Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (25 page)

The blind stranger led them through musty, oppressive corridors in the citadel. The smell of stale air clung to Vailret, and he shuddered. Bryl stumbled along, clutching the Water Stone. Delrael remained silent, keeping his hands close to his weapons and looking from side to side.

The wooden doors were all reinforced with iron. Each had a small window above eye level for a man, barred or ringed with spikes: not because each was a prison cell, but because the Slac seemed to enjoy bars and spikes. Sunlight filtered through chinks in the crumbling ceiling, casting weird shadows.

Vailret tried not to imagine the hissing laughter of the Slac or the screams of captives.

After the old Sorcerer wars had ended, the Slac remained in their fortresses, simmering in anger and waiting for the day they could rule Gamearth. When most of the old Sorcerers had departed in the Transition, the Slac came pouring down out of the mountains, howling and thirsty for the blood of men. But the humans fought together with the aid of the Sentinels and won Gamearth, beating the Slac back into the mountains.

Now Paenar said the Slac had all abandoned their mountain citadels and gone east
¯
where the Rulewoman Melanie said the Outsiders were beginning the destruction of the world.

Paenar's moodiness made Vailret feel cold and terrified. He was about to stand face to face with the Outsiders, who had created Gamearth in their imaginations, who had Played all the major characters in history.

They were here, hiding, invisible. He sniffed the air, and the dank shadows seemed filled with mystery. Were they watching even now? What did they

want? His throat felt thick. The back of his neck prickled with sweat. If the Outsiders forced him to look at their
real
selves, would it blast his eyes from their sockets, like Paenar
¯
or would such a sight annihilate him completely, because he was only imaginary to them anyway?

"Why, exactly, are the Outsiders here?" he asked.

Paenar paused in midstride, as if thankful for an opportunity to delay.

"They've been here since the Transition, which was supposed to be the climax of their Game. While the Sentinels were gathering themselves together, while the Slac were getting ready to come back and fight for domination of the world, while the men began their Scouring of Gamearth
¯
two of the Outsiders came here to drop off a seed of evil that would engulf the entire map.

"They spawned a thing called Scartaris in the eastern mountains beyond the city of Taire, almost at the edge of the world. It is a blob of energy that grows and sucks the life from the land, engulfing hex after hex.

"Nothing can stop this thing from swallowing the world and ending the Game
¯
the Outsiders don't intend to give us a chance to win."

Paenar hung his head. "Even the Outsiders can be sore losers. For almost a century they have been hiding here, working, creating. The Outsiders David and Tyrone are here to watch a spectacular end for their imaginary world.

"Gamearth is doomed. It is already too late."

Vailret shook his head, staring at the floor. "That means the Barrier River won't save us, either. Why didn't the Rulewoman tell us more?"

"But what do the Outsiders want
us
for?" Bryl asked the blind man.

His thin voice echoed in the claustrophobic passageway.

An ironic smile curved on Paenar's lips. "They don't want
you
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they want the Water Stone. They've been here so long they can no longer return by themselves. Their ship crumbled when they turned their immense imaginations to other things. They bent and twisted the Rules they created
¯
and now they need Gamearth's own magic to send them back. They can't return to the real world unless they use the power in your Water Stone."

Bryl stood aghast, clutching the sapphire cube. Delrael began to laugh.

"After they created this Scartaris thing to destroy us, they expect us to help? Well, if they can't play nice, we'll just take our dice and go home."

Paenar turned to him. "They will not ask your permission. If you are not careful, they will simply destroy you. The Spectres toy with me but do little else. I hate them for blinding me, yet I am dependent on their power for my new eyes." He stretched out his eye-staff.

"The Outsiders are mere children in their own world, in the
real
world. All the centuries of our history have been only a few years of gaming to them. And they have tempers like spoiled children as well.

"I cannot give you any better advice, because I have none. They have doomed our world, and I would be happy to see them stranded here to share its fate. But that is not in my power, or yours. They will take what they need, whether you cooperate or not." He set off again. The foot of his staff rang out on the stone floor.

"We'll see about that," Delrael said.

The tunnel spilled out of the hivelike chambers to a wide, barren courtyard where the Slac had apparently conducted battle-training. Wooden posts and crossbars had been erected in the dusty earth; bloodstained manacles dangled from them.

Sprawled across the courtyard were huge twisted girders, coated with rust, that formed the skeletal outline of a metal ship like a dead prehistoric animal. The ship had crumbled into a shadow of its construction, not able to travel anywhere. Vailret stared at it in awe: The Outsiders had constructed it from their imaginations and had used it to carry them from their
real
world to Gamearth. But over the centuries, which had seemed like days to the Outsiders, they turned their efforts to destroying the world, allowing their fantastic ship to fade.

They needed to use the Water Stone as a catalyst to get themselves off their own maps and back to
reality
. Vailret found the irony impressive. What possible power could the magic of the Stones have that the Outsiders' own dice could not work? It wasn't fair
¯
and fairness was supposed to be one of the cardinal Rules of Gamearth.

They stepped out into the sunlit courtyard, and awe crept up on Vailret again. A tingling in the air, a vibration, told him others were there. He looked around the dusty, barren ground, but he could see no evidence of the Spectres other than the abandoned and disintegrating ship. Vailret stopped with Delrael and Bryl beside him. Paenar stood off to one side, scowling, gripping his eye-staff so hard his knuckles turned white.

"You are here. Now we can go home at last." The voices boomed out in the silent mountain air, echoing like thunder. They came from different corners of the courtyard. More than one speaker stood hidden on the empty, bloodstained training ground. The words themselves were spoken in a deep, rich tone that sounded like a caricature of someone omnipotent and dangerous
¯
the voice of an angry god. Bryl clutched the sapphire Stone instinctively, protecting it but ready to use it.

"We felt Sardun use the power of the Water Stone to create the Barrier River. We felt you, Bryl, use it to save the khelebar. Now it will set us free of this world, let us go back home before it is too late."

Delrael shouted, directing his voice at the entire court yard. "Get rid of your Scartaris creature in the east, and then we'll talk!"

Vailret cringed, wary of the anger of the Spectres. A second voice came from a different corner of the courtyard.

"We want to stop the game. We can do that if we want. What difference does it make
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you're all just part of our imaginations. A roll of the dice."

"It matters to us!" Delrael said.

Vailret put a hand on his cousin's arm to restrain him. He made his own voice sound quiet and firm. "You don't look very real to me, Spectres
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I can't see you, and you can't even get home. Who's to say you're not more make-believe than we are?"

"Shall we drop our invisibility and let you see just how real we are?" the first voice boomed.

Bryl jerked out the cube of the Water Stone and gripped it in both hands, letting it glint and reflect in the bright sun. "Spectres! My mind is linked with the Water Stone right now. If you send us out of existence, I'll take the Stone with me!"

Vailret clenched his teeth to keep from shouting his enthusiasm.

"Stop!" the Outsider shouted.

"He also has the power to destroy the Water Stone," Vailret bluffed. He doubted Bryl could bring himself to harm the gem, even if he had the strength.

But the half-Sorcerer gave the Outsiders no indication of that.

"You have set in motion the destruction of Gamearth, and now you're trapped. Either send Scartaris back into nonexistence and let us continue our lives, or remain here and suffer our fate."

"But we don't want to play the Game anymore!" the second Spectre said.

"And we don't want to be wiped from the universe, either," Delrael retorted. "Regardless of what
you
say, to us this isn't imaginary at all!"

Vailret drew a deep breath. Paenar had said the Outsiders were mere children in their own world. How gullible were they? How sure of themselves?

Did the Rules have nuances they did not know about?

"In fact, Spectres, we think of ourselves as
real
," Vailret ventured, stepping forward. He looked to the side, making sure Bryl kept a firm grip on the Water Stone. "Look at us
¯
we breathe, we eat, we sleep, we love, we hate, we fight. We feel pain, and we dream. How can we possibly be imaginary?"

He spread his hands to indicate the broken rocky landscape. "Look around you. Feel the cold air, see the towering mountains, the sky, the sun.

You claim this is just a fantasy world you have created as a Game
¯
but I think you've got it backward.

"I think that we concocted
you
from our imaginations. Maybe we needed someone to blame, some fictitious outside people who make all the misery and pain in our world. That way, we could soothe our collective conscience into believing there was nothing we could do to prevent the wars, no real reason for us to work toward peace, no valid possibility to make our lives better. We needed someone to shake our fists at, someone to curse, rather than at ourselves and our own frailties.

"So we invented an imaginary group of beings who make a Game of our world, playing it as we play our own small games. Until now, no one has ever seen these Outsiders, no one has ever so much as found evidence for their existence."

Vailret took a deep breath and surged ahead with his challenge. "You say you're trapped here, but how can that be? If you are all-powerful, then change the Rules
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it should be simple for you. How can you be trapped by Rules unless they're
real
?"

Delrael raised a fist in the air, grinning. Paenar stood stunned, but perplexed.

"Is there a speck of doubt in your minds? Is there even one whispered thought gnawing at you? It'll take only a momentary flicker of disbelief -and then you'll be gone!" He forced himself to laugh loudly.

Bryl held up the Water Stone, looking angry. "If I could see you, Spectres, I'd give you a taste of the power you say does not exist."

Paenar, standing in silence, rapped his eye-staff on the ground. He gave a secretive smile and pointed the end of the staff off into one corner of the courtyard.

Bryl apparently knew what he meant and rolled the Water Stone in the dust. A bolt of lightning seared through the air to where the blind man had pointed. The bolt struck something, and a mammoth shriek echoed along the stone walls of the citadel. Paenar pointed again, and again. Bryl scrabbled to pick up the sapphire cube and rolled it three more times, missing the spell once but striking the Spectres twice, using his anger to pry more energy from the Stone.

The two Outsiders howled. Vailret shouted after them, "Can you feel that, Outsiders? Is that imaginary power? How can you be hurt by imaginary pain?"

He let his words sink in a moment. "I believe the Water Stone is
real
. I believe Gamearth is
real
. I believe I am
real
." Vailret dropped his voice and spat out his words, one at a time. "And I do not believe in
you
!"

"This is not possible!" the dominant Spectre voice bellowed. Then soul-ripping wails filled the courtyard, and a burst of unbearable light, as something tore its way screaming through the air, whisked off to a place not imaginable. Only a brief howl of despair was left behind, quickly fading into the mountain wind.

Vailret found himself knocked backward to the lifeless dirt of the Slac training ground. Beads of sweat dried cool on his forehead. He blinked at spots of color in front of his dazzled eyes.

Delrael whooped. He got to his feet, jumping up and down as if he had forgotten about his
kennok
leg.

"Are they gone?" Bryl asked. "Are they destroyed, or just sent back to their own world?"