The Great Game

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction!

We end up at a white door in a stretch of corridor that looks like it came from the same designer as my clothes. The carpet is predominately orange and brown in an ugly hexagonal pattern, and the white doors look cheaply laminated.

I don’t doubt Massinisa’s word, but the room in front of us is not an empty node now.

I look at the door, and say “This is not an empty node. Are you sure it’s the right place?”

He nods gravely. “Yes, I am certain. I can always find my way to the graves I have dug, and to the bodies I have laid to rest.”

“That must be a burden,” I say.

Massinisa looks at me oddly. “Yes, but it is one I gladly shoulder.”

I nod. “You have a strong heart.”

“Thank you,” he says, but he sounds a bit shaky.

Alice is looking at me curiously, so I flash her a reassuring smile, then try the door. It opens smoothly, onto a dimly-lit room. It feels safe enough, so I walk in, and find myself in a stone-clad chamber. Rushes line the floors, and light is provided by guttering torches fixed in the centre of each wall. Curious artworks fill the walls, primitive but powerful.

Eadida is lying on a pyre of stacked wooden beams, as if ready for burning. She’s dressed in a flowing white gown, with a simple necklace of fresh daisies. She looks terribly young to be a corpse. She’s unusually well-preserved, too. It must have been several days at least, but there’s no evidence of decay, which is odd. Even just taking internal bacteria into account, her skin should be waxy by now with dark streaks of internal decay, and she should be bloated with intestinal gasses.

“We need to take her hand, Massinisa.”

He looks over at me, surprised. “Her hand?”

“It will point the way to where this trouble all started. Where we can save Alice’s life.”

Massinisa looks at Alice, who nods unhappily. “Her hand,” he says again. “And how will you claim your prize?”

He has a point there. I look around the room for anything that could be useful. “Well, uh, I might be able to smash through her wrist using one of the wooden spars she’s lying on. Or it looks like the torch brackets are nailed in fairly crudely, it might be possible to lever a nail out of the wall with my room key. In fact, I…”

“Stop it!” Alice is on the verge of tears. “She was my friend. We should do this properly. We should go and find a knife.”

“I understand your feelings,” I say. “There’s no way of knowing how long that would take though. If the hotel is feeling bloody-minded… We don’t know how much time we have to spare. Are you sure about this?”

Alice shudders, and hunches in on herself, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Why do you not ask the girl for her hand?” Alice and I both look over at Massinisa, but he’s playing it deadpan. Alice shudders again.

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Today’s photo is Funeral Pyre (c) National Museum of Wales