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Dust motes sparkled in the golden late afternoon light streaming through the high leaded-glass windows as Blaise dropped tiredly onto a bench in the old West Reading Room. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt in an effort to keep cool, but the only real effect was that his attempts to wipe the sweat off his forehead using his equally-sweaty forearms were stymied. It turned out a stack of books was a mysterious artifact that always seemed to weigh more in aggregate than the sum of its constituents; he would certainly remember that before agreeing to this kind of labor next time. No matter how frantic and desperate the Head Prelate looked when he asked.
It was almost the Feast of the Enlightenment, and the School was abuzz with activity. Even now, Blaise could hear harried voices calling to one another across the courtyard through the transom window. It was always like this in the weeks leading up to one of the High Holy Days, except this year the excitement seemed fever-pitched because it was rumored that the Imperial Keeper of the Scrolls himself would be in attendance, having traveled all the way to Wayrest to witness the dedication of the new Prophecy Studies wing of the library. Truth be told, Blaise was keen to catch a glimpse of the mysterious figure himself; the Scrollkeepers were shrouded in legend and lore and the Keeper was the only one in their association who so much as interacted with the outside world, much less traveled outside of the Imperial City.
So the Head Prelate’s anxiety made sense, as much as Blaise regretted agreeing to offload all these old books and scrolls by the end of the day. It was obvious that this wing had previously been used for overflow storage of research materials the School didn’t know what else to do with, so thus far his day had been an exercise in archaeology. He’d hauled boxes of dog-eared old tomes, lugged moth-eaten tapestries, even gingerly relocated a few dubious-looking artifacts he half expected to zap him with the remnants of some defunct enchantment (they didn’t, although one of them did make an alarming wounded-sounding buzzing noise when he touched it).
The shelves were clearing, slowly but surely. And now the daylight was waning, and he’d said this would be finished by supper. Grimacing, he stood up and stretched, looking around for his next task.
Against the opposite wall was an elegant but battered old chess table, inlaid with black and white marble, its pedestal fluted and carved like an Ayleid column. Was that supposed to stay in here? Supposedly the edges of the room had to be clear for the preservation enchantments that would need to be laid before any of the School’s precious artifacts could be stored. He crossed the room and nudged the table experimentally; it was as heavy as it looked.
He was studying the table, trying to determine if the top was detachable, when the sound of scurrying feet distracted him and he looked up just in time to see a small blue-robed figure dart around the edge of the doorway in a blur and then flatten against the wall of the library, breathing hard.
Blaise straightened slowly, blinking in surprise. “Hello,” he said.
The newcomer started, flinching violently. Upon closer inspection, she was a girl—a very young Breton girl, perhaps no more than ten or eleven. She was wearing child-sized robes at least notionally styled to imitate those of a credentialed mage, and her light brown hair was in wild disarray, presumably from her mad dash down the corridor.
She didn’t reply, but seemed to dislike him looking at her, because she tried to shrink back even further into the wall, shaking her hair into her face and frowning up at him. Her cheeks were flushed and blotchy; unless he missed his guess, she had been crying. As he watched, she reached up with both hands and flattened her hair over her ears.
“Are you lost?” he tried again, and still got no response; if anything, she shuffled her heels against the wall as if actually trying to disappear into it. Blaise folded his arms, studying her helplessly, at a loss. Surely he ought to try to figure out what she was doing here? He could not think of any reason for a child of this age to be running loose in the west wing; the only things on this side of the campus besides this disused old library and more dusty storage was the Head Archivist’s office, and Blaise certainly could not imagine that fastidious old mer entertaining young visitors.
There was a sudden commotion in the hallway outside as the door to the west wing banged open, the sound echoing loudly off the marble floor. Then came an indistinct angry voice and loud, stomping footsteps. At the noise, the little girl shot upright, her eyes going wide, and before Blaise could do or say anything, she darted between two bookshelves and disappeared into the shadows.
A moment later, Imanuel Gant, Blaise’s least favorite prelate, appeared in the doorway of the library looking irate.
If Blaise were to make a list of all the people he most tried to avoid when on campus, Gant would be near the top. Stout and beady-eyed, he wore a perpetual sour expression that simultaneously managed to convey both aloof disinterest and disdain. And as far as Gant was concerned, every other faculty member at the School of Julianos was worthy of that disdain except perhaps the Head Prelate.
However, Gant had established himself as one of the foremost Alteration theory experts in the Iliac Bay, and a distinguished lecturer and teacher to boot, so despite his general unpleasantness his time and attention was typically in great demand. What was he doing in this dusty old storage wing?
Gant’s paunchy face was red from exertion and possibly anger as he leaned against the doorframe, huffing and puffing and glaring at Blaise. “Have you seen a girl come through this wing?
In spite of his recent ponderings about what to do with his surprise young visitor, Blaise allowed his dislike of Gant to win out and put on a puzzled expression. “A girl?”
“My student,” snapped Gant, still panting. “She ran out on me. Impudent little—“ he paused to gulp in a lungful of air “—I’ve lost her. Parents have been pestering me for months to do an assessment, I finally scheduled her, and now this. Renaud said she came this way. Have you seen her?”
“What happened to make her run out on you?”
“She has a block,” snapped Gant impatiently. “A nasty one, too. She has a better grasp of the principles of magical form architecture than most of my students twice her age, but her magicka pool is like a fart in the wind compared to what it should be. I’m told she’s got Direnni blood, for Julianos’ sake. It must be a block.”
“How do you break a block?” Blaise asked suspiciously, remembering the girl’s red-rimmed eyes.
“Depends on the person! I’ve beaten the block out of more than one acolyte in my day. I didn’t try that on her, mind you, but if you ask me, a snowflake like her would benefit from a little toughening up. She’s stubborn enough I thought anger might do it, but I neglected to lock the door so she ran out and undid all my setup work. This is why I don’t tutor children. In any case, I don’t have time for this; have you seen her or not?”
“I didn’t see anyone, but I heard footsteps running toward the Orrery courtyard a few minutes ago,” said Blaise coldly. “Perhaps that was her.” The Orrery was near the top of the astronomy tower, a completely separate building, across a sloping courtyard and up numerous flights of stairs. By the time Gant realized she wasn’t there, he would probably need to lie down and take a nap before coming back down.
Gant muttered an oath under his breath, then heaved himself off the doorframe to stomp away down the hall in the direction Blaise had indicated, still grumbling, without so much as a nod of acknowledgment.
“Well that was unpleasant,” Blaise said aloud, once the door at the end of the corridor had slammed shut and all was quiet once more. “Searching the Orrery should keep him busy for at least twenty minutes, in case anyone was looking for a way to get back to the administrative building without being seen.”
He waited for a moment, eyeing the shadows between the shelves for any sign of movement, but the child didn’t emerge. It occurred to him that Geraud would know what to do in this situation much better than Blaise did; he had a way with children. But Geraud was currently on the other side of campus, no doubt up to his neck in his own preparations for the Feast.
There didn’t seem to be much to do other than wait for her to come out on her own terms, so Blaise squatted down and resumed his examination of the old chess table. The setting sun had shifted while he had been talking to Gant, and now a warm stripe of early evening light from the highest window in the west wall bisected the tabletop into light and shadow, the dust between the marble tiles shimmering in the glow. He ran his fingers along the edge of the tabletop; the slab was thick and heavy, with an inset drawer on either side to hold the chess pieces, but it appeared to be removable.
“Is that a chess table?”
The small voice still sounded a bit teary. Blaise backed out from under the table and looked over at her. She had emerged from between the shelves and was peering at him through narrowed eyes, a surly little thundercloud who was nevertheless unable to disguise her reluctant curiosity.
“It is,” he confirmed, turning back to the table and feeling under the top for the easiest way to release it from the pedestal. “Do you play?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod.
“That’s good,” he replied. “Chess can be useful practice for students of magic.”
“Are you a mage?” she asked, her sullenness making it sound almost accusatory as she sidled closer and craned her neck to examine the table.
“I am,” confirmed Blaise. “I’ve nowhere near the skills of most of the students here, but I grew up around the priests and picked up a thing or two.”
“Do you play chess?” Now she was standing almost next to him.
“Occasionally,” he said, straightening up and testing one of the drawers in the side of the table experimentally. It was a loose fit; probably should take them out prior to moving the table to avoid the risk of them falling out.
“Do you want to play now?”
Surprised, he turned toward her, opening his mouth to tell her he was busy and she should probably be getting back to the main building to find her parents anyway, but something stopped him. She was looking up at him with a hopeful, hungry look in her red-rimmed blue eyes. Blaise felt a surprising pang of sympathy. The child had clearly been through an ordeal—Gant was unpleasant enough for Blaise to deal with; whoever had inflicted him upon a ten-year-old girl was just cruel.
“All right,” acquiesced Blaise. “One game, and then we go back to the administrative building.”
At this, her lips curled into a small smile, and she wasted no time climbing onto the chair and tucking both legs under her. “You can be white,” she said, opening the corresponding drawer and selecting a piece, holding it up to look at it.
It was the white queen. As it turned out, rather than marble, the white pieces were carved of transparent crystal, angular and many-faceted. As she held the queen in her hand, the golden evening light caught its facets and a hundred points of light dazzled across the stone floor.
For a moment, she watched the light dance, but then abruptly reached out and dropped the piece into his outstretched palm. The rest of the pieces followed, one by one, pushed into his hands with brisk efficiency.
He arranged the crystal pieces on his side of the board, but by the time he had his first rank arranged, she had already settled all her onyx pieces and reached across to arrange his pawns too, lining them up deftly. His eyebrows climbed.
“Your move,” she prompted matter-of-factly, leaning forward to peer across the board.
She’d given him the initiative. Either she expected to win, or she was being polite, as the proposer of the game. Maybe both; she certainly handled the pieces as if she knew what she was doing. It had been awhile since Blaise had played; Laurent was a masterful chess player and used to take great pleasure in soundly beating both him and Geraud on a regular basis. Blaise had picked up a few tricks from losing so many times over the years, so his skills were passable, but if his strange little visitor turned out to be a poor player, he wasn’t about to trounce a ten year old on purpose.
She was looking at him expectantly. Blaise studied the board for a moment, deciding which opening to use, then pushed his center-right pawn forward two spaces.
Lightning-quick, she mirrored him, moving her corresponding pawn to meet it. He brought out his knight next, and she moved another pawn, clearing the center spaces in her second rank. He did the same, and her next move took her bishop almost clear across the board, within striking distance of his knight. It was an aggressive move, and she made it with decisive quickness, as she had every other move thus far. Perhaps he had underestimated her.
Sure enough, his knight rapidly fell to her bishop, and from there the game proceeded in fits and starts, with an uneven rhythm composed of Blaise taking several seconds to decide on a move, and his opponent responding rapidly, then looking at him impatiently. It was impressive; Blaise could find no strategic fault with any of her decisions, and she made them so quickly, hardly seeming to think.
She beat him in under fifteen moves. Her black rook pinned his king between his own bishop and hers. Checkmate.
He reached out to shake her hand, and she took it and shook it firmly, a gravely triumphant expression on her face, her hand small and cold in his.
“Good game,” he said, nodding to her in deference. “You are a formidable opponent.”
“If you’re a real mage, how are you so bad at chess?” she asked suspiciously.
Blaise laughed out loud. There was nothing else to do, because she certainly had earned that jibe. She was peering at him across the board, tears long forgotten, an incredulous look of disdain on her face.
“I wish my brother was here to hear you say that. He would probably shake your hand,” said Blaise, reaching across the table to retrieve his captured pieces and lining them up to be replaced in their drawer. The movement cast another dazzling array of tiny rainbows across the floor.
“I thought all mages learned to play chess. My dad says it’s good for focus.” She was still peering at him skeptically, making no move to retrieve her pieces.
Blaise shrugged. “Your father is right, chess is good for that, but there are many ways to learn focus. Just plain practicing spells does it too, if you are regimented about it.” His own tutor growing up had been utterly immovable in his insistence that Blaise run through the full beginner series of basic and modifying forms at least once a day, expressly for the purpose of cultivating focus, even when he was well beyond that skill-wise.
“Really?” There was a strange, avid note in her voice. She was leaning forward slightly, watching him closely.
“Yes,” said Blaise. “Focus is just a kind of mental toughness. It’s like…the blacksmith gets strong by working iron. But there are other people who are also strong who didn’t get that way by working iron.”
“What about really strong people who are really bad at working iron?” she pressed, folding her arms across her chest. The avid note was still there, but there was something else too, a wistfulness that abruptly recalled Blaise to what Gant had said, about her block.
“Well, there are all sorts of other jobs that require strong people. Soldiers, stonemasons, for example,” said Blaise, trying to make his tone gentle.
“What if the strong person really wants to be a blacksmith!” She pushed herself back from the edge of the table and climbed down off the chair, and now she sounded near tears. Blaise half expected her to stamp her foot.
“You know what they say,” said Blaise, gathering up the black pieces and lining them up in the silk-lined drawer. “Practice makes perfect.”
She groaned, and now she actually did stamp her foot. “All I ever do is practice!”
“Well then you’re leagues ahead of most other students,” said Blaise. “Discipline might be the hardest skill of all.”
She glared at him in response, but there wasn’t any heat in it. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Myfanwy,” she replied sullenly.
“Family name?” he asked curiously. If he recalled correctly, Myfanwy was an ancient Breton mage queen, famous for conquering some region or other. Geraud would know. It wasn’t a common name anymore, as far as he knew.
“Caldevwin,” she said suspiciously. Ah—that made sense; the Caldevwins were a well-known pair of historians in Wayrest, specializing in ancient history of the Iliac Bay. He had heard their names mentioned before in the history wing; perhaps Geraud had met them in the course of his studies. His instincts to take the girl to him had been more spot-on than he had realized.
“Why, what’s your name?” Myfanwy asked, still peering at him suspiciously.
“Blaise Gaumont,” he replied. “Nice to meet you, Myfanwy Caldevwin. Do you know my brother, Geraud? I was thinking of going to find him now. He’s a chess player too; maybe he will be interested in a game.” With any luck, the Caldevwins were already looking for their daughter, but if not, Geraud or one of his teachers would know how to get in contact with them. And seeing as Geraud was an atrocious chess player, inflicting Myfanwy upon him would be a fitting revenge for all the times he had cheated in an attempt to gain an edge.
“Okay,” said Myfanwy. She trailed behind him as he led the way out of the room, checking both ways for any sign of Gant before stepping into the corridor.
This afternoon had certainly taken a turn, he thought bemusedly as they made their way out of the west wing and across the courtyard. In the gathering dusk, the gray stone of the School buildings was painted in soft evening light, and as they reached the center of the courtyard, the sonorous tolling of the bell tower at the north end of campus announced vespers.
“That’s the end of my lesson,” observed Myfanwy, slowing to a stop and looking around for the source of the tolling.
Blaise stopped as well so as not to leave her behind. Most likely Gant was still looking for her on the other side of campus, so it seemed she had indeed successfully run out the clock on her lesson. He said as much, backing slowly away in an effort to draw her into a walk, but she stayed firmly put, gazing out toward the bell tower, looking distressed.
“I shouldn’t have run away,” said Myfanwy in a small voice, almost too softly for Blaise to make out. “I want to learn.”
Blaise stopped backing away then, and really looked at her. She was standing slightly hunched over, eyebrows drawn down and her mouth set in a line. As he watched, she reached up and flattened her hair over her ears in that peculiar gesture again. Not for the first time, he thought what a strange, dour little girl she was. But at the same time, beneath the tear tracks and the set of her jaw, there was a stubborn intensity to her; the particular single-minded focus of a child who refused to believe the world could be anything other than what she wanted it to be.
It was enviable, really, he thought as he watched her standing there and grinding her teeth. There was a whole complex world inside her, even as young as she was. Had he been so full of intensity at that age? He didn’t think he had.
“I’ll bet your parents are looking for you,” he tried, thinking resignedly of the mountain of work that still awaited him that night.
She heaved a gusty sigh, but turned on her heel and began following him again, across the courtyard, into the deep evening shadow cast by the priory, and into the back entrance of the administrative wing, where they did indeed find her parents waiting anxiously.
He did not run into Myfanwy Caldevwin again in the halls of the Wayrest School of Julianos, and it would be years before he again heard her name, though in a very different context. But every so often in the intervening years, the memory of that strange, somber chess game in the dusty old storage room would cross his mind and bring a smile to his lips. It wasn’t the game he remembered, or the sheepish feeling of being soundly drubbed by a ten year old, but the burning intensity in her small, wan face; the pure conviction that what she wanted would be hers, if she only wanted it hard enough.
It was the image of her face, staring down at the crystal queen in the palm of her hand, prismatic in the evening light, glittering like she held a fistful of stars.