The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part one

“Talisman,” I blurted. “Talisman to King’s Blood Four.”

“Good.” Gervaise actually smiled. “Now, tell me why!”

“Because our side can’t see what pieces may be hiding behind the King. Because Talisman is an absorptive piece, that is, it will soak up the King’s play. Totem is reflective. Totem would splash it around, we’d maybe lose some pieces…”

“Exactly. Now, students, visualize if you please. We have King, most durable of the adamants, whose blood, that is, essence, is red light. Demon, most powerful of the ephemera, whose essence is shadow. Tragamors making barriers at the sides of the Demesne. The player is a student, without power, so he plays Talisman, an absorptive piece of the lesser ephemera. Talisman is lost in play, ‘sacrificed’ as we say. The player gains nothing by this, but neither does he lose much, for with this play the Demesne is changed, and the game moves elsewhere in the purlieu.”

“But, Master,” Karl’s voice oozed from the corner. “A strong player could have played Totem. A powerful player.”

I flushed. Of course. Everyone in the room knew that, but students were not strong, not powerful, even though Karl liked to pretend he was. It was just one more of his little pricks and nibbles, like living with a hedgehog. Gamesmaster tilted his head, signifying he had heard, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he peered at the chronometer on the wall, then out the window to check where the mountain shadow fell upon the harbor, finally back to our heavily bundled little group. “So. Enough for today. Go to the fires and your supper. Some of you are half frozen.”

We were all half frozen. The models could only be controlled if they were kept ice cold, so we spent half our lives shivering in frigid aeries. I was as cold as any of them, but I wanted to let Karl get out of the way, so I went to the high window and leaned out to peer away south. There was a line of warty little islands there separating the placid harbor with its wheeling gulls from the wide, stormy lake and the interesting lands of the True Game beyond. I mumbled something. Gervaise demanded I repeat it.

“It’s boring here in Schooltown,” I repeated, shamefaced.

He didn’t answer at once but looked through me in that very discomforting way the Masters sometimes have. Finally he asked me if I had not had Gamesmaster Charnot for Cartography. I said I had.

“Then you know something of the lands of the True Game. You know of the Dragon’s Fire purlieu to the North? Yes. Well, there are a King and Queen there who decided to rear their children Outside. They wanted to be near their babies, not send them off to a distant Schooltown to be bored by old Gamesmasters. They thought to let the children learn the rules of play by observation. Of the eight sons born to that Queen, seven have been lost in play. The eighth child sleeps this night in Havad’s House nursery, sent to Schooltown at last.

“It is true that it is somewhat boring in Schooltown, and for no one more so than the Masters! But, it is also safe here, Peter. There is time to grow, and learn. If you desire no more than to be a carter or laborer or some other pawn, you may go Outside now and be one. However, after fifteen years in Mertyn’s House, you know too much to be contented as a pawn, but you won’t know enough for another ten years to be safe as anything else.”

I remarked in my most adult voice that safety wasn’t everything.

“That being the case,” he said, “you’ll be glad to help me dismantle the model.”

I bit my tongue. It would have been unthinkable to refuse, though taking the models apart is far more dangerous than putting them together. Most of us have burn scars from doing one or the other. I sighed, concentrated, picked a minor piece out of the game box at random and named it, “Talisman!” as I moved it into the Demense. It vanished in a flash of white fire. Gervaise moved a piece I couldn’t see, then the King, which released the Demon. I got one Tragamor out, then got stuck. I could not remember the sequence of moves necessary to get the other Tragamor loose.