THE GAME OF LIFE … AND DEATH

The orphan, Richard Blaine, is thrust into a surreal chess game with One many fear is the Devil itself.

THE GAME OF LIFE … AND DEATH

“Man loves recalling life, but he does not enjoy living.”

- Lamashtu Morton

 

“I think I’ll stand,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because you want me to sit.”

Morton shook that withered, emancipated head.

“You see yourself as a hero in one of those historical melodramas in your library. You are deluded.”

Its face was living contempt.

Not mercy, not compassion, nor anything remotely human glimmered in its wet stone eyes.

But then, considering who I thought it might be, what else did I expect?

“Real life is filled with invisible razors under your bare feet. It is cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be.

 In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil wins every day.”

It flashed a smile of smug assurance. “Like with this game of life … and death.”

“You’ll have to play to find out, sir.”

“Sir? Respect?”

I shook my head. “Acknowledgement of more years than mine.”

“I was sung into being before the very concept of time, you talking chimpanzee!”

“Figured as much … sir.”

Its face was a living sneer. 

“What dreary painting do you suppose one of your sentimental, literal-minded simpletons would craft of this moment?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. What others think of me matters nothing to me.”

Its caricature of an eyebrow lifted. “Really?”

I smiled darkly, knowing of whom he spoke. “Helen Mayfair is not a simpleton nor an Other. She is one of a kind, unique.”

“More true than you know … simpleton.”

“Not so simple that I don’t realize that the spread of evil is merely the result of a vacuum. 

Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.”

It snorted. “And tsunamis of genocide have washed away millions fighting over which culture’s basic principles were correct.”

I shrugged. “I never stated that mankind wasn’t flawed. Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.”

“Then, not a complete simpleton, merely a backwater hayseed.”

“Coming into Jerusalem, riding a donkey.”

Its eyes narrowed, and I continued, “All that we have, all that we are is on loan. Our lives are not about us.”

Its eyes were mere slits, and I was tempted to ask how it could see that way, but I shelved that idiot question and instead asked,

“I do not know who my father was, do you?”

A coldness emanated from it that I could feel deep in my bones.

“I’ll take that silence as a no. Here’s a thought: what if in our chess game, every time we make a move, reality is changed.”

“We have not made any ….”

It stared at the shimmering board whose pieces were scattered all over it. Many of his black pieces were completely off to the side.

As we watched, one of my pawns blurred, becoming a second Queen.

“You are cheating!” it hissed.

“It is a perfectly legitimate move. You are allowed to promote one of your pawns to a second Queen. It happens all the time in chess games.”

All the time, yes. But not in the way it had just happened. Besides, we both knew neither of us had moved any pieces.

Someone else was responsible.

Perhaps Someone who frowned on Mr. Morton going back on its word not to harm me in this game? Who knew?

But judging from the furious, scared look on Morton’s face, it suspected the same Someone I did.

My second Queen blurred, becoming a second King – something that absolutely never happens in chess.

It’s face became livid, and I lamely smiled, “I guess you prefer to be your own choreographer.”

It sprang up from its golden throne, (modest it was not) and charged around the table, sharp, black claws outstretched.

“Check out time,” I muttered and pulled the only weapon I brought with me: one of the two artifacts which kept Morton from Stearns’ quarters –

The handheld Mirror of Enigmas, which showed the viewer who and what he was.

Apparently, Mr. Morton, unlike Socrates, was not into self-examination.

It wailed, throwing up its claws in front of its wizened face.

I stumbled in my haste to make haste, and another set of claws latched onto the back of my neck.

I was wrenched off my feet backwards into a secret passageway that I had not known existed in Morton’s mansion.

Guttural words hissed into my left ear as we scurried down wet, slippery cobblestones, “Could you not have let That One win in his own lair?”

Deborah!

“It was taken out of my hands actually.”

“Well, this has certainly severed The Dark One’s bond with my People. For saving you like this, I and my People will be hounded by Morton!”

A maddeningly familiar voice said, 

“This has been ordained where such things must be. I will take you and your People to a place even the Dark One may not go so as to await the time of Armageddon where you and the librarian may be reunited.”

Harsh, but strangely soft, lips brushed my cheek.

“So be it. Richard Blaine, we make promise. So long as The Blood endures, I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours: 

In that day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all, Our Houses will stand together, and the pillars will not fall.”

“But I have no House,” I protested.

‘Yet,’ a small stillness murmured within my mind.

The almost-familiar voice chuckled, 

“Now, that is a sentiment I can get behind. In fact, I will be there myself to do so. Now, Librarian, off with you to fight a doomed battle with the fledgling.”

As Deborah and I both yelped at that statement, 

I was pushed out of the passageway to stumble beside a stunned Helen Mayfair into the sort of alleyway a wino would hole up in to die.

“When first we met, I did not guess that Love would prove so hard a master.”  

- Helen Mayfair

The Music below really is stirring.

Give it a listen.