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  They prepared the components throughout the night. Quintel stole a few hours of sleep during the morning, but Siyer continued to work without rest. By afternoon the next day they had rendered, diluted and strained the portions Huk needed.

  Siyer labeled several large flasks by month, inscribing instructions on how to portion the substance. He had mixed the drug in such a way that Huk would unknowingly taper off during the middle portion of his journey, thus extending the supply. On the return trip, however, the dosage would again increase, to ensure the warlord's continued addiction.

  “What if this is a trick,” Quintel asked. “What if Huk plans to kill you and is storing enough of the drug to sustain him until more can be made.”

  Siyer strained a large pot of liquid through a sieve and spoke while he worked.

  “If only that were true! It would be better if Huk were to create such a deceit rather than travel to meet the god,” Siyer said. “Something is happening. Ru is moving his pieces.”

  “I understand,” Quintel said. “Their conference is to engage new strategies against our people.”

  Siyer set the large pot on the table.

  “It is certainly not for social purposes,” he said.

  When finished, Siyer had Crag and two other guards load the elixir on one of the wagons.

  Chapter 8

  The entire fortress convulsed in preparation for Huk’s journey. Servants scurried about preparing clothing, food and other essentials, warriors polished their armor and sharpened their blades, blacksmiths hammered fresh shoes for the horses.

  On the day of departure, a caravan of twenty wagons and fifty horsemen formed outside the castle's northern wall with Huk's landbarge placed in the middle. A captain gave the sign to move and like a huge caterpillar, its body lunging forward in segments, the parade crawled east to meet the god.

  After the caravan had left, activity at the fortress slowed to a stroll. Most of the Huk's council had departed with him, leaving a handful of lieutenants to administrate. Even Crag took the opportunity to collect as much sleep as possible while on duty. Quintel and Siyer were left with nothing to do. To get them out of their cell, Siyer would fabricate a need to collect herbs or use the downstairs kitchens. Since no one was sure what he and Quintel did from day to day, their trickery remained undiscovered.

  They played the game often during this slow time and Quintel found himself growing more bored than ever. After playing for several years, he still had not won a single match. Although his skills had improved enough to offer Siyer a worthy challenge, the inevitable outcome prevented any competitive enjoyment.

  Then one afternoon in the middle of their fourth game of the day, Quintel noticed something different. He had struggled to an even position and his next move looked strong. But as his hand reached for the piece, he noticed another line of attack. The grids of the board seemed to rise and present a new angle which at first appeared weak, but as he let his mind probe the possibilities he saw more. The harder he concentrated on the line the deeper his mind pierced into the folds of the game. The outside world faded from view. He seemed to sit in a vast emptiness occupied only by himself and the pieces on the board. And there was something else. Something within his mind — a spreading warmth of understanding; the emergence of a new perspective. With blunt insight, he realized the secret of the game: it was not designed to be won.

  He moved the piece to begin the discovered attack. As if it were the only possibility open to him, Siyer gave the anticipated response.

  Quintel's depth of concentration melted away common patterns and opened possibilities previously unknown. He saw the game differently from the thousands of times he had played it before. Although the options of movement were infinite, a single line would appear and leave no room for others. It seemed the game told him where to move next. He played without consideration, following the leads that materialized before him.

  Images separate from the game entered his mind like visiting dreams. They were disjointed fragments of events he had not experienced, places he had never been and people he did not know. Their presence did not distract from his play but rather seemed to be a part of it. Every move opened another gateway and channeled his thoughts like a river.

  He knew where Siyer would move many turns in advance, just as he knew where he needed to move to focus the shifting images rushing through his mind. Each turn brought a different focus to his thoughts, a different concept to consider.

  After a few more moves, Quintel realized that the images were not coming from the game, but emanated from his opponent.

  Somehow, Siyer was speaking to him through the movement of the pieces.

  He did not react to the realization, afraid the sensation would be compromised. Instead, he followed the course mapped before him, moving toward an inevitable conclusion. As the end of the game approached, his thoughts had taken wild, hallucinatory tangents. A thousand images stormed past his senses in blazing visions of emotions and perceptions. When the last move found its square, a clear, single message appeared in the position of the pieces.

  It was a question, naked in its simplicity.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Quintel took his hand from the cylinder and realized the game was his; he had reached the opposite end of the board and divided Siyer's pieces. He stared at the pattern with its voiceless message ringing clear.

  The game was not a game, it was not a puzzle to be solved. It was a language; a language beyond words. A language of the spirit realm.

  The mist disappeared from the surroundings and the cell returned. His heart raced and blood roared in his ears.

  Siyer stared at him, knowing.

  “So now you see,” he said.

  “Incredible,” was the only word to find Quintel’s lips. “Incredible.”

  “Would you like to play another?” Siyer asked, but Quintel was already setting up the pieces.

  They played again. This time the images did not come in screaming shards, but in concise phrases dictated by the position at hand, carved from the possibilities buried in the grid. As pieces fell from play, ideas ended and new ones began. Entire epic narratives appeared and vanished with every move.

  “Words are the path tracing the side of a mountain, they show a small band of the truth,” Siyer said with the movement of a few pieces. “The game reveals the mountain as a whole -- as a man sees it upon the horizon.”

  And so, Quintel began to learn. With the aid of the game, Siyer explained all that had happened before, binding events and concepts that mere words could never contain.

  First, he elaborated upon his own fate, explaining how he had come to be chosen by the god and later imprisoned by Huk. He showed his existence in Vaer as a boy, carefree, intelligent with ambitions to be a warrior.

  But with the shift of few pieces, the tale changed as the god intervened. Siyer and others throughout the centuries had been selected to assist Mankind in battling Ru. Each had served for a time and later passed his or her responsibility on to another. All had held a unique skill for the task before them. Siyer had been selected to usher in the last of the Chosen, to provide instruction to the final human who would receive the touch of the god.

  That was where Quintel entered the tale.

  Quintel was to be unique even among the Chosen. He was the final answer to Ru's domination of the world. While Yuul was not powerful enough to incarnate in this realm, the god could enter a being who was already here, if the individual had been properly prepared.

  If all went as planned, soon Quintel would go to a secret place and bond with the god, allowing the deity to enter his body, to see through his eyes, touch with his hands, live through his breath. Siyer moved a piece, noting that the outcome of the bonding was uncertain. Nothing of such design had been attempted before. Quintel could die.

  Such unknowns did not trouble him, Quintel answered. He had been raised to despise Sirian Ru. An opportunity to accept such power made his blood rush with excitement. He woul
d not shirk from the task. He would answer Yuul’s call.

  Siyer explained that his ingrained philosophy was the reason Quintel had been selected. Only an Abanshi soul could counterbalance the negative aspects the god would experience once incarnated.

  For a month they played the game in this frenzied manner, using both hands to move their pieces, taking turns winning depending on who initiated the conversation. After hundreds of games Quintel began noticing other strange side effects of play. The game did more than open supernatural channels of communication-- it changed the currents of his thoughts and gave him new ways to see the entire world. It changed the way his mind worked.

  An intense awareness of his surroundings crept into his daily life. His physical senses had become acute. With a degree of concentration, he could hear the scraping tread of an ant crawling across the window ledge, or smell the light of day warm the stones of his cell. In a crude fashion, he even sensed the other occupants of the fortress milling about, fulfilling their daily lives. They were globs of life moving beyond the walls and under the floors. Maintaining such levels of awareness left him exhausted, yet he was compelled to attain them.

  He told Siyer of these strange perceptions.

  “They are only one of the many effects of the game,” Siyer explained. “There are others, but you cannot feel them. They occur in the realm of your spirit.”

  “Are these effects harmful?” Quintel asked.

  Siyer considered the question.

  “For millennia, men have sought higher perceptions and greater awareness of their world,” he began. “Some have pursued this goal through study and meditation, others chose drugs and artificial methods. What you have is what they sought. It is not damaging, yet you will never be as you were before.”

  “But I have followed none of those paths,” Quintel said.

  Siyer nodded.

  “The game is a shortcut,” he explained. “It bridges the route to enlightenment and heightens awareness of the physical world. But the results are fleeting.”

  “How fleeting?” Quintel asked, fearful of losing his newfound abilities.

  “It depends on the individual,” Siyer said. “But any powers you possess will be gone within a year, unless the god intervenes.”

  Disappointment washed over Quintel's features. His heightened senses made the world pulse with color and music.

  “I can tell by your reaction it is time to move our lessons to another level,” Siyer said. “Get the game and set up the pieces.”

  Quintel brought out the wooden pieces. With the practice of a thousand games he arranged them on the board. When finished, he boldly made his first move.

  Siyer did not lift a digit to respond.

  After a moment, Quintel looked up.

  “What?” he asked, but Siyer did not answer.

  Quintel sat up and crossed his arms, contemplating the meaning of Siyer's refusal to move. Siyer was trying to tell him something. This was the lesson.

  After several more seconds, Quintel shook his head.

  “I do not understand.”

  Siyer sighed with mock impatience.

  “Play the game without the pieces.”

  “How?”

  Siyer offered a stern look. “Just try.”

  Quintel closed his eyes and tried to visualize the board. He had played in his mind before, but this was different. After a few minutes he realized he was doing nothing but imagining possible games in his head, there was no bridge to Siyer.

  “Don't just picture yourself moving the pieces,” Siyer advised. “Rather, seek to attain the feeling you hold when the channels are open. Move beyond your senses. The pieces are only blocks of wood. They do not command you. They cannot restrain you.”

  In the way a few drops of rain precede a deluge, Quintel began to absorb the world around him without depending upon the game.

  At first it was very difficult without the assistance of the pieces to guide his thoughts. But as he relaxed into the effort, he sensed, on the horizon of his perceptions, Siyer's presence growing clear. As he remembered the sensations of entering the experience, progress became easier.

  Although his eyes were closed, he saw Siyer sitting across from him and sensed the tides of his mind. He could hear the stone walls hum and the air against his skin felt alive. He captured Siyer’s thoughts like butterflies, but was too enchanted to respond with his own. The experience was different without the game; less restricted, but also less coherent. Lacking a boundary, his awareness floated freely, hearing Siyer's message, but not comprehending him against the landscape of a thousand other color-spangled ideas. After several minutes of drifting, he felt Siyer become impatient.

  Then the Vaerian tore through the gentle chaos with a shout of focused thought.

  “Listen! This is the final step of your training; you must remain focused. You must control your impulse to roam.”

  Once contact was made, Quintel understood. He pushed out the clumps of mental debris bumping about the room and reeled in the narrow strand of communication cast by Siyer. With the connection complete, a strong, steady pulse found the rhythm of his heart and he settled into discourse with his mentor.

  “Inside this sphere of awareness, you control all the things that are you,” Siyer said without words. “Hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue cannot burden you. You must still eat, breathe and drink to stay alive, but now you control the quantity of each element your body requires. A corner of bread could keep you alive for weeks. A cup of water will sustain you much longer than a man. You are the master of your own limits.”

  As Siyer relayed that concept, Quintel became aware of his own organic being. He sensed the currents of his mind changing. His body was a vehicle; his spirit, an observing passenger. He felt the weight of his muscles, bones and blood. He felt the burning fire of Life inspire his heartbeat and fill his lungs with breath. His body seethed with organic determination. Where the sterile boundaries of his invisible soul ended, the water, stone, fire and wind of his physical body writhed in filthy celebration of its own existence.

  “I see myself,” Quintel said aloud. “I see what I am.”

  Siyer withdrew his link with Quintel. The cell, once crowded with thought, sound and color, returned to its previous condition. Quintel's revelation passed to memory.

  “That is all I have to teach you,” Siyer said.

  Chapter 9

  Quintel was gathering herbs with Siyer outside the fortress wall when he saw the charging rider coming up the road.

  A watchman on the wall also saw the horseman and called down to the gatekeeper. With a grinding moan, the heavy gate parted to let him enter.

  The rider dismounted and spoke a single sentence to the guards.

  “Huk returns in three days.”

  Quintel looked at Siyer, but the old man pretended not to hear the news and continued pulling plants from the ground and knocking dirt from their roots.

  Since Quintel had deciphered the conundrum of the game, he held a new view of the world. He could control his hunger and amplify his endurance at will. He could detect the approach of people before they entered the boundaries of his senses.

  Attaining freedom had ceased to worry him. He knew it was only a matter of time before they escaped. With Huk returning, he suspected that time was short.

  Four guards and a lieutenant rode to the edge of the forest to summon Siyer. The officer told him that Huk was ill and would require aid immediately upon his arrival.

  Siyer offered to meet Huk with the drugs half way, but they refused, saying the warlord had commanded against it.

  “That is not good,” Siyer told Quintel as they walked back to the fortress. “He hides something.”

  “A weapon?” Quintel asked.

  Siyer nodded.“That is my guess. I believe the god has provided Huk with new technologies to battle our people. We must find out what they are.”

  They had been prepared for the warlord's return for many weeks. Doses of the drug had been mi
xed and stored in adequate, but not self-threatening, quantities.

  “At least we know he is ill,” Quintel said after they had returned to their cell. “Our deception has lasted.”

  “True,” Siyer said. “But it also means he is running out of the substance, otherwise his health would be good. Meeting him halfway would have eased my anxiety.”

  On schedule, Huk returned to the fortress at the end of the week. His caravan of wagons and soldiers waited behind a low hill in the forest, concealing their ranks while Huk's ornate coach entered the gate. He arrived in the middle of the night. Siyer and Quintel were at the entrance, waiting to meet him.

  “I am starting to feel better, Vaerian,” Huk said as Siyer filled a small flask with the herbal potion. “I was beginning to think that it was your medicine making me ill.”

  “No, your apparent improvement in health is a very bad sign,” Siyer countered. “It precedes the final stages of the disease. We must saturate your body with the herbs.”

  Although something that might have been suspicion flickered in Huk's eyes, he took the flask from Siyer. His traveling supply had run out three weeks ago, and he missed his medications.

  Siyer dared not question the warlord about his meeting with the god. It was obvious Huk was hiding something. Quintel did not need special powers to figure that out.Quintel discerned some facts just from the energies of Huk's presence. He sensed anticipation – excitement -- in the warlord's spirit. Caution was there, and something else.

  Fear?

  “I brought you and the Abanshi a small gift back from my journey,” Huk said draining the flask with one swallow.

  “Oh?” Siyer said.

  “A dozen Abanshi assassins attacked our encampment two weeks ago,” Huk said. “We captured four of them.”

  Siyer refused to give Huk a reaction. The warlord was baiting him. He wanted Siyer to know something.

  “These you won't be able to save.”

  Huk dismissed them. Siyer and Quintel returned to their cell. The news of his captured countrymen swayed Quintel, but not as it would have months ago. He knew he could not help them.