Free A Fortune for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers Page B

player — the more the deaths.
    The double doors were thrown open. Mingled streaming light poured in, the glorious radiance of the Suns of Scorpio, illuminating a stairway of brilliance out to horror.

Chapter Seven
Execution Jikaida
    We played black.
    Each one of us wore a grimy black breechclout and a tattered favor marking the rank of the piece we represented — and that was all.
     
    Almost all the black breechclouts carried rusted stains — dark and dreadful mementoes of past games.
    The brilliance of the day outside smote in with pain. We walked out, for we hardly marched, and so were shepherded willy-nilly to our places on the yellow and blue sanded squares. The terraces were packed. The spectators craned forward. The rituals with their incantations and sacrifices and prayers were all passed. We marched out to a hush, a long hollow waiting silence.
    Up there against the brightness of the day the ranks of Bowmen of Loh brooded down, tall and spare; but they were there on this day to perform a slightly different function from their usual task of shafting any wight foolish enough to run. Now they were insurance, in case the men in black were too slow.
    One young lad — his face was so contorted with fear it took a moment to realize he was apim — when he was positioned by the marshals upon his square in the front rank, simply ran. He did not know where he was running. Head down, screaming, he fled from horror — and ran into the arms of the men in black, into the arms of horror upon horror.
    What the men in black and their instruments did to the young man rooted every other piece wearing the black to the square on which he stood. Rooted him there as though he had grown into the solid ground beneath.
    The trumpets blew. The banners waved. The crowd craned forward as the white pieces emerged.
    So we understood what kind of Execution Jikaida we played. I stood on my square, feeling — well, feeling that I had had some ups and downs in my life upon Kregen, sudden and dizzy swoops from greatness to disaster. And I had clawed my way back, only once more to be thrust down. The situation was no novelty in that respect; but this was like to be the last time I was so cast down. This time was the casting down and out.
    The white pieces were not men condemned to execution. They were soldiers, in garish fancy-dress uniforms, with white favors everywhere. They carried weapons. They were off duty, performing a part of their agreement entered into when they signed on, and earning themselves a tidy bonus apiece.
    When they took a piece from the black side they would kill him, chop him — or her — down without thought. When a black piece took one of them, he would simply walk quietly off the board, most probably to sit on the substitutes bench to watch the remainder of the game.
    As the Pallan I stood next to the Princess.
    She stood there, drooping, pale, and I saw she was the woman I had so uselessly attempted to rescue from the trampling hooves of the totrixes. She wore a black breechclout and, because she was the Princess, a forlorn black crown of drooping feathers.
    I looked again. In her arms she cradled the baby.
    The bastards had even wrapped a scrap of black cloth about the baby’s skeletal ribs. I felt sick.
    If I lost the game, then hyrkaida would not be a mere civilized checkmate — it would be the swift and lethal swordblow finishing this woman — and her child.
    “What is your name, doma?”
     
    She jerked as though I had assaulted her. Her eyes shifted sideways. She colored. She shook her head.
    “They don’t mind if we talk a little, quietly.”
    “Yes... I am Liana whom men once called the Sprite.”
    “Lahal, Liana the Sprite. I am Jak.”
    “Lahal, Jak — will it be very — very terrible?”
    “For some of the swods and Deldars, and some of the superior pieces, yes, it will be terrible. But you will be safe—”
    “Unless you lose!”
    “Yes.”
    Up there lolling on the terraces, ensconced on