CHAPTER 1
Up at the unpeopled borderland of cloudy
heaven, where unending wind drove eternal snow
between and over high gray rocks, the gods and
goddesses were gathering.
In the grayness just before dawn, their tall forms
came like smoke out of the gray and smoking wind,
to take on solidity and detail. Unperturbed by wind
or weather, their garments flapping in the shriek-
ing howl of air, they stood upon the rooftop of the
world and waited as their numbers grew. Steadily
more powers streaked across the sky, bringing rein-
forcement.
The shortest of the standing figures was taller
than humanity, but from the shortest to tallest, all
were indisputably of human shape. The dress of
most members of the assembly displayed a more
than mortal elegance, running to crowns and jewels
and snow-white furs; the attire of a few was, by
human standards, almost ordinary; that of many
was bizarre.
By an unspoken agreement amounting to tradi-
tion the deities stood in a rough circle, symbol of a
rude equality. It was a mutually enforced equality,
meaning only that none of their number was will-
ing to concede pride of place to any other. When
graybearded Zeus, a laurel wreath embracing his
massive head, moved forward majestically as if
after all he intended to occupy the center of the cir-
cle, a muttering at once began around him. The
sound grew louder, and it did not subside until the
Graybearded One, with a frown, had converted his
forward movement into a mere circular pacing,
that soon brought him back to his old place in the
large circle. There lie stopped. And only when he
stopped did the muttering die down completely.
And still with each passing moment the shape of
another god or goddess materialized out of the rest-
less air. By now two dozen or more tall forms were
in place around the circle. They eyed one another
suspiciously, and exchanged cautious nods and
signs of greeting. Neighbor to neighbor they mut-
tered in near-whispers through the wind, trading
warily in warnings and backbitings about those
who were more distant in the circle, or still absent.
The more of them that gathered, the more their
diversity was evident. They were dark or fair, old-
looking or young-looking. Handsome-as gods-or
beautiful-as goddesses-or ugly, as only certain
gods and goddesses could be.
Twice more Zeus opened his mouth as if he
intended to address them all. Twice more he
seemed on the verge of stepping forward, taking the
center of the circle, and trying to command the
meeting. Each time he did so that warning murmur
swelled up into the frozen air, through the blasting
wind, giving notice that no such attempt was going
to be tolerated. Zeus remained silently at his own
station in the ring, stamping his feet now and then
and scowling his impatience.
At last the individual gossipings around the ring
began to fade toward quiet, give way to silent wait-
ing. There was some general agreement, tacitly
attained, that now a quorum had been reached.
There was no use trying to wait until all the gods
and goddesses were here, all of them never
attended a meeting at the same time. Never had
they been able to agree unanimously on anything at
all, not even on a place or an agenda for their argu-
ments.
But now the assembly was large enough.
It was Mars, spear-armed and helmeted, who
broke the silence; Mars speaking in a voice that
smoldered and rumbled with old anger. The tones
of it were like the sounds of displaced boulders roll-
ing down a glacier.
Mars banged his spear upon his shield to get the
attention of the assembly. Then he said to them:
“There is news now of the Mindsword. The man
that other humans call the Dark King has it. He is,
of course, going to use it to try to get the whole
world into his hands. What effect this will have on
our own Game is something that we must evaluate
for ourselves, each according to his or her own posi-
tion.”
It was not this news he had just announced to the
assembly that was really angering Mars. Rather it
was something else, something that he wanted to
keep secret in his own thoughts, that made him
almost choke on rage. Mars did not conceal his feel-
ings well. As he finished speaking he used a savage
gesture, a blow that almost split the air, simply to
signify the fact that he was ready now to relinquish
the floor to someone else.
Next to speak was Vulcan-Vulcan the Smith with
the twisted leg, the armorer and Sword-forger to the
gods.
“I am sorry,” began Vulcan, slyly, “that my so-
worthy colleague is unable to continue at the moment.
Perhaps he is brooding too much about a certain
setback-one might even call it a defeatthat he suffered
at the hands–or should one say the paws-of a certain
mortal opponent, some eight or nine years past?”
The response of Mars to this was more sullen,
angry rumbling. There also was a murmuring around
the circle, some of it laughter at Mars, some a
denunciation of Vulcan for this obvious attempt to
start an argument.
Aphrodite asked softly, “Is this what we have come
here for, to have another quarrel?” Her tall body, all
curves, all essence of the female, was wrapped in
nothing but a diaphanous veil that seemed always on
the verge of blowing away in the fierce wind but
never did. She like the other deities was perfectly
indifferent to the arctic cold.
Near her, Apollo’s taller form appeared emphasized
for a moment in a lone ray of light from the newly
risen sun. The Sun’s bright lance steadily pierced the
scudding clouds for just as long as it took the god to
speak, and held his body in its light. Apollo demanded,
“I take it that we are all agreed upon one thing at
least?”
Someone else was cooperative enough to ask
Apollo: “What?”
The tall god replied, “That Hermes has not come
back from his mission to gather up the Swords again.
That he is never going to come back.”
“That’s two things,” another member of the group
objected.
Apollo took no notice of such carping. “That our
divine Messenger, who no doubt thought himself as
secure in his immortality as most of us still think we
are in ours, has now been for four years dead?`
That word, of all words, had power to jolt them all.
Many faced it bravely. Some tried to pretend that it
had not been spoken, or if spoken certainly not heard.
But there was a long moment in which even the wind
was voiceless. No other word, surely, could have
brought the same quality and duration of silence to this
assembly.
It was the relentless voice of Apollo that entered
into this new silence and destroyed it, repeating: “For
four years dead.”
The repetition provoked not more silence, but the
beginning of an uproar of protest; still the voice of
Apollo overrode the tumult even as it swelled.
“Dead!” he roared. “And if Hermes Messenger can
be slain by one of the Swords, why so can we. And
what have we done about it, during these past four
years? Nothing! Nothing at all! Wrangled among
ourselves, as always-no more than that!”
When Apollo paused, Mars seized the chance to
speak. “And there is the one who forged those
Swords!” The God of War pointed with his long war-
spear, and aimed an angry stare at the crippled Smith.
“I tell you, we must make him melt them down again.
I’ve said all along that the Swords are going to destroy
us all, unless we are able to destroy them first!”
Leaning awkwardly on his lame leg, Vulcan
turned at bay. “Don’t blame. me!” Wind whipped
at his fur garments, his ornaments of dragon-scale
clashing and fluttering in the gale. But his words
ate through the windstorm plainly, suffering no
interference from mere physical air. “The blunder,
if there was one, was not mine. These very faces
that I see all about me now spoke urging me, com-
manding me, to forge the Swords.”
He turned accusingly from one to another of his
peers. “We needed the Swords, we had to have
them, you all told me, for the Game. The Game was
going to be a great delight, something we hadn’t
tried before. You said the Swords must be distrib-
uted among the humans, who in the Game would be
our pawns. Now what kind of pawns have they
turned into? But no, you all insisted on it, no matter
how I warned you-”
Again an uproar of protest was breaking out, and
this time it was too loud for any one voice to over-
come. Objectors were shouting that, on the con-
trary, they had been the ones against the whole idea
of the Swords and the Game from the very start.