Tenebroum

Chapter 169: All Just a Game

Taz moved the ivory bishop carved into the shape of a high priest of Siddrim across the board with thoughtless ease and took a pawn with it. The move had been expected by Jordan, but it was still a painful one and moved him solidly back to the defensive.

The bishop had a distinct enough face that Jordan had long suspected that it, along with every other piece on the board, was meant to be someone specific, though he lacked the history to even begin to guess, and if he asked Taz, then he would only be assigned more reading in an endless search to find answers that weren’t there.

Jordan had no interested in being given any extra reading, with his eyes being in the state they were in. Instead, he removed the spectacles that Taz had found for him among his seemingly endless trove of objects and peculiarities that were tucked away in his tower and cleaned them while he considered the board and the situation they were in.

It wasn’t just the bishops, of course. Every piece on the board, white and black, was carved in such a detailed way that they were almost certainly modeled on someone. While the white pieces were hard to figure out, the black pieces were less so. White was carved in such a way that they were mortals, but black - they were obviously carved in the shape of the gods. The black king was Siddrim, and the black queen was Lunaris; that much was very clear. One of the rooks was probably the dwarven All-father and one of the knights was Niama, mistress of the wild places. The others were more difficult.

He was fairly certain that one of the bishops that Taz had already taken was Istiniss, mistress of sea and storms, and that the pawns were various small gods, but even if Jordan had the eyes to study those fine details, he simply didn’t study the gods closely enough to make educated guesses for each piece. He didn’t need to, though. It was clear to him merely from the theme of the board that Taz considered him to be at war with the heavens on some level. That every friendly game of chess they played was another exercise in subjugating the divine was no surprise to Jordan after all this time.

“Ready to concede already?” Taz asked with a crooked smile.

“What? No,” Jordan answered quickly, as he reached forward and moved the All-Father out of danger while using it to put pressure on Taz’s undefended knight. “I was just considering my options.”

It was a fine move, but it was a delaying tactic at best. Jordan was fairly sure that, just like most of the other games they played, he’d already lost this one; he just didn’t see how yet. That was ironic because even though he felt like he was always a step behind in these games, thanks to the book of Ways, he felt like he was a step ahead in every other way.

He knew that the children were looking for a way out of sanctuary but that they wouldn’t find one for a long time to come. He knew that Taz was looking to harvest their light, even if the man hadn’t come right out and said it yet. Jordan even knew how it was he would stop him when that horrible day finally came. Not that he ever would have thought of it, of course. Not on his own.

Such things were enough to make him wonder if the book was so much predicting the future as it was dictating those events into existence. After all, Jordan would never have dreamed that the Archmage’s weakness was his strongest point, the spell that kept them all safe, but after reading through what he would do on the appointed day more than once, he could find no fault with the logic.

Now, the hardest part was keeping the look of distaste off his face whenever he had to spend too much time with the man. It wasn’t easy, but then, there was nothing else to do while they were all trapped here together besides learn and play games.

“Are you quite sure that the youngest one of your little group hasn’t changed recently?” Taz asked as a series of exchanges were made, and the game inched toward checkmate. “He hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary recently?”

“Leo?” Jordan asked, pretending to think. “No. He’s still the same serious little boy he’s always been. I think he’s getting frustrated with being perpetually the smallest since none of us are getting older, but—”

“And the light?” Taz interrupted. “Have you not noticed the light intensifying? What do you suppose the cause of that is?”

“Intensifying?” Jordan feigned ignorance. The book had the same thing, but it wasn’t anything that was visible to the naked eye, and since he knew Taz watched all of them, the last thing he wanted to do was cast a spell that might clarify things. “His eyes are no brighter than any of the other children. In fact, I think that in terms of brightness, Toman and Rin might—”

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“Check,” Taz interrupted before standing up and walking to his telescope. “Come here. There’s something I want you to see.”

Jordan couldn’t help but notice that the lens was already tilted down toward the beach, even if the Children would have finished their little tourney hours ago. Slowly, the Archmage pointed the long brass tube toward the village of Sanctuary and then moved aside. After he adjusted a couple of lenses, he said, “Tell me, what do you see?”

Jordan bent to the eyepiece and took a long look at the small town. He was still impressed how Taz could make objects hundreds of yards away seem like they were only a few feet away, but every book on optics that the man had shared with him had gone over his head. Jordan might have some talent with magic, but this was entirely beyond him.

Still, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see, though, and he just started listing what he saw. Old man, Marley was bringing in some produce from the fields with Cynara’s help, the blacksmith was pounding away on something small, and a few people were sitting in the shade on the east side of the market talking.

“Nothing seems out of place, does it?” Jordan asked finally.

“Not with the lens,” Taz agreed before he pulled out the clear lens that had been at the focal point and replaced it with a smoked one that looked like the mage had mixed glass with obsidian or something. “But now that you’ve seen what you’re looking at, try again with this.”

Jordan looked down at the village square again. This time, everything was hazy but unchanged. It was like a pall had been cast over the town, which made sense considering how muddled the new lens was. He was about to say as much when he noticed Cynara walking back into view. That was when he saw the light around her. She was largely a featureless silhouette like everyone else, but the light that was normally confined to her eyes coruscated around her like an aura now.

“She’s glowing,” he breathed.

“She is,” Taz agreed. “They all are. Now, see if you can find little Leo.”

“But how will I be able to tell anyone apart with this lens. They—” Jordan started to protest.

Taz cut him off, though. “You’ll see. Trust me on this one.”

As Jordan looked, Taz started lecturing him on the optical properties of alchemically treated glass, but Jordan wasn’t really listening. Instead, he was panning around the village, looking through the fields and the beaches in search of all the children.

They were not hard to find. Though he would have a hard time guessing who was who, each of them stood out like little stars against the darker world. Some of them shone brighter than others, and while some children glowed with a golden light, others were closer to silver or even white.

Jordan almost gave up on his search and pulled away from the scope. It was only then that he found what he was looking for. This time, he didn’t have to feign surprise. Leo had just come up the path from the beach, and as soon as he walked into view, he appeared like a pillar of flame.

“What in the…” he gasped. He didn’t need to fake his surprise this time. The book had told him that the lad was growing stronger, but not like this, and Jordan was entirely taken aback by it.

Some of the other children’s glows had flickering flames at their edges, but they were nothing like this. Even if Jordan still had the perfect eyes he’d been gifted until recently, he would have trouble seeing the outline of the boy amid the glow. As it was, he was a smear of darkness surrounded by a bonfire, and Jordan could only look for a moment before the light hurt his eyes, and he had to glance away. Still, that moment was enough to send his mind racing.

“See, I told you,” Taz said smugly as Jordan stood and backed away. “The boy is changing. Trust me. I’ve kept detailed logs of him and all the others. A year ago, he wasn’t like that, and two years ago, he wasn’t anything special. Now though…”

“Please don’t tell me you intend to harm them,” Jordan protested. “For heaven’s sake, Tazuranth, they’re kids.”

“No one is hurting anyone,” the mage assured Jordan, even though Jordan knew what the other man was planning and that he was lying through his teeth. “This is merely a mystery I wish to explore. In the face of the darkness, the heavens have great need of such light, and if we could find a way to harvest it…”

Jordan tuned out the lecture as he looked out the window with his naked eyes for the boy. After a minute of searching, he finally found the distant boy who appeared no different than ever, at least from here.

Taz often ranted about the nature of stars and how they protected the world from outer darkness. According to him, the greatest threat to the world at large was not the darkness sweeping across it. It wasn’t even the broken sun or the dimming moon: it was the state of the stars.

According to him, they were fewer and number and dimmer than they’d been in centuries. Jordan had no idea if that was true, but the idea of trying to harvest the children’s light to use it to fix that problem seemed to be a fool's errand, and the Book of Ways had already given Jordan some insight into how that experiment would end if it was allowed to proceed.

For now, he pushed that out of his mind, though, and instead focused on staying calm as the Archmage talked about big ideas concerning light and constellations. While Jordan might agree that the devils of the void needed to be kept back, as far from the world as possible, he was not prepared to do so at the cost of his wards’ lives.

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