The Uncounted Swing

On the western wall of the House of Count hang four thousand wires of counting beads. The House of Count is home to the neutral clerks who count every match in the Arena. These clerks are called Counters. Each wire knows the finger of one Counter. Obelus's wire was in the seventeenth row, right across from the window. From there you could see Kadrun below. Kadrun is the Arena's field of moss-grown stones. A turquoise river runs between the two Weights, the base crystals of the two teams. He was fourteen when they gave him that wire. They gave him his name the same day. Old scribes drew a small mark in the margin beside a doubtful line. Obelus was the name of that mark. “You will doubt,” Chief Counter Koronis had told him. “And we will count your doubts.” Back then Obelus had thought it was a joke.

Looking down from the window during a Swing was forbidden. A Swing is a match in the Arena. A Counter does not watch the match; he only counts the result. But that afternoon everyone was looking. Something in Kadrun was wrong. The birds were not rising from the trees. On the Dawn side, Kaedra's torn banner curled in the wind. Opposite her, before the Dusk Weight, stood Ruvok. He struck his two axes together and began a lament. Above the river was the staff of the white-haired Zahreth girl. The orb on the staff was spinning. Every step Vorgal took shook the dust on the walls of the House of Count. This was the four million four hundred seventy-one thousand three hundred thirtieth Swing. Obelus whispered the number like a prayer. He held the bead ready at his fingertip.

When the Dusk Weight cracked, a sound rose from Kadrun. It was not the sound of breaking crystal. It was deeper, a sigh from inside the stone. Obelus turned his head. In the middle lane there was a giant stone face. It was half buried in the earth. Everyone called this ancient carving the Sleeping Face. Now the Sleeping Face was opening its eyes. Slowly. Centuries of moss parted like eyelashes. From beneath, two pale turquoise lights looked out over Kadrun. They seemed to be trying to recognize a room after a long sleep.

Then everything stopped. Obelus's finger stayed on the bead. The dust drifting through the window hung in the air. Below, Kaedra's banner was frozen mid-wave. Ruvok's lament was cut off in the middle of a syllable. The river did not flow. Obelus heard his heart not beating. He needed no ears to hear it. The silence was so vast that the missing sound echoed like a scream. He could think, but he could not move. The Stillness was the time when the world once stood still. Those frozen mid-step back then are called the Stilled. Old books argued over whether the Stilled dream. In that moment Obelus knew the answer, and it frightened him.

It lasted one heartbeat. Perhaps less. Perhaps a lifetime. There was nothing to measure it with. Then his heart beat again. The dust settled. The banner finished its wave, and Kadrun roared. The Dusk Weight had fallen. The Swing was over. Obelus pushed the bead.

The bead did not slide. Obelus pushed again. The wire was taut and the bead was sound. But the bead would not move. It was as if another invisible bead sat behind it. The Counters on the nearby wires felt the same thing. Some forced their beads with their nails, some prayed. Some only stared. For eight hundred years no bead had ever stayed in place. Koronis stood in the middle of the hall. Without a word, he opened the great ledger. Then he closed it in the same silence.

That night Obelus had the watch. After the lamps went out, he sat down before the ledger. He read the last pages backwards. Dawn had won the previous Swing. The oaths had gone to Tavellin, to Gurhal and to Hesperra. An oath is a champion's pledge of loyalty to a patron. That record was correct. Obelus had counted that match himself. Below it there was one more line. The ink and the handwriting were the same. The line said Dusk had won the four million four hundred seventy-one thousand three hundred thirtieth Swing. The column of oath-holders was empty. There was only a small pendulum seal in the margin. The line's hour was exactly one hour before the Sleeping Face opened its eyes. At that hour there had been no one in Kadrun. Obelus knew this. At that hour he had been sitting at his wire, looking down at an empty Kadrun.

So that was why the bead had not slid. The Arena had not lived this Swing. But the ledger had counted it. And the Arena refused to accept that.

Obelus held the page up to the lamp. The seal looked familiar. Every clock dial in Tavellin had the same pendulum. But he had never seen one this small. The seal sat in the margin of the ledger, where no one would look. Just like the thing his own name marked: a doubtful line.

Obelus closed the ledger. His eye drifted to the top of the counting wall. Where the wires ended, old Velun numerals were carved into the stone. The Velun were an old civilization that lived before the Stillness. This number was older even than the House of Count. Nobody bothered to read it. The apprentices called it decoration. Obelus had memorized it in his first year as an apprentice. He was curious simply because no one else knew it. Now he raised the lamp and looked. The mark in the last place had changed. The carving was fresh. A thin line of stone dust still lay on the ledge beneath it. The number had gone down by one.

The count everyone could see had gone up by one. The old number had gone down by one. Obelus looked at the two of them for a long time. One was climbing, the other falling. Both stood on the same stone. Then he did something the House of Count's eight-hundred-year-old rules forbade. He tore the page from the ledger carefully, margin and all. He folded it in four and slipped it into the inner pocket of his robe. As he walked to the door, he heard a sound behind him in the empty hall. A single bead had slid on its own. Obelus did not turn to see which one.