Delrael reached out to take Siya's hand, but she refused. Bryl scowled at her and worked his own careful way down. "You don't get much help these days. You should take it when it's offered."
She snorted. "You might be an invalid, but I'm not yet."
Vailret turned and squinted toward Tareah waiting on the opposite bank. The line of fighters continued to cross over the walkway. They began milling in the nearby forest terrain to keep from crowding the base of the bridge.
Jathen stood beside the other characters, but remained silent. He looked at the river, then gazed deep into the forest terrain that hid their long journey toward Taire. Delrael wondered what it had been like for him to take a log and swim across the cold river. No wonder Jathen had been sick and exhausted by the time he reached the Stronghold village.
Scattered around the riverbank, Delrael noticed the burned spots of many different campfires, as if a great number of characters had waited there. Up and down the hex-line, he saw other dead fires spaced equally apart. One still smoldered.
"Here she comes!" Vailret whispered.
The last of the fighters had crossed over. The colorful figure of Tareah climbed up and strode along the ice bridge she had made. He couldn't quite make out what she was doing until she reached the apex and began to descend toward them.
The delicate icicle bridge melted into silvery trickles of water, pouring back into the river only one step behind her as she moved along. Tareah walked with stiff legs and a shuffling step that showed just how much she concentrated to maintain her spell. As she walked closer, the melt water splashed and drummed into the river like a heavy downpour filled with chunks of ice.
Delrael caught her as she stumbled the last few steps toward the bank. He pulled her off the base of the bridge as it suddenly collapsed into a great wave that smacked back into the silty river. The big splash dumped water and mud on those who stood too close to the hex-line.
Delrael held Tareah a second longer than he absolutely needed to. She pulled away, looking tired but exhilarated. She brushed herself off and tried to smear some of the mud from her sleeve. She gazed back over the river. "I did it!"
Delrael grinned back at her. "I should have known you could." He avoided her eyes. " ― without you needing to remind me."
He looked at the scattered dead campfires again, then he heard someone moving in the forest behind him. For a moment he thought some of his fighters had gone to gather firewood.
As he turned, Delrael saw a tall powerfully built man walking along the quest-path out of the trees. He had long dark hair and a voluminous black beard; his eyes looked red. His white robe must have once looked magnificent, trimmed in purple, but now it was tattered and stained. Finger-smeared lines of ashes marked a strange pattern on the cloth. The man appeared healthy, though; powerful and confident. He cocked his head from one side to the other, fixing a fiery glare at random tree trunks, then at the human fighters.
Delrael recognized the Sentinel immediately.
Before he could say anything, Jathen brushed past him and stopped two steps away from the man, blinking, his mouth open in astonishment. His usual stunned expression now held hope and excitement. "Enrod!" he cried. "I knew you wouldn't desert us."
Enrod the Sentinel stopped and surveyed the army. When he saw Delrael and Vailret and Bryl among the gathered fighters, a flicker of confused recognition passed across his red eyes. Delrael found himself cringing inside, not knowing what would happen. This was the Sorcerer who had tried to destroy them all with the Fire Stone.
"I was ... wondering when characters would come," Enrod said. His eyes looked up and off to the side, as if listening to voices in his head. "Waiting for you."
Chapter 6
DEPARTURES
"All quest-paths lead to adventure, treasure, combat, perhaps death. Which route will you take?"
― The Book of Rules
Vailret felt uneasy watching the dark-haired Sorcerer, wondering how much Enrod remembered. What if Scartaris had damaged his mind so much that he would always be a threat?
With the curious army around him, Enrod stood by the bank of the Barrier River, digging his fingernails into the bark of a tree. He sniffed, then turned his head to one of the still-smoldering fires along the bank. He smiled, then nodded to the gray ash-clumps of other dead fires.
"I can still make fire." He bent down and smeared his hands in the cold remnants of one fire, pawing about for an ember. He held up a blackened lump of wood, but it held no spark. He dropped it with a disappointed sigh.
By the bank, Vailret looked at where Enrod's crude raft had washed up against dangling roots. Vailret remembered riding on it with Delrael and Bryl, surrounded by mist. Enrod had poled on, not seeing, only continuing his endless journey as decreed by the Deathspirits. When Vailret tried to snap him out of his trance, Enrod had moved with lightning speed, sending Vailret sprawling against the wet logs. The Sentinel had never spoken a word.
Now Enrod splashed his ash-coated hands in the rushing water, confused by all the characters watching him.
"How long have you been ... awake again, Enrod?" Vailret asked. Despite his misgivings, Enrod of Taire would be a great ally if he fought with them against the enemy horde. Delrael stood watching, as if he had not yet made up his mind about the Sentinel.
Enrod continued to stare at his broken raft hung up on the black hex-line. Mud and silt had clogged up under one corner. A broken blade of grass drifted by, bobbing on a ripple, and then continued out of sight downstream.
"Days. Not sure." He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Some of the wet ashes stained his lips.
"Like a dream. The Deathspirits ... held me. Couldn't think. Couldn't move. Back and forth across the river." He stared out at the hexagon-wide current. "Until now. Scartaris is dead, Deathspirits gone. I'm left here on this side. Where do I go?"
He looked at them, turning his head so he might see all the characters there. But his eyes remained unfocused. "Something happened in my city. Scartaris." He closed his eyes and pushed a hand against the side of his head. "Made me think things. Do things. It still echoes in my head!" His expression snapped into clarity and the words came out with sudden focus. "I always wanted to rebuild Taire ― that was my goal, but I could only think of burning."
He fixed his stare on Delrael, but it seemed to carry no antagonism. "Because you created this river."
"We destroyed Scartaris," Delrael said. "You shouldn't want to hurt us."
"Not ... anymore," Enrod said.
Vailret bent forward. "The Earthspirits came to fight Scartaris. So did the Deathspirits. They vanished from Gamearth again, gone dormant to rest. Maybe they forgot about you, loosened your curse."
"Forgot about me." Enrod made a thin smile. "But I can still make fire." He kicked at the ashes in a circle by his feet.
"The Deathspirits could have gone off to their other realms, to play Games of their own creation," Tareah said. "That's why they made the Transition in the first place."
"I don't know. But they're gone." Delrael sounded impatient with the discussion. "It's a good thing you didn't stop trying to fight against them." He hesitated. "Are you all right?"
"Never stop trying. Never." Enrod turned his gaze back to the washed-up raft. "This is no longer part of me. Gone."
He planted his foot on a corner of the raft and, bracing himself against the tree, he shoved the log. The raft lurched out into the current, leaving a cloud of mud in the water. The raft swerved one way and then curled around the other as it crawled into the current.
"Why I stayed in Taire for so many turns. In the desolation." Enrod stared away from the river, back to the east. "Never stop trying."
Jathen came up beside Enrod. His heavy eyebrows and dark hair hung about him. His eyes glinted bright against the nightmares behind them. "Enrod, you and I are the last survivors of Taire. When Scartaris sent you away, he made the rest of us Tairans do his work. We had to create weapons and shields for him!"
"Weapons ― from Taire?" Enrod sounded astonished.
"We supplied his horde of monsters. We sweated and worked ― " Jathen swallowed and turned his face away. "We gave ourselves. Hundreds of us were skinned for leather, butchered and dried for meat to feed his army ― " Jathen looked as if he were about to gag, then he whirled back. All the nightmares had resurfaced.
"That's the worst part, isn't it, Enrod?" He stood up straight with his anger. "Yes, we're free of the control. We can do what we want now. But we're not free of the memories. Scartaris made us do what he wanted. But he didn't hold our minds tightly enough to make us unaware of our actions. And now that I can remember what we were doing, it's burning me up inside. Because if I can remember so clearly, why couldn't I refuse?"
"It's not your fault, Jathen," Delrael said.
But the Tairan turned to him and snapped. "It isn't? I worked in the tannery. Didn't I know what I was doing? Was Scartaris so powerful that he could direct every finger that moved? Every step I took? Every ... cut with the knife? I can see it all in front of me. I spent days there, skinning people, characters that I had known and grown up with, fought with and worked with. But none of that stopped me. Maybe if I'd tried harder I could have resisted. But I didn't. I took the knife. They stood before me ― their eyes were pupilless, focused ahead, unseeing.
"But if I can remember what I was doing, surely they knew what was about to happen to them! Scartaris wouldn't let them do anything more than stand there and wait as I drove a knife into their throats. At the last minute, did he release them, let them feel their own dying? I wouldn't doubt it. Why should he bother to waste energy controlling them as they bled out on the floor of the tannery? While I stood waiting for them to stop jerking and writhing so I could skin them more easily and not waste a bit of their leather."
Enrod interrupted him and spoke in a quiet but piercing voice. Jathen's words seemed to intensify Enrod, forcing back the maze of shadows in his mind. "If you're responsible for all that, then I must be responsible for everything that I did." He paused. "And that's not a burden I can bear right now. Look ahead, not back."
"And forget about Taire?" Jathen asked. His expression looked dumbfounded that his hero, the great Sentinel Enrod, would suggest such a thing.
"No, never forget," Enrod said. He looked behind him to the clustered trees and the quest-path that wound eastward away from the river. "Go back there."
Jathen held his breath in anticipation. Vailret could feel the tension in the air. Enrod brought his attention back to Delrael. "I will follow your army. Fight for Taire."
Delrael's voice was gruff. Vailret could see that his cousin wasn't sure how much to say about their plans. "That's where we're going."
Enrod drew himself up, didn't quite smile, but tugged a lock of black hair away from his face. Vailret noticed for the first time a thin streaking of white hairs in his beard. "I still have many powers. Spells." Enrod looked down at his own hands, his tattered robe, as if embarrassed at the level to which he had sunk. "I lost the Fire Stone."
Delrael appeared about to say something, but Bryl suddenly broke in. Vailret realized that Bryl had covered up his own two Stones as soon as they saw Enrod again. Since Scartaris had used the eight-sided Fire Stone as a conduit to corrupt Enrod, Vailret silently agreed with Bryl's decision.
"The Fire Stone is ― safe," Bryl said.
The following morning, Vailret and Bryl prepared to go down their own quest-path as the remainder of the army broke camp.
"Time to go," Vailret said, clapping Bryl's shoulder. He had not been looking forward to this moment, but they had no time to waste. "The Earth Stone is waiting for us."
"I'll be sad to see you leave," Tareah said, smiling at him. Her words made Vailret's skin tingle with delight. He shuffled his feet.
His mother Siya gave him a brief hug, hesitated, then gave him a much larger one, to his embarrassment. Siya turned with tears in her eyes and snapped at the characters around them. "What are you looking at!"
Vailret felt uncomfortable with the entire ritual. He did not look forward to leaving the protection of the large army. As he stood there, wishing he could just be on his way, he had to wait as Delrael and Jathen bid them luck on their quest, as did other fighters he had come to know during training. It seemed to take forever.
"With all the luck we're being offered, we shouldn't have any troubles at all," Bryl muttered to him.
"No," Vailret said, "none at all."
――――
INTERLUDE: OUTSIDE
The sheen in Melanie's eyes made David want to slap her face to shake her out of it. But she would be completely beyond reason; Gamearth held her mind too firmly. David could only hope the others were not as weak ― or everything was already lost.
"It's all or nothing tonight, David." Melanie's voice was like the growl of a small dog that wanted to sound threatening. It didn't seem like her own voice anymore, and it probably wasn't.
She had won the dice roll when David contested her use of the character Enrod. Enrod had been David's own character, raised in Taire, which was his city. He had used Scartaris to send Enrod to attack the Stronghold, to weaken Melanie and stop her desperate schemes to keep the Game going.
But Melanie claimed that since David had abandoned Enrod, the character was up for grabs. So she took him. She beat David by one point in the dice roll.
Something about the way the dice fell made David more concerned. If the powers of the Game could reach out and manipulate them, if it could stop the phone from working, make his car engine refuse to start ... couldn't it also alter dice rolls? Couldn't Gamearth play itself if it wanted, and make sure it won?
But David could not accept that. The very foundation of Gamearth was built on the Rules. The Rules could not be tossed aside so easily. If Gamearth was willing to break those Rules, then the map would go about destroying itself without any help from him.
Tyrone squinted at the map, pressing his face close to the painted hexagons. "I thought we might be able to see it. The ice bridge, you know? Like we could see the Barrier River when we created it."
David fought back his resentment. Tyrone was so focused on how much fun he had with the growing Game, that he couldn't conceive of any danger.
"It would have melted already, Tyrone. You should have looked before the round ended," Scott said. Nothing else, no censure about "being ridiculous." David had won an important victory with Scott, who always insisted on a rational explanation. At least Scott now realized the seriousness of the Game and how it was affecting all their lives.
The flames continued to crackle in the fireplace. The room got warm enough that David pulled off his sweater. Outside the house, as the dusk grew into night, he could still hear the storm.
"Are you going to bring out any other old characters, Mel?" Tyrone asked.
David wanted to shake Tyrone and shout at him to face the reality of their situation. But Tyrone just didn't understand.
Melanie glanced at Tyrone, considering, then her eyes lit up. "Any character we've introduced before is fair game. David's not going to pull any punches." She refused to look at him. "So I'm going to use everything I can think of. David captured Jules Verne and the Sitnaltan weapon. We have to find weapons of our own."
David resented how she automatically included Scott and Tyrone in her conflict with him ― unless Melanie was speaking of her own characters when she said "we." David couldn't tell.
"I ― " Scott said, then paused. He took off his glasses; his eyes looked small without the thick lenses. He seemed vulnerable and uncertain of what he wanted to say.
"I've been thinking about this mixup with the Game and our world. There's really no way we can deny it. Not after the Barrier River, and the explosion last week."
He nodded toward the blue hexagons on the map and the blasted parts around Scartaris's battlefield. The force released from that struggle had damaged Tyrone's kitchen table and burned David's hands.
"So if this is rea
lly going on ― " Scott said the word 'this' as if it encompassed everything. "Then I have to worry about something else. The Sitnaltan Weapon that Verne and Frankenstein built, that I directed them to build ... they made it from the ship that David and Tyrone created out of their imaginations. The power source they took couldn't have been totally real. And yet it couldn't have been totally imaginary either."
He stopped for a moment, as if waiting for the others to understand the implications.
"If it's part real and part imaginary, the Sitnaltan weapon may be a lot more devastating than we know." He swallowed. David could see him struggling with the concept in his own mind. "What if it's more than enough to destroy Gamearth? What if it can backlash outside the map? What if it's enough to destroy us too?"
Tyrone groaned comically. "This is boggling my mind!"
David ignored him and felt a shiver up his spine. That fear had been tickling the back of his mind, but he had not faced it until now. He remembered times when he didn't seem to have complete control over his own characters. If Siryyk the manticore wanted to detonate the weapon now that he had Verne captive, David wasn't sure he could stop it.
He let his voice fall to a whisper. "I'm beginning to wonder just who created who."
Melanie looked at him in a rare moment of rapport, but then the defiance returned to her eyes. "Or is it mutual now? Are we and the Game so intertwined that we can't survive without each other?"
――――
Chapter 7
MAYER'S RESEARCH EXPEDITION
"Once we have finished gathering data, we are by no means finished with our research. In fact, the work has only begun, because then we must discover how to apply that information for our own benefit."
Game's End Page 7