Vailret stood in silence as the cold wind blew on him, and listened to the river grinding its channel deeper. The silent stars and the aurora shone overhead.
They had fulfilled the quest Drodanis and the Rulewoman had required. They had protected themselves from whatever the Outsiders had placed in the east. Creating the River might have been more extreme than was necessary to fulfill the vague instructions—but they knew too little about their enemy. They had finished one quest, but now they had promised Sardun another. And the Stronghold was still in the hands of Gairoth.
Vailret liked the old veteran Tarne and trusted him to lead the villagers to safety somewhere in the forests. But Gairoth had the Stronghold, and the Air Stone, and all his ogre comrades. Vailret hated to think of the damage they could be doing.
Sardun had nearly sacrificed himself to create the River, and they were bound by the Rules to go on the quest to rescue his daughter. By the time Vailret returned to the throne room, the old Sentinel had finally awakened.
“Tareah could be dead by now. You must hurry.” Sardun’s voice seemed stronger now, and he sat up again. His lisp seemed more pronounced. “Have you copied the map on the wall—so you know exactly where you’re going?”
“I’ve already memorized it,” Delrael said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Sardun sighed. “Perhaps I kept Tareah too sheltered. She should have been out, seeing Gamearth, learning the world. If she had not been here during the attack, she would still be well.”
“I would like to take a good sword if you have one, Sardun,” Delrael asked. “It would increase our chances.”
“Yes, choose whatever you need from the relics I keep if it will help you rescue Tareah.” The Sentinel spread his hands.
Bryl moved forward, reluctant but extending the shining Water Stone he had removed from where it had frozen into the ice of the balcony. The awe on his face was plain. “Here is your Water Stone, Sardun.”
The Sentinel squirmed away from the sapphire’s touch, twisting his face in an expression of fear and disgust. With a twitch of his gnarled left hand, he knocked the Stone out of Bryl’s hand.
Astonished, the half-Sorcerer chased the sapphire as it skittered across the floor of the throne room. “What’s the matter?”
Sardun slumped into his blankets, and a violent shiver rippled through his body. “When I last used the Water Stone, I forged a link with the dayid below. The other minds in the dayid are lonely. They nearly forced me to make the half-Transition. With the Water Stone it would have been so easy. So easy. So frightening.
“I think the dayid hoped that with me using the Stone and with its own strength, I could liberate enough power to raise us all through a real Transition.”
He sighed. “But I refused. I may regret it in the future as my only chance to make a miracle happen. I am afraid to use the Stone again. The dayid knows I’m here—and I doubt if I could resist that calling a second time.”
Bryl looked down at his blue cloak, flashed a glance at both Delrael and Vailret, then looked at Sardun. “I am a half-Sorcerer. I can use Sorcerer magic. I can use the Water Stone.” He spoke quickly, before anyone could stop him. His eyes were bright. “This could be just the magic I need.
“Gamearth is still infested with monsters that survived the Scouring. Maybe with the Water Stone I can protect us. That would give us a better chance to rescue Tareah.”
The Sentinel closed his eyes. “Yes, take the Water Stone and take it far from here. You will remove the temptation.” Sardun sounded very weary. “Use it to bring Tareah back to me.”
Bryl stared at the deep blue gem in his hand. He smiled, eager and in awe.
Delrael returned holding an ornate but serviceable sword. He strapped it at his side, against the tooled silver belt his father had given him. He straightened, brushed his hands over his leather armor and looked prepared.
“Let’s go.”
Sardun insisted on seeing them off, and they made their way outside with painstaking slowness. Vailret had tried to convince the Sentinel to rest, but he would hear none of it. “You will take me to the gateway!” Sardun said. His long mustache drooped into his mouth, making him look angry and impatient. They walked down curving crystal corridors just beginning to fill with rainbows as the sun rose.
When they reached the front gate of the Palace, Sardun slumped against the repaired doorway. He looked tired, but not quite empty of hope anymore.
“Luck.” Delrael waved as they set off.
“Luck—rescue my daughter!”
The sunlight was much brighter now that the ice walls no longer filtered it. Vailret shaded his eyes against the glare. Some of the snow from Sardun’s unnatural cold still covered the ground, reflecting the light, but the day was warming rapidly.
Melted snow had muddied the ground. The mountain path was much easier now that they didn’t have to battle the weather. The Ice Palace stood whole again, glistening like a diamond.
The three travelers hiked southward, leaving the towers behind. Bryl fingered the sapphire Water Stone in his chest pocket, as if waiting for the moment when he could use it. Vailret looked at their optimism and felt a foreboding—they seemed to have forgotten what they were going to be up against.
At the Ice Palace, without the Water Stone to protect it for the first time in centuries, the tall spires started to succumb to the returning summer heat. Tiny trickles of water ran down the great walls, freezing again before they reached the ground, and then warming once more. The Ice Palace began to melt.
Interlude: Outside
The Players stared at the crystalline twenty-sided die on the table. A perfect “20” faced up.
Melanie rubbed her hands together and smiled at David. David made as if to knock all the dice off the table, but she held up her hands. “You can’t do that, David.”
She could see the anger behind his eyes, the need to beat her, and she worried about the change that had come over him. Oh, he had professed boredom with the Game in the past, but never anything serious . . . just complaining for the sake of complaining. They were used to that from David.
But now the urgency of stopping the Game possessed him—and he couldn’t just leave. The four of them were part of the Game, they had been at it too long. David acted addicted, hating himself for it. Like an alcoholic, a compulsive gambler . . . a compulsive gamer? If he just walked away from the Game and let them continue playing, Melanie knew he would be back. He knew he would be back. And he desperately wanted to remove that option, that carrot in front of his nose.
“I think we should get different dice,” he mumbled. “She’s been rolling too well tonight.”
“Spices things up a bit,” Tyrone said. He rocked back in the chair and drummed his fingertips on his chest. “Hey, anybody want some more dip? I’ll put it in the microwave.”
“Are you suggesting she’s using fake dice, David?” Scott raised his eyebrows. “You know those are the same ones we’ve always been using. Besides, it doesn’t make sense because we’re all using the same ones. If a die’s loaded for her, it’s loaded for us, and we should be rolling twenties, too.”
Melanie stared at the map, at the colored hexagons, and she smiled. “Or maybe it’s just that my characters are helping out.” Her voice had a facetious tone, but David looked at her sharply.
“You’re crazy.”
“Oh, whose turn is it?” Tyrone stood up from his chair, scooped some of his bean dip on a cracker, and offered it to Scott, who refused. “What are you going to do with your roll, Mel?” He shut the microwave door and twisted the timer.
“Sardun succeeded in creating the Barrier River. It cuts off the western half of the map from the east.”
“That won’t be enough,” David said. “It’s just a delaying tactic.”
But Melanie stared at the map. Her eyes widened. She couldn’t believe what was happening. “Look!”
One hexagon of gray mountain terrain below the Northern Sea suddenly winked. It
changed color to the enameled blue of the water.
Then the hexagons of grassland terrain below it also turned blue, one at a time, moving downward like a zipper. One after another the hexagons of terrain turned to water in a line that meandered its way around the forested-hill and grassy-hill terrain.
“Wow!” Tyrone leaned across the table and pressed his face close to the map. “Look at it go!”
“Like it’s choosing a logical course!” Scott said. “I don’t believe this.”
The hexagon of a lone village was inundated and changed without a trace. Melanie thought of the villagers, the people, their homes and fields. The River moved on until it emptied into the sea below.
Melanie sat frozen. David turned gray.
Scott jumped up and ran into the kitchen, pulling open drawers until he found the silverware. He came back to the map with a butterknife. He chipped away at one section of the new blue color.
Melanie tried to stop him, but he avoided her. “Wait, we’ve got to check this out. Timed-exposure paint or something? Of course not.” He frowned, deep in thought. “I don’t know what else to make of it.”
“That was wild!” Tyrone said.
Scott squinted down. “The blue goes all the way to the wood!” He looked as if his reality had somersaulted in front of him.
David’s reaction was incredible even to Melanie. She was amazed . . . but David took it in stride.
“I’ll stop your characters. They’ve made a river, but I won’t give them another chance.”
Melanie jabbed a finger at the map. “You’re way over here. You’ve been spending all your time in the mountains and in the east. You can’t get anything to them in time.”
David raised his eyebrows. “We’ve got wandering monsters left over from the Scouring. I can roll up some more. It doesn’t have to be part of any major plot to get rid of your characters.”
“Plenty of wandering monsters in my section,” Tyrone said. He rubbed his hands together. “And catacombs and good stuff. That’s where they’re heading next.”
Scott kept staring at the blue paint. “Don’t you guys realize what just happened?”
David drummed fingertips on the table. “With Tyrone helping me out for the last bunch of turns, we’ve done everything we needed to do in the east and in the mountains. Everything is set, all my wheels are in motion. We can get out now, and on to other things. Consider your characters doomed, Melanie.”
Tyrone forced a laugh. “Sounds like you’re getting personal, David.”
“It is personal. A lot depends on this, you guys. I’m fighting for your lives, too.”
The bright blue streak down the center of the map filled Melanie with awe. “And I’m fighting for theirs.”
5. Cyclops Canyon
“By setting forth the Rules in this book, we have attempted to make sense of the way Gamearth works.
“Characters must follow the Rules—we have no choice. If travelers want to go farther than the allotted number of hexagons per day, or if magic users want to cast more than the allowable number of spells, they cannot. Their feet would refuse to cross the hex-line, their spells would not work.”
—Preface, The Book of Rules
Even with a brisk pace, the Rules said they could cover only one hex of mountain terrain per day. No matter how fast they walked, they never reached a hex-line before nightfall. Vailret wanted to hurry, to end the quest and get back to the Stronghold and his studies, but they would have to overthrow Gairoth first. Vailret hated to be away from home—he had so much else to do besides adventuring.
Delrael seemed to know what he was thinking and raised an eyebrow. “There’s some consolation, Vailret. Just trying to rescue Tareah could help us save Gamearth. If we give them a good show, the Outsiders might stay interested enough to keep Playing a while longer.”
Around him the mountains in the distance were indistinct and blurry. Though many of the plants had died in Sardun’s unnatural winter, he could still see the colors of late spring. “Do you even know where we’re going?” Vailret asked.
“Sure,” Delrael said, nonchalantly. “We need to get across the Spectre Mountains, then follow the mountain terrain line down toward the city of Sitnalta. No problem. “
Vailret looked around. “Invisible ghosts are supposed to inhabit the Spectre Mountains, you know. No character has ever encountered the ghosts and returned alive.” He paused and put a finger on his lips. “But if no one ever returned alive, then how do we know the story?”
Delrael shifted his longbow on his back. The sunlight gleamed on his oiled leather armor. “This section of the map was filled with catacombs and all kinds of wandering monsters. More likely there’s a Slac fortress making off with unwary travelers.”
Vailret remembered his make-believe encounter with Slac in Drodanis’s role-playing game in the weapons storehouse. “Then we’ll need to be even more careful.”
They followed the rocky trail downhill until it disappeared completely at the sharp hex-line against forested-hill terrain. They stopped for the night. Across the line, a mixed forest of oak and pine abruptly replaced the stone crags.
The three sat around the fire sparked by Bryl’s magic. They played a game of dice on a flat patch of rock, but Delrael kept winning and the others grew bored. Vailret tossed a pine cone across the hex-line. It bounced and skittered into the forest debris.
Vailret sighed. “You know, some of the old Sorcerer writings get metaphysical. I remember one that tried to explain how the hex-lines got into the world.”
“How else would you have it?” Delrael shrugged. “If the landscape wasn’t broken into discrete areas of terrain, the world wouldn’t be very orderly, would it? It only makes sense.”
Bryl yawned and looked ready to sleep.
“Well, imagine a chaotic world where grassland and forest and hills and mountains are all intermingled, no boundaries, just a constantly changing confusion.”
“That’s crazy,” Delrael said. “It would never work. It’s too unstable.”
Vailret leaned back and looked at the flickering flames dancing over the wood. He thought of the message stick from Drodanis and the warning from the Rulewoman. “So, who says the Outsiders make sense?”
“Let’s get some sleep,” Delrael said as he stretched out on the rocky ground. Vailret looked longingly at the softer leaf-cushioned earth only a short distance away across the line. But he could not break the Rules and cross into another hex.
Delrael didn’t see the Cyclops until it was almost too late.
They followed a stream that cut itself deeper into a narrow valley; the peaks of the Spectre Mountains remained visible only a hex away. Sandstone walls rose sharp on either side, eaten away by the swift water, dotted with a few valiant pine trees that somehow found rootholds. On the top rim of the gorge the forest grew thicker, dark with pine trees and splashed with the lighter color of oaks. The tall rock walls loomed above them, riddled with notches and caves.
The stream turned into rapids as icy water dashed itself against the strewn boulders. Delrael stopped at the foot of a small waterfall. He tried to follow an individual bead of water as it tripped and crashed against boulders before dropping into space. Bryl leaned forward to splash his fingers in the cool water. Delrael strode back and forth until he found an easy path that led them below the falls.
It all seemed very peaceful, with only ragged birdsong and the sounds of the stream. Delrael’s hunter senses suddenly sent him a dozen alarms. He heard a guttural bellow from somewhere above, but when he craned his neck to look, the lowering sun flashed in his eyes.
“Look out! Heads up there!” a voice called from the opposite rim of the canyon.
Delrael turned his head to the cliff above them. His brown hair whipped into his eyes, but he stared in amazement for a moment. Bryl also saw and pointed frantically.
A thirty-foot-tall hulk emerged from behind a squat outcropping of rock, glaring at them with one wide yellow eye set in the cen
ter of his forehead. A horn curved up from his brow, looking like a twisted root yanked out of the ground and sharpened to a deadly point. The Cyclops roared again, exposing a jumbled set of fangs, as if someone had haphazardly hammered the teeth into his mouth.
The Cyclops strained his muscles and heaved a boulder over his head. His fingers ended with obsidian claws that gouged white marks into the stone. Clods of earth crumbled off the bottom of the rock, dusting the monster’s shoulders.
The voice shouted again from the opposite side of the gorge. The Cyclops hurled his boulder across the canyon at the caller, but the rock fell short and plunged into the narrow stream instead.
“Run!” Delrael said, pushing Vailret ahead of him. “Get to some shelter.” He smiled as he ran, though—he felt his heart beating, felt his brain working. He’d wondered when they were going to start having adventures again. This section of the map had more than its share of wandering monsters, treasure-filled catacombs to explore, incidental adventures—just like in the golden age of Gamearth.
As Vailret and Bryl hurried toward the canyon wall, Delrael paused to search for the source of the voice. In the lengthening shadows on the rock face, he could discern another creature, a hybrid man/animal with the body of a panther and the head and upper body of a man. The panther-man held a long sword that seemed to be carved from heavy oak wood and varnished with hardened pine pitch. The panther-man thrust the sword in a scabbard strapped to his back before he started down into the gorge, scrambling for footholds on the knobby sandstone wall.
“Don’t just stand there and gawk!” Vailret shouted back at Delrael. “Find some cover!”
The Cyclops bellowed as he uprooted another boulder.
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