A single lamp lights a corner of a cavernous room. A young child crouches close to the flame, straining to read from a small, leather bound book. Stacks of similar books encroach on the small circle of light.
Mother referred to it as The Training Room. “It’s very simple.” She said leading me inside with my little lamp. “All you have to do is learn enough to find your way out.” She then closed the door leaving me alone with a huge roomful of books and crates and strange looking odds and ends. She went easy on me the first time, saying I had such a small light because I could see the answer from the door with it. I had read through most of the history of some land called Tara and learned some basic mathematics before I discovered a false book containing a key. The tests get harder and more intricate as I aged, requiring me to learn more and more skills. I picked the lock once, constructed a block and tackle style arrangement to force it, and blew it up with alchemy. Once the door talked to me and I had to answer riddles on a variety of subjects. The last time was the most humbling. I spent days chasing down false paths, stringing together minutiae into a tapestry of planning that ultimately proved fruitless. The door was impervious to everything I tried against it. I was almost on the verge of giving up and calling for Mother when I pushed aside a crate and found a second door that opened easily. Mother was sitting there and she simply said, “The final lesson of this place son. The rules of the game can change at any time.” It was perhaps a harsh way to teach and test a child, but it instilled in me a self-reliance and attention to detail I don’t think I’d have otherwise. I enjoyed every minute of face-to-face instruction Mother gave me, but I do think the Training Room was a fine teacher.The scent of her perfume wafts across the board, making him smile at her subtlety, reaching for the Knight. He moves the piece, dropping it into its new place, sure now that checkmate is his, even as her hand comes to rest lightly on his. Even as he looks to her eyes, he knows this match is done.
It was never supposed to be anything serious. It was the usual situation in tense negotiations, beautiful female noble invites handsome male diplomat to dinner. There is food, and drink, and the talking of important matters couched in metaphors so subtle that not even the two talking are sure what just transpired. Both try to woo the other hoping to gain advantage with their bodies. In fact, I find not trusting my partner can add an interesting spice to such encounters. It was never supposed to be anything serious. Just another lady giving what she could for her country and a diplomat willing enough to enjoy the attempt. Then I became stranded here, and we found ourselves seeking each other’s presence more and more for comfort during the days that followed the disaster that sundered us from Shadow. That chess game was the first moment I admitted to myself I had fallen for her, and the first time I sensed she had fallen for me. We both know a thousand reasons why this shouldn’t be, and we both know we can’t find what we need elsewhere. Time will tell where this leads. I’m just trying to enjoy the ride while I can.A dinner party with socialites flitting from room to room, a solitary man stands watching. His uniform, pressed and polished, he takes in all the surroundings without ever becoming part of them.
It is hard to believe I was once this aloof. My youth had been so full of books and study, of bearded men and dusty tomes. When I reached maturity Mother decided it was time to address the gaps in my education in her usual sick or swim style. The uniform was from my stint in the Navy. I was a competent if not enthusiastic sailor and it quickly toned my body and gave me the basic weapon skills I have since built on. Once they saw I had a head for strategy I rose through the ranks and left as a Captain when my term was up. From there, my naval contacts and my mother’s influence got me in the Diplomatic Corps to force my people skills to develop. How wooden I must have been then, so uncertain as to the rules of this strange social world that I froze into near paralysis away from the bargaining tables. But I tried, I made mistakes, I learned, and now I smirk inwardly when I hear comments of how I must have been born to do this job.The rising of the flames around his chest even as the pain sears into his brain, a final brief clarity to his thoughts as he tries desperately to lift his foot from the darkness between the lines and set it once more upon the Pattern, too late though he is.
I had this dream for a solid week before my Pattern walk. Each time I got farther and farther as if learning from my previous dreams mistakes, but all of them ended with me fading into searing oblivion. That was the worst part. I never woke up screaming. I slept with my dream self experiencing total void aware I was dreaming and wondering if I would ever find my way back to the waking world. At the Final Veil, I froze with one foot raised, some insane part of myself saying, “I wonder what it would feel like to step outside the lines. Would it really be like the dream?” But I kept control, fighting the Pattern and my own death wish and I won. I’ve learned what I could of it from Mother, not as one seeking to unravel the mysteries and powers as she does, but as one who seeks to know his nemesis.A woman in a black gown and veil stands by a closed casket in a candlelit room. She holds a red rose in her left hand, and a deck of cards in her right.
I had never seen true sorrow on Mother’s face before that night. I haven’t seen it since in fact. That night, by flickering candlelight in front of my father’s grave, all barriers between us were gone. For that one night we were simply, Mother and Son, and I gave her all the comfort I could. She told me everything that night about this father I never knew. How he fell in love with her at first sight. The amusement she felt when he first started courting her, and the amazement that her icy stare did not dissuade him. He was an archer and poet; his verses carried his arrows to their targets, and guided Cupid’s arrow into Mother’s. They spent a year together in lover’s bliss before Mother found herself pregnant with me and she disappeared into shadow to bear and raise me. She looked in on him from time to time. On his deathbed, she told him of the fine son she bore him, and fulfilling his dying wish, she told me all of him and how much of him she sees in me. Then she placed the rose on the casket, she hugged me close, and then we went our separate ways. That day has never been spoken of since, but we have been a little closer ever since.