The Fire. Katherine Neville

      

      The Fire

      Katherine Neville

      

       To Solano

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

Prologues

End Game

PART ONE Albedo

The White Land

The Black Land

The Pit

Black and White

The Charcoal Burners

The King’s Indian Defense

The Vessel

A Closed Position

       The Veil

       The Hearth

       PART TWO Nigredo

       The Return

       The Chef

       Tactics and Strategy

       The Pyramid

       The Queen Advances

       The Middle Game

       Two Women

       Recalled to Life

       The Key

       Too Many Queens

       The Four Seasons

       PART THREE Rubedo

       Fire in the Head

       Jihad

       The Question

       The Original Instructions

       The Ashes

       The Flag

       The Flight

       The Cauldron

       Ring of Fire

       Shock and Awe

       Return of the Eight

       City of Fire

       The Book of Balance

       Publishing Note

       Acknowledgments

       The Fire

       Also by Katherine Neville

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Prologues

       In AD 782, the emperor Charlemagne received a fabulous gift from Ibn al-Arabi, the Moorish governor of Barcelona: a gold and silver, bejeweled chess set that today we know as the Montglane Service. The service was rumored to contain a secret of dark, mysterious power. All those obsessed with power were determined to obtain the pieces. In order to prevent this, the Montglane Service was buried for nearly a thousand years.

       In 1790, at the dawn of the French Revolution, the chess set was exhumed from its hiding place, Montglane Abbey in the Basque Pyrenees, and the pieces were scattered across the globe.

       This move launched a new round in a deadly game, a game that threatens – even today – to light the match that will set the world aflame…

       End Game

       The only goal in chess is to prove your superiority over the other guy. And the most important superiority, the most total one, is the superiority of the mind. I mean, your opponent must be destroyed. Fully destroyed.

      – Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, world chess champion

       Zagorsk Monastery, Russia

       Autumn 1993

      Solarin gripped his little daughter’s mittened hand firmly in his own. He could hear the snow crunch beneath his