R Z Held - [BCS299 S02] Read online

  Truth as a Prize

  R.Z. Held

  Rules

  In this place, one who lies will always deceive; one who speaks truth will never waver from it.

  The Game had a new player, so Naomi found herself once more frozen in her place, one ghost among the many owned by the Game. Anticipation, no longer tethered to her living belly, shivered through her whole self. Another chance. Another chance for some fool to die and take a place amongst the ghosts, but another chance for Naomi to guide a player to victory. Impossible to have one without the other.

  The Game’s gallery grove stretched long, encompassing each ghost upon their plinth, at the base of two rows of grand cedars that touched branches far above. A cathedral, writ in living growth, with needles that softened footsteps down the center and impassible undergrowth beyond. Down it, each solitary player padded in their turn, eager or suspicious, to hear the rules. To play the game. Inevitably, it seemed, to lose.

  But in victory, if Naomi could ever manage it, a player could leave; a player who left could rob the Game of prey forever after, by spreading word of the Game’s trickery. An end to victims would mean that Naomi, who could no longer be saved, had saved someone else. Perhaps she could not have an ending, but by grace she would have a purpose.

  The ghosts who lined the grove wore robes, a circlet at their temples—no less a mark of ownership for not being about the throat—each with an individual pattern of posture and objects to hold. Symbols, Naomi suspected, in a language lost to ancient, pre-magic times, but nonetheless built into the very heart of the Game.

  Naomi’s symbols were a bound notebook and pencil, book held static before her belly on the flat of one hand, pencil poised in the other. A sign of how she watched, she supposed, how she recorded everything in her memory: her own litany of failures, unable to guide players to success, and the other failures she had been granted no influence on.

  This player was an old woman, confident but frugal with her movements. Her dark skin showed the seaming of weather and emotion through her face only subtly, but the tiny braids along her skull were much more white shot with black than the reverse. The woman listened as the Game spoke the rules in its ringing, directionless voice, hands folded at her belly, and kept her thoughts hidden.

  “Who has come to play the game? Do you understand that if you do not abide by the rules, your life is forfeit?”

  “I am Dianthus. I understand this.”

  Naomi did not think this player would be one to rely on strength of arm. And those with strength of mind thought better than to bring a proverbial knife to a spell fight. Thus, she was most likely skilled in magic, and in searching, Naomi found a swipe of flaking red-brown over each of the woman’s eyelids. A blood mage, then, having armored herself with an all-purpose spell against illusion. A good blood mage, for her fingertips and inner arms had no scars whatsoever, which was a sign of power and training sufficient to heal cuts with the tail end of each spell, as a matter of course.

  Naomi had seen no few blood mages play the Game, almost invariably for the prize of an ability to work magic with the blood of others, not only their own. That was, of course, one of the prizes that were impossible to win. One of the many.

  Truth or lies? said the Game.

  The words were only within Naomi, as they would be within each ghost, upon their plinths. She wasn’t sure why the Game asked them—as if it could not force them either way, as if it didn’t know their answers before they spoke them. But this had at least the semblance of a free choice, the only enforcement coming after it was made, should they wish to waver. Naomi made the choice she always did, Truth, and the heavy sensation of the Game’s control over her receded for the moment.

  Choose your friend or choose your foe; the other will be chosen for you.

  Dianthus stepped from ghost to ghost, giving each a silent weight of consideration. Naomi could not move, to entice her with expression or gesture, but if Dianthus paused before her, Naomi was permitted to speak. And if in that speech Naomi could persuade her... Each player was such a line of “ifs.” But at the end of that line, someone might finally, finally win.

  “I would fall quickly before your strength, as foe,” said the first man when Dianthus looked into his eyes. A lie. He was fast, with poison on his stiletto. “I would teach you such a spell as none can withstand, as friend.” The next ghost, another lie. Naomi supposed the manner of their deaths—or even the mere fact of their failures—left few ghosts eager to help.

  She, on the other hand, had nothing else left but her drive to aid the players. The question, however, was whether to offer that aid as friend or foe. As friend, she could give every answer Dianthus might need, but only if Dianthus could find the correct questions. Naomi was slight with no skill in combat, which would make her an excellent choice as foe, but that was balanced by the fact that it would not be her fighting, it would be the Game.

  She hated the sensation of the Game filling her up, using her as an extension of itself, ownership saturating her to the edges of her consciousness. At least when she spoke as a friend or silently watched to record one more failure in her memory as an unchosen ghost, she could pretend there was still truly a self for her to be.

  Dianthus moved with a suddenness Naomi would not have predicted, to stand before one ghost in particular. “Althea,” she said, and shut any further words away behind fingertips on her lips.

  “I would speak to you again for as long as I am allowed, as friend,” the ghost of the young woman said, tears blurring the words at the edges.

  Ah, so. Disparate pieces of knowledge snapped themselves into alignment. Althea had been the most recent player, and she’d worn her hair so as well, tiny braids along her skull. Those had changed to longer ones as one of her symbols, a great spill over her shoulders to her hips. She held a willow branch, tipped low, and her head inclined to an angle that spoke of weeping as well. Her death had been long, and hard, and Naomi had done what she could to ease it, though what she could do was only listen and do her best to deny the Game a suicide. In dying, and then as a ghost, Althea had spoken much of her wife, the one she could not—as it had indeed proved—live without, but also of family. A grandmother too wise to have made the mistakes Althea had.

  This, then, must be the grandmother, come intending to bargain for her granddaughter’s life. That particular boon could never be granted, but at least as ghosts, they could speak together without barriers. And first, Dianthus would choose her as friend.

  Dianthus drew herself up, drew herself away from her granddaughter and continued on with heavy steps. Determined. Hope fluttered, unfocused, within Naomi’s self. If Dianthus could turn away from a chance to speak with her granddaughter one more time, what other heights of strategic thinking could she reach? “I would tell you who grants you truth and who grants you the reverse,” Naomi said. She’d meant to speak it much plainer than that, but the Game seemed to warp everything within its control into its own ornate logic.

  The important thing was, what would Dianthus make of that offer?

  Dianthus scoffed, yet intelligence sparked within her eyes. “The answer to that particular riddle only applies when there are two, one bound to lie, one bound to tell the truth. All of you could be lying to me, could you not?” She swung an arm to indicate the grove stretching away, ranks of ghosts.

  “Yes.” Naomi answered as much as was allowed to her, then waited. It would be a frail thing, any trust built on the fact that Naomi had broached the idea of riddles, of their accompanying strategy. But she did not lie, and it was all she could offer.

  “This one.” Dianthus set a hand on a stone-like fold of Naomi’s robe, firm in her decision the moment it was made.

/>   “Naomi.”

  Another inclination of her head. “As friend.”

  A friend must answer every question but the last; they know how you can win.

  A wrench of perception, and Naomi was on her hands and knees on the needle carpet, robes and symbols gone from her. Now she was as she’d been at the moment of her death, black rope of her single braid falling over one side of her neck, and in bodice over blouse and fitted pants. They were different in execution from Dianthus’s bright, loose linen tunic and trousers, but not in concept. Strange, to think that Dianthus must stand as far from her in style and culture as she had from pre-magic times when she died.

  The other ghosts were gone from them, banished to observe or ignore as they pleased, denied all substance but thought, somewhere beyond the trees. The length of the tree-vaulted gallery was left empty but for the slowly sharpening angle of sunlight that trickled through the branches. And through the light brown of Naomi’s skin, rendering it translucent. Pure, direct sunlight was the thing that most showed the ghosts for what they really were, if the player did not try to touch. And if the Game did not lend them substance as a foe.

  Naomi stood tall, had to look up now she was on a level with Dianthus, who had no stoop, no matter her age. Now, the questions. Her knowledge was nothing if the player did not prompt it properly. She stood by habit with her balance forward, as if on her toes. Now there were gesture and expression to help her, she held her hands open, inviting.

  “What determines which question is the last?” Dianthus approached and held out one hand, fingers loosely fanned over Naomi’s, until they sank in to Naomi’s nothingness. Naomi indulged herself by closing her fingers, imagining for just one moment what that touch would once have felt like.

  That was an excellent question for them to begin with. “When you ask me how to win, that is your last question, for I cannot answer it, and then you must fight your foe.”

  Dianthus’s eyes touched where her fingers could not, every detail of Naomi’s face and appearance. “You played the game yourself, and lost?”

  “Yes.” Less scope in that one. Naomi grimaced over it, exaggerated.

  “You—” Dianthus stopped. Calculated, lips thin. “Can you only answer questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you wish you had known?”

  “That lies are not merely the absence of assistance, they are weapons aimed actively to harm. That truth cannot be given expansively lest its assistance be too great.” There was more she’d thought she might be able to convey—Questions phrased too widely yield little more of use than those phrased too narrowly—but the words would not come. She hunched briefly, arms hugged over her belly, with the effort of trying.

  “How did you die?”

  That, she little liked to remember, but perhaps the Game would enjoy the memory’s effect on her, let her tell it at length, with other lessons buried within. “The mistake I made,” she set her hand through Dianthus’s, emphasis, “was believing lies. The friend I chose told me my fight would not begin until I struck the first blow, so I thought I had some moments of safety to assess my foe.”

  Instead, in that first moment, her foe had drawn his blade. Now, here, with Dianthus, her throat opened under that cut and the heavy, crimson spray made Dianthus flinch from what should have been a wet slap against her skin. Naomi felt nothing, of course, and the blood kissed away to nothingness against Dianthus’s reality. “What was that for—?”

  “Talking is boring. Love, the Game,” Naomi said with heavy irony. It was that or madness. Another semblance of a free choice. “It will escalate if you ignore it for too long.”

  Dianthus straightened but did not otherwise scrub at her face or arms where phantom blood had disappeared. But blood would hold no disgust for her, Naomi supposed. “What mistakes did you avoid?

  Yes! “As my prize, I chose knowledge. There were accounts, of people who said they’d won riches in the game, but wouldn’t that be a convenient cover for a little banditry? There were also accounts, of people who sought out the place where ‘The Game’ was scratched on a sheer cliff face and who must have taken their riches to far-off lands, for they were never heard from again. But those two sets of people—they never matched. I wanted to understand.” She’d thought there might be a way to hear the rules without committing to the playing, more fool she. “Knowledge, that prize I could grant to myself.” She held Dianthus’s gaze, tightly, over that.

  “Grant yourself? But the prize is awarded—” Dianthus’s focus snapped internal. “Ah. The rules never say a prize will be given, do they? Just that it must be won.” Her voice hardened, shot through with her grief. “What prize did my granddaughter ask for? How did she die?”

  “Her wife’s life,” Naomi said. Dianthus must have known that already, but it did offer Naomi a few more seconds in which to craft a gentler way to offer the truth of an ungentle death.

  Gentle did not suit the Game’s purposes, of course. Beside them, the image of Althea, braids short and tight to her head, sank to her knees. That they were watching the moment of her death was unmistakable, given her sunken eyes, sunken cheeks, the way she couldn’t focus her eyes, confusion stark in her face.

  No reason then not to let the truth tumble free, with all its cutting edges. “She died of thirst. She defeated her foe, but as her prize was an impossible one and the rules did not allow her to leave without it... There is no water here. But she denied the Game a suicide, at least?” Naomi found comfort in that, but she rather doubted any other would. “Those, it savors.”

  Silence then, Dianthus retreating behind a mask forged of that grief. Naomi reached a hand toward her shoulder, an impulse to comfort. Dianthus dropped her shoulder away from it, so Naomi granted her two steps of distance between them. Dianthus had the information she needed, or at least it seemed so to Naomi. Perhaps time to regather herself now would serve her better than more questions.

  “The Game will make her my foe, of course.” Not a question, but Naomi nodded her answer in any case. “If I hadn’t acknowledged her—?”

  Again, the impulse to touch for comfort. Naomi dropped her hand. “The Game knows what its ghosts know, because we belong to it. And it can guess what facing her will do to you.”

  Dianthus sighed, her appearance of bone-deep fatigue growing with each second of the exhalation. “Is that what this game seeks? The greatest pain? Suicides, to... ‘savor’?”

  “That’s the only guess I’ve been able to form. Perhaps all players are suicides, coming here, and taking the final moment into their own hands is the purest distillation of that. Or perhaps it’s more simple—individually crafted pain certainly isn’t boring.” Naomi smiled, tried to gift the irony, in case it helped.

  Dianthus’s counter-smile was tight. She stepped back from Naomi, looking down into the infinite distance of the gallery, where no end was to be found. “To win, one must sometimes take the long view. Now tell me this. What are your motives for offering me what you’d have me believe is truth, Naomi?”

  A last check of trust was only sensible, though to her frustration Naomi could think of no clever leading answer to offer. “If someone could finally win, leave and carry a true account to lay to rest all the rumors, perhaps there need be no more deaths. It cannot be me, but I don’t care, as long as it’s done.”

  “Sounds true enough to me.” Dianthus’s smile turned cutting in its sadness. “How do I win, Naomi?”

  Name the prize for which you fight; you will never find a way free without it.

  No wrench this time—as friend, Naomi was not removed from the gallery, but she could do nothing to influence the physical clash of the fight while insubstantial in any case. Dianthus stepped away from her as the Game’s voice surrounded them on all sides. “For what prize do you fight?”

  “I fight for the chance to see my granddaughter one more time.” No sign of Dianthus’s grief now; she was a straight pillar with the strength of weathered granite.

 
Naomi had thought that she’d hoped to the point of desperation before; it was nothing to what she felt now. Dianthus had understood, had chosen her prize wisely, had gathered every chance to win... but for the fact that she would need to defeat the very granddaughter who love had driven her here to save. Naomi couldn’t conceive of that love with precision enough to weigh Dianthus’s chances truly—was that because she was a ghost, or because she’d died too young?

  The Game strode for Dianthus, wearing Althea as its skin, and Naomi set aside her calculations as she brought her clenched hand to the base of her throat to press down a knot of anguish, lest it grow to consume her. She remembered well what it was to be worn by the Game.

  A foe must fight with all they have; there is no choice for them.

  The Game and Dianthus chose their stances, within the space demarcated for them by the trees. More than enough distance from side to side of the gallery to face off. The Game eased into a low, graceful stance with fighting daggers at the ready; Dianthus centered herself into comparative stillness instead.

  Stillness but for the flick of a knife drawn from her hip pocket. She drew a line in red along her inner arm, then flicked the knife back down into its handle and dropped it into her pocket once more. Her first move, then, simultaneous with the Game’s: Dianthus gathered blood on the pads of her first two fingers and flicked it outward, though there was not enough of it for any droplets to break free, and the Game slashed at her.

  The Game’s first dagger came down on a red shimmer of shielding magic, light clotting around the blade to hold it back with a growling hum that hurt to hear. Dianthus held two blood-painted fingers low in a position that could be maintained indefinitely. A split second later, the second blow landed at a different angle but with the same angry noise as the shield stopped it. The Game settled back on its heels and considered.

  First, a whirlwind of blows. As fast as they came, the shield hardened beneath them. That was the beauty of it, Naomi realized. It resisted where it was struck, not across the whole surface. If it drew its strength from the strength of the blow, however—