Taz moved the ivory bishop carved into the shape of a high priest of Siddrim across the board with thoughtless ease and took a pawn with it. The move had been expected by Jordan, but it was still a painful one and moved him solidly back to the defensive.

  The bishop had a distinough face that Jordan had long suspected that it, along with every other pie the board, was meant to be someone specific, though he cked the history to even begin to guess, and if he asked Taz, then he would only be assigned more reading in an endless search to find ahat weren’t there.

  Jordan had no ied in being given ara reading, with his eyes being iate they were in. Instead, he removed the spectacles that Taz had found for him among his seemingly erove of objects and peculiarities that were tucked away in his tower and ed them while he sidered the board and the situation they were in.

  It wasn’t just the bishops, of course. Every pie the board, white and bck, was carved in such a detailed way that they were almost certainly modeled on someone. While the white pieces were hard to figure out, the bck pieces were less so. White was carved in such a way that they were mortals, but bck - they were obviously carved in the shape of the gods. The bck king was Siddrim, and the bck queen was Lunaris; that much was very clear. One of the rooks robably the dwarven All-father and one of the knights was Niama, mistress of the wild pces. The others were more difficult.

  He was fairly certain that one of the bishops that Taz had already taken was Istiniss, mistress of sea and storms, and that the pawns were various small gods, but even if Jordan had the eyes to study those fiails, he simply didn’t study the gods closely enough to make educated guesses for each piece. He didn’t o, though. It was clear to him merely from the theme of the board that Taz sidered him to be at war with the heavens on some level. That every friendly game of chess they pyed was another exercise in subjugating the divine was no surprise to Jordan after all this time.

  “Ready to cede already?” Taz asked with a crooked smile.

  “What? No,” Jordan answered quickly, as he reached forward and moved the All-Father out of danger while using it to put pressure on Taz’s undefended knight. “I was just sidering my options.”

  It was a fine move, but it was a deying tactic at best. Jordan was fairly sure that, just like most of the ames they pyed, he’d already lost this one; he just didn’t see how yet. That was ironic because even though he felt like he was always a step behind in these games, thanks to the book of Ways, he felt like he was a step ahead in every other way.

  He khat the children were looking for a way out of sanctuary but that they wouldn’t find one for a long time to e. He khat Taz was looking to harvest their light, even if the man hadn’t e right out and said it yet. Jordan even knew how it was he would stop him when that horrible day finally came. Not that he ever would have thought of it, of course. Not on his own.

  Such things were enough to make him wonder if the book was so much predig the future as it was dictating those events ience. After all, Jordan would never have dreamed that the Archmage’s weakness was his stro point, the spell that kept them all safe, but after reading through what he would do on the appointed day more than once, he could find no fault with the logibsp;

  Now, the hardest part was keeping the look of distaste off his face whenever he had to spend too much time with the man. It wasn’t easy, but then, there was nothing else to do while they were all trapped here together besides learn and py games.

  “Are you quite sure that the you one of your little group hasn’t ged retly?” Taz asked as a series of exges were made, and the game ioward checkmate. “He hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary retly?”

  “Leo?” Jordan asked, pretending to think. “No. He’s still the same serious little boy he’s always been. I think he’s getting frustrated with beiually the smallest sinone of us are getting older, but—”

  “And the light?” Taz interrupted. “Have you not noticed the light intensifying? What do you suppose the cause of that is?”

  “Intensifying?” Jordan feigned ignorahe book had the same thing, but it wasn’t anything that was visible to the naked eye, and since he kaz watched all of them, the st thing he wao do was cast a spell that might crify things. “His eyes are nhter than any of the other children. In fact, I think that in terms htness, Toman and Rin might—”

  “Check,” Taz interrupted before standing up and walking to his telescope. “e here. There’s something I want you to see.”

  Jordan couldn’t help but notice that the lens was already tilted down toward the beach, even if the Children would have fiheir little tourney ho. Slowly, the Archmage poihe long brass tube toward the vilge of Sanctuary and then moved aside. After he adjusted a couple of lenses, he said, “Tell me, what do you see?”

  Jordao the eyepied took a long look at the small town. He was still impressed how Taz could make objects hundreds of yards away seem like they were only a few feet away, but every book on optics that the man had shared with him had gone over his head. Jordan might have some talent with magic, but this was entirely beyond him.

  Still, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see, though, and he just started listing what he saw. Old man, Marley was bringing in some produce from the fields with ara’s help, the bcksmith ounding away on something small, and a few people were sitting in the shade on the east side of the market talking.

  “Nothing seems out of pce, does it?” Jordan asked finally.

  “Not with the lens,” Taz agreed before he pulled out the clear lens that had been at the focal point and repced it with a smoked ohat looked like the mage had mixed gss with obsidian or something. “But now that you’ve seen what you’re looking at, try again with this.”

  Jordan looked down at the vilge square again. This time, everything was hazy but unged. It was like a pall had been cast over the town, which made sense sidering how muddled the new lens was. He was about to say as much wheiced ara walking bato view. That was when he saw the light around her. She was rgely a featureless silhouette like everyone else, but the light that was normally fio her eyes coruscated around her like an aura now.

  “She’s glowing,” he breathed.

  “She is,” Taz agreed. “They all are. Now, see if you find little Leo.”

  “But how will I be able to tell anyone apart with this lens. They—” Jordan started to protest.

  Taz cut him off, though. “You’ll see. Trust me on this one.”

  As Jordan looked, Taz started lecturing him oical properties of alchemically treated gss, but Jordan wasn’t really listening. Instead, he anning around the vilge, looking through the fields and the beaches in search of all the children.

  They were not hard to find. Though he would have a hard time guessing ho, each of them stood out like little stars against the darker world. Some of them shone brighter than others, and while some children glowed with a golden light, others were closer to silver or even white.

  Jordan almost gave up on his seard pulled away from the scope. It was only then that he found what he was looking for. This time, he didn’t have to feign surprise. Leo had just e up the path from the beach, and as soon as he walked into view, he appeared like a pilr of fme.

  “What in the…” he gasped. He didn’t o fake his surprise this time. The book had told him that the d was growing stronger, but not like this, and Jordan was eaken aback by it.

  Some of the other children’s glows had flickering fmes at their edges, but they were nothing like this. Even if Jordan still had the perfect eyes he’d been gifted until retly, he would have trouble seeing the outline of the boy amid the glow. As it was, he was a smear of darkness surrounded by a bonfire, and Jordan could only look for a moment before the light hurt his eyes, and he had to gnce away. Still, that moment was enough to send his mind rag.

  “See, I told you,” Taz said smugly as Jordan stood and backed away. “The boy is ging. Trust me. I’ve kept detailed logs of him and all the others. A year ago, he wasn’t like that, and two years ago, he wasn’t anything special. Now though…”

  “Please don’t tell me you io harm them,” Jordan protested. “For heaven’s sake, Tazuranth, they’re kids.”

  “No one is hurting ahe mage assured Jordan, even though Jordan knew what the other man nning and that he was lying through his teeth. “This is merely a mystery I wish to explore. In the face of the darkness, the heavens have great need of such light, and if we could find a way to harvest it…”

  Jordan tuned out the lecture as he looked out the window with his naked eyes for the boy. After a minute of searg, he finally found the distant boy eared no different than ever, at least from here.

  Taz often ranted about the nature of stars and how they protected the world from outer darkness. Acc to him, the greatest threat to the world at rge was not the darkness sweeping across it. It wasn’t even the broken sun or the dimming moon: it was the state of the stars.

  Acc to him, they were fewer and number and dimmer than they’d been iuries. Jordan had no idea if that was true, but the idea to harvest the children’s light to use it to fix that problem seemed to be a fool's errand, and the Book of Ways had already given Jordan some insight into how that experiment would end if it was allowed to proceed.

  For now, he pushed that out of his mind, though, and instead focused on staying calm as the Archmage talked about big ideas ing light and steltions. While Jordan might agree that the devils of the void o be kept back, as far from the world as possible, he was not prepared to do so at the cost of his wards’ lives.