Delrael climbed down off his horse and steadied himself against the gelding's back. "Vailret, you and Bryl stay out here and watch the horses. The three of us can handle this."
"You bet your life!" Journeyman said.
"Funny you should put it that way," Mindar said.
Inside, the smithy was dark, lit only by orange, smoky fires. Delrael choked on the stench of sulfur and hot iron. The clang of hammers on anvils rang out in the air.
Five Tairan men worked at the anvils, three women tended hot ingots in the forge. Another hauled pig iron from the pile outside. Their tunics had either burned away or torn off. Red welts and black scars on their skin showed where they had been seared by sparks; the untended wounds festered.
Mindar held her sword in front of her. "Stop what you're doing!" she shouted into the noise.
The Tairans turned to look in unison with blank-eyed stares, then they continued their work, banging against the anvil. She had to yell. "Stop that, I said!"
Delrael strode forward and wrenched the mallet from one of the Tairan's hands. "Drop your hammers!"
Journeyman came forward and yanked mallets out of the other hands. The mindless men continued to raise and lower their arms for a few moments, then they stood with hands loose at their sides.
"Better move fast, before they figure out what's going on," Mindar said.
Delrael started hacking at the bellows with his sword, severing the pulley ropes. Mindar bent to her knees and used the strength in her back and arms to tip over an anvil.
Journeyman, with a huge grin of glee on his face, picked up an anvil and threw it into the stone-rimmed forge. The heavy iron smashed into the chimney bricks and punched a hole through. With another broad clay hand, he grabbed one of the stone support pillars in the center of the room and jerked it free, toppling a portion of the ceiling. The golem sputtered and brushed dust off his arms.
The Tairans stood blinking at them with murky expressions. Mindar swatted one of the workers with the flat of her blade. "Go on, get out of here! You can't do anything more."
The three of them herded the Tairans into the street. As a parting effort, Journeyman knocked down the columns in the front of the building, making the facade collapse and closing off the front of the smithy.
Several other Tairans stumbled out of buildings, watching with their unblinking gaze.
"Well, that was exhilarating!" Journeyman said.
Mindar mounted her gray mare. "We have to keep moving before they second-guess us. Scartaris enjoys watching me fail ― he won't put up with this for long."
She turned the mare around and set off at a trot down the angled street. Delrael tried to figure out how to guide his gelding, but the horse followed Mindar on its own.
Taire waited in dead silence. Delrael could sense other characters watching through the blind windows, looking at them with the pupilless eyes of Scartaris....
A chemical, rotting stench told him they had reached the tannery. On an adjacent wall Delrael saw a fresco of a dark-haired man he recognized, flowing black beard and fiery eyes ― Enrod the Sentinel, wielding the Fire Stone to shine light on the desolation. The optimism in the artist's conception seemed to mock them all.
Delrael imagined a time when the streets had not been silent: horsecarts taking characters to the reclaimed hexagons for work in the fields.
He thought of Tairans talking, doing business, even squabbling with one another. Scartaris had taken all that away.
The tannery was one of the larger buildings in the city, now modified by adding shutters to close off the windows. A gate stood ajar on crude hinges in front of a stained leather curtain that hung over the entrance. Smoke from fires used to cure and dry the stretched leather drifted out of the window openings like fat snakes. Outside the building lay stacked rows of finished shields, varnished leather coverings over a sturdy iron frame. The bad smell forced Delrael to take short, hitching breaths.
"I don't see why we have to do this," Bryl said, mumbling his words. He covered his nose with the blue cloak. "If we've got the last horses, there's no more leather for shields anyway."
Mindar glanced at him with a strange look on her face. Her smile might have been wry if the expression hadn't been so bleak. "Horses are much too valuable to Scartaris. He would never use them just for leather."
She blinked her eyes at the piled shields, the pale, discolored leather glinting off the iron frames. Disgust distorted her face.
"But if it's not horsehide, then ― " Bryl began.
"Shut up, Bryl!" Vailret snapped. His face turned greenish.
"We must destroy this place," Mindar whispered.
She dismounted and drew her sword. "Come on, Delrael. We'll get the people out, then Bryl can destroy it with the Fire Stone. Enrod would want that, burn it clean."
Without waiting for him, Mindar strode to the front of the tannery.
Delrael took three running steps to catch up to her. She pulled open the iron gate, letting it clang against the far stone wall. She used the tip of her sword to slash across the sewn leather curtain and let it fall to pieces. Her boots stomped it flat as she entered the building.
Delrael followed her into the firelit dimness. The stench hung in the air like foul liquid pressing into his lungs. Irritated tears formed in his eyes, but he blinked them away.
"We won't fail this time, Scartaris," Mindar said at the shadows around her.
Delrael's knuckles whitened around the hilt of his sword. Other Tairans moved in the large, but somehow claustrophobic, room. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he staggered from the grisly sight around him.
Four Tairans grappled with a wooden frame, stretching a skin on a rack.
Another woman took a flat knife and began scraping the back of the skin.
Entrails, bones, and waste leather lay piled in deep stone vats, dripping in pools of clotting blood.
Against the walls sat basins filled with brine solutions, lime, and tanning chemicals, each stuffed with ragged skins. A covering of ash was scattered on the floor to soak up the blood. Brownish-red footprints left aimless trails in the gray ash.
Racks of drying, treated skins hung from the stone arches, showing vague, distorted shapes of what had once been arms and legs. Piles of finished leather lay stacked in the dim corners, waiting to be mounted on shield frames.
The orange light from torches and braziers flickered with the air coming in now that the leather curtain had been torn down. Mindar let out a strangled cry at the scene, and Delrael closed his eyes with a wince, then forced himself to open them again. He was a fighter, after all. He should have been immune to the sight of gore and carnage.
A mound of human heads, useless for their leather, were piled high in the corner. Their soft jelly eyes stood open in a blank expression of terror.
Some of the mouths hung open, dry and black inside.
Then Delrael noticed something that made the nausea surge up inside him. These eyes weren't the pupilless white of the other empty Tairans ― they were normal, terror-stricken, brown irises and blue. Scartaris had given them back their minds an instant before death, letting them know what they had done and what was going to happen to them.
"You bastard!"
Delrael bent over, feeling his chest and stomach muscles spasm. This was foul and unfair. Scartaris did not play the same Game ― no glorious combat with heroic deeds. Just slaughter, no honor or challenge or excitement.
How could Scartaris enjoy this? Always have fun ... Such a warped character, even a monster, had to be destroyed.
The dead Tairan eyes stared up from the mound of heads. The pupils seemed dilated in the dim firelight.
He squeezed his eyelids shut and was sick on the ash-covered floor of the tannery. He wheezed and coughed.
The other Tairan workers stopped what they were doing and stood facing them. They all wore identical, broad grins.
Delrael lurched back to his feet, closing his hand around the sword hilt. Stinging tears
came to his eyes. Mindar gripped him by the shoulder to be sure he was all right, but he shrugged her off and lunged forward to slash at the drying skins on the racks overhead.
"Let's get the people out of here so we can bring this place down," he said. He grabbed one of the motionless Tairan workers and jerked him toward the door. The man stumbled, without cooperating or resisting. Delrael pushed him out the door. He wasted less time shoving the next person out.
Mindar went to the three other workers, but they suddenly moved and grabbed her around the shoulders. Taken by surprise, she lashed out and struggled, but they held onto her arms. The third Tairan went to the cluster of hanging skins, loosened a dangling rope and let two intact bodies fall to the floor, one large and one small. With a thump, they sprawled on their heads, stiff arms and legs cracking into awkward positions. They lay in the blood and ash.
Delrael ran to help Mindar ― but the Tairans were not trying to hurt her. One of them grabbed her head and turned it so that she had to look, had to see.
The two bodies were naked, but preserved by the tannery's processes -a man and a small child, a daughter. Dried blood and claw marks scored their flesh. Both faces held a fixed look of terror and eyes that were not milky-blank, but contained a pupil and dark iris, a mind, a soul.
"No!" With a scream, Mindar threw herself away from the Tairan workers and went wild with her sword, striking down both Tairans who held her. Her rippled blade slashed across the face of the third Tairan, obliterating the empty white eyes. Delrael drew his sword, but Mindar needed no help.
"No, Scartaris..." She hunched over the torn bodies of her husband and daughter. Her voice trembled in the silence of the tannery. She reached out to touch Cithany's stiff shoulder.
Delrael stood behind her. "We have to go." He placed his hand on her back. "Let's destroy this place."
Mindar slid shut the brittle eyelids of her daughter, brushed her fingers over the face of her husband and then closed his eyes as well. "Now you can't see any more of what Scartaris is doing to our city."
Delrael took her arm to guide her. Mindar lurched out of the tannery and stumbled on the slippery flagstones. She fell to her knees, retching, then scrambled back to her feet. She held her sword in both hands and lashed back and forth at imaginary demons. Her eyes were clouded and gushing tears. Her lips drew away from her teeth in an angry snarl.
The others stepped back. She screamed and seemed unable to catch her breath. "Scartaris!" Mindar turned around in circles with the sword and then stopped as if grabbed by a giant hand. "You will pay for this."
She staggered toward Bryl. "Use the Fire Stone. Burn that place! Bring it down!"
"Is there anyone left inside?" Bryl asked.
"Burn it!" Mindar screamed. She reached out and grabbed his blue cloak, pushing him back toward the stone wall of another building. Bryl lost his footing and slipped, but she held onto his cloak and propped him up. "Burn it, I said!"
Her smoldering eyes seemed to cut through him. Delrael took a step forward, then hesitated, afraid to touch her, afraid that Mindar might explode or lash back at him with her rippled sword. He didn't want to hurt her, and he didn't think she wanted to hurt him either.
She wanted to hurt Scartaris. That was all for now.
"Do it, Bryl," he said.
Hands shaking, the half-Sorcerer took out the eight-sided ruby. "Move your feet. Give me some room."
Bryl stood, brushed himself off, then rolled the ruby. The Fire Stone clacked on the flagstones, showed a "6."
Mindar whirled to point at the tannery. Bryl grabbed the Fire Stone and launched fireballs with all the strength of his high roll.
Stone splinters from the tannery exploded outward as Bryl hurled crackling spheres of flame. Inside, the doors buckled. Roof shards erupted into the air; smoke belched through the window slits, reeking of burned skin, oily wood, and vats of preserving chemicals.
The tannery collapsed with a long, low rumble. The wide walls of two nearby buildings cracked with the concussion. Smoke curled around the wreckage up into the air again.
The red S-scar on Mindar's forehead glowed a flaming red with unnatural light. She worked her jaw convulsively and stared to the east. "I curse you, Scartaris. I will use every resource to destroy you."
Then the Tairans arrived.
Gray-clad, mindless people surged out of the buildings and moved down the streets toward them, shoulder to shoulder, a massed wall of flesh like a living, unthinking vise.
"We've got to get out of here!" Delrael cried. He grabbed his horse.
Mindar stood unable to move. Her eyes looked devastated.
"Show us the way out of here!" Delrael grabbed her by the shoulders, and she seemed to snap out of her confusion. She saw the Tairans coming.
Mindar hustled them down a narrow alley, leading the horses and shouldering aside three Tairans who blocked their way. At the end of the alley, another group of characters moved into place to block off their escape.
Mindar stopped and looked at a large pavilion to their left.
"This way. We can cut through here." Grabbing her mare's reins, Mindar ran up the steps to the pavilion and into the wide interior. Delrael and the others followed.
The stone roof overhead echoed the sounds of the horses. They passed under lattices strung with decorated clay pots from which hung curtains of dead vines. The vines must have once been lush and cool, but now the brittle strands were like dangling claws trying to scratch down.
"Quick, we can go out the other side!"
They reached the side door where polished steps spilled down onto another street. An obsidian trough that had once served as a reflection pool sat empty, caked with a ring of lime from the evaporated water.
The street in front of them looked deserted. But as they charged down the steps, Tairans moved into the area, crowding at the intersections.
"We've got to hurry," Mindar said. They turned right and ran down the only street still open to them.
"I wish I'd had a chance to study the map of Taire," Delrael said, breathing hard. "I don't know where we're going. I don't know how to get out of this."
"I don't know either," Mindar said, "But we're going to find a way."
The haunted buildings around them stood tall, disorienting. The sun hung straight up in the sky, giving no indication of direction. Delrael followed Mindar, feeling that he could trust her instincts. She fought like he did.
They led the horses, running around one corner, and came abruptly to the tall, smooth stone barrier of the Taire city walls, blocking them off from the desolation terrain.
"Now what do we do?" Bryl said.
Vailret moved to the wall and put his fingers against the cracks of the hexagonal stone blocks. He looked up, frowning. "We can't climb this. We can't get over."
A wave of Tairans closed in from all sides, moving in a bizarre lockstep, rippling as they pushed forward. Their eyes were all empty, cold and pupilless.
Delrael pulled out his sword. Mindar crouched with her back to the wall, holding the rippled blade in front of her. Delrael could feel her tension, flicking her dark gaze from side to side. They would fight together here, to avenge the ghosts in their pasts.
Without warning, Mindar let out a cry and lunged into the approaching crowd, swinging her sword. Some of the unresisting Tairans staggered from their wounds, but the others continued forward without heeding their injuries.
They took no notice of Mindar's attack. They folded around her and kept pushing toward Delrael and the others.
She took out the whip instead, lashing out. The Tairans moved away from her, but did not stop. Mindar whipped a Tairan woman in the head, leaving a bright streak of blood across her temple.
"Scartaris! I will make you notice me!"
The horses backed and reared, closed in by the stone wall behind them.
"Mindar!" Delrael called.
The Tairans moved slower, as if Scartaris wanted to relish the victory.
Mindar fo
ught her way back to the wall. Delrael used the flat of his blade to drive the people away from her. He grabbed Mindar's arm and yanked her to him.
The Tairans formed a semicircle around them.
Journeyman turned to face the wall, spreading his clay hands out against the stone. His flexible face bore an exaggerated, perplexed frown. "If we can't go over the wall ― " He drew his arm back. The clay flowed, making a giant bulldozer fist. "Why can't we just go ... through it?"
With the force of a thunderclap, he smashed his arm into the wall blocks. Dust trickled down. He slammed again, and the blocks, not held together by any mortar, jumbled loose.
The Tairans let out a unanimous hiss of anger and pushed forward.
Journeyman struck one more time and, with a rumble, the blocks toppled outward. "Look out!" he said and reached out to deflect a stone block that would have struck Bryl's head.
The horses reared.
The Tairans grasped at them. Their fingers bore dirty, broken nails.
Many of them gushed blood from wounds made by Mindar's sword.
The dust from the rupture in the wall stung Delrael's eyes. He coughed.
"Let's get out of here!" He leaped on the back of his horse. "Come on, Mindar!"
Vailret grabbed Bryl and they both scrambled onto their horse.
Journeyman, looking immensely pleased with himself, pushed around the rubble and let out a strange, primitive yell ― "Yabba dabba doo!" ― and crashed into the Tairans, knocking many over, cracking some ribs. He picked up bodies to fling them against each other.
"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" he said.
Delrael and Mindar rode side by side through the opening in the wall.
Vailret led his horse over the rubble.
They galloped out into the desolation. After a moment, Journeyman leaped after them, bounding with great resilient strides and following them into the desert. "Thank you, come again!" he called back at the city.
The air was hot, and reflected sunlight rippled up from the broken stone and caked dust. The sun had just begun to dip into afternoon.
"We have to ride ― get as far away from here as we can." Mindar's voice came in gasping, clipped phrases.
Game Play Page 18