A Queens Gambit

A/N This is my first try at Narnia fanfiction, a short piece set in the early years of The Golden Age and inspired by the White Stag scene near the end of LWW and the finding the chess piece early in PC. Please feel free to comment and feedback, if that is your thing. Thanks for clinking through.

As the orange ball of sun fell steadily below the treeline, light flickered in the Great Hall of Cair Paravel. Torches, bracketed to the wall flared, while from the magnificent fireplace flames sputtered, crackled and licked at the stone surrounds. Queen Lucy loved this time of day best of all. Too tiring to start anything new (unless of course there was a real emergency to be dealt with) but not so late that sleep overcame you. It was a time for reflection and solace, to watch and listen to the fire, enjoy its comforting warmth and gaze at the strange shadows it cast. The fire, Lucy often felt was a reminder of the burning light and power of Aslan himself. Queen Susan was crossing the stone floor, wearing a long dress of the bluesest of blues, the colour of a Kingfisher on a spring morning. As she walked, flashes of sliver whipped out as the light caught beads embroidered into the skirt. How gracefully she moves, thought Lucy. Her poise and agility flowing, just as naturally as when she was at one with the Sea creatures in Glasswater. Never once had Lucy seen Queen Susan stumble, or catch the hem of her dress around the castle and Queen Lucy often did. For as skilled as the seamstresses were, every gown produced always hung to the growing Queen Susan more elegantly than for Queen Lucy.

Something in the back of Lucy's mind told her this had begun before they were ever Kings and Queens of Narnia. The way Susan could abandon her younger sister if Mother became free, the flushed faces and whispered conversations that suddenly cut off whenever Lucy caught the two them together in the sitting room, or bounded unannounced into the bedroom that she shared with her sister. For you never knock on your own bedroom door, even when it closed. Yes, Queen Susan had blossomed like spring flowers during theirreign and now there was no Mother to explain away Lucy disjointed feelings. The younger girl hoped that Susan herself would come to do so in time, and secretly feared she would not. Perhaps, she told herself, she ought to have a talk with Mrs Beaver, but even her closest friends had changed, oh ever so slightly, since Aslan had had made the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve Kings and Queens. Only Mr Tumnus was the same, and being male, and a fawn no use in this matter to Lucy at all.

"Nobel brother," cried Queen Susan "Would though, per chance accept my challenge across the chess board, for I seek to better myself since the last occasion we played."

High King Peter laughed, in his accustomed low growl, "Why Sister, have the fawns been teaching you new skills? As verily I doubt a giant could manage to best a Queen."

King Edmond looked up slyly from the book he was pretending to read.

"Tut, my bother doth mock me, if only in jest. Let it be known that while the High King crosses his realm, ensuring all is prosperous and peaceful for the benefit of his grateful subjects, those he leaves in this place have not been idle. I have made a study of chess problems, while the Queen Lucy practises daily with bow and arrow to a standard nearly the equal of my own. Better, Lucy thought, as Su never did anything useful with her skills, preferring to spear tiny fruit from long range rather than hunt. "And where is the good in that?" Lucy said to herself, not bothering with the high talk the others were using and which they only spoke in the company of guests and courtiers anyway. "It's what one does." Peter had impressed upon them. While the game was being set up King Edmond explained how whenever Peter went to on journeys across the kingdom it was even more important than usual that he, Edmond, ensured those entrusted with orders and tasks carried them out to the letter. He did this to such great length that Lucy soon got board and sort out the company of Mr Tumnus. And in doing so she missed the start of the game.

Lucy soon fell into deep, natural conversation with Mr Tumnus , regarding a proposal to widen some of the pathways through Lantern Waste, removing some dying old tress and replanting younger saplings in fresh ground. There were maps and drawings to consider and approve. At first Lucy was concerned about the destruction of trees that had survived the Winter of the White Which, but Tumnus assured her that once a tree knew it had passed on its final seeds, then it would be content to know it was returning to the earth. "All things in Narnia that know," he told her, "understand the natural order. Also by allowing more light to enter this part of the wood, new and different plants and creatures will enter and colonise." Lucy saw now it was as very practical and sensible plan. Just then she was distracted by a clink on the chessboard and Susan uttering a single word, "Check."

King Peter looked upon her kindly.

"Too impatient Su," he said, quite forgetting his royal mannerisms for a moment as he picked her Jade Queen off the board to be replaced by his own King. Susan smiled, and that smile was as much inside her head as outside.

"But Sire has overlooked this brave pawn, who's advance uncovers an attack from the bishop, leaving but one square free. She moved Peter's piece herself. Now the knight moves thus and the game is lost."

"Well I'll be…" mumbled Peter making sure he did not look at King Edmond.

"It would be wise I think," continued Susan, "To remember the sacrifice of a queen, for the greater good of one's position." With all the momentous adventures that followed, Peter somehow forgot these words, but Susan never did.