Queen's Peril

by Darin Kennedy

  “Lucky me.” Audrey peeled away one of the blankets of her cocoon. “I must have come along right on time.”

  “Why do you think the pouch brought us here, Steven?” Niklaus asked. “You told us about this already.”

  “No clue. Shocking as it is, I saw all of this in a vision when I first met Grey months ago.” A brisk wind sent a spray of sand into Steven’s eyes. “Make no mistake, though. This time, we’re actually here.”

  “Is the Game going to make us watch?” Lena’s brow furrowed.

  “I suppose that’s a possibility, though from what I remember Grey saying, this one ended as he’d planned.” Steven’s eyes narrowed. “With no fatalities.”

  Zed held the King’s position among the Black while Grey occupied the same square along the back row of the White. None of the other faces were familiar, though their features ran the gamut—African, Arabic, Asian, Slavic—a cross section of the world populace that might have passed through Egypt when the northeast corner of Africa was the de facto center of the world.

  As they drew close, the first iteration of the Game began to play out before them. One Pawn advanced, then his opposite. A mounted soldier among the White leaped from the back rank and took up a defensive position near the center of the board. In answer, one of Black’s elephant-mounted fighters thundered out from the back row. Archer drew bow. Horseman raised mace. Tension mounted with each bloodless move leaving the time-displaced White breathless as each awaited the first blow.

  And then, in the blink of an eye, they were all somewhere else.

  The stench hit Steven before his eyes registered where they were. Previously filtered through memory, the unmistakable smell of death now assaulted his senses directly. He fought not to retch, a battle neither Lena nor Niklaus won that day.

  “Where are we?” Emilio asked.

  Stonehenge, a stone’s throw away, had borne witness to the slaughter of the fifteen figures in blood-stained white that lay around the checkered battlefield.

  “Why is the pouch showing us this crap?” Niklaus wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat. “We are all more than aware of what awaits us.”

  “I suppose,” Steven said, “but you haven’t seen or experienced it.” Bile filled the back of his throat. “None of us truly have.”

  Beneath the sunless sky, the aftermath of Grey’s first defeat to Zed’s machinations stretched before them all. A feast for flies and vultures alike, the remains of the ancient wizard’s second army served as a potent reminder of exactly how far yet they all had to go.

  “Zed did this.” Audrey rose from her chair and knelt by the crumpled form of that iteration’s White Queen, her head turned at an impossible angle. “And he’d do it again, if it served his purposes.”

  Reality warped around them again, and in an instant, they were in another place altogether. A blizzard raged around them, obscuring everything but the six of them within a swirling mass of blinding white.

  “Where?” Niklaus asked.

  Even blinded by the snow, Steven had no doubt as to exactly where they were. “Antarctica.” A bitter wind whipped through their circle with icy teeth that clawed at their eyes, their hands, their faces.

  “But why?” Lena asked.

  “The third iteration of the Game happened here.” Steven grabbed Audrey by the shoulders and pulled her close before another frigid gust could send her frail form to the ground. “The one Grey would never speak of.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Emilio asked between chattering teeth. “The third round of the Game ended in a stalemate with Zed denied a second victory, right?”

  “From what Zed said, yes.” A shiver shook Steven’s entire body. “But, apparently at a great cost.”

  At Steven’s words, the storm abated as if one of the ancient gods of myth had willed it so. With the snow gone and the wind stilled, he and the others found themselves atop a craggy glacier looking down upon a valley of ice.

  There, a battle raged, the likes of which Steven used to believe only happened in summer blockbusters.

  Two lines, one dark and one light, charged across the alternating squares of black and white, the Pawns of this previous iteration of Grey’s great Game.

  At one edge of the checkered battlefield, a pair of armored warriors in jet, their black steeds clad with a mix of chain and plate mail, battled silver-clad knights mounted atop polar bears covered in armor of gold and alabaster.

  Several stories above them, two giants of ice traded blows with a pair of onyx titans, each impact sending tremors through the entire glacier.

  The center of the board held two women, one wrapped in glistening ivory, the other in darkest sable. The two Queens circled each other like mongoose and cobra, silver lightning crackling around the White Queen’s hands and orbs of darkness around her opposite’s.

  Surrounding the pair of Queens, the four bishops held aloft ornately carved staves as if performing an ancient ritual lost to history.

  And there, at the back of each army, the Kings waited. At one end of the board stood a much younger version of the man they knew as Grey in the glowing raiment of the White King, platinum crown at his brow and broadsword, held aloft, gleaming with a blinding silver sheen. At the other stood Zed, his black cloak extending to the snowy ground and his silver crown glowing a deep purple as he rested his hands atop the pommel of his broadsword, his weapon’s point buried in the ice at his feet.

  “This isn’t a Game.” Lena covered her mouth with her hands. “This is carnage.”

  “The ceremonial bringing together of Black and White to stave off the destruction of the world has been Game only in name since Zed abandoned all sense of decorum and fairness after the first iteration.” Archie’s breath steamed in the cold. “The only question that remains is exactly how this ends.”

  “You don’t know?” Niklaus asked. “In all your visions, you never saw what happened here?”

  Archie recoiled, as if struck. “I have.” His eyes grew wild. “But what I saw won’t remain in my head. It’s as if—”

  And with that, the words left him, as if the very breath had been taken from his lungs.

  “It’s as if what, Archie?” Steven looked into the priest’s eyes and found only a blank stare. “What were you going to say?”

  Archie blinked once, twice, and shook his head. “Steven?”

  “Archie, this is important. What was it you were going to—”

  A deafening explosion echoed up from the canyon below. The pair of giants formed from black stone stood triumphant as one icy colossus stumbled backward from the board while the other, reduced to fragments of ice the size of school buses, rained down upon the checkered battlefield like judgment from the gods. In seconds, nearly all the Pawns and half the Knights, Black and White alike, lay crushed beneath the White Rook’s fragmented corpse. Only one of the White Bishops survived, the other a victim to the falling ice that moments before had likely been a friend. The remaining Knights, atop horse and bear respectively, each leaped to safety before charging at each other anew from opposite corners of the board. At the battle’s center, protected by a dome of scintillating ebony and silver, the Queens continued to circle, neither taking their focus off the other for even half a second.

  And the Kings, neither of whom had budged an inch from their initial position, both looked on dispassionately as the battle waged on.

  “What now?” Niklaus shivered from head to toe, not just from the biting wind but also from the shock of witnessing his fellow Rook’s absolute destruction.

  “What always happens when one side gets the numerical advantage.” Steven narrowed his gaze at the battlefield below. “The endgame.”

  Their opposites on the checkered battlefield eliminated from play, the pair of onyx behemoths turned their attention on their remaining adversaries. The lone White Bishop still standing was the first to fall, her robed form hurled into an outcropping of rock by a single kick from the nearer of the two Black Rooks. The lone White Pawn that ha
d escaped the rain of icy death went down a second later beneath an avalanche of black stone summoned by the second. The remaining Black Knight took advantage of his opposite’s momentary distraction and struck the White Knight’s breast plate with a spiked flail, crushing his foe’s armored ribcage with an ear-splitting clang and sending him flying from his ursine steed. The pair of Black Bishops converged on the remaining White Bishop, driving him from the board.

  “That leaves the White Queen.” Audrey looked on, the tremor in her weak voice breaking Steven’s heart. “She’s all alone.”

  “Not quite.” Steven pointed to the far end of the board where a lone White Pawn struggled to pulled himself free from the icy debris. “There’s still hope.”

  As the gathered Black descended upon the White Queen, Steven took Audrey’s hand and squeezed it tight. The woman in white below held her own for a while, but the outcome was never in doubt.

  “Come on, Grey,” Steven whispered, holding on to hope. “Don’t let her down.”

  The pair of Black Rooks converged behind the White Queen, blocking any retreat, while the Black Knight leaped from square to square, hindering any attempted advance on the Black King. The two Black Bishops maneuvered themselves into position around their master, leaving the Black Queen to hammer away at her opposite’s defenses. Just as all seemed lost, the White King stepped forward and faith surged in Steven’s heart.

  “Here it comes.” A slight smile found its way onto Steven’s face. “The moment of truth.”

  The White Queen chanced a single glance back in hope of finding refuge in her King’s eyes. After a moment that seemed to last a year, the man they knew as Grey shook his head slowly from side to side and raised his arms to the glaciers on either side of the great board, the pouch in his hand glowing like a miniature star. Energy crackled around the White King and a sonic shudder went through the glacier at their feet followed a moment later by an ear-splitting cracking as tons of ice that had been present since Jesus walked the earth began to break apart.

  “My God…” Steven held aloft the pouch and grasped Audrey’s shoulder. “Everyone, with me.” As the other four all fell in on Steven, he murmured, “Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere…”

  The pouch emitted a deafening pulse, and the universe swirled around them again. One by one they disappeared from Steven’s sight until only he remained, the magic of the pouch holding him aloft as the glacier disintegrated beneath his feet and an avalanche to end all avalanches descended upon the checkered battlefield below. The Queens, Black and White alike, screamed at the impending icy doom, their voice drowned out in the cacophony of fracturing ice. Zed slipped off the crown of the Black King and stared up in disbelief at the nullification of his well-laid plans. The White King hesitated but a moment before holding aloft the Hvitr Kyll of this time, and vanished in a flash of silver.

  “It can’t have ended that way.” Steven looked on as Zed as well disappeared from the chessboard in a ripple of darkness, leaving his Pieces to face their icy fate. “Grey wouldn’t have let that happen.” As the falling ice swallowed up the checkered battlefield, Steven’s head dropped. “And yet, he did.”

  Floating there in a cocoon of silver energy, Steven readied himself to send himself after the others, his heart racing as he pondered what he’d just seen.

  No, not his heart, but the iridescent dragonfly of metal that resided there and had guided his steps for so many weeks. He brought his hand to his chest to pull Amaryllis out into the light, hoping she might provide some sort of insight into what he should do next, but she had already worked herself to the top of his pocket and teetered there precariously. His trembling fingers reached to grasp her just behind her wings when, for the first time Steven could recall, she took flight as if truly alive.

  “No!” Steven’s hand shot out to pluck Ruth’s magical gift from the air before she could escape, his instinctive flail pulling his gaze to a section of pristine ice along the opposite ridge.

  There, nestled among the blinding white, his eye caught a flash of grey.

  Or, perhaps, a flash of…Grey?

  30

  Reunions & Regrets

  “Could it be?” As wisps of silver energy played around Steven’s form ready to transport him home, he shifted his attention to the crevice in the ice across the valley. “No. Take me there.”

  Another pulse of bone-shaking sound, and Steven vanished from one side of the glacier only to reappear in the narrow fissure of snow and ice he’d spied a second before.

  “Grey,” he shouted. “Are you here?”

  “Steven.” The single word, colored with his mentor’s unique accent, echoed from across his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Steven turned and found Grey standing before a floating doorway of darkness. “Grey.” The man appeared emaciated, as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Or longer. “What’s wrong?” He gestured to the shimmering hole in space. “And where does that lead?”

  “Go from here.” Weakly, Grey motioned to the pouch. “Do not follow me.”

  And with that, he retreated into the darkness, leaving Steven alone in the icy crevasse. A moment later, the ice at Steven’s feet shook even as the dark doorway to God knows where began to ripple like a flag in a high wind.

  “The hell with that.” Steven rushed the doorway and dived through even as the hole in space collapsed about him. Half a second later, he landed facedown, his elbows and knees taking the brunt of an icy landing.

  Grey stood before him, hungrily devouring a small bowl of what could only be described as gruel. As Steven rose from the ice, his grey-clad mentor hid the stone bowl behind his back and scowled in exasperation.

  “I told you not to follow me.”

  “Last I checked, you were the White King of this Game.” Steven set his jaw. “I can’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t follow.”

  “I cannot bear for you to see me this way.” Grey brought the bowl back around and resumed his ravenous consumption of its contents. “King, indeed.”

  “What happened?” Steven asked. “Where are we?”

  “Zed, it would seem, truly has a talent for torture.” The corner of Grey’s mouth turned up in an ironic half-grin. “He could have simply left me to die, but instead, he has provided the barest of subsistence so that I can relive my worst moment again and again for all perpetuity.”

  “Your worst moment?” Understanding blossomed in Steven’s mind, revealing not only where they were, but when. He turned just in time to watch the valley below transform into the enormous black and white checkered pattern that had all but come to define his life. “He’s making you watch,” Steven swallowed, “as they all die.”

  “As I kill them, you mean.” The bowl dropped from Grey’s fingers, the spilled gruel staining the ice like a spatter of blood. “I stopped counting how many times I’ve relived these few hours after the first thousand or so. I tried for weeks to simply avert my gaze, close my ears, not to see it, hear it, smell it. But it draws me back every time.”

  “The doorway,” Steven asked, “it sends you back each time to the exact same spot a few hours earlier?” Understanding blossomed in his mind. “To just…before…”

  “More or less.” Grey hung his head in shame and exhaustion. “Sometimes there is food, albeit the poorest fare Zed can put together. Most times, there isn’t. I refused it at first…”

  “But hunger is hunger.” Steven took a step toward his mentor. “I get it.”

  “Every time, it’s the same.” Grey peered across the edge. “The board appears, the opposite sides take their positions, the Black achieves the upper hand quickly and never gives it back, and the massacre of Stonehenge threatens to repeat itself, leaving Zed on the precipice of victory.” He turned to Steven, sadness, rage, and defeat all warring on his face. “Please understand. He couldn’t be allowed to win again. That much power in his hands…”

  “That’s why you never told me—us—about Antarctica.”

 
; “You never asked.” Grey looked away. “Even after Zed’s taunt all those months ago.”

  “I don’t think I wanted to know.” Steven gave Grey a rueful smile. “And somehow, I already did.”

  “I know my words must ring false, Steven, but this is the reality. The Game that Zed and I created is forever. It cannot be undone, no matter how much I might wish it otherwise.”

  “You could always go back and warn yourself, maybe change the rules set in place to keep Zed from capitalizing on all the loopholes.” Steven held the pouch before him. “The two of us standing here is living proof it’s possible.”

  “Possible to go back, perhaps.” Grey let out a steamy breath. “To change the past, however, is impossible.”

  “You’re saying that nothing we’ve done has changed a thing.” Steven’s hands flew up in frustration. “What about when we found you and Arthur in 1946? I’m assuming you held that back from me, how we’d already met decades before I was born.”

  “Everything that happened in your various forced sojourns to the past only led to the eventuality of this iteration of the Game you and I still play even at this very moment.”

  Steven considered Grey’s words. Without their interference, Ruth and Arthur would never have met. Zed wouldn’t have such insight into their identities.

  The Black Queen would not exist.

  As much as it pained him to admit, their interference in the past had only solidified the future they’d already lived.

  “So, Zed provides you just enough sustenance to keep you alive so you can bear witness to your darkest moment again and again for all eternity.”

  “If I go through the door, I reappear at this moment.” Grey gestured to the ground at his feet. “If I choose not to go through the door, the glacier collapses, I fall to my death, and then reappear here at the same moment regardless.” He gestured to the high walls of ice surrounding them and the impossible climb down to the battlefield below. “No way to escape. No way to intervene. My fate, to watch again and again as those I called friend fall, some at the feet of our shared enemy and some by my own hand.”