I remember Chance buying charts from a map-man, the map-man waxing poetic about the accuracy with which the Demesnes were shown and the delicacy with which the cartouches were drawn¾these being the symbols mapmakers use to show which Gamesmen may dwell in a given place. I remember boarding the Lakely Lass, a fat-bellied little ship which was to take us from the mouth of the River Reave along the north and western shores of the Gathered Waters until we came at last to Vestertown and the highroad leading south. There was a Seer standing at the rail as we came aboard, his gauze-covered face turned toward me so that I could see the glitter of his eyes beneath the painted pattern of moth wings. Then I remember huddling with Chance and Yarrel over a chart spread on the tough table, shadows scurrying across it from the hanging lantern each time the ship rolled, Chance pointing and peering and mumbling…
“Over there, east, is the Great Dragon Demesne. See the cartouche, dragon head, staff¾that’s for a warlock, a slather of spears showing he’s got Armigers. Well, we’ll miss that by a good bit.”
“How will we know the highroad is safe?” asked Yarrel in his usual practical tone.
“We’ll go mousey and shy, my boys, mousey and shy. Quiet, like so many owl shadows under the trees, making, no hijus cries or bringing on us the attentions of the powerful. Well, hope has it there are many alive in the world of the Game who have never seen the edge of it played.”
I said, “I don’t understand that.” They both stared at me in astonishment.
“Well, well, with us again are you? We’d about given you up, we had, and resolved to carry your senseless carcass the whole way to its new House without your tenancy. You don’t understand it? Why, boy, it’s ‘most the first lesson you learned.”
“I can’t remember,” I mumbled. It was true. I couldn’t.
“Why,” he said, “when you were no more than four or five, we used to play our little two-space games in the kitchen before the fire, you and me. You with your little-bit queen and king on each side, the white and the black, and your wee armigers and priests and the tiny sentinels at each end, standing high on their parapets, and me the same. We set out on the board in such array, like the greatest army of ever was in a small boy’s head. You remember that?”
I nodded that I did, wondering how it connected.
“Well, then. We’d play a bit, you and me, move by move, and maybe I’d win, or maybe by some strange cleverness,” he winked and nodded at Yarrel, “some most exceptional cleverness, you’d win. And there on the board would be the lonely pawn, perhaps, or the sentinel on his castle walk, never moved once since the game began. True?” Again, I nodded, beginning to understand.
“So. That piece was not touched by the edge of the game. It stood there and wasn’t bothered by the armigers jumping here and there or churchmen rushing up and down. It’s the same in the True Game, lad. Of course, in House they don’t talk much about the times that Gamesmen don’t play, but truth to tell much of life is spent just standing about or traveling here and there, like the little pawn at the side of the board.”
He was right. We didn’t spend any time in House learning a thing about not playing. All our time was spent in learning to play, learning what moves could be made by which Gamesmen, what powers each had, what conditions influenced the move, how to determine where the edge of a Demesne would lie.
“But even if they’re not involved in the play,” I protested, “surely they feel the power…”
“’Tis said not,” he said. “No more than in the lands of the Immutables who stand outside the Game altogether.”
“Nothing is outside the Game,” I protested once more, with rather less certainty.
“Nothing but the Immutables, Lad, and they most unquestionably are.”
“I thought them mythical. Like Ghost Pieces.”
Even saying it, I made the diagonal slash of the hand which warded evil. Chance cocked his head, his cheeks bulging in two little, hard lumps as he considered this, eyes squeezed almost shut with thought under the fluffy feathers of his gray hair.