomatic legion to escort them, Ratashakti sent back the heads of their two greatest Luminaries as a message.

Tarnanis, being no fool, gathered his Warmasters together and formed numerous strategies against the southerners. I was privileged to be among these, though by this time I was ready to accept better alternatives.

“Who is best to lead my Champions?” Tarnanis asked the assembly.

Someone tried to push me forward, but I did not permit it. Others did push their way to the fore. Three arrogant Lux with no real experience but a great deal of court influence seemed the likeliest candidates. But it was one of these, Dartravren Lux, who pulled me to the front and suggested to Tarnanis that my observations of Skinner’s triumph made me the best candidate.

“Honored Gambiter,” I bowed. “It is not my place to boast of strategies or mettle. He whom you need is not here. For your best choice would be no other than Skinner.”

“Skinner,” his eyes blazed. “He is but-” He cut himself off from finishing the insult. Perhaps he had some prescient thought, but I am more convinced that he merely feared the man.

“If Skinner were here, he would be my Warmaster,” Tarnanis announced. “But, as he is neither here nor there . . .”

“Shall I name my Champions, then?” Skinner’s voice was still the rasp it had been, but there was no denying whose voice it was. He pushed his way through the startled crowd to face the Gambiter.

“Name them,” Tarnanis nodded. He was too shocked to be displeased.

“Warmaster of the Nahlix Legions, Zhedrotten,” Skinner motioned to me, but did not look at me.

“Warmaster of the Lux, Dartravren Lux,” and so he went through the Nine Houses. Finally, he named himself again the Warmaster of the Concubine’s Legion.

“Honored Gambiter,” Skinner bowed to Tarnanis. “There is a slight boon I crave, should I prove an adequate Warmaster for the Throne’s campaign against the Brathravarhi.”

“Let us discuss that when you have so proven,” Tarnanis declared.

“I must insist, Honored Gambiter,” Skinner said. This was an invitation to heinous death, but Skinner seemed innocent of the threat.

“What boon?” Tarnanis was piqued, but he kept his voice smooth.

“Skinner wishes to join the Hall of Luminaries-as a Luminary,” Skinner smiled. “In all due humility and with the trembling of an errant dgrot, Skinner begs this of the Throne with all his being, hereby swearing upon the Seven Sisters that the threat of the Brathravarhi shall never rise against this court.”

“So be it, dgrot ghetraxhot,” Tarnanis dismissed the hall.

W          W          W

“We have little time,” Skinner told me as we sat to counsel among the Warmasters.

“They march?” Dartravren asked.

“Worse,” Skinner took a deep breath. “They have not been idle. Their Luminaries have discovered and created lores our own would find impossible.”

“What can we do?”

“Zhedrotten,” he turned to me. “Have you taught your House the new zadubrathai?”

“My Legion knows it,” I answered. I cursed my own shortsightedness for not having taught all the House.

“That is an excellent start,” he assured me. “Have you those adept enough to teach the other Legions? You must be the vanguard, and behind you must come the House of Nahlix.”

“Dartravren Lux,” Skinner turned to him, and a weight lifted from my wings.

“Yes?” Dartravren asked, eager.

“I need one-thousand of your quickest-learning recruits, those young enough to take training from me personally.”

“Done,” nodded the Lux.

“Here,” Skinner withdrew a roll of what turned out to be schematics on muscotam skin. “These are designs for new weapons and upgrades for what we have. We’re going in outnumbered twenty to one.”

“Twenty to one?” Asked Nomovar Diarhvhrati. “But how?”

“They’ve been breeding for all they’re worth since the fall of Taravhratra,” Skinner explained. “They’ve bloated their armies to what the land will bear. And their Luminaries are developing weapons the likes of which have never been imagined by the Nine Houses.”

“How do you know this?”

“I studied with them for the last four years,” Skinner replied.

A long, tense silence followed this.

“Search among the Overpowered,” Skinner told the Naxhtolux Warmaster. “Have every one capable of such work to begin manufacture of these-they just be exact in my specifications. We will first need the zhasuvai[xxiii] for the House of Nahlix; have them delivered to Bedrathen Luminary of that house.”

He gave orders to the others with urgency, but also with great specificity. When the others had left, I escorted him to the House of Nahlix, where he had requested conference with Bedrathen Luminary. Bedrathen was the Zheluminary of my people, but the Throne’s Hall of Luminaries had banished him to his own House for suggesting that the sign of the violet crystal sealing the Starpools was an omen of Skinner’s certain return.

“Zheluminary,” Skinner bowed deeply, as is proper. “My memories of your experiments are yet fond. Have you pursued the question of paths through the stars?”

“Skinner,” Bedrathen did not so much as nod. He merely stared with an expression on his face I had never thought to see on a Nahlix-naked horror.

“Forgive me, Bedrathen Zheluminary Nahlix,” Skinner bowed again. “I do not mean to offend you in any manner.”

“Bedrathen is not offended,” he replied. His wings flinched in the manner of my people when they are confused by social politics, or generally too anxious to control the shudder.

“Skinner is expected-and yet his presence is wanted less than Bedrathen’s next breath,” said Bedrathen.

“Enough of the formality,” Skinner grinned. “Pardon my inept discourtesy, but such transpires that we must make haste. I need your entire cadre of esotericists.”

“Just like that?” Bedrathen flinched, then opened his eyes wide. Then he through back his head and laughed. “You still do not know your place, do you, Skinner?”

“My place is here,” Skinner grinned, holding his arms wide. “I am where I belong. Else, I would be in another place.”

“Zhedrotten,” Bedrathen addressed me.

“Zheluminary,” I bowed as appropriate.

“Choose your friends wisely,” he admonished. “And keep constant vigil on the queer being whose ears and eyes have curved to round. He is the harbinger of cataclysm-and our best defense against it.”

There was no reply to make, and so I followed the two of them into the Hall of Experience where eighty-one apprentices had gathered. By the time a third of the night was gone, Skinner had taught them what he expected of them. He set them to their work on weapons from the House armory for practice and then pulled me aside.

“I need to look into your mind,” he told me.

Skinner was ever a direct and intrepid man, but this . . . It occurred to me for a moment to cease him in his tracks. But, Skinner is Skinner.

“What is it you seek?”

“Another champion,” he replied.

“What other champion?”

“He whom you thought to have consumed,” he told me. Though I immediately knew that he spoke of Kaafaal, I did not comprehend his goal.

“How can this be?” I asked.

“Oh,” he grinned at me and closed one eye. “There are many mysteries within the Starpool, old friend. And many more behind the eyes of every sentient being-save maybe the muscotam, if you’re generous enough to call them sentient.”

“What do you need of me?”

“Just let me gaze into your eyes and mind,” he replied.

“If you think it necessary, then do so, my friend,” I said, lifting him to stand on a bench so that our eyes were at the same level.

A very strange thing happened then, he gazed into my being. I knew what he was doing, and I felt him pull things from hidden places within me. And then he spoke in a language called Ghiatravahri that was never spoke on the Bright Sister before some learned it from the beings within the Starpools. He said: Zhanvarox vrit mathrakotar, which means something close to “disentwine yourselves and return to the truth of your mother-born selves.”

And suddenly Kaafaal seemed to call out from within me. I felt as though I were retching through my forehead. And then there was Kaafaal in the flesh.

“I am very grateful, Luminary Skinner,” he bowed. Then he turned and bowed to me.

“A most worthy Warmaster, Zhedrotten. And a Nahlix of a caliber never to be reached by any other. I am beholden to you-your humble servant.”

What does one say in such matters? He whom I had slain stood again before me. Only then did I notice that he bore more semblance to Skinner now than to himself. He had been of a House of winged warriors like myself, and yet now he stood before me wingless and with no other outward mark of change.

“Surely I dream.” So saying, I reached out and struck him hard across the face. He fell, bleeding.

Skinner intervened, striking my cheek forcefully enough to convince me that I was not within a dream. And yet I stood confounded. How could a vanquished foe, who betimes did tend to haunt my dreams with strange conversation, manifest from my memory into flesh?

“Forget about the details,” Skinner told me. That path is too crooked for the Nahlix to comprehend fully. But . . . there are things I can teach you that you must use.”

Strange as that night was, I learned more before daylight than I had learned in the previous millennium. In truth, I was forced to concede much of my own knowledge as erroneous in light of evidence both Skinner and Kaafaal were to teach me.

W          W          W

The third morning thereafter saw me parading my Legion from the gates of Synesthrostra. We marched until the sun was a third the way down from its zenith, and then we split into two forces to approach a divided mountain where the terrain was much like our long ago home. We stayed the night in the high places and made ourselves ready.

Skinner and his Concubine’s Legion led the vanguard as was appropriate. He led them along the wide road to camp three hours’ march from the enemy. His ranks were much the same as he had formed them in his Taravhratra campaign. This struck the Throne as pure brilliance. The Lux called it madness outright, but set themselves behind the Nahlix as commanded. The other Houses were to protect the Synesthrostra at all costs should the Nahlix and Lux fail.

Next morning, the vanguard of Brathravhar made its way out to harass and test the Concubine’s Legion. Skinner gave them little to think about, putting up the usual resistance of such legions. This first day of battle was little more than beating of drums. But this was good; it gave our craftsmen time to forge and manufacture Skinner’s innovations and new weapons.

The second morning promised the same. I watched from a safe distance, and thought at first that it would be the same as the first day’s battle. But Skinner spread his lines out before the city and left great spaces between them as though expecting the enemy to sally forth with small regiments and oblige him with numerous small battles instead of one decisive clash.

The morning grew warm, for it was the time of planting. Skinner led a force of hand-chosen leaders toward the city and waited for some time. He looked a fool standing there. As though he expected to wait for the sands to claim him. But then a great, dark cloud rained down from the wall, a strange shadow. Half of those around him fell. And yet Skinner stood before the walls.

Several of these clouds arched from the wall to the plains around Skinner. And most of his men fell. He walked closer to the walls and seemed to yell something. A small cloud of shadow engulfed him there, but he did not fall; instead, he raised his spear and a thousand forks of lightening bolted from a thunder cloud overhead and danced all along the wall before seeming to drench itself in Skinner’s spear.

Then a great host of drastyn flew out over the waiting troops and rained fire and ice and acid on them. Again and again, Skinner raised his spear to the dark clouds of a gathering storm, and lightning felled hundreds of the drastyn.

Undercover of the storm as the clouds burst and let the rain fall, Skinner rallied the remnant of his legion and set out at a run toward our valleys of cliff. At first he ran ahead, encouraging his men and vorek to push themselves. But then drastyn came at them from behind.

I saw this in flashes, as the storm blurred my own vision. This was not according to the Rules of War. The enemy violated several codes, especially in pursuing through a storm. Nevertheless, they did so.

Skinner moved himself to a position of better vantage and called lightning again and again from the clouds. And time and again Riders fell dead-some drastyn seemed to be unfazed by the lightning, while many perished in flames.

Every part of my being urged me to send out my Nahlix to aid them, but my orders had been clear and specific. And so I returned to my Legion. I told them of our enemy’s inglorious tactics. I told them of the strange new ability of the Brathravarhi drastyns. I admonished them that such an enemy must be blotted out forever from the memory of the world.

“All must be destroyed,” Kaafaal agreed. But when I nodded my ascent, he stayed me with a gesture.

“All, Warmaster.” He said. “Every creature within the Daradai-every dwelling ruled over by the Brathravarhi. For they will not be re-instructed as did the Taravhrat. They will not be Overpowered.”

“Barbarism!” I clutched his throat before thinking, but he was suddenly out of my grasp and smiling at his own cleverness.

“Nevertheless,” Kaafaal pursued. “All must be slain that the Nine Houses may be saved. Especially the Hall of Luminaries and all who therein reside.”

“Go to Skinner,” I commanded him, turning my back and striding to instruct my officers.

Zhedrotten. I heard my name called from within my own head, and I knew that it was Skinner.

“Yes?”

Ready yourselves. They come.

“That is foolish, Skinner,” I told my own head. “Night falls even now. The day is done, the time for battle over.”

Nevertheless! They pursue us still. Forbid it that they should fall upon the Nahlix unprepared. They observe . . .

And he was gone from my mind. I gazed out to where the storm still raged, and I saw lightning of a deep blue color I had only seen in Skinner’s presence. I passed word that our enemy had forgotten the difference between day and night.

What arrived behind Skinner and his last few hundred was a force I shall be happy never again to behold. Luminaries with smooth staffs of wood rode drastyn and rained down short bolts of lightning. On the ground, a breed like giant dgrots bit at the footmen and vorek while muscotam threw javelins from the backs of these strange beasts.

Behind them came a mass of short roundears all armed with zhaxhriu, and all with feral eyes. I knew at first sight of them that Kaafaal had spoken rightly. But at that moment, all questions of philosophy and manners was cast aside as we put ourselves to the task of survival and glory.

What Skinner had taught us with the new zadubrathen saved a great many Nahlix that night. For the leaping dgrots and the spitting drastyn were enemies we never had anticipated. As much to credit were the new zhasuvai, which gave us a great advantage as we threw the one blade at Luminaries and drastyn and retained the greater spear for close combat.

Once in the valley, Skinner turned with his vorek to face the dgrot and muscotam. He built a chevron of twenty or more of the vorek with himself at the point. Each vorek used an oushriu in each hand. Skinner used his t’kwaisuvai to drive them forward into the onslaught, and they did amazingly well for as long as I could watch.

My name was called from above, and I ducked just as a bright green flash passed by me. Looking up, I saw a white-haired Luminary pointing from his harness on a green drastyn. Another flash shot from his stick, but I leapt into the air, rolled, and launched my lesser suvai at him.

Because I had to dive immediately and roll to evade the drastyn, I was unaware that I had pierced his forehead. That is where I later recovered the weapon while fighting an orderly retreat. The drastyn riders killed half my Legion before we could destroy them all. This was in part because of the flashing lights that killed us and in part from the strange fire and ice the drastyn spat.

It took until darktide, the hour before dawn, for us to regroup enough to make a concerted attack on the enemy. At that time, we used a wedge formation as Skinner had done and spread out to make use of our wings. Though we were greatly outnumbered, it became a matter of slaughter once the fighting was restrained to the ground.

The roundears fought with great fervor, perhaps madness. But they had neither honor nor discipline. It was morning before I realized that they even had Champions among them. By this time, I had grown so full of slaughter that I would permit none but myself to challenge them.

As my officers were not altogether uninjured, it seemed prudent. But even in the duels of Champions, that foul race knew no honor. The first four I met singly and dispatched with no little difficulty, but around noon, I was beset by six. None of my men was unchallenged, and so I was forced to use all my skill and bide time.

Skinner and Kaafaal somehow found their way to aid me, and soon the two of them had taken my odds from five to one down to three, for I had already slain the sixth. I fell into a deep red haze then, and when I emerged, all the enemies around me were still.

“Why did you account for but one?” I asked Skinner, not thinking to ask but asking thoughtless.

“It takes a moment to recover,” he shrugged.

“We usurped them,” Kaafaal explained. And without knowing that I knew, I understood that he meant that the two had assimilated the force and experience of their enemies.

“You can take this from them,” I asked. “What you gave to me when I vanquished you?”

“You have that skill as well,” Skinner grinned. “Only you didn’t realize using it.”

“I did not!” I objected. But reflecting then on the strange red haze, I realized that I had done this to each of the Champions I had slain. And with each increased my own power.

“These Champions were Luminaries?” I asked, though I knew it to be the truth already.

W          W          W

As was my duty, I informed the Throne of all that had transpired in the eradication of the Brathravarhi. Ratashakti and Tarnanis both were present when I gave my report. They were especially interested in the power-stealing from vanquished foes. Perhaps it is only this interest that kept them from great anger over our slaughter of would-be slaves.

Whatever their thoughts, they did not further consult me but asked rather that I send Skinner to them.

From the Hall of Audiences, I made my way to the House of Nahlix and presented myself to the Zheluminary. He assessed me many hours before petitioning the Throne to have me removed as Warmaster and instilled in his Hall as a student. This was very strange and new, because he had formerly taken only apprentices.

I did not find out until many centuries later that this was only permitted as part of the Throne’s negotiations with Skinner. Upon finding out by means of my report that they might gain greater personal power and thus reinforce their authority, the Throne petitioned Skinner to tutor Ratashakti and Tarnanis individually and in secret. Skinner refused to teach them, reportedly stating that they lacked the self-discipline and wisdom necessary. This was only part of the truth, as wisdom and self-discipline are less needful for these powers; he left unsaid that these qualities were preferred for responsible and honorable use of such powers.

In the end, the bargain was struck that Skinner would take them as students in private on the conditions of total secrecy, that I be permitted to study under the Zheluminary of my own House, that Skinner should be the Throne’s Zheluminary, and that Kaafaal should be adopted into Skinner’s own house and be his Champion.

---

[i] Trans: “Rainbow conquers the moon, whose death brings life to the living dead and rains hale from heaven” AKA Rainbow Cataclysm, AKA Rainbow Apocalypse.[ii] Asper has the most stable orbit in a solar system of some twenty-six planets. Compared to Earth’s solar year, the Asperian solar year comes to 5.7976313333 years [figures courtesy of Boden of Finukili]. See Skinner’s Valepeium for figures on Valliant time.

[iii] He means by this the surrender or taking by force of the Nahlix’s lifeforce by Ghiatravhari sorcery. Skinner suggests that the consumption of an individual’s soul is a fallacy created to instill fear, and has successfully separated merged beings. Igea’s is the benchmark skill in this area. Skinner claims to have assimilated the experiences, memories, and identities of numerous high-order sentients. Some consider this propaganda, others a facetious avoidance of fact, and others, the majority, simply consider him a delusional crackpot, which he finds greatly amusing.

[iv] A dgrot is a breed of canine used for vermin control, and vermin on the Bright Sister were incredibly prolific during the time before the Molliandran Cataclysm. Their aggressive tendencies make them a threat to prepubescent hominids, and they are renowned for eating babes from nurseries no matter how cleverly one tries to subvert them. Most who own them kill them during the gestation period of expected offspring, and replace them only once all children are out of the home. Nahlix, who seem to possess a stronger parental instinct than the other Houses, prefer to employ domesticated naxhtok for pest control. Consequently, naxhtok favor canine meat over most other flesh.

[v] Ghiatravhari word meaning ‘drastyn rider’ with a connotation of symbiosis.

[vi] Vorek are female warriors renowned for seduction more than martial skill.

[vii] Though other worlds and civilizations hold a core belief in death as oblivion, this idea is too absurd for any Nahlix to discuss. One migrates, phase-shifts, or in whatever manner manifests differently after leaving the physical body.

[viii] This is currently referred to as ‘ethnic cleansing’ or genocide. Some of the Houses were known to call it purity by exsanguination (of the other House).

[ix] The Houses are left-hand preferentially, and so ‘first’ in terms of Gambit refers to the first to the left of the speaker.

[x] Abliavarhi marks her as being of mixed blood in the House of Albiavhrati, signifying also that her physical attributes (absence of wings, especially) mark her as being more Albi than Lux, as her mother was Lux.

[xi] Zadubrathai is a martial practice such as the Japanese kata, and practiced by the Houses in the manner of Tai Chi and such disciplines of well-being.

[xii] Means scorpion sting, though poison is not used in Gambit. These are curved daggers of lightweight, but strong steal perfectly curved to strike through the ribs upward through the kidney and into the heart.

[xiii] Footman’s swords usually carried by pawns in the Circle. They are the length of a man’s forearm, and have a thick, tapering blade good for stabbing and chopping.

[xiv] Twin blades, a pair of blades used more for fieldwork than for combat. One blade is broad for chopping and the other a triangular blade made for stabbing.

[xv] Literally means nine-spear. Mobile ballistae capable of firing up to nine javelins at a time in an arc up to 120 degrees.

[xvi] Literally, one-hand spear. A short, rustic spear used for something akin to boar hunting. The haft is hardwood about 40 inches, and then a dual-bladed iron head makes it useful for either hand defense or as a throwing weapon. It is normally half-tang to balance, but heavier ¾ tang versions were later developed after Skinner’s Taravhradai campaign.

[xvii] T’kwaisuvai literally translates as souls-bound spear.

[xviii] Ghiatravhari phrase translated as “Conquered and abased, you enlighten my ignorance, I place my being at your will and in this paradox I place myself at the command of your true self, become a fissure in the jewel that is your soul.

[xix] Generic for short spear used by hand - versus ballista, etc.

[xx] Eunuchs of the temples and courts. Scribes and slaves with no value but to spy and copy texts.

[xxi] short stabbing sword with a triangular blade approximately seventeen inches long.

[xxii] Trans: whisper of bladepoint; a whip of metal-studded, braided leather tipped by a sharp, thin blade. These whips range from six to nineteen feet in length. Skinner’s version was approximately nine feet long, with a point of about nine inches long and triangular like the ixhriu.

[xxiii] two-spear, a spear with a long blade at each end. One blade is meant to be taken out and thrown at short range, the remaining spear is basically a vrihsuvai.