Gameplay (18 page)

16. Night of the Cailee

“We cannot hide from anything the Outsiders send against us. They know our fears better than we know ourselves. If we are to win this Game, we must face our greatest enemies and hope the dice roll in our favor.”

—
Enrod of Tairé

Gairoth did not like the Tairé city walls around him. He sniffed the air, flaring the nostrils in his potato-sized nose. He did not like the tall buildings, he did not like the feel of flagstones under his big bare feet. The buildings were too close, the alleys too narrow as he lumbered down them. The sharp spikes of his club clinked against the street. The smell of the air was dry and bland, too
human
for him.

Pictures covered the walls. He stared at them but did not understand the rituals depicted, the games, the gatherings of characters all standing side by side.

Gairoth squinted his one eye, baffled at the thought. It was repellent for ogres to work together. When he had been in Delroth’s Stronghold and used the shiny rock to make illusion ogres, he could tolerate them only because he knew they weren’t real. But these pictures showed human characters staying by each other because they
wanted
to.

One of the crudely drawn figures reminded him of the man Delroth. The ogre made a snarling noise and smacked the end of his club against the plaster. Great chunks of the fresco broke off and pattered onto the flagstones, exposing a jagged blot of fresh white plaster, like a wound.

“Haw!” Gairoth stomped down the zigzagging streets, satisfied. He had forgotten why he was chasing Delroth, but that didn’t matter.

Everything was so quiet around him. He banged his club against the wall just to keep himself company. He wished Rognoth were there. The stupid little dragon had been a convenient companion, and now he was gone. Another dragon, a big dragon, chased him far away. Gairoth knew Delroth had something to do with that, too.

When he heard the explosion and saw gouts of smoke gush into the sky from the burning tannery, he had to see what was going on. Delroth might be there.

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, funneling 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, hoof prints 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 sleepwalking, 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.