A Game of Cards

The man was seated in the back of one of the wagons. I met him during one of the caravan's many stops. We were passing through an area of the Desert where we frequently came across massive shards of pottery littering the sand - a wagon-sized hand here, half a gargantuan nose there, jagged spikes of ceramic sticking out of the sand all around. It was as if a giant terra cotta army had shattered where it stood.

The gafl could have climbed over these areas, but they were strangely reluctant to go into them, and the wagons were somewhat less maneuverable. We didn't try to cross the shards. When we came across a patch of them, Tirakhai simply stopped the caravan and had everyone look the other direction until it went away.

It was during one of these interludes, with everyone facing resolutely toward the back of the caravan, that I got out to stretch my legs and came across the man in the back of the wagon. He was seated on a rickety wooden chair, leaning his shirtsleeved arms on a large trunk as if it was a table. Another chair stood, unoccupied, on the other side of the trunk. He tipped his hat to me as I walked by.

"Good day to you."

He spoke perfect English, with a rough, inward-turned accent that I couldn't quite identify. When he found that I spoke the same language, he beamed from ear to pointed ear and set a small wooden box on the table.

"Would you care for a game of cards?"

As a rule, I avoid gambling; I am not a professional, and if I have a desperate need to rid myself of money, I know more rewarding ways of doing so. The man was quick to assure me that he felt much the same way. He simply wanted someone to play with. The game he had was a complex one, and it was rare to find someone who knew the rules or was willing to learn them.

That was enough to catch my interest. I took the other chair, and he dealt the cards.

The deck had eight suits: hearts, diamonds, moons, spoons, arrows, horseshoes, gears, and frogs. Each suit had numbers up to 12, plus a few face cards - which were different in each suit. Hearts was the only one with the Jack-Queen-King arrangement with which I'm familiar. Spoons had Chef, Scullery, and Dog; Moons had Comet, Deer, and Flute; Gears had Golem, Gremlin, and Grapplemouse, whatever that is. Overall, there were slightly more than twice as many cards as in the deck I'm used to.

We started with only four spots on the table where we could put cards - House, Yard, Oubliette, and Forecastle - but these grew steadily more complex as we started using pairs and quartets of cards, flipping cards upside-down to reverse their effects, adding little satellite clusters and linking them together with more cards still. The table soon grew to look like some sort of strange mechanical diagram.

Some cards we left face-down and never revealed. These were called Turnips - possibly based on the Desert legend that one turnip in a million is filled with gemstones - and they gained effects of their own based on the very uncertainty of what they were.

The man kept introducing more rules. Every time I thought I understood the entire game, something new would show up. Many of the rules seemed to be based on songs and rhymes and obscure poetry.

"Five threes." He laid down a handful of threes and turned them sideways, so that the numbers looked - if you were generous - like birds in flight. "Five ravens. Five is for silver, or sickness if you use the other rhyme, so if I have the Physician" - he did; it was one of the face cards for the Horseshoes suit - "I can rescue a card from my Oubliette."

I have no idea whether he was telling me existing rules or simply making them up as he went. I didn't particularly care. The reasoning behind them was fascinating and poetic - and as I've said before, regardless of whether I win or lose, I always enjoy a well-played game.

To no one's surprise, the man eventually won. Laying down a final trio of aces (three houses, which formed a village and completed the road between his Yard and Forecastle), he demonstrated the line of numerically ordered cards he'd formed across his side of the table, stretching from the single two in his House to the Miser of Diamonds ensconced in his Forecastle. I was so surprised that I actually applauded. I had begun to doubt that either of us would be able to complete the Procession; of the six or seven possible ways of winning, it sounded like one of the most challenging.

I congratulated the man on his victory and, perhaps somewhat late, introduced myself. He said he couldn't tell me his name. The last time he'd let it out, it had bitten three people and stolen an entire set of silverware before he caught it again.

This was far from the most unusual introduction I've heard, and I assured him that I didn't mind. We thanked each other warmly for the game. The sun was setting by then, and we were surrounded by the creaks of wagons and the soft, thumping shuffle of the gafl. I hadn't noticed when the caravan had started moving again.

During all my time with the caravan, that was the only time I ever saw the man with the cards. I wish I had thought to ask him the name of the game. I'd like to look it up sometime and find out if it exists anywhere but in that little wooden box.

Departure

The gafl have apparently eaten their fill, ballooning to three times their previous size, so the caravan packed up and left Denemat this morning. I was surprised to discover how many of the people I've seen around the village are actually passengers on the caravan. Denemat's population, apparently, is even smaller than I thought.

I went back to say goodbye to Fenbit and Hasisha before we left. They were sitting in the shade of their acacia again, though the tree had moved to the other side of their house. Perhaps it wanted a change of scenery. They gave me a package to deliver to their grandson, who apparently lives in a remote town called Snarkish. If the caravan happens to come across the town on its journey, I'll deliver the package myself; if not, I'll give it to someone else before I leave the Desert. It will find its destination eventually.

The package seems to weigh almost half what I do, which is why they're not sending it by postbird. The postbirds refuse to deliver anything that weighs more than they do. Heavy mail has to take its chances with foot travel. Inhabitants of the Golden Desert are used to waiting months or years for their packages to arrive.

The train of wagons had already lined up at the outskirts of the village when I arrived. Everyone was loading things aboard. The merchants in the caravan are transporting a wide variety of cargos. One entire wagon is full of parsnips and munchmelons; another holds cages of pahareets, jazz birds, and salamanders. Several harried-looking potter's apprentices were shifting towering stacks of ceramic tiles, glazed with brightly colored butterflies and sheep and squid and peacocks, and wrapping them in thick woolen blankets before loading them into crates. Further on, a team of the caravan's largest and strongest lifters were carrying heavy chests reinforced with iron bands and massive padlocks. I don't know what was inside them. Most of the lifters were samovals, who tend to be larger and stronger than average; there was also an upright elephant with painted tusks, a few of the masked people I've glimpsed occasionally in the Desert, and a pair of twins who looked almost human, aside from the armadillo scales across their backs. They lifted chests that were larger than I am, and must have weighed three times as much, without any visible effort.

A team of men and women in white robes were taking great care in loading crates onto one of the wagons. A few of the crates were still open, and I could see glimpses of complex machinery inside, all gleaming brass and polished lenses. One of the team - an avian woman with jet-black feathers, who was panting in the heat despite the hood shading her face - gave me an enthusiastic explanation when she stopped to rest.

"Is for, eh, measure the sand, yes?" She fanned herself with one feathery arm. "Is for… Look in sand, see what is before. Sand now is small pieces, but before, maybe is castle, or mountain, or glass, yes?" She pointed to a crate where an elaborate series of lenses sat, half wrapped in cloth, gleaming in the sunlight. "Look with this, see castle, mountain, glass. What sand is before."

I'm still not entirely sure what she meant. Some unusual variety of archaeology, perhaps? The equipment was nearly all packed, so a demonstration was out of the question. My Amrat, unfortunately, is nowhere near as good as her English, and I'm no geologist. Most of what she said went completely over my head. She didn't seem disappointed with my incomprehension; she just shrugged and smiled, a slight rumpling of the feathers at the corners of her beak. "Eh. When you maybe learn more Amrat, I tell you again. Yes?"

One of the wagons has been cleared out and altered to hold a single passenger. Normally, a caravan would not allow this; space is too limited to waste an entire wagon on one person. (I will be sharing a wagon with five other travelers and their luggage, as well as a shipment of assorted fossil shells, and sleeping on top of my luggage.) However, from what I've heard, this passenger is not only wealthy enough to pay for a whole wagon; he is also aquatic. The alterations to the wagon were mostly to make it watertight. The wagon bed has been sealed - I assume with tar, or snail glue, or something of that sort - and filled with river water. The canvas roof has been replaced with a silk canopy nailed down tightly on all sides. This, apparently, will hold moisture inside the wagon and keep the water from evaporating too quickly.

I don't know the passenger's name, but I've heard that he's from a wealthy family of river merchants from the Scalps. How he got all the way out here, I have no idea. I hope he doesn't mind being stuck inside a wagon for the next month or so.

The caravan set off shortly after noon. This was later than it was scheduled to leave - I could hear Tirakhai's voice from one end of the wagon train to the other, booming at steadily higher volumes the later it got - but it's nearly impossible to organize this many people, much less to do it on time. I'm impressed we only left a few hours late.

The gafl handlers had been maneuvering their charges into position all morning, checking harnesses and providing a few last snacks before departure. They steered the gafl with a sort of percussive code, thumping out quick rhythms on the shaggy hides that told the creatures to stop, go forward, turn left, and so on.

I managed to find a good place to sit when we left; it was a seat near the front of one of the central wagons, where I had a good view of the whole caravan. It was quite a sight. All the gafl started nearly at the same time, lurching forward with surprising speed as they stretched and compressed their massive bodies. Hundreds of soft feet hit the sand at once. The sound was like a pillow fight of operatic proportions.

The rest of the day's journey was largely uneventful. The wagons slid over the dunes fairly smoothly, though they seemed to find more bumps and pebbles than I would have thought possible in what looked like perfectly smooth sand. The springs on their shafts at least kept them from sharing the gafl's lurching gait.

There was always someone singing. Over the course of the day, I must have heard dozens of melodies from one wagon or another. Karlishek identified a few of them for me when he happened to be nearby; one was a love song, another a prayer, a third a comical ballad about a man who built a house out of sand.

The sun set an hour or two ago. The wagons are currently arranged in a circle around a large campfire. There is little wood in the Golden Desert, so we're burning gafl dung. The handlers collected enough over the course of the day to make a sizable fire. Thankfully, it has almost no smell at all. The gafl themselves smell strongly of rosemary right now, as their handlers have been rubbing the herb into their fur to keep away parasites. The gafl seem to like the smell; they stuff their faces into each other's fur and sniff happily every time we stop. Most of them are sleeping at the moment. Their silhouettes are like grassy hills in the dark, rising and falling slowly with their breathing.

All the passengers who are still awake sit around the fire. Supper was a bewildering array of shared food, contributed by everyone, followed by an hour or so of songs and storytelling. I missed most of the stories, but I was able to at least hum along with the songs.

By now, everyone is quiet. Most of the passengers have wandered off to their wagons to sleep. The few who remain sit around the crackling fire, writing letters or journals, or playing games with boards and decks of cards that I've never seen before. It's peaceful.

The moon and grandmoon are high in the sky above us, wearing the campfire smoke like veils. There must be a million stars around them. Bats and night birds fly overhead, black on black, little fluttering silhouettes that croon and squeak softly to each other. I have a bed of sorts set up in the wagon, but I might just sleep outdoors tonight.

After all, it's not as if it's likely to rain.

Rikanta

Having only arrived in Rikanta two nights ago, I wasn't ready to leave just yet, so I spent today wandering around the town. It's a beautiful place. The old stone gives it a solid, peaceful feel that is hard to find outside of old ruins. It's a town that has settled comfortably into its place. I walked through the streets, following the shade, watching carts roll by and children play elaborately drawn jumping games in the dust, admiring the way the creeping hieroglyphs twined their way around the architecture - though I was careful not to lean too long against any inscripted walls. I didn't want them rubbing off.

Rikanta is a small town. Walk three blocks east, and you reach the river; it's too shallow here for boat travel, but there is the occasional tumbledown dock where people sit to fish during the long, drowsy afternoons. Walk three blocks west, and you come out into farmland, shady orchards and drought-wheat fields where trained shrews scour the crops for particularly succulent insects.

Perhaps "blocks" is the wrong word, though. The town's layout has nothing so regular as that. Inside this narrow patch of land is a maze of twisty little streets that seems far too complex to fit within such a small space. I wandered all day, and I'm fairly sure I was never on the same street twice. Fortunately, there's a tall clock tower in the center of the town, so I could never get entirely lost.

The clock tower is made of the same pilfered castle stones as the rest of the town. It has no clock. When I asked the group of elderly men playing board games in the town square,* they said that the town will get a clock someday. Eventually. When they find one they like. One of the men - who seemed to be winning his game of Hens and Comets, if his opponent's expression was any indication - said that his great-grandfather used to say the same thing.

People in the Golden Desert are rarely in a hurry about anything.



* There is always a group of elderly men playing board games in the town square. This is a universal constant. If it's not the town square, then it's the general store, or perhaps one of the more neatly-kept parks. No matter how far you travel, they are always there. The only things that change are the language and the board games.

If I ever settle down in one place, I hope to be one of them someday.

Cats and Riddles

While in the Railway Regions last year, I had my first encounter with a cathomar. Don't worry - I'm still quite alive and in possession of all my limbs. In fact, as near-death experiences go, it was surprisingly entertaining.

Cathomars are some of the only dangerous animals still common in the Railway Regions. (There is the occasional carnivorous sheep, but they're relatively rare, and most are perfectly safe if they're trained correctly.) Wolves avoid anything that looks civilized, as intelligent creatures like humans are too unpredictable for comfort. The same goes for bears and dreadgoats. Most of the other large carnivores - the intelligent ones, like saberclaws and serrated raptors - have become somewhat civilized themselves; most of them live in towns these days. Once in a while, even the most dedicated predators like to get their meat by paying the butcher for it. The solitary ones, who still prefer to stay out in the forests and hunt, see travelers as sources of conversation rather than food. I've met several raptors who have trampled out of the forest, all muscles and fangs and ripping talons, only to lick the blood off of their claws and politely challenge me to a game of chess. (They're usually quite good at it.)

Even dragons have become relatively peaceful.* Their pillaging days are long gone. They've found that it's easier - if slightly less fun - to pay farmers to raise prey for them.** Half the cows and sheep in the Railway Regions belong to dragons. They acquire their gold (or other expensive collections) from estates of well-managed farms, or put it in banks and buy more gold with the interest. Business, it seems, is more profitable than piracy. Their only feuds are private ones with other dragons.

Cathomars are different. They have no compunctions about eating anything or anyone. Any animal that is not a Cathomar is food.*** The ones that talk are simply more fun.

This one was a tom - sleek, enormous, and fairly old, judging by the size of his fangs. They were nearly as long as my arms. The Train had been taking its time in coming, and I had decided - perhaps foolishly - to try the footpaths that pass for roads in the Railway Regions instead. Now I know why people generally avoid them. The cathomar glided silently out of the woods as I was walking and sat his sand-colored sleekness down neatly in front of me. He looked about twice my height, sitting down, and was slightly wider than the path I was on.

A fly buzzed near his shoulder. Without looking at it, without twitching a single unnecessary muscle, he flicked his tail up and swatted it into the trees.

"Good morning," he purred. "You're not as well-fed as I'd like, but you look educated. What will it be?"

Cathomars are quite polite when they catch intelligent prey. Creatures that can talk are much more entertaining than ones that can't. Instead of killing them immediately, the cathomars will challenge them to a contest of the prey's choice: speed, strength, or riddle. (Technically, this challenge applies even to non-speaking prey; anything that runs away has obviously chosen the contest of speed, and anything a cathomar catches has obviously lost.) If you lose, the cathomar will eat you. If you win, it will leave you alone, forever. Cathomars have excellent memories for faces and always keep their word. If you beat one, you will never need to worry about that cathomar again - only all the other ones.

Most people avoid the first two contests, as the cathomars always win. Only a giant or an exceptionally muscular samoval has much hope at winning a contest of strength, and if you could win a race, the cathomar probably wouldn't have caught up and challenged you in the first place. Nearly everyone chooses the riddles.

Fortunately, I spent several weeks on my first trip to the Railway Regions researching obscure riddles - and coming up with a few of my own - just in case I ever ran into a cathomar. (That was one thing that Plack probably needn't have worried about.) I followed tradition and chose the contest of riddles. In fact, cathomars are no better than anyone else at riddles (thank goodness); they just enjoy them. They could live entirely on non-speaking animals and never go hungry. Intelligent prey is just more fun. Creatures that don't talk are good to eat, but creatures that do talk are good to eat and possibly entertaining as well.

Numerous people have called cathomars psychopaths. This is not entirely correct. They're not insane; they're merely wild. The fact that they can talk doesn't change that. Consciences are only normal for civilized creatures, and cathomars - for all their cleverness and elegant manners - are anything but civilized.

I would love to tell you the riddles we asked each other, but I'd rather not spread them (and their answers) any further than I can help. The cathomar used a variation on the old egg riddle, easily guessed, but that's all I'll give away. You never know when you might need a riddle no one's heard before. Suffice it to say that I won the contest. When the Cathomar finally gave up, lashing his tail and rumbling, I told him the answer to my last riddle. He stopped and stared at me for a moment; then he threw back his head and roared. I thought he was angry at first, but eventually realized he was laughing.

"Very good, meatling," he eventually said, still sneezing with subsiding laughter. "Very good indeed. You have won the game and your life. Go run off and do whatever it is you herbivores do." I happen to be an omnivore, but I thought it unwise to correct him.

"And come back to visit me!" he roared as I walked away, trying very hard not to run. "We'll see if I beat you next time!"

Perhaps I will. It's always a delight to see a game played well. If the stakes are low enough, it doesn't matter whether it's played well by you or your opponent. Losing to a worthy adversary can be as satisfying as winning. It's rare to find anyone who understands that. That was not the case in this game, of course, as I had a rather personal interest in winning, but that couldn't be helped.

Perhaps next time.



* They are not tame. If you call them tame, quite a lot of them are still likely to eat you. "Relatively peaceful" doesn't mean you can insult a dragon and expect to live.

** They pay with Train tickets, of course, not actual coins. Few dragons will willingly part with anything metal.

*** Except llamas.