Gameplay (5 page)

Enrod gave no sign that he had heard.

Vailret stared at the cursed Sentinel. Enrod’s eyes were red and unfocused, possessed. He had been driven into madness somehow, he had wanted to blast all the hexagons into blackened cinders. Did he know that his imagined enemies stood directly beside him? Did he know that Bryl carried
his
Fire Stone no more than two steps away?

“Enrod? Enrod, can you hear me?” Vailret stood beside him, but the Sentinel did not flinch.

“I’ve heard many legends about you. I know what you attempted to do for Tairé. You remained behind from the Transition to help rebuild the blasted lands. You wanted to atone for all the damage done in the old Sorcerer Wars.”

Enrod fixed his eyes at the blank wall of mist in front of him. He lifted his arms and pushed down on the pole.

“Enrod,” Vailret continued, “we know the Outsiders put something in the east, a monster called Scartaris who’s going to destroy Gamearth. Can you tell us anything about him?”

The dark-haired Sentinel seemed to be in a world of his own. He moved jerkily. His eyes did not blink.

“Enrod, please help us!”

Enrod lifted his pole out of the water.

“The whole Game is at stake!” Vailret clutched at the Sentinel’s tattered white sleeve, trying to yank his attention away from the raft.

In a lightning blur of speed, Enrod snapped backward with his right foot, scooped it behind Vailret’s legs. He slashed with the mud-dripping pole and jabbed with his elbow.

Vailret tumbled, sprawling to the deck of the raft. He skidded and grabbed at the pitch-covered logs to keep from falling into the water.

In a fluid motion, Enrod composed himself again, thrust his pole back into the River, and pushed on.

It all happened so fast that Delrael could do little more than bend over to catch his cousin. Bryl blinked in astonishment.

Enrod acted as if nothing had happened at all.

Vailret coughed and tried to catch his breath, opening and closing his mouth. Then he climbed back to his feet, brushing himself off. He said nothing, but continued to watch Enrod out of the corner of his eye.…

Before long, shapes appeared in the mist ahead of them, the dark silhouettes of trees from the far shore. Vailret squinted as they approached closer until the fog around the raft broke open, letting him see the hex-line of the shore.

Enrod moved toward the bank, stopped the raft just before touching, then held it in place with the pole. He turned his neck on sluggish muscles to look at the three passengers, but he made absolutely no sign of recognition. He began to turn the raft around again.

Delrael jumped to the shore, clearing the hex-line and landing on the dry forest soil. Bryl scrambled off, splashed in the mud, and joined the fighter.

Vailret turned again to plead with the Sentinel. “I wish you could help us, Enrod.”

His back turned to Vailret, Enrod hesitated and then pushed the raft away from the bank. Vailret jumped across the widening gap of water and landed beside his two companions.

Vailret shook his head. “He’s so powerful, and the whole map is in such trouble. I wish his magic wasn’t wasted like this!”

“Are you forgetting he was going to blast our entire land?” Bryl said. “He wanted to destroy us all. The end result would be the same as Scartaris.”

As the raft moved away again, the island of mist curled around Enrod and swallowed him up until Vailret could no longer see him or the raft or, after a few moments, the mist itself.

“We’ll never know.”

Delrael rubbed his hands together and turned to face the forest terrain stretching away from the river. “Let’s get going. We’ve got plenty of hexes to travel.”

A strange voice interrupted them from beside the River. “Hold your horses! Play it again, Sam.” The voice was deep and hollow, and did not belong to any of them. A burble of mud from the bank made Vailret look down.

The thick clay opened a hole like a mouth, with lips protruding and moving to form words. But the quality of the voice changed, becoming loud and abrasive. “Listen to me when I’m talking to ya, boy! Now, pay attention!”

Bryl stood to the side, but Delrael leaned over the mouth in the mud. Vailret looked around for a stick, wondering if he should poke at it.

“Where’s the beef?” the mouth continued in a different voice again. “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”

“This thing isn’t making any sense at all,” Delrael said, glancing at Vailret. “What is it?”

“What’s up, doc?”

A bulge pushed up from the surface of the mud, then became a rounded lump straining harder until it grew into a blockish, clumsily formed head made of clay. It drew a great gulp of air through its mouth, then exhaled with a whistle through the caverns of its nose.

“Ah, how sweet it is!”

The head struggled, then a neck emerged, forming out of the mud as it rose. The shoulders and torso squeezed up as if forced out of a mold from below.

“I want to get out of here,” Bryl said.

The clay man emerged from the bank until it stood as tall and as burly as Delrael. It flexed both arms and blinked empty eye sockets. The clay man bent over the river, splashed some water on its skin and rubbed down a few rough spots with its hands.

“Well surprise, surprise, surprise!” Then he turned to face the three of them. The clay of his lips formed a wide, misshapen smile, showing soft sculpted teeth. “You deserve a break today!”

He patted his clay chest so hard that he made an indentation. Perplexed, he smoothed over the mark. Clay eyelids came down over the empty sockets, then blinked up again.

“G’day, mate! My name is Journeyman, your friendly neighborhood golem. I’m from the government—I’m here to help you. I was sent by the Rulewoman Melanie to join your quest to destroy Scartaris. One for all and all for one!”

***

4. Slave of the Serpent

“All character races were created by the Sorcerers to fight in their wars: humans, Slac, khelebar, werem, ogres, ylvans. Do not forget, however, that the Sorcerers also created individual monsters according to their imaginations. Many of these monsters still wander the map with no other purpose than to cause havoc. Questing characters should beware of such monsters, as their methods of fighting will be unfamiliar, and their weaknesses will not be known.”

—Preface,
The Book of Rules

The veteran Tarne woke in the middle of the night with ice in his stomach and a crawly feeling on his skin. He stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, and he knew the aurora in the sky would speak to him again.

With the silent step of a practiced fighter, he slipped out of his borrowed quarters in the Stronghold’s main building. He stood on the wide open grounds enclosed by the hexagonal stockade walls.

The greenish light of Lady Maire’s Veil swirled and shone down upon him with visions of the future.

Tarne stared upward, heedless of the bunched muscles in his neck. He was able to see things in the aurora ever since his head injury. It had been his last real fight, part of Drodanis’s vengeful ogre hunt after Cayon was killed.…

Tarne had been delirious for a while, slow to heal. His scalp felt as if it had been pierced with white-hot needles, visions, ideas of what would come in future turns of the Game. He shaved his head, exposing the network of scars, thin and thick, from the knocks he had taken during other quests. With smooth skin on his head, with nothing to stop the flow of thoughts, everything seemed clearer to him. When he watched the shimmering aurora, sometimes everything fell perfectly into place.

His last vision had shown Gairoth invading the Stronghold with his army of ogres. Tarne foolishly tried to fight against the prediction and led a group of desperate defenders, to no avail. He could never force the visions to come to him—and he could do nothing about what he saw.

Vailret insisted that this kind of magic was fascinating in its own right. Tarne had no Sorcerer blood, and as a pure human character he should have no magical abilities at all.

But anomalies happened. Gamearth operated on the Rules of Probability, where even unlikely things were statistically possible. Tarne had visions of the future. Bryl’s former apprentice Lellyn, also human, could work any imaginable form of sorcery. Even the mighty Earthspirits and Deathspirits, by their very existence, tied the Rules in knots. It seemed that some things were more powerful even than the Outsiders.

Tarne suspected Gamearth had its own kind of magic the Outsiders knew nothing about. And that magic was awakening in these last days of the Game.

The throbbing aurora above confirmed his guess. Then sent him a message.

The green folds of Lady Maire’s Veil made him see images in his head. They made no sense to him, but a part of him understood:
Clenching, coiling, preparing to strike. An enemy approaching, evil, death.

The bright white streak of a meteor stitched across the aurora, startling Tarne. Then the shooting star faded and was gone.

Tears ran down the veteran’s face. The chill night breeze made him feel cold tracks on his cheeks. He was very afraid.

He had learned one thing from his visions—fighting against them was useless. The visions showed him only things over which he had no control. But at least he knew what he had to do, what role he must play.

The night was silent and cold. The next day would be the autumn equinox, when Sardun’s daughter Tareah planned to lead the villagers in a celebration of Transition Day. When he thought of that, the veteran felt a pang inside. He went to the gates of the Stronghold and opened them up.

He would tell no one about this. It was better that way.

He walked across the bridge covering the trench and worked his way down Steep Hill in the dark. Tarne thought of too many things, and he tried to empty his mind of thoughts. His entire body was in turmoil. He had no time for any of this. No time at all.

He walked into the silent and darkened village until he reached his own home. He lit a candle. The inside smelled musty, closed-in. He had covered all the windows now that he spent most of his time guarding the Stronghold.

The light from the candle jumped around the walls. He went to a corner of the room and dug his fingernails into the wood of one of the hexagonal floor tiles. He lifted it, then popped up the adjacent tile to uncover a shallow storage area he had dug out beneath the floor.

Tarne paused, sighed, then forced all the memories away. He reached in to pull out a long bundle wrapped in rags. Peeling away the cloth, he stared down at the notched but well-cared-for blade of an ancient sword. The sword had been used centuries before in the old Sorcerer wars; it had been used in previous years when Tarne himself was a fighter. The orange candlelight made it glow with the blood and fire of past victories.

He reached under the floor once more and pulled out his old suit of leather armor. He had oiled it well before wrapping it up for storage. Everything was still intact, mended of scuffs and cuts, studded with chain links for extra protection. He brushed off dust and powdered dirt. He never thought he would need either the sword or the armor again.

Of all the fighters of his generation, Tarne was left here alone. After his injury, he gave up fighting and questing to become the village shearer and weaver. Some of the designs of fate he saw in the aurora he wove into his personal tapestries; no one but himself could understand them.

Tarne slipped on the leather armor and patted it against him. He listened to the chains jingle in the dimness. The armor seemed to grow on him again, become part of his body.

He held onto the sword, gripping the handle. Yes, it felt right. His reflexes and all the old training awakened. On impulse he whirled and slashed at the candle on the table. The flame went out.

* * *

On her unfamiliar bed, Tareah lay back but couldn’t sleep. The lonely darkness did not comfort her. Her bones and joints ached again; she wondered if it would ever get better.

Back in the Ice Palace, when she couldn’t sleep she got up and wandered the cold rainbow halls, or pick through Sardun’s collection of ancient artifacts, or stand on the balcony of the high tower and look out at the checkerboard of mountains and wasteland terrain.

Tareah climbed out of bed, feeling the cold air on her legs. Many thoughts kept her awake. She missed Delrael and Vailret. It upset her that they hadn’t taken her along, but she was also frightened, overwhelmed that they had left her with the duty of watching over the Stronghold.

Tareah dressed, pulling one of Siya’s warm shawls over her shoulders and tugged her boots on, a pair of Vailret’s old comfortable castoffs. She had plenty of things to do, especially in preparation for tomorrow, the anniversary of Transition Day.

Her father had pounded into her a respect and a wonder at the Game and the accomplishments of her race. The villagers seemed to know nothing about their own heritage—yet human characters had undertaken many of the greatest quests, the most difficult journeys. She was in awe of them for what they had done.

According to what she had seen, though, the characters were drifting away from that way of life. Instead of treasure hunting and fighting monsters, they had become farmers, villagers, peaceful people. Siya said that they were sick to death of the shallow, adventurous life.

Tareah crept into the courtyard. The door moved silently as she opened it. The night air was cold and fresh, warm compared to the nights far in the frozen north.

Transition Day. She grinned with excitement. She would tell the story to all the villagers. They could rejoice and be happy in their heritage, how Gamearth had come to be. And then they would let off the fireworks.

Tareah smiled as she strode across the courtyard to the weapons storehouse against one wall segment. The storehouse held several small clay containers filled with firepowder. Bryl, Vailret, and Derow the blacksmith concocted a powder that would flash and explode in brilliant colors. She wondered what kind of magic the sealed clay containers held—some fire spell rolled up inside a little package? A hand-length of fuse dangled out from the containers. During the celebration they would use an old catapult to fling the containers into the air for the show.

She looked forward to that most of all. Vailret talked about the spectacle, his eyes gleaming. It would be like the meteor shower that came every autumn.

Vailret fascinated her. He knew so many of the same things she did, they could talk for hours. But Delrael kept her in awe. He was so much like the legendary fighter characters she had read about. She adored listening to his adventures and his questing. He was exactly what she expected a fighter character to be.

Bryl, though, she did not know—he was a magic user, yet his attitude was strange to her. She couldn’t understand his bitterness or his reluctance to learn.

Leaving the firepowder where it was, Tareah turned away from the door of the storehouse, then stopped. Under the light of the aurora she could see the training equipment in the yard. The wooden sword posts were monuments by themselves in the shadows, the hanging sacks, the archery targets. They looked like scarecrows in the darkness.

The Stronghold gate stood wide open. Tareah stared at it, wondering how that could be. She heard someone coming up the hill path. She didn’t know if she should sound the alarm or just watch.

A bulky well-muscled man walked through the gate. He stood in shadow for a moment, then closed and secured the gate. It took her a moment to recognize the veteran Tarne—only now he carried a long sword she had never seen him bear before. And he was clothed in leather armor. Metal chains jingled and glinted in the faint light.

But Tarne would never fight unless he had to. What was going on here? The gate was opened, Tarne was armed—treachery? Something none of them knew about?

Tarne had always seemed completely on their side in the Game. But all characters were like puppets on a string if the Outsiders decided to manipulate them.…

On the verge of saying something, Tareah paused and looked at the fighter from the shadows of her hiding place. He did not know she was there. She would watch and see.

The veteran walked slowly in his armor, as if under a burden. He seemed … afraid, very tense. But he moved with dignity. He walked to the training area and stood still. He rested the sword tip on the ground in front of him, squared his shoulders, and
waited
for something.

Tracks of sparkling tears ran down his cheeks. Sardun’s daughter felt a shiver dance along her spine. Was he betraying them?

The fighter stood motionless in the darkness. Dawn would come soon. But Tareah felt, as she watched, that something else would come sooner.…

The night filled with tension, a buzzing—and then in front of Tarne the air rippled and seemed to tear. The veteran cringed, only for an instant, but he held his ground.

An ear-splitting roar burst from beyond hearing, channeled closer. Tarne remained standing, braced and ready for whatever was coming. He raised his blade, either in salute or defense.

Tareah hid deeper in the shadows by the storehouse.

A hole in space appeared in front of the fighter. The air snapped, and a huge, vague form appeared as a solid shadow, then burst into sharp clarity. A monstrous figure stepped out, hulking forward in long strides.

It was an enormous hairy beast bearing a gigantic snake—Tareah had never seen anything like it, not in all her studies of the fighting monsters from the ancient wars. She wondered why it had come, how Tarne knew it would arrive.

The demon stood fully ten feet tall and three wide, though it walked hunched over, carrying a great burden. A pelt of thick, blackish-brown hair covered its body, but its head and chest plate were reptilian. The head seemed large for its body, almost square, with a gaping mouth out of which lolled a forked tongue.

The monster bore a tremendous serpent entwined around its body, a sickening green with oily, rainbow scales and fiery red pupilless eyes. The scarlet glow shone like embers.

From her hiding place, Tareah felt the hairy demon’s deep-set eyes strike her with an overwhelming feeling of sadness and pity. She blinked to shake away the emotion. She wanted to shout for help, but the other villagers lived too far away. She didn’t have the Water Stone with her, and only Tarne could actually fight the monster.

The serpent reared up upon seeing the armored fighter standing before it. The hairy monster did not move until the serpent coiled and squeezed the demon’s massive ribs, urging it forward. The tree-trunk legs stumbled toward Tarne.

“You are called the Slave of the Serpent,” Tarne said. His voice sounded strong, empty, different. “I have been waiting for you.”

The Serpent hissed, and the scarlet light blazed brighter. “Who are you?”

“Go back to Scartaris. There’s nothing for you here.” Tarne said the words as if he had memorized them, as if they were expected of him.

“Scartaris must have the Fire Stone back. Must destroy fighter named Delrael and any other character who would quest against Scartaris.”

Tarne swallowed. “Then I am Delrael.” He held his sword before him, wavering the tip back and forth. “I’ll take any quests I want if I can save Gamearth.”

Tareah wanted to cheer for him—she could write down the legend of his brave fight to defend the Stronghold.

“Give back the Fire Stone!” the Serpent said, bobbing its head up and down.

“Sorry, we need it right now.”

By the storehouse, Tareah watched with wide eyes, saying nothing. They were about to battle, just like in the old stories. Tarne was a talented fighter, a veteran of many quests and campaigns. He remained silent as he faced the demon and glared at the Serpent.

She didn’t know if she was expected to help fight. But Delrael had called her inexperienced. She would only get in the way, maybe even hurt Tarne’s chances.

The Serpent urged the lumbering Slave forward, nipping it. The fangs dripped foul-smelling venom. The monster heaved itself forward, reluctant to move closer to the fighter.