Gameplay (15 page)

“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 Tairé, 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 Tairé 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 Tairé. 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 Tairé—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.

“Tairé 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 Tairé. 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.

***

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 Tairé 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 Tairé 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 Tairé, 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 Tairé 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.”