Chapter 11:

ARKEN'S GATE

"I stand by my decision not to accompany you on the Transition. I will not abandon our descendants. If other characters need me on Gamearth, then I must remain and help determine the course of the Game."

― Arken, final address to the Sorcerer council.

 

The quest-path wound along the side of a tall unfurrowed granite face, with sheer rock to their left and a frightening drop on their right. Wind whistled around the rocks, polishing away any snow that clung to tiny cracks.

The companions came around a curve to where the rock wall jutted sideways, as if a great hand had split the cliff and pushed it over to the right, channelling the quest-path through a narrow cut in the mountain.

But a locked gate blocked their way.

Vailret stopped and blinked. The black gate seemed so incongruous in the rocky wilderness. It towered three times their height, protected on the sides by the smooth rock walls. The bars were wrought iron, gilded with curlicues and sharp spikes, forbidding and unscalable. No other signs of life or civilization showed on the barren terrain.

"Verrry interesting," Journeyman said, curling his voice in a strange accent.

Vailret considered the problem, trying to think of who would place such an obstruction and why. He wondered if it might be a relic left over from the old Sorcerer days, but then some notation should have been made on the master maps at the Stronghold. The locked gate had not been there long.

Delrael made an angry noise and went forward. He looked for a latch, then grabbed the bars, rattling the gate on its hinges. It didn't budge.

Without saying anything, he let the look on his face express his anger and impatience.

"Let me try." Journeyman wrapped his arms around the bars, looping into the gate. He pulled with enough force that the iron shivered and hummed with the strain. A few bits of rock flaked off the side of the mountain. But the gate held firm.

The golem surrendered and withdrew his arms. He smoothed the indentations on his limbs and stood looking ruffled. "I could reshape myself and squeeze through."

"That won't help us," Bryl said.

Journeyman shrugged. "I'll go myself if we can't find any other way. My own quest takes priority, you know."

"We're not ready for that yet." Delrael struck his fist ineffectually against the cliff face. He looked around with narrowed eyes. Vailret could see the emotions struggling in him ― until now, Delrael had been using the forced march to cover up his other feelings. Now he had to face them and do something. But he didn't know what to do.

One of the lumps of rock shifted on the cliff face above. Delrael jumped back out of the way, ready to defend himself against a trap. Vailret looked up, and his neck hurt in the cold air.

The boulder sprouted arms as they watched. A portion of the rock raised itself to form a head. The flat gray stone flowed like hot wax. Joints stretched out as a blocky creature uncurled from its camouflage. Jagged stone wings lifted upward, revealing an ugly sculpted figure, human in shape but molded with a lumpy gray texture. Small ridges ran down its back, and demonic horns sprouted from the center of its forehead.

Delrael looked at it with contempt, ready to fight. But Vailret put a hand on his cousin's shoulder and squinted up at the cliff face to make sure of what he saw. "A gargoyle?" He took a step forward and addressed the stone figure. "Is that what you are?"

"You are very perceptive," the creature said.

Vailret had heard references to these creatures in his studies of Gamearth legends. Many of the old Sentinels had destroyed themselves in a final unleashing of sorcerous power, a half-Transition that liberated their spirits into independent wandering entities. Some of these spirits gathered together to form a collective presence, called a dayid. But others, the stronger individual spirits, wandered by themselves and formed crude and temporary bodies of stone.

The gargoyle straightened up and directed his hollow gaze at them. He sighed. "You cannot pass this gate. It's not my choice, but I have to stop you."

Journeyman mashed his face into a scowl. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

"We need to get to Taire," Delrael said. He placed his hands on his hips and tried a deliberate lie. "My brother is dying. You can't stop me from seeing him one last time."

"I'm afraid you wouldn't care for Taire anymore. Much has changed since Scartaris." The gargoyle turned his grotesque stone face up to the sky. "I remember when Enrod wanted to rebuild the lands around the city. Such a shame ― all that work, wasted now."

"Who are you, gargoyle?" Vailret asked.

"That's a long story. I've lived for many turns of the Game, first as a Sorcerer lord and then as one of the Sentinels trying to help human characters. By now the memories are dim. A stone head isn't made to hold too many thoughts, you know." He rapped on his forehead with a granite fist. "My name was, is Arken. I wasn't always so weak ― now I'm required to guard this gate so that no characters may pass."

"Arken?" Vailret said. He blinked his eyes and took two steps forward, lowering his voice. "Arken? That's incredible! Do you know how much I ― "

"Who is controlling you, gargoyle?" Delrael interrupted, silencing his cousin. He stared at the gate as if he could will it to vanish.

Vailret frowned at Delrael, still in shock. In all his readings, Arken had been one of the greatest Sorcerers. Only Arken had spoken out against the Transition, arguing that the surviving Sorcerers should help rebuild Gamearth after their endless wars had laid waste to so much of it. Most of them refused to listen, but some had remained behind as Sentinels to help human characters against the other monsters.

The stone gargoyle turned his head toward Delrael. "Scartaris controls me. He grows more powerful every day. The Outsiders want him to win, I think."

Vailret mumbled another question. "But you're Arken ― we remember you as the first Sentinel, the greatest defender of Gamearth. How can you possibly be in league with Scartaris?" Vailret let his hands fall to his sides. "Don't you know what he's doing? He's going to end the Game for all of us!"

The gargoyle leaned over the mountain face and walked down, perpendicular to the cliff at an impossible angle. He righted himself on the path and came to stare at them.

The gargoyle shook his demonic stone head. "I am bound by the Rules.

Scartaris defeated me, and I have to defend this gate to the best of my ability. It doesn't matter if I despise what he is trying to do."

Suddenly Arken's manner seemed filled with new excitement. He focused his attention at them. "You travelers know who Scartaris is? And you're on a quest eastward?" He held up a blocky stone hand. "No, don't tell me anything ― Scartaris will hear! I can guess for myself. Let me keep my hopes up. But I still can't help you."

"You're talking to us, though," Vailret said. "You're answering our questions."

"Certainly. And I'll do everything I can to get around my restrictions."

"Why can't you just let us pass and not tell Scartaris?" Bryl asked.

The gargoyle looked at him, annoyed. "I can't disregard my task for the sake of a whim. The Rules are the Rules, regardless of my feelings." He hunkered down and put his chin in his blocky stone fist. "Perhaps we can think of a different way I might help you."

Delrael kicked at a stone on the path. His lips were pressed together into a thin, white line. "Is there another pass we could go through?" he said.

"We need to get moving."

"I doubt it," Arken said. "Scartaris will have guardians on all the quest-paths over the Spectre Mountains anyway. The other gatekeepers might not be so understanding."

"How do we know you're telling the truth, not trying to trick us?" Bryl put his hands on his hips, haughty.

Vailret thought he looked silly. "That's Arken, Bryl ― don't be ridiculous."

The gargoyle seemed puzzled by Vailret's comment. "Well, you don't know whether I'm telling the truth or not ― although I can promise that if I were trying to trick you, I would attempt to be ... a little more devious."

"All right, then, here's a straightforward question." Delrael stepped forward. "How can we pass? How can we defeat you?"

The stone gargoyle shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we can figure out something."

"Could we play a game of dice, Arken? It's simple but effective. High roll wins?" Vailret withdrew his own set of dice. "If we win, you let us pass?"

The gargoyle placed his stone chin on his fist. "Remember that I have more than my share of luck." Arken knelt down to the ground. The cold path and the bleak mountains seemed to have no effect on him. "But if this doesn't work, we can still try something else."

He raised his head to look at all of them. "We'll only be able to use this challenge once, though. It wouldn't be fair if you kept rolling until you beat me one time."

"Fair enough." Vailret held his hand out and raised his eyebrows. "Del, why don't you roll for us?"

The fighter took the dice and looked at them. "My luck seems to have turned sour lately."

"Then it's time to change it. Go ahead and roll."

Delrael rubbed the two twenty-sided dice between his palms and, without interest, let them fall to the ground. A "10" and a "14."

"Not bad," Vailret said.

"Not good," Delrael countered.

Arken brushed the dice into his palm, using one flat stone hand because the blocky fingers were not dexterous enough to grasp the small objects. He tossed them into the air. One die landed flat on the quest-path; the other struck a rock and bounced sideways, coming to rest a few feet away. A "12" and an "18."

"I'm sorry," Arken said. "I told you I had too much luck."

With a scowl on his pinched face, Bryl took out the Air Stone and Fire Stone. They glinted in the bright mountain sunlight. "I have these. They're powerful enough. Can I command you with them? Will they work?"

The stone creature straightened and took a step backward in shock. He reached a crudely formed hand toward the diamond and the ruby, but Bryl snatched them away. The gargoyle rocked back on his clublike stone feet. "Are those what I think they are?"

Vailret nodded. "If you're really Arken, you must remember them."

The gargoyle drew a deep breath. "You make me feel strange about my past. When I saw that so few Sorcerers would refuse the Transition and remain to help their own half-breed children, I begged them to create the Stones. Do you know where the other two are? It's been so long. As I recall, one was lost in the Scouring...."

Vailret glanced at Delrael, then decided to answer anyway. "Yes, we know where they are, though the Earth Stone is not readily accessible."

Bryl had sensed the twenty-sided emerald Stone somewhere in the treasure grotto of Tryos the dragon, but they had no time to search before rescuing Tareah. Vailret wondered how Tareah was faring back at the Stronghold....

"Never bring all four Stones together unless you are prepared for what will happen," Arken said, pointing a stone finger at them. "It's like magical synergy. More power resides in the combined Stones than even the six Spirits possess. A character gathering all four Stones could unleash a new Transition for himself. One character should not have such power."

Arken cocked his grotesque head toward the open sky between the peaks, and his voice took on a wistful tone. The wind whistled around the bars of the gate. "The Transition was an awesome enough thing to do once in the Game."

Vailret cleared his throat, hoarse with awe at a conversation with one of the greatest Sentinels of legend. "I read your description of the Transition. I found it in Sardun's Ice Palace." His voice trembled.

The blocky stone gargoyle turned his head. A long sigh rumbled out of his stone chest. "I remember writing that, but I was too amazed to describe it well. Imagine the Sorcerer race gathered in a shallow valley, waiting. All the characters who were going on the Transition, and some who only wanted to watch."

"We've been to that valley, too." Vailret watched the crude face and tried to picture what Arken must have looked like as a great Sorcerer spokesman. "It seemed haunted."

"I don't doubt it," Arken answered. "Five of our leaders were inside a counsel tent. Even Stilvess Peacemaker was there, the one who had ended the wars. He was so old he could barely move.

"It was about this time of year, the autumn equinox. The air was cold, and the wind kept flapping the white tent. The other characters waited outside on the plain, ready, in case something should happen. None of them knew what was going on inside. But I did. I was there, their official observer."

"Well?" Vailret asked. His eyes sparkled and his breath quickened. "How did you manage to break the Rules and succeed in the Transition?"

Arken held up one stone hand. "We broke no Rules! It was difficult what we did, yes ― but we broke no Rules. Actions on Gamearth are determined by the roll of the dice. Nothing is impossible if you wait long enough and try enough times."

"So what were they doing inside the tent?" Vailret repeated. Delrael shuffled his feet; Vailret wondered if he was curious or just impatient.

"The five of them were rolling dice. Twenty-sided dice, made from pure crystal, perfectly balanced, the finest dice ever seen on Gamearth.

"The five Sorcerers rolled their dice, over and over and over. They did not stop, day or night. They were weary. I watched their eyes turn red. All of them looked haggard. Old Stilvess seemed as if he was about to collapse."

"But what were they trying to do?" Vailret asked.

Arken seemed to ignore Vailret's question. He spread his stone wings with a grinding sound. "At last, all five of them rolled a twenty on the same roll. A nearly impossible roll ― nearly impossible. A perfect, perfect dice roll, unheard of on Gamearth.

"And when they rolled five twenties, five of the greatest living Sorcerers on Gamearth, they unleashed enough power to initiate the Transition." The stone gargoyle hung his head. "That was when I ran out of the tent."

Delrael sighed and sounded angry. He rattled the gate again with his hand. "That doesn't concern us." He leaned against one of the cold walls of rock. "We have to get past here."

Arken hunched his shoulders and swivelled the crudely formed blockish head to look at the fighter.

"Can we fight you?" Delrael unsheathed his sword, but it looked ineffective against the blocky stone body of the gargoyle.

Arken shook his head from side to side. "I wouldn't advise it. Your sword wouldn't harm me, but I could cause plenty of damage to you."

"What if you had a better opponent?" Journeyman said. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going! A gargoyle and a golem ― we should have an equivalent strength class."

Journeyman turned to the other travelers. "He can't really damage me, any more than I can damage him. We could wrestle. If I win, the gate opens and we pass."

Arken clapped his stone hands with a sharp crack. "It sounds acceptable to me. I must warn you, though, that I am bound to try my utmost to defeat you. I can't just let you win. It has to be fair."

Journeyman drew himself up, flexing his soft arms. "Go for all the gusto while you can."

Arken worked his jaw, as if finding words difficult. "If the golem does win, I wish you the best of luck on your quest. I want to see Scartaris stopped too."

He faced Journeyman. "Don't worry about causing damage to me. My spirit isn't bound to this stone body. As long as Scartaris holds me here, he controls me. But if you ... break me, then I will be free. For a time, at least."

Journeyman made the features of his face run flat as he flowed more clay into his shoulders and arms, concentrating his strength. "It's not just a job, it's an adventure."

Delrael, Vailret, and Bryl stood by the locked gate and watched Arken.

The massive stone creature stepped to the narrow part of the path and faced Journeyman.

"Luck, Journeyman," Vailret said.

"Luck," Bryl and Delrael echoed.

Arken planted his stone feet squarely on the quest-path and opened his arms, ready to grapple with the golem. He surprised them all by wishing Journeyman luck as well.

"You can surrender any time," Journeyman said.

The grotesque gargoyle straightened his back. "I'll remember that.

Ready?"

"Yes, ready."

With a slap of clay on stone, Journeyman and Arken grabbed each other around the shoulders. Journeyman's hands flattened as he pushed against the stone gargoyle's arms. Arken spread his feet, which seemed to fuse to the rock of the trail.

Neither of the combatants made a sound. They kept their faces neutral.

Since they were not human, they did not grunt with the strain, or pant, or show any sign of the exertion they made. The breeze died down, and the cold air retained its claustrophobic silence.

"Irresistible force and immovable object," Journeyman said. "Did you ever hear about that one, Arken? It's a riddle from Outside."

Arken strained and pushed, but his voice sounded curiously neutral.

"What is the solution?"

Journeyman's body seemed distorted and stretched with the effort to maintain himself against the gargoyle. "I don't believe it has a solution. The Outsiders can be very strange at times."

The gargoyle lifted one of his blocky stone feet and pivoted, forcing Journeyman to bend and turn his back to the sheer precipice.

"Come on, Journeyman!" Bryl shouted.

Arken's hunched back bent as he took a small step forward, forcing Journeyman closer to the edge. But the clay golem did not move his feet, stretching his legs instead. He slid his arms to get a better grip on Arken's smooth shoulders.

"More powerful than a locomotive," Journeyman said again, but his voice was fainter this time.

Vailret found himself wincing and pressing his fingers into his fists, straining his arm muscles as if that could assist the golem.

Arken's blocky hands left deep indentations in Journeyman's body. The stone gargoyle pushed harder and harder.

"Able to leap tall buildings in a single ― "

Finally something snapped.

"― bound!" Journeyman let out a strange cry like the release of a too-tight bowstring, and his clay flowed like liquid. He flung himself backward, bending over upon himself in an impossible angle, out of the way.

Arken, thrusting forward with all his might, suddenly had no purchase and nothing to push against.

He went plummeting over Journeyman, off into space.

Vailret and Delrael ran forward as Journeyman straightened himself up, pulled his body back together and rearranged his clay. He stood tall. They all heard a distant thock! as Arken's stone body crashed into the rocks far below.

Vailret didn't want to go to the path edge and look.

Journeyman did not appear flustered. His clay mouth twisted in a beaming expression. "That was the big difference between us, you know, a golem and a gargoyle," he said. "Clay bends, stone doesn't."

The black iron bars of Arken's gate tinkled into nothingness on the rock. A chill wind whistled along the quest-path, motioning the travelers ahead to where the trail was wide and easy.

The shadows of sunset followed them as they passed through the vanished gateway. Just on the other side of the cut waited the black hex-line where they had to stop for the day. The next hexagon of mountain terrain descended gradually, sloping down out of the Spectres, as if saying that any character who passed Arken's gate deserved easy traveling.

Ahead, the land of Scartaris waited for them.

 

Chapter 12:

DOWNFALL OF THE STRONGHOLD

 

"We must keep the legends alive, the stories of brave quests, the memories of past characters who have become heroes. Though the Outsiders wish only to amuse themselves turn after turn, this is still our history."

― The Sentinel Sardun, part of the "Lost Records" buried under the Ice Palace ruins.

 

The villagers gathered in the Stronghold courtyard at sunset to hold a formal ceremony in memory of Tarne. Jagged shadows from the pointed wall crept across the courtyard. The veteran's ashes had been gathered up and buried in a special area near the Stronghold wall, an honored place where Vailret's father Cayon was interred, as well as Delrael's mother Fielle.

Young Tareah rubbed her elbows and knees in the chill air. Her joints still ached, but she listened with rapt attention as the villagers did quest-tellings of Tarne's greatest adventures.

Jorte, the keeper of the gaming hall, spoke of when Tarne had been one of the companions of Drodanis and Cayon, a great fighter and quester. Others told how Tarne was one of the fighters led by Drodanis against the ogres in revenge for the murder of Cayon ... how Tarne was wounded in that fight and had since seen visions of future turns of the Game. The young farmer Romm described Tarne's warning to the other villagers that Gairoth would take over the Stronghold, and how he led a brave defense against the attack; when that failed, Tarne had led them into exile in the deep forest terrain until Delrael returned and vanquished Gairoth.

Tareah herself picked up the hexagonal tile bearing the veteran's name and placed it on the grave. She remembered the quiet, bald man who seemed to hold so much inside him. A weaver, who wanted no further part in fighting and battles. She stared at the wall, not at the gathered villagers, as she described Tarne's brave fight, alone in the middle of the night to defend them all against the Slave of the Serpent.

Darkness fell, and young Romm lit several torches in the courtyard. The villagers stood around, not certain what to do after the ceremony. They seemed leaderless and disoriented without the bald veteran. Tareah did not blame them ― she was new, she had no experience with quests or adventuring. Why should they trust her to lead them?

She had spent her entire life isolated in the Ice Palace with her father, and when the dragon had kidnaped her, she merely waited for some adventurer to come rescue her. Regardless of her Water Stone or how much magic she could use, Tareah still had much to learn.

Vailret's mother Siya stood beside her, looking tired and withdrawn.

She wore clean but drab clothes highlighted by a flashing emerald brooch. Siya told Tareah that Cayon had given it to her, stolen from a Slac treasure pit he once raided. Now Siya's face seemed old, and she tied her hair back in a severe bun. Since her son and Delrael had gone on their quest to Scartaris, Siya acted angry and lonely, with nothing more to hold onto.

The stars came out. Night birds made sounds in the forest. Tareah looked up to see the green smear of Lady Maire's Veil across the sky. That made her think of how Tarne must have seen his own death there ― yet, even knowing that, he still went to face the Slave of the Serpent.

The outbuildings stood shadowy and empty now, with Delrael, Vailret, and Bryl gone, and Tarne dead. The main hall of the Stronghold echoed with silence. They had no students at the Stronghold for battle exercises or role-playing games. The place was deserted, big and frightening. It reminded Tareah of the Ice Palace and the empty vaults full of relics, now buried under crumbled ice and snow.

She took her eyes away from the sky and saw Mostem the baker coming toward her. Tareah still had difficulty identifying all the villagers in her mind, but she remembered that Mostem had three daughters. According to Siya, Mostem hoped that either Vailret or Delrael would be interested in pairing with one of them. Tareah had never met the daughters, nor had she tried. She was not sure if she should feel jealous ― she had trouble pinpointing her feelings, either about Vailret or Delrael.

Mostem's eyes moved from Tareah to Siya, then to the ground. From the way the other villagers watched him, Tareah realized that they had all discussed this beforehand. She let a slight frown cross her face.

Mostem looked as if he didn't know how to begin, and finally he said, "You're all alone up here now. Are you sure the Stronghold is safe? Do you think you should stay here?"

He didn't wait long enough for her to say anything. "We were talking, uh, I mean I was thinking that maybe you could come stay with us? Or one of the other villagers. We're not sure that staying at the Stronghold is a good idea anymore."

Tareah was surprised at the suggestion and tried to decide how to react to it, what Delrael would want her to do. But Siya drew herself up, indignant.

"What, and just abandon the Stronghold? It's been here intact for generations, and this is my home! I don't take that lightly." She crossed her thin arms over her chest. "I will stay here."

Mostem took a step backward and continued to speak to the ground. "We just thought it might be best if ― "

Tareah cut him off. "I promised that I would remain here and do my best to defend the Stronghold." She stood beside Vailret's mother. "You know the Rules. I made a vow ― I can't break that. I'm not one of those characters who takes such things lightly."

She and Delrael had gotten into arguments on that point before. But this time she didn't think he would object.

"Besides, look around you." She indicated the double walls topped by sharp points, the weapons storehouse, the heavy gates and the trench around the Stronghold, the Steep Hill path. "This is the most defensible place, the safest spot for hexagons around! And don't forget I have the Water Stone, too.

If we're not safe here, we certainly won't be safe anywhere in the village."

She raised her voice so the others would hear her clearly. "If you're concerned for our safety, any of you is welcome to stay here and help guard us against attack."

Mostem cleared his throat and looked to the others to see their reaction. The death of Tarne and the threat of Scartaris was too close on their minds.

But Romm the farmer straightened. His blond hair was mussed, and his skin looked dry from spending too many hours outside in all weather. "That's a good idea. We should arrange our schedules so some of us can be up here. We were willing to fight against Gairoth, with Tarne ― we shouldn't do any less than that now."

His words heartened Tareah. She nodded to them all. "We do need a stronger defense, now that Tarne isn't here to assist me."

"We can discuss this tomorrow," Siya said. Her stiff movements showed how much Mostem's suggestion had upset her. "We'll roll dice to see who stays up here with us. You all could brush up on your training a little."

Apparently relieved, the villagers left, going down the hill into the night and back to their homes. Tareah could hear muffled voices as the villagers went along the path.

Siya and Tareah worked together to swing the heavy gate shut. They fastened the solid wooden crossbolts in place. The shadowy empty buildings inside the walls looked spooky enough that Tareah decided to leave the torches burning in the courtyard.

Before going to bed, Siya and Tareah began the ritual of closing up the Stronghold for the night. With the others to help, they always finish quickly before, but it took them longer and longer each night as the evenings grew colder, now that they were the only two to do everything.

They made sure all the windows were shuttered, the cracks stuffed with rags to keep the cold out. They stoked the main fireplaces with enough wood to keep burning all night long, since it was such a tedious task to rebuild the fires the next day. Tareah saw no point in keeping the entire main building heated and tended, but she didn't countermand Siya's wishes. Siya seemed to attach a far greater importance on maintaining her routine than on actually thinking about it.

Tareah was exhausted by the time she reached her own quarters and heaped wood on the fire. Her joints would ache if she did not keep her room warm, which seemed odd to her since she had spent so many years in the bright coldness of the Ice Palace. Over the weeks she felt as if the pain had faded somewhat, but her body would take a long time to adjust to the dramatic stretchings and twistings her accelerated growth put it through.

She stripped off the formal dress she had worn for Tarne's ceremony and pulled on a comfortable shift, then climbed under the blankets. She lay back in the bed and thought of Delrael and Vailret on their quest, all the stories they were adding to the history of the Game. She wished her father Sardun could be here to discuss them.

Tareah kept the Water Stone with her even in bed. She ran her fingers over the cool blue facets. They reminded her of the ice in the rainbow halls and crystal towers. She dozed with that thought.

And woke up some time later. The fire still burned bright, so she couldn't have been asleep too long. It was just past midnight, she guessed.

She blinked her eyes in the dancing firelight. Her nose was cold, but she could smell the aromatic wood.

Tareah heard scratching, scrabbling sounds. The wood in the fireplace settled with a slump and a small shower of sparks. The noises stopped for a moment and began again with renewed intensity. The scrabblings sounded like rats in the walls, clawing their way out.

Tareah rubbed her eyes on the blanket and tried to see in the wavering orange light. Sharp shadows lay in the corners. Then her eyes came to focus on the dark and churning wall beside her bed.

The wood was crawling with small figures, each about the size of her hand. Emerging from cracks in the wood, pushing themselves out between splinters and scrabbling over each other, along the walls, along the floor.

Tareah sat up, flinging tangled hair out of her eyes, and bit back an outcry. Her blankets were covered with the little creatures as well, tiny ratlike animals, but vaguely human in form. They had ear tufts and pointed faces with sharp fangs. On two hind legs they walked upright, and they bore two sets of humanlike arms, one sprouting from their shoulders and another set along their abdomen, giving each creature four hands full of sharp claws.

She snapped her blanket, spraying the creatures off her bed and onto the floor. She grabbed for the Water Stone under her pillow, but some instinct warned her not to show it, not to use it just yet.

The ratlike creatures swarmed over the room as they searched for something. They scurried down the mantle of the fireplace, disassembling the wood splinter by splinter with their sharp claws. Now that Tareah had awakened, they chittered among themselves, making no effort to keep quiet.

She kicked her blankets away and rolled to the edge of her bed. Her voice hitched as she tried to call out ― but there was no one to help her.

She would have to fight by herself. One of the bedposts groaned and broke free from its joint, torn apart by the creatures. The bedframe cracked and dropped to the floor with a thump.

More rat-creatures scurried to the storage chests and peeled the locks and hinges from the base wood, splintered the sides, and spilled the treasure from Delrael's past adventurings onto the floor. They searched through the plunder, using four hands to paw and toss away diamonds and gold and silver links as if they were worthless.

"Stop!" Tareah shouted. They hesitated, glaring at her with pupilless red sparks for eyes ― empty, as if something had erased the minds behind them. She felt very afraid to look at the hundreds and hundreds of tiny, pointed teeth and sharp claws. Then the creatures fell to ransacking again.

The shelves on the wall crumbled, and Tareah's possessions crashed to the ground, breaking and clinking on the floor. Every splinter of wood spawned another of the small creatures as they pushed out and added to the army. Above the chittering, rustling din, she heard noises from the other rooms.

Tareah jumped out of bed, stepping on squirming furry bodies and trying to kick them away from her. "What do you want?" she shouted. She drew herself up to look menacing.

The rat-creatures fixed their blank gazes on her. Many of them cleared an empty spot on the floor, and others moved into formation with some kind of intent. Dozens of them aligned themselves to form letters with their own bodies.

On the floor, they spelled out "FIRE STONE."

Scartaris knew the Deathspirits had stripped the ruby Stone from Enrod and delivered it to the Stronghold. He had sent the rat-creatures to tear everything apart until they found it.

Scartaris knew nothing about Delrael's quest to bring the Earthspirits across the map ― because of Tarne's ruse, Scartaris thought the Slave of the Serpent had killed Delrael. Perhaps Scartaris knew nothing of her Water Stone either. She clutched the six-sided sapphire in her hand.

"No!" Tareah stamped her foot on the ground, squashing one of the rat-creatures and making the others scurry out of the way. "You can't have it." She waited to feel sharp claws and teeth on her bare legs.

One section of the wall slumped down in a shower of broken wood. Flames from the fireplace caught on the kindling. The creatures ran around, dismantling the room.

A few of the rat-creatures on the floor of the room spelled out "WE WILL FIND IT," forming and dissolving one word after another.

From her own room, Siya screamed ― but it was a scream of anger and disgust, not pain. The ceiling groaned above Tareah, and she looked up to see the planks buckling.

In her bare feet, trying not to look where she stepped, Tareah ran to the door and struck it with her shoulder to push it open. She ran down the main hall.

Everywhere she looked, the scrambling creatures emerged from the splintered wall and set about ransacking everything in sight. The structure of the main building groaned and creaked above the insane chittering.

Tareah ran out the broken doorway into the cold night. Two of the courtyard torches had burned out, but the other three flickered in the sharp wind. Small, furious sounds came from all buildings within the Stronghold walls.

"Siya!" she called.

Tareah saw the creatures piled on top of each other in the roof structure, throwing pieces of wood in the air and over the edge in glee, digging and searching. Others tunnelled in the courtyard, uprooting sword posts. The weapons storehouse crashed and toppled to the ground. Other walls in the outbuildings split and collapsed.

Tareah felt outraged, but didn't know how she could fight against the infestation.

Siya burst out the front door, frantic. She had a broom in her hands, and she flicked it right and left to knock away the creatures in front of her.

"Get away!" She whacked them off the walls. "Leave that alone! Stop!"

Her gray hair hung down below her shoulders in broad tresses. Several of the creatures grabbed on and yanked, climbing the strands like ropes. Siya tossed her head and flung them off, then chased after them with a vengeance.

"Get away from the door, Siya!"

Siya ran into the courtyard. Chittering, some of the rat-creatures followed her, but most swarmed over the door jamb, peeling away the wood. Two of the shutters cracked and fell off their hinges. New rat-creatures burst up from the fresh wood, flexing their forearms and bouncing down to the ground.

With scrabbling hands in a blur of motion, they fell upon the wooden walls and kept tearing it apart in chunks. Dust and smoke filled the air from collapsed mantels and the burning fires in the hearths. The main building was on fire.

Tareah took out the Water Stone. "I've got to do something." She rolled it on the ground. The six-sided sapphire landed with a "4" up. She grabbed it again and cast her spell at the main building.

The wind whipped up. The already-cool air dropped below freezing.

Biting snow blasted down and, with a snap of cold, ice encrusted the Stronghold, freezing the wood solid. The cold itself shattered some of the shutters; the support beams groaned inside from the weight of snow. She heard a loud pop from somewhere inside.

When the wave of cold struck the rat-creatures, they withered and disappeared. Siya chased others with her broom and left blots of fur and blood on the ground.

The assault seemed to have stopped for a moment, leaving a stillness like a held breath. "Did it work?" Tareah asked.

With squeals of angry chittering and a shower of pale splinters, more creatures burst out of the logs in the double wall surrounding the Stronghold.

They dropped to the ground, bristling with patches of brown and gray fur, sharp fangs and fiery blank eyes.

The creatures ignored Tareah and Siya, but scurried toward the ice-encrusted Stronghold to chip their way in. They set upon the main building once more.

Between the upright pointed logs of the stockade wall, more creatures surged out. The dirt insulation between the double walls crumbled and sifted out of the holes. Several logs toppled and fell over to leave gaps in the perimeter.

The brittle casing of ice over the main building split open. The rat-creatures surged inside again, tearing holes out of the walls.

Tareah grabbed the sapphire, angry and ready to roll it. But the rat-creatures swarmed over the ground at her feet, waiting with arms outstretched. They knew what the Stone was now; they wanted her to roll it so they could snatch it away the instant it struck the ground.

Tareah clamped her teeth down on a frustrated scream. She couldn't even roll the Stone, and none of her minor spells would do anything. She couldn't fight, and that infuriated her even more.

Tears streaked down Siya's cheeks. Her face reddened and she panted from her effort. A strange noise came from Siya's throat as she continued to strike out at the creatures. "What do they want?"

Tareah felt the corners of the Water Stone bite into her palms as she pushed her fists together. "They're looking for the Fire Stone. Scartaris wants it back, now that he knows how powerful it is."

Siya blinked and stood with her broom upright. Her face wore an astonished expression. "But the Fire Stone isn't even here! By now Delrael and the others should be ― " She waved her hand at the crumbling walls. "By the mountains or something."

All of the rat-creatures stopped with their ears cocked. In unison the horde turned to glare at them.

Tareah wanted to scream at Siya in anger and frustration. "You idiot!

Scartaris thought Delrael was dead!"

The rat-creatures chittered among themselves ― and then they all vanished into the ground, leaving no trace other than the bloodied bodies Siya had killed.

Tareah kept her voice level and cold. "You just increased the danger to Delrael and Vailret. Now Scartaris knows they're coming, and he can concentrate everything he has on stopping them."

Siya's eyes widened as big as plates when the realization sank in. She hung her head. Her shoulder blades jerked as she tried to hold the sobs in.

Tareah looked around at the ravaged Stronghold ― Delrael had left her behind to defend it. He had counted on her abilities and her judgement. Grim anger filled her mind ― but the collapsing buildings, the ruined wall brought stinging tears in front of her vision.

The fire from the broken hearths had spread into the main building, and smoke poured into the air.

 

INTERLUDE: OUTSIDE

 

David put his hands behind his head and leaned back against them. His eyes still looked red, but he smiled with satisfaction. Melanie was so angry she wanted to punch his face, or at least dump her cold soda in his lap.

"You destroyed my Stronghold!" she said. Her voice sounded strangled, carrying more emotion than she wanted to display.

The rat-creatures, the dozens of attack rolls, the walls falling, the fire starting ... She felt Tareah's helplessness, felt Siya's loss. If only the characters could have fought back more, helped her more.

David kept his eyes closed. "Now I think we can officially say that Scartaris knows Delrael isn't dead. And he also knows that the group is coming to get him."

"And this time her characters don't know that Scartaris knows. Ha!"

Tyrone added. "That's a switch."

"Thanks, Tyrone." Scott scowled at him.

David grinned. "That means Scartaris can now try to stop them." He shrugged. "Unless I decide to just have him blow up the map, and we can be finished with all this nonsense." He truly looked as if he was enjoying this.

Melanie stood up in anger. Her chair tipped back but did not fall over.

"That wouldn't be very sporting, now would it?" Scott asked.

"Let's not let this get personal, guys," Tyrone said, waving Melanie back into her chair. "It's just for fun, remember."

Melanie and David both glared at him. Tyrone went to get another bag of chips from the top of the refrigerator, shaking his head.

"When Delrael and company get through the mountain terrain, that's when the real fun starts. The city of Taire is my first serious line of defense."

David rubbed his hands together. "We can probably end this tonight."

"What's your hurry, David?" Tyrone asked. "There's nothing on TV Sunday nights anyway."

David slapped both hands on the tabletop, startling them all with his outburst. "Because I don't want to have any more nightmares about Gamearth! I want it done and finished and out of my head!"

He swallowed and blinked, as if amazed at himself. Melanie felt a moment of sympathy for him. The power of Gamearth was frightening to her, too, but the characters, the landscapes, the legends all gave her wondrous dreams, not nightmares. She had to save them, and the characters had to help in their own way.

"Melanie, when your characters get into Taire they're playing right into my hands." He avoided her gaze and looked down at the painted map. She saw that his hands were shaking.

Melanie kept her voice low. "That's exactly where I want them to be.

Shut up and play."

 

Chapter 13:

PEOPLE OF A DEAD CITY

 

"By building this beautiful city in the midst of desolation, we will prove that Gamearth characters can overcome any difficulty so long as we pool our talents and work toward a common goal. We have our magic, and we have the Rules on our side. Nothing can stop us now."

― Enrod, ceremony at the founding of Taire.

 

They descended out of the mountains. The hard, cold ground crunched under Delrael's boots. He felt stronger now, as if he was finally opening his eyes again. Tallin was dead, but the Game went on, turn after turn ― unless the Outsider David had his way.

Delrael made his facial muscles stop frowning. He remembered Rule #1.

He focused on quests, treasure, action, on getting things done. He did not sit around and ponder everything to death. Death.

Maybe that changed too many things.

His father had sent a message stick with the aid of the Rulewoman Melanie, charging Delrael and Vailret to find some way to stop Scartaris, to keep Gamearth alive and intact. In the cold mountain air, Delrael absently clenched his fist.

The next days passed in a blur. Delrael kept his eyes fixed on the distant horizon toward the crumbled mountain terrain that marked the lair of Scartaris. After another hexagon they crossed over grassy hills and then entered the rocky desolation, scars left from the old Sorcerer wars.

The landscape became flat and barren, like gray ash in a bleak ocean.

The ground was strewn with shattered rocks and jutting boulders like broken teeth. The sun seemed hotter here, making everything look blasted and devastated. The desolation rang with silence, leaving only the crunch of their footsteps. The wind had nothing but bare rock to rustle against. No birds or insects made any noise at all.

Journeyman stumped along beside them, but the dry heat made him move more stiffly.

"Did Scartaris cause all this?" Bryl asked.

Vailret looked around, and his eyes were red. "No, that was just reopening an old wound. It's easy to destroy something that was already knocked to its knees. The final battles laid waste to a huge section of the map, right here."

He drew a deep breath. "But the Wars ended here, too. The two factions of Sorcerers finally made their peace. Did I ever tell you about Stilvess Peacemaker?"

Delrael forced himself to appear interested, to be part of the group again. "Arken mentioned that name, didn't he?"

Vailret looked pleased. "By the time the Wars ended, the Sorcerers were almost worn out. Most of them had forgotten why they were fighting in the first place. How could they still be angry about the game of throwing stones at Lady Maire's wedding celebration, so many turns before?

"Then a self-appointed mediator appeared among the camps. Stilvess. He wandered from one army to the other, refusing to reveal which side he came from ― but he made it clear that he wanted no more war. He was an outstanding orator."

Vailret sighed. "He brought the two sides together like a crashing wave, making them one again. He forced the factions to see they were fighting themselves into extinction.

"Finally, the son of one of the great generals was killed in a skirmish. Instead of allowing that to inflame emotions again, Stilvess used that to show the Sorcerers how much pain their battles were causing. He made the two leaders meet at the funeral pyre of the general's dead son, and he urged them to cast their ceremonial swords into the hot flames."

Vailret looked lost in his own memories. "Sardun had one of those burned swords in the museum under his Ice Palace."

"I think I remember it," Bryl said.

Delrael looked around the wasteland and imagined the furious battles ―

Slac regiments, human armies, characters slaughtered, old Sorcerer leaders wielding spells...

The hexagon of desolation fell away behind the black dividing line into another section of terrain that should have been lush prairie. But all the grass was brown and dry, scratching together in the breeze like a vast tinderbox. A line of brown grassy-hill terrain blocked their view of further desolation ahead.

"Enrod founded a city out here somewhere. Taire," Vailret said. "The characters spent many turns trying to bring life back to the land, where they could be reminded of the scars left by the battles. That's why I was so shocked to hear Enrod coming to destroy us with the Fire Stone ― he was always a rebuilder, not a destroyer."

Vailret bent over to snap a brittle grass blade. "Looks like the Tairans managed to reclaim these hexes, for a while. Until Scartaris sucked it all dry again. Maybe we'll find some cropland closer to the city walls."

Delrael kicked the ground, scuffing up a chunk of dead grass.

They followed the quest-path to the hills and camped at the hex-line that night. When they moved on the next day, Delrael stood at the top of a ridge looking down. The hot wind whipped his hair, but they had gone far enough away from the desolation's flying dust and grit.

Among the stiff crags of the Spectre Mountains behind them, he saw a misshapen blob of black fog crawling out of the distant mountain terrain, touching the ground and wending its way down the final slope. He recognized it as the dark, shimmering cloud they had seen from the other side of the mountains. As the nebulous mass drove headlong into the grassy hills, dust churned up from its passage. He wondered if the mass was some great force summoned by Scartaris to join his armies. Or perhaps it was following them.

He turned and led the way down the slope, away from the cloud. They had enough problems already.

The city of Taire lay ahead of them, large enough to cover five hexagons. It seemed gloomy, blanketed in shadows, but it was a sign of life like a bulkhead in the desolation. He wondered why anyone would remain there after Scartaris drained all life away, killed all their work.

Outside the city rose great mounds of broken rock. Apparently, the builders of Taire had intended to make terraced gardens, but they contented themselves with arranging the shattered boulders in ornate circles. Delrael was impressed that simple characters had done all that work, picked up all those stones and stacked them there, cleared the dead hexes to make them fertile again. In vain.

By noon they reached the black dividing line that marked the beginning of the city. The wall surrounding Taire was made of gray stone, interlocked blocks without mortar, and marked at precise intervals by tall parapets to provide a better view of the desolation beyond.

Carved into the wall were intricate, stylized friezes depicting scenes from the Game. Vailret squinted his eyes and scanned them with apparent astonishment. His mouth opened and closed, just as it had when he confronted Arken.

Delrael did not recognize many of the scenes, but he could make out Sesteb's disputed stone throw that started the Wars, the creation of the character races as fighters, the funeral pyre in which Stilvess had the Sorcerer generals cast their swords, the surviving Sorcerers creating the four die-shaped Stones, and finally the six Spirits rising up from the Transition.

Delrael rubbed the silent silver in his belt and thought of the Earthspirits, wishing they would somehow communicate with him. Let him know they were still alive.

The Tairan friezes were crumbling and weathered, caked with blown dust and never cleaned. The city seemed strangely silent, restless and waiting.

Delrael saw windows in the towers, but they remained empty, revealing no curious faces to greet the travelers.

"And now for something completely different," Journeyman mumbled.

Taire should have contained thousands of characters. Delrael heard no activity, none of the clanking and bustle that had marked Sitnalta from a distance. Instead, Taire cowered in a hush, comatose from being too close to Scartaris.

The city's main gate stood tall and open, an ornate framework of wrought iron showing leaves and flowers growing up out of the ground. But the gate sagged on rusted hinges. Wind blew through the spidery ironwork, making it hum. No one greeted ― or challenged ― them as they entered Taire.

"Either the Tairans aren't taking care of anything," Bryl said, "Or this place is as dead as the land around it."

"Yoo hoo! Anybody home?" Journeyman called.

The Tairans had made full use of the limited resources of the desolation. The houses were constructed of broken stone blasted up in the upheavals of battle, decorated with frescoes painted into plaster made from crushed limestone. The artists had used natural pigments, ochres and reds found in the rocks, black from soot. Pieces of glistening obsidian were inlaid in gameboard patterns.

Some of the flat sides of buildings showed scenes of daily life ― not epic battles, but pictures of bountiful harvests, lush forest terrain, large gatherings for group games. History was depicted on the walls outside of Taire; inside, they looked to the future instead.

The architecture was open, with plenty of space for meetings. Wind whispered through the buildings, weaving through open windows. Delicate metal chimes hung on corners, tinkling at random.

As they travelled deeper into the city, the neglect became more apparent. Many of the spectacular frescoes were chipped and faded, smeared with an oily soot floating in the air. Delrael saw empty troughs under the windows of some buildings, apparently intended to hold flowers.

On several larger buildings, crude doors, bars, and gates had recently been added, looking clumsy and out of place.

The noise of a dripping fountain sounded loud in the Tairan silence.

Delrael put out his hand to catch the warm, rust-tinted water, but he did not drink. The sculpture above the fountain was a wrought-iron bell, ornate but silent. The fountain stood at an intersection of two streets with wide stone buildings on either side. He realized that in the middle of the desolation someone must have used magic to summon up water, but now even the fountain had ceased.

Journeyman scooped up some of the puddled water and spread it on his dry clay skin to moisten himself. He smiled in relief.

Vailret and Bryl sat down, but Delrael paced around the fountain, shading his eyes and searching for signs of life. The afternoon sunlight was bright and harsh. "I'm getting tired of this," he said.

In the shadows of one of the open buildings, he saw a figure standing between two stone columns. Delrael strode toward the building. "Come here!" He didn't know if the Tairan would hide or come to him.

To his surprise a thin, haggard woman stepped forward. At first she appeared ancient, but he saw that she was not old at all, despite her sunken and shadowed eyes. Dirt stained her tattered gray clothes ― but she seemed unaware of all that. She took several jerky steps toward him, as if something else moved her arms and legs.

"Where is everybody?" Delrael asked her. "What's going on here? This is Taire ― what happened?"

She turned to face Delrael. Her eyes were milky white; the pupils and irises had vanished, leaving a soulless blank expression that sent a shiver up his spine. She never blinked.

Her voice sounded garbled, awkward. Her lower jaw moved up and down, clacking her teeth together, but not in time with the words she tried to form.

Her tongue writhed around in her mouth, making sounds by brute force.

"Delrael. You are Delrael."

The fighter blinked, taken aback. Delrael looked behind him at the others, questioning, before turning back to the woman. "How do you know my name?"

The Tairan woman jerked backward as if her nerves had snapped like broken bowstrings. "Delrael!" She hissed and gurgled in her throat, but she stood with her arms straight at her sides. Spasming muscle tics rippled across her face.

"What's happening to you?" Delrael shook the Tairan woman by the shoulders, but he might as well have been grabbing an empty sack.

"Something is moving." Journeyman jerked his head to indicate the empty dwellings.

Delrael released the woman, and she staggered one step backward, then remained where she stood. He saw other forms inside the buildings, lining up at the entrances. A rustle crept into the air, like thousands of furtive footsteps on the cobblestones. He smelled a sharp tang that might have been his own fear-sweat. He narrowed his eyes and felt his heart pumping.

Other Tairans stepped onto the street in a strange lockstep. They moved in unison, stiff, like movable pieces in a complicated war game. All their eyes were blank.

They behaved like the ylvans in Tallin's village. Delrael winced at the cold memory.

The Tairans stepped forward from the buildings, coming through intersecting streets together. They stood close. Their hands looked torn and infected from hard work. Their faces showed no expression at all.

"They're completely mindless," Vailret said.

Journeyman spoke in a gruff voice. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

Delrael pulled out his sword. The silence of the city remained, doubly eerie now. The Tairans marched forward, closing in. He felt their synchronous breathing, their hearts beating together as they took one step, then another.

"We can't fight all these characters," Vailret said, but he pulled out his short sword anyway.

The golem bent his knees and banged his fists together with a smacking noise. "They've blocked off every exit. Bummer."

The blank faces of the Tairans made Delrael's skin crawl. They were unarmed. This would not be a battle, it would be a slaughter ... but the Tairans would win. They outnumbered the travelers by thousands. He didn't know what to do.

Bryl took out the Fire Stone. "I can blast our way through. It'll kill a lot of them."

Delrael blinked back stinging water in his eyes. The sword felt heavy and poisonous in his hand. He thought of how all these characters had been warped by Scartaris. He saw Tallin lying dead in the catacombs of the Anteds.

None of this felt like a simple game anymore. He couldn't just slaughter with impunity. He didn't want to. It had to be a fair fight.

"Only as a last resort," he told Bryl. "We have to think of a better way."

Delrael felt sweat dribble between his shoulderblades. He could smell the Tairans, feel them breathing, sense their body heat. The afternoon sun slanted through the streets. Ripples of warmth rose from the heated stone walls.

"If you want me to use the Fire Stone it better be now, before they get too close." Bryl rubbed his palms on the eight-sided ruby.

Then a woman's loud voice broke the attack. Hooves rang out on the cobblestones; they heard the crack of a whip. "Hyah! What are you doing? Get away from there, all you Tairans." The whip cracked again. "Go on!"

Delrael craned his neck but could not see who had made the noise. He felt his damp grip around the hilt of his sword. His throat had gone dry.

A woman pushed her way forward on a gray horse, squeezing between the Tairans. The horse moved from side to side, nervous around the shuffling people. The woman flicked her whip back and forth, making the Tairans shrug aside. "Go on! I know you're not deaf. Get out of here!"

Reluctantly, it seemed, the Tairans moved aside. Their sluggish attack dissolved as they drifted toward the buildings. They moved backward, keeping their pupilless gaze on Delrael. He glared back at them.

Delrael drew deep breaths through his nose and let them out between his lips. He watched the woman approach on her horse. She was wiry, clad in a bright green tunic; it looked as if she had made some effort to keep herself clean. At her side hung an unsheathed sword with a rippled edge, like a tongue of flame.

Her hair was long and dark, tied out of the way in a single braid. She moved quickly, as if with an attitude that her every action counted a great deal. Her dark eyes flicked rapidly, alert and intense. A fire of anger burned in her pupils. Pupils ― somehow this character had escaped Scartaris's touch.

"I'm Mindar," the woman said and dismounted from her horse. She brushed at her legs and stamped her feet, looking flustered. "Did they harm you?"

Delrael glanced at his companions and answered for them. "No, I think we're all right."

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Journeyman asked. The others introduced themselves.

"They know who we are," Vailret said, looking shaken. He flashed an angry glare at Delrael. "They know who we are!"

Mindar led her horse ahead of them down the street. "Let's get farther away from this place. I never know what Scartaris is going to do."

She moved ahead with a determined step. Delrael had to hurry to keep up with her. Mindar turned, and Delrael was startled by the viciousness of the grin she flashed at them. "I don't know who you are, but I haven't seen the people so awake in a long time. Nobody's been able to arouse them since Scartaris came."

She stared at Delrael, letting the question hang in the air. Vailret shuffled his feet, but Delrael wasted no time pondering. He didn't see the point in hiding it any longer. "We're on a quest to destroy Scartaris, but he's found out about us somehow. That makes our task even riskier."

Vailret nodded. "We understand that Scartaris has the power to end the Game whenever he wants, some kind of metamorphosis. Any time he's frightened enough of us, he'll just destroy the map."

Mindar brushed aside her dark bangs and exposed a lumpy red scar on her forehead, a burning red welt in the shape of an S. "Scartaris will play with you as long as he can. He enjoys that. He does it to me."

Vailret squinted at her. "What happened to you?"

"Scartaris can't control me. I don't know why my mind can resist him when the other characters can't ― do you think that's a blessing? Look what it did for me." She spread her hands. The spring-green tunic looked dirty, a pitiful attempt at brightness and cheer in the drab city.

Somehow Tallin had some ability to resist Scartaris, too, a random trait generated by a fluke of a dice roll. Of the thousands of characters in Taire, Delrael was not surprised that one had the same immunity.

"I wasn't any important person," Mindar continued. "I was just another artist, painting some of the frescoes. Two days each week I'd go outside the city walls and help tend the fields, rebuild the irrigation channels, plant trees in the hills."

She glared at them. "All of this used to be beautiful, you know. My husband worked more than his share of time out there, so I could have extra hours for painting. We had one daughter, Cithany."

Tears glistened on Mindar's dark eyes. "The children were the first to ... to fade. We didn't know about Scartaris ― but all of our crops withered and died. The grass turned brown, the trees became barren. Then our children were lost to us. Scartaris seeped into their minds and played them like puppets. We couldn't understand. We didn't know."

Mindar shook her fist in the air, facing toward the east. "Some characters were stronger, but they lost in the end. You see how they all are, mindless husks. Scartaris enjoys role-playing them, like the Outsiders Play their characters on Gamearth. I was the only one remaining. What could I do, all by myself?"

She lowered her eyes. "At least I had my anger. One afternoon I looked around me and saw that I was no longer part of my own city, that everything else had cut itself off from me. The soul of Taire was gone. By this time some of us knew about Scartaris ― Enrod had found out, but it was too late for him, too.

"So, in my despair, I shouted into the streets, I cursed Scartaris at the top of my lungs." Her fingers rubbed the S-scar on her forehead. She mumbled her words. "So he cursed me back.

"The people gathered and found me. They grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me, then they carried me to one of the blacksmiths' shops. I couldn't break free because there were so many. You saw them. They held me down by an anvil in the dark. I was screaming and I could hardly breathe. I hurt myself trying to struggle.

"They took a hot iron and branded this on my forehead. Then they dunked my head in the water and left me there on the floor." She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"They were people I knew! They were ― " her voice hitched, "my brother and my husband!"

She leaned against a stone wall on which had been painted an ochre sunrise shedding light over lush forest terrain and bountiful fields surrounding the reborn city of Taire. The paint had faded, dusted with an oily smear.

"This is supposed to mark me as the lowliest character in Scartaris's domain. I am to be taunted, played with, and, worst of all, ignored. He casts aside and breaks everything I cared for ― Scartaris must be laughing as he watches me try to pick up the pieces."

Mindar trembled with passion. Her hands clutched at the hilt of her rippled sword as if she wanted to damage something. She fought to bring control over herself again.

"Scartaris sent a demon watcher to make sure that I see no peace. The Cailee. It hides in the shadows, watches my thoughts to learn how it may inflict the most pain on me."

Bryl looked at the shadows of the alleys, widening his eyes. Delrael frowned. "What is the Cailee?"

Mindar straightened and began to walk down the street, leading her horse. Delrael could see nothing but the back of her head as she answered.

"The Cailee becomes tangible only at night. It looks like a shadow, featureless and black, in the form of a human. But on the ends of its hands are hooked silver claws, sharp enough to rend ― " Her shoulders bunched and rippled. "The characters here are all so helpless now, so helpless."

Mindar swallowed. "The Cailee shadows me, follows me, waiting until I'm not watching ― and then it slaughters!"

She whirled with such anger that her horse skittered two steps sideways. The S-scar on her forehead seemed to throb with a light of its own.

She dropped her voice to a quiet longing tone. "One night the Cailee slit open my husband. And Cithany. And left them to bleed onto the floor of our home. For no other reason than that it would hurt me."

Delrael felt his heart pounding, thinking again of Tallin and how the Anteds had killed him. Mindar slashed at the air in her passion.

"For that, I'm going to destroy Scartaris. No matter what it takes. If you have a way, then I will join your quest." Her gaze flicked from Delrael to the others. Delrael felt the heat behind those eyes.

"We have a way," he answered.

"I have a way, too," Journeyman said.

"We'll need all the help we can get," Delrael said. He held out his hand to her. Something inside of him felt uneasy about Mindar, but he could understand her anger and her obsession. She struck him like a true comrade, someone who had felt the same wounds. He felt close to her.

She flashed a smile, sharp and dangerous, and grasped Delrael's hand.

"My friends, together we can defeat Scartaris."

Mindar stiffened and turned pale. Her eyes widened, flicking back and forth as if to see something from the corner of her eyes. "What have I done? I called you my friends!"

She grabbed the horse and set off down a side street. The mare's hooves made loud noises that echoed against the buildings. "You are in grave danger ― follow me! It's almost sundown. The Cailee will come soon."

She didn't speak. She didn't have to. Deep shadows slanted across the street. The sky turned orange as the sun sank behind the knife-edge of the Spectre Mountains, dappling the stone walls.

Mindar brought them to a wide, squat building and opened the iron front gates. She stopped and held the horse's head in her hands. She rubbed the gray mare behind the ears.

"There now, you take care of yourself." She released the horse and clapped her hands. "Go on!" She turned it around and gave it a light kick with her boot. The mare trotted away through the streets.

"Won't the Cailee get your horse in the middle of the night?" Bryl asked.

Mindar flashed her hard smile again. "No. A horse is not like the people of Taire ― she can defend herself. And she can run. She knows where to hide. Besides, horses are much too valuable for hauling supplies to Scartaris's armies.

"This building here is one of the old storehouses." She led them inside. The windows were narrow, and the air smelled musty and empty. Dust filtered into angled shafts of light across the floor.

"Taire couldn't raise all its own crops, of course. Sometimes we bought food from the farming villages in the mountain foothills. The half-breeds used magic to replenish our supplies of meats and grains. Mostly it's all been used up by now."

Their footsteps echoed across the floor in the empty building. Mindar led them down an open staircase to the basement, cool and dry beneath the ground. Several chambers had been hollowed out. Mindar took them to the door of one.

"I set this up for myself a while ago, when I thought someday I might have to make a stand against the people of Taire. It's well defended and well supplied."

Inside, the room was windowless. Boxes of provisions and drinking water in sealed casks were piled against the wall. Bryl found candles in one of the boxes and took them out.

"The door is secure. It's heavy wood ― and we don't have much wood here. It should keep us safe against the Cailee."

Mindar stood up straight, as if something had twisted inside her. She looked frightened and sweating, even more than before. "I forgot to lock the upstairs gate! Be ready to let me in when I come back down!"

Before they could say anything, she squeezed out through the half-shut door. Delrael heard her boots skipping up the stairs, then quick footfalls across the floor above. He looked at Vailret, who shrugged and shook his head.

And then they heard an outcry from above. "Cailee! Stay away!" They heard a clang of iron as the gates slammed, and then a loud crash of torn metal clattering to the floor. "Get out!"

A sharp sound rang out as metal struck stone. Delrael pictured Mindar swinging with her rippled sword, and then he heard frantic steps charging down the stairs.

"Get ready!" Delrael said. Vailret stood with him by the door, waiting to push it shut.

Mindar ran for them, holding the sword in one hand, her whip coiled at her hip. She leaped down the last three stairs. Her boots skittered on the floor, and her dark braid flipped back and forth.

"Close the door behind me! Close the door!"

As she ducked inside, Delrael saw an oily black silhouette creep down the stairs. moving dark and humanlike, but completely without features. A solid black mass that looked like a hole, a cut-out in the shape of a human character, gliding down the stairs, smooth and fast.

On the ends of each finger were gleaming, knifelike claws.

"Close the door!" Mindar cried.

Delrael shoved his shoulder against the door, and it thumped against the jamb. Mindar scrabbled with her hands and pulled the solid wooden crossbeam over the supports.

An instant later they heard a howl as something massive struck the other side of the door. Delrael still had his shoulder against it and felt the wood vibrate.

With another roar, the Cailee struck the door again. Then Delrael heard sharp, splintering sounds of silver claws ripping open the wood.

 

Chapter 14:

THE WOMAN CURSED BY SCARTARIS

 

"The Outsiders put their characters through a crucible, forging us with their games, tempering us with agonies or pleasures. Some characters are destroyed by this testing. Others come through it galvanized and stronger than before."

― Stilvess Peacemaker.

 

The Cailee attacked again.

The door thudded as the monster slammed against the wood, then screeching claws skittered up and down the jamb.

Bryl whimpered.

"That's more than just a shadow," Delrael said.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Journeyman said.

Mindar looked at them. The flickering candlelight washed over her face, shining with the sweat of her effort, her fear. The air felt hot and close around them. Delrael took a drink from one of the water skins, but the liquid tasted warm and flat.

Mindar turned away to stare at the door. She ran the braided end of the whip through her calloused hands.

The Cailee struck the door again.

"I've tried to hunt it down in the streets," she whispered. "I went out at night with my sword, but the Cailee always eluded me. It can vanish into any pool of darkness, hide in any corner where the light doesn't fall. I challenged the Cailee, but it chose to strike behind my back."

Her fingers clutched at the whip, as if to use it as a garrote. "I ran through the streets. Everything was dark, since no one lit lamps in their homes anymore. I found that the Cailee had torn down the door to my own home.

"I didn't try to be cautious. It wouldn't have done any good. When I pushed the torch into the shadows of my house, I could sense the Cailee. I also smelled fresh blood. When I came into the main room, I found ― "Mindar choked on her words.

Delrael stiffened and wanted to go to her, comfort her. But he felt that she did not want any comfort. She might be afraid it would weaken her.

"I found my husband and my daughter. Even mindless, they still knew where home was. They lived there. They were both slaughtered by the Cailee. It had thrown their blood in all directions, like it was playing.

"They hadn't put up any struggle, of course. Scartaris killed their minds long ago. I suppose they didn't even feel any pain."

"Mindar..." Delrael said.

"I ran outside and found the Cailee. I slashed at it with my sword and scored a blow ― then the Cailee tore at me with its silver claws, laying open my side. I fell to the street with a mortal wound, bleeding for hours. But I couldn't die.

"When I woke up at dawn, I had healed completely. And I found that the Cailee had also slain my brother. The one who had helped brand my forehead."

On the other side of the door, the Cailee ran one claw down the wood in a long, slow scratching noise that made the skin crawl on Delrael's back. The Cailee seemed to be mocking them.

Bryl's face looked the color of sour milk in the dim candlelight. He kneaded his fingers around the ruby Fire Stone. "If the Cailee gets in here, I'm going to blast it."

Mindar looked at the eight-sided stone with an expression of scorn on her face. Her eyes had a dull despair to them, but suddenly her gaze focused.

"How did you get that?" Her voice carried a sharp command, and she sprang to her feet. "Where did you get Enrod's Fire Stone?"

Delrael stood up beside Bryl. Everything fell into place for him as he remembered. Vailret cleared his throat, but seemed reluctant to start explaining.

"Delrael..." Mindar said, rolling the name around her mouth. "You're the ones who made the Barrier River! Enrod said you cut us off!"

Vailret coughed and turned away, as if avoiding her. "Enrod wasn't ... himself, I don't think. He tried to destroy all the hexagons west of the Barrier River. But the Deathspirits stopped him and cursed him to stay on the River until the end of the Game. They took the Fire Stone away from him and gave it to us."

He lowered his eyes. "Scartaris must have been manipulating Enrod, but the Deathspirits didn't care about any reasons, only what he was trying to do."

Mindar sat back down with slumped shoulders. She undid the braid in her hair and shook her head to loosen the strands. She closed her dark eyes.

"That doesn't surprise me. I know how upset Enrod was about your River.

He had found out about Scartaris and how we'd all have to escape soon. You made our escape impossible. You trapped us on the same side of the map with Scartaris." She shrugged and ran her fingers through hair that hung long and dark, kinky from the tight braid.

"Enrod was strong, very strong. He resisted longer than most of the Tairans. But he became obsessed about the Barrier River. I watched him. I think Scartaris used that as a hook to trap him, to twist open a weak spot in his mind and drive in the puppet strings." She sighed. "Still, his fate doesn't seem fair."

Vailret pursed his lips. "I don't suppose the Deathspirits were much willing to compromise."

The Cailee hit the door, but its efforts seemed to be losing enthusiasm.

"In a way, I'm glad Enrod isn't here to see what's happened to his city. He loved it so much."

She took the water skin from Delrael's hands and drank a deep gulp.

"Scartaris is using the characters here to make weapons, swords and shields for his great battle." Mindar shuddered and looked at them, but seemed disappointed with their reaction. She scowled.

"You wouldn't understand how great that defeat is. Remember that Taire is built on the worst scars of the ancient wars. The mechanics of game battles and personal combat are abhorrent to us. When Enrod founded this city, it was to be progressive and forward-looking. He knew the future of Gamearth lay in the hands of human characters ― he wanted to make sure we succeeded without repeating the mistakes of the Sorcerers."

Vailret lit another candle to replace one of those that burned low. He spoke up. "That's where Enrod and Sardun had their differences, I think.

Sardun wanted to enshrine the memory of the Sorcerers. Enrod wanted to work at keeping human characters alive and safe. Is that right?"

Mindar nodded. She kept her eyes lowered. "By using Taire to forge swords, Scartaris struck another psychological blow ― it makes his victory more fun to him. Imagine, Tairans making weapons!

She sat brooding, thinking. They fell into silence, waiting for the night to pass. The Cailee took to scratching along the stone walls outside their room, then howling in the echoing basement.

"How many more years are we going to have to stay here like this?" Bryl asked.

"Time flies when you're having fun," Journeyman answered.

They waited.

They sat in silence, listening to the ticking, random noises of the room. Outside, they heard quiet shuffling, the unknown movements of the Cailee that were even more frightening in their stealth than the occasional violent crashes against the door.

They sat for hours with no way of knowing how much time passed. They heard nothing from the Cailee. Bryl huddled in the blue robe, running his gnarled fingers through his gray beard. Journeyman appeared dormant.

Delrael looked at Vailret and Mindar. "Do you think it's morning yet?"

Mindar stood up. "We can see if the Cailee is gone. I'll go out. You watch the door."

Delrael began to protest, but she cut him off. "No. If I find the Cailee, then I'll have what I want." She lifted her sword. "If I don't find it, then we can go to our work."

Delrael and Vailret stood close to each other by the door with their own swords drawn. He imagined the edge of the old Sorcerer blade clanging against the slash of silver claws.

Mindar popped up the sturdy crossbar, and Delrael yanked the door open.

Mindar slipped through the crack and vanished into the basement. He caught a glimpse of grayish morning light before he and Vailret threw their weight against the door to close it.

They listened, but heard no immediate sounds until Mindar's quiet steps went up the stairs.

"Cailee!" she cried.

Delrael tensed, ready to yank open the door and run to fight with her, but they heard no scuffle, nothing else.

She came back down the stairs and stopped by the door. "It's all right.

The Cailee is gone."

They opened the door again. Mindar put her shoulders through. The anger in her eyes was rekindled.

"I saw the Cailee standing in the shadows. It was fading with the dawn light. I ran with my sword, but it was too insubstantial. Now I'll have to wait for another night."

She pushed open the door. Delrael breathed the cooler air of the basement, saw the murky light that filtered down from the narrow windows above, bright and clean after their night in the storeroom. They looked at the sturdy wooden door and stopped.

The door had been shredded. Great gouges and splinters were peeled away, torn out by hooked silver claws. The iron pins of the hinges hung loose from the wall, nearly pulled from the stone.

"That's not going to last another night," Delrael said. Bryl swayed on his feet, but managed not to faint.

When they got to the open air and bright sunlight, Delrael stood blinking and breathing deeply. He liked to be out where he could do something, where he could fight ― not trapped like a victim in a cell.

Mindar looked changed ― strengthened. She had a bounce to her step, and her demeanor did not seem so hopeless. "Come. I want to show you something."

She took Delrael's elbow and led them through the streets. Nothing stirred. The Tairans seemed to be hiding.

"I painted this back when I was happy and idealistic." She pointed to one of the frescoes on a building. "It was easy to think up nice things to paint then, of our bright future and how the Game would continue forever. We were going to make ourselves strong and self-sufficient. That's what we thought the Outsiders wanted! To make lives of our own so we wouldn't be dependent on them."

She led them to the side of an old building with a flat expanse of hexagonal stone blocks. "This one I did later."

A half-finished fresco had been sketched on the blocks, but in the center of the wall the soot-grimed plaster had been scrubbed away and overlaid with a fresh coating. Mindar had drawn a new picture showing the mountains to the east. A great featureless human figure towered over the landscape, holding his arms up in a gesture of victory. But the fresco was finished, not just a sketch. She had drawn the figure without features, but it had a mystique, a power to it.

"It's the Stranger Unlooked-For," she said.

Vailret looked at her, frowning as if trying to recall something he had heard. "Who was that?"

"Nobody knows. But he saved Gamearth." Mindar put her hands on her hips and walked over to the wall, inspecting her artwork. "It was just after the Transition, before Enrod established Taire, when the rest of the Gamearth characters were fighting each other over who would rule the map."

"The Scouring," Vailret said. Mindar ignored him.

"In the middle of the desolation grew something that would have destroyed us all, something a lot like Scartaris."

Mindar stared up into the sky. "The Outsider David must have tried to end the Game once before, and failed. He failed because the Stranger Unlooked-For came and destroyed his monster. The Stranger used some kind of weapon more powerful than anything ever used in the old Sorcerer wars. Nobody knows who the Stranger was. Nobody knows how he succeeded in killing David's first monster. But we should all remember him as a hero."

She took out her rippled sword and rested its tip on the flagstones of the street. "I know one thing, though. We can't count on the Stranger to return. We've got nobody but ourselves to fight Scartaris."

Shuffling away from the painting, Mindar kept her eyes averted. "Before we go, there's one thing I want to do. I'll need your help. I hope you'll join me."

Bryl shifted his feet uneasily.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," Journeyman said.

Mindar took a deep breath. "Scartaris has one large smithy to fashion swords, and the tannery to make shields. I want to destroy them before we go.

Strike a psychological blow back at Scartaris. That'll teach him not to use Taire to make his weapons."

Delrael looked at the deserted streets and saw in his mind the dream that Enrod had, to raise the city out of the desolation, to turn it toward the future. And he saw how Scartaris had twisted that idea.

Yes, he liked the thought of striking a real blow, now that Scartaris knew who they were anyway. They no longer needed to keep their quest secret.

It was time to stop hiding ― time to start showing that they meant business.

"Yes." Delrael met Mindar's eyes. "Let's do it."

Mindar smiled, and Delrael felt a thrill, perhaps of fear, run down his spine. She looked beautiful and determined, and more deadly than any weapon he had ever seen. The angry red S-scar marred her forehead.

"Let me find my mare. If we get horses for you too, we can increase our travel allotment, get to Scartaris sooner."

Mindar led them through the winding streets. Delrael noticed a few Tairans shuffling along doing indecipherable tasks. They took no notice of the travelers. Mindar pointedly did not look at them.

When they reached the stables, Mindar's gray mare waited for them.

Mindar patted the mare on the neck, and Delrael could see a genuine attachment between them. She left the horse outside as she motioned the others in. Only two horses remained in the stable.

"They've taken three more." Mindar shook her head in disgust.

"Sometimes Scartaris sends his monsters here to get weapons. Other times he has the Tairans use horses to haul cartloads off to his army. The horses never come back."

"There aren't enough horses for us," Bryl said, although from the tone in his voice, Delrael thought he sounded relieved. Bryl had never ridden a horse, and probably wasn't thrilled at the idea.

"I don't need one," Journeyman said. "I can keep up with any pace you set."

"Bryl's light enough." Vailret stood beside the half-Sorcerer. "He can ride with me. We'll take one horse. Del, you take the other. Mindar has her own."

Mindar nodded and turned to the door. "Let's get going."

Delrael approached one of the horses skeptically, a mottled brown gelding that appeared calm enough. He ran his palm along the horse's shoulders and then, trying not to look inexperienced, he scrambled on the gelding's back. Delrael held onto the mane and swayed, finding his balance. The horse felt warm and vibrant under him, strong and alive.

"Don't worry," Mindar said, "You're a fighter character. You'll ride easily. It's natural for you. Part of your characteristics."

Vailret watched his cousin, then worked his way onto the other horse.

Bryl frowned, then Journeyman picked him up bodily and set him in front of Vailret. The horses seemed anxious to leave the stables. Outside in the street again, Mindar mounted her own mare.

She stopped in the square in front of the stables to where an iron bell, embossed with flower patterns, hung over a stone foundation. Four Tairans shuffled from one building to another, keeping their heads down and slouching. Their gray clothes and sunken expressions made it impossible for Delrael to tell if they were even male or female characters.

Mindar removed the whip from around her waist and, holding onto the gray mare's mane with one hand, she lashed out and struck the bell. A gong echoed through the streets.

The Tairans looked up, gawked at her for a moment, then moved back inside. Mindar struck the bell again with the whip and waited. Nothing stirred in the buildings. Her expression turned dark and stormy. Tears glistened in her dark eyes. She rang the bell twice more, then hung her head.

"Taire has died," she said. "That bell should have brought all characters in the city flocking to see what the danger was." She fastened her whip, then urged the mare forward.

"We'll give them some danger."

The smithy stood by itself, surrounded by smoke and noise. On three sides, the alleys were broader than usual. One wall of a nearby building had been knocked down to give greater access for raw material to be shipped in, for weapons to be carried away. The rubble lay where it had fallen; white chips and broken brick showed that the wall had been intact not long before.

Smoke curled into the bright, hot sky; feathery black stains smeared the smithy walls. A mound of pig iron lay piled near the door. From the inside came gusts of heat and banging sounds as Tairans worked on swords and shield frames.

"What are we going to do?" Vailret said, squinting his eyes as if deep in thought. "We can't burn it."

"I can still cause a lot of damage." Journeyman smacked his fists together.

"We don't need to destroy the buildings," Mindar said. "This is still my city. It won't do any good to save Taire if we ruin it in the meantime.

We'll destroy the forge and the hearth ― that will ruin things so they can't be used to make swords." She stared at the smithy wall with a gaze that seemed to bore through stone. "That'll be enough for now."

Delrael climbed down off his horse and steadied himself against the gelding's back. "Vailret, you and Bryl stay out here and watch the horses. The three of us can handle this."

"You bet your life!" Journeyman said.

"Funny you should put it that way," Mindar said.

Inside, the smithy was dark, lit only by orange, smoky fires. Delrael choked on the stench of sulfur and hot iron. The clang of hammers on anvils rang out in the air.

Five Tairan men worked at the anvils, three women tended hot ingots in the forge. Another hauled pig iron from the pile outside. Their tunics had either burned away or torn off. Red welts and black scars on their skin showed where they had been seared by sparks; the untended wounds festered.

Mindar held her sword in front of her. "Stop what you're doing!" she shouted into the noise.

The Tairans turned to look in unison with blank-eyed stares, then they continued their work, banging against the anvil. She had to yell. "Stop that, I said!"

Delrael strode forward and wrenched the mallet from one of the Tairan's hands. "Drop your hammers!"

Journeyman came forward and yanked mallets out of the other hands. The mindless men continued to raise and lower their arms for a few moments, then they stood with hands loose at their sides.

"Better move fast, before they figure out what's going on," Mindar said.

Delrael started hacking at the bellows with his sword, severing the pulley ropes. Mindar bent to her knees and used the strength in her back and arms to tip over an anvil.

Journeyman, with a huge grin of glee on his face, picked up an anvil and threw it into the stone-rimmed forge. The heavy iron smashed into the chimney bricks and punched a hole through. With another broad clay hand, he grabbed one of the stone support pillars in the center of the room and jerked it free, toppling a portion of the ceiling. The golem sputtered and brushed dust off his arms.

The Tairans stood blinking at them with murky expressions. Mindar swatted one of the workers with the flat of her blade. "Go on, get out of here! You can't do anything more."

The three of them herded the Tairans into the street. As a parting effort, Journeyman knocked down the columns in the front of the building, making the facade collapse and closing off the front of the smithy.

Several other Tairans stumbled out of buildings, watching with their unblinking gaze.

"Well, that was exhilarating!" Journeyman said.

Mindar mounted her gray mare. "We have to keep moving before they second-guess us. Scartaris enjoys watching me fail ― he won't put up with this for long."

She turned the mare around and set off at a trot down the angled street. Delrael tried to figure out how to guide his gelding, but the horse followed Mindar on its own.

Taire waited in dead silence. Delrael could sense other characters watching through the blind windows, looking at them with the pupilless eyes of Scartaris....

A chemical, rotting stench told him they had reached the tannery. On an adjacent wall Delrael saw a fresco of a dark-haired man he recognized, flowing black beard and fiery eyes ― Enrod the Sentinel, wielding the Fire Stone to shine light on the desolation. The optimism in the artist's conception seemed to mock them all.

Delrael imagined a time when the streets had not been silent: horsecarts taking characters to the reclaimed hexagons for work in the fields.

He thought of Tairans talking, doing business, even squabbling with one another. Scartaris had taken all that away.

The tannery was one of the larger buildings in the city, now modified by adding shutters to close off the windows. A gate stood ajar on crude hinges in front of a stained leather curtain that hung over the entrance. Smoke from fires used to cure and dry the stretched leather drifted out of the window openings like fat snakes. Outside the building lay stacked rows of finished shields, varnished leather coverings over a sturdy iron frame. The bad smell forced Delrael to take short, hitching breaths.

"I don't see why we have to do this," Bryl said, mumbling his words. He covered his nose with the blue cloak. "If we've got the last horses, there's no more leather for shields anyway."

Mindar glanced at him with a strange look on her face. Her smile might have been wry if the expression hadn't been so bleak. "Horses are much too valuable to Scartaris. He would never use them just for leather."

She blinked her eyes at the piled shields, the pale, discolored leather glinting off the iron frames. Disgust distorted her face.

"But if it's not horsehide, then ― " Bryl began.

"Shut up, Bryl!" Vailret snapped. His face turned greenish.

"We must destroy this place," Mindar whispered.

She dismounted and drew her sword. "Come on, Delrael. We'll get the people out, then Bryl can destroy it with the Fire Stone. Enrod would want that, burn it clean."

Without waiting for him, Mindar strode to the front of the tannery.

Delrael took three running steps to catch up to her. She pulled open the iron gate, letting it clang against the far stone wall. She used the tip of her sword to slash across the sewn leather curtain and let it fall to pieces. Her boots stomped it flat as she entered the building.

Delrael followed her into the firelit dimness. The stench hung in the air like foul liquid pressing into his lungs. Irritated tears formed in his eyes, but he blinked them away.

"We won't fail this time, Scartaris," Mindar said at the shadows around her.

Delrael's knuckles whitened around the hilt of his sword. Other Tairans moved in the large, but somehow claustrophobic, room. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he staggered from the grisly sight around him.

Four Tairans grappled with a wooden frame, stretching a skin on a rack.

Another woman took a flat knife and began scraping the back of the skin.

Entrails, bones, and waste leather lay piled in deep stone vats, dripping in pools of clotting blood.

Against the walls sat basins filled with brine solutions, lime, and tanning chemicals, each stuffed with ragged skins. A covering of ash was scattered on the floor to soak up the blood. Brownish-red footprints left aimless trails in the gray ash.

Racks of drying, treated skins hung from the stone arches, showing vague, distorted shapes of what had once been arms and legs. Piles of finished leather lay stacked in the dim corners, waiting to be mounted on shield frames.

The orange light from torches and braziers flickered with the air coming in now that the leather curtain had been torn down. Mindar let out a strangled cry at the scene, and Delrael closed his eyes with a wince, then forced himself to open them again. He was a fighter, after all. He should have been immune to the sight of gore and carnage.

A mound of human heads, useless for their leather, were piled high in the corner. Their soft jelly eyes stood open in a blank expression of terror.

Some of the mouths hung open, dry and black inside.

Then Delrael noticed something that made the nausea surge up inside him. These eyes weren't the pupilless white of the other empty Tairans ― they were normal, terror-stricken, brown irises and blue. Scartaris had given them back their minds an instant before death, letting them know what they had done and what was going to happen to them.

"You bastard!"

Delrael bent over, feeling his chest and stomach muscles spasm. This was foul and unfair. Scartaris did not play the same Game ― no glorious combat with heroic deeds. Just slaughter, no honor or challenge or excitement.

How could Scartaris enjoy this? Always have fun ... Such a warped character, even a monster, had to be destroyed.

The dead Tairan eyes stared up from the mound of heads. The pupils seemed dilated in the dim firelight.

He squeezed his eyelids shut and was sick on the ash-covered floor of the tannery. He wheezed and coughed.

The other Tairan workers stopped what they were doing and stood facing them. They all wore identical, broad grins.

Delrael lurched back to his feet, closing his hand around the sword hilt. Stinging tears came to his eyes. Mindar gripped him by the shoulder to be sure he was all right, but he shrugged her off and lunged forward to slash at the drying skins on the racks overhead.

"Let's get the people out of here so we can bring this place down," he said. He grabbed one of the motionless Tairan workers and jerked him toward the door. The man stumbled, without cooperating or resisting. Delrael pushed him out the door. He wasted less time shoving the next person out.

Mindar went to the three other workers, but they suddenly moved and grabbed her around the shoulders. Taken by surprise, she lashed out and struggled, but they held onto her arms. The third Tairan went to the cluster of hanging skins, loosened a dangling rope and let two intact bodies fall to the floor, one large and one small. With a thump, they sprawled on their heads, stiff arms and legs cracking into awkward positions. They lay in the blood and ash.

Delrael ran to help Mindar ― but the Tairans were not trying to hurt her. One of them grabbed her head and turned it so that she had to look, had to see.

The two bodies were naked, but preserved by the tannery's processes -a man and a small child, a daughter. Dried blood and claw marks scored their flesh. Both faces held a fixed look of terror and eyes that were not milky-blank, but contained a pupil and dark iris, a mind, a soul.

"No!" With a scream, Mindar threw herself away from the Tairan workers and went wild with her sword, striking down both Tairans who held her. Her rippled blade slashed across the face of the third Tairan, obliterating the empty white eyes. Delrael drew his sword, but Mindar needed no help.

"No, Scartaris..." She hunched over the torn bodies of her husband and daughter. Her voice trembled in the silence of the tannery. She reached out to touch Cithany's stiff shoulder.

Delrael stood behind her. "We have to go." He placed his hand on her back. "Let's destroy this place."

Mindar slid shut the brittle eyelids of her daughter, brushed her fingers over the face of her husband and then closed his eyes as well. "Now you can't see any more of what Scartaris is doing to our city."

Delrael took her arm to guide her. Mindar lurched out of the tannery and stumbled on the slippery flagstones. She fell to her knees, retching, then scrambled back to her feet. She held her sword in both hands and lashed back and forth at imaginary demons. Her eyes were clouded and gushing tears. Her lips drew away from her teeth in an angry snarl.

The others stepped back. She screamed and seemed unable to catch her breath. "Scartaris!" Mindar turned around in circles with the sword and then stopped as if grabbed by a giant hand. "You will pay for this."

She staggered toward Bryl. "Use the Fire Stone. Burn that place! Bring it down!"

"Is there anyone left inside?" Bryl asked.

"Burn it!" Mindar screamed. She reached out and grabbed his blue cloak, pushing him back toward the stone wall of another building. Bryl lost his footing and slipped, but she held onto his cloak and propped him up. "Burn it, I said!"

Her smoldering eyes seemed to cut through him. Delrael took a step forward, then hesitated, afraid to touch her, afraid that Mindar might explode or lash back at him with her rippled sword. He didn't want to hurt her, and he didn't think she wanted to hurt him either.

She wanted to hurt Scartaris. That was all for now.

"Do it, Bryl," he said.

Hands shaking, the half-Sorcerer took out the eight-sided ruby. "Move your feet. Give me some room."

Bryl stood, brushed himself off, then rolled the ruby. The Fire Stone clacked on the flagstones, showed a "6."

Mindar whirled to point at the tannery. Bryl grabbed the Fire Stone and launched fireballs with all the strength of his high roll.

Stone splinters from the tannery exploded outward as Bryl hurled crackling spheres of flame. Inside, the doors buckled. Roof shards erupted into the air; smoke belched through the window slits, reeking of burned skin, oily wood, and vats of preserving chemicals.

The tannery collapsed with a long, low rumble. The wide walls of two nearby buildings cracked with the concussion. Smoke curled around the wreckage up into the air again.

The red S-scar on Mindar's forehead glowed a flaming red with unnatural light. She worked her jaw convulsively and stared to the east. "I curse you, Scartaris. I will use every resource to destroy you."

Then the Tairans arrived.

Gray-clad, mindless people surged out of the buildings and moved down the streets toward them, shoulder to shoulder, a massed wall of flesh like a living, unthinking vise.

"We've got to get out of here!" Delrael cried. He grabbed his horse.

Mindar stood unable to move. Her eyes looked devastated.

"Show us the way out of here!" Delrael grabbed her by the shoulders, and she seemed to snap out of her confusion. She saw the Tairans coming.

Mindar hustled them down a narrow alley, leading the horses and shouldering aside three Tairans who blocked their way. At the end of the alley, another group of characters moved into place to block off their escape.

Mindar stopped and looked at a large pavilion to their left.

"This way. We can cut through here." Grabbing her mare's reins, Mindar ran up the steps to the pavilion and into the wide interior. Delrael and the others followed.

The stone roof overhead echoed the sounds of the horses. They passed under lattices strung with decorated clay pots from which hung curtains of dead vines. The vines must have once been lush and cool, but now the brittle strands were like dangling claws trying to scratch down.

"Quick, we can go out the other side!"

They reached the side door where polished steps spilled down onto another street. An obsidian trough that had once served as a reflection pool sat empty, caked with a ring of lime from the evaporated water.

The street in front of them looked deserted. But as they charged down the steps, Tairans moved into the area, crowding at the intersections.

"We've got to hurry," Mindar said. They turned right and ran down the only street still open to them.

"I wish I'd had a chance to study the map of Taire," Delrael said, breathing hard. "I don't know where we're going. I don't know how to get out of this."

"I don't know either," Mindar said, "But we're going to find a way."

The haunted buildings around them stood tall, disorienting. The sun hung straight up in the sky, giving no indication of direction. Delrael followed Mindar, feeling that he could trust her instincts. She fought like he did.

They led the horses, running around one corner, and came abruptly to the tall, smooth stone barrier of the Taire city walls, blocking them off from the desolation terrain.

"Now what do we do?" Bryl said.

Vailret moved to the wall and put his fingers against the cracks of the hexagonal stone blocks. He looked up, frowning. "We can't climb this. We can't get over."

A wave of Tairans closed in from all sides, moving in a bizarre lockstep, rippling as they pushed forward. Their eyes were all empty, cold and pupilless.

Delrael pulled out his sword. Mindar crouched with her back to the wall, holding the rippled blade in front of her. Delrael could feel her tension, flicking her dark gaze from side to side. They would fight together here, to avenge the ghosts in their pasts.

Without warning, Mindar let out a cry and lunged into the approaching crowd, swinging her sword. Some of the unresisting Tairans staggered from their wounds, but the others continued forward without heeding their injuries.

They took no notice of Mindar's attack. They folded around her and kept pushing toward Delrael and the others.

She took out the whip instead, lashing out. The Tairans moved away from her, but did not stop. Mindar whipped a Tairan woman in the head, leaving a bright streak of blood across her temple.

"Scartaris! I will make you notice me!"

The horses backed and reared, closed in by the stone wall behind them.

"Mindar!" Delrael called.

The Tairans moved slower, as if Scartaris wanted to relish the victory.

Mindar fought her way back to the wall. Delrael used the flat of his blade to drive the people away from her. He grabbed Mindar's arm and yanked her to him.

The Tairans formed a semicircle around them.

Journeyman turned to face the wall, spreading his clay hands out against the stone. His flexible face bore an exaggerated, perplexed frown. "If we can't go over the wall ― " He drew his arm back. The clay flowed, making a giant bulldozer fist. "Why can't we just go ... through it?"

With the force of a thunderclap, he smashed his arm into the wall blocks. Dust trickled down. He slammed again, and the blocks, not held together by any mortar, jumbled loose.

The Tairans let out a unanimous hiss of anger and pushed forward.

Journeyman struck one more time and, with a rumble, the blocks toppled outward. "Look out!" he said and reached out to deflect a stone block that would have struck Bryl's head.

The horses reared.

The Tairans grasped at them. Their fingers bore dirty, broken nails.

Many of them gushed blood from wounds made by Mindar's sword.

The dust from the rupture in the wall stung Delrael's eyes. He coughed.

"Let's get out of here!" He leaped on the back of his horse. "Come on, Mindar!"

Vailret grabbed Bryl and they both scrambled onto their horse.

Journeyman, looking immensely pleased with himself, pushed around the rubble and let out a strange, primitive yell ― "Yabba dabba doo!" ― and crashed into the Tairans, knocking many over, cracking some ribs. He picked up bodies to fling them against each other.

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" he said.

Delrael and Mindar rode side by side through the opening in the wall.

Vailret led his horse over the rubble.

They galloped out into the desolation. After a moment, Journeyman leaped after them, bounding with great resilient strides and following them into the desert. "Thank you, come again!" he called back at the city.

The air was hot, and reflected sunlight rippled up from the broken stone and caked dust. The sun had just begun to dip into afternoon.

"We have to ride ― get as far away from here as we can." Mindar's voice came in gasping, clipped phrases.

Delrael looked at her and saw how torn she was inside. But a great fear seemed to underlie her anger. "I think we'll be safe now," he said, trying to be reassuring.

Mindar shook her head. "Until tonight." The dust in her hair stiffened the kinks from where she had braided it. "Out here we'll have no protection at all from the Cailee."