The players stared at the board. Their respective pieces were scattered and, to the untrained eye, it looked as if neither of them had any advantage. Yet both of them had a similar look on their face. A look of confidence and superiority. The game was not yet over.
Deep in the desert, the archaeologist worked. The site was immense and there was much to be discovered. He and his team had been here several weeks now and while they were far from the city, messages still made it out here and each time a new one arrived, it spoke of worsening events and everyone predicting open conflict.
“Should we pack up yet?” one of the workers, a native of the land they were in and one of a handful who could speak the archaeologists language, asked. “If the army comes,” he left the sentence hanging in the air.
The archaeologist, a surprisingly young man with a well built physique and sandy blonde hair shook his head. “Political events are not our business,” he replied. “We have the respect of the people,” he nodded towards the worker and the other native people milling around. “Besides, the army will have to stay in the cities, not just the capital, in order to prevent an uprising if they take control. To come out here, into the desert, would stretch them far.”
“But if they do?” the worker was nervous. He had family in the capital.
“We go south,” the archaeologist said. “Further into the desert. If we’re lucky,” here he smiled that famous smile that made him almost a celebrity in his own nation, “we can make it through the desert to the southern port and leave from there.”
“The southern port?” the worker asked. “There is no southern port.”
“My friend,” the archaeologist said, placing his hand on the other mans shoulder. “Do you think I would come to this place, one of the most hostile nations on the planet, without having several redundancy plans? Years ago, the southern port was the only way in or out of the island. The pirates of the day used it frequently. Its my emergency plan.”
“But the tribelands. How …”
“The famous Bazi tribes,” the archaeologist said, nodding. “It will be an honour to meet them.”
The archaeologist walked away, back towards the dig site and started to converse with others of his team. The southern port? The native thought to himself. Through the tribelands and out the other side. He grinned despite himself. The visitors, as honourable as they were, were still outlanders. If they thought the people of the cities were hostile, there was no way they could handle the tribes.
One of the players was a magic user. A man whose power came from the arcane, from the power inherent in the universe itself. It had limits, as all power did, but so far he had not come close to reaching them. A part of him, the part of him that was responsible for his sitting across from the other, fumed at not being able to use that power to end this. He screamed inside his own head. Itching to break the rules, to scatter this game and its pieces across the stone room they sat in. The rest of him was able to ignore this as he smirked at his opponent and pushed one of the eight gaudily coloured pieces to another spot on the board. It wouldnt be long now.
Religion worked in ebbs and flows. Sometimes events occurred which opened the doors to adherents flocking to the words of those who claimed to understand the cause and effect of those events and other times, it drove them away, believing that the church was responsible for them. Most times were somewhere in between, where the churches were quiet, flying under the radar of most people and were at their most dangerous. Like now. Powerful religious figures were able to move across most of the world easily and quickly, and werent harassed because of their beliefs. They were able to meet each other wherever they wanted and talk about whatever they needed. Everyone was comfortable and safe. It was a good time.
But events happen despite peoples best intentions and this church would be the focal point of something incredible.
The two men sat across from each other in a small coffee shop in the single port city that allowed access between the rest of the world and the island of Bazi. To them, being in this particular city was mere coincidence. They had been on their way to various other locations when their paths intersected and the order to meet had come through. The coffee was mediocre, but the conversation was anything but.
“You have news, then?” the older man said. He wore casual clothes. In this city he would not look out of place. “The bloodline continues?”
“Not so loud,” the other, younger, man said. He was dressed in his religious outfit. A true believer and an influence known across the world. Somehow he had not been noticed in this little cafe. “If people heard,” he said, looking around with unhidden paranoia.
“People hearing” the older man said. “Is irrelevant. I worry when they start to understand. Now, quickly, before we are noticed and your celebrity makes conversation impossible, tell me what you know.”
“Nothing is confirmed,” the younger said. “But there are candidates. At least one is actually promising. A woman we’ve had in our care for some time. In truth, we’ve known about her since her birth.”
“What has taken so long for this to be spread then?”
“An accident. Someone failed to file our paperwork appropriately and now we have some damage control to undertake. We would have preferred to never let this information out.”
“What about these other candidates? If you have her, what else do you need?”
“A bluff,” the younger said, shrugging. “Sow the seeds of doubt. If we make it look like we arent entirely certain, people wont know for sure what we do and we can play the leak off as a lie.”
“And the girl?”
“She is being trained. Somewhere out of the way. If they find out and see through our ruse, then they wont find her easily.”
“Any word on the items?”
The younger shook his head. “They are still lost. The game cannot yet be played.”
“Still,” the older said, disappointed at the result of the meeting. “The clock ticks on. Each day we get closer to it.”
“Indeed,” the younger said as a cry of recognition flew up from someone lined up at the cafe counter. “Now, I believe that is my cue to shut up.”
“Until next time,” the older said, standing and leaving the younger to his crowd of fans.
He stared across at the sorcerer. His move had confused him. Good. His intelligence will be his undoing.
He was the warrior, a hero among his people. A leader who protected everyone who needed protecting. Once upon a time the sorcerer had been an enemy. An impossible to kill virus who had harassed and tormented his people for years. That is until he had stepped up and put him in his place.
Years had passed since then and his people had lived peacefully. Left alone. How the times change that the two of them now found themselves competing on another level entirely. This game, these stakes, they were totally different to the physical nature of their previous lives. But there was more than the game at work here. Someone else had set this up. Someone else had put them here. He knew the sorcerer knew that too. Yet neither of them mentioned it. The game was too tempting. A level field. Neither his strength nor the others magic gave them an advantage. The game was new to both of them and a winning strategy had yet to be determined. At least, had yet to be determined by either of them. The warrior watched the sorcerer. The latter considering the board and its various pieces. The winning play was almost within sight, but this game was about more than just the board and its pieces; like most games, the real move was to understand the other player. Or players.
Power was the goal. The attainment and use of it was the reason why you sought it. If you didnt want power, then you didnt deserve it. And if you didnt deserve it, you would be crushed underfoot by those who did. That was how the world had always worked. The deserving would seek the power they needed to prove they deserved to be there. The power would then elevate them and they would only be removed by someone more deserving.
“There is no one more deserving,” the woman said, her death imminent. “You deserve it all, everything I can give you and everything I cant. You must go out and claim it.”
“Mother,” the stern faced youth said. She wasnt really his mother, but she was the closest thing he had ever had to one.
He clenched his fists and watched with a stone face as the woman who raised him, who taught him everything he knew, died in her bed. As he watched her face struggle with the end and then turn strangely calm, he let out a deep sigh and left the room. He knew in his heart that she was right. She had given him much and he had taken it all voraciously. But he still felt empty inside. Incomplete. She was right, it was time for him to claim what was left to claim.
The warrior saw the opportunity and immediately took it. He moved the red piece three spots and took the green piece. As he lifted it from the board, the sorcerer made his move and used the purple piece to take the red and set the game towards its ending.
“You make rushed decisions here too,” the sorcerer gloated. “Every time you lost it was because you failed to think ahead, to weigh the outcomes of the choices you made.”
The warrior didnt look perturbed at this. “A one for one move,” he replied calmly. I didnt lose an advantage, but I gained breathing space. The board is now bigger for our remaining pieces.”
“Meaningless,” the sorcerer said.
“Perhaps, but every time I have won against you, it has been because you failed to listen when people you deem as less than yourself have spoken. You have forgotten the rules of the game as laid out by our host, and it will cost you dearly when I win,” he surveyed the board, “in seven turns.""