One of the men of the party of Cos which had now returned to the stage stood on the table of the game, the yellow Home Stone in his grasp. He lifted it to the crowd. Men began to swarm upon the stage. The guards could no longer restrain them. I saw Centius of Cos lifted to the shoulders of men. He lifted his arms to the crowd, the sleeves of the player's robes falling back on his shoulders. Standards and pennons of Cos appeared as if from nowhere. On the height of the rim of the amphitheater a man was lifting the standard of Cos, waving it to the crowds in the fields and streets below.

The stage was a melee of jubilant partisans.

I could not even hear the shouting of the thousands outside the amphitheater. It would later be said the Sardar itself shook with sound.

"Cos! Cos! Cos!" I heard, like a great drumming, like thunderous waves breaking on stone shores.

I struggled to keep my place on the tier.

Pieces were being torn away from the great board. One sleeve of the robe of Centius of Cos had been torn away from his arm.

He waved to the crowds.

"Centius! Centius! Centius!" I heard. Soldiers of Cos lifted spears again and again. "Centius! Cos!" they cried. "Centius! Cos!"

I saw the silvered hair of Centius of Cos, unkempt now in the broiling crowd. He reached toward the man on the table who held aloft the yellow Home Stone. The man pressed it into his hands.

There was more cheering.

Reginald of Ti was attempting to quiet the crowds. Then he resigned himself to futility. The tides of emotion must take their course.

Centius of Cos held, clutched, in his hand, the yellow Home Stone. He looked about in the crowd, on the stage, as though he sought someone, but there was only the crowd, surgent and roiling in its excitement and revels.

"Cos! Centius! Cos! Centius!"

I had lost fourteen hundred tarns of gold. Yet I did not regret the loss nor did it disturb me in the least. Who would not cheerfully trade a dozen such fortunes to witness one such game.

"Centius! Cos! Centius! Cos!"

I had, in my own lifetime, seen Centius of Cos and Scormus of Ar play.

On the shoulders of men., amidst shouting and the upraised standards and pennons of Cos I saw silver-haired Centius of Cos carried from the stage.

Men were reluctant to leave the amphitheater. I made my way toward one of the exits. Behind me I could hear hundreds of men singing the anthem of Gas.

I was well pleased that I had come to the Sardar.

It was late now in the evening of that day on which Centius of Cos and Scormus of Ar had met in the great amphitheater. There seemed little that was discussed in the fair that night save the contest of the early afternoon.

"It was a flawed and cruel game," Centius of Cos was reported as having said.

How could he speak so of the masterpiece which we had witnessed?

It was one of the brilliancies in the history of Kaissa.

"I had hoped," had said Centius of Cos, "that together Scormus and I might have constructed something worthy of the beauty of Kaissa. But I succumbed to the temptation of victory."

Centius of Cos, it was generally understood, was a strange fellow.

"It was the excitement, the press, the enthusiasm of the crowds," said Centius of Cos. "I was weak. I had determined to honor Kaissa but, on the first move, I betrayed her. I saw, suddenly, in considering the board what might be done. I did it, and followed its lure. In retrospect I am saddened. I chose not Kaissa but merciless, brutal conquest. I am sad."

But any reservations which might have troubled the reflections of the master of Cos did not disturb those of his adherents and countrymen. The night at the fair was one of joy and triumph for the victory of Cos and her allies.

His response to Ubara's Spearman to Ubara's Spearman five, sequential, in its continuation, was now entitled the Telnus Defense, from the city of his birth, the capital and chief port of the island of Cos. Men discussed it eagerly. It was being played in dozens of variations that very night on hundreds of boards. In the morning there would be countless analyses and annotations of the game available.

On the hill by the amphitheater where sat the tent of Centius of Cos there was much light and generous feasting. Torches abounded. Tables were strewn about and sheets thrown upon the ground. Free tarsk and roast bosk were being served, and Sa-Tarna bread and Ta wine, from the famed Ta grapes of the Cosian terraces. Only Centius of Cos, it was said, did not join in the feasting. He remained secluded in the tent studying by the light of a small lamp a given position in Kaissa, one said to have occurred more than a generation ago in a game between Ossius of Tabor, exiled from Teletus, and Philemon of Asperiche, a cloth worker.

On the hill by the amphitheater, where sat the tent of the party of Ar, there was little feasting or merriment. Scormus of Ar, it was said, was not in that tent. After the game he had left the amphitheater. He had gone to the tent. He was not there now. No one knew where he had gone. Behind him he had left a Kaissa board, its kit of pieces, and the robes of the player.

I turned my thoughts from Centius of Cos and Scormus of Ar. I must now think of returning to Port Kar.

There was little now to hold me at the fair. Overhead, with some regularity, I saw tarns streaking from the fair, many with tarn baskets slung beneath them, men and women returning to their cities. More than one caravan, too, was being harnessed. My own tarn was at a cot, where I had rented space for him.

I thought that I would leave the fair tonight. There seemed little point now in remaining at the fair.

I thought of the ship of Tersites, its high prow facing toward the world's end. That unusual, mighty ship would soon be supplied and fitted. It could not yet see. Its eyes had not yet been painted. This must be done. It would then be ready to seek the sea and, beyond it, the world's end.

I was troubled as I thought of the great ship. I was troubled as I thought of the world's end. I was not confident of the design of the ship. I thought I might rather ply toward the horizon beckoning betwixt Cos and Tyros in the Dorna or the small, swift Tesephone.

Tersites, it was clear, was mad. Samos thought him, too, however, a genius.

Oddly, for there seemed no reason for it, I found myself thinking, in a mentally straying moment, of the herd of Tancred, and its mysterious failure to appear in the polar basin. I hoped the supplies I had sent north would mitigate what otherwise might prove a catastrophe for the red hunters, the nomads of the northern wastes. I recalled, too, the myth of the mountain that did not move, a great iceberg which somehow seemed to defy the winds and currents of the polar sea. Many primitive peoples have their stories and myths. I smiled to myself. It was doubtless rather the invention of a red hunter, bemused at the request of the man of Samos, months ago, for reports of anything which might prove unusual. I wondered if the wily fellow had chuckled well to himself when placing the tarsk bit in his fur pouch. Seldom would his jokes and lies prove so profitable I suspected. The foolishness of the man of Samos would make good telling around the lamp.

I was making my way toward the tarn cot where I had housed the tarn on which I had come to the fair, a brown tarn, from the mountains of Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks. My belongings I had taken there earlier, putting them in the saddlebags. I had had supper.

I was looking forward to the return to Port Kar. It is beautiful to fly alone by night over the wide fields, beneath the three moons in the black, star-studded sky. One may then be alone with one's thoughts, and the moons, and the wind. It is beautiful, too, to so fly, with a girl one has desired, bound over one's saddle, tied to the saddle rings, commanded to silence, her white belly arched, exposed to the moons.