A shape appeared within: my image, dressed in a smart white uniform with brass buttons. I sported a little moustache. I looked older. In my right hand I held a poniard slackly; some blue lightning flickered at its tip.

  “This is you, as you will be,” said the Bishop. “I declare that you possess a full soul, Pedino!”

  “A full soul,” my mum echoed. “Oh my.” (I shall come to the matter of souls, and their sizes, soon.)

  “I invite you to train as a pawn-squire at the palace.”

  “A royal page,” said my father. “That’s an honour, lad.”

  “No,” said Slon, “it’s a consequence. The boy has little choice in the matter. Untrained, yet possessing a full magical soul, he would be bound to come to the notice of Chorny eventually; even if he spent his whole life hiding down a drain.” (This wasn’t quite true, but no matter.) “He might be attacked, or possessed.”

  “I could cry Opasnost!”

  “Boy, boy!” The bishop chuckled. “No sooner do I say you have a soul, than you are the equal of Sir Brant or Prince Ruk! You must be trained. Now drop that bubble.”

  I obeyed. The bubble promptly fell to the waxed oak floorboards and shattered, like the skin of ice on a puddle of a wintry morning under a schoolboy’s boot. The glassy shards melted till there was only a patch of moisture, drying.

  “You’ve killed,,” Slon said to me. “That may come in useful. You’re one of the guardians of Bellogard now, Pedino.”

  And so my true education began.

  I soon took up residence in the pages’ quarters of the palace, in one of those high towers with a white onion dome atop.

  Does this suggest that I was high up the tower? I wasn’t. My room looked through mullion windows upon a cobbled courtyard at the rear of the kitchens. Trays of cabbages were my view, sacks of potatoes, churns of milk, crates holding honking geese. The prospect above was of steep towers, and only then the sky.

  When I became more proficient I would earn a room higher up, with an outlook over the town. There was sound sense in my initial immurement down by the kitchens. The bulk of the palace protected me, while I was still naive.

  But nor was I housed in a miserable cell. My chamber was spacious, with a grand stone inglenook. The walls were walnut-panelled, and numerous paraffin sconces backed by mirrors lit the room as brightly as desired. I had a big four-poster bed, a carved chest to keep my belongings, a marble washbasin with silver taps, and other creature comforts; not least a maid, Margarita, to tidy, collect laundry, trim wicks, and such. It was Margarita who soon saw to it that I lost my virginity, in that same four-poster bed.

  More of this in a moment.

  Us pages (or pawn-squires) numbered six, of whom I was the last to “make a move on the board”, as a palace saying went. (One pawn-squire had been lost due to Prince Ruk’s “castling” defence during Oscaro’s attack. A second had been “swept off the board” when Princess Alyitsa was promoted to queen.)

  We were a mixed bunch. King’s Page, Beno, who took me under his avuncular wing, looked to be in his late fifties, though undoubtedly he was much older. A pawn-squire with full soul could live as long as the kingdom itself without showing undue signs of ageing. (Equally, a pawn might at any time be squashed like a fly.)

  In descending order of apparent age were: Castle Page, Josip, who had lost his own lord when Prince Carl was killed in magic combat; Josip generally attended Prince Ruk who had been forced to sacrifice his squire. Then: grim Henchy, Bishop Slon’s page, who often visited the Samostan. And: Iris, a forceful and handsome woman apparently in her thirties, who was the only female squire. She served Bishop Veck, Queen’s chaplain. Finally: Knight Page Pyeshka, who squired Sir Brant. Pyeshka was just twenty to look at, jaunty and debonair.

  Though nominally a Knight Page, I had arrived too late to serve slain Sir Vlado; I would be expected to serve the queen herself.

  Which brings me to the matter of my sexual initiation in Margarita’s arms, and in her loins.

  I’d been living in the royal household for about three weeks, and so far the transition had passed off painlessly. I knew that I couldn’t visit my old home on Chalk Street again until I’d been judged competent-which might take a couple of years. Exposed in town I might be in peril from any infiltrating Chorny magic. However, I wasn’t homesick; I had no fits of the weepies. My fellow squires numbered no A. Mog amongst them. They went out of their way to be accommodating. Even Henchy, who looked so dour, took me on a guided tour of the upper towers. Nobody teased or japed me. I found no dead slugs floating in my soup in the refectory. No one sent me on a mock errand to the dungeons and clanged the door behind my back. Already Beno was my long-lost uncle, and Pyeshka my older brother.

  I hadn’t yet been presented to Their Majesties but I’d met Prince Ruk, who would coach me in forward magic, and Bishop Veck, who would show me the diagonal kind. Pyeshka had spent days leading me around the halls and galleries, courts and gardens and parapets, stables, kitchens and servants’ quarters, then testing me on my newly acquired knowledge. (“What’s the fastest route from White Garden to the Buttery, not going by way of the Corridor of Charm?” “Name the route from Topmizzen to Glass Shield Hall, via the Beehive Well?”) And I had seen the princesses at their play.

  I’d become reasonably acquainted with the palace in physical terms. I was still a newcomer in other ways, bound to get lost upon that other invisible plan—of relationships, psychology, intrigue.

  Intrigue? My fellow squires certainly didn’t intrigue against me. Nor did the surviving noble lords plot against one another. They would be stout in each other’s defence and in defence of the realm. In furtherance of this it might become direly necessary for one lord to expose and sacrifice another; but that would not really be intrigue. True, the princesses schemed, whilst conducting their gavottes of amusement and cousinly interplay. They were all rivals to eligibility. Skilful attainments mattered to them as rosettes to a champion horse rider.

  The real intrigue to which I refer was the way that the hidden war between Chorny and Bellogard inevitably impinged upon everyday life at the palace. Not upon life in Bellogard, oh no! Far from it. This was a war which only immediately menaced and destroyed those people who were magical. A few soldiers on the southern frontier might be killed in brawls. A village in Letto province might suffer conflagration or pillage. However, it was members of the royal household who would be destroyed by any serious attack, while the ordinary people of the kingdom went about their normal lives. So yes, the war touched the palace with long fingers. There might be years of peace, but when a move took place it happened abruptly, sometimes murderously sometimes inconsequentially. (Or seemingly so. Thus the sense of intrigue at the palace.)

  Of course, in the end all would amount to the same thing. If the lords and queen and squires were destroyed and the king “checkmated” then the kingdom itself would blaze into ashes, fall to pieces, crumble to dust. The hearts of farmers and townsfolk alike would halt, their brains would cease to think. The river Rehka would dry up. The sun would vanish, and the stars. The whole land would be black and empty.

  Margarita, additionally, was maid to Iris and Henchy. She was dark and slim, soft-voiced, yet also fierily graceful in a gypsy kind of way. Her smile was magic (though strictly speaking, unmagical!), and her dark eyes too, and her bobbing curly hair. I didn’t really know enough to say to myself that she was desirable, though I don’t doubt my body told me so. She was taller than me, as of then, but I would outgrow her.

  Margarita. oh why should I detail each separate moment of my delicious initiation? Imagine it, rather! Imagine her amiable skill, her tenderness and enflaming caresses, the taste of her tongue, touch of her nipples, the (unmagical) moist magic between her legs which I soon made so much moister, more than once. I was still a boy, after all; these were naked mysteries. I shall keep them mysterious. Surely it is the aftermath, when the seduction was explained to me, that is most germane.

  I’d wondered initially whether what Margarita and I were up to in a palace bedroom was licit or illicit; soon I’d decided that I didn’t care.

  Subsequently Margarita lay back yawning. “Boys are so potent at your age! Men go downhill.”

  “Do you often make love to boys?” I hoped I sounded nonchalant.

  “Oh no. Never before. I’ve heard that said of boys, and it seems true.”

  I put my hand on her breast. “You wanted to check the truth of it?”

  She shook her head, smiling.

  “Why then? Why me?”

  “I was asked to, Pedino. Bishop Slon asked me.”

  “He asked you to take me to bed? Why?”

  “He told me to explain, if you asked me.” She knit her brow in concentration. “You are to be Queen Alyitsa’s squire, aren’t you, my vigorous young lover? Well then, what is your attitude to women? Thus far: idealism!” She sounded as if she was reciting. “You have a sister, whom you idealized; whom you wished to safeguard as a creature without sex. You directed magical violence at another boy who would, in your eyes, violate her blasphemously. The success of your magic reinforces this idealism, carving an emotional channel which in essence denies love and the body. Adolescent frustration would emphasize this pattern-of magic and denial. In your classroom there was a picture of the queen, which you lusted after.” “So Master Samo has been gossiping!”

  She ignored my interruption. “The queen would become your new idealized, forbidden elder sister. In your undermind you would resent King Karol for bedding her. This would make you erratic, unreliable. You mustn’t protect the queen out of frustration, but out of knowledge. Equally, you might need to defend the king, since the king’s survival is crucial. The lava-plug must be drawn from your volcano, so that it gives up its power steadily, flexibly, and consciously-not impetuously and explosively. Therefore I have given you knowledge, of woman’s body and your own.” She laughed. “Don’t look crestfallen. Show me once more what you’ve learnt! If you can!”

  Oh, I could. Next morning, I was presented to the king and queen in the Ex-Chequer Chamber high up.

  Sun streamed through great leaded-light windows. The thick, wide-spaced strips of lead cast a network of shadow bars across a long white marble floor, dividing it into phantom diagonals. In twin ivory thrones sat King Karol and Queen Alyitsa, flanked by muscular soldiers wearing mostly clear glass armour as though each man occupied a contoured, transparent box. These guards held spears of glass with crystal tips, another fashion favoured by Alyitsa. Flunkies attended behind. Brassbound doors, wide open, led to a further, sunlit room: the Chequer Chamber proper.

  The king, puffing at a meerschaum pipe, was contemplating a glassy bubble balanced on his knees. He wore a white silk dressing-gown, woolly pantoufles on his feet, and a golden coronet. King Karol was stout, ruddy, whiskery, and looked to be sixty years old, though I knew he was as old as Bellogard. He was smoking fruity shag rather than the more suave “royal cut mixture”.

  Queen Alyitsa’s long yellow hair tumbled from under a helmet of milky glass. She wore a breastplate of the same material, white leather boots, and a skirt of thonged white leather exposing golden knees and a glimpse of golden thighs. Across her lap she held a sword of glass.

  As Beno led me forward she regarded me intently, though the king continued to admire his bubble. This enclosed a vision of a crazy river looping through space, describing a twisted figure-eight so that the surface became the bottom, the bottom the surface. Yachts upon that river became fish; fish changed into yachts.

  Beno presented me. I knelt. The guards shuffled, clanking and tinkling, to attention. Alyitsa tapped me on the skull with her sword then descended from her throne. She raised me by the hand, kissed me briefly on the brow.

  “Welcome, Pedino, faithful squire. May your magic multiply and magnify. Will you escort me to the Chequer Chamber? Come, Karol,” she called.

  Her husband harrumphed but handed his bubble-prisoned mad river to a flunkey and followed us, pantoufles sliding over the marble.

  In the Chequer Chamber clear glass windows occupied five out of six walls, affording a fine view of Bellogard and the surrounding countryside. I could make out Lake Riboo in the distance. Within a perimeter of white tiles was an eight-by-eight chequerboard of white marble and black jet slabs, each large enough for a person to stand on with plenty of elbow-room. Queen Alyitsa stepped upon a black slab. She directed me to a white square: the queen’s knight’s squire position.

  “Now,” she told me, “you will see some queenmagic.”

  The king had moved over to one of the windows and was staring out while chatting to Beno, as if reluctant to watch the queen’s display or involve himself. His hands described the vista, enfolding, twisting it.

  The queen began to sing in the magic language. Ghostly figures appeared on several slabs. The bishops, Slon and Veck. Sir Brant. Prince Ruk. The king himself. My fellow squires. These apparitions seemed as oblivious as sleep-walkers; perhaps I should say “sleep-standers”, since none took as much as a step.

  “Stand steady now, Squire.” The queen’s song quickened and changed key.

  Other figures appeared. Of a king-yes, plainly a monarch. He was as portly and antique as our own King Karol, but of cruel countenance and squeezed into a tight black uniform decorated with red sash, red sunburst.

  Of a red-headed queen in long black silken robes, who looked lascivious, sensual. A black-cassocked bishop. A bearded knight in black iron armour. A sly, wiry prince. Two squires in black suits with obsidian buttons.

  I glanced at my queen. “Are these actual positions in the war?”

  “No. The eidolons only show the number of fighters. Chorny is better positioned.”

  “They only have two squires. Have all their squires not yet, er, made a move on the board?”

  “Chorny are ruthless with their pawn-pages. But one is still invisible.”

  “Is it possible to predict the outcome, your Majesty?”

  “Yes. Probable defeat for Bellogard, unless Chorny blunders. That may be many moves from now. Many, many years.”

  “Unless a stalemate’s reached, where no move ever leads to a result?”

  “Move to the square before me, Pedino.”

  I felt a sense of the bizarre to be moving sideways; almost a nausea. The queen beckoned, drew me. I persevered, arrived.

  “There’ll be no stalemate,” she said in my ear.

  “Isn’t stalemate better than victory by either side? If there’s stalemate, life continues. Shouldn’t we be trying to force a stalemate? Can’t we make a pact with them?”

  The queen ruffled my hair. “If only it was so simple. How could we trust them? How could they trust us? Their souls are black, and ours are white. Bishop Veck says we must always aim for victory, even if we vanish as a result. Otherwise, in the next cycle of existence.” She fell silent, then resumed. “We must never resign ourselves to defeat; still less adopt the futile impotence of a stalemate policy.”

  “If only there was some magical means to monitor their actual moves,” I said.

  “Bellogard has spies. So has Chorny. But spies only learn part of the truth. Spies can be trapped and corrupted.”

  “There are spies in Bellogard?”

  “Oh yes. Spies don’t fight. They don’t assassinate; though perhaps they may sabotage. And they spy.” “Stalemate might happen by accident? By luck?”

  “Unlikely. Human nature finds a position of stalemate hard to tolerate for long.”

  “How did we first start losing ground, Majesty?”

  “Queen Dama dared a rash move, to try to protect Bellogard totally, forever. She had some such idea as yours. So she exposed herself without a squire. She became vulnerable. There’s no total defence, no wall of adamantine.”

  Alyitsa sang again, and the eidolons faded. The chequerboard was soon empty.

  “Off to your lessons, my page and pawn!” And the queen smacked me on the rump.

  Souls and magic. The war, of course, was waged by means of magical attacks and magical defences; and magic belonged to people with full souls. However, no one in the kingdom was entirely soulless. Soul diffused outward from the palace and refracted among the whole population. Yet a woodcutter in the Shooma Forest might only possess a hundredth part of a soul (and perhaps the A. Mogs of this world only owned a ten-thousandth!). After death he would be a mere mote in the soul-pool, at best a fractional ghost, according to the bishops.

  A king had his own characteristic kingmagic. Likewise, a squire possessed pawnmagic. Alyitsa had once been a princess without any magic; now she had half of the magical power of former Queen Dama. When Dama was killed, the princess was promoted through the sacrifice of the previous queen’s squire. His full soul adhered to Alyitsa, though since his magic was lesser her new queenmagic was diminished accordingly (while remaining queenly in character).

  This I learned from Bishop Veck. I suppose I should present a vignette of one of his tutorials.

  Veck was a gaunt, not unkindly man with close-cropped silvery hair, starveling birdlike features, and a perpetual sore on his cheek where he had suffered a magical injury years earlier. He wore a flesh-tinted patch to hide whatever raw deformity lay below. I suspected it pained him to eat, which accounted for his meagre diet. Maybe it hurt him to talk, resulting in his usually careful choice of words.

  So here I am, meeting this bishop in the palace Bibliotek.

  What a strange room that Bibliotek was. I had marvelled at the quantity of volumes lining the dusty mahogany shelves. Dusty, indeed! No servant was allowed inside with broom or feather-duster. Bare floorboards recorded every footprint. Tables and leather chairs were coated. So was the window glass, which looked out upon battlements with some alabaster soldiers on statue-guard.

  Veck warned me to step gently so as not to stir up dust unnecessarily; I imagined he would have found sneezing painful.

  “What a multitude of books, sir!” I recalled the one bookshop in town which mainly sold school texts and volumes of engravings, one whole section being locked away from young lads and lasses. “I never knew there were so many.”