Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (12 page)

" 'Those of us remaining stared in awe, but the Spirits made no move to speak. They seemed indifferent to us and to the thousands of empty bodies lying on the valley floor. The Spirits conferred among themselves briefly, and then they vanished.

" 'To this day, the Spirits have had no contact with our world. This does nothing to allay the regrets of those Sentinels who now wish they had made a different decision. Sometimes I wonder if I had a right to stop so many of them.'"

Vailret stopped reading. Bryl turned away quickly, as if trying to hide a sheen of tears in his eyes.

Vailret saw a plume of breath as he let out a long sigh. "Do you suppose the old Sorcerers knew something, even back then? That they were so desperate to escape to a new reality where the same Rules don't apply? Before the Outsiders decided to destroy Gamearth." He drew in a deep breath, awed.

"Then why did the Sentinels stay behind?"

"The Sentinels carried all the Sorcerer bodies here," Bryl said, muffling his words in his sky-blue cloak.

Vailret squinted ahead. "Look at them all."

The ceiling of the vast chamber dropped low. The dormant bodies lay in awesome ranks beyond where the torchlight vanished into blue murk from the ice walls. They looked alive, asleep, with a gentle dusting of frost in their hair. Vailret could imagine them being placed here by the Sentinels; he could imagine Sardun spending patient decades rearranging them into restful poses.

The chamber felt very cold. Silence pressed down on Vailret, and he thought he heard breathing, countless lungs being filled at a synchronized but maddeningly slow rate, then an equally slow exhale. The torch sputtered once, making him jump and breaking the spell.

"Come on, Bryl. Let's get out of here."

Sardun propped himself up on a shaky forearm and glared at them. "You should not have waited!"

Vailret shrank from the outrage rising behind the old Sentinel's watery gray eyes, but he eased Sardun back to his blankets. "We had to make sure you were all right."

The night before, while Sardun still lay comatose, Vailret had crept out on the sparkling balcony to gaze in awe at the Barrier River. Nearly hypnotized, he stared at the vast channel of frigid water zigzagging sharply along the hex-lines, laden with ice chunks and brownish-gray silt. He squinted, but his poor eyesight blurred the details. He had to use his imagination, just as Drodanis had taught him.

Vailret stood in silence as the cold wind blew on him, and listened to the river grinding its channel deeper. The silent stars and the aurora shone overhead.

They had fulfilled the quest Drodanis and the Rulewoman had required.

They had protected themselves from whatever the Outsiders had placed in the east. Creating the River might have been more extreme than was necessary to fulfill the vague instructions
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but they knew too little about their enemy.

They had finished one quest, but now they had promised Sardun another. And the Stronghold was still in the hands of Gairoth.

Vailret liked the old veteran Tarne and trusted him to lead the villagers to safety somewhere in the forests. But Gairoth had the Stronghold, and the Air Stone, and all his ogre comrades. Vailret hated to think of the damage they could be doing.

Sardun had nearly sacrificed himself to create the River, and they were bound by the Rules to go on the quest to rescue his daughter. By the time Vailret returned to the throne room, the old Sentinel had finally awakened.

"Tareah could be dead by now. You must hurry." Sardun's voice seemed stronger now, and he sat up again. His lisp seemed more pronounced. "Have you copied the map on the wall
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so you know exactly where you're going?"

"I've already memorized it," Delrael said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Sardun sighed. "Perhaps I kept Tareah too sheltered. She should have been out, seeing Gamearth, learning the world. If she had not been here during the attack, she would still be well."

"I would like to take a good sword if you have one, Sardun," Delrael asked. "It would increase our chances."

"Yes, choose whatever you need from the relics I keep if it will help you rescue Tareah." The Sentinel spread his hands.

Bryl moved forward, reluctant but extending the shining Water Stone he had removed from where it had frozen into the ice of the balcony. The awe on his face was plain. "Here is your Water Stone, Sardun."

The Sentinel squirmed away from the sapphire's touch, twisting his face in an expression of fear and disgust. With a twitch of his gnarled left hand, he knocked the Stone out of Bryl's hand.

Astonished, the half-Sorcerer chased the sapphire as it skittered across the floor of the throne room. "What's the matter?"

Sardun slumped into his blankets, and a violent shiver rippled through his body. "When I last used the Water Stone, I forged a link with the
dayid
below. The other minds in the
dayid
are lonely. They nearly forced me to make the half-Transition. With the Water Stone it would have been so easy. So easy. So frightening.

"I think the
dayid
hoped that with me using the Stone and with its own strength, I could liberate enough power to raise us all through a real Transition."

He sighed. "But I refused. I may regret it in the future as my only chance to make a miracle happen. I am afraid to use the Stone again. The
dayid
knows I'm here
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and I doubt if I could resist that calling a second time."

Bryl looked down at his blue cloak, flashed a glance at both Delrael and Vailret, then looked at Sardun. "I am a half-Sorcerer. I can use Sorcerer magic. I can use the Water Stone." He spoke quickly, before anyone could stop him. His eyes were bright. "This could be just the magic I need.

"Gamearth is still infested with monsters that survived the Scouring.

Maybe with the Water Stone I can protect us. That would give us a better chance to rescue Tareah."

The Sentinel closed his eyes. "Yes, take the Water Stone and take it far from here. You will remove the temptation." Sardun sounded very weary.

"Use it to bring Tareah back to me."

Bryl stared at the deep blue gem in his hand. He smiled, eager and in awe.

Delrael returned holding an ornate but serviceable sword. He strapped it at his side, against the tooled silver belt his father had given him. He straightened, brushed his hands over his leather armor and looked prepared.

"Let's go."

Sardun insisted on seeing them off, and they made their way outside with painstaking slowness. Vailret had tried to convince the Sentinel to rest, but he would hear none of it. "You will take me to the gateway!" Sardun said.

His long mustache drooped into his mouth, making him look angry and impatient.

They walked down curving crystal corridors just beginning to fill with rainbows as the sun rose.

When they reached the front gate of the Palace, Sardun slumped against the repaired doorway. He looked tired, but not quite empty of hope anymore.

"Luck." Delrael waved as they set off.

"Luck
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rescue my daughter!"

The sunlight was much brighter now that the ice walls no longer filtered it. Vailret shaded his eyes against the glare. Some of the snow from Sardun's unnatural cold still covered the ground, reflecting the light, but the day was warming rapidly.

Melted snow had muddied the ground. The mountain path was much easier now that they didn't have to battle the weather. The Ice Palace stood whole again, glistening like a diamond.

The three travelers hiked southward, leaving the towers behind. Bryl fingered the sapphire Water Stone in his chest pocket, as if waiting for the moment when he could use it. Vailret looked at their optimism and felt a foreboding
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they seemed to have forgotten what they were going to be up against.

At the Ice Palace, without the Water Stone to protect it for the first time in centuries, the tall spires started to succumb to the returning summer heat. Tiny trickles of water ran down the great walls, freezing again before they reached the ground, and then warming once more. The Ice Palace began to melt.

INTERLUDE: Outside

The Players stared at the crystalline twenty-sided die on the table. A perfect "20" faced up.

Melanie rubbed her hands together and smiled at David. David made as if to knock all the dice off the table, but she held up her hands. "You can't do that, David."

She could see the anger behind his eyes, the
need
to beat her, and she worried about the change that had come over him. Oh, he had professed boredom with the Game in the past, but never anything serious ... just complaining for the sake of complaining. They were used to that from David.

But now the urgency of stopping the Game possessed him
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and he couldn't just leave. The four of them were part of the Game, they had been at it too long. David acted
addicted
, hating himself for it. Like an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler ... a compulsive gamer? If he just walked away from the Game and let them continue playing, Melanie knew he would be back. He knew he would be back. And he desperately wanted to remove that option, that carrot in front of his nose.

"I think we should get different dice," he mumbled. "She's been rolling too well tonight."

"Spices things up a bit," Tyrone said. He rocked back in the chair and drummed his fingertips on his chest. "Hey, anybody want some more dip? I'll put it in the microwave."

"Are you suggesting she's using fake dice, David?" Scott raised his eyebrows. "You know those are the same ones we've always been using. Besides, it doesn't make sense because we're all using the same ones. If a die's loaded for her, it's loaded for us, and we should be rolling twenties, too."

Melanie stared at the map, at the colored hexagons, and she smiled. "Or maybe it's just that my characters are helping out." Her voice had a facetious tone, but David looked at her sharply.

"You're crazy."

"Oh, whose turn is it?" Tyrone stood up from his chair, scooped some of his bean dip on a cracker, and offered it to Scott, who refused. "What are you going to do with your roll, Mel?" He shut the microwave door and twisted the timer.

"Sardun succeeded in creating the Barrier River. It cuts off the western half of the map from the east."

"That won't be enough," David said. "It's just a delaying tactic."

But Melanie stared at the map. Her eyes widened. She couldn't believe what was happening. "Look!"

One hexagon of gray mountain terrain below the Northern Sea suddenly winked. It changed color to the enameled blue of the water.

Then the hexagons of grassland terrain below it also turned blue, one at a time, moving downward like a zipper. One after another the hexagons of terrain turned to water in a line that meandered its way around the forested-hill and grassy-hill terrain.

"Wow!" Tyrone leaned across the table and pressed his face close to the map. "Look at it go!"

"Like it's choosing a logical course!" Scott said. "I don't believe this."

The hexagon of a lone village was inundated and changed without a trace. Melanie thought of the villagers, the people, their homes and fields.

The River moved on until it emptied into the sea below.

Melanie sat frozen. David turned gray.

Scott jumped up and ran into the kitchen, pulling open drawers until he found the silverware. He came back to the map with a butterknife. He chipped away at one section of the new blue color.

Melanie tried to stop him, but he avoided her. "Wait, we've got to check this out. Timed-exposure paint or something? Of course not." He frowned, deep in thought. "I don't know what else to make of it."

"That was wild!" Tyrone said.

Scott squinted down. "The blue goes all the way to the wood!" He looked as if his reality had somersaulted in front of him.

David's reaction was incredible even to Melanie. She was amazed ... but David took it in stride.

"I'll stop your characters. They've made a river, but I won't give them another chance."

Melanie jabbed a finger at the map. "You're way over here. You've been spending all your time in the mountains and in the east. You can't get anything to them in time."

David raised his eyebrows. "We've got wandering monsters left over from the Scouring. I can roll up some more. It doesn't have to be part of any major plot to get rid of your characters."

"Plenty of wandering monsters in my section," Tyrone said. He rubbed his hands together. "And catacombs and good stuff. That's where they're heading next."

Scott kept staring at the blue paint. "Don't you guys realize what just happened?"

David drummed fingertips on the table. "With Tyrone helping me out for the last bunch of turns, we've done everything we needed to do in the east and in the mountains. Everything is set, all my wheels are in motion. We can get out now, and on to other things. Consider your characters doomed, Melanie."