Game Play (29 page)

Vailret felt his
stomach tighten. He couldn't think of anything like this in the legends he had
read, the accounts of wandering monsters and methods for dealing with them.

"It's making
good time," Delrael said. His face was firm and emotionless. "It's
either following us or it's going to join Scartaris. But we'll get there before
it does."

He pushed his gelding
past Mindar and rode ahead. Feeling an oppressive need to hurry, the others
followed at a faster pace. Delrael spoke back to them without turning his head.
"We should be to Scartaris in two days, if I remember the map right."
They knew where Scartaris made his lair. Vailret saw Delrael absently brush the
silver belt at his waist.

Vailret wondered if
Delrael still had his complete faith in the Earthspirits. They had heard no
communication to assure them that the Spirits still lived, still intended to
destroy Scartaris. Vailret imagined what it would be like if they fought their
way to the threshold of Scartaris, only to find they had no weapon after
all....

Gamearth was
fighting against the Outsiders by using the Earthspirits.

But the Rulewoman
Melanie had sent Journeyman. Maybe
that
would be enough.

Though Scartaris
knew they were coming, he did not know what they intended to do, how they
intended to fight. Since Scartaris could end the Game at any time with his
deadly metamorphosis, Vailret hoped they could keep him curious until it was
too late.

Mindar urged her
gray mare as close beside Delrael as the trees would allow. She seemed to enjoy
being by him, and Vailret smiled a little. Her spring-green tunic was marked
with black and brown smears from the dead trees.

"Scartaris
still has all his armies massed in front of him, ready to march out and destroy
Gamearth. And before you can even get that far, he has a demon guardian waiting
to stop anything that might be a threat
―
the Slave of the
Serpent. That will be a great challenge for us."

Delrael's shoulders
rippled as he gripped the horse's mane. "I'll defeat him." Then he
paused and turned to look at Mindar. Their eyes met, and his expression turned
more apologetic. "
We'll
defeat him."

Mindar smiled.

When they reached
the crest of the hills and started down the other side, Journeyman took the
lead, knocking sharp branches out of the way. The trees were thinner on the
eastern slope, farther from Taire and closer to Scartaris. The desolation
terrain sprawled out in front of them; the sharp mountains of Scartaris thrust
up five hexagons away.

A worn white line
marked the main quest-path stretching across the wasteland, the road from Taire
to the camps of Scartaris's armies. Delrael cupped a hand over his eyes and
stared. "Something's moving down the road."

Vailret couldn't
make out anything so small, but Mindar agreed. "It's a troop of Slac.
They're heading to Taire, probably to take Tairan supplies to Scartaris."
She frowned. "They'll start hunting us once they find out what we've done.
We'll have to be careful."

Delrael's face
remained expressionless. "We're always careful. It's how the Game is
played."

The sun approached
the Spectre Mountains behind them, casting long shadows across the dead
forested hills. As they rode toward nightfall, the skeletal silence worked on
Vailret's nerves. He wished he could hear birds, insects, any kind of life in
the trees.

The tension kept
them all from talking. Even Journeyman pushed ahead, snapping branches out of
the way. "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" he said, seemed to wait
for the others to pick up the chant, then gave up.

"I don't want
to confront the Cailee in this place," Mindar said.

"I don't want
to confront it anywhere!" Bryl mumbled.

Delrael pondered a
moment. "I think we should get as much firewood as we can possibly haul,
strap it onto the horses. Journeyman, you can carry a lot. Then we'll go as far
out into the desolation as we can. We'll build a big fire
―
that
might keep the Cailee back."

Mindar nodded.
"Yes, at least it can't sneak up on us in the flatlands."

"Um, Del,
won't Scartaris's armies be able to see the fire?" Vailret asked.

"Scartaris
plays only one game at a time," Mindar said. "He'll send the Cailee
after us tonight. I can feel it. He enjoys manipulating the fears of other
characters. The Cailee will be more
fun
to him. Even Scartaris has to follow
Rule #1."

They gathered
firewood.

The night was black
like a clenched fist around them, driven back by the orange shell of firelight.
Vailret didn't know how long the wood would last, but the bright flames and the
crackling sound pushed away the feeling of impending doom, leaving them in an
island at the center of a black universe.

They had ridden
hard, crossing another hexagon of desolation into the thick dusk until the
jagged ground became too treacherous to cross in the dark.

Delrael found a
spot that was clear in all directions, where they could huddle together by
their fire and make a stand against the Cailee. If they had to.

They ate, speaking
little. Journeyman strode around the perimeter of firelight, thrusting out his
chest and swinging his fists. The horses stayed together as a group, but Mindar
found nothing to tie them to, nothing to hobble them with. She wiped her mouth
on her dirty green tunic, then looked out into the darkness.

"Enrod really
thought his dream for Taire would work." Mindar seemed to be talking to
herself. "After the Transition he got most of the half-breeds to settle
with him there. Enrod was brash and willing to try anything that might work. He
poured himself into the effort and forced the others to do the same."

She picked up a
handful of crumbly dirt and let it stream through her fingers. She cast the
rest of it at the fire.

"It was a
bitter and difficult life, but the half-breeds turned their magic to practical
ends. They used all the spells they could to make crops grow in the desert
hexagons. They summoned water up from the ground. They quelled the dust storms
―
I painted a picture of that once, all the half-Sorcerers standing in line,
rolling dice and casting spells to drive back the winds and protect the crops.
They used their powers to summon rains and dig canals."

Mindar forced a
bleak smile. "How could it fail? We were united. We put our entire effort
into this. But just when things were starting recover, just when the lands
around Taire began to stir
―
the trees died again. The crops failed.
The desolation returned, and nothing any of us could do would stop it."

She stood up and
stared into the fire. "To make things worse, the people didn't even care.
They were all sleepwalking, getting worse every day.

Scartaris was
taking their minds, playing them like puppets. I watched other characters
succumb, and only I could resist. I wish I knew how."

Then Mindar paused
and looked at Delrael, meeting his eyes. Her brow furrowed with puzzlement.
"Why are
you
protected? Do you have the same immunity that I've
got?" She turned to stare at them all with a mixture of hope and challenge
on her face.

Journeyman stepped
back into the firelight. "
I
don't need it. The Rulewoman Melanie sent
me." He returned to his guard duties.

Vailret widened his
eyes. He hadn't considered the question before, but now a grin stretched across
his face. He tried to communicate with Delrael through his expression. The
fighter pondered, touched his belt lightly.

Vailret nodded,
then Delrael smiled as well.

They couldn't all
have the same resistance to Scartaris that Mindar and Tallin had. The Rules of
Probability made that highly unlikely. But if the Earthspirits were somehow
protecting them, shielding them
―
that meant the Spirits must
still be alive! The screeching sound they'd heard back in the forest had
not
been a death cry.

But they could say
nothing of this to Mindar, especially if Scartaris watched her so closely.
Vailret could think of no safe way to answer her question.

But suddenly a
sheen of sweat broke out on Mindar's forehead and around her eyes, making her
face look oiled in the firelight. The horses snorted and stamped, making
strange, uneasy noises. Vailret didn't know what that meant -he wasn't used to
horses.

"The Cailee is
here," Mindar whispered. "It's close, and it's coming."

The horses milled
about in greater alarm.

Delrael stood up.
"How can we hold them?"

Journeyman hurried
over. The horses reared up, blowing and snorting.

And then they
bolted, all three of them.

"Wait!
Wait!" Mindar cried.

"They're
gone!" Bryl said.

Above the crackle
of the fire, they heard the horses pounding off across the desert.

Mindar stood up and
yanked her rippled sword away from her hip. "I'm going after them. You
stay here."

"No!"
Delrael said. "I'm going to help you if the Cailee's out there."

She whirled. Her
jaw was rigid, and her eyes blazed with anger. "No!

You have to stay
here! The Cailee wants us all to be separated, away from the fire, where it can
get you one by one! The Cailee won't harm me
―
it wants you.
You
stay here. Together. By the fire."

Without another
word, she ran off into the darkness. They heard her panting, calling for the
horses, growing more distant.

Vailret waited,
sitting up straight and listening to the fire burn. He looked at the stars
overhead, wishing he could hear the sounds of the Stronghold village, the
forest, anything. Wishing he could be by Tareah, discussing old legends. He
wondered what she was doing.

Far off in the
distance they heard Mindar shout "Cailee!" Then nothing more.

"What should
we do?" Bryl asked.

Delrael held his
own sword, looking off into the muffling darkness. His eyes were wide and
shining with worry. "We'll wait here, as Mindar said. She's right. I'm not
going to let the Cailee win because it's smarter than we are."

"I'd rather
have stuffing instead of potatoes," Journeyman said. He fidgeted and moved
to where the horses had been.

Mindar stepped back
into the firelight with such suddenness that they all whirled, startled. She
looked drained, as if something had been yanked out of her. She took a drink
from one of the water skins and sat down next to the warm fire.

"The horses
have run off. The Cailee went after them." She took another drink and said
nothing else.

Far off they heard
the oddly human screams of horses in the darkness.

Vailret felt fear
slice down his spine.

Mindar pulled the
length of her whip between her fingers, feeling the rough braid. Her eyes were
dark pools reflecting the dancing flames.

"The Cailee is
there!" She lunged to her feet and pointed at the other side of the fire.

Delrael and the
others turned, trying to react. Vailret saw the Cailee silhouetted, a black
human shape so dark that it made the night look dim. It moved, flowing and
oily, and let out a snarl from an unseen mouth. Silver claws glinted in the
firelight. Yellow pupilless pools glowed where the eyes should have been.

The Cailee danced
into the light just long enough to throw something heavy and dripping into the
bonfire, then it vanished again.

The head of
Mindar's gray mare tumbled through the burning wood, slumping into the coals.
The head smoked, and drops of blood sizzled on the embers. The mare's eyes were
rolled up like tiny white plates; the tongue hung partway out of the mouth. The
severed end of her neck had been torn by silver claws, the spine snapped in two
and twisted off.

The fire cracked
and hissed. Sparks swirled up toward the stars.

Mindar stumbled
backward, gaping without words. She tripped and fell gracelessly to the dirt,
never taking her eyes from the mare's smoldering head.

"I didn't even
hear the Cailee come!" Journeyman said. He strode out to the edge of the
light and came back again. The golem's gray-brown body absorbed the firelight
and shadows. Vailret thought he looked astonished at his lapse, disappointed in
himself.

Bryl held onto the
Fire Stone with trembling hands. His lips were white, and his eyes glistened
with fear.

Mindar's head
snapped up from her grief to scan the perimeter of darkness. "Prepare
yourselves!"

Vailret caught a
movement out of the corner of his eye and, by some instinct driven into him
from all the battle training Drodanis had forced him to endure, he knew to drop
and roll. He felt the wind of something moving very fast, the sigh of silver
claws whistling past his ear and grazing the back of his neck.

Journeyman leaped
in to block the Cailee with a solid clay arm. The claws gouged great troughs in
the golem's skin, but Journeyman slammed sideways with his other arm. He struck
the shadow-thing with a soft, wet sound.