Sethra Lavode (Viscount of Adrilankha) (45 page)

Seeing our own rôle, then, as the introduction of comprehension and hue where there was confusion and sallowness, we hope, as we conclude as best we can the history of our friends, that the reader may take away from this journey something that will help him to follow—or create—his own path through the myriad of choices and actions that, together, form the complex tapestry that we call history, or life.

A Series of Biographical Vignettes
Incorporating a Mythographic Account that May,
Through Juxtaposition, Prove Informative

By Ivan Sekély, Witch-Antiquary of the North

T
his is not a preface, and ought not be used as one, though it should be admitted that no actual harm will be done thereby; the fish does not care if is served before the cheese, though the diner may, if he is mindful of the ginger.

Doubtless many, if not most, of you are wondering who on earth is this individual chosen to grace (if that is the proper word) the concluding volume of this series, why he among all the living was chosen, and what ought to be expected. To answer these questions in reverse order:

I have not the faintest idea.

I was requested to perform the service by Paarfi of Roundwood himself, with whom, as the persistent will discover, I have a long and rather varied acquaintance.

My formal office is generally held to be mythographic, sometimes mythopoeic, and occasionally literary; in general, I might be described as one who dwells in the upper attics of the House of the Athyra, in the hope that the other bats will teach him to fly.

When I first encountered Paarfi of Roundwood, it was in the distant town of Cenotaph. This place draws its name from an ancient monument to what was probably a battle, though the sources disagree. I was present to research representations of Ordwynac on ceremonial lanterns, when I discovered that Paarfi would be visiting to meet his reading public; I took one of his books and went to the dealer’s stall where the event was to take place.

As I arrived, however, Paarfi was gathering to depart in what seemed a great hurry, to the confusion of other waiting bookbuyers and against the background of some kind of commotion at the nearby inn. I held the book out as he passed, and reminded him of a meeting some
years earlier at the University, whereupon he smiled somewhat tensely, scribbled a message on the flyleaf, and was gone in the next moment.

After allowing the ink time to dry, I read:

Three Aces of Swords is at least one too many to be caught holding.
Yours in haste, P.

The reader, whose attentiveness we must always presume, will have noticed that I have used the phrase, “the first time I met Paarfi,” yet spoke of a prior meeting. Understand that my use thereof does not indicate our absolutely initial encounter, but our first meeting under a particular circumstance of time and place, or condition of the man himself. I have seen objections, in the voluminous academic criticism of his recent work, to multiple iterations of, let us say, “Khaavren crossed such and such a river,” as if it were the same river each time, which any mythographer can tell you is a patent impossibility. I would not fill your time and precious memory with repeated occasions of identical meetings; the first time scholars agree that the bean soup at the University refectory bears small sign of beans, and less of soup, being much like the fiftieth such.

When I first met Paarfi of Roundwood, we were both at the University, I as a visiting scholar-without-portfolio, he still as an undergraduate. Precociously as usual, he had attained that state of aggrieved anomie that, while it attends only a few of the student population, is a grave affliction to that number.

“Have you noticed,” he said, over hot klava and a cold pear pie, “a particular condition amongst the distinguished graduates of this academy?”

“I can think of several such.”

“It is only one I have under consideration.”

“Well,” said I, “discarding such minor matters as wearing the University colors or carrying a sword marked with the sigil of the University combat team—”

“Particularly among those who were not members thereof.”

“—yes, particularly so—there is the frequency with which they are found at the Inn of the Phoenix and Infant, or as it is known so well locally, the Roast and Rugrat.”

“A fact indeed, which marks you as an astute observer of your surroundings. But not the one I think upon.”

“Perhaps, then, it is the habit, which is fairly universal these days, of dressing as very old men while at lecture, regardless of actual age or sex.”

“We are glad to be reminded of this affectation,” said Paarfi with approval, and an early appearance of his. “You will agree, I venture to say, and understand that I am not diverging from your subject, that men and women are more alike than they are different, and in this I do not refer to my immediately prior observation.”

“Well. And well.”

“Then, young scholar, if we are to make of this a drinking game, we shall both be insensible long before a victory is determined, and while this might be pleasurable in the short term, it might also prove expensive, given what I have observed to be your tastes and despite my volume. So, as the huckleberries are in season, as it were, allow me then to purchase you a drink, and we shall nigh instantly be at the object of our duello.”

“Well,” Paarfi then said, acknowledging that no disingenuity was intended by ordering a good but modest wine, rather than the sweet essential which I had otherwise imagined would be his gift to us both.

Once we were served, he continued, “As you know the way to a student’s heart, I shall call it first blood and concession. My predicate, then, is that these emeriti are all
still here,
excepting only those misfortunate or careless enough to be dead. Now, sir, what other institution is so retentive of its output? Healers go off to their practices, soldiers join a company, or likely several in series, even the Court sees some rotation, with the Cycle if not more hastily and violently. To take it to extremes, even the village midden gives up fertilizer to the general, and the occasional piece of furniture and oddment to the more, or shall we say less, particular. Only here is Time caught in an impasse.”

“It must be said that no other such institution has the eminence and respect of this one.”

“Well; and yet, ought this not encourage some diffusion, knowing that one’s talents would only shine the brighter, away from so much brilliance?”

“Perhaps if we may venture so far—”

“ ‘We’?”

“Yes, esteemed scholar, you and I as well.”

“Ah. Well. Proceed.”

“Let us syllogize then. I pretend that they are here to be in one another’s company. You pretend that they are here not to be in the company of others. They pretend they are here because they have chosen not to be someplace else. Is this good?”

“This is good,” Paarfi said, and simultaneously raised his glass, and as he knew that I knew that he knew, all was well.

Now, I ought speak of my ancillary purpose today, which is to recount a tale of the gods that may, let us hope, have some relevance to the principal matter of Paarfi of Roundwood His Life Work and Character, as the letter I have received from his publishing house defines it and them.

It will be understood by the manuscript-fatigued mythologian, but perhaps requires amplification for those who have spent more time in other galleries of the great Library of the World, that attributions in tales of the gods are problematic, and in some few instances wildly divisive, as the healers of any center of learning will attest. When, in the course of the tale, it is said that “Verra said such,” or “Barlen played thus,” I describe an action definite to the story, but only my interpretation, arrived at through research and comparative study, of which of the gods indeed performed it. It might seem absurd, not to say blasphemous, to suggest that the mythographer cannot distinguish Verra from Moranthë, leave aside Barlen from Ordwynac; yet this is, as many examples affirm, entirely the case.

As an illustration familiar to the general, Arriskalo’s
Kéarena and Kelchor Walk the Streets of Dragaera by Night in Search of the True Steel
has been, there can be no possible doubt, derived from the same ur-text as e’Zisya’s
Trout and Tri’nagore Wander Dragaera by Night in Pursuit of a Decent Cup of Klava,
so much so that itinerant theatrical troupes routinely maintain one scenario for both, ascertaining through the casual enquiries of an advance-man which story the next town most favors, and cutting the cloth to suit.

When I first met Paarfi of Roundwood, he was attempting to teach a colorfully plumed Eastern bird to recite an equally colorful phrase, and simultaneously to hold the attention of a handsome young woman,
who was also dressed in bright colors, though with fewer feathers involved. Which action had his primary attention I could not tell, though the woman, of course, already knew how to speak.

There is a small but vocal group of theologians that maintains it to be a rank impossibility (small but vocal groups of theologians not being given to denouncing the merely improbable) that the gods should play games of chance. The larger audience, however, and a vast number of stories of “the gods at play,” hold an opposite view; indeed, most people insist that the gods gamble, and would, at least in terms of their representation in stories such as Paarfi’s, think less of them if they did not.

In this matter, I can do no better than to quote from the aforementioned
Trout and Tri’nagore Wander Dragaera by Night:

Tri’nagore turned an orb over in his fingers. Though he and his companion still wore human form, there was a clicking as the coin revolved, as if it scraped against scales.

“They may exchange these for food, clothing, a safe or at least somewhat comfortable place to sleep, the services of a healer, or a temporary companion.”

“So they do,” said Trout. “Yet you must admit that for food and shelter we have no requirement. Of healing I will not speak, and our lovers must be otherwise attracted.”

“It would be absurd to disagree.”

“So why, then, do we play at hazard in just such a fashion as they do, when our hazards are of such a different character?”

Now, most of the world must know how Trout replied. For those who may be young, or provincial, I shall return to the point in good time, be assured. But for now let us resume our former narrative.

Two words must now be said concerning the games the gods play. It will be recalled that they hold converse on the meaning and purpose of such activities, and indeed what are gods, whose actions
are
meaning,
are
purpose, to do other than so discuss? Whether these interchanges reach the level of argument (that is to say, in the common sense of acute disagreement, not the scholar’s sense of brooking no disagreement) is a matter of mythopoeic interpretation, as some writers
will have the deities quarreling almost incessantly, while others have them differ only to show many sides of a single thought.

But for all this, Tri’nagore’s observation is true: while the idea of risk is by no means unknown to the gods—Adron’s Disaster, we may assume, was accounted a mischance—they do not wager in terms of the price of dinner or even the price of blood. Honor, however, is a concept they know, and how many times have we heard such mortal declarations as, “On this I stake my sacred honor,” followed by a sequence of statements that, in the gambler’s argot, hedge the bet?

And, too, the gods have a concept of place and prominence, and if they are never wrong, then still one may be more right than another (the reader is referred to the old Court entertainment
Fishes in Their Season
for a most entertaining illustration thereof).

When I first met Paarfi of Roundwood, he was at work on a retelling of the Eastern legend of the Fenarian gulyás—nosferati, whose immunity to the hostile effects of garlic lends them a distinctly tragic grandeur. This work would have occupied several volumes of text and at least two more detailing the recipes sampled by the characters during their long quest. We discussed this over our dinner (a quiet affair of some few courses—fried pork and cabbage rolls, a fish stew, a small duck, cold soup of wild cherries; the rest escape my recall), and, to my everlasting regret, I suggested that perhaps the searching out of these dishes was more Paarfi’s motivation than the ancient tale of the hungry undead. Paarfi replied that such thoughts had occurred to him as well, as might be indicated by his proposed title for the work,
Blood and Paprika
.

My regrets are due to the fact that this work seems to have been set aside, if not abandoned, and while I would for nothing be without the books we have and have promised, still the selfish promise of assisting in the historical research seems a lost thing, and all the more romantic therefore.

I could go on, but as the pressmen have been advised that
The Viscount of Adrilankha
is to be published in three volumes, so I am instructed that it is not to become four.

And now, worthy patrons, to our story. It is one generically known to mythographers as
The Gods Play at Eidolons,
and it is unusual in that it involves the entire pantheon, and shows them playing not the common
games of Orbs or Bones, but a variant on the contest of symbols known in our gambling houses as Seven-Clawed Jhereg.

As the play begins, the gods settle themselves into their circle within the Halls of Judgment—this step is always mentioned, sometimes with considerable detail of the taking of positions—and each deity receives a secret allocation of two eidolons—images of a particular type and value. Most often the types match those found in the gaming cards of this world—Swords, Orbs, Dzurs, Maidens, and suchlike. Other times they are exotic: Storms, Wounds, Songs. In a few tales the symbolism is obscured from us, though it may somewhat weaken the story to have Verra, let us say, holding the Threes of the Nameless, the Endless, and the Timeless.