Siryyk was the chosen commander of all the monster troops. He had to be intelligent. Scartaris had selected him to lead the most gigantic army ever to appear on Gamearth. He was not a slavering, brainless beast.
The manticore scratched his claws on the flagstones. “I understand the magnitude of power that this weapon contains. The map of Gamearth holds many things of such power. I want them all, and I will do whatever is necessary to get them.” His distorted face took on a reflective expression.
“You see, when the six Spirits destroyed Scartaris and nearly obliterated themselves as well, all of Gamearth convulsed and broke. Something happened to the Rules. They may not hold as absolutely as they have in the past.
“And if the Outsiders do indeed plan to ruin Gamearth so that it troubles them no more—I intend to have all the protection I can. I do not know what effect your weapon or any of these other things, magical things, might have on the Outside. But if the end of the Game is coming, I will be the one with the best chance to survive.”
Siryyk lowered his head and hunched forward, widening amber eyes that looked the color of honey mixed with acid. Verne winced from the stench of the beast’s breath.
“Listen to me, Professor Verne,” the manticore continued. “The Outsider Scott may come to you in dreams and offer ideas—but I have dreams too. In my dreams, I can see the Outsider David. I know what he intends to do. And I can feel the anger, the desperation he feels toward us. I also know how it is breaking him. I am no longer certain how this is happening, whether he appears in my dreams, or if I appear in his!”
Verne said nothing in his surprise. The other monsters seemed to be listening, but made no move.
“I am doing what I can to thwart the Outsider David’s own plans, though he thinks that I am his ally.”
Verne cleared his throat. “Um, that is very. . .interesting, but I can’t help you. That’s all there is to it. Yes, I did construct the weapon, as you have learned from my own journals—but as you also know, it didn’t work! It malfunctioned, and I don’t know why. Obviously, my idea was wrong. The Sitnaltan weapon is no weapon at all.”
Siryyk stood up, and Verne could see the ripple of muscles running down his sandy leonine back. His huge shadow cast by opposing clusters of firelight rose in tandem against the bright frescoes on the wall, dominating them and swallowing them up.
“General Korux, would you please remove the prisoner’s left shoe.”
Making a husky sound deep in his throat, the Slac general moved forward, flexing his clawed fingers. Verne shrank back, but his two shrivel-skinned monster guards grabbed him by his bruised arms. Korux bent over and held Verne’s black shoe in both reptilian hands. After fumbling unsuccessfully with the laces, the Slac general snorted and used one claw to rip them out of the leather. Tossing the broken laces aside, he peeled off the shoe.
Verne’s foot was cramped and sweaty. He had not been able to change clothes, not even his socks, in days. But he felt no relief to be able to flex his toes now.
The manticore went to one of the firepits and, reaching into the coals with his massive hands, he pulled out a stubby, smoke-blackened dagger. Its blade glowed bright orange from the heat.
The twisted lips on Siryyk’s human face bent upward, exposing overlapping fangs in his mouth. “I am going to play a game with you, Professor Verne. I think you can repair whatever went wrong with this weapon. And if that is not the case, I think you can make another weapon. Something different, a giant destructive toy for me to play with. Judging by your journals, your mind is filled with useful ideas such as that.”
He looked down at the blade and placed his own thickly padded finger against the yellow-hot point. Verne winced as he heard the loud sizzle and smelled the wisp of smoke as the glowing metal ate its way into the manticore’s finger pad. Siryyk withdrew his hand, looked at the wound, and frowned but showed no other sign of discomfort.
“Now then, our game.” Siryyk looked around to the other monsters gathered at the entrance and standing along the walls. The manticore raised his voice.
“Shall we take bets on how many of the Professor’s toes we will have to burn off before he agrees to cooperate with us?”
Verne swooned even as the monsters shouted out their bets.
Interlude: Outside
The other three players arrived together, keeping oddly silent, as if they could all feel the tension, too. David stared at Melanie, Scott, and Tyrone as they entered in one group; the back of his mind kept imagining ways that they had banded together against him. Gamearth had forced them into it. He narrowed his eyes, but Tyrone stepped into the front hallway, grinning as he shucked his damp jacket and laid it on the bench.
“I got it! I passed.”
David looked back at him, completely confused. “What are you talking about?”
“My driver’s license! I passed, just on Friday. I borrowed my dad’s car and picked up Scott and Mel.”
Melanie stood beside Scott. In her hands she held the large wooden map of Gamearth, wrapped in plastic to protect it from the drizzle. Her knuckles were white from her tight grip, as if she thought the map might be in danger.
“Good for you,” David said to him.
“Tyrone kept babbling about it all the way over here,” Scott said. He used the corner of his shirt to wipe the raindrops from his glasses. Melanie mumbled something and went straight into the family room, where she laid the map on the carpet. Her eyes were bright as she unwrapped the wet plastic and stared at the colorful patterns of Gamearth.
It looked as if a truck had run over it. Black stains showed the explosions of the great battle from the previous week, when Melanie’s golem-weapon named Journeyman, as well as Gamearth’s own Earthspirits and Deathspirits, had destroyed David’s greatest creation, Scartaris. Gamearth’s destructive power was plain for anyone to see, its ability to strike back at the outside world.
But the map also showed cracks and splits, jagged splinters at the edges. A few of the hexagonal segments of terrain split loose, like tiles in a mosaic—which was impossible, since they were merely a pattern painted on a smooth surface of wood.
David stood over the map, and Melanie pointedly refused to look at him. He felt sullen, afraid to wait and afraid to move on. As if mechanically, he went into the kitchen and brought out the bags of chips he had opened. Standing beside the stove island, he poured glasses of soda without asking what anyone wanted.
All their conversation felt forced. Everybody seemed as uneasy as he was, except for Tyrone.
Tyrone went back outside to his car, leaving the front door open. David felt a cold gust of wind and stared, annoyed. But Tyrone reappeared, holding a foil-wrapped platter.
“Wait until you guys taste this one! My masterpiece, I think. It’s got that imitation crab stuff, hot mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and sour cream. Goes great on those wheat crackers.”
“You sound like a commercial, Tyrone,” Scott muttered.
Tyrone didn’t seem to know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, so he changed the subject. “Okay, here’s the joke for this week. What goes ‘Ha! Ha! Ha. . .Thump!’?”
David set down another bowl of chips.
“Oh, brother, Tyrone—”
He grinned. “A man laughing his head off!”
Melanie sat cross-legged on the carpet beside her map, holding her soda in one hand. The firelight danced across the room. David left the lights on in the kitchen, but the fire was the only illumination in the family room. It seemed appropriate to play in the firelight.
Melanie tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and drew a deep breath. She looked at David with a petulant expression. “We all dreamed again this week, David. We talked about it in the car. You must have, too.”
“Every night,” Tyrone said. “Better than watching movies.”
“Tyrone, you’re such a dweeb,” Scott said, scowling. “This is real! Start taking it seriously. Even I remembered the dreams this time, and I never have dreams.”
David bristled. He spoke in a low and serious voice. “No, Scott, this is not real. All of you, can’t you understand? It’s just a game—we made it up! It’s not supposed to be real! And when a game goes beyond that, it gets dangerous. It’s time to stop.” He stifled an exasperated laugh. “You should look at yourselves. You guys are like puppets, pawns!”
Tyrone squatted on the floor and dumped their dice out of the suede pouch. Glittering different colors, they fell to the carpet, showing various numbers. Two of them fell next to the wooden game map.
“Well, I’m anxious to see how it all turns out,” Tyrone said. “This has been the absolute most intense game I ever imagined! My parents sure yelled at me for what happened to the kitchen table last week, though. They still can’t figure out what we did.”
David scowled; he could have guessed how Tyrone would react. In fact, after their years of playing together, the four of them had grown so close that they all knew how each other would react. They all knew the world of Gamearth and its characters and the rules of the Game inside and out. That was how they could continue playing with their own unorthodox methods, enjoying their adventures without any godlike game-master arbitrating their moves. Each of them watched over certain sections of the map. It was a strange system, developed for their own group. . .for a very unusual fantasy world.
A fantasy world that was coming alive.
David decided to remain silent, instead of voicing the same old arguments, the same objections. Gamearth had too great a hold on the others, and David would never convince them. Not by arguing.
He would have to use the same tricks Melanie used. He could come up with his own twists in the rules. It was time to play dirty.
He would win the Game in his own way.
2. Combined Forces
“Combat is very important in the Game. A character’s chances for victory are improved by thorough training; an army at large may increase its probability of success simply by being prepared.”
—The Book of Rules
Tareah opened her eyes and uncurled her fingers. The nails had dug into her palms from the strain, and black spots of exhaustion still fluttered in front of her vision.
When she saw the piles of new supplies that had magically appeared from her spell, Tareah let out a sigh of relief. She slumped back against the ruined wooden wall, the only part of the Stronghold still standing.
According to Rule #8, a magic-user character on Gamearth was allowed only three spells a day. But Tareah held three important magical artifacts, which increased the daily allotment of whatever spells she cared to cast. She had been using all those extra spells just to replenish the stockpiles in the Stronghold and the storage sheds in the village. Delrael’s growing army would need all the supplies before they could march out against the enemy; and she felt glad to be doing something to help, rather than just an observer.
Tareah possessed the sapphire Water Stone, whose powers controlled water and the weather; she also had the Fire Stone, an eight-sided ruby that could control fire. The Sentinel Enrod, his mind twisted by Scartaris, had come to the Barrier River to destroy the western land with the Fire Stone’s power; but the Deathspirits had stopped him, cursing him to push his raft back and forth across the river for the rest of the Game. The Spirits stripped him of his gem and gave it to Tareah, the only other full-blooded Sorcerer on all of Gamearth. These two Stones increased her spell allotment from three to five per day.
Finally, she also kept the four-sided Air Stone, the diamond that had been lost many turns before but then found by Gairoth the ogre and his runt dragon Rognoth. Gairoth had used its powers to take over the Stronghold, but Delrael defeated him in battle. Later, with the Air Stone’s powers of illusion, Bryl had created an imaginary army to engage the monster horde of Scartaris.
“My turn,” Bryl said beside her, holding out his hand. Dressed in his blue cloak, the half-Sorcerer looked old and fragile. As soon as Tareah handed him the Stones, Bryl’s spell allotment also would increase to six per day. She enjoyed manipulating the Rules like that; it would have made her father proud.
By the time Delrael had returned to the Stronghold from his quest, telling of the vast army of monsters that would soon march across the map, Tareah had already begun training the villagers. They had seen the threat of Scartaris in their own homes.
Taking charge again, Delrael ordered the manufacture of new weapons. Derow the blacksmith worked himself to exhaustion, hammering out blade after blade; others made spears and arrowheads, bows, shields. The forests around Steep Hill were picked clear of suitable wood.
Couriers went out to the known surrounding villages, spreading the warning and calling all able characters to meet at the Stronghold site for training. Delrael meant to put together an army, a last defense for Gamearth, the greatest rallying of human characters since the epic battles of the Scouring.
War supplies came in from mining villages, smelted iron ore in long rods, ingots of bronze and copper. Many characters rejoiced to see the Game mounting toward a tremendous showdown. Some of them wanted to have fun.
Delrael drilled all the incoming trainees. The top of the Hill—where the Stronghold had once stood tall and undefeated—was cleared of debris from the outbuildings. In its place stood a training field: sword posts and archery targets, single-combat practice grounds, straw dummies for spear thrusts. After the first few days, the noise and constant shouting, the clang of weapons, the outcries of exertion or victory, seemed an unrelenting drone on Tareah’s ears.
Through it, Tareah watched Delrael grow confident, swelling with his new role, as if he had been waiting for this all his life. She thought of how his father Drodanis must have appeared. It gave Tareah a thrill to feel she actually knew someone like that. She had spent so many years reading the legends.
Her father Sardun had kept her trapped in the Ice Palace, holding her in the body of a child for thirty years, hoping that another full-blooded Sorcerer could be born through the vagaries of the Game’s probabilities. She had been alone with the Sorcerer relics, wandering the rainbow corridors of blue ice, looking out at the white wastelands of frozen terrain, with hexagons of mountains in the distance. She had stared out at the mosaic map of Gamearth and wondered what else was happening across the world. She never imagined she would see as much as she already had.
Sardun had at one time even earmarked her for marriage to Enrod of Tairé. But Enrod and Sardun had a great many differences and arguments about the past, about the future, and how the Sorcerer race fit into it all. Tareah had never met Enrod. He never came to the Ice Palace to see the history of the Game that Sardun had collected since the Transition.
Now, beside the broken Stronghold wall, Tareah stood up and brushed at her knees. The joints ached, but not as badly as before. Her body had finally stopped growing. When her father died and the Palace melted into broken chunks of ice, the spell binding her in the shape of a little girl faded away. She began a rapid catch-up with her own body, growing into an adult woman through weeks of wracking pain as her joints and muscles and bones tried to accommodate the drastic growth.
Tareah stood tall and beautiful, with long pale hair and fair skin of the sort meant for colder hexagons of terrain. She knew Delrael found her attractive, and Vailret could barely speak a coherent sentence around her in his charming shyness. She caught sidelong glances from several other male characters, but they were too much in awe of Gamearth’s last surviving Sorcerer female; they could not even approach her.
Tareah felt odd around these human characters. She was with them, yet apart from them. For three decades her father had forced her to study the history of the Game. He made her learn the Rules inside and out, with all their nuances and all their implications. Sardun made her believe that the Game had something special in store for her, that she was not an ordinary person. So Tareah forced herself to remain aloof from the other characters.
Next to her, Bryl muttered something under his breath. She saw him sittin
g with his eyes squeezed shut and his lips clamped tight, saying a spell to himself. Another pile of supplies winked into existence next to the others.
When Bryl leaned back with a sigh, Tareah said, “I’m going to find Vailret.” She glanced up, and in the failing light of dusk, she saw Delrael striding among the other fighters in the training area, helping one woman with her sword stroke, showing a young man how better to hold his bow. Delrael would be busy here until there was not enough light in the sky to see by.
She left the clamor of practice battles behind and went down the hill path toward the village, moving quickly to keep her balance on the slope. The air had grown chilly already. Winter was coming soon.
In the village below, tents and temporary shelters had been set up for all the new inhabitants of the area. Inside the tent enclosures, flickering light from braziers and candles made moving shadows of the characters within.
New tents appeared every day as trainees and able-bodied helpers arrived at the Stronghold village. Word of Delrael’s rekindled training spread across the western half of the map. Tareah remembered stories of Drodanis and his brother Cayon and their own legendary training sessions. Characters had come from hexagons around to undergo instruction before setting off through catacombs and dungeons in the simple treasure-hunting adventures in the early days of the Game. Drodanis had met Delrael’s mother Fielle among his trainees.
Delrael’s exercises appeared frantic and desperate by comparison, with the fate of the entire map looming over their heads. Delrael brought the characters together, found what they could do, and had them practice with each other. They sharpened skills, traded hints and strategies, anything that might help in a pitched battle or single combat against the army of Scartaris.
Tareah saw light glowing from the home of Mostem, who baked bread and fruit pastries. Mostem was a widower and had three daughters, any one of whom he constantly tried to convince either Delrael or Vailret to marry. Since the destruction of the Stronghold, Vailret and his mother Siya had lived in the village with the baker’s family.
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