Puffing through his dry, flabby lips, he heaved himself into motion. He got lost in several dead-ends, but with the curling smoke showing the way he could always find his way back to the right path.
Gairoth stumbled upon the wreckage of the tannery. The foul-smelling debris reminded him of his long-lost cesspools, now drowned under the Barrier River. He drew in a deep breath. Milling Tairans stood sluggishly around the burning building, then they moved and drifted away, funnelling down a side street. They didn’t even react to Gairoth.
Being ignored annoyed him, and he stomped after them. The Tairans did not seem uneasy from each others’ presence, from the closeness of their packed bodies. They did not get lost in the winding streets. They led Gairoth to a larger crowd, sluggish like a swarm of smoke-stunned bees. Many Tairans bled from wounds, but they didn’t take care of themselves.
Gairoth elbowed the characters aside, shoving them away as he stormed forward to see the focus of their attention.
A ragged hole had been smashed in the tall Tairan wall. The ogre saw the Tairans looking out at the desolate terrain, but none of them said a word. Gairoth grabbed a man by the front of his tunic. The brownish-gray cloth ripped in the ogre’s fingers, but he lifted the man high enough to stare into his eyes. The man’s feet dangled in the air; his arms went limp. He didn’t struggle. Gairoth shook him a bit, just to make him squirm.
The Tairan blinked and gurgled. His eyes were milky white, without pupils.
“Where is Delroth?” Gairoth demanded.
The Tairan turned his head toward the hole in the wall and the sprawling desert. Gairoth saw fresh tracks, hoofprints plowed up in the dust. His heart leaped. Delroth had been here! He was close!
Gairoth released the Tairan and let him fall. The man’s arms and legs did not react quickly enough, and his knees buckled sideways. He landed on his hip on the flagstones.
The ogre bounded through the opening, bumping his head on one of the stone blocks. He ignored the pain and charged across the flat ground.
#
The blasted terrain flowed like magic under the horses’ hooves. Vailret was amazed at how fast they approached the next hexagon of forested hills. He rode, gripping the mane in front of him because it seemed like the thing to do. He had never traveled so swiftly over land before, except in Professor Verne’s balloon. At any moment he felt as if he was going to fall off and crash on the dusty ground.
The sudden release of tension from their near death at the hands of the Tairans made him feel exhausted. Vailret’s lips were dry and cracked from breathing the dusty air. When he held Bryl’s frail form in front of him, he could feel the old half-Sorcerer’s ribs through his blue cloak. Bryl seemed so frightened he couldn’t say anything.
At the hex-line the forested hills rose in front of them. They had left the quest-path behind for fear of what might be on the road from Tairé to Scartaris. Now the horses picked their way among the haunted-looking slopes.
The thick trees stood black and gnarled in death. They were all relatively young, planted in neat rows in the turns that had passed since Enrod began to rebuild the land. But here the Tairans’ work had come to an end.
The horses stumbled upon a path made by the tree-planters and followed that up the slope. The dead trees scrabbled like arthritic fingers in front of their eyes. The close branches snapped and left black stains on the clothes they touched. The smell of sharp, dry death hung in the air, depressing and stifling.
Mindar rode in the lead, scowling. Her face looked full of anger and determination. The sight of each dead tree seemed like a slap in the face to her.
Vailret thought of the Tairans and their dream of rebuilding the landscape. The half-breeds had magic to renew the terrain, and the human characters used straightforward farming techniques to plant sturdy grass and stands of trees such as these. Then Scartaris came and destroyed everything again—and this time the ancient Tairan hero, the Stranger Unlooked-For, had not reappeared to save them.
The trees thinned as they rose in the hills, letting them look back at Tairé and the surrounding devastation. Squinting, Vailret could still see fading smoke in the air from the destroyed tannery.
Mindar’s face bore a stunned expression. “Delrael, what did you bring upon us?”
“It’s still there!” Bryl cried, pointing.
Vailret couldn’t make out details with his poor eyesight, but he could discern the boiling black mass that crept along the ground, the dark swarm they had seen following them from when they fled the Anteds. The unfocused, milling mass seemed to be skirting Tairé to the south.
Delrael scowled. “We don’t know what it is.”
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 Tairé 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 Tairé 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 Tairé, 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 Tairé 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 Tairé 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 sleep-walking, 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.
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br /> 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.
Vailret rolled onto his back and kicked his feet against the loose ground to push himself away. It was all happening so fast. Mindar and Delrael were shouting, running with their swords drawn.
An explosion of fire erupted around the perimeter to separate the golem and the Cailee. Journeyman made no sound, though the fire blackened his clay skin. The Cailee shrieked and flung itself back into the darkness.
Bryl sat with the Fire Stone cradled in his hands, biting his lip. He struck out again with the flame spell, though he saw no target. When the fire faded away, Vailret smelled smoke in the air. He heard nothing else, no insects, no footsteps, only his own heavy breathing.
Delrael scowled and used a stick to push the mare’s head out of the fire. The blackened hide smoked with the smell of roasting meat.
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