The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part one

One thing about Gervaise. He doesn’t rub it in. He just looked at me again, his expression saying that he knew what I knew. If I couldn’t get a stupid Tragamor out of the model, I wouldn’t survive very long in the True Game.

Patiently, he showed me the order of moves and then swatted me, not too gently.

“It’s only a few days until Festival, Peter. Now that you’re fifteen, you’ll find that Festivals do much to dispel boredom for boys. So might a little more study. Go to your supper.”

I galloped down the clattering stairs, past the nurseries, hearing babies crying and the unending chatter of the baby-tenders; down past the dormitories, smelling wet wool and steam from the showers; into the firewarm commons hall, thinking of what the Gamesmaster had said. It was true. Brother Chance said that only the powerful and the utterly unimportant lived long in the True Game. If you weren’t the one and didn’t want to be the other, it made sense to be a student. But it was still very dull.

At the junior tables the littlest boys were scaring each other with fairy tales about the lands of the Immutables where there was no True Game. Silly. If there weren’t any True Game, what would people do? At the high table the senior students, those about to graduate into the Game, showed more decorum, eating quietly under the watchful eyes of Gamesmaster Mertyn, King Mertyn, and Gamesmaster Armiger Charnot. Most of those over twenty had already been named: Sentinel, Herald, Dragon, Tragamor, Pursuivant, Elator. The complete list of Gamesmen was said to be thousands of titles long, but we would not study Properties and Powers in depth until we were older.

At the visitor’s table against the far wall a Sorcerer was leafing through a book as he dawdled over his food, the spiked band of his headdress glittering in the firelight. He was all alone, the only visitor, though I searched carefully for one other. My friend Yarrel was crowded in at the far end of a long table with no space near, so I took an open bench place near the door.

Across from me was Karl, his red, wet face shining slickly in the steam of the food bowls.

“Y’most got boggled up there, Peter-priss. Better stick to paper games with the littly boys.”

“Oh, shut up, sweat-face,” I told him. It didn’t do any good to be nice to Karl, or to be mean. It just didn’t matter. He was always nasty, regardless. “You wouldn’t have known either.”

“Would so. Grandsire and Dadden both told me that ‘un.”

His face split into his perpetual mocking grin, his point made. Karl was son of a Doyen, grandson of a Doyen, third generation in the School. I was a Festival Baby, born nine months after Festival, left on the doorsteps of Mertyn’s House to be taken in and educated. I might as well have been hatched by a toad. Well, I had something Karl didn’t. He could have his family name. I had something else. Not that the Masters cared whether a student was first generation or tenth. There were more foundlings in the room than there were family boys. “Sentlings,” those sent in from outside by their parents, had no more status than foundlings, but the family boys did tend to stick together. It took only a little whipping-on from someone like Karl to turn them into a hunting pack. Well, I refused to make a chase for them. Instead, I stared away down the long line of champing jaws and lax bodies. They all looked as I felt¾hungry, exhausted from the day’s cold, luxuriating in warmth, and grateful night had come.

I thought of the promised Festival. I would sew bells onto my trouser hems, stitch ribbons into the shoulder seams of my jacket, make a mask out of leather and gilt, and so clad run through the streets of Schooltown with hundreds of others dressed just as I, jingling and laughing, dancing to drum and trumpet, eating whatever we wanted. During Festival, nothing would be forbidden, nothing required, no dull studies, the Festival Halls would be opened, people would come from Outside, from the School Houses, from everywhere. Bells would ring…and ring…