The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

Chapter 96: The Impassive Eye

The party backtracked to the large, white building which they had seen on their way to the mines.

This square-shaped building had a large, black stone roof, which formed an imposing triangular structure on high and had a small golden, metal finial in the elegant shape of a phoenix. Its white gables were painted with intricate silver patterns, almost like embroidery, with a sculpted gargoyle head on the gable above the door.

The construction was lent colour by the navy-blue fascia which stretched under the eaves on the left and right of the building.

As Crucis approached the open door, he noticed the fearsome gargoyle head staring down at him. Its features weren't clearly distinguished, with its sculpted skin seeming to twist unnaturally, as if due to the effort of keeping its sharp-edged mouth wide open. Its eyes were simply vague, jagged streaks which looked like fire. It almost resembled a bat, but with a lion's roar.

As he entered the door, he saw that the interior was made of a single room, divided into multiple segments by a pattern of long, head-high wooden panels.

"Do come in," a slow male voice called from the shadows, near the back of the building. "This is our humble place. So, why do you visit? Perhaps you wish for a game of chess?"

"You invite visitors to play chess?" DicingDevil said. "Awfully gentlemanly."

There was no response, only the faint sound of laughter. After a few seconds, the room was lit up as faint flames rose in the fireplace at the back of the room.

In this dim light, Crucis could make out that the wooden panels on each side of the room joined to form rectangular sub-rooms, which seemed to contain many shelves of books. At the entrance to each of these sub-rooms was a marble-coated wooden doorway, which rose into a marble accolade formed from two delicately cut ogees.

The flames gradually illumined the man at the back of the room, who stood up tiredly from the fireplace. He was a tall, gaunt man wearing a stiff, black suit, with shallow dark-brown eyes which occasionally flickered white in the fire's light.

He swept his arm out to his left majestically, and said, "No, no, I am too tired to play chess. It is our machine that plays chess."

Crucis' eyes drifted to the right, where he saw a large, ornate table topped with a chessboard. The pieces were made of marble, and seemed to glow like new ashes in the faint light.

Sitting over one side of the board, next to the black pieces, was what looked like a man with a grey, bird-like beak, wearing a thick black bisht under a ghutra which hid most of his face. His long, straight hands hung to each side like wings, but his elbows bent slightly until his hands hovered unmoving over the chess board.

"So is that an automaton?" Crucis asked.

"The very same," came the reply from the back of the room. "We typically charge the crafters from nearby a reasonable fee to play against it, and they are fascinated by it. Well, you guys seem tired, and I'm sure you've come a long way. Besides, why be stingy with wonders? So you can try out a few moves for free."

"I see. What's your name, by the way?"

"Good question. I am Sharak. It is pronounced 'shah-h-raakh.' And here is my friend, Fahiz."

Crucis turned to the left, and saw a man emerge from a sub-room near the back of the building. This man was shorter, and had a slightly rat-like, devious-loooking face which was softened by the smile of a knowing knave. He bowed slightly to the visitors. Crucis saw that he was carrying a thick, hard-bound book which had 'POE' written in capital letters on its spine.

"Hello, Fahiz. So, what are you reading?" Starfighter said.

"The poetry of Poe. Not a man whom I'm familiar with, but a fine writer," Fahiz replied. "At times too sentimental, but his poetry and prose are styled excellently, and I know of few better. Too many authors weigh down their words in an attempt to capture a feeling or some such fleeting will-o-wisp, Poe is like a plain church where the images and meanings shine out all the brighter. He may try to be maudlin, but I submit that he is too much like an automaton to do it properly, and it is to his credit."

"Well spoken, Horatio," Sharak said playfully. "Now, come, let us watch this chess game. The chess is the thing."

"Very well. It has caught my conscience."

DicingDevil looked across the chess board carefully, then played a conventional e4. The rest of the players were clustered around the board.

They were surprised as the beaked man from the other side reached out his right hand mechanically, then moved it straight down to pick up his e-file pawn. Dragging this forwards, he replied with e5.

"Did that machine just play a move?" Akshel said.

"Looks like it," DicingDevil replied, furrowing his brow and moving his Knight to f3.

The rest of the players carefully inspected the table and the automaton. However, they could find no magnets or other techniques to direct the automaton, and the automaton itself was a metallic sculpture which was hollow and did not contain anyone.

Glancing across the room, Crucis noticed that the two men from this building both had empty hands by now, since Fahiz had put the book down to watch. They both wore light sandals, which formed a strange juxtaposition with their stiff suits. He noticed that, as they animatedly whispered like gossips, they referred to the automaton by the name 'Ala-ud-din.' Though they watched, they did not control the automaton.

"Well, man against machine it is," Akshel said mock-dramatically.

"Does that make me a John Henry?" DicingDevil sighed.

He had played into the drawish Berlin Defence of the Ruy Lopez, and decided to transpose into the Four Knights Defence.

The automaton lifted its Knight, and placed it daringly forwards on Nd4. DicingDevil looked at the position nervously. While he had trained at chess briefly in his youth, his memory of these openings was slightly foggy.

Shrugging, he took the opponent's e5 pawn with his own Knight, and watched as the automaton threatened the Knight with its Queen. As he retreated, the automaton wielded its Knight like a bludgeon and whacked his b5 Bishop right off the board. He sighed, and captured the Knight in return.

A few moves later, his pieces were nervously hopping around to defend the King, which had been drawn forwards as the automaton exchanged Queens. The automaton mustered its Knight and its Bishop pair around the King.

Shrugging, DicingDevil gave up. "Well, there's your few moves. What next, a pound of flesh?"

"Ha, well played all the same," Fahiz said. "You know, chess always struck me as a bit dreary. Imagine a book written purely in chess notation, and you as the reader poring through it without knowing chess at all. You would be bored or flummoxed, I dare wager... But what of reading about the emotions of people nowadays, with their hysterics, identities, orientations, etc.? They wish art to obsess over 'emotions.' Well, today, your emotions are just your personal aberrations, are they not? No man shares your incidental qualia. They too are a closed book, but some readers call them central to art. Well, I submit that someday I shall write a great book of true art, purely in chess notation."

"Now, now. At a King's funeral, people all weep for display. Reading the King's book, they all feel strongly — in the same way. Thus it is art. And as for those thrill-seekers who seek a high or an up-and-down emotional donkey-ride from literature, they are merely trifling," Sharak said. "I do not know if religion is the opiate of the people, but surely popular literature is the LSD of bores."

"Well, emotion can be used if it is put in its place. Quite like chess. Say, 'Returning from the ball, at midnight, to the dreary Flying Dutchman, Hélas sat still against the rough wood lining the starboard. He listened to the wind's occasional, stormy blasts sadly, with such a sadness as Ganféan must have felt as he returned from the battlefield of Arioff to his declining Kingdom.' But it's the scene! I don't care if you feel sad or happy on reading this, but the ghostly, morbid nature of the ship is developed and can be built on. There is a richness there, and a slightly Faustian touch, so the character's dilettante misery need not trouble the reader.

"The writer trying to produce emotions in the reader is like a dollar-store propagandist. How soon until he becomes a tyrant, trying to regulate the reader's mentality? They end up writing like schoolmarms, their heroes are schoolmarms, giving bland, conventional 'morals' to villains who would be better served reading lorem ipsum than listening."

"Returning from a ball at midnight? I say, did you find a poem by Cinderella in that large book of writings by the sailors of the Flying Dutchman? But an excellent point, all the same."

"Sadly not. All the same, indeed, it blends in well with the scene's undercurrent — the duality of attending the ball in an aristocratic garb, and his real identity as a cursed sailor on a ghost ship. A tale of hope's frailty. It is like a man who boards the Titanic and becomes King of the world — on the condemned voyage. It could be told well, illustrating the tragic architecture of the scene, or it could be sentimental fluff."

"What's this about the Flying Dutchman?" DicingDevil asked.

"The Dutchman, a ghost ship," Sharak replied. "It sails the Western seas. Some sailors left poetry or simpler writings behind before departing, many of these writings are hopeful in a slightly uncanny way. We have plenty of writings in here, some by automatons — but more of this later."

"The automatons write?" Akshel asked, surprised.

"Well, we have built a few automatons that process information from the towns nearby, and use this to write on paper. They write about all kinds of uncanny things — 'America,' football, video games, culture wars, being 'trapped.' It is my estimation that this must be what adventurers are speaking of right now? Perhaps it all represents the habit of a foreign land."

"You could say that," Crucis replied.

"Well, well. Anyway, would you like to see some of the books we have here? If you could, I would appreciate it if you could help us get more information about these books, since we find these books here but lack much record of the authors or circumstances of the book."

"In time. First, could we see some of the automatons' writing?" Crucis asked politely. "I could help somewhat with the books, I'd guess, but I know someone in town who studied them. I'll see if I can bring him over."

"Most excellent. Yes, you may see some of its writing."

Sharak walked up to a small drawer by the fireplace. Kneeling down to open it, he began ruffling through documents.