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stand in the gamemaster’s box and speak to “his people.” Grinta called this “playing at patriarchy.”
    On some nights, he would rant drunkenly at his fellow countrymen, reminding them that the mission of the Island of the Free was to build an army, and that he, the greatest gladiator who ever stalked the sands of Calimport, would lead this army south to retake the ancient city from the djinni scum who had usurped it. Cephas first learned to sleep with his eyes open during these harangues.
    On certain other nights, Cephas paid very careful attention, indeed. On those nights, when the moon Selûne cast bright-enough light, Azad brought forth something in the presence of which Cephas would never dream of sleeping. Some nights, Azad brought forth a book.
    “These are the Founding Stories,” he would say, casually flipping pages as if he were not casting the most potent magic Cephas could imagine. “This collection here.” Azad’s bottle of palm wine would find his lips at this point. “This book was made on the order of Kamar yn Saban el Djenispool, the leader, the great
human
leader of all Calimshan, sometime … I don’t know, sometime back in those old days.”
    A book was a sort of box made of leather, and its contents the rustling stuff of dreams. Dreams, Cephas had long ago learned, could be captured with an elixir called ink and locked in prisons called pages. To set them free again, one had to know a sort of magic that the Calishites kept from Cephas, a discipline called reading.
    One night long ago, when Cephas was not even half the height he would grow to, around the time of his fiftieth escape attempt, Azad read aloud a story called “The Chain That Set Bashan Reaver Free.” It told of a human slave who learned to slip his iron collar at night, and who discovered that the very chains that bound him could be used as weapons in his desperate quest for freedom. In the tale, the slave Bashan became a desert raider with thirty wives to do his bidding, and a thousand camels.
    Then Azad brought out a double-headed flail—
this
double-headed flail—and held it high above his head. “Do you remember this, Brothers?” he asked. “Do you remember the chain I used to wear; the chain I used to set us free?”
    Everyone in the stands, even Cephas, awkwardly crouched on his high-soled clogs, had cheered. Cephas, though, had been cheering for Bashan Reaver, not for Azad.
    Now the master of games lifted his hand from the weapon and walked over to another wooden stand. This one swiveled so that the object it held was concealed from view until Azad slowly rotated it toward Cephas. It held the
Book of Founding Stories
. For a moment, Cephas thought Azad really was going to read aloud, probably a story meant to teach him a lesson about the futility of escape, but the young man didn’t mind. He had yet to hear a story from the book that he did not learn something valuable from, even if what he learned was not what the story—or its reader—meant to teach.
    “Yes, I thought I would read you a story,” said Azad, opening the book. “But which one? Which one could teach the lesson that I mean to impart?” Azad was among the oldest of the Calishites, perhaps even as old as Grinta the Pike, but he was heavily muscled, with the build of a brawler. Still, his thick fingers managed the delicate act of turning pages nimbly.
    “And then I realized the time for lessons is past. You have ignored so many, after all. No, now is the time for punishment.”
    Cephas tensed, but Shaneerah had not moved from her relaxed stance. In fact, there was a glint of amusement in her eye.
    “So now is when I tell you, Cephas,” finished Azad, “that you will never see this book, or hear any of its stories, again.”

The claims of the elf sages may be disregarded,
as they are born of vanity and fancy.
The dwarves depend on legends, not scholarship.
History is clear. The djinn invented war
.
    —Akabar ibn Hrellam
Empires of the