Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "This is probably going to take all day," Tareah said.

  Enrod squeezed a handful of snow until it melted through his fingers. He looked at the water dripping down.

  She held the glistening sapphire cube in her hand. In the sunlight it reflected the white ice. Holding just one of the Stones, she could only use three spells, as would Enrod when she passed the Stone to him. However, Tareah hoped she could awaken the dayid that lived at the site, which would focus and intensify her spells far beyond anything she could do herself. Sardun had created the Barrier River that way.

  She rolled the six-sided sapphire on the snow. The number "6" showed up, the highest she could roll. Tareah knew the dayid was already there helping her.

  When the magic surged within her, she forced it through the facets of the Stone. She channelled the power to shape the surrounding water and ice and snow, sculpting it, pushing the towers and the parapets, making them rise tall and monolithic. She swirled the ice around into solid blue bricks.

  She sucked all of the snow and mud and debris away from the underground vaults where Sardun had kept his old Sorcerer treasures. She scoured the area clean.

  Tareah rolled sixes with all three of her spells.

  For hours she kept herself submerged in the power, building up the walls, fashioning passages, opening rooms and adapting the structure to make it more appropriate for protecting Delrael's army.

  When her last spell ended and Enrod took the Water Stone from her fingers, Tareah saw him trembling. Enrod had not used a Stone since the Deathspirits stripped the Fire Stone from him. She wondered if he felt afraid of touching that power again, that it might unlock some scar within him, something that had caused him to turn evil.

  She wanted to snatch the sapphire cube back. She had nearly finished the Ice Palace herself, she didn't need his help. Perhaps by midnight, when she got three more spells, she could finish all the construction. Delrael's army would arrive by then, but maybe the monsters would not be too close behind.

  Before she could say anything, Enrod rolled the Stone. Tareah watched him become strong again as he grabbed the sapphire and turned toward the new Palace.

  Numbed by her own exhaustion, Tareah leaned back, not even feeling the cold. She sat in the snow and watched the dark-haired Sentinel build the outer walls taller, make a slippery mound on all sides of the fortress, adding other defenses against the monsters. He thickened the fragile towers. He made hidden places where parts of the human army could march out and attack the unsuspecting monsters.

  Enrod rolled again, and Tareah drifted into sleep....

  When the front portion of Delrael's army arrived, stumbling and weary, she and Enrod stood in the tallest tower and watched the army approach. The first fighters passed through the wide gap in the first wall.

  Enrod gazed out at the mountains, the northern sea, the rushing Barrier River. He seemed pleased with his work. "I prepared Taire's defenses, too," her said.

  Tareah paused to hide her initial skepticism. "It looks like a blocky fortress now. Not what I remembered at all." She tried to keep the sour tone out of her words. "But I suppose it can't be a fragile monument to the Sorcerer race anymore, not for our purpose."

  Enrod murmured his agreement. "A place to make a final stand."

  Tareah went down to meet Delrael and the others as they came marching into the courtyard and the main lodging rooms of the rebuilt fortress. Delrael seemed extremely tired, but his eyes glistened. He felt proud of her, she could tell. He stared around himself at the blue ice walls and grinned.

  "There, Tareah," he said, "see how I'm using your abilities? I'm giving you tasks to do, just like any other fighter in my army."

  He smiled, but Tareah scowled, feeling stung. It had not even occurred to her what Delrael thought he was doing. "You just ruined it by pointing that out to me, Delrael, rather than just making it seem like a natural decision."

  He blinked, confused by her reaction.

  She went outside into the courtyard and watched the last of the human fighters come in. She waited a few minutes, but the hexagon of wasteland remained empty behind them, marred only by a wide, slushy trail where the army had marched.

  Tareah raised her arms and motioned toward the central gap in the wall where the soldiers had passed through. By closing her eyes and letting the back of her mind touch the magic still in the ice, she imagined the two separated ends of the outer wall. They clenched and flowed together into an unbroken barrier, sealing the army safely inside the ice fortress.

  At sunset several sentries called Delrael to the watchtowers. As they stared eastward in the long shadows of the fading light, they could see the massive crowds of dark figures pouring out of the mountain hexagon, crossing the black line, and swarming over the frozen wasteland.

  Seen on the flat terrain rather than hidden by the mountains, Siryyk's army appeared huge. They had arrived in seige.

  ――――

  Chapter 20

  TUNNELS OF THE WORM-MEN

  "I wish the Game challenged us with only one enemy at a time, but the Outsiders are not so simplistic. As soon as we defeat one adversary, another waits in line to take its place."

  ― Stilvess Peacemaker

  Gold stood in puddles, still soft from the heat blasting out of the nearby lava lake. The seething temperature baked Bryl's face, made his blue cloak hot to the touch. He used one hand to shield his eyes as he took another step closer. His knuckles stung from the searing air. His eyes filled with irritated tears.

  At the top of the crater high above, he could see the hole where the orange-dappled volcano walls opened to the night. But the bubbling lava burned away any cool breezes that swirled around the island.

  "We don't even know there's a dayid here!" Bryl said. His throat felt raw; when he sucked in a breath, his nostrils seemed on fire. His nose hairs curled. He fought back the urge to cough, because that would mean gulping in more of the heat.

  "There must be!" Vailret shouted back. He stood in the shade, behind one of the large boulders. "Try anyway!"

  Bryl squeezed his eyes shut and felt tears ooze down his cheek in cool lines that rapidly evaporated. "Easy for you," Bryl muttered. "You're not standing out here."

  Bryl had sensed the dayid at the heart of the volcano. It seemed likely that he would find one here, knowing what he did about the Sentinel spirits. But the volcano's dayid felt small and weak, perhaps even dormant.

  Bryl had to call it up and somehow speak with it.

  He didn't know if he could. Bryl's parents had killed themselves in their half-Transition when he was just a boy, and he had grown up without magical training, always feeling inferior. His simple heritage as a Sorcerer had been blocked away for so long he wanted to make up for it, to show all of Gamearth that he could indeed use the magic that was meant for him. He could do that if he got all four Stones, if he became the Allspirit.

  He thought of the dayid and clenched his hands around the folds of his cloak to cover the exposed skin. He squeezed his eyes shut and recalled how he had touched the dayid in Ledaygen, working through the Water Stone. He had to feel that power now, seek it out, pull it in front of him.

  The Earth Stone had vanished. If the dayid remained here, the dayid would know. The perfect ten-sided emerald was the most powerful of the four Stones.

  The lava glowed orange, belched and sputtered. The air reeked of sulfur like a handful of rotten eggs smashed all at once.

  "Dayid ― show yourself!" Bryl said in the loudest voice he could manage. He didn't know what else to say. He knew no summoning spells, no binding he could place on the dayid. Either it would appear to him, or it wouldn't.

  He felt a warm presence like melted honey reaching within him from the depths of his stomach and back, creeping up along the inside of his spine.

  "Bryl, look!" Vailret said, peeping his head around the rock.

  Bryl tried to shade his eyes from the oven heat. As he looked, he felt the searing temperature change, cocooning
and softening and spreading out so that Bryl could stare at the center of the lava lake.

  With a pop, a lava bubble burst, shooting a tall flame upward like an orange feathery pillar that grew brighter, shining into the gullet of the volcano.

  Bryl felt his skin tingle. The raw burns faded away; his singed hair no longer felt stiff and crumbly. "Dayid, I am Bryl," he said. His voice pinged off the rock wall, tiny in the vast roaring chamber. Realizing that the name would have no significance, he added, "I am son of the Sentinels Qonnar and Tristane. If you can recall some portion of your past, you must remember them."

  The flame brightened and wobbled, bending toward Bryl. Images shimmered up from deep within him.

  He saw flashes of his mother, his father, and a flickering series of other Sentinel faces. He recognized some of them, but most remained strangers. He saw his father and mother accused of poisoning Jarriel by his widow Galleri. Bryl felt their despair, confusion at how their good works had twisted around to strike at them. He felt other memories of the dayid's components as they acknowledged Bryl's presence.

  "Dayid, we came for the Earth Stone. We know it was here. We must have it or Gamearth will crumble apart. The Outsiders will put an end to the Game. You must be able to sense that hexagons are already flying off into space. It won't be long before this entire island is destroyed. With the Earth Stone, though, we can bring enough magic together to create an Allspirit."

  He clamped his lips together to keep from babbling. He trembled with fear and awe of the presence in front of him. "Help us find the Earth Stone," he said again.

  Images filled him again, congealing into an understandable message. Though his eyes still saw the fire and the lava in front of him, in another layer of vision he also watched Tryos's treasure, piles of gold coins, strings of pearls, carvings of onyx and jade, studded with sapphires, rubies, and garnets. Bryl's vision melted through layers until he saw the potent Earth Stone, as green as the heart of a leaf in the middle of summer. Ten-sided, the greatest stone of the four. Bryl felt elation to glimpse it even in this second-hand sight.

  Then the dayid showed him other creatures, twisted forms with grayish skin, manlike torsos on bloated serpentine bodies. The creatures had blank saucer eyes, smooth heads, and clawlike hands protruding at the wrong angles from their shoulders. He saw swarms of the worm-men, werem, tunnelling up from below, breaking into the treasure vault. He watched grasping hands pluck away all the gems. They snatched the Earth Stone as well, intending to deliver it to their Master.

  The visions faded. Bryl remained standing as the waves of heat returned, only this felt like the heat of anger. The worm-men had stolen the Earth Stone. The dayid felt outrage, but had no way of fighting. Not until Bryl and Vailret had arrived.

  They needed the Earth Stone back.

  "But where is it? How do we find it?" he said. His throat felt dry enough to snap if he raised his voice.

  The flame of the dayid bunched up and flickered, breaking away from the lava. It shot through the air to blast at the inner wall of the crater. Among the jagged blobs of hardened lava, the flames struck and illuminated a blot of shadow, a passage descending into the rock.

  Then the dayid's flame petered out. The melted-honey sensation dissolved inside of Bryl, and he found himself uncovered and unprotected in the searing heat again.

  He pushed his face into the folds of cloth on his elbows and staggered backward. He felt Vailret grab him and pull him to the cooler sections of the grotto.

  "What happened?" Vailret said. "I saw the fire and I heard you talking, but it didn't make any sense. Did you learn anything?"

  Bryl's eyes felt red, and his entire face seemed stiff and prickling from the shallow burns. "Yes," he said. "I know what happened to the Earth Stone."

  To Bryl, the tunnel felt dank and claustrophobic, closing around them with stifling shadows. It plunged down, away from the heat and away from the volcano. He and Vailret stumbled along until the slope finally flattened out, then they continued at a more normal pace.

  The smooth catacombs had no branch tunnels. Bryl's hand-held flame lasted a long time, but he lost all sense of the passing hours. They had been too long without seeing the stars overhead.

  "Do you think it's daylight yet?" Vailret asked.

  "Of which day?" Bryl said.

  Vailret fell silent, walking behind his stretching shadow. He broke the silence again. "If the werem took all the gems, were they really interested in the Earth Stone in the first place? I seem to recall that they believe all gemstones belong to them."

  "Seeds of the earth," Bryl said, "planted in the rock, from which all life springs. They took the gems to return them deep underground. But I think they had a special purpose for the Earth Stone. The dayid made me sense something that the werem call their Master."

  They continued ahead. "We just passed another hex-line," Bryl pointed out.

  Vailret turned to squint, then plodded along the tunnel. "Is that four now?"

  "I can't remember. We must be under the water hexes already."

  "We're heading in that direction."

  Bryl followed him, maintaining the same pace. "Did I ever tell you about Delrael's training in the old weapons storehouse?"

  Vailret did not look back. Of course Vailret would remember his own storehouse training, when he had to imagine being captured by Slac, who made him fight an invisible monster in their arena.

  Vailret stopped. "Del fought the worm-men, didn't he? Did he win?"

  Bryl remained silent for a few moments. "Nobody wins the storehouse training," he said. "Drodanis and I set it up that way. But everyone learns."

  "What did Del learn then?" Vailret asked. Bryl could tell he just wanted to keep the conversation going, to break the tedium of their long, dark journey.

  "He learned never to get captured by werem."

  "It figures," Vailret said. He moved on as Bryl followed behind him with the ball of clean fire in his hand. Their shadows lurched ahead, dancing on the tunnel walls.

  Bryl and Drodanis had planned young Delrael's training meticulously, using all the details they could find from legends about encounters with the werem. When they brought young Delrael into the weapons storehouse, closed the shutters, and barricaded the door, Bryl asked him, "Are you ready?"

  Delrael had nodded. He looked confused, but even then he seemed ready to confront whatever problem they threw at him. Bryl blew out the candle.

  "Delrael, you are camped alone beside the shore of a lake," Drodanis said from a dark corner of the room. "You have a small fire burning on the shore, and you have just finished eating. You're relaxed. Your senses are dull. You're about to go to sleep."

  "Then," Bryl said, "the ground bubbles at the lake shore. Dirt spatters in the air as three worm-men tunnel out of the ground and lurch up into the moonlight. They're caked with slimy mud. They have thin arms with sharp elbows, powerful claws. Their eyes are wide and white, blind because they live under the ground. Their bodies are long and segmented, trailing in their holes as they lunge forward."

  "What am I supposed to do?" Delrael said. Bryl could hear the alarm in his voice.

  "What would you like to do?" Drodanis asked. "They come toward you from three different sides."

  "I've got my sword, right? And my armor? I'm going to fight."

  "Of course you are." Drodanis's voice carried a lilt of amusement.

  "Pick a number between one and seven," Bryl said. "Guess right, and we'll let you defeat them."

  And so Delrael had fought several rounds against the worm-men, killing one of them, but then the battle became tedious, so Drodanis had the other two werem overpower Delrael's character and drag him underground. They pulled him through the wet tunnels where dirt fell on him and mud caked his face, and he could hardly breathe. Though he continued to struggle, Drodanis wouldn't let him break free.

  The werem took him through their tunnels under the lake to a large central chamber. Their emperor sat atop his bulbous coils of segmen
ts wound in a high mound beneath him.

  "The emperor grows one segment for every human character he kills," Bryl said. He thought that was a nice detail.

  When the werem hauled Delrael before him, the folds of the emperor's segments split. Fat white grubs spilled from the cracks, wet and oozing mucous. They flopped along the emperor's segments and left sticky trails.

  "They are the larvae of the werem," Drodanis said. "Like maggots, without the human arms and heads of full-grown worm-men. They have only a mouth filled with teeth ― and the instinct to chew into a human body, to devour a character from the inside out. Only through the taste of human flesh can the larvae mature."

  Though Delrael's character did break away and kill two more of the worm-men, they overpowered him again and dragged him in front of the werem emperor. Delrael struggled when they planted the larvae on his body. As he writhed and screamed and squirmed, Delrael could feel the grubs chewing into his arms, into his stomach, into his back.

  Then the werem backed off and stood with their blind faces cocked toward him. Their nostril slits flared as they smelled his fear and pain.

  Delrael lay on the floor and felt the larvae inside him, eating, snapping his muscles. Blood poured from his wounds.

  "Once the larvae get to your heart, you will be dead," Drodanis said.

  Bryl kept his voice cold. "You are dead already. You have only a few moments left of the pain as you feel the grubs devour your body."

  "Can I get to my sword?" Delrael said.

  Bryl hesitated, letting Drodanis decide.

  "Yes. But the werem are backing away from you. You've already killed three of them. They won't stand near, and you don't have much control over your body."

  "I'm going to take the blade and hack at the hardened mud pillar in the center of the chamber. The one holding up the ceiling, and the water of the lake above."

  "Good, Delrael!" Drodanis said. "You're weak, but the werem don't know what you're doing. You can take a few strikes at the pillar."