“And does the High King also play now at some rarefied level of excellence?” Shalhassan noted the hint of exasperation in his voice. The two sons of Ailell seemed to elicit that in him.
“I have no idea,” Gorlaes replied. “I’ve never seen him play as an adult. He was very good, when he was a boy. He used to play with his father all the time.”
“He doesn’t play ta’bael anymore,” said Tegid. “Don’t you know the story? Aileron hasn’t touched a piece since the first time Diarmuid beat him when they were boys. He’s like that, you know.”
Absorbing this, considering it, Shalhassan moved his Mage threateningly along the diagonal. It was a trap, of course, the last one he had. To help it along, he distracted the fat man with a question. “I don’t know. Like what?”
Pushing hard on the arms of his chair, Tegid levered himself forward to see the board more clearly. Ignoring the trap and the question, both, he slid his Castle laterally, exposing Shalhassan’s Queen once more to attack and simultaneously threatening the Cathalian Lord’s own King. It was quite decisive.
“He doesn’t like to lose at anything,” Tegid explained. “He doesn’t do things when he thinks he might lose.”
“Doesn’t that limit his activities somewhat?” Shalhassan said testily. He didn’t much like losing, himself. Nor was he accustomed to it.
“Not really,” said Tegid, a little reluctantly. “He’s extremely good at almost everything. Both of them are,” he added loyally.
With such grace as he could muster, Shalhassan tipped his King sideways in surrender and raised his glass to the victor.
.”A good game,” said Tegid genially. “Tell me,” he added, turning to Gorlaes, “have you any decent ale here? Wine is all very well, but I’m grievously thirsty tonight, if you want to know the truth.”
“A pitcher of ale, Vierre,” the Chancellor advised the page standing silently in the doorway.
“Two!” Shalhassan said, surprising himself. “Set up the pieces for another game!”
He lost that one, too, but won the third decisively, with immense evening-redeeming satisfaction. Then both he and Tegid made cursory work of Gorlaes in two other games. It was all unexpectedly congenial. And then, quite late at night, he and the Chancellor further surprised themselves by accepting a highly unorthodox suggestion from the sole member of Prince Diarmuid’s band remaining in Paras Derval.
What was even more surprising to Shalhassan, ultimately, was how entertaining he found the music and the ambience and the undeniably pert serving women in the huge downstairs rooms of the Black Boar tavern and a smaller, darker room upstairs.
It was a late night.
If he did nothing further, Paul thought, nothing at all from now until whatever ending lay waiting for them, no one could tax him with not having done his share.
He was lying on the strand near the river, a little apart, as usual, from all the others. He had lain awake for hours, watching the wheeling stars, listening to the sea. The moon had climbed as high as it could go and was westering now. It was very late.
He lay by himself and thought about the night he had ended the drought and then about the predawn hour when he had seen the Soulmonger and summoned Liranan, with Gereint’s aid, to battle Rakoth’s monster in the sea. And then he let his mind come forward to the moment, earlier this evening, when he had spoken with the voice of Mórnir, and the sea god had answered again and stilled the waves to let the mariners of Prydwen survive the Weaver’s storm.
He had also, he knew, done something else almost a year ago: his had been the crossing between the worlds that had saved Jennifer from Galadan and allowed Darien to be born.
He wondered if those who came after would curse his name for that. He wondered if there would be anyone to come after.
He had done his part in this war. No one could question that. Furthermore, he knew, no one but himself would even think to raise the issue. The reproaches here, the sleeplessness, the striving, always, for something more —all of it was internal, a part of the pattern of his life.