R. Scott Baker - The Prince of Nothing 01 by R. Scott Baker

Author:R. Scott Baker [Baker, R. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-12T13:38:48.350000+00:00

Xinemus snorted in the bullish way he often used to express disapproval. “Your move, Akka.”

Achamian searched Xinemus’s face, but the Marshal seemed thoroughly absorbed by the geometries of piece and possibility across the plate. Achamian had agreed to the game knowing it would drive the others away, and so allow him to tell Xinemus about what had happened in Sumna. But he’d forgotten how benjuka tended to bring out the worst in them. Every time they played benjuka, they bickered like harem eunuchs.

Benjuka was a relic, a survivor of the end of the world. It had been played in the courts of Tryse, Atrithau, and Mehtsonc before the Apocalypse, much as it was studied in the gardens of Carythusal, Nenciphon, and Momemn now. But what distinguished benjuka was not its age. In general, there was a troubling affinity between games and life, and nowhere was this affinity more striking, or more disturbing, than in benjuka.

Like life, games were governed by rules. But unlike life, games were utterly defined by those rules. The rules were the game, and if one played by different rules, then one simply played a different game. Since a fixed framework of rules determined the meaning of every move as a move, games possessed a clarity that made life seem a drunken brawl by comparison. The proprieties were indubitable, the permutations secure; only the outcome was shrouded.

The cunning of benjuka lay in the absence of this fixed framework. Rather than providing an immutable ground, the rules of benjuka were yet another move within the game, yet another piece to be played. And this made benjuka the very image of life, a game of baffling complexities and near poetic subtleties. Other games could be chronicled as shifting patterns of pieces and number-stick results, but benjuka gave rise to histories, and whatever possessed history possessed the very structure of the world. Some, it was said, had bent themselves to the benjuka plate and lifted their heads as prophets. Achamian was not among them.

He pondered the plate, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Xinemus taunted him with a nasty chuckle. “Always so dour when you play benjuka.”

“It’s a wretched game.”

“You say that only because you try too hard.”

“No. I say that because I lose.”

But Xinemus was right. The Abenjukala, a classic text on benjuka from Ceneian times, began, “Where games measure the limits of intellect, benjuka measures the limits of soul.” The complexities of benjuka were such that a player could never intellectually master the plate and so force another to yield. Benjuka, as the anonymous author put it, was like love. One could never force another to love. The more one grasped for it, the more elusive it became. Benjuka likewise punished a grasping heart. Where other games required industrious cunning, benjuka demanded something more. Wisdom, perhaps.

With an air of chagrin, Achamian moved the only stone among his silver pieces—a replacement for a piece stolen, or so Xinemus claimed, by one of his slaves. Another aggravation. Though pieces were

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