Page 43 of Smoke & Ashes
“Is this a trap?” I asked.
“A sacrifice.”
I really, really didn’t get chess. “I don’t understand.”
“Sometimes you must lose a little to gain much. A pawn for the centre of the board. An eye for wisdom. A life for a throne.”
“None of those seem worth it.”
“Perhaps. But appearances deceive.”
“You still haven’t told me what’s going on.”
“I have told you everything you need to be told.”
I took the pawn, and she smiled.
“The right move,” she said. “But too late. You killed the queen of coins and now she thwarts me. You listened to the queen of wands, but forgot that her card was reversed.”
That seemed deeply unfair. “So what do you want me to do? You must want me to dosomething.”
“Spear me to an ash-tree,” she replied. “Save a thief in my stead. Cut me apart and scatter me in the sea. Cast me back into the lake where I was found.”
None of that sounded like anything I could live with. “I can’t.”
She reached out a hand and caressed my cheek. The look in her eyes was hauntingly compassionate. “I know. And I’m sorry.”
The giraffe broke off at a run and I followed it. The motorway curved upwards and upwards and ever upwards, stopping at a cliff-edge of broken tarmac and shattered concrete. I stared out over a gulf of mist-shrouded water and saw a castle amidst a lake.
And then the giraffe was gone, and the strange old woman sat next to me, cards between her hands. The ten of spades. The ace of hearts. The devil and the moon.
“Nimue said I’d killed you,” I told her.
“You did.” She flicked a card between her hands. The five of diamonds.
I looked closely at her. Had I seen her somewhere before? The face was unfamiliar, but we were in dreams and faces were easily changed. Eyes were less so. I looked at her eyes.
“Vera King?”
She flipped the Queen of Diamonds. “The same. You stuck me good, little girl. Hardly any of me left now.”
“So you’re just here to fuck with me?”
She shook her head. “My, but you would never have made a sorceress. You think so narrowly.”
I sat down on the edge of the asphalt cliff. “What then?”
“I’m stuck, my dear, stuck between worlds. But the devil don’t have me yet, and I can cling to that.”
“And you’re talking to me because?”
She cackled. Proper Witch-of-the-West cackled. “Your fine lady had a plan. The queen’s gambit—a pawn for the board, but you refused it.”
“You know between the cards and the chess I’m getting deeply tired of game-related metaphors.”
“A pity, because you shall get little else. We are both pawns, my dear, in a game your queen plays with her own self. A far-sighted little Tireseas she was, and she saw that one day she might become a thing that we all should fear.”
“I swear if you don’t start making more sense I’m going to kill you all over again.”
