“Your father is a wise man, though the outcome of this particular solution was almost worse than the problem it solved.” Grey lowered his head. “The forces previously responsible for the great cataclysms became simply another aspect of the face of war, a new and terrible aspect no one had prepared for. The immense power pouring into and through the warring armies would often escalate hostilities, protracting for years strife that should have lasted mere days. The death toll of these conflicts grew to staggering heights, outmatching even that possible with modern technology, often eradicating entire tribes or races from the planet. Still, the cataclysms stopped, as if some dark god had been appeased with the blood sacrifice of countless men.”
“Like how dropping the bomb on Hiroshima ended World War II,” Steven said. “Still, you haven’t explained what any of this has to do with me or this Game you keep talking about.”
Grey’s eyes slid shut. “Fourteen centuries ago, Zed and I proposed a solution to the rampant slaughter necessitated by our ancestor’s arrangement. A simple contest to replace the great wars while maintaining an equilibrium set in place long before my time.”
“Ah.” Steven’s eyes flashed with recognition. “The Game.”
Without warning, reality twisted around him, a swirling kaleidoscope of light and colors that pulsed in time with the drone from the pouch. Faces, images, locales all flashed by in a rapid torrent of experience. Then, as abruptly as before, Steven was somewhere else and again alone. Far brighter than the previous location, he squinted to take in his new surroundings. A mountain of sand beneath his feet, pyramids peeked above the next ridge, while in the valley below, a scene both game and battlefield played out.
Atop sixty-four squares of alternating marble and obsidian, two opposing forces waited, one garbed in white and gold, the other in jet and silver. Each side sixteen strong, foot soldiers from both front lines had already begun their advance. Their forms indistinct due to the distance, Steven gasped at the unmistakable silhouette of four of the combatants.
Are those… elephants?
Steven sprinted down the hill to get a closer look at the battle unfolding before him. With each square at least twenty feet across, the enormous chessboard was better than half a football field in size. Behind the front line of foot soldiers, the four corners of the board held bronze chariots manned with armored warriors and drawn by massive steeds. Next in, mounted soldiers armed with either mace or flail awaited the command to go into battle. Flanking the middle squares of both black and white, a quartet of elephants waited. Armored head to toe, a pair of archers sat atop each of the elephants, as if the creatures’ bronze covered tusks weren’t sufficiently intimidating. Finally, the two center squares of each rear file held a pair of men, one clothed in the ornate dress of royalty and the other dressed in simple robes and sandals.
“That’s odd,” Steven said. “Where are the queens?”
“A good question.” Stepping out of nothingness, Grey appeared by Steven’s side. “In Chaturanga, and later in Shatranj, the pieces in question were known as viziers. The ministers to their respective kings, they were only marginally more capable than a pawn. The piece you know as queen did not come along for another six hundred years.”
“Six hundred years?” Steven asked. “When is this? What are we seeing?”
“The first iteration of the Game, over fourteen hundred years ago.”
Steven continued his sandy trudge toward the board. “They can’t see me, can they?”
“There is no one to see, Steven. You are not actually in this place. As real as all this may appear, you are nothing but an observer to events that occurred long before your time.”
Steven swept his arm outward in a grand motion, indicating the gathered forces of light and darkness. “Who are they?”
“Mere men, much like you,” Grey said. “Empowered by the Game, however, this day they faced each other with the power of gods.”
“Men like me…” Steven watched as one of the elephants thundered along a diagonal line of white squares to the far end of the board. “What happened to them?”
Reality warped around Steven again, the hot sand replaced by yellow grass and the bright blue of the Egyptian sky with dreary grey. At the center of a rugged plain, another enormous chessboard stretched out before him, the far end littered with the mangled remains of better than a dozen forms, their white garb stained deep crimson. Vultures circled above while a murder of crows availed themselves of the bloody spread.
Steven stepped onto the board and moved in the direction of the carnage. Bile rose in his throat, the stench of death growing stronger with every step. Within seconds, he stood over the first body. Covered in armor of silver plate, the young man lay crushed beneath the flank of his ivory steed, his breastplate caved in as if struck with a battering ram. His face, barely visible beneath a medieval helm, was frozen in a rictus of fear.
“This is a slaughter.” Steven looked to the sky. “Why am I being shown this?”
Grey appeared from a shimmer in the air. “You must see what has gone before if you are to understand what is happening in the present.”
“This is what you created?” Steven asked. “What’s waiting for me?”
Grey stared at the maimed bodies at his feet. “The first iteration of the Game ended without bloodshed, exactly as I imagined it. The lives of countless innocents had been saved and the correction contained, its energies returned to the ether from whence they came. I was so proud, and so naive. Here in this place and on this day, however, any sense of pride or naiveté was extinguished along with the lives of those you see before you. You see, the conclusion of the first iteration revealed a truth no one save my opposite had considered.”
“Zed?”
“Zed.” Grey spat the name. “Stripped of their dramatic conclusions, these corrections leave an abundance of raw, undifferentiated energy in their wake. For a brief period, the checks and balances that govern reality are distorted, and a person adept at the Art can manipulate the energies in question to accomplish anything they desire. Zed tasted that power at the conclusion of the first iteration, and greedily awaited the second to claim it for his own.”
Steven knelt at the body, running his fingers along the man’s crushed helmet. “Looks like he made damn sure he won this time.”
“The winning side is responsible for the final disposition of the forces remaining at the end of play, an aspect of the Game Zed insisted on and to which I unfortunately agreed.” Grey walked among the butchered bodies, his face a mask of regret. “These were good people, Steven. I trained them myself, ensured they were ready, but not for the onslaught they faced this day.” His grey eyes caught Steven’s gaze. “They barely lasted two minutes.”
“The woman who came for me tonight.” Steven shivered. “She’s the current Black Queen, isn’t she?”
“Indeed,” Grey said. “Though she is new to me, the role she plays in this Game I helped create is not.”
“But why send her?” Steven’s downward gaze met the young foot soldier’s dead eyes. “Why not come for me himself?”
“Truth be told, I have no idea. He certainly sent a most beguiling emissary. I suppose it is within the realm of possibility that he wished merely to capture you.”
“You saw her. What she did to all those people. I got the distinct impression I wasn’t part of any sort of catch and release program.”
Grey offered a solemn nod. “As I said before, regardless of how well I know Zed, his motivations in seeking you out before the Game proper can begin are unclear.” His eyes darkened. “Outside the obvious, of course.”
Steven’s entire body tensed. “You faced Zed once in Egypt and a second time… wherever this is. How many times has this happened?”
“Only once more. Antarctica. 1537.” Grey looked away, a new tremor in his hands. “The third iteration ended in… a stalemate.”
“Antarctica.” Steven bit his lip. “Did they all freeze to death?”
&nbs
p; “It doesn’t matter. The balance was maintained.” Grey gazed into the distance. The coolness in his eyes sent a shiver through Steven’s core. “Suffice to say Antarctica is a place I hope to never see again.”
Steven stared into the opaque eyes of the dead man at his feet. “How is it this Game of yours has been going on for centuries, yet no one has ever heard of it?”
“Clandestine by its very nature, the Game has ever been a part of history, though no history you ever learned in school.” Grey stepped into an adjoining square. “Countless misconceptions and outright falsehoods have been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. Much of what you and the rest of society accept as fact is simply a more palatable fiction. This history of lies is for the best, though. The truth is more than most could take.”
Steven’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand, though. You didn’t stop war. Millions died in the two World Wars. Then Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. What’s the point?”
“Man has killed man from the beginning,” Grey whispered. “Technology has only made it easier with every passing century. Still, the death that would come if the Game did not take place would make any war in your history books pale in comparison.”
Steven rose from the dead man’s battered form. “So, lesson’s over?”
“Not quite yet,” Grey said. “There is still one last game for you to see.”
As Grey’s form faded into the air, Steven turned to go back the way he’d come and discovered where the pouch had brought him. More breathtaking than all the pictures he’d seen, the ring of colossal stones to the west seemed fitting, as if gravestones for the fallen had been placed generations before in preparation for this day. He stepped off the board and rested his hand on the jutting stone that pointed to the heart of Stonehenge.
“Africa. England. Antarctica.” Steven took a deep breath. “And now, America.”
Steven’s surroundings again spiraled into a kaleidoscope of colors, though this time the experience was different. Scenes from his own life flashed by in rapid order: dinner with Ruth and Arthur, his bold rescue by the man he now knew as Grey, a conflagration of black flames with their dark mistress resting at their heart, his lonely months in Chicago, the accident, Katherine dancing in her red cocktail dress, grad school, college graduation, high school prom, his mother cooking breakfast, and finally, his dad arriving home from work where a much younger Steven waited to play their favorite game.
Everything slowed to a crawl, and a strange compulsion drew Steven’s attention to his family’s old coffee table. There, frozen in time, he and his father sat perfectly still, hunched over an old wooden chessboard.
Steven remembered this game well. Thirteen years old at the time, the watershed moment marked the first time he ever defeated his dad at anything. In this particular match, Steven played white and his father black. In the end, it came down to his king, bishop, knight and remaining pawn against his father’s king, queen, knight and the remnants of his front row. Though his father’s remaining pieces gave him the numerical advantage, Steven managed to keep the opposing king in check for several turns and eventually forced him into a corner.
He remembered the look of defeat in his father’s furrowed brow several moves before the end. One of many small steps in the inevitable progression of boy to man, the recognition had thrilled him at the time. Only in later years did he look back on that moment with a soberer understanding of the day.
His younger self reached for the pawn, advanced the piece to the seventh rank and placed the black king in checkmate. Time stopped for a moment before resuming its normal cadence. Then, his father shook his boy’s hand like he would a man before mussing his hair as they walked into the next room, leaving adult Steven alone with the old chessboard.
Every scratch in the wood, every dent of the checkered surface, every blemish on the old chess set roared back as if only minutes had passed since this game rather than years.
Above all, the lesson he learned that day echoed in his mind: Even the weakest piece on the board, when employed correctly, can bring down the king.
In an instant, Steven’s perspective changed. Shrunk to the size of a chess piece, he stood in the seventh rank of his father’s old board, the black king to his forward right. The white king to his rear protected him from capture while the white bishop and knight, each in their respective squares, blocked the black king’s every escape.
“It is time.”
Grey’s voice echoed in the space, and in a blink, Steven found himself back at the Pedone dinner table. Ruth and Arthur looked on in wonder as the groan of the pouch grew louder, pulsing in time with Steven’s heartbeat. A stirring of the air caused the candles at the table’s center to flicker. Grey rested a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “Reach into the pouch and show me what you find there.”
Steven rose from the table, held the pouch before him, and stared down once more into the silver glow. His father’s chessboard filled his vision, though only one piece remained on the sixty-four squares of alternating pine and walnut. Steven reached into the bag, the low drone now amplified to deafening volume. His fingers grasped something cold and hard. His clenched fist emerged from the pouch, knuckles white.
“Open your hand,” Grey whispered.
Steven loosened his grip on the object. Lying in his palm was a marble chess piece, a sphere positioned atop a tapering column with a wide, rippled base. He looked up at Grey, the shock in his eyes fading into simple resignation. “I’m the Pawn.”
“So it would seem.”
“What do I do now?”
“That is for you to decide, Steven. The first move is yours.”
A streak of shimmering darkness shattered the room’s lone window and flew between Steven and Grey, ripping the pouch from Steven’s hand. An inch in diameter and scintillating with ebon energy, the black arrow imbedded itself in the dining room wall with a resounding thunk, impaling the pouch on the blood-red surface.
Grey’s brow curled into a frustrated scowl. “At least in theory.”
6
Stone
The pawn icon shimmered in Steven’s hand, the silvery glow a brilliant counterpoint to the waves of darkness emanating off the ebony shaft and fletching protruding from the wall. A moment later, a searing pain ripped through his core, sending him to his knees. Steven clutched his side in agony as a second arrow flew past his head.
“Steven!” Ruth crawled to his side, a distinct edge to her voice. “Are you okay?”
“Other than feeling like I’m about to puke up my shoes, I’m doing all right.”
Flipping the heavy oak table onto its side, Grey pulled Arthur to the floor and motioned for Steven and Ruth to take cover. Fighting off alternating waves of pain and nausea, Steven scrambled to the makeshift bunker with Ruth close behind.
Arthur pulled his wife to him and held her close, eyeing the man he called Rex with a potent mix of fear and concern and a hint of anger. Steven dropped to one side as a barrage of arrows tore into the oak tabletop, their scintillating razor tips piercing the thick wood like paper.
“What’s happening to me?” Steven fought off a wave of nausea. “I feel like I’ve just drunk a gallon of antifreeze.”
“Have you not guessed?” Grey peered above the edge of the overturned table. “Your icon is alerting you to the enemy’s presence.”
Steven coughed out a laugh. “A bit late for that, don’t you think?” He held his clenched fist up to his face, the icon within shining like a miniature sun. “Message received, you lousy piece of shit.”
“Actually, your icon is performing precisely as designed,” Grey said. “What you feel is a call to action. As long as you remain vulnerable, the pain will continue.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Steven clutched his side in agony. “Thing feels like it’s ripping me in half.”
“Stop complaining, then,” Grey grunted, “and defend yourself.”
“Defend myself?” The stabbing in Steven�
�s midsection continued to pulse in time with the icon’s oscillating glow. “How?”
“In your mind’s eye. Summon an image of a shield. Will it onto your arm.”
Steven closed his eyes, his mind running through image after image of shields, anything from movies to art to his high school visit to the Tower of London.
“You are wasting time,” Grey said. “They will be upon us any moment.”
“Fine.” Steven took a deep breath and focused. The icon disappeared from his grip, scorching his hand with a flash of silver fire. When his eyes cleared, he found a circular shield better than two feet across strapped to his left arm. The convex disc fashioned from a lightweight metal resembling brushed platinum, its mottled streaks reminded Steven of the pawn icon’s marble surface. A subtle white iridescence shimmered from its burnished surface. Like a switch had been flipped, the pain in Steven’s belly faded to a dull ache.
“That’s better.” Steven rose into a low crouch. “The pouch?”
“The target of their initial strike was no accident.” Grey’s gaze shot to the wall where the pouch hung limp below the darkly shimmering shaft. “Without the pouch’s capabilities, none of us will leave this place alive.”
“At least there’s no pressure.” Steven peered across the table. “What’s going to keep William Tell out there from shooting me in the back?”
“I can shield you from the enemy’s eyes, at least for the moment. I suspect their archer, unfortunately, may be the least of our concerns.” Grey’s eyes slid closed, a low hum escaping his lips and his body swaying to an unheard rhythm. The lights dimmed and the air in the room filled with electricity. Grey stretched out his arm and every shadow in the room obeyed his silent command, leaping to the window and forming a swirling mass of obscuration.
“How did you do that?” Steven asked.
“Time is short.” Grey’s eyes flicked to his rear as another group of arrows flew through the window. “Hear me, Steven. As Pawn, your shield will protect you from any attack from the front, but you must ever watch your back.”
Pawn's Gambit Page 5