The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (42 page)

“Very well,” she motioned to Alondo. “After you.”

“Why, thank you.” Alondo bowed his head formally. His hand hovered over a red piece. “This is The Fool,” he announced. He paused uncertainly. “Does The Fool move two spaces or three?”

“Three,” Keris’ impatience was starting to show through. “Do you need me to go over the rules?”

“Er, no…no. I’m sure it will all come back to me as we play.” He moved the piece the required number of spaces, then twirled it between his fingers as if trying to make up his mind. “Northern…er, no sorry, Eastern orientation.”

Keris picked up a yellow piece, holding it between thumb and forefinger. “The Door,” she declared, looking at Alondo as if she were instructing a small child. She moved it four spaces towards the centre of the board and turned it so that it faced sideways. “West.”

Shann’s horge soaked brain was confused. She turned to Lyall. “All the pieces look the same.”

“That’s right. Shassatan involves memory skills as well as tactical and positional training. You have to remember your pieces’ designation, as well as those of your opponent. Certain strategies can even alter a piece’s designation during a game. Also you notice that at the end of each move, every piece is given a ‘facing’, which raises its defence rating on that side.”

Shann blinked. “It sounds really complicated.”

Lyall laughed. “Oh, this is nothing. Shassatan can be played by up to four players. Imagine trying to keep that lot in your head. A full game is normally played with twenty-one pieces a side, but the number of starting pieces isn’t fixed. Beginners usually start with four of five pieces a side and build up from there. You can also have unequal starting numbers, where an experienced player will agree to start with less pieces to even up the game. That’s called a handicap.

“What makes the game so fascinating is that with the number of different possible designations of pieces and the various combinations of strategies between them, the possibilities are virtually endless. No two games are ever alike.”

Pieces were being thinned out as they were moved across the board. Both sides of the table were littered with those captured or sacrificed. A subtle change in the players was also taking place. Alondo’s moves were becoming faster and more confident. Keris, on the other hand, was hesitating more, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Shann cupped her hand to Lyall’s ear. “When does it end?” she whispered.

“When one side or the other no longer has the right pieces to form a strategy, they cannot win,” Lyall confided. At that point ‘Kada-Lorran’ is declared.” He registered her puzzled expression. “It means ‘victory and defeat.’”

“Ah…” she acknowledged, adding, “Who do you think will win?”

Lyall’s eyes were smiling a secret smile. “Wait and see.”

Keris seemed paralysed by indecision. Finally, she moved two pieces so that they were adjacent to a third.

“Facing?” Alondo asked.

“Oh, er…North,” she replied distractedly.

Alondo smiled his sweetest smile, went to a piece immediately and moved it ten spaces into the centre of the board. Still smiling, he turned it. “South.” Keris was staring at the board intently. “Did I make a wrong move?” he asked innocently.

“What? No…no…” her voice trailed off.

“I think your Wheel is threatened,” he suggested, helpfully.

“Yes, I see that, thank you.”

Shann’s face was buried in Lyall’s shoulder. She was stuffing the brocade on the lapel of his jacket into her mouth to try and suppress her laughter. Her small body shook with the effort.

Keris shot her a look of irritation. She turned back to Alondo, her voice formal. “Lorran.”

“Kadda.” He announced with a mock version of her own formality. He stood up from his stool and bowed. “Thanks for the game. I could give you a handicap next time, if you like?”

Shann finally lost control. She released Lyall, doubling up in fits of raucous laughter, drawing attention from nearby tables.

Keris ignored her with some effort. “You deceived me,” she accused Alondo.

Alondo’s eyes widened. His hands moved to his chest in a gesture of injured innocence. “Me?”

“You led me to believe you were less experienced than you are.”

Lyall moved to intervene. “Well, I’m surprised a trained investigator couldn’t spot the clues.” He ticked off his fingers one by one. “First, he’s a genius. Second, he’s a musician by trade. Where do you think musicians spend most of their time?”

“Playing in inns and public houses,” Keris acknowledged.

“Exactly.”

“So the two of you set me up?”

“Only in fun…and as a way of helping you to relax. After all, he did give you a challenging game.”

Keris appeared mollified by Lyall’s explanation. She rose from her stool and formally returned Alondo’s bow. “Thank you. I look forward to our next encounter.”

Shann had her arm around Alondo’s shoulder.
Good friends. Good food. Good company
. She could not remember a time in her life when she had felt so contented. “How about another drink?” she suggested amiably.

Far off in another corner of the Calandra, a figure in a black and red tunic and black trousers sat alone at a table half in shadow, watching the party surreptitiously. As he raised his mug to his lips, a ring was visible on his index finger, bronze and set with a single stone of the deepest ebony.

<><><><><>

Chapter 26

Shann awoke the next morning feeling muzzy-headed. They had secured two rooms at the Calandra, one for Lyall and Alondo and one for her and Keris. Boxx had naturally accompanied Keris and no-one had argued the point.

As she came to and struggled to focus, she quickly realised that Keris and Boxx were gone. She was alone. Like everything else at the Calandra, the bed was soft and sumptuous–not at all what she was used to, but highly pleasant for all that. She was sorely tempted to turn over and go back to sleep, but the light level told her that it was well past the time for her to rise. Besides, she was curious as to what the others were up to.

Reluctantly, she pushed back the covers and padded across the wooden floor to a side table where a basin of fresh water stood. The rush of cold water on her face brought her to full wakefulness. She found some clean clothes in a dresser and slipped out into the corridor. Going to the door of the adjacent room, she knocked lightly. The door opened and she was gratified to see Alondo’s round face.

He beamed at her. “We thought you were going to sleep all day.” He opened the door fully and beckoned her inside. Lyall and Keris stood to one side, watching Boxx. The Chandara had the machine from the past set up in the middle of the floor. Light reflected off the gold and silver coloured workings, but the device was otherwise inactive. Shann and Alondo took up a place on the other side of Boxx.

Lyall looked up. He seemed pleased to see her. “How are you this morning?”

Shann was still feeling a little fragile. She realised she probably needed some food inside her, but that would have to wait. “I’m fine. What is Boxx up to? ”

“You got here just in time,” Lyall informed her. He was wearing a rustic brown tunic and trousers, in sharp contrast with his ostentatious outfit of the previous evening. “Boxx says that Annata is due to contact us shortly.”

“She will expect us to be on the other side of the world by now,” Keris reminded them. “We are going to have to break the news that the tower was destroyed.”

“Do you think there is another way to get there?” Shann asked.

Keris was looking tired and anxious. Her hair was uncombed. “Let’s hope she knows of one. And that we are not already too late.”
Was she being genuine? Or was she merely saying what she thought they wanted to hear?
She remembered what Lyall had said about the difficult journey that both she and Keris were on. Lyall had been prepared to give her a second chance, but in doing so, he had chosen a dangerous path for everyone. It was a second chance for her to betray them all. She claimed that she had turned against her overseer and left him dead in the Gilah, but there was no way of verifying that–they only had her word. One persistent thought kept nagging at the back of her mind–
Keltar do not turn against the Prophet
.

Then there was Boxx. In some ways, its role in all of this was just as much of a mystery.
Chandara do not lie
; Lyall had said as much. Deep down, Shann believed that to be true. But could it be deceived? Was it possible that the Keltar had somehow run across Boxx and the machine from the past and had seen an opportunity to use the situation for her own ends?

Shann could not help but think back to last evening’s game of shassatan. During their epic journey together, moves had been made; gambits employed; strategies followed. Now was the decisive point. Kada-Lorran. Victory or Defeat.
It all comes down to this
.

“It Is Time.”
Boxx’s announcement brought a deathly silence to the room. Shann hardly dared to breathe. The Chandara stretched forth its left middle forelimb and touched the panel set into the mechanism’s circular base. It did so again. And a third time. Nothing. No gentle hum emanated from the delicate components. The row of lights remained stubbornly dull. It was for all intents and purposes dead.

Broken. She broke it after all
. Shann was filled with despair and disgust. She fired a look at Keris, but the older woman was looking intensely at the scene in the middle of the room and did not notice, or pretended not to.

Alondo had moved to Boxx’s side and was on his haunches, inspecting the device. His hand touched a part of the inner apparatus, then went to his chin.

“Well?” Lyall finally broke the silence.

Alondo was continuing to stare into the unfathomable mix of brightly coloured parts. “All I can say for sure is that there is still no power getting to the unit. Whether that is due to the earlier damage, or the fact that no power is being transferred to it, I just don’t know. I’m sorry.”

A pall had settled over the gathering. Finally Lyall drew himself erect and spoke to no-one in particular. “Well, it seems we have some thinking to do–and I for one don’t think well on an empty stomach. I am going to order up breakfast. I want everyone downstairs as soon as it’s ready.” His tone brooked no argument.

The group slowly dispersed, each one to their own private room of dejection.

~

The table at the back of the Inn was laden with a sumptuous repast of flatbreads, sweetmeats and an amazing variety of fruits, both dried and fresh. At any other time, Shann would have happily piled her platter high and ate her fill. Yet now she was doing little more than picking at the seeds on a pastry or rolling a janaberry around on her plate. The others were showing scarcely more of an appetite than her. Only Boxx seemed unaffected as it munched a yellow fruit contentedly with its eyes closed. She envied the little creature. The little girl in her resented the thought of all that food going to waste.
Maybe later
.

Lyall was seated at the head of the table; his eyes rested on each of them in turn. When he reached Shann, she met his look and smiled encouragingly. She did not want to let him down, although she was not sure what any of them was supposed to do now.

Finally he began, “I can appreciate that you are all disappointed. We made the journey here in the hope that Annata would contact us and tell us how we might cross the Great Barrier. However, for whatever reason, it seems she has been unable to do so. She told us before that she had devoted her life to the salvation of the Kelanni of our time. I believe that she is even now doing everything she can to get through to us. In the meantime, we must continue to do our part.” He paused as if waiting for a response, but no-one spoke. He tied the threads of his purpose into a single knot. “We must cross the Great Barrier ourselves.”

Keris who was seated to his left, lifted her head from her empty plate. “And how do you propose that we do that?”

Lyall smiled enigmatically. “I was hoping that you were going to tell me.”

Alondo smiled back from the seat on his right. “I thought jokes were my speciality.”

“I mean it.” Lyall leaned back on his stool and spread both hands wide. “Look, The Great Barrier of Storms lies over there,” he pointed vaguely towards the front of the inn, “just across the Aronak Sea. All we need to do is cross it.”