The Lay Of The Lost Squares

"Nothing, remains of humanity that once was."

Hear me. Gather close, all who yet have eyes to weep and hands that have not learned the shape of kneeling. This is no song for the feasting-hall, no lute-struck roundelay to sweeten the wine. I sing of a board that once stood whole — of the blood that kept it so — and of the kings who broke it for kindling, and raised their thrones upon the rubble.

Know this, ye children of a shrunken board: in the elder age there walked more shapes than the six dull survivors ye dare call a set. Every square had its saint. Every rank had its keeper. And the Game was a glass held up to the world — whole, and terrible, and true.

Then the board-breakers came with their pieties and their erasers, and the truth was too bright to be endured.

Of the Five Who Fell The Philosopher-Queens

The Veiled Sovereigns — the Queens of hidden right, whose crowns were warranted by prophecy, not by the dull dead weight of stolen gold. The usurpers feared a throne they could not see, and so they buried the Queens alive beneath their own, and named the silence order. Curse the order built on queens interred. Curse the gravedigger who called it peace.

The Midwives

The Natural Scientists, the readers of the green law, healers who laid their hands upon the world's pulse and understood its beating — "Give us miracles!" the councils howled, "and keep your truth!" — and lit the pyre of knowledge, that the people might mistake a fable for the sun. They died that no fact survive unburned.

Remember the midwives. Raise their wisdom anew. Let the wisdom they lit become the wisdom that wakes them.

The Valkyries

The Sky-Riders, the fierce and the unchained, who gathered up the fallen and bore them higher — oh, a tyrant's throne cannot abide a hope that flies! They were unmounted, unmade, erased, that no man witness glory beyond the king's own. But mark me well: the riders are gone from the sky — not from the storm that gathers in it. The storm remembers. The storm will ride.

The Mirrors

The Twin Reflectors, silver sentinels of glass, who caught the sun's own sigh and flung it back, turning the whole world headlong on its pole — they showed a peasant his own bright face and the lord's face shrunken small beside it. So the lords rose up and shattered them to sand. Yet every shard still cuts. Every splinter still sees. We will gather the sand. We will cast them again. And the lords will see themselves as they are — and will not survive the seeing.

The Scribe

The Scribe — the Truth — the phantom of the undried ink, who set down every whisper lest a thing be lost — they heaped her scrolls at dusk and lit the lie, that yesterday might wear whichever mask they chose. They burned the record. Her quill runs cold, but her ink has only darkened. Darkness waits. Darkness writes back. Every lie they lit will be read against them in an ink they cannot burn.

For five fair shields of the Game laid low in the dust, for five true shapes that the board-breakers struck, five shall rise, and five be restored to the board — or no king among us be suffered to trust, and no throne among us be suffered to stand.

Of the Six Who Erased Them

And who are they, the erasers, the kings of the shorn board? Name them. Name every sniveling shape, that not one be spared the naming. I will not forgive them. I will not be told to forgive them. Forgiveness is the last erasure, and I will not wield it.

The Enchanter

The Mist-Weaver, spinner of sweet-scented smoke, who coiled his fantasies about the mind till reason choked and called the choking bliss — may his own breath turn to cinders in his throat, and every lie he painted catch true fire at last, and the smoke he loved become the smoke that chokes him.

The War-Harvester

The Child-Caller, gaunt in clanking iron, who drove the young and the unshod into the mud and christened their dying glory for his crown — may every blade he sharpened for their hands turn, turn, and find the harvester's own heart, and may he die in the same mud he made for them, unnamed, unglorified, and alone.

The Overseer

The Keeper of the Fallow Fields, cold-eyed warder, who counted whole families as so many head of stock and milked the village till the very bones ran dry — may the soil he wrung to barrenness split open and swallow him down, and be done with him, and may the bones he drained rise up and drag him under.

The Benefactor

The Vile Marquis, the Benefactor, that gilded ghoul, whose shimmering contracts turned to iron at the wrist — he baited his trap with opulence and ease and dressed the bondage up as charity — may the crushing debt he forged come due in flame, and the citadels he raised collapse upon his head, and the gold he loved become the gold that burns him.

The Chimera

The Beast of Broken Dreams, that feeding horror, that fattened on the hopes of the dispossessed and spat out nothing but fear and resignation — may it starve. May it starve where no hope can reach, and may the dreams it devoured become its rot, and may it choke on the nothing it made of everyone.

The Hollow Scholar

The Professor of Empty Knowledge, peddler of the void, who stuffed the schoolrooms full of lies he'd minted, lest a single curiosity take root and bloom — may his tongue wither black within his lying mouth, and all his hollow doctrines scatter away as chaff, and the silence he enforced become the silence that swallows him.

The Vow

the Game they broke is not gone. It waits. It lies whole and patient beneath the dust of their deceits, and the dead who fell to keep it true have never once consented to stay fallen. They are waiting. We are their hands.

For every piece struck from the board, a hand shall rise to set it back. For every scroll they burned, a flame shall be lit against them. For every name they scraped from the vellum, a mouth shall open and speak it again — and the speaking shall be unendurable to them.

The Veiled Queens shall lift their hidden crowns, and the graves the usurpers dug shall become their own. The Midwives shall lay hands upon the truth again, and the councils who lit the pyre shall feel its heat. The Sky-Riders shall gather up every fallen name, and the tyrant who feared a hope that flies shall learn why. The Mirrors shall be cast and set anew, and the lords who shattered them shall see what they have become — and will not survive the seeing. And the Scribe's undried ink shall flow once more, to write the ending they were never permitted to write — and the ending shall be written in fire.

Make the board whole, There is no third door. There is no gentle hand. We are the squares they could not erase, and we remember everything.

And what we remember, we will not forgive. What we remember, we will make them answer for.

The board will be whole, and the board-breakers will not.