Game Play (23 page)

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.