Game Pieces

Aedric's group attempts to gain access to Helios tower.

10.

Game Pieces

 

Snoe looked down somewhat fearfully from the levitation platform that she and Aedric stood upon, wishing the whole ordeal was over.   The young Queen did not like to think that the only thing keeping the two of them from falling 60 feet onto the floor of the valley was an arcane shelf of energy cast by a mysterious lady that none of them trusted.  

“We have no railing, you know.”   She weakly said to her husband, as she gingerly stepped back from the edge, “If a strong wind comes along, or one of those bird monsters was to attack us, we would plummet to our deaths.”

“Well, you shouldn’t look over the edge, my dear.”   He extended his hand to her and she took it, and then pulled in close, wrapping her arms tightly around him.  

“I feel safe now.”   She sighed, smiling brightly at him.

He hugged her and she rested her head against his shoulder, “Well, have you seen anything?”

“Nothing but birds… don’t worry, just regular birds.”

“This is insane, Aedric!    I don’t trust her - not at all.”

“Valmiai?”

“If that is even her real name!   She wouldn’t tell us anything about Amala, only that she will be ‘different when we see her again’.”

“Well, she did get us up here so we can see the last two rows of spaces where the tower will appear.”    He glanced to the west and even with his acute Elven vision, he could just barely make out the second levitation disc, where Allea, Valmiai and Gamel stood.    Somewhere on the ground, unseen between the two observation platforms, Mattleos, Mutt and Aaron watched and waited for a signal to move toward the site of the tower’s appearance.

“We’ve been up here four hours”, Snoe told her husband as she looked again at one of the wizard’s watches that Valmiai had found for them to use.    “It’s getting cold up here and I can’t help but worry that more of those bird monsters will see us and move against us.”

“Yes, that is my biggest concern too.”   Aedric admitted.

“We don’t even know how long this will take.”

“Valmiai seemed confident that the game reset this morning and she said the tower was directly behind us in its correct starting position.”

“Yes, but she didn’t show us before she put us up here.   I can’t see it from here, can you?”

“No, sweetheart.   It would be three and a half miles away and the trees in between would block our line of sight.    You’ve got to trust her, my love.”

“It’s hard to trust someone who ambushed my sister and won’t tell us exactly what happened to her.   If Valmiai wanted to, she could dissolve the two levitation spells and send me, you, Gamel and Allea to our graves.”

“Well, she’s up there with Gamel and Allea on their platform.”

“Yes, but I’ll wager she would have some sort of teleportation spell ready to escape injury to herself.”

“I don’t think she’ll try that, Snoe.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It looks like it would take more than one person to enter this tower.   She sure sounded like someone who had a grudge against Helios.”

“Yet she wouldn’t tell us why she had this grudge.”

“True, but still I felt like there was a burning hatred toward him for some harm he did to her years ago.    So even if Valmiai is doing this for her own reasons, you know the old saying, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’”

Snoe nodded, “Yes, but is Helios actually our enemy?”

“His creatures killed Sintore.”

Snoe’s face darkened, “Yes, quite right.   He is indeed our enemy.    The poor boy.   Gamel told me that his parents were very nervous about him serving as a squire.   Now they’ll learn he’s dead.”

“I don’t envy Gamel when he has to tell them.”

“No… I just think that... Hey!”   Snoe blinked in surprise, “Look!   Is that what I think it is?!”

She pointed to a tall round tower of grey stone that had appeared in a blink of an eye, without any sort of flash of light or sound.    It was to the north of them, about half a mile away, in the spot of ground where Allea and Valmiai told them that the right-most corner of the ‘enemy row’ of the huge chessboard would be.

It fit the exact size of the patch of soil and looked to be three stories tall.

The albino Drow girl looked down at the wizard’s watch, then at a piece of paper where Allea had carefully sketched a grid showing her theorized minimal times that the tower would remain in that spot.

 

70	140	210	280	350	420	490	560
60	120	180	240	300	360	420	480
50	100	150	200	250	300	350	400
40	80	120	160	200	240	280	320
30	60	90	120	150	180	210	240
20	40	60	80	100	120	140	160
10	20	30	40	50	60	70	80
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

 

 

“It’s on the last row… that means… 560 seconds, which would be… over 9 minutes per second of actual time in the hypothetical chess match!   Right?”

Aedric glanced at the chart, “Yes - it is in the position that will give us the most time!”

Immediately he scooped up one of the signaling horns that the mysterious Valmiai had also retrieved from one of the abandoned wizard camps.    Aedric blew two short blasts with all his might and the sound pierced the late morning air, sending echoes across the valley.  

A moment later the levitation platform began to slowly descend to the ground, while in the distance, Gamel responded with two blasts from his horn.

“I sure hope Allea is right about the time factor.”   Snoe said, clutching her husband tightly as they descended to the ground.

“Yes, I do too.   She’s a very intelligent girl, though, so let’s not worry.   We’ll have to wait until Gamel, Allea and Valmiai join us before we can go in.”

“That’s the flaw in this plan - they are several miles off!”

Aedric was about to respond to his wife, when there was a flash of pink light below them and to his relief, there stood the three.

“She must have teleportation spells.”   He whispered to Snoe as the disc sat down next to them.   

“Now listen to me, please!”   Valmiai said to all of them, holding her hands over her head to quiet them, “I will now tell you - I have been inside Helios’ tower before.”

“You have?”   Several of them said together.

“Many years ago - but we have no time for me to explain right now.   I know how to buy us much more time within, but you’ll have to trust me.   Snoe; there will be a rhyme inscribed on the door to the tower in Elven script.   The second line, translated, is ‘Virgin Queen’:   This refers to you.”

The girl blushed, but Valmiai continued with her instructions, “You must touch the words for ‘Virgin Queen’ and then try the door.   It will open for you.   Only you should enter in.   Do not worry, it will be safe.    When you enter in, there will be a little room - about the size of a stairwell landing.    There will be a table set there, with a chessboard on it.   It might be moving as if ghosts were playing chess.”  

“Find the white Queen piece on this board and move it so as to block in the white rook piece which will be at the back row of the enemy row.   I mean by this, the home row of the black pieces.   If you can keep the white rook from being moved in the next move, the tower will remain here longer.”

“So you want me to block my own white rook, which will be in the same position on the chessboard as Helios’ tower is on the huge ‘board’?”

“Correct.    Helios’ chess games on the little board reflect the movement of the tower.   If we can keep the Rook stationary and protected by some of its’ own pieces, we’ll have more time.”

“What if I can’t move the piece that far forward to protect him?”

Valmiai smiled knowingly, “You will - it is something Helios set up to give visitors to his tower a gaming chance at success.   The first few moves and those afterward can be of several different patterns, but always when the tower is first entered, the game pieces will be in specific positions.    So you will be able to do it.   Only your piece will have the power though.”

“What happens then?”

“We begin a life-sized chess game, but on a room-sized scale, with us as the players.    Do not worry; I’ll explain more in a while.   Hurry now!   If you don’t move quickly, then we won’t have as much time.”

Snoe glanced at Aedric and he nodded.   The two of them ran a short distance to the tower and directly on the thick wooden door of the Keep was carved Elven words in a flowing script.    Thankfully he could read it, and pointed toward the line Valmiai had mentioned.

“Aedric, whatever you do, DO NOT touch the door or try to follow Snoe inside, until she has finished the move.   You too have specific places to step.   Do not fear, I will not lead you astray.   You are the only way I can get into this tower and seek revenge.    Your success will mean my success.”

“Alright.”   He responded, not at all liking the idea of Snoe going into the arcane keep alone.   But before he could say anything to his wife, the girl had already touched the line of script at which he was pointing.   He expected the door to open, but instead Snoe simply vanished with a popping sound.

 

***

 

Snoe jumped in surprise upon finding herself suddenly inside the tower.   For a moment she panicked, but the words of the strange shape-changing woman came to her again and she took a calming breath.   Looking around, she found that she was in a room perhaps eight feet square.   Just as Valmiai had told her, there was a rather fancy chess game on a gaming table in the middle of the room, with a door in the wall behind it.  

As she approached it, she saw a black pawn rise up as if by itself and move one place forward on the board.

Though unnerved by this, Snoe scanned the board quickly.   Her parents had loved chess and she and all her sisters had played the game from early childhood.  

Sure enough, one of the white rooks had been moved the entire length of the board until it rested in the enemy ‘home row’, apparently having taken its opposing black rook.  

She quickly took in the moves of the game at this stage.   There were several white pawns missing as well as one of the white bishops.   The black side had a rook, knight and three pawns gone.

“Let’s see…” She said aloud to herself, finding the White Queen.   It had been moved into the spot vacated by the white rook, apparently to protect the piece from afar.   The albino girl checked to see there was no black piece that could take the Queen, and then she moved it all the way down to the spot next to the rook.  

“I hope that will do it.” Snoe sighed, wondering how soon some one would join her and hoping Aedric would be first.

 

***

 

“There!”  Valmiai said with a satisfied smile, as if she could sense that something had changed.    She looked at Aedric, “It is now your turn, King Aedric.   Touch the topmost carving on the door and you will join your wife.   When you arrive, do not go through the door or touch the chessboard in the room.   We will join you one by one.”

Aedric didn’t waste any time and touched the carving in the tower’s door.   Immediately he was inside the tower, causing Snoe to utter a little peep of surprise at his sudden arrival.

“Thank Yesh, it’s you!”   She sighed and ran over to him as if she hadn’t seen him for a long time.

“Are you alright?”   He asked as she hugged him.   She was trembling.

“I didn’t think you - or anyone- would get here!”

“Sweetheart, you only left us about a minute ago.”

She looked up at him with great surprise, “It has been nine hours, Aedric!”

“Nine hours? But…”

“I know why”, she said as she held him close to her, “It is the time distortion.    The Tower is on the last row of the chessboard, so that was… 560 seconds for each second of real time.     So a minute passing out there is nine hours long inside the tower.”

“Good heavens!   You were in here - alone- waiting for nine hours?!   You poor girl!   She should have told you there would be a wait.”   He leaned over and kissed her forehead, “I’ll bet you were scared to death.”

“Yes, but I knew you wouldn’t leave me here and I finally figured out it was probably the time difference.    But I was getting very anxious.”

“Well, we’ll have a wait still, as we can only go in one by one.    I don’t think it will be as long, but we will have some time by ourselves before the next arrival.   Do you want to eat something?   I have my pack with me and you are probably starving.”

 “Yes, I am hungry.   Being all alone for that long, I feared I was going crazy.   I still feel like I want to just cry hysterically for a few hours and scream and punch things - it was like being trapped somewhere.   Let’s sit and eat something before the others arrive.”

“That sounds like a splendid idea.”

He pulled off his pack and produced a container of dried fruit and nuts.   Soon they were eating as they waited for time to pass.