Blood of the Fold (47 page)

In the distance, the drums beat on.

Verna found Warren sitting on the dark, flat rock at their meeting place in the rushes on the city side of the river. He was skipping stones out onto the swirling waters prowled by one lone fishing boat. Warren jumped up when he heard her approach.

“
Verna! I didn’t know if you were ever going to come.”

Verna watched the old man bait his hooks as his skiff rolled gently beneath his steady legs. “Phoebe wanted to know what it was like to get old and wrinkled.”

Warren brushed dirt from the seat of his violet robes. “Why would she ask you?”

Verna only sighed at his blank expression. “Let’s get going.”

The journey through the city toward the outskirts proved as strange as the palace grounds. While some of the shops in the wealthy sections were open and doing a bit of trade with a scattering of people, the market in the indigent section was vacant, its tables empty, cook fires cold, and shopwindows shuttered. The lean-to shelters were deserted, the looms in the workshops abandoned, and the streets silent but for the constant, grating presence of the drums.

Warren acted as if there were nothing unusual about the ghostly streets. As the two of them turned down a narrow, deeply shadowed, dusty street lined with dilapidated buildings, Verna had had enough and finally erupted in fury.

“
Where is everyone! What’s going on!”

Warren stopped and turned to give her a puzzled look as she stood, fists on hips, in the center of the empty street. “It’s Ja’La day.”

She fixed him with a scowl. “Ja’La day.”

He nodded, the puzzled frown deepening. “Yes. Ja’La day. What did you think happened to all the …” Warren slapped his forehead. “I’m sorry, Verna; I thought you knew. We’ve become so accustomed to it I just forgot you wouldn’t know.”

Verna folded her arms. “Know what?”

Warren returned to take her arm and start her walking again. “Ja’La is a game, a contest.” He pointed over his shoulder. “They built a big playing field in the bowl between two hills on the outskirts of the city, over that way, about … oh, I guess it must have been fifteen or twenty years ago, when the emperor came to rule. Everyone loves it.”

“
A game? The entire city empties out to go watch a game?”

Warren nodded. “I’m afraid so. Except a few—mostly older people; they don’t understand it and aren’t too interested, but most everyone else is. It’s become the people’s passion. Children start playing it in the streets almost as soon as they can walk.”

Verna eyed a side street and checked behind, the way they had come. “What kind of game is this?”

Warren shrugged. “I’ve never been to an official game, yet; I spend most of my time down in the vaults, but I’ve delved into the subject a bit. I’ve always been interested in games and how they fit into the structure of different cultures. I’ve studied ancient peoples and their games, but this gives me the chance to observe a living game for myself, so I’ve read up on it and made inquires.

“
Ja’La is played by two teams on a square Ja’La field marked out with grids. In each corner is a goal, two for each team. The teams try to put the ‘broc’—a heavy, leather-covered ball a little smaller than a man’s head—in one of their opponents’ goals. If they do, then they get a point, and the other team gets to pick a grid square from which they begin their turn at attack.

“
I don’t understand the strategy, it gets complex, but five-year-olds seem to be able to grasp it in no time.”

“
Probably because they want to play, and you don’t.” Verna untied her shawl and flapped the ends, trying to cool her neck. “What’s so interesting about it that everyone would want to go crowd together in the sun to see it.”

“
I guess it takes them away from their toil for a day of festivity. It gives them an excuse to cheer and scream, and to drink and celebrate if their team wins, or to drink and console one another if their team loses. Everyone gets quite worked up over it. More worked up than they should.”

Verna thought it over a moment as she felt a refreshing breeze cool her neck. “Well, I guess that sounds harmless.”

Warren glanced over out of the corner of his eye. “It’s a bloody game.”

“
Bloody?”

Warren sidestepped a pile of dung. “The ball is heavy and the rules loose. The men who play Ja’La are savage. While they must of course be adept at handling the broc, they’re selected mostly because of their brawn and their brutal aggressiveness. Not many a game goes by without at least some teeth getting knocked out, or a bone broken. It isn’t rare for a neck to get broken, either.”

Verna stared incredulously. “And people like to watch that?”

Warren grunted a humorless confirmation. “From what the guards tell me, the crowd gets ugly if there isn’t blood, because they think it means their team isn’t trying hard enough.”

Verna shook her head. “Well, It doesn’t sound like anything I would enjoy watching.”

“
That isn’t the worst of it.” Warren kept his eyes ahead as he strode along the shadowed street. To the sides, shutters so faded it was hard to tell they had ever been painted stood closed over narrow windows. “The losing team is brought out onto the field when the game is over, and each is flogged. One lash with big leather whip for each point scored against them, administered by the winning team. And the rivalry between teams is bitter; it isn’t unheard of for men to die from the flogging.”

Verna walked in stunned silence as they turned a corner. “The people stay for this flogging?”

“
I think that’s what they go for. The entire crowd supporting the winning team counts out the number of lashes as they’re laid on. Emotions run pretty high. People get really worked up over Ja’La. Sometimes there are riots. Even with ten thousand troops trying to keep order, things can get out of hand. The players sometimes start the brawl. The men who play Ja’La are brutes.”

“
People really like rooting for a team of brutes?”

“
The players are heroes. Ja’La players virtually have the run of the city, and can do no wrong. Rules and laws rarely apply to Ja’La players. Crowds of women follow the players around, and after a game there’s usually a team orgy. Women fight over who will be with a Ja’La player. The spree goes on for days. To have been with a player is an honor of the highest order, and is so highly contested that bragging rights require witnesses.”

“
Why?” was all she could think to say.

Warren threw up his hands. “You’re a woman; you tell me! When I’ve been the first in three thousand years to solve a prophecy, I’ve never had a woman throw her arms around my neck, or want to lick the blood off my back.”

“
They do that?”

“
Fight over it. If he’s pleased with her tongue, he might pick her. I hear the players are pretty arrogant, and like to make the eager women earn the honor of being under him.”

Verna looked over and saw that Warren’s face was glowing red. “They even want to be with the losing players?”

“
It’s irrelevant. He’s a Ja’La player: a hero. The more brutal, the better. The ones who have killed an opponent with a Ja’La ball are renowned, and are most sought after by the women. People name babies after them. I just don’t understand it.”

“
You’re just seeing a small sampling of people, Warren. If you were to go into the city instead of spending all of your time down in the vaults, women would want to be with you, too.”

He tapped his bare neck. “They would if I still had a collar, because they would see the palace’s gold around my neck, that’s all; they wouldn’t want to be with me because of who I am.”

Verna pursed her lips. “Some people are attracted by power. When you have no power yourself, it can be very seductive. That’s just the way life is.”

“
Life,” he repeated with a sour grunt. “Ja’La is what everyone calls it, but its full name is Ja’La dh Jin—the Game of Life, in the old tongue of the emperor’s homeland of Altur’Rang, but everyone simply calls it Ja’La: the Game.”

“
What does ‘Altur’Rang’ mean?”

“‘
Altur’Rang’ is from their old tongue, too. It doesn’t translate well, but it means, approximately, ‘the Creator’s chosen,’ or ‘destiny’s people,’ something like that. Why?”

“
The New World is split by a mountain range called the Rang’Shada. It sounds like the same language.”

Warren nodded. “A
shada
is an armored war gauntlet with spikes. Rang’Shada would roughly mean ‘war fist of the chosen.’”

“
A name from the old war, I guess. Spikes would certainly apply to those mountains.” Verna’s head was still spinning with Warren’s story. “I can’t believe this game is allowed.”

“
Allowed? It’s encouraged. The emperor has his own personal Ja’La team. It was announced this morning that when he comes for his visit, he’s going to bring his team to play Tanimura’s top team. Quite an honor, from what I gather, as everyone is beside themselves with excitement at the prospect.” Warren glanced around, and then turned back to her again. “The emperor’s team doesn’t get flogged if they lose.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “The privilege of the mighty?”

“
Not exactly,” Warren said. “If they lose, they get beheaded.”

Verna’s hands dropped away from the points of her shawl. “Why would such a game be encouraged by the emperor?”

Warren smiled a private smile. “I don’t know, Verna, but I have my theories.”

“
Such as?”

“
Well, if you have conquered a land, what problems do you suppose might present themselves?”

“
You mean insurrection?”

Warren brushed back a lock of his curly blond hair. “Turmoil, protests, civil unrest, riots, and yes, insurrection. Do you remember when King Gregory ruled?”

Verna nodded as she watched an old woman far up a side street draping wet clothes over a balcony railing. It was the only person she had see in the last hour. “What happened to him?”

“
Not long after you left, the Imperial Order took over and that was the last we heard of him. The king was well thought of, and Tanimura prospered, along with the other cities under his rule in the north. Since then, times have become hard for the people. The emperor allowed corruption to flourish and at the same time ignored important matters of commerce and justice. All those people you’ve seen living in squalor are refugees come to Tanimura from smaller towns, villages, and cities that were sacked.”

“
They seem a quiet and content lot for refuges.”

An eyebrow lifted over a blue eye. “Ja’La.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
They have little hope of a better life under the Imperial Order. The one thing they can have hope for, dream about, is to become a Ja’La player.

“
The players are selected because of their talent at the game, not because they have rank or power. The family of a player need never want for anything again; he can provide for them—in abundance. Parents encourage their children to play Ja’La, hoping they will become paid players. Amateur teams, classed by age group, start with five-year-olds. Anyone, no matter their background, can become a paid Ja’La player. Players have even come from the ranks of the emperor’s slaves.

“
But that still doesn’t explain the passion for it.”

“
Everyone is part of the Imperial Order now. No devotion to one’s former land is allowed. Ja’La lets people be devoted to something, to their neighbors, to their city, through their team. The emperor paid to have the Ja’La field built—a gift to the people. The people are distracted from the conditions of their lives, over which they have no control, and into an outlet that doesn’t threaten the emperor.”

Verna flapped the ends of her shawl again. “I don’t think your theory casts a shadow, Warren. From a young age, children like to play games. They do it all day. People have always played games. When they get older, they have contests with the bow, with horses, with dice. It’s part of human nature to play at games.”

“
This way.” Warren caught her sleeve and pointed with a thumb, turning her down a narrow alley. “And the emperor is channeling that tendency into something more than natural. He need not worry about their minds wandering to thoughts of their freedom, or even simple matters of justice. Their passion, now, is Ja’La. Their minds are dulled to everything else.

“
Instead of wondering why the emperor is coming, and what it will mean for their lives, everyone is aflutter because of Ja’La.”

Verna felt her stomach lurch. She had been wondering just why the emperor was coming. There had to be a reason for him to come all this way, and she didn’t think it was just to watch his team play Ja’La. He wanted something.

“
Aren’t the people worried about defeating such a powerful man, or his team, anyway?”

“
The emperor’s team is very good, I’m told, but they don’t have any special privilege or advantage. The emperor takes no affront at his team losing, except, of course with his players. If an opponent bests them, the emperor will acknowledge their skill and heartily congratulate them and their city. People long for that honor—to best the emperor’s renowned team.”

“
I’ve been back for a couple months, and I’ve never seen the city empty out for this game before.”

“
The season just started. Official games are only allowed to be played in the the Ja’La season.”