… “I challenge the one who cast stones even The Forerunner couldes’t not defend. I challenge the reigning champion of this night, Leinan from Landsend!”
— Wizard Barnibus Jefferson Montgomery Barnwinkle
* * *
Leinan Hated the Wizard. Hated. More than she had hated anything in her fifteen years of living.
He wasn’t a hero. He didn’t protect them from The Forerunner, and he was crazy. He didn’t care about the horror that was happening right in front of him!
He spoke to The Forerunner like old friends and… and Leinan had still saved him! Saved him only for him to fall asleep like an old codger on his porch and leave Leinan to deal with….
Leinan swayed where she stood. She would have fallen except that Keimen pushed her back with all her little strength and rocked Leinan back onto her feet.
‘How much longer could she last?’ That traitorous voice was back. It was louder than before and Leinan wished, she wished that she could answer back something pithy like ‘As long as is necessary…’ like some fool hero from Master Bordenshire’s stories, but… she couldn’t.
Leinan shoulders shook and her eyes streamed and her hands shook as she swayed where she stood.
Leinan didn’t think she could last ‘as long as was necessary’. She wasn't even certain about another game.
But she knew she Hated that Wizard. In that moment, as the Wizard pointed at her and beamed that silly grin with his ridiculous beard, she knew.
Leinan knew she Hated the Wizard more than she hated The Forerunner herself.
The Forerunner was like one of the Great Winds which blew down from the Dragons Pass every so often. The ones which tore trees up and flung them like twigs and sometimes, if they got all the way to Landsend, they did the same to houses and barns.
The Forerunner was like that. More. The same way the wind or an earth shake was More.
But the Wizard was human. The Wizard was a person and he saw what The Forerunner was doing. He saw Leinan resisting. He saw her fighting and trying and breaking!
He saw… and he grins and challenges her to a game?!
Leinan stomped back over and flopped back onto her log — the pain barely even registering anymore — and said through gritted teeth “I offer whatever I have in my pockets!” Which was of course nothing. And Nothing was what he’d have from her.
The Forerunner gasped like one of the gossiping girls at market.
She tittered, repeating what Leinan said to the Wizard… and, for some reason, the Wizard brightened!
He pulled from his robe —
Leinan blinked and then squinted at it despite an initial valiant attempt at apathy.
The thing was metal. A sort of gold-ish, tawny metal Leinan had never seen before and about the size of two of her hands stuck together.
It had knobs sticking out from odd places and small sticks — many, many sticks — with images attached to them splayed out from the center of a flat, white, circular face with odd squiggles stenciled at the edges.
Leinan thought that the sticks were supposed to move, and as she watched one of them did! The stick shifted slightly and then fell into a new position with a solid thok.
Leinan flinched back, blinking.
There was something about this device, Leinan saw as she studied it. Not More like everything The Forerunner was, and did, and offered, but Something. Magic.
The Wizard was announcing his offer to the air with grand gestures and as he spoke, Leinan felt all of her possible desire for the magic contraption fade away.
She Hated the Wizard.
Play The Forerunner? Lienan grit her teeth. She’d fight The Forerunner with her last breath. Because she had to. Aemon and Keimen depended on her to. But the Wizard? The one who stood by and played along?
Shadows take the Wizard.
Something vindictive made Leinan reach into her pocket and pull… well, Nothing out and mime placing it next to the board.
She would have smirked with that same vindictiveness too, except that The Wizard was eyeing her fist through the entire exchange and then lingered on the ground where she had placed Nothing with such clearly restrained avarice that Leinan felt too sour to smirk.
She couldn’t even have that satisfaction, she thought dismally. The Wizard just had to be crazy.
They played.
* * *
Immediately Leinan noticed The Wizard played differently. Not like The Forerunner at all, all wild and scintillating abandon. Lighting attacks and aggression.
The wizard was stately in how he navigated the board. Methodical, and elegant and almost introspective. He moved the way Leinan imagined someone at a noble ball to move. He danced. He played the game with Leinan instead of against Leinan. Leinan and her pieces, such that they moved together to create a dancing mosaic of tiles and walls and shifting towers.
He had played this game, The Wizard. He had played and played and honed his skill at this game and when he moved it was Beautiful!
It was Beautiful.
And with that same vindictiveness that drove Leinan to offer him Nothing, Leinan tromped over that beautiful board.
She placed stones down in anger and with little thought. She threw walls at his towers and drove her armies at all the patterns that emerged with no thought for how or why or the cost of engagement.
And she laughed at The Wizard as his road emerged. She laughed as she lost and this time she got her satisfaction.
The Wizard rocked back as he won, and this time there was no smile on his face or twinkle in his eye or… he just looked tired.
He didn’t look as he slowly picked up the odd finicky device and replaced it in his robe and then reached out and picked Nothing up and stuck that up his sleeve.
‘My. My darling daughter of man.’ The Forerunner crooned wonderingly. ‘Dids’t I not see with mine own gaze I woulds’t not have believed thee had such rime on thine heart. Thee might well enjoy thine time in Winter.’
Leinan blanched.
* * *
“You didn’t play!” Aemon’s voice was accusatory. He poked her. “You have to play, Sister Lei!” He poked her again.
“Stop that.” Leinan chastised. She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. ‘How long had they been at this?’ It felt like hours. It felt like many, many hours. Shadows’, she thought blearily. ‘How long since night fell?’
And The Wizard and The Forerunner were going at it again now. Both of them were eyeing the board intently and then, at intervals, each other even more intently, when they thought the other wasn’t looking.
The Forerunner was pursing her lips cutely and The Wizard looked like he was doing something with his fingers behind his back except that there was nothing in them.
Poke.
“Stop that!” Leinan snapped, and glared at Aemon.
Aemon glared back obstinately and that was so surprising to Leinan that she just looked at him.
“You have to play!”
Aemon was angry with her, Leinan realized suddenly. Actually angry.
Leinan could count the times Aemon had been angry. Piqued, maybe. Irritated… but, actually angry? Any other child, Leinan would have brushed it off, but this was Aemon.
Leinan looked from Aemon to his sister and even Keimen looked disappointed with her!
“Why, Aemon?” Leinan sat up and tried to shake the heavy tiredness from her eyes — ‘How long?’ She gripped the boy by his shoulders and shook him just a little. “Why do I have to play?”
Aemon shrugged as children do when they didn’t know the reason but were still completely convinced of what they had concluded from it.
Leinan scowled at him.
“The Wizard needs you to play. He’s trying to help us!” Aemon insisted.
Leinan scoffed.
“He dares grandly,” Aemon insisted. “And he needs you to dare grandly too. He needs you to play grandly! Or…”. Aemon shuddered and his eyes started to tear up — and that was also something he didn’t do!
Aemon and Keimen didn’t do that. They didn’t cry.
Leinan remembered. ‘Two toddlers alone the Werwood, who did not wail and did not cry, who went home with them and could not remember where they came from or how they got there.’
A single tear fell from Aemon’s eye now. “Or The Forerunner will win,” He said. “She’ll win, and take us away, and ne’er shall we love you another day.”
Leinan stared at Aemon, open mouthed. And then she looked at Keimen who was watching silently the way Keimen watched everyone silently. Leinan looked back at Aemon and asked a question she suddenly wished she’d thought to ask from the very beginning.
A question for her two special children.
“Do you know what a Wizard is?”
Aemon shook his head.
‘Oh.’ Leinan thought, disappointed. But Keimen paused and looked thoughtful for a moment before shaking hers too.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Leinan speared her with a long look and Keimen squirmed… and folded.
“Magic.” She whispered hesitantly.
‘Oh, well,’ Leinan thought. ‘I could have told you that.’
“Like a Mage?” Leinan asked out loud.
Keimen shook her head. “Different.” Keimen answered, thought for a second, then said, “Other.”
Leinan gave the girl a deadpanned glare and shared some of it with Aemon when he nodded along with his sister enthusiastically. “Other? Like The Forerunner?”
Keimen shook her head. “Less. Other.” Keimen looked frustrated and looked at Aemon. Aemon shrugged. “Grand.” She tried again as if begging Leinan to understand.
Which — Shadows Above and Shadows Below and Everywhere and Anywhere and Never Too Slow — She did not at all understand! Less? Other? Grand?! Magic, but not a Mage?!
‘What did any of that mean?! What did any of this mean?!’
But… her two special children watched her and… “And he needs me to play?” Leinan asked weakly. They nodded. “Play… him?” They nodded again.
“But really play. Not like before.” Aemon supplied earnestly. “You need to play…” He thought for a moment then smiled widely. “You need to play Grandly.”
Aemon reached forward and Leinan thought he wanted a hug, so she pulled him into one. So tight. As tight as she could manage without hurting him….
And into her ear, as if sharing a secret, Aemon whispered. “He needs you to play with Blades in your eyes.”
And what did that even mean?!
* * *
The Wizard’s game with The Forerunner took a while. A long while and Leinan had the distinct sense that they were playing the game on several levels.
They played the game on the board, and that game Leinan could see.
It was beautiful and intense and thoughtful as their game had not been. The Forerunner blazed across the board with her whirlwind blitzes and The Wizard swamped her attacks with pieces and towers, so perfectly placed that they damped her attacks without drowning them in pieces.
The mosaic they drew budded like a flower and sprang forth like spring, and the city of towers they built together was breathtaking.
Then there was the other game they played, and this one Leinan couldn’t see. It happened in the air above the board when they — just barely — did not lock gazes. It happened superimposed over the pieces.
Leinan couldn’t see the battle that took place directly, but she saw it in the game, when The Wizard would suddenly draw his fingers away from one of his pieces with a halted breath, or The Forerunner would glare at one of her towers and then start counting the levels with very careful scrutiny.
The Wizard mostly lost these battles, but sometimes, he won them. Sometimes. And Leinan knew this because his eyes would twinkle and mustache would quirk around a small smile and The Forerunner would hiss a chagrinned laugh.
Then they would be intent again and The Wizard might rock back soon after as he missed a trick and the board changed for the worse.
A couple times he exchanged an odd salute with The Forerunner as if acknowledging an elegant victory Leinan couldn’t see, and The Forerunner accepted these with a gracious nod and small smile of her own and not a hint of cruelty.
They played, if not like friends, than friendly, and it was Beautiful! And Leinan’s heart hurt because nothing about this night had been beautiful and this game had no business being so either.
But, ‘Grandly’, Aemon had said. She needed to play Grandly with Blades in her eyes, whatever that meant.
And so, after The Wizard lost — and lose he did — and after The Wizard passed The Forerunner a very odd pair of spectacles and The Forerunner accepted them with a satisfied grin, Leinan cleared her throat.
“I challenge The Wizard,” Leinan announced, and she would have clenched her teeth in contempt except… ‘Play Grandly’.
“I offer,” Leinan looked down at her pile of winnings and selected the silver circlet that could have likely bought all of Landsend twice over.
“I offer a circlet of silver from elsewhere and nowhere.” Leinan licked her lips, and studied the circlet of perfect silver. So perfect and elegant and twined and twisted just so. ‘Play Grandly’. And she tried! But…
‘Perspective’, Leinan thought suddenly. Like before. This night was all about perspective. To see the Other in something. To look around the actual.
Grandly… was hard! But that was because she couldn’t really see what Grand meant. How does one play Grandly? Was that like ‘greatly’? That didn’t feel quite right.
But… Leinan licked her lips again. But maybe… maybe the Blades she could do.
And with that same shift from before, Leinan gripped the circlet in a loose but firm grip like she’d hold a knife.
She raised her eyes to meet The Wizard’s twinkling ones. She looked him in the eyes with as much hard steel in her gaze as she could possibly manage and intoned into the night
“This band was worked, but ne’er by hand.
And ever and always shall the wearer remand,
The hearts of her subjects and every observer.
The ire of her enemies and all who oppose her.”
The Wizard rocked back where he sat, and The Forerunner squawked in outrage as the Circle of Weak Metal she’d offered against Leinan’s Rough Corded Hair Tie was met with an offer of —
“ — Bottled Moonlight of Twilight’s last Glimmer.”
Leinan knew that, because The Forerunner repeated that part of The Wizard’s announcement with Unconcealed Avarice.
And Leinan knew that because she also had eyes, and she thought, as she looked at the shimmering Something trapped inside that small, glass bottle, that it couldn’t be anything else.
* * *
Leinan played hard, as hard as she ever played against The Forerunner. And it was hard. No mean opponent was The Wizard and Leinan had no problem believing that she would have been bested quite handedly by The Wizard, except that Leinan had learned against The Forerunner and her magics.
Leinan kept the ‘blades’ in her eyes the entire game. She peered at each piece the way she had learned to against The Forerunner, and counted and isolated pieces she had trouble verifying.
Several times, her eyes fuzzed from fatigue, and when that happened she closed them and relaxed her mind and breathed. For seconds. For minutes. Shadows, it could have been hours. But when she opened them again she was focused. She needed her eyes sharp. She needed to play at her best.
Grandly, she hoped.
When she won, The Wizard shared with her a bright smile as he handed her the small glass bottle of moonlight.
Magic.
It was Beautiful.
Then they played again and this time it was the Golden Apple of a Fell Giant against a thick, leather bound book from underneath The Wizards hat.
Leinan lost to clever subterfuge from the Wizard and not magical trickery. And when she lost it was with exhaustion, but also that zinging satisfaction of a well played game tinged with the chagrin of loss, rather than rage, or hatred, or vindictiveness.
* * *
They played once more.
Leinan had to meditate the fuzz from her eyes almost each turn now, but she played at her sharpest. Nothing else would do.
Leinan staggered back afterwards, but nestled in her palm was another small bottle. This bottle contained a shimmering pink liquid in it and it glimmered with Magic.
Aemon and Keimen met her as she stumbled back, needing to look at something, anything that wasn’t a curiously carved board with too-perfect pieces on it.
They glowed with Approval, and Aemon kept whispering to his sister as if she couldn’t hear, “Did you see? She had them! Blades!”
‘So’, she thought distantly, ‘I guess it worked. Whatever ‘it’ was.’
* * *
Wizard Barnibus Jefferson Montgomery Barnwinkle dueled.
He wasn’t a duelist. He wasn’t even really a competitor, or competitive in general. But tonight….
Barnibus Saw.
Whatever Hat was doing, it was working. And he knew his hat was doing something, because he hadn’t heard anything from his head covering for quite some time. While that might be a rather normal occurrence for most people, it was certainly not for a Wizard. So, he thought, Hat must be doing something important.
‘Hat, are you there?’ No response. Barnibus nodded to himself, and focused.
He dueled with The Forerunner of all The Fae.
And he was losing.
But that was fine! The point wasn’t to win. The point was to strive. To dare greatly. To play a Beautiful Game!
So he dueled. He pulled Whitest Fury from up his sleeve and held it in one hand while calling up Firelight’s Flickering Dissonance and bound it up with Fright of the Night Terrors.
Dissonance could go either way in this context, light or dark, and so Barnibus timed it just so, and light it was. That canceled with the Night Terrors aspect nicely, leaving Fright alone.
Fright inhibited while Fury reduced inhibitions. Another convenient reduction, though he needed quite a lot of Fright of the Night Terrors and Firelight’s Flickering Dissonance to reach the magnitude of Whitest Fury. Thankfully he had plenty of both Mana, and Whitest was left behind.
Not much, but enough. It would do
He colored three of his pieces with Whitest and sent them forward.
‘Sleeper agents’, he thought. ‘The Forerunner’s pieces until he needed them not to be.’
The Forerunner found them almost immediately, of course, and she switched them back, but while she was doing that, Barnibus replaced one of her towers with Nothing that he won from Leinan.
A worthy trade.
The Wizard dueled. And he lost, but at least it was Beautiful.
* * *
The bottle was forced back into her hand by Aemon after she dropped it next to the circlet by her feet.
“It’ll help. It’ll help!”
Keimen nodded with her brother. “Mentenzo’s Draught for the Un-belabored Mind.” She whispered, nodding seriously. "The label says so.”
Leinan didn’t even question. Down that pink shimmering liquid went. And her mind burned.
It burned clean and raw like it had been scrubbed by a rough bristled brush.
* * *
She played The Forerunner. Bottled moonlight against a cloth of Star-Spun Shadows.
Her mind Burned and she won.
* * *
The Wizard offered a single vial containing three small, golden, ethereal stars against her cloth of Star-Spun Shadows.
Leinan needed more items to offer, so she glared at him until he hesitantly extracted a smooth, wood covered book — Translated Druidic Compendium of Fungal Fauna — and a long, two-tined fork which felt like a scream.
Leinan’s mind burned, and her eyes were sharp and did not fuzz.
She won.
* * *
“‘Captured Moment of Inspiration’,” Keimen read from the small piece of paper stuck to the bottle. “There are three of them, Sister Lei.” She whispered.
Leinan took her literally and did not at all question why Keimen could read those indecipherable scratches on the paper. She was beyond questioning now.
Leinan swallowed two of those moments one after the other in a furious exchange against The Forerunner who’s eye’s glowed coldly and brilliantly in the night.
Leinan won.
* * *
Leinan used the last moment against The Wizard and gained Five Minutes of Brilliance and a Box of Stasis, whatever that was. It sounded powerful.
But she lost the Star-Spun Shadows cloth soon after.
* * *
Five minutes of Brilliance was not sufficient this time. The Forerunner played as coldly and methodically as a glacier, and the game ended to that odd rule about running out of pieces.
The Forerunner laughed.
Laughed. Not a cackle, but a laugh of mirth and relief and satisfaction and just a little bit of disbelief.
She laughed and laughed and jumped and whooped with a wide grin on her face.
Then she grabbed Leinan before anyone could do anything, spun her about in a circle and planted single kiss on Leinan’s mouth.
Leinan froze, and The Wizard’s face turned deep red underneath his beard.
“With thine wit an’ eyes sharp as knives, I bested thee. Well played Leinan of Landsend.”
* * *
Leinan from Landsend.
Not child.
Not girl, or Mortal Kine.
Leinan from Landsend. The night changed.
* * *
Barnibus beat The Forerunner in return for an answer.
* * *
The Forerunner laughed and answered “Not, but wait ‘pon the noonday sun. For we can’st not reside twixt spheres, more’n a night an’ a day.”
* * *
And the night wore on.
The moon burned, large and cold overhead, and the wind wove and spun playfully in the glen. The fire burned, bright and golden through the night, and no one ever fed it or mixed the coals, but the fire never dimmed, and its heat never faltered.
Time stretched incrementally. And though the stars moved the moon did not.
* * *
The night fragmented and discretized. A game was played. And then another. And another… and another.
Someone lost. Someone won, and the riches of worlds changed hands.
* * *
Powdered Quartz for a leather satchel filled with rubies.
A floating, bone-white plate for a Broomstick of Flight.
* * *
Sometimes there was laughter. Sometimes there was a scowl. And often there was deceit. But at all times, it was Grand.
Only The Forerunner could have said how long they played.
* * *
Winged Sandals for that Box of Stasis.
Kettle of Tea Overfloweth for a Crown of Dominion.
Tome of Ancient Knowledge for a single coin cursed with Immortality.
* * *
Potion of Immateriality for the Keys to an Ancient Realm Lost to Time.
And a Hat said…
* * *
To a head…
* * *
Which had long since forgotten…
* * *
What it was supposed to be waiting for…
* * *
‘It’s time.’
* * *
And when The Forerunner, her lips stretched by wild, elated laughter, offered a Chariot wrought from Sun’s Rays and Fire… The Wizard rejoined with Mine Claim to the Children of Landsend.
…And the night… faltered.