Game Play

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "And now for something completely different," Journeyman mumbled.

  Taire should have contained thousands of characters. Delrael heard no activity, none of the clanking and bustle that had marked Sitnalta from a distance. Instead, Taire cowered in a hush, comatose from being too close to Scartaris.

  The city's main gate stood tall and open, an ornate framework of wrought iron showing leaves and flowers growing up out of the ground. But the gate sagged on rusted hinges. Wind blew through the spidery ironwork, making it hum. No one greeted ― or challenged ― them as they entered Taire.

  "Either the Tairans aren't taking care of anything," Bryl said, "Or this place is as dead as the land around it."

  "Yoo hoo! Anybody home?" Journeyman called.

  The Tairans had made full use of the limited resources of the desolation. The houses were constructed of broken stone blasted up in the upheavals of battle, decorated with frescoes painted into plaster made from crushed limestone. The artists had used natural pigments, ochres and reds found in the rocks, black from soot. Pieces of glistening obsidian were inlaid in gameboard patterns.

  Some of the flat sides of buildings showed scenes of daily life ― not epic battles, but pictures of bountiful harvests, lush forest terrain, large gatherings for group games. History was depicted on the walls outside of Taire; inside, they looked to the future instead.

  The architecture was open, with plenty of space for meetings. Wind whispered through the buildings, weaving through open windows. Delicate metal chimes hung on corners, tinkling at random.

  As they travelled deeper into the city, the neglect became more apparent. Many of the spectacular frescoes were chipped and faded, smeared with an oily soot floating in the air. Delrael saw empty troughs under the windows of some buildings, apparently intended to hold flowers.

  On several larger buildings, crude doors, bars, and gates had recently been added, looking clumsy and out of place.

  The noise of a dripping fountain sounded loud in the Tairan silence.

  Delrael put out his hand to catch the warm, rust-tinted water, but he did not drink. The sculpture above the fountain was a wrought-iron bell, ornate but silent. The fountain stood at an intersection of two streets with wide stone buildings on either side. He realized that in the middle of the desolation someone must have used magic to summon up water, but now even the fountain had ceased.

  Journeyman scooped up some of the puddled water and spread it on his dry clay skin to moisten himself. He smiled in relief.

  Vailret and Bryl sat down, but Delrael paced around the fountain, shading his eyes and searching for signs of life. The afternoon sunlight was bright and harsh. "I'm getting tired of this," he said.

  In the shadows of one of the open buildings, he saw a figure standing between two stone columns. Delrael strode toward the building. "Come here!" He didn't know if the Tairan would hide or come to him.

  To his surprise a thin, haggard woman stepped forward. At first she appeared ancient, but he saw that she was not old at all, despite her sunken and shadowed eyes. Dirt stained her tattered gray clothes ― but she seemed unaware of all that. She took several jerky steps toward him, as if something else moved her arms and legs.

  "Where is everybody?" Delrael asked her. "What's going on here? This is Taire ― what happened?"

  She turned to face Delrael. Her eyes were milky white; the pupils and irises had vanished, leaving a soulless blank expression that sent a shiver up his spine. She never blinked.

  Her voice sounded garbled, awkward. Her lower jaw moved up and down, clacking her teeth together, but not in time with the words she tried to form.

  Her tongue writhed around in her mouth, making sounds by brute force.

  "Delrael. You are Delrael."

  The fighter blinked, taken aback. Delrael looked behind him at the others, questioning, before turning back to the woman. "How do you know my name?"

  The Tairan woman jerked backward as if her nerves had snapped like broken bowstrings. "Delrael!" She hissed and gurgled in her throat, but she stood with her arms straight at her sides. Spasming muscle tics rippled across her face.

  "What's happening to you?" Delrael shook the Tairan woman by the shoulders, but he might as well have been grabbing an empty sack.

  "Something is moving." Journeyman jerked his head to indicate the empty dwellings.

  Delrael released the woman, and she staggered one step backward, then remained where she stood. He saw other forms inside the buildings, lining up at the entrances. A rustle crept into the air, like thousands of furtive footsteps on the cobblestones. He smelled a sharp tang that might have been his own fear-sweat. He narrowed his eyes and felt his heart pumping.

  Other Tairans stepped onto the street in a strange lockstep. They moved in unison, stiff, like movable pieces in a complicated war game. All their eyes were blank.

  They behaved like the ylvans in Tallin's village. Delrael winced at the cold memory.

  The Tairans stepped forward from the buildings, coming through intersecting streets together. They stood close. Their hands looked torn and infected from hard work. Their faces showed no expression at all.

  "They're completely mindless," Vailret said.

  Journeyman spoke in a gruff voice. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

  Delrael pulled out his sword. The silence of the city remained, doubly eerie now. The Tairans marched forward, closing in. He felt their synchronous breathing, their hearts beating together as they took one step, then another.

  "We can't fight all these characters," Vailret said, but he pulled out his short sword anyway.

  The golem bent his knees and banged his fists together with a smacking noise. "They've blocked off every exit. Bummer."

  The blank faces of the Tairans made Delrael's skin crawl. They were unarmed. This would not be a battle, it would be a slaughter ... but the Tairans would win. They outnumbered the travelers by thousands. He didn't know what to do.

  Bryl took out the Fire Stone. "I can blast our way through. It'll kill a lot of them."

  Delrael blinked back stinging water in his eyes. The sword felt heavy and poisonous in his hand. He thought of how all these characters had been warped by Scartaris. He saw Tallin lying dead in the catacombs of the Anteds.

  None of this felt like a simple game anymore. He couldn't just slaughter with impunity. He didn't want to. It had to be a fair fight.

  "Only as a last resort," he told Bryl. "We have to think of a better way."

  Delrael felt sweat dribble between his shoulderblades. He could smell the Tairans, feel them breathing, sense their body heat. The afternoon sun slanted through the streets. Ripples of warmth rose from the heated stone walls.

  "If you want me to use the Fire Stone it better be now, before they get too close." Bryl rubbed his palms on the eight-sided ruby.

  Then a woman's loud voice broke the attack. Hooves rang out on the cobblestones; they heard the crack of a whip. "Hyah! What are you doing? Get away from there, all you Tairans." The whip cracked again. "Go on!"

  Delrael craned his neck but could not see who had made the noise. He felt his damp grip around the hilt of his sword. His throat had gone dry.

  A woman pushed her way forward on a gray horse, squeezing between the Tairans. The horse moved from side to side, nervous around the shuffling people. The woman flicked her whip back and forth, making the Tairans shrug aside. "Go on! I know you're not deaf. Get out of here!"

  Reluctantly, it seemed, the Tairans moved aside. Their sluggish attack dissolved as they drifted toward the buildings. They moved backward, keeping their pupilless gaze on Delrael. He glared back at them.

  Delrael drew deep breaths through his nose and let them out between his lips. He watched the woman approach on her horse. She was wiry, clad in a bright green tunic; it looked as if she had made some effort to keep herself clean. At her side hung an unsheathed sword with a rippled edge, like a tongue of flame.

  Her hair was long and dark, tied out of th
e way in a single braid. She moved quickly, as if with an attitude that her every action counted a great deal. Her dark eyes flicked rapidly, alert and intense. A fire of anger burned in her pupils. Pupils ― somehow this character had escaped Scartaris's touch.

  "I'm Mindar," the woman said and dismounted from her horse. She brushed at her legs and stamped her feet, looking flustered. "Did they harm you?"

  Delrael glanced at his companions and answered for them. "No, I think we're all right."

  "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" Journeyman asked. The others introduced themselves.

  "They know who we are," Vailret said, looking shaken. He flashed an angry glare at Delrael. "They know who we are!"

  Mindar led her horse ahead of them down the street. "Let's get farther away from this place. I never know what Scartaris is going to do."

  She moved ahead with a determined step. Delrael had to hurry to keep up with her. Mindar turned, and Delrael was startled by the viciousness of the grin she flashed at them. "I don't know who you are, but I haven't seen the people so awake in a long time. Nobody's been able to arouse them since Scartaris came."

  She stared at Delrael, letting the question hang in the air. Vailret shuffled his feet, but Delrael wasted no time pondering. He didn't see the point in hiding it any longer. "We're on a quest to destroy Scartaris, but he's found out about us somehow. That makes our task even riskier."

  Vailret nodded. "We understand that Scartaris has the power to end the Game whenever he wants, some kind of metamorphosis. Any time he's frightened enough of us, he'll just destroy the map."

  Mindar brushed aside her dark bangs and exposed a lumpy red scar on her forehead, a burning red welt in the shape of an S. "Scartaris will play with you as long as he can. He enjoys that. He does it to me."

  Vailret squinted at her. "What happened to you?"

  "Scartaris can't control me. I don't know why my mind can resist him when the other characters can't ― do you think that's a blessing? Look what it did for me." She spread her hands. The spring-green tunic looked dirty, a pitiful attempt at brightness and cheer in the drab city.

  Somehow Tallin had some ability to resist Scartaris, too, a random trait generated by a fluke of a dice roll. Of the thousands of characters in Taire, Delrael was not surprised that one had the same immunity.

  "I wasn't any important person," Mindar continued. "I was just another artist, painting some of the frescoes. Two days each week I'd go outside the city walls and help tend the fields, rebuild the irrigation channels, plant trees in the hills."

  She glared at them. "All of this used to be beautiful, you know. My husband worked more than his share of time out there, so I could have extra hours for painting. We had one daughter, Cithany."

  Tears glistened on Mindar's dark eyes. "The children were the first to ... to fade. We didn't know about Scartaris ― but all of our crops withered and died. The grass turned brown, the trees became barren. Then our children were lost to us. Scartaris seeped into their minds and played them like puppets. We couldn't understand. We didn't know."

  Mindar shook her fist in the air, facing toward the east. "Some characters were stronger, but they lost in the end. You see how they all are, mindless husks. Scartaris enjoys role-playing them, like the Outsiders Play their characters on Gamearth. I was the only one remaining. What could I do, all by myself?"

  She lowered her eyes. "At least I had my anger. One afternoon I looked around me and saw that I was no longer part of my own city, that everything else had cut itself off from me. The soul of Taire was gone. By this time some of us knew about Scartaris ― Enrod had found out, but it was too late for him, too.

  "So, in my despair, I shouted into the streets, I cursed Scartaris at the top of my lungs." Her fingers rubbed the S-scar on her forehead. She mumbled her words. "So he cursed me back.

  "The people gathered and found me. They grabbed my arms and pinned them behind me, then they carried me to one of the blacksmiths' shops. I couldn't break free because there were so many. You saw them. They held me down by an anvil in the dark. I was screaming and I could hardly breathe. I hurt myself trying to struggle.

  "They took a hot iron and branded this on my forehead. Then they dunked my head in the water and left me there on the floor." She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  "They were people I knew! They were ― " her voice hitched, "my brother and my husband!"

  She leaned against a stone wall on which had been painted an ochre sunrise shedding light over lush forest terrain and bountiful fields surrounding the reborn city of Taire. The paint had faded, dusted with an oily smear.

  "This is supposed to mark me as the lowliest character in Scartaris's domain. I am to be taunted, played with, and, worst of all, ignored. He casts aside and breaks everything I cared for ― Scartaris must be laughing as he watches me try to pick up the pieces."

  Mindar trembled with passion. Her hands clutched at the hilt of her rippled sword as if she wanted to damage something. She fought to bring control over herself again.

  "Scartaris sent a demon watcher to make sure that I see no peace. The Cailee. It hides in the shadows, watches my thoughts to learn how it may inflict the most pain on me."

  Bryl looked at the shadows of the alleys, widening his eyes. Delrael frowned. "What is the Cailee?"

  Mindar straightened and began to walk down the street, leading her horse. Delrael could see nothing but the back of her head as she answered.

  "The Cailee becomes tangible only at night. It looks like a shadow, featureless and black, in the form of a human. But on the ends of its hands are hooked silver claws, sharp enough to rend ― " Her shoulders bunched and rippled. "The characters here are all so helpless now, so helpless."

  Mindar swallowed. "The Cailee shadows me, follows me, waiting until I'm not watching ― and then it slaughters!"

  She whirled with such anger that her horse skittered two steps sideways. The S-scar on her forehead seemed to throb with a light of its own.

  She dropped her voice to a quiet longing tone. "One night the Cailee slit open my husband. And Cithany. And left them to bleed onto the floor of our home. For no other reason than that it would hurt me."

  Delrael felt his heart pounding, thinking again of Tallin and how the Anteds had killed him. Mindar slashed at the air in her passion.

  "For that, I'm going to destroy Scartaris. No matter what it takes. If you have a way, then I will join your quest." Her gaze flicked from Delrael to the others. Delrael felt the heat behind those eyes.

  "We have a way," he answered.

  "I have a way, too," Journeyman said.

  "We'll need all the help we can get," Delrael said. He held out his hand to her. Something inside of him felt uneasy about Mindar, but he could understand her anger and her obsession. She struck him like a true comrade, someone who had felt the same wounds. He felt close to her.

  She flashed a smile, sharp and dangerous, and grasped Delrael's hand.

  "My friends, together we can defeat Scartaris."

  Mindar stiffened and turned pale. Her eyes widened, flicking back and forth as if to see something from the corner of her eyes. "What have I done? I called you my friends!"

  She grabbed the horse and set off down a side street. The mare's hooves made loud noises that echoed against the buildings. "You are in grave danger ― follow me! It's almost sundown. The Cailee will come soon."

  She didn't speak. She didn't have to. Deep shadows slanted across the street. The sky turned orange as the sun sank behind the knife-edge of the Spectre Mountains, dappling the stone walls.

  Mindar brought them to a wide, squat building and opened the iron front gates. She stopped and held the horse's head in her hands. She rubbed the gray mare behind the ears.

  "There now, you take care of yourself." She released the horse and clapped her hands. "Go on!" She turned it around and gave it a light kick with her boot. The mare trotted away through the streets.

  "Won't the Cai
lee get your horse in the middle of the night?" Bryl asked.

  Mindar flashed her hard smile again. "No. A horse is not like the people of Taire ― she can defend herself. And she can run. She knows where to hide. Besides, horses are much too valuable for hauling supplies to Scartaris's armies.

  "This building here is one of the old storehouses." She led them inside. The windows were narrow, and the air smelled musty and empty. Dust filtered into angled shafts of light across the floor.

  "Taire couldn't raise all its own crops, of course. Sometimes we bought food from the farming villages in the mountain foothills. The half-breeds used magic to replenish our supplies of meats and grains. Mostly it's all been used up by now."

  Their footsteps echoed across the floor in the empty building. Mindar led them down an open staircase to the basement, cool and dry beneath the ground. Several chambers had been hollowed out. Mindar took them to the door of one.

  "I set this up for myself a while ago, when I thought someday I might have to make a stand against the people of Taire. It's well defended and well supplied."

  Inside, the room was windowless. Boxes of provisions and drinking water in sealed casks were piled against the wall. Bryl found candles in one of the boxes and took them out.

  "The door is secure. It's heavy wood ― and we don't have much wood here. It should keep us safe against the Cailee."

  Mindar stood up straight, as if something had twisted inside her. She looked frightened and sweating, even more than before. "I forgot to lock the upstairs gate! Be ready to let me in when I come back down!"

  Before they could say anything, she squeezed out through the half-shut door. Delrael heard her boots skipping up the stairs, then quick footfalls across the floor above. He looked at Vailret, who shrugged and shook his head.

  And then they heard an outcry from above. "Cailee! Stay away!" They heard a clang of iron as the gates slammed, and then a loud crash of torn metal clattering to the floor. "Get out!"

  A sharp sound rang out as metal struck stone. Delrael pictured Mindar swinging with her rippled sword, and then he heard frantic steps charging down the stairs.