Kevin J. Anderson - Gamearth 03 - Game's End

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Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

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Fictionwise

www.Fictionwise.com

Science Fiction

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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.

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*Prologue*

David kept watching the clock. As Sunday afternoon ticked toward evening, fear grew inside him, echoes of nightmares and impossible things. Tonight they would play the Game again -- or it would play them.

The empty house buzzed with silence. David opened the curtains, showing the gray afternoon and the cold drizzle outside. Every once in a while, a gust of wind rattled the windows. The house felt fragile, as if at any moment some powerful outside being might crush the walls and sweep him away.

As he had done to characters on Gamearth.

David thought of the flat, colorful game-board that Melanie had painted. For the past two years, he and Melanie and Scott and Tyrone had acted out their adventures on Gamearth, following rules they had created and adapted from other game systems. They enjoyed their quests for treasure, their battles, their magic. They had fun. That was the primary rule they all agreed on -- to have fun.

But as the four of them poured their imaginations into the world, built generation after generation of characters, backstitched history and made the entire place whole and real in their minds. The players created a synergy with their imagination, a force that had _pushed_ their made-up world into a life of its own.

And Gamearth began to strike back at them.

David saw this sooner than any of the others. He suggested they all stop playing before it went further, before it got out of control. But the other players out-voted him. Scott, with his technical "Mister Science" mind, simply could not believe that anything supernatural would happen. Tyrone, with his delight in the game, noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Melanie, though, recognized the same thing David did -- but she ignored what could happen if Gamearth continued to grow in power, continued to gain its own identity. No, Melanie wanted to nurture it, watch in amazement as the Game took over their lives, breaking free from the restrictions the players placed on it. David had seen her eyes glaze over as Gamearth exerted its survival instinct on her.

David tried to create ways to squelch their creation, and Melanie fought against him with her characters. She placed them in conflict with everything he tried to do to save himself, to save them all. She refused to listen when he tried to explain it to her. David felt a shudder of desperation run through him.

The house felt gloomy from the cold and wet outside. David went to the fireplace and busied himself starting a fire, using some of the fragrant wood they kept in a cardboard box beside the hearth. He thought about turning the stereo on, but decided he would rather think in silence.

He lived with his dad, except for a few weeks in July when he went upstate to stay with his mother in her house trailer. Somehow he had escaped the game last summer, but perhaps Gamearth had not grown strong enough then.

David's parents had been separated for three years, talking coldly on the phone every few months; but they had never gone through the actual process of getting divorced. Both of his parents kept their feelings so well shuttered from him that David felt isolated even from the conflict. At times he thought he might actually enjoy it if they tried to make him take sides.

But instead, all his mother did was engage him in pleasant, empty conversations about girlfriends and movies; and his father just voiced stern reproofs about David's falling grades in the last semester -- when the Game had started to take over. But David's father seemed to be saying those things out of an obligation he felt, not from any deep concern.

David sighed and crumpled a few sheets of old newspaper. He piled kindling and other debris from the bottom of the box on top of the paper.

His dad had gone away for the weekend on a business trip, asking David if it was all right to be left alone. His tone left unvoiced the comment that even if David did express an objection, his father wasn't really willing to change his plans anyway.

But David certainly didn't mind being alone this night, when they would play the Game. He felt terrified of what might happen, but he didn't want anyone else there to watch. No other ... outsiders.

He reached for the long fireplace matches, then he turned on the gas lighter below the logs. Hissing blue flames swirled up to lick against the bark. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Over the past two weeks, Gamearth had gotten more vicious in its retaliation, going beyond subtle hints and turning instead to blatant displays of its growing power over the real world. Showing how it could defeat them.

Melanie's characters Delrael and Vailret had gone on a quest to create a vast river as a barrier between the east and west sides of the map. As that had happened, the four outside players watched a blue line suddenly trace across the painted wooden game-board where the flow of water would have gone. Then, in the battle at the end of the evening, the dice started rolling by themselves, bouncing up and down. By magic, the magic _they_ had put into Gamearth.

During the following week, all four players experienced identical dreams, watching other parts of the Game unfold even when they were not playing. The Sorcerer Enrod took the Fire Stone and tried to destroy the land on the other side of the Barrier River, only to be stopped by the Deathspirits. They had never played out that scenario -- yet all of them remembered it.

David had planted a creature called Scartaris on the map -- a force to absorb the energy from Gamearth, to bring it back to where it was merely a role-playing game, where it was _safe_: just a painted map and made-up characters, all put together for fun.

But Gamearth reached out and played Melanie like a puppet. She bent and twisted the rules in ways that David had not considered. In secret, she had added a part of their real world into one of her characters, a golem named Journeyman, like another ancient character, the Stranger Unlooked-For, who had ruined David's first attempt at defeating Gamearth.

But that had been before David got serious about his own mission. And now that he understood some things, he could use the same tactics.

David cleared away the family room floor, made an open spot where they would play that night. It was his turn to host. The fire snapped. The earth-tone carpeting seemed to absorb the warmth. A gust of wind rattled the windows again.

Gamearth was waiting. It was anxious to play, to manipulate them again. And as it became real by itself, Gamearth would no doubt come out to this world, the _real_ world, and begin to Play them. Gamearth would retaliate for all those things that David and the other players had done to their imaginary characters.

He could not let that happen.

David considered simply not showing up. If he didn't play, then the others couldn't play -- and Gamearth could not go on. It was the _four_ of them, the synergy of the four distinct personalities that came together to play, week after week -- _that_ had caused Gamearth to come alive. If he didn't play, the same ingredients wouldn't be there.

David frowned, then ran his hands through his dark hair, finding his fingers damp with perspiration. As chilly as it was outside, he still felt sweat from his own fear.

This could be simpler than all his plans to incapacitate Gamearth. His attack with Scartaris had weakened the Game greatly. The map itself was fragile now, and he sensed that Gamearth grew ready to use desperate measures.

If he was here when the others arrived, together they would somehow convince him to keep playing. He knew it. They had always done that before. But if he cancelled the game, claimed that he was sick -- not too difficult, since he had been having nightmares all week. Inside his head he envisioned Gamearth characters looking more vivid and solid to him than any of the people he truly knew.

He couldn't face another night of this.

Before he could change his mind, David stood up and went to the telephone. He would call them all, tell them the Game was off, tell them to stay at home. If it worked, the Game would be off forever. A stalemate, perhaps, but better than an outright defeat ... and the loser would lose all if they kept playing.

He picked up the phone. It felt hard and clammy against his hand. He would save Melanie for last -- she would be the difficult one.

David started to dial Tyrone's number, but nothing happened. He listened, but got no dial tone. He hung up again and tried punching buttons. He could hear no response; the phone was dead.

Moving stiffly, David went to the other phone in the kitchen. It, too, remained silent. He flicked the cradle up and down several times, but he got no sound on the line.

He felt a shiver up his spine, and he turned to stare out the kitchen window at the slick driveway and the street beyond. In the dimness, orangish streetlights had flickered on. The storm didn't look very bad, but maybe some falling branch had shorted the phone lines.

Something inside him knew that wasn't the case.

He pulled on his black denim jacket, grabbed his car keys, and went through the garage to his old car in the driveway. Fine, then -- this was going beyond courtesy.

He simply wouldn't be there when the others showed up. He made sure he had all the lights off in the house, all the doors locked. David would be gone, at a movie somewhere, or maybe just out driving.

When he stepped outside, drizzle spattered his face, making him squint. He grabbed the handle of the driver's-side door of the red Mustang, got in, and pulled the door shut. The hinges squeaked. But inside the car he felt safe and comfortable. He could smell leftover scents of the rain, candy wrappers on the floor and in the ash tray, the old odor of upholstery -- it all seemed reassuring to him. A gust of wind rocked the car frame, like a giant invisible hand of some outside player ready to pick it up and move it.

David slid the key into the ignition and turned it. The starter made a single click as it cranked, but otherwise the car made no other sound. Again and again, he twisted his wrist, jamming the key around. The keys clinked together, and the wind made noises outside. The engine remained dead.

"Come on! Start!" David hissed through his teeth.

But the Mustang refused even to try. David kept it running in perfect condition. It _always_ started for him. This was no coincidence.

With a balled fist, David pounded the cold dash and gritted his teeth. In angry despair, he dropped his head against the steering wheel, then jerked back up as a blast from the horn startled him.

He could walk, he could go somewhere else. He had never tried hitchhiking before. But he knew Gamearth wasn't going to let him get away. No matter what he tried to do. The Game held him. He had to play.

Blinking back needle-sharp tears, David got out of the car and slammed the door again. Standing in the driveway as the drizzle came down on his cheeks, he felt the wind in his hair, cutting through the denim of his jacket. He growled under his breath, "All right then, damn you! I tried to end this. I tried to cut my losses and yours."

He sucked in another deep breath. "You better be prepared to win, because this time I'm playing for keeps!"

He waited for some sort of answer, but the rain only whipped up harder and colder.

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*Chapter 1*

Prisoner of War

"Such monsters I have seen, Victor! It makes me doubt the Outsiders have even the slightest understanding of biological principles. But no matter how fantastical these monsters may seem, they are certainly dangerous, beyond a shadow of a doubt."

-- Professor Verne, _Les Voyages Extraordinaires_

(unpublished journal)

Professor Jules Verne had a difficult time maintaining his self-respect as the Slac guards hustled him forward. He stumbled, and his legs were weak and shaking. The monsters jabbed him in the ribs with their sharp knuckles. They cast him on the flagstoned floor in the main hall of Taire.

Verne bit back an annoyed retort and allowed himself only a muffled grunt of indignation. Over the past several days his captors had pummeled him with the polished ends of their clubs every time he became too vocal in his complaints. Now he merely thought up extravagant insults instead.

Verne stood up and cleared his throat, still keeping his eyes closed. He brushed at the front of his indigo and brown plaid greatcoat, but the coat would need serious cleaning and pressing before he could feel presentable again.

In front of him in the firelight waited Siryyk the manticore, rumbling deep in his throat.

The leader of all the monsters towered twelve feet above the floor, though he remained seated on his haunches. His huge, maned head showed a smashed and distorted human face, with two curved horns protruding from the forehead. Siryyk's body was built like a lion's, but was as massive as an elephant. His front claws glittered like curved knives, and the segmented tail curled around his legs was silvery, wider than a man's thigh. A wicked stinger tipped its bulbous end, like an enormous scorpion's. Flickers of blue lightning traced the stinger and the tail, as if the manticore could barely control the power it contained.

The venomous tail flinched when Verne gazed up at Siryyk. Sparks snapped against the flagstones, highlighting other blackened spots from other times the beast had twitched his tail in anger or annoyance.

"I brought you here, human, to give you the honor of assisting me in winning the Game." Siryyk's voice was deep and liquid, as if he were gargling with some caustic substance. He reached forward with one forepaw and scraped his claws against the stone.

Verne blinked in shock and cleared his throat. "But that's not why I came here at all."

A bright light and an explosion echoed from the floor as the manticore smashed his tail down. "I don't believe I asked your preference."

Verne tried to hold his ground, but he felt overwhelmed by everything he had seen and done in the last few turns. Under dreams and guidance from the Outsider named Scott, he and his colleague Professor Frankenstein had constructed a new kind of weapon. Verne had driven a steam-engine car all the way from Sitnalta to where the growing, destructive force of Scartaris appeared ready to destroy Gamearth. The Sitnaltan weapon would surely eliminate Scartaris -- but it was also so powerful it might destroy Gamearth as well. That thought had not occurred to Verne until much later.

He had driven his vehicle to the desolate battlefield where Scartaris had gathered his horde. Verne set its detectors on auto-pilot, adjusted the timer for his weapon. But a meddling ogre had appeared out of the battle, intent on something else entirely, and had tossed Verne out of the car. Taking over, the ogre rode the steam-engine vehicle on its way toward Scartaris.

The Sitnaltan weapon had never gone off as expected.

Verne, perhaps too perplexed for his own good, but obsessed with gathering all information he could about the performance of his own device, remained behind. Before returning to Sitnalta in disgrace, he had to discover what had gone wrong.

The following day, he tried to find the steam-engine vehicle in the wreckage of the mountains. After hours of searching, he had found it intact among the broken rocks with the weapon still primed. But before Verne could look at the mechanism and determine anything about the malfunction, other scavenging monsters had captured him.

At times, he felt like kicking himself for his own stupidity, his own naivete. After the giant battle during which the Earthspirits and Deathspirits appeared and defeated Scartaris, Verne had not concerned himself with the remainder of the horde or what they might do if they found him. They seemed of no consequence to him. He couldn't be bothered with details like that when the question of the failed weapon loomed so large.

Unfortunately, the monsters didn't see it that way.

A troop of reptilian Slac had surrounded him among the deep shadows and broken rocks, drawing weapons. One of them carried a sputtering torch, and Verne could see their slitted eyes in the light. For an instant, the professor thought they were going to execute him without even attempting to communicate.

Several Slac drew dull black arrows; one pulled out a pronged knife. They hissed and drooled and stepped toward him -- all Verne could do was stand, gaping in disbelief. He had not thought his predicament through, and he hated to die while looking so stupid. The Sitnaltans admired his ideas, but some had chuckled, with good reason apparently, at their "absent-minded" professor.

But then the commander of the monster band, a powerful general named Korux, had ordered them to stop their attack.

"All of the other human characters have disappeared. Their army is gone. This is the only one of the enemy we have found." Korux looked at the Slac while Verne stood frozen, waiting to hear what he would say. "Take him. With minimal damage."

The Slac general stood staring at Verne and narrowed his yellow yellow eyes. "We must squeeze information out of this one. We can learn what happened here, and learn how we could have been so badly defeated by an army that doesn't even exist!"

Professor Verne did not resist when they grabbed his arms and prodded his sides with the blunt ends of their weapons. He watched with great dismay as the misshapen creatures grabbed the delicate Sitnaltan weapon -- so close to its detonation -- and passed it among themselves as the spoils of war.

Korux ordered his underlings to take the steam-engine car. Verne twisted his head to glance back at the once-beautiful red vehicle of Sitnalta, with its cushioned seats, the tattered canopy to shade him from sunlight during long days of driving, the great brass boiler that provided the car's power. The others pushed the vehicle along the blasted terrain, grunting and struggling against the rocks and broken ground.

So Verne had been taken prisoner, sweating, dirty, and hungry. Bound in rusty chains, he could barely move as his captors hustled him along, treating him like a piece of walking baggage.

The horde had gathered itself together once more under the leadership of the hulking manticore, and they marched westward, away from the dawn and toward the city of Taire.

Verne spent several days in confusion and despair. His captors forced him to eat the bubbling black porridge they slopped in front of him. It tasted of sulfur and ashes; the water they gave him to drink was warm and brackish. His hands were bound, his legs were shackled.

The professor's mind remained free, though -- a powerful advantage to him. But he had no resources, no way he could invent a means for himself to escape.

Finally, after the monster army reached the city of Taire, Siryyk the manticore took time in the evening to summon Verne, his prisoner of war.

Without explanation, two hulking creatures with leathery shrivelled skin and pinched faces hauled Verne from where he had been trying to sleep against a broken wall. They dragged him forward, pushing, elbowing, jabbing, forcing him to stumble as fast as his legs would move. He had given up asking questions of his captors -- he just watched and waited, cooperating as little as possible, as much as necessary.

His escorts led him into what appeared to be a great banquet hall supported by stone pillars. The walls were painted full of colorful frescoes showing humans at work building a city. All of the pictures had been defaced, by white skittering claw marks or splatters of black tar, smears of ash or excrement.

The hall looked empty and damaged. The vaulted ceiling left skylights open to a cold, star-studded night. Along the rafters hung glazed clay pots, some broken, some holding scraggly dead plants.

Firepits had been built deep in the floor, burning oil-soaked support beams from demolished buildings. Dancing orange flames reflected on the painted wall, making sharp shadows. Verne blinked in the thick, smoky air, trying to clear his vision.

Siryyk the manticore growled down at him, leaning forward and showing his sharp teeth in the firelight. Verne kept his mouth shut. He knew how delicate a line he walked as a prisoner -- any time Siryyk liked, he could order Verne's head sliced off and leave his body for the other monsters to feed on. The other characters in Taire had not been so fortunate.

Beside the manticore, the Slac general Korux stepped out. He was clothed in a black, oily garment; tassles marked the sleeves, and glints shone from blood-red gems stitched on one breast. Verne got the impression that Korux had risen in rank because of the professor's successful capture.

Korux spoke from beside the manticore. "We know who you are, Professor Jules Verne of Sitnalta." The Slac voice sounded thin and rasping after the manticore. "We know why you came here."

Verne straightened in surprise, trying to keep his expression neutral. Was Korux bluffing? Verne had never spoken about his past -- in fact, the monsters had never asked him, or interrogated him in any way. He thrust out his chin, making his gray beard bristle.

Korux raised his left hand and clicked the claws together. Two other Slac appeared from outside the scarred banquet hall, grunting and carrying between them the small but extraordinarily heavy weapon that he and Frankenstein had built. Verne's eyes widened as he saw the polished cylinder of whitish metal taken from the ruined Outsiders' ship, a set of red fins, a bullet-shaped brass top with lights and dials and gauges that might tell Verne what had gone wrong with the detonation. And also how many seconds remained on the bomb's timer.

Scrawled on the side in black grease-pencil stood the number 17/2, the patent number that Professors Verne and Frankenstein would have obtained for their awesome weapon. But they had sworn never to build another one. They had intended for the device to be used only once, only to destroy Scartaris.

The manticore spoke up. "We have found your personal journals, Professor Verne. They are very interesting. _Les Voyages Extraordinaires_. Is that some kind of code? Everything else is in plain language."

Korux reached into his slick black garment and removed a battered volume. The cover looked bent; some of the pages were loose and shoved back into the binding -- Verne's own account of his extraordinary journey and the thoughts he had had while traveling across the map to reach Scartaris. It told everything about his mission and about the Sitnaltan weapon.

Verne stared at the journal in astonishment. It had been pounded into him throughout all his years of education that, for the posterity of other characters, he _must_ keep records of all his ponderings, all his ideas, all the inventions that he might envision. The ideas concocted by any Sitnaltan inventor were for the benefit of Gamearth.

It had never occurred to Verne that those ideas might fall into the hands of an evil creature such as Siryyk. He had not imagined the possibility that, even if that happened, the manticore could actually read and comprehend the information!

"I am a fool!" he muttered to himself.

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.

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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.

--------

*Chapter 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.

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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 Taire. 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 accomodate 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 sitting 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.

One of Mostem's daughters opened the door at Tareah's knock. The three daughters each looked the same; Tareah could tell them apart only by the varying lengths of their dusty-brown hair. All three were squat, with turned-up noses and narrow, dull eyes. Kind enough, the type who would be described in their later years as "sturdy women." The girl blinked, as if trying to remember what she was supposed to say when guests came to the door.

"I need to see Vailret," Tareah said. "Is he working in here?"

Mostem's daughter opened the door wider. Tareah went in, paying her no further attention. The smells of fresh bread and yeast filled the main room, along with warmth from the wall on the other side of which Mostem housed his big ovens.

Vailret looked up at her and grinned, self-consciously brushing back his straw-colored hair. He had a thin nose and bright eyes that squinted too often. "Hello, Tareah!"

"Welcome, Tareah," Siya said from her seat against the wall. "While you're talking to my son, I'd appreciate a little help here." She motioned at a mound of weapons and armor in need of repair beside her.

After watching the Stronghold destroyed before her own eyes, Siya had adopted their cause wholeheartedly. She could wield none of the larger weapons, but Siya adapted her other skills to help administer the growing army after Delrael's call to arms. It was Siya who kept track of the numbers of trainees and where they came from. Siya managed the food distribution, found lodging for all of them -- she kept the practical matters running smoothly.

She spent the rest of her spare time repairing and cleaning the old weapons they had kept at the Stronghold or the relics brought in by trainees. Patched and restitched leather armor lay cleaned and smelling of sweet oil in a separate pile. She polished rust off of blades, sharpening and oiling them. Now, she took a fine metal awl and chipped out hardened dirt and mud from the mechanism of a crossbow.

"Plenty here to do," she said, indicating the heap again.

"Mother!" Vailret turned to her, scowling. "Tareah's been using all six of her spells every day to replenish our supplies. That should be enough." He turned to look at Tareah.

"Well, I have been doing that." She smiled at him, which seemed to set Vailret all aglow. "But I can still do something while I watch what you're doing."

Without looking, Siya picked up an ornate battle-ax and untangled some fresh leather thongs from a pile on the floor. "The handle here needs to be rewrapped. The old lacings got blood on them and started to rot."

Tareah used a knife blade to scrape the dark old leather from the ax handle and began twisting new thongs along the wood.

Vailret leaned over his table where he had spread out the huge map of Gamearth. He seemed to be showing off for her. Other characters had constructed the big master map over generations of exploring the world and adventuring. It had once been mounted on the Stronghold wall, but the collapse of the main building damaged it. Vailret used some of his own notes and talked to several old characters to reconstruct the details.

The flickering candles around the table made Tareah nervous that they would start the map on fire; a few specks of wax had spattered on the map itself. Siya always insisted that Vailret maintain enough light for his close work, especially with his weak eyesight.

Vailret squinted at two hexagons, trying to brush away smudges on a hex of forested-hill terrain. "After I get all the pieces together, I'm going to make several copies of the map for characters to have when we finally go on the march," he said. "We need to know where we're going. That'll save us lots of time."

Vailret flashed his gaze at her, as if sharing a secret. "Look here. With all the new characters coming in, we're learning about dozens of new villages. Either they're new settlements, or somehow they went undiscovered during all our years of questing!"

Siya snorted at him without looking up from her work. "Characters are settling down, Vailret. Lots of them stopped questing by the time your father was killed. All those characters had to live somewhere. What did you expect?"

Vailret ignored her. "And something else strange is happening, very strange. I've only just figured it out. Our couriers were told to move as fast as they could, to explore, to find all the villages and pass along the warning about Scartaris's army. Most of the couriers traveled their alloted number of hexagons and then stopped, out of habit. But some of them found that there's no restriction anymore! They can go farther. No matter what the _Book of Rules_ says."

Tareah stopped her work with the ax handle and looked up at him. She felt a sudden rush of fear.

Vailret dropped his voice to a whisper. "With the Outsiders disrupting the Game, with the Earthspirits and Deathspirits coming back and Scartaris nearly destroying the map, and the great battle, and ... and with the piece of _reality_ that Journeyman carried -- something is going very wrong with Gamearth. _Characters are breaking the Rules!_ For now it's just travel restrictions that we know about, but maybe you can use more than your number of spells each day." He raised his eyebrows. "Who knows what else can happen?"

Tareah blinked at him in shock. "That can't be! The Rules are what hold Gamearth together. Without the Rules, we ... it would be chaos!"

"Maybe that's what we're in for, whether we win or lose."

Tareah tied off the leather thongs and set the ax on top of the mound of repaired weapons. She looked up to take something else from Siya, but the old woman had packed up her tools and stood up herself. "Come on, Vailret. Time to go," Siya said. "It's dark outside, and they'll be doing the quest-tellings again. You know how much you enjoy those."

Siya gave him what appeared to be a patronizing look, but Tareah knew that Siya enjoyed the quest-tellings as much as the rest of the villagers, especially now that she had become more interested in the battles. She always liked to hear legends about her husband Cayon and his quests with Drodanis.

Outside in the center of the village, the other characters had gathered around a bonfire made from the split trunks of some of the large trees; all of the smaller branches had already been used for making spears and arrows.

To start things off, one of the women characters from a mining village began telling how in her work underground she had broken into a network of catacombs that appeared ancient and well-traveled. Marveling at her discovery, she armed herself, took supplies, and set off to explore the tunnels, where many of the early quests of the Game must have taken place. She was gone a full day, mapping her progress and moving warily, eyes open for any sort of trap or attack. In the end, she found only a few scattered gems and dusty coins, and one broken skeleton of a misshapen monster. The dungeon was dead and empty, and she had not bothered to return again, though some of the children of her village occasionally played there.

Accompanied by five of his students, Delrael finally came striding into the village, finished with the last details of the day's training exercises. Tareah saw him, encased in a set of armor, well-muscled, confident in his abilities. He smiled at Tareah, Vailret, and Siya sitting together near the fire.

They shared food and sipped steaming cider from wooden mugs. Delrael looked very tired, but charged with a new kind of energy. After some coaxing from the others, he began telling of his battle with the Cailee, the shadow-thing that was the deadly alter-ego of their companion Mindar from Taire. As he spoke of how they had locked themselves in an underground storeroom, Tareah could picture them all waiting in darkness as the Cailee prowled just on the other side of the door, scratching at the wood with its long silver claws. Delrael told how the Cailee had attacked them out in the desert the following night, as they sat around their campfire, how it slaughtered Mindar's horse and thrown its head into the fire --

A commotion among the gathered characters made Delrael pause in his story. Vailret squinted into the night. Tareah turned to see another figure approaching out of the twilight, a man dressed in dark and tattered clothes. He stumbled forward, seeming to emerge from the dark surrounding forests.

He came forward one step at a time, swaying, concentrating on his balance. Several of the trainees leaped up to steady the man, bringing him toward the firelight. His face was scratched and smeared with mud and grime. He looked gaunt and starving, with sunken eyes. Though they brought him close to the fire, the stranger continued to shiver violently.

"Well, get him some water or something!" Delrael shouted. Before he had finished his command, someone thrust a dripping ladle into his hand. Delrael poured it on the haggard man's mouth, not caring that most of it spilled down the stranger's chin.

The man gasped and turned to stare at all of them, as if suddenly realizing where he was. He seemed to melt. He looked dark of skin, with tangled black hair and strong calloused hands.

"Tell us your name," Vailret said, leaning close. "Where did you come from?"

The man's eyes flashed with alarm and he gawked at the fire as if it would reach out and consume him. "From Taire." He drew in a long, sucking breath, then slumped beside the fire.

--------

*Chapter 3*

FOUR STONES

"Yes, if all the Sorcerers depart from Gamearth, we leave behind human fighters to defend it -- but we also leave many enemies. We must give humans a greater advantage, a means to fight! We have much magic at our disposal. What are we going to do with it?"

-- Arken, proposing that the old Sorcerer Council create the four Stones

Delrael stood up in the firelight and spread his arms as other characters pushed forward, chattering with each other. The stranger flinched at their sudden reaction. "Stand back!" Delrael shouted to overcome their noise. "Give the man room to breathe!"

The others backed off as the stranger sat slumped and cross-legged in the dirt, shivering despite the fire's warmth. His drab clothes, dark hair and skin reminded Delrael of Taire, the city where Scartaris had stolen the minds of all its inhabitants. Taire was the home of Mindar, the one woman somehow immune to Scartaris's control; she alone had attacked Scartaris's installations while the other Tairans unknowingly worked at creating weapons.

But this man had escaped from Taire. After the destruction of Scartaris, he had somehow made his way here.

Before Delrael could say anything else, Siya squatted down with a mug of steaming cider in her hands. She looked with disdain at the unmoving spectators. "Have him drink this."

The Tairan man took the mug and held it in both hands, but sat staring down at its surface. The trembling in his body caused tiny ripples to flow across the top, disturbing his reflection. He finally took a sip.

They all sat in silence. Delrael realized they were waiting for him to ask the questions, to find out what had brought the man here.

"The man needs rest," Delrael said to the other characters. "He's had a long and terrible journey. We'll find a place for him to stay. He can talk to us tomorrow."

"No!" the man said, coughing. He scowled at the cider, then took another drink. "I came this far. I can tell my story. You need to know what's happened."

Delrael dropped his voice and tried to sound gentle. "All right then, tell us your name."

The Tairan blinked, as if unable to understand the relevance of the question. He held one hand out to the fire and visibly began to let exhaustion take hold.

"I am Jathen. You -- " And then a flash shot across the stranger's face. He turned so quickly that some of his cider sloshed out of the mug. "_Delrael!_" he said in an inhuman whisper that sent shudders down Delrael's spine.

Delrael remembered all of the Tairans, massing toward him under the direction of Scartaris, ready to tear him and his companions apart with their mob frenzy. In a unison hissing voice they had all screamed his name, _Delrael!_

Jathen must have been among them.

The Tairan man's expression fell. "We didn't mean to do that. None of us could help it. Now I can't help remembering."

"It's all right," Delrael said. "We know what Scartaris did to you. What happened to your city beyond what we've already seen?"

Jathen glanced up with lost eyes. "As if that wasn't terrible enough." He shook his head.

"It happened just before dawn a few weeks ago. Scartaris was like a terrible nightmare, and we sleepwalked through it all. But then, all of a sudden, Scartaris vanished from our minds. He was gone, destroyed somehow. We in Taire were free to face the horror of what we had done, what we had nearly helped him accomplish.

"We were stunned, but we managed to count our losses, learn exactly who had been killed -- " He paused, stumbling over his words, and forced himself to continue. "We learned who _we_ had killed.

"Then, we searched for Enrod, who had helped us build Taire and resurrect it from the desolation. Enrod had been our strength, our guiding force, a true visionary with the best intentions for all human characters. But Enrod had left us. We couldn't understand what happened."

Jathen stared around at the faces, as if searching for some explanation. Vailret cleared his throat and turned his gaze away as he answered. "Scartaris twisted Enrod's mind as well. The Deathspirits trapped him on the Barrier River and sentenced him to take his raft back and forth for the rest of the Game."

Jathen hung his head. "Enrod deserved better than that after all the good he did."

Delrael sighed. "The Deathspirits did not seem willing to negotiate." The bonfire continued to crackle and slump as some of the burning logs collapsed into ashes.

Jathen remained silent, digesting the news about Enrod. Finally, he picked up his story. "We Tairans met with each other. We walked the streets. We looked at our city and saw all the frescoes, the statues, everything we had built. We saw the dried fountains, the gutters, the brittle plants. We went outside the walls and saw our dead crops.

"At first the dead grass and trees in the hills made us despair. All the terrain we had recovered was lost again. But as we continued to look at our city, it became clear to us how much we had already accomplished. We let our pride return. _We_ had built this with our own hands, with our own sweat. _We_ had snatched that land from the worst blight ever seen on the map.

"The Stranger Unlooked-For came and rescued us from destruction once. Then Scartaris grew, and then someone else, another Stranger, destroyed him."

"Journeyman," Vailret muttered.

"Now we had a third chance, and we couldn't just ignore it. We felt at a loss -- and yet, it made our commitment stronger. We in Taire were stronger than the Outside forces of the Game. We would prove ourselves self-sufficient, independent of the whims of the Players. We could defend against anything. We vowed to start work immediately, to clean up the rubble, to restart the forces. To come back better than ever!"

Jathen closed his eyes and continued speaking. "We set to work with such enthusiasm as we had never felt before. We would do it this time. Tairans have always been proud of our optimism in the face of hardship. For all the good it did us."

Jathen opened his eyes and stared into the firelight, but he seemed to be seeing something else entirely. "And then the monster army came, led by that manticore. They came without warning, and without mercy. And they _wiped us out!_"

Some of the trainees mumbled to each other. Jathen did not pause to let the noise die down.

"Because of the grassy-hill terrain to the east of the city, we couldn't see the army until it was only a hexagon away. They came in the darkness. We Tairans had been working all day and all night, taking shifts. But we knew something was wrong at dawn, when a team of workers out repairing an irrigation system failed to return on time.

"As the sun rose and the morning grew brighter, some characters working on the top of our wall spotted the manticore's army. We sent out a team of emissaries, not knowing what this was. They didn't return.

"The monster horde marched forward. For the next hour or so, we grew afraid. We had no protection. We had no weapons in Taire. Scartaris had already taken everything we made, stripped us of all our resources. Even our great wall had been breached."

Jathen looked at Delrael, then at Vailret. Delrael remembered how the golem Journeyman had used his immense strength to knock down a portion of the wall so they could escape the attack of the Tairan people.

"We built barricades, we made clubs, we ... improvised weapons. It was all we could do." He closed his eyes and made a sobbing, laughing sound.

"It was so useless. Oh, we did manage to kill some of the first creatures as they charged in, using their own battering rams to knock down other parts of the wall. They swarmed into the city -- there were so many of them. And not very many of us.

"We managed to defend ourselves for a few minutes. And then the monsters broke through, and kept coming. And kept coming! We couldn't stand against them.

"We ran for our lives, all of us, not just me. Many Tairans barricaded themselves in buildings, fled to hiding places within the city. But I knew that would be useless. The manticore's army searched from building to building, and they slaughtered any human characters they found. They weren't quick about the killing either. Those characters who barricaded themselves lasted only a few hours. The monsters had all the advantage in this game.

"A few dozen of us fled the city out into the surrounding terrain. We ran, and there was no shelter for several hexes. Just grassland or flat desolation, no place to hide.

"The monsters came fast. Most of us died out there, in the desolation. Not a good place to die. Several of us made it to the mountain terrain, where we hid among the rocks. We split up to make smaller targets. We kept running westward. I knew you were here, along with other villages of human characters. Some of us went south.

"Siryyk kept sending scouts to hunt us down -- I know several of the others were executed that way. I might be the only one who survived. But I knew it was no use to stay and die with the others. It wouldn't have made any difference, would it?" He looked around. "Would it? And I made it here to warn you, because the manticore's army won't stop in Taire for long. They'll regain some of their supplies, maybe make a few more weapons."

He turned his dark gaze to the gathered characters listening around the fire. "But they will come. Oh yes, they _will_ come. But will you be ready?"

The listeners gaped at Jathen and his story, at the threat of Siryyk's horde, now brought closer to home.

Delrael stood up and clenched his fist. He turned to stare down the trainees. He kept his voice low, but powerful. "Yes, we will be ready!"

* * * *

Vailret kept trying to blink the gummy sleep from his eyes as he shuffled along in the cool dampness before dawn. Delrael had asked him, along with Tareah and Bryl, to meet in the training grounds at daybreak. They needed to discuss things among themselves before all the trainees began to work out. Everyone would be looking toward Delrael for a solution, for a grand quest they could embark upon.

Vailret appreciated the fact that his cousin wanted input from the others. Delrael was a better fighter than any other character; he had more experience with questing, with combat. He knew exactly how to deal with battles and strategy. But for planning and discussion, to look into the consequences of his actions, he needed to talk to someone else.

Vailret and Tareah had enough background in the history of the Game, in the Rules, that they could find more subtle things than Delrael would ever imagine. And Bryl, of course, kept them from doing anything too rash.

Vailret plodded on the wet dirt path up Steep Hill, kicking dew off the toes of his boots. The stripped trees in the surrounding forest looked skeletal and frightening in the strawberry-colored light of daybreak. On the training field, he saw silhouettes of the others huddled down, barely distinguishable from the scarecrow shapes of practice dummies and sword posts. He heard their low voices, but otherwise Gamearth was silent and holding its breath.

Delrael crossed his arms and stood up, looking as if he didn't know what to do on the training field without trainees there.

Bryl saw Vailret coming and raised his voice. "Delrael, you stirred up the trainees last night, and now they're all anxious for battle. You've got the charisma to lead them anywhere -- but what are we really going to do? You can't just go bumbling in and swinging swords! You saw the size of the army against us."

Delrael shrugged. "We know that the monster horde has marched to the city of Taire. They're going to come here sooner or later. So, we have two options: We can either stay here and keep training and waiting, or we can go get them first."

Vailret blinked in surprise. Bryl cried out. "Go get them? Are you crazy?"

Delrael frowned. "That way we can fight on _our_ terms, not theirs. The monster army knows we're here. They'll be ready for us when they get here, they'll mass at the edge of the Barrier River and figure out how to cross it. They'll take us by storm. Once they do, there isn't much left for us."

Then his eyes began to sparkle. "But think of this -- if we launch our army, we can send scouts ahead, find out where the monsters are and what they're doing. We can find a place to ambush them. We can set a trap. Even if we're outnumbered, we can win -- if we pick the terrain and our attack carefully.

"Picture a trap in the Spectre Mountains where the horde needs to file through a narrow gorge or along a cliff face. It'll be easy -- _if_ we get there first. They won't know what hit them." He grinned at Tareah.

"Siryyk thinks we're just sitting here, dreading the day when he comes. We can turn the tables on him. You saw the trainees after Jathen told his story -- our army is ready to fight _now_. That'll work to our advantage. We can ambush the manticore, surprise him."

He shrugged. "And if our first assault doesn't work, we can do it again and again, hounding him as we fall back. We can use the Barrier River as our last defense, not our first."

Vailret pursed his lips. "That does make sense, Del." Bryl looked terrified.

Tareah scowled, thinking about something else entirely. Delrael noticed her expression. "Speak up, Tareah. What is it?"

She fumbled for words, then finally decided what she wanted to say. "What you're planning is fine, Delrael. But, doesn't it avoid the main question? You created the Barrier River, but that wasn't enough. You destroyed Scartaris, but that wasn't enough. Now the monster army is coming, and even if you defeat them, you know that still won't be enough. The Outsiders will come up with another way to attack us." She met Vailret's eyes. "Won't they?

"We have to look beyond one battle to the entire war. Siryyk seems to be our main enemy, but in truth it's the Outsiders. We need to find some way to fight them directly. They want to obliterate Gamearth. We have to escape them, to make Gamearth _real_ on its own, so we no longer need to worry."

Delrael looked disturbed. He let his hand grasp the end of his sword, and Vailret knew the reason for his uncertainty. Delrael needed to fight a tangible enemy, an opponent he could see and strike at. He needed to understand the combat -- and the thought of any direct conflict with the Outsiders was alien to him.

Delrael had once stood mystified in an abandoned Slac fortress while Vailret argued with manifestations of the Outsiders David and Tyrone in their ruined half-imaginary, half-_real_ ship. With assistance from blind Paenar, Bryl had struck out at the Outsiders, driven them back to their own world.

"I concede your point about the Outsiders, Tareah," he said, "But I don't understand what we can do about it. How can we make Gamearth _real_? What kind of weapons do we have that can fight against the Outside? It's a question with no answer."

Tareah smiled at him. "But what if I do have an answer?"

Vailret himself was interested. Bryl looked as if he knew he wasn't going to like it; he seemed too old for all this. Delrael watched her. "I'm listening."

Tareah cleared her throat in uncharacteristic shyness. "We've got the Air Stone, the Water Stone, and the Fire Stone. The Earth Stone is the most powerful of the four, and we know where it is -- still buried in the dragon's treasure hoard on the island of Rokanun. We found it when you and Bryl came to rescue me. Now," She took a deep breath. "If we bring all four Stones together -- well, you remember what happens then."

Delrael frowned and turned his back to them. "Refresh my memory."

Tareah sighed at him. Vailret jumped in. "The old Sorcerers created the four Stones just before they turned themselves into the Earthspirits and Deathspirits. They knew the Transition wouldn't require all their magic -- so they used the rest of it to make the Stones."

Tareah nodded vigorously. Vailret liked the way her pale hair moved in the early morning air. "Yes, and the power in the four gems exceeds the total power of the Spirits. If all four Stones are brought together, the one bearer will hold the entire magic of the Sorcerer race. Enough magic to make a full Transition. This character could become the Allspirit -- more powerful than even the six Spirits together. We know it'll work."

Vailret whistled. "That should be enough."

"I propose this," Tareah said. "While you launch your army eastward to the mountain terrain, dispatch a second party south to Rokanun, to the dragon's treasure pile. Get the Earth Stone and bring it back to the main army. Then one of us will put all four Stones together and create the Allspirit. It's the only way."

Vailret grinned with excitement. "The monsters will be a trivial problem then! The Allspirit should have enough power to break us away from the Outside and hold Gamearth together."

"But who's going to do such a thing?" Delrael asked.

"Our choices are rather limited," she said. "It has to be someone with Sorcerer blood to activate the Stones."

Vailret was afraid to think that Tareah might be suggesting that she do it herself. It would transform her into a supernatural being, but she would cease to be _Tareah_ forever.

A small voice surprised them all. "It might as well be me," Bryl said. Vailret looked at him in surprise, and Bryl sounded defensive. The wrinkles around his eyes made complicated patterns. "I used the Water Stone to call the _dayid_ and stop the forest fire. I used the Air Stone to summon the illusion army for your battle against Scartaris. I have proven that I can handle that kind of power."

Bryl shrugged and huddled down into his blue cloak. "Besides, I'm old. I've done enough in the Game. What have I got to lose? You people will just keep dragging me on quests for the rest of my life anyway."

--------

*Chapter 4*

SITNALTA WITHOUT VERNE

"I don't know why it is so beneficial to us, but Jules and I will continued to work together. From this day forward, we instruct the Council to issue all of our patents jointly, under both names Verne and Frankenstein. We trust this will be satisfactory."

-- Professor Frankenstein, message to the Sitnaltan

Council of Patent Givers

Professor Frankenstein squinted down at the city of Sitnalta. Cool morning mist from the ocean clung to the cobblestoned streets, giving the buildings a muzzy appearance. Off in one hexagon, he could see the lamplighters still at work, clambering up ladders to extinguish the gas mantles for the morning.

Frankenstein stood atop the central ziggurat, the highest point in Sitnalta. They had once placed their powerful defense here -- the Sitnaltan dragon siren, which the city used to fight against Tryos the dragon as he went to and from his island domain across the hexagons of water.

Vailret and blind Paenar had stolen the dragon siren, though, and used the _Nautilus_ designed by Frankenstein and Verne to battle the dragon directly. Luckily they had won, otherwise Sitnalta would have been left defenseless.

Frankenstein curved his lips upward in the closest thing to a smile he ever made. No, Sitnalta was never defenseless -- not with powerful inventors like himself and Verne among its inhabitants.

Where the hexagons of ocean met the black line that delineated the shore, Frankenstein watched three pile-driving cranes, operated with weights, counterweights, and electric generators. In the still air he heard the sharp cracks as they worked. He also watched tiny figures of characters in suits with giant cast-metal helmets. The experimental underwater breathing apparatus would have accompanied the _Nautilus_ sub-marine boat ... but the _Nautilus_ was wrecked now, and he would not want to build another one, not without Verne.

On the streets below he heard a puttering and chugging sound. Leaning over the edge of the ziggurat, he saw someone driving a steam-engine car along a main thoroughfare. Other hissing sounds pointed to where Dirac's street-cleaning engines swirled along, scrubbing the gutters and polishing clean the cracks in the flagstones. Otherwise, Sitnalta seemed quiet and at peace.

A few weeks before, Frankenstein would have been astonished at his own lassitude. He had too many ideas, too many things to invent, too many principles to investigate. Both he and Verne had notebooks filled with sketchy ideas for inventions. He would never have enough time to patent all of them. Working in collaboration, the two professors had become legends in Sitnalta. They had used up an entire series of patent numbers, and begun another set just for themselves.

But now, by himself, it didn't seem the same. With Verne gone and sending no word back, Frankenstein no longer had sufficient eagerness for the work. Looking at their stacks of ideas, he felt overwhelmed with the impossibility of it all. After completing the great and terrible weapon, he had no such drive anymore.

The Sitnaltans had led a research expedition to the crashed Outsiders' ship, to the technological fringe where science grew uncertain. They had dissected the ship, looking at its controls, its molding, the contours, the engines. They had learned enough for a lifetime of analysis.

But at the excavation site, he and Verne had shared the same dream one night, a vision inspired by the Outsider Scott himself. They learned how to remove the ship's power source, part _real_ from the Outside, and part imaginary from within Gamearth -- Frankenstein could not even hypothesize the consequences of such a thing. Their weapon could be used to destroy the evil force of Scartaris. Verne and Frankenstein kept their weapon a secret and rolled dice to determine who would go on the mission to deliver and detonate it. Verne had been the one chosen.

Back in Sitnalta, Frankenstein checked his detectors and found that the force of Scartaris had vanished. But the detectors failed to record any form of detonation, and Frankenstein was sure he would have seen that. They had been afraid the weapon might destroy all of Gamearth.

_Then why hadn't Verne returned?_

Frankenstein squatted on top of the ziggurat, looked out over the city, and sulked. Another few days, and he would propose mounting an expedition to search for his partner.

Steam rose from the stacks of the manufactories and metal-processing centers. The city began to come alive for another day of activity.

The characters below moved about in random patterns, going about their individual business and their predetermined tasks. Frankenstein thought of making a random-motion study, sitting up here all day and plotting the paths of characters. It might give him some insights into the societal structures of insect colonies, since from this height the Sitnaltans appeared similar to a nest of ants.

But as he stared, clicking his fingernails together, the randomness changed. Characters shifted in their courses and moved toward one of the large manufactory buildings by the ocean hexagons, as if drawn by a magnet.

He squinted into the bright sunlight and saw other characters coming from different parts of the city. Many Sitnaltans looked confused and watched them, but others moved with a jerky walk. Frankenstein shaded his eyes, frowning.

Below him, one man moved in an exaggerated lock-step. He flailed his arms wildly. Finally, one foot crossed in front of the other -- apparently intentionally -- and he sprawled to the flagstoned street. "Help me!" he cried out loud.

"What the devil is going on?" Frankenstein said to himself.

But before the man below could shout again, his hand reached out and clapped across his own mouth with a sound loud enough for Frankenstein to hear from the top of the ziggurat. With awkward movements, still holding his own mouth shut, the man rolled onto his knees and jerkily made his way to his feet again; he followed the other Sitnaltans moving toward the big buildings.

"This is insane," Frankenstein said, scrambling down the ziggurat steps. His hard leather shoes slapped on the stones as he ran down. "This is beyond reason!"

Before he reached the hex-cobbled street, one of the secondary manufactories exploded in an orange fireball. The concussion made Frankenstein's ears ring. He lost his balance, falling backward to the ziggurat steps. The tall Sitnaltan buildings obscured his view, but he watched flames and black greasy smoke tumble into the air. From his vantage point he could see the explosion had been in the building where metals were stamped and cast into forms designed by the great inventors.

Several streets away, a loud alarm bell began to ring. He heard shouts as he stumbled to his feet and ran down the street, turning sideways into an alley, a shortcut to the shore. The alarm bell abruptly fell silent, as did the other shouts.

A group of Sitnaltans moved down the street in a strange arthritic shuffle. He called out to them. "What is happening? What's going on?"

The Sitnaltans continued their march. One woman in the back -- he saw it was Mayer, daughter of Dirac -- swivelled around and stared at him; her expression filled with relief and hope upon recognizing him. But when she saw only confusion on Frankenstein's face, she showed despair again.

"What is -- " Suddenly, Frankenstein's right foot lurched out from under him, as if yanked from below the knee by an invisible hand. "What?"

He squirmed, but his leg hung at half-step in the air. His foot wavered left and right, as if testing muscles, and then the leg reached forward to step down on the pavement. His left leg yanked up, moved forward, and stepped down.

"Stop!" Frankenstein shouted to the air. He waved his arms.

An invisible grip slammed his posture straight, jerked his hips forward, and made him take four more stumbling steps. He felt absolutely helpless. "This cannot be happening! I refuse to believe -- there is no explanation for this." But his words felt absurd in the situation.

His own right hand reached out in front of his face. He watched his tumb and forefinger close together several times, like snapping pincers. Then he bent forward and gave his own nose a vicious tweak.

His legs made him run to catch up with the other puppet Sitnaltans.

They strode through the streets toward the central manufactory building. Some of the characters had surrendered and moved along willingly, but others continued to make choking, gurgling sounds as they fought to resist, like good Sitnaltans. Frankenstein felt sweat breaking out all over his body, but he could do nothing.

Beside him, Mayer made her face into a stony expression of outrage, but when she tried to ask him a question, her lips clamped themselves together. He could see from her moving jaws that she was still trying to speak.

Beside the manufactory he could see the smoking rubble from the exploded building. He heard the roar of flames, saw the bodies of several Sitnaltans among the wreckage, burned and moaning, but he could not move to help them. His head twisted around, making him stare ahead.

At the great brick arches of the building, the doors stood wide open, knocked loose from their brass hinges. On the cornerstone of the building, engraved words seemed totally ineffectual:

"BY ESTABLISHING THIS MANUFACTORY,

THE CITY OF SITNALTA DECLARES

ITS SUPERIORITY AND FREEDOM

FROM MAGIC AND THE WAYS OF THE GAME"

As his body lurched, pulling him inside the manufactory, harsh chemical smells made Frankenstein's nose and eyes burn. A cacaphony of banging and hissing sounds beat upon his ears.

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Skylights let bright morning light into the open bay. Steam and multi-colored smoke swirled in the air, making it difficult to see. Giant copper and brass vats stood in rows, studded with polished rivets; these were the processing tanks where Sitnaltans pumped and treated seawater, extracting metals and other elements. Other chambers processed or reduced raw ore they took from outlying hexagons. Pipes and valves led into a circulation system, monitored by gauges and pressure-release vents.

The puppet Sitnaltans swarmed to the tanks and scrambled on the piping, using whatever tools they found to damage everything. Some characters opened valves to spew chemical solutions onto the floor; others banged on pipes with the handles of stir-sticks.

One man struck the side of a copper vat with a heavy sledge hammer, wrestling with his arm all the way. He managed to succeed in dropping the hammer, but then his body bent down, his hand picked it up, and he pounded again at the tank. He dropped the hammer a second time, but then his hand came up and struck him across the face. He picked up the sledge one more time, heaving it back and smashing into the dented side of the vat. The polished rivets popped out, and a section of metal gave way, exposing a seam. Hot seawater gushed out, spraying him in the face and knocking him backward.

Frankenstein found himself at one of the compressors, yanking out connections, twisting a gauge. He stared at his hands as they worked of their own accord, and he snarled at them. "Stop this! You are _my_ hands -- listen to me!"

But his hand only turned, waggled fingers at his face as if sarcastically waving, and then went back to unscrew the gauge. It popped off, shooting into the air and clanging against a ventilation duct. Shunted high-pressure gas hissed out with a shriek.

Mayer dumped one container of chemicals into another vat, which set off a sputtering, burning reaction that knocked her stumbling away. The reaction continued to build.

Frankenstein strained until he felt his muscles ready to snap, resisting the invisible tugs on his own body. Deep in his throat he let out a disjointed animal cry. At any other time, he would have scoffed at himself for such a futile, barbaric gesture.

Then the invisible force vanished, like strings suddenly severed.

Frankenstein fell forward as his straining body plunged back into control again. Several characters collapsed; others screamed and fled the manufactory. As he got to his knees on the concrete floor, blinking, Frankenstein knew the controlling force had not been defeated -- it had left willingly, as if it was just playing a game with them, testing its limits, taunting them.

The chemical reactions continued to bubble in the damaged tanks. Smoke poured from broken equipment. One of the skylights overhead shattered from the rising heat, sending sharp glass shards raining down on the floor.

Frankenstein realized that the fleeing Sitnaltans had the right idea. "Get out of here! Now!" He clapped his hands and shouted to the others standing in a daze. "No telling if this will explode!"

He hurried toward the door. The other characters needed no encouragement and ran for the exits, jostling each other and sloshing through spilled chemicals on the floor, stumbling, some blinded or with burned hands.

A block away from the big building, Frankenstein stopped and watched the manufactory. Colored smoke continued to pour through the broken skylights and out the windows and doors.

Mayer stood beside him with her calloused hands balled into fists. Smoke and grease smeared her face, and her short dark hair had been singed, curled away from one ear. Her voice carried a vicious tone; she seemed to be continuing an argument with herself and spoke out loud only because Frankenstein was listening.

"That was _magic_, Professor! How dare they!"

She turned and stared at the burning wreckage, squinting her eyes. "How dare they use _magic_." She spat out the word. "Magic has no place in Sitnalta. It's not even supposed to work here. What's happening?"

Frankenstein felt weak. His muscles trembled, and his thoughts spun with the turmoil. He only half-listened to what Mayer was saying. "What are we going to do, Professor?" she demanded.

He did not look at her, but continued to stare at the smoke. Other Sitnaltans scurried over the rubble of the adjacent manufactory, removing bodies and helping injured characters.

"Our technology is more powerful than magic," he said. "We have our minds. We have our imaginations. We have all the resources of the Rules of Science."

He took a deep breath. Verne wasn't here, and Frankenstein would have to work solo for the first time in many turns. "I vow to use all my talent, all my resources to defeat this abomination."

He worked his mouth, as if to swallow away a bad taste. "Magic in Sitnalta! The very thought of it!" Frankenstein shook his head. "This is a matter of personal pride now."

--------

*Chapter 5*

RIVER CROSSING

"An adventure begins when the journey begins. Characters need not reach the end of their quest before they encounter interesting events."

-- _The Book of Rules_

Delrael was amazed at how much effort it took to set out with an entire army. On other quests, he and his companions had simply packed up and departed at dawn. Now, though, trainees asked him thousands of questions, they argued among themselves on how do the same tasks, they packed and repacked, studied maps, and worked themselves into a mixture of excitement and dread. If they delayed much longer, that anxiety and aggression would backfire.

Delrael paced up and down, tired and hungry because he had not found enough time to sleep or take meals. He hated to think of so many things at once, so many meaningless details -- he wanted to set off and _do_ something. Couldn't they take care of administrative squabbles along the way? He wasn't sure he was cut out to be a commander of such a large force.

Yellowed leaves blew through the encampment. The weapon makers had cut down so many of the surrounding trees that debris lay scattered on the hillside, adding dead leaves to those already falling from the end of the season.

Finally, tired of pacing and unable to think of anything else that absolutely had to be done, Delrael whistled and formed up the front ranks, directing them to start off down the quest-path toward the Barrier River. "Enough of this," he said. "Let's go!"

A few of the fighters didn't seem to know whether they were supposed to cheer or not; some did anyway. Delrael stood in his leather armor, listening to the ragged mixture of sounds. The fighters talked to each other and moved about, but they seemed just as happy to be on the move.

Delrael watched them march by, nodding and smiling to any character who met his eyes. His father Drodanis would have been at the front, waving his sword and leading all the fighters. But Delrael's army would not need a battle commander for a while, and they knew which quest-path to follow.

As the army marched into the forest, Delrael went back to take a last look at his village. In the frosty morning, it stood deserted except for those characters who could not handle the journey, a few old men and women and young children who had come to the Stronghold not to train, but to offer their assistance in the preparations. The open spaces showed the marks of a sprawling encampment, scars from tent stakes, black smears of cooking fires. He saw the broad ash-strewn circle from the central bonfire where they burned their garbage among splintered and knotty wood unsuitable to be made into arrows or other weapons.

Delrael stared at the empty houses, the stripped trees, the Steep Hill on which he could see remnants of the Stronghold defenses and the newly erected training area. He wondered if this was the last time he would ever see his home. Turning his back on that thought, he hurried into the forest to catch up with the rest of the troops. _Some commander!_, he thought.

As the army journeyed through the morning, Delrael moved among the groups, chatting with characters and maintaining their morale. Jorte, who operated the village gaming hall, and Mostem the baker also kept the trainees talking about their villages and past quests. Vailret helped as well, though he seemed to spend a lot more time with Tareah.

Bryl seemed quiet and withdrawn. Delrael knew how worried he must be with the great responsibility he had undertaken, not to mention the aches in his old bones from the prospect of a prolonged journey. Once the army crossed the Barrier River, Bryl and Vailret would split off on their own quest. Together those two would journey south to Rokanun and secure the Earth Stone.

Delrael wanted to go with them, a reminder of old quests -- theirs seemed to be a more enjoyable adventure, especially with all the headaches just to keep his army together. But Delrael was the nominal leader of these fighters, and he had to stay with them. Besides, he could never again go near the city of Sitnalta with its technological fringe, where science worked and magic failed -- his left leg was carved of magical _kennok_ wood, and he could use it as well as his real leg. But in Sitnalta, without magic, the leg would refuse to function, perhaps permanently, and Delrael would be a cripple. No, he had to stay with his army.

From their previous expedition to Rokanun, Bryl knew exactly where to find the Earth Stone. But since the two of them would be alone against the hazards of Gamearth, Bryl would also take the Air Stone and the Fire Stone for their protection. Tareah would keep the Water Stone to aid the main army in any skirmishes.

If everything worked out as planned, Vailret and Bryl could hurry back with their prize and join Delrael's army somewhere in the Spectre Mountains. They could then use the magic in the Stones to fight Siryyk's horde, or Bryl could transform himself into the Allspirit right there. They hadn't quite decided that part yet.

Delrael's fighters traveled over forested-hill, forest, and grassland terrain on their first day. When they bedded down on the edge of another hexagon, Delrael sensed the excitement among the army. That would change as the journey grew longer, but for now they seemed caught up in the adventure. He leaned back against the trunk of a tree, then reached up to touch his fingers to a knob of bark. Sighing, he bent his knees and let his eyes close in a much-appreciated moment of rest.

Siya came by and offered him a blanket, which he waved away. During the previous two days, she had proven herself invaluable, thinking of countless things they had forgotten to do, supplies to be packed, tools, equipment.

Jathen the Tairan muttered a goodnight before trudging off into the shelter of trees, where he would sleep away from the main group. Jathen tossed fitfully in his sleep, in the grip of nightmares, and he chose not to disturb anyone else. From what Delrael himself had seen in Taire, he could well imagine some of the nightmares that Jathen suffered....

For three days the army continued through hexagons of forested terrain. Delrael had crossed this landscape before, but never with hundreds of characters marching beside him in a group much too wide for the quest-path. They forged through the trees, spreading out and scouting the area. It seemed more like a carnival than a group of fighters on a quest.

The terrain remained easy, causing no troubles -- until they reached the Barrier River on the third day.

The vast river stood before them, rushing past with gray water channeled from the Northern Sea. The quest-path stopped abruptly at the hex-line boundary of the river; it would have continued across the terrain, had it not been submerged by the irresistible wall of water down the length of the map.

The Barrier River looked uncrossable, with its swift current a full hex wide. The fighters stared in expressions of awe and disbelief. Delrael stood on the bank in silence, remembering how he had convinced Sardun to create the river, in exchange for their rescuing his daughter Tareah.

The air felt brisk against Delrael's cheeks as he rested before he faced the problem of crossing. He heard the ripple of water swirling around the sharp hex-line and listened to the rustle of leaves in tall trees above. He could smell the dampness in the air, the cloying wet stink of all the toppled trees and forest debris decomposing beneath the water.

Some of the exhausted characters knelt on the black line and dipped their hands in the water, splashing it on their faces, rubbing their eyes. Delrael did the same, scrubbing his sweaty, itching head in the river.

He listened to the restless sounds of the other characters, shifting packs, sitting down to rest, tromping into the forest. He heard Siya break out their supplies; Tareah and Vailret helped her distribute them.

Delrael stood up and adjusted the chafing leather armor on his chest, when he heard a crunching sound in the trees. The army stirred off to his left; some of the fighters stood up, others looked around.

A big man came into view riding a tall black horse. Delrael used his fingers to spread dripping hair away from his eyes and forehead; he felt a trickle of water behind his ear. The man on the horse rode through the army, as if looking for someone. Delrael stepped forward and introduced himself.

The stranger snapped to attention, then urged his horse forward. The man was very large and muscular, a full hand taller than Delrael. His blond hair streamed back to his shoulderblades, so pale and fine that it looked white. The black horse showed velvety purple shadows on its hide as the muscles rippled. The hooves bore scuffed iron shoes; its saddle, bridle, and reins looked immaculately cared for, with gleaming silver studs.

The stranger wore black leather armor, and a vest with a badge carved on the right breast, showing a white field with the dark silhouette of a bird of prey, wings spread and claws extended to strike. On his back, the man carried a long bow and a quiver bristling with arrows. At his side hung a two-handed sword, and a dagger poked up from his belt.

Yet with all the weapons and armor and black trappings, the man looked beatific, his face unblemished, his eyebrows perfectly curved and thin. A faint flush showed the chill on his pale skin.

"My greetings, Delrael. I've heard of your army and your call to arms. My name is Corim. As a representative of the Black Falcon troops, I crossed the river and came to your Stronghold to exchange information and to offer our services. But the Stronghold was in ruins, and some of the characters there told me you had already departed. So I rode hard in the direction I knew you would be taking."

_Black Falcon troops?_ Delrael thought. He looked around for Vailret, who would probably be able to explain Corim's group.

"Black Falcons!" Vailret said in a loud voice to the stranger. "Are you planning to do anything useful? Or are you just here to cause havoc as you have in the past?"

Corim surprised Delrael by ignoring Vailret entirely. Delrael looked to his cousin, but wasn't sure what to think. Offhand, this man appeared to be an awesome warrior. If Corim had troops of similar fighters, how could Delrael turn down the offer of reinforcements? "What are you talking about, Vailret?"

"The Black Falcons, Del!" Vailret seemed surprised when Delrael gave him only a questioning gaze. Vailret made an exasperated expression, but Tareah spoke in a patient voice. Delrael felt embarrassed as she tried not to talk down to him.

"The Black Falcons have been here since the Scouring, but at least there's not many of them. They go around killing any non-human character they find. They band together and use all their strength to wipe out harmless races, like the ylvans or the khelebar."

Sarcasm laced her voice. "Apparently for all their strength, they're too frightened to attack anything dangerous like the Slac or the wandering monsters across the map."

"That is a lie," Corim said in a flat voice. "The Black Falcon troops strike at any enemies we find. We've slaughtered whole regiments of Slac, we've defeated dozens of ogres and individual monsters. And yes, we have also struck against the khelebar, who caused great damage to human characters in the past. If you doubt that, your knowledge of the Game is ... not accurate."

Tareah looked ready to blurt out something else, but Corim continued. "When the old Sorcerer race went on their Transition, they gave Gamearth to _human_ characters, the ones formed in their own image. That's what the Scouring was all about -- the enemy character races trying to wipe each other out. Despite our defenses, the Slac nearly succeeded in conquering the entire map. Only by the efforts of the Black Falcon troops, working with other human fighters and the Sentinels, did we turn them back to their mountain fortresses." Corim stood silent for a moment. His lips were so pale they looked the same color as his skin.

"The map is still infested with threats to human characters. We split no hairs -- Gamearth is ours. We have no wish to share it with races that fought against us in the past. They might be peaceful now, but who's to say they won't turn against us again? It makes no difference if they're direct threats such as the Slac, or parasites like the ylvan. They're equally bad in our eyes."

He looked at Delrael, then jerked his chin in the direction of Tareah and Vailret. "Who are these people, Delrael?"

Keeping his voice even and his face plain so as not to betray his anger, Delrael nodded to the two of them. "Vailret is my close advisor. Tareah is the daughter of Sardun. She's one of the most powerful characters left on the map."

Corim's eyebrows raised, but he made no comment.

Delrael remembered the gentle but distraught khelebar who had fought so valiantly to save their forest from burning, and the khelebar woman Thilane who had healed his destroyed leg; without her magic of replacing his leg with one made of _kennok_ wood, he would have bled to death. Now, when he disrobed and ran his fingers over the soft, warm surface of the living wood, he could see the grain from the stunted _kennok_ tree -- and he could also feel his own touch, he could move his toes, he could do everything with it. He owed his life to the khelebar, whom Corim dismissed as being enemies.

He also thought of Tallin, the tough little forest man they had rescued from Gairoth. Tallin's entire ylvan village had been numbed by Scartaris, even from a vast distance, which made them easy prey for the ogre. Tallin was a good companion, and a good friend -- until the Anteds killed him.

"What is it you're offering, Corim?" Delrael said.

The Black Falcon rider looked at Delrael's army, but his face remained expressionless. Delrael thought he detected a hint of scorn, though he saw nothing overt.

"We can offer our help in fighting this monster army marching against Gamearth. Despite what your ... advisor and your Sorceress say, the Black Falcon troops are devoted beyond anything else. We have been for generations. The survival of the Game is our foremost concern.."

Delrael stood, feeling inadequate with his dripping hair and unkempt appearance in front of this monolith of a man. He thought for just a moment, then answered.

"You're welcome to join us. We'd be foolish not to accept the assistance of your troops. But are you going to focus your efforts on fighting the monster horde? That's the _only_ enemy that should concern us. I forbid you to waste any time, any effort, or any resources on attacking friendly character races."

Corim scowled down from his horse. Delrael could smell the horse and the leather of the saddle, the hint of sweat on Corim's uniform. He also noted a sour, rotten smell from the bulging saddle bags, and Delrael didn't want to know what they carried.

"Sometimes you must trim away small roots before you may topple a large tree," Corim said, keeping his voice low.

"Sometimes," Vailret interrupted, "you can get so busy trimming those roots that you don't see the tree about to fall on you."

Corim yanked on the reins of his horse. When the Black Falcon rider spoke, he seemed to disregard everything they had said. "I don't have time to share a meal with you, Delrael. I'll bring your terms to Annik, our leader. We'll meet again. Perhaps as allies."

"I hope so," Delrael said. He wondered if he was starting to sound more like a true commander.

Corim rode the horse directly between Delrael and where Vailret and Tareah stood. Vailret stepped back, exaggerating his reaction to how close the horse had come. The horse charged through the trees and plunged over the black line into the river.

It sank up to the top of its saddle and began to swim across the current, tossing its head but keeping its gaze on the line of the opposite bank. Corim did not turn back. His blond hair glinted in the sunlight. The current yanked the horse at a diagonal across the river, but the Black Falcon rider seemed unconcerned about where they would come to shore.

Delrael turned back around and refused to watch Corim's receding silhouette against the rushing water. Vailret put his hands on his hips, scowling. "Well, what are we going to do about that, Del?" The other characters were listening.

"We're not going to do anything about it," Delrael answered, realizing that his voice had grown testy. "We'll let them make their move. If they want to fight with us, they can help a lot. But we'll succeed without them, and I won't have them in my army if they go slaughtering the khelebar or the ylvans."

He sighed, then clapped his hands, raising his voice so that the characters would pay attention. "Enough of the show! We've got bigger problems to worry about."

Delrael looked over his shoulder at the river. Corim, small now in the distance, worked his way around a dead tree half-submerged in the current.

" -- such as crossing this river."

Normally, he would have asked Vailret's help in planning such an operation, but Delrael felt heady with responsibility. He could do it himself. He made it clear in his mind exactly what he wanted to do.

Delrael separated his fighters into different groups for building rafts that would carry them to the opposite bank. He selected teams to scout out nearby trees, others to work at felling them, still others to trim away the main branches and tie the trunks together. The army had enough work to keep busy for several days, but they would cross in a grand procession.

Jathen plunged into his job with enormous stamina, hacking at branches protruding from fallen trunks. His woodworking ax smacked into the wood with the solid sound of a sword connecting one of the practice posts. Chips of bark and sweet white wood sprayed in the air around him. Jathen pulled off his tunic even in the cool air. Dust and dirt smeared his chest, clinging to his sweat. Jathen's whole world seemed focused on what he was doing, as if to distract him from anything else that might haunt him.

As Delrael watched them fall to their directed tasks, he felt a growing pride -- all these scattered fighter characters from villages up and down the map were now mobilized into a real unit, like a Sitnaltan machine where all the pieces worked together.

Delrael's idea was to construct several rafts the size of barges to haul his fighting force across the water. There, the characters would cover the rafts with brush. If his army was on the run from Siryyk's horde, if their ambushes and defensive battles failed, they could uncover their rafts and escape down the river, leaving the manticore and all the monsters stranded behind.

As the other characters worked, Tareah wore an atypical scowl. Even in her mended clothes, she still looked beautiful to Delrael, with her long pale hair and the sapphire Water Stone hanging at her neck. He smiled at her, but she only glared at him. He felt crestfallen, wondering what he had done wrong.

Vailret finally spoke with her out of earshot. Tareah said something to him, shaking her head; Vailret looked surprised, rapping his knuckles against his forehead as if to demonstrate his own stupidity. He grabbed her arm, dragging her toward Delrael.

"Del, Tareah's got -- "

"If he wants to ignore my abilities, I'll let him." She refused to look at Delrael. "He's the one paying in sweat and sore muscles, after all."

He still couldn't fathom what had upset her. "Tareah, what did I do to make you angry -- "

She stood with her hands on her hips. For a moment Delrael saw a reflection of furious Sardun, who had attacked them when they first entered the Ice Palace.

"Why do you keep stopping me from doing anything to help you? I'm one of the most powerful characters on all of Gamearth. You made a _point_ of that to the Black Falcon rider -- and yet, when you have to cross this river, why doesn't it occur to you that I could make an ice bridge with the Water Stone? Would your fighters really rather spend days building rafts by brute force?"

Delrael blinked his eyes in surprise. He felt shocked and stupid. The other characters stood up beside the fallen logs and pressed sweaty hair away from their eyebrows. The forest looked churned up from their efforts; stripped logs lay scattered about.

Delrael felt his cheeks burning. Tareah was right. She could help them cross with a single spell. He always tried to do everything he could to impress her, but in the back of his mind he still remembered her as the little girl who had waited to be rescued on the island of Rokanun, _waited_ for some hero to come because that was how she thought the Game was played.

But she had changed much since then.

The weary characters glared at him, upset that they had done their work for nothing. Jathen stood up, blinking, but impatient: he didn't seem to mind the work, but just didn't want to stop.

Delrael stared at the gray, fast-moving river behind them. It looked treacherous even if they were on rafts. He forced himself to meet Tareah's eyes. "The rafts are a known risk, Tareah," he said. "And we'll have them there waiting for our return. Can you be sure your bridge won't collapse with our army halfway across?"

"If the spell works, it works. You'll know that as soon as I roll."

"Even with the Rules breaking?" Vailret said.

Tareah considered the question only long enough to shrug. "If that's the case, how do you know the rafts will float?"

Delrael knew how long it would take them to complete the rafts and slowly work their way across the current. He could well lose as many characters over the sides.

"Tareah, will you help us cross the river?" he asked.

Looking more relieved than smug, she nodded. "Yes. I will."

Tareah brushed her cheeks and arms as if preparing herself -- her expression looked truly eager to be part of things, to be helping out. Vailret nodded to her in encouragement.

"Get the fighters ready," Tareah said. Her voice was low and husky. "My father used the Water Stone to maintain the entire Ice Palace, but I don't want to hold up a bridge any longer than I have to. I'm not quite as confident as he was."

Delrael called to the other characters. Jathen pulled his tunic on again, tugged the lacings, and stood restless, shuffling his feet. Some fighters dipped their hands in the cold river water, trying to scrub away splinters or chafed skin.

Bryl went beside Tareah. "Need any help?"

She shook her head, then stepped between the trees to stand at the black line at the edge of the Barrier River. Her brown blouse and many-colored skirt had belonged to Delrael's mother. "Fielle liked this skirt," Siya had said when she took it out of a storage trunk and gave it to the newly grown Tareah.

Delrael didn't know what to think about Tareah fitting his mother's clothes. He rarely thought of his mother any more, not since she had died of a fever years before. Because of that, Delrael's father had gone into grief-stricken seclusion. He eventually fled the Game entirely, going in search of a legendary Pool of Peace inhabited by the Rulewoman Melanie.

Drodanis had left Delrael to run the Stronghold, without much training and experience. Delrael resented him for that, sometimes -- but other times he saw it as a trial by fire that had forced him to grow into a better fighter, a better player in the Game. Drodanis had made no contact with them for years, until he sent a message stick to warn Delrael about the threat of Scartaris. While offering no assistance of his own, he charged Delrael with a quest to find a way to save Gamearth. That message stick had caused Delrael to bring about the Barrier River, to protect them.

And now Tareah gazed at the immense river Sardun had created -- she, too, had to live up to the greatness of her father.

Tareah held the gleaming Water Stone in her hands. In silence, Delrael motioned his hands backward, making the other fighter characters step away. He bumped into Vailret's elbow, startling both of them.

Tareah held her head high, and her pale hair continued to drift back in the river breeze. Delrael remembered her in her little-girl body standing up like a great Sorcerer queen, using the power of the Stones against the dragon.

He heard only the rippling water and the occasional cough and shifting noise of the gathered characters. The army seemed to be holding its breath as Tareah knelt. She rolled the Water Stone on the ground. A smooth sapphire face stared upward into the clear sky, showing a chiselled "4."

Tareah, staring with half-closed eyes and acting as if she didn't want to break her concentration, snatched up the sapphire. She planted her feet squarely apart so that her boots dug into the soft mud and rested high on the black hex-line. One of her hands crooked, the fingers moved.

The water of the Barrier River responded, pushing up in a hump and then squeezing forward like clay, frosting and turning solid as it became ice. More water curled up under it, lapping, freezing, and extending the curved surface out.

Tareah moved her other hand, bringing her elbows close to her ribs in a silent pushing gesture. The tongue of ice bucked, widened, and lurched farther out, suspended over the choppy surface of the river.

The magic flowed through Tareah now, and the water churned into froth around the base of the ice bridge. The wide white footpath looped but held firm, rippling and thrusting like someone squeezing dough through a tube.

As the arch rose through the center of the hex-wide river, it began to curve toward the opposite shore. The base in front of Tareah's spread feet grew thicker and wider. Icicles dribbled down from its sides, growing thicker and plunging into the water as support struts.

Tareah made a coughing sound. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut; her forehead was wrinkled. Delrael wanted to place his hands on her shoulders, to comfort her or to add strength somehow -- but he didn't dare break her concentration and send the ice bridge crumbling into the swirling waters.

The characters began to mutter in appreciation and awe. Jorte, the keeper of the village gaming hall, made an enthusiastic cheer. But Delrael whirled around with a glare and silenced them all.

Tareah clenched both her hands into fists around the Water Stone. She lifted her head up, and it was as if she could see even with her eyes closed. The ribbon of ice fell a hexagon away and struck the opposite shore, completing the link. She relaxed a little. Her shoulders slumped, her fingers remained curled around the sapphire.

The ice continued to thicken and widen as more water flowed up to freeze along the bridge. Its surface became stubbled and rough, with steplike projections on the steepest part of the curve.

Tareah spoke, but kept her face directed across the river. "Send them across. It'll hold now. But don't take any longer than necessary."

Delrael motioned with his left arm. Some of characters acted uneasy; Delrael climbed up onto the bridge first, in his role as their brave leader, moving at a brisk pace. Vailret followed behind, then Jathen. Bryl came up with Siya, and then the other fighters started to march along.

Delrael hurried. He didn't know how Tareah would come over herself, but he kept moving. The air around the bridge blew bitterly cold. Less than a man-length wide, the ice bridge felt hard and slick under his feet. He had to pay attention to where he set his feet and could not allow himself to be distracted by the gurgling waters against the icicle struts below.

He did peer over the edge and see, submerged in the current, rocks and the murky shadows of toppled trees. Some distance to the south he made out a black line parallel to the bridge, which marked the boundary of the next river hexagon.

The last time he had crossed this river had been on Enrod's raft, pushed by the cursed Sentinel. Delrael wondered about Enrod now. He could sense Jathen close behind him, and did not want to mention the fallen Sorcerer who had been a hero to the Tairans.

Delrael found it difficult to keep his balance on the downward curve of the opposite side, but managed to set foot on the bank again. Behind him Vailret slipped with the heels of his boots and fell on his backside into the mud. It showed the others to be careful, and Vailret managed to laugh at it; Delrael wondered if he had done the stunt on purpose, to make a point for them all.

Delrael reached out to take Siya's hand, but she refused. Bryl scowled at her and worked his own careful way down. "You don't get much help these days. You should take it when it's offered."

She snorted. "_You_ might be an invalid, but I'm not yet."

Vailret turned and squinted toward Tareah waiting on the opposite bank. The line of fighters continued to cross over the walkway. They began milling in the nearby forest terrain to keep from crowding the base of the bridge.

Jathen stood beside the other characters, but remained silent. He looked at the river, then gazed deep into the forest terrain that hid their long journey toward Taire. Delrael wondered what it had been like for him to take a log and swim across the cold river. No wonder Jathen had been sick and exhausted by the time he reached the Stronghold village.

Scattered around the riverbank, Delrael noticed the burned spots of many different campfires, as if a great number of characters had waited there. Up and down the hex-line, he saw other dead fires spaced equally apart. One still smoldered.

"Here she comes!" Vailret whispered.

The last of the fighters had crossed over. The colorful figure of Tareah climbed up and strode along the ice bridge she had made. He couldn't quite make out what she was doing until she reached the apex and began to descend toward them.

The delicate icicle bridge melted into silvery trickles of water, pouring back into the river only one step behind her as she moved along. Tareah walked with stiff legs and a shuffling step that showed just how much she concentrated to maintain her spell. As she walked closer, the melt water splashed and drummed into the river like a heavy downpour filled with chunks of ice.

Delrael caught her as she stumbled the last few steps toward the bank. He pulled her off the base of the bridge as it suddenly collapsed into a great wave that smacked back into the silty river. The big splash dumped water and mud on those who stood too close to the hex-line.

Delrael held Tareah a second longer than he absolutely needed to. She pulled away, looking tired but exhilarated. She brushed herself off and tried to smear some of the mud from her sleeve. She gazed back over the river. "I did it!"

Delrael grinned back at her. "I should have known you could." He avoided her eyes. " -- without you needing to remind me."

He looked at the scattered dead campfires again, then he heard someone moving in the forest behind him. For a moment he thought some of his fighters had gone to gather firewood.

As he turned, Delrael saw a tall powerfully built man walking along the quest-path out of the trees. He had long dark hair and a voluminous black beard; his eyes looked red. His white robe must have once looked magnificent, trimmed in purple, but now it was tattered and stained. Finger-smeared lines of ashes marked a strange pattern on the cloth. The man appeared healthy, though; powerful and confident. He cocked his head from one side to the other, fixing a fiery glare at random tree trunks, then at the human fighters.

Delrael recognized the Sentinel immediately.

Before he could say anything, Jathen brushed past him and stopped two steps away from the man, blinking, his mouth open in astonishment. His usual stunned expression now held hope and excitement. "Enrod!" he cried. "I knew you wouldn't desert us."

Enrod the Sentinel stopped and surveyed the army. When he saw Delrael and Vailret and Bryl among the gathered fighters, a flicker of confused recognition passed across his red eyes. Delrael found himself cringing inside, not knowing what would happen. This was the Sorcerer who had tried to destroy them all with the Fire Stone.

"I was ... wondering when characters would come," Enrod said. His eyes looked up and off to the side, as if listening to voices in his head. "Waiting for you."

--------

*Chapter 6*

DEPARTURES

"All quest-paths lead to adventure, treasure, combat, perhaps death. Which route will you take?"

-- _The Book of Rules_

Vailret felt uneasy watching the dark-haired Sorcerer, wondering how much Enrod remembered. What if Scartaris had damaged his mind so much that he would always be a threat?

With the curious army around him, Enrod stood by the bank of the Barrier River, digging his fingernails into the bark of a tree. He sniffed, then turned his head to one of the still-smoldering fires along the bank. He smiled, then nodded to the gray ash-clumps of other dead fires.

"I can still make fire." He bent down and smeared his hands in the cold remnants of one fire, pawing about for an ember. He held up a blackened lump of wood, but it held no spark. He dropped it with a disappointed sigh.

By the bank, Vailret looked at where Enrod's crude raft had washed up against dangling roots. Vailret remembered riding on it with Delrael and Bryl, surrounded by mist. Enrod had poled on, not seeing, only continuing his endless journey as decreed by the Deathspirits. When Vailret tried to snap him out of his trance, Enrod had moved with lightning speed, sending Vailret sprawling against the wet logs. The Sentinel had never spoken a word.

Now Enrod splashed his ash-coated hands in the rushing water, confused by all the characters watching him.

"How long have you been ... awake again, Enrod?" Vailret asked. Despite his misgivings, Enrod of Taire would be a great ally if he fought with them against the enemy horde. Delrael stood watching, as if he had not yet made up his mind about the Sentinel.

Enrod continued to stare at his broken raft hung up on the black hex-line. Mud and silt had clogged up under one corner. A broken blade of grass drifted by, bobbing on a ripple, and then continued out of sight downstream.

"Days. Not sure." He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Some of the wet ashes stained his lips.

"Like a dream. The Deathspirits ... held me. Couldn't think. Couldn't move. Back and forth across the river." He stared out at the hexagon-wide current. "Until now. Scartaris is dead, Deathspirits gone. I'm left here on this side. Where do I go?"

He looked at them, turning his head so he might see all the characters there. But his eyes remained unfocused. "Something happened in my city. Scartaris." He closed his eyes and pushed a hand against the side of his head. "Made me think things. Do things. It still echoes in my head!" His expression snapped into clarity and the words came out with sudden focus. "I always wanted to rebuild Taire -- that was my goal, but I could only think of burning."

He fixed his stare on Delrael, but it seemed to carry no antagonism. "Because you created this river."

"We destroyed Scartaris," Delrael said. "You shouldn't want to hurt us."

"Not ... anymore," Enrod said.

Vailret bent forward. "The Earthspirits came to fight Scartaris. So did the Deathspirits. They vanished from Gamearth again, gone dormant to rest. Maybe they forgot about you, loosened your curse."

"Forgot about me." Enrod made a thin smile. "But I can still make fire." He kicked at the ashes in a circle by his feet.

"The Deathspirits could have gone off to their other realms, to play Games of their own creation," Tareah said. "That's why they made the Transition in the first place."

"I don't know. But they're gone." Delrael sounded impatient with the discussion. "It's a good thing you didn't stop trying to fight against them." He hesitated. "Are you all right?"

"Never stop trying. Never." Enrod turned his gaze back to the washed-up raft. "This is no longer part of me. Gone."

He planted his foot on a corner of the raft and, bracing himself against the tree, he shoved the log. The raft lurched out into the current, leaving a cloud of mud in the water. The raft swerved one way and then curled around the other as it crawled into the current.

"Why I stayed in Taire for so many turns. In the desolation." Enrod stared away from the river, back to the east. "Never stop trying."

Jathen came up beside Enrod. His heavy eyebrows and dark hair hung about him. His eyes glinted bright against the nightmares behind them. "Enrod, you and I are the last survivors of Taire. When Scartaris sent you away, he made the rest of us Tairans do his work. We had to create weapons and shields for him!"

"Weapons -- from Taire?" Enrod sounded astonished.

"We supplied his horde of monsters. We sweated and worked -- " Jathen swallowed and turned his face away. "We gave ourselves. Hundreds of us were skinned for leather, butchered and dried for meat to feed his army -- " Jathen looked as if he were about to gag, then he whirled back. All the nightmares had resurfaced.

"That's the worst part, isn't it, Enrod?" He stood up straight with his anger. "Yes, we're free of the control. We can do what we want now. But we're not free of the memories. Scartaris made us do what he wanted. But he didn't hold our minds tightly enough to make us unaware of our actions. And now that I can remember what we were doing, it's burning me up inside. Because if I can remember so clearly, why couldn't I refuse?"

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"It's not your fault, Jathen," Delrael said.

But the Tairan turned to him and snapped. "It isn't? I worked in the tannery. Didn't I know what I was doing? Was Scartaris so powerful that he could direct every finger that moved? Every step I took? Every ... cut with the knife? I can see it all in front of me. I spent days there, skinning people, characters that I had known and grown up with, fought with and worked with. But none of that stopped me. Maybe if I'd tried harder I could have resisted. But I didn't. I took the knife. They stood before me -- their eyes were pupilless, focused ahead, unseeing.

"But if I can remember what I was doing, surely they knew what was about to happen to them! Scartaris wouldn't let them do anything more than stand there and wait as I drove a knife into their throats. At the last minute, did he release them, let them feel their own dying? I wouldn't doubt it. Why should he bother to waste energy controlling them as they bled out on the floor of the tannery? While I stood waiting for them to stop jerking and writhing so I could skin them more easily and not waste a bit of their leather."

Enrod interrupted him and spoke in a quiet but piercing voice. Jathen's words seemed to intensify Enrod, forcing back the maze of shadows in his mind. "If you're responsible for all that, then I must be responsible for everything that I did." He paused. "And that's not a burden I can bear right now. Look ahead, not back."

"And forget about Taire?" Jathen asked. His expression looked dumbfounded that his hero, the great Sentinel Enrod, would suggest such a thing.

"No, never forget," Enrod said. He looked behind him to the clustered trees and the quest-path that wound eastward away from the river. "Go back there."

Jathen held his breath in anticipation. Vailret could feel the tension in the air. Enrod brought his attention back to Delrael. "I will follow your army. Fight for Taire."

Delrael's voice was gruff. Vailret could see that his cousin wasn't sure how much to say about their plans. "That's where we're going."

Enrod drew himself up, didn't quite smile, but tugged a lock of black hair away from his face. Vailret noticed for the first time a thin streaking of white hairs in his beard. "I still have many powers. Spells." Enrod looked down at his own hands, his tattered robe, as if embarrassed at the level to which he had sunk. "I lost the Fire Stone."

Delrael appeared about to say something, but Bryl suddenly broke in. Vailret realized that Bryl had covered up his own two Stones as soon as they saw Enrod again. Since Scartaris had used the eight-sided Fire Stone as a conduit to corrupt Enrod, Vailret silently agreed with Bryl's decision.

"The Fire Stone is -- safe," Bryl said.

* * * *

The following morning, Vailret and Bryl prepared to go down their own quest-path as the remainder of the army broke camp.

"Time to go," Vailret said, clapping Bryl's shoulder. He had not been looking forward to this moment, but they had no time to waste. "The Earth Stone is waiting for us."

"I'll be sad to see you leave," Tareah said, smiling at him. Her words made Vailret's skin tingle with delight. He shuffled his feet.

His mother Siya gave him a brief hug, hesitated, then gave him a much larger one, to his embarrassment. Siya turned with tears in her eyes and snapped at the characters around them. "What are you looking at!"

Vailret felt uncomfortable with the entire ritual. He did not look forward to leaving the protection of the large army. As he stood there, wishing he could just be on his way, he had to wait as Delrael and Jathen bid them luck on their quest, as did other fighters he had come to know during training. It seemed to take forever.

"With all the luck we're being offered, we shouldn't have any troubles at all," Bryl muttered to him.

"No," Vailret said, "none at all."

--------

INTERLUDE: OUTSIDE

The sheen in Melanie's eyes made David want to slap her face to shake her out of it. But she would be completely beyond reason; Gamearth held her mind too firmly. David could only hope the others were not as weak -- or everything was already lost.

"It's all or nothing tonight, David." Melanie's voice was like the growl of a small dog that wanted to sound threatening. It didn't seem like her own voice anymore, and it probably wasn't.

She had won the dice roll when David contested her use of the character Enrod. Enrod had been David's own character, raised in Taire, which was _his_ city. He had used Scartaris to send Enrod to attack the Stronghold, to weaken Melanie and stop her desperate schemes to keep the Game going.

But Melanie claimed that since David had abandoned Enrod, the character was up for grabs. So she took him. She beat David by one point in the dice roll.

Something about the way the dice fell made David more concerned. If the powers of the Game could reach out and manipulate them, if it could stop the phone from working, make his car engine refuse to start ... couldn't it also alter dice rolls? Couldn't Gamearth play itself if it wanted, and make sure it won?

But David could not accept that. The very foundation of Gamearth was built on the Rules. The Rules could not be tossed aside so easily. If Gamearth was willing to break those Rules, then the map would go about destroying itself without any help from him.

Tyrone squinted at the map, pressing his face close to the painted hexagons. "I thought we might be able to see it. The ice bridge, you know? Like we could see the Barrier River when we created it."

David fought back his resentment. Tyrone was so focused on how much _fun_ he had with the growing Game, that he couldn't conceive of any danger.

"It would have melted already, Tyrone. You should have looked before the round ended," Scott said. Nothing else, no censure about "being ridiculous." David had won an important victory with Scott, who always insisted on a rational explanation. At least Scott now realized the seriousness of the Game and how it was affecting all their lives.

The flames continued to crackle in the fireplace. The room got warm enough that David pulled off his sweater. Outside the house, as the dusk grew into night, he could still hear the storm.

"Are you going to bring out any other old characters, Mel?" Tyrone asked.

David wanted to shake Tyrone and shout at him to face the reality of their situation. But Tyrone just didn't _understand_.

Melanie glanced at Tyrone, considering, then her eyes lit up. "Any character we've introduced before is fair game. David's not going to pull any punches." She refused to look at him. "So I'm going to use everything I can think of. David captured Jules Verne and the Sitnaltan weapon. We have to find weapons of our own."

David resented how she automatically included Scott and Tyrone in her conflict with him -- unless Melanie was speaking of her own characters when she said "we." David couldn't tell.

"I -- " Scott said, then paused. He took off his glasses; his eyes looked small without the thick lenses. He seemed vulnerable and uncertain of what he wanted to say.

"I've been thinking about this mixup with the Game and our world. There's really no way we can deny it. Not after the Barrier River, and the explosion last week."

He nodded toward the blue hexagons on the map and the blasted parts around Scartaris's battlefield. The force released from that struggle had damaged Tyrone's kitchen table and burned David's hands.

"So if _this_ is really going on -- " Scott said the word 'this' as if it encompassed everything. "Then I have to worry about something else. The Sitnaltan Weapon that Verne and Frankenstein built, that _I_ directed them to build ... they made it from the ship that David and Tyrone created out of their imaginations. The power source they took couldn't have been totally real. And yet it couldn't have been totally imaginary either."

He stopped for a moment, as if waiting for the others to understand the implications.

"If it's part real and part imaginary, the Sitnaltan weapon may be a lot more devastating than we know." He swallowed. David could see him struggling with the concept in his own mind. "What if it's _more_ than enough to destroy Gamearth? What if it can backlash outside the map? What if it's enough to destroy _us_ too?"

Tyrone groaned comically. "This is boggling my mind!"

David ignored him and felt a shiver up his spine. That fear had been tickling the back of his mind, but he had not faced it until now. He remembered times when he didn't seem to have complete control over his own characters. If Siryyk the manticore wanted to detonate the weapon now that he had Verne captive, David wasn't sure he could stop it.

He let his voice fall to a whisper. "I'm beginning to wonder just who created who."

Melanie looked at him in a rare moment of rapport, but then the defiance returned to her eyes. "Or is it mutual now? Are we and the Game so intertwined that we can't survive without each other?"

--------

*Chapter 7*

MAYER'S RESEARCH EXPEDITION

"Once we have finished gathering data, we are by no means finished with our research. In fact, the work has only begun, because then we must discover how to apply that information for our own benefit."

-- Dirac, Charter of the Sitnaltan Council of

Patent Givers

Mayer felt sore from riding the bicycle. She wobbled along the path, unsteady on the hard tires but impressed by the distance she had already covered. She still had several hexagons to go before she reached the Outsiders' ship.

Only a few hours after leaving Sitnalta, Mayer's legs already ached from the effort of pedaling and steering over the bumpy terrain. Her dark hair streamed with sweat in the sunshine. She had spent too many hours in her tower workroom, pacing back and forth, thinking, scrawling designs in chalk on the dark wall -- and not enough time exercising her body.

With determination, Mayer pushed her legs down, applied force to the pedals, which turned the gear, pulling the chain and rotating the wheels, and carried her forward. Simple exhaustion wasn't going to stop her.

The black bicycle had been welded together from scrap piping, one of several prototypes developed by her father Dirac in his younger days; but the invention never caught on in Sitnalta. Probably, Mayer now thought, because the thing had never been designed with the comfort of its rider in mind. The seat was a flat metal triangle with rounded corners and two rigid springs that made each bump feel like a blow to her buttocks. The minimal padding did little to ease the ride.

But it would take a team of engineers to get a steam-engine car up the winding paths Mayer knew she would be traveling. The initial Sitnaltan research team to the Outsiders' ship had needed strong characters to hoist and lift their vehicles around sharp corners in the mountain terrain. Mayer could never do that by herself, and so she was left to her own abilities. She could travel faster with the bicycle than by walking.

She rolled across a hex-line from flat grassland into abrupt mountain terrain. Mayer began to puff as the quest-path took a steep upward turn. After only a short while of this, she stopped and dismounted from the bicycle, letting it fall to the dry grass and rocky earth.

Mayer patted her thighs, stamped her feet, and flexed her hands to keep the blood circulating. She blinked and turned to look behind her, across two flat hexagons of grassland sprawling toward the intricate city of Sitnalta.

A bird flew up from the grass, and Mayer squinted her eyes, studying the shape of its wings, the color of its markings. She tried to recall the proper genus and species name, though biology had never been her strongest talent. Professor Frankenstein would have known instantly.

Mayer's face shrank into a sour expression at the thought of the dark-eyed professor. He had disappointed her and angered her at the same time. After the destruction of the manufactories by the cruel force that seeped up through the Sitnaltan streets, Frankenstein had vowed to find a way of combating the invisible enemy.

Straight-backed and on fire with determination, Mayer went to the professors' workshop. Here Frankenstein and Verne had created so many inventions that even the Council of Patent Givers could not keep up with them all. She burst through the door without knocking and stood watching the dark inventor.

He continued pacing around the cluttered room without even looking up at her. Mayer saw a thousand different inventions, some disassembled to be repaired, some half-constructed and then abandoned, not because they would not work but because the professors had grown more interested in something else.

Frankenstein had knocked half-finished gadgets to the floor, ignoring any damage he might do to them. He simply needed more table space. Diagrams of human anatomy and large drawings of muscles and joints were pinned up on the walls and lying on the table in stacks. Scattered dissection reports of nervous systems poked out from other piles beside scrawled treatises on how different parts of the body worked.

Professor Frankenstein had always been fascinated with living things and how they worked. He had spent much of his early solo effort in creating mechanical automatons, imitations of living things. Metal fish swam in the fountain pools, moving mechanical arms assembled items in the hazardous areas of the manufactories, claws picked up castings too hot to handle.

In the jumbled workroom, Mayer's dark eyes were wide and fascinated as she drank in all the details. "I've come to help you, Professor."

He turned, startled into annoyance by the distraction. "I don't need any help. I didn't ask for any."

Mayer leaned with both hands on the edge of Frankenstein's work table. The sharp windings of a screw stung her palm; she brushed it aside. "You work better with a partner. I know I can help you. Haven't I proven I can do it? Look at all my own inventions. I'm as angry about this ... this intrusion as you are -- let me contribute."

Frankenstein's shoulders slumped, and his face took on a weary expression. "Yes, I did work well with Verne. With _Verne_. But he's gone. Now I work alone."

Anger welled up inside Mayer. She drove herself as hard as any character. She would be a good match for Professor Frankenstein, if only he would let her. "Professor, I must insist -- "

Frankenstein picked up a metal plate and tossed it to the floor among the scattered debris there. The crash and clatter startled Mayer; she heard something break, the tinkle of glass shards falling to the floor. The professor glared at her, and she saw how angry he was, how absorbed he had been in his own work.

"Please leave!"

"You vowed to rescue Sitnalta from this invisible force. It's been happening four times a day. Different buildings, different parts of the city. We've got to find a way to stop it."

"I will," Frankenstein said, "if you stop bothering me. Don't you see how difficult this is going to be?"

"Let me help!" Her head pounded with the intensity of her desire, but she felt that she had already lost.

"You can help by going away. If you have a brilliant idea, put it into practice yourself. You're a good inventor. Right now I've got my own idea."

Pointedly ignoring her further, he sat down on a stool and dragged papers in front of him, rearranging them on the table. He let his face show exhaustion and anguish deeper than anything Mayer expected. "I need to do it this way. This time. Now please -- let me work."

Mayer felt her lips trembling as she tried to contain her disappointment. "It's something to do with what you and Verne learned at the Outsiders' ship, isn't it? The information that you won't tell anyone."

He shook his head, but continued to stare at his drawings. "No. It isn't that."

Mayer knew otherwise. She thought she could tell when he was lying. She stormed out of the professor's workroom without another word, but in her mind she made promises to herself. She knew where to go. She would have to do it alone. She would have to hurry, before the invisible force continued to make the Sitnaltans destroy themselves....

It had been chilly that morning when she set out on the bicycle. The sluggish sea mist still crept through the hex-cobbled streets until the dawn grew strong enough to burn it off. Mayer pedaled out through the main gates as Sitnalta began to stir for the morning. Many characters had left their own research projects to help clean up destroyed buildings from the previous day's manipulations and to begin rebuilding efforts. They did not say to each other that the evil compulsion could make it all wasted effort at any time.

Mayer pedaled off along the quest-path, pushing herself to get to the Outsiders' ship as fast as possible. She didn't know how the travel restrictions spelled out in Rule #5 would affect her progress on a bicycle -- she would need to keep track and contribute more data to the Sitnaltan collection of information.

As she rested beside her bicycle on the mountain terrain, Mayer felt her leg muscles shaking, her body prickling from sweat. She took a drink from a small water flask and then shrugged the pack off her shoulders.

Crawling out of her warm outer clothing, Mayer felt the breeze cool the sweat on her skin, raising a few goosebumps. Once she started riding uphill again, the effort would keep her warm enough. She tucked the discarded clothing inside her pack without bothering to fold it, cramming it into any pocket of space. With a deep indrawn breath, she shouldered the pack again and righted her clumsy bicycle.

Mayer set off again, puffing and pedaling up the steep slope but making steady progress.

She had marked on her own small map exactly where to find the ruins of the ship, which lay crashed next to an abandoned Slac fortress. The first Sitnaltan expedition had left the excavation site the morning after Professor Verne rode off alone. Frankenstein had declared their mission over and ordered them to pack up and depart immediately, giving no explanation. Not until later, through hints, did the professor tell about his and Verne's dream from the Outsider Scott, showing them how to create a devastating weapon with what remained in the wreckage in the ship.

After they had finished, Frankenstein used a firepit in the old Slac fortress to burn all their plans and notes, so that no other character might know about the weapon they had developed. Mayer and many others in Sitnalta found this attitude appalling. Professors Verne and Frankenstein had created enormous numbers of inventions -- they had always shared every detail, every nuance. Just the thought of them destroying information that was common property, by law, of all characters caused friction with the other inventors.

Frankenstein remained firm, though. He and Verne had made a vow -- this was one invention they would not share. Not ever.

Returning to the ship, Mayer would find a way to learn what they had learned, or some other means to fight for Sitnalta. She remembered the words the Vailret had said as he confronted her on the docks at night, just before he and blind Paenar had stolen Verne's _Nautilus_ sub-marine boat.

"_You tinker with your calculating machines and street-cleaning engines, but when faced with a problem your technology may not be able to solve, you dismiss it as something not to be considered,_" Vailret had said. "_Scrap your frivolous gadgets and invent something to stop this thing! If we fail, all of Gamearth could be depending on you._"

Mayer had no idea if Vailret had been successful on his journey to the island, though the dragon Tryos had not been seen again. She didn't know what had happened to their greater enemy, Scartaris -- but Verne had disappeared with his secret weapon, and even Frankenstein didn't know what had gone wrong.

The force corrupting Sitnalta might have something to do with Scartaris, or the Outsiders, or the rumored end of the Game. Their own detectors showed nothing, and Mayer had no idea. But she would take Vailret's challenge and try to invent something to counteract the danger.

Her dark eyes glazed with the effort to keep pushing uphill, focusing only on the quest-path before her. Her skin was flushed, her face set in the obsessive expression she thought might be like the one she saw so often on Professor Frankenstein's face. He was one of the greatest inventors since Maxwell. But he apparently did not have the same admiration for her, since he spurned her assistance.

In late afternoon she crested a peak and abruptly crossed another hex-line of mountain terrain where the slope changed and the crags spread out before her in a different pattern. The quest-path zig-zagged ahead like a white line carved into the cliffs. The air felt cold, like rough cloth against her face, but so far she had not encountered enough ice and snow to make for treacherous riding.

Some of the peaks on Mayer's left blocked the setting sun, filling the air with shadows. As she looked ahead, she could discern the stark parapets of the crumbling Slac fortress, the tiny black window slits, the jagged and forbidding spikes. She stopped for a moment, drawing a deep breath.

As the fading light glinted around the cliffs, she saw gleams and reflections of the collapsed metal from the Outsiders' ship, excavated girders that the Sitnaltan expedition had left exposed.

Mayer pedaled furiously, picking up speed as the quest-path plunged downhill. The narrow tires were awkward on the rough trail, sending her careening against loose rocks as she tried to stop herself. The ship seemed to be waiting for her, a box filled with wonders and ideas, all the things she could discover.

With the incentive burning in her, Mayer felt the need to discover something of tremendous significance to the entire Game. The answer lay buried somewhere in the ruins ahead.

"I'll show you Professor Frankenstein," she muttered between teeth clenched with effort and the cold, "and I'll show you, Vailret."

--------

*Chapter 8*

POOL OF PEACE

"I shall never return. I am done with the Game, and the Game is done with me."

-- Drodanis, on his departure from the Stronghold

The great still Pool, as smooth and flat as a puddle of quicksilver, began to drain away. It seemed as if a hole had cracked open at the bottom of the map, letting it all pour to the Outside, into nothingness.

Drodanis stood beside the trees, staring down at his reflection. His face shone back at him, but he also saw through the placid water to the depths of the Rulewoman's Pool.

Near the bottom he glimpsed the boy Lellyn, frozen in a block of forever-ice. The Rulewoman Melanie had encased Lellyn there to protect him from his own destructive doubts. But now as the level of water in the Pool fell visibly, without a sound, Drodanis realized that even her protection could not last.

The Rulewoman had not shown herself to him in many turns. She had come occasionally to speak with Drodanis, to talk of the rest of Gamearth and how it continued without him. Drodanis had been one of her favorite characters, she said. When the Outsider David began his work to destroy the map, she had allowed him to send a warning to his son Delrael, but then she had departed and never returned.

The Rulewoman would be occupied with other concerns, more serious adventures with a bearing on the entire Game, he thought. Drodanis remained in the silent forest, resting ... existing, but doing nothing else. The past had left its crippling scars on him. His mind had replayed the tragic events of his life so many times that the memories had exhausted themselves --

The death throes of his beloved Fielle, sweating, her skin warm and damp to the touch as Drodanis knelt over her and watched the fever course through her system like a serpent's venom. He felt weak, barely recovered from the fever himself ... the fever he had passed on to her while she tended him back to health. Fielle died as he stood there. He watched the milky glaze on her eyes when the delirium faded into a thicker glaze of death....

He saw again the last cocky grin on the face of his brother Cayon while he fought the deadly ogre out in the forests. Cayon: always trying to compete with him, to outdo his older brother, to prove that he could tackle this monster on his own. But he was desperately mismatched, and didn't even realize it until it was too late....

Again and again those memories had flooded Drodanis's mind, focusing his thoughts. It had made Drodanis leave his life behind, to come here in search of forgetting, to avoid the responsibilities of questing and amusing the Outsiders.

Here in this peaceful place, the bad memories had replayed themselves so many times -- and with each recollection they grew smaller and weaker, like a river eating away a giant wall of rock. By now those memories were withered ghosts, still part of his past, but powerless.

Drodanis stood by the trees, feeling empty. Now that the pain from his past had faded away, it left him only numb. He had nothing else to do, no companions, not the Rulewoman, not young Lellyn who had followed him on his long journey here.

And now the Pool of Peace was draining away before his eyes.

Drodanis stared at the reflection of the old fighter looking up at him from the Pool's surface, and he asked himself if he really had changed that much. In his own mind he still pictured himself as the brash young quester, the fighter character who had gone out with Cayon on adventures, who had found piles of treasure, slain dozens of monsters.

But now he saw a man whose face looked drawn and slack; his eyes appeared hollow, his expression vacant. This man frightened Drodanis. His rich brown hair, long moustache, and beard were now streaked with gray. He hadn't cared for his appearance anymore; he had seen no point to it.

Drodanis remembered when Fielle had combed his hair for him and he had braided hers, when he strutted around wearing the jewels and weapons and fine armor he had won through his quests. Now he recognized only a once-brave character who had been badly used and then discarded.

Drodanis drew a deep breath and felt a strange emotion stirring in him, resentment and anger -- not directed toward himself, but focused outward, at the Game.

A ripple in the Pool of Peace startled him. The very thought of something marring the surface was so puzzling that he took a moment to realize that the water level had dropped enough that the motionless, encased figure of Lellyn began to protrude. The Pool drained around him, exposing the young boy's head and shoulders.

Beneath the milky ice, Drodanis could see Lellyn's expression locked in astonishment, disbelief, and terror at what the boy had just realized. "Ah, Lellyn, what is going to happen to us?" Drodanis said.

But he heard no noise, not even a trickle from the draining water. Tall black pines and oaks and willows shielded the Rulewoman's Pool from curious characters. No quest-paths led here, and Drodanis had found the place only after long searching.

When Lellyn was still beside him, they had debated with the Rulewoman about the Rules and _reality_. Lellyn seemed too perceptive for his own good. Lellyn himself was a Rulebreaker -- a human character with powerful magical abilities, a contradiction in itself. Lellyn became obsessed with the contradictions. He had queried the Rulewoman too much about _reality_ and about Gamearth's place and how it had been created.

When in his mind he so firmly grasped the idea that Gamearth was not _real_, that he was not _real_ ... when he had locked onto the concept and refused to let go, and in his heart he completely disbelieved in his own existence -- then the Rulewoman had stopped him. She froze him in forever-ice and submerged him in the Pool a moment before he could vanish into nothingness.

Now the Pool had nearly drained away, and Drodanis could see the forever-ice melting.

Lellyn's body stood exposed up to his shins, and the water drained even faster. The boy apprentice had his arms locked in a warding gesture, trying to wave away the realization he was forcing upon himself. His legs were taking a step backward, as if trying to flee.

The remaining water stood out in glistening puddles, like frozen mirrors. The bottom of the Pool showed dark and lumpy, rocks where no plant could take hold in the magical water.

"Rulewoman! What do you want me to do?" Drodanis shouted into the air, breaking the silence. His voice sounded like a roar, and he expected to hear disturbed cries of birds in the forest terrain, but nothing answered him, not even a breeze among the trees. The air felt perfectly warm and still, too comfortable.

The spark of anger in him grew a little brighter.

He heard a crack, and saw that a chunk of the forever-ice fell from Lellyn's shoulders. Other spidery lines appeared along the filmy coating that masked the boy's entire body. The forever-ice split and fell off, part melting, part vanishing into sparkles of light in the air.

"Lellyn!" Drodanis cried.

The boy moved, turned his head, keeping his eyes wide. He took one more step backward and waved his hands. "No!" he said -- but he was answering a question asked many turns ago. He could not change his thoughts fast enough. "How can I get this out of my mind?" he cried, but his voice turned high and distorted.

Lellyn rippled and faded. "Where am I going?" he managed to say, and just for an instant before he flowed into an uncertain image, Drodanis watched the boy's expression change to one of wonder.

Lellyn dissolved into the air, leaving behind no more trace than had the water in the Pool.

Drodanis hung his head and squatted down at the rim of the basin. Everything was gone now, his memories, the Pool, Lellyn, the Rulewoman ... his reasons for existing.

If the map survived, these would be remembered as the greatest times of the entire Game, not simple quests, but battles for survival of Gamearth itself. Drodanis had stepped away from all that, bowing out to let other characters shoulder the burden.

The only small part he had offered to the Game was to send a message -- a warning -- to Delrael about the need for stopping Scartaris. Delrael had taken the quest, and the younger generation of characters now determined the events of the Game. Drodanis was proud of his son.

He blinked his eyes, and the tears burned there. It felt strange to him. Living too long with comfort and peace had drained him, like the waters from the Pool; it made his life gray instead of filled with the bright colors of happiness and sadness.

He could not compete anymore, this old empty fighter who had not used his training for many turns. He felt useless. He wondered if he had made the right decision so long ago in leaving everything behind.

Drodanis concentrated on the small flame of anger inside, and it seemed to be the only living part in his entire body, the only spot of color in his world. As he thought about what he had done -- and what he had failed to do by running away from it all -- he watched the spark grow brighter. He felt his senses reawaken.

"No, I am not useless," he said to himself. "I can still remember how to fight. How to change things."

Perhaps the Pool had gone away to punish _him_ for going away, to kick him out of his numb surrender and show him that Gamearth still needed Drodanis.

He stood up and went to one of the few remaining puddles at the bottom of the Pool of Peace. He bent over and scooped up the cool water in his hands, splashing it on his face and trying to wash away some of his weariness. But now it was just water after all, and the refreshing strength he gathered came from within himself.

Drodanis stood again, took a deep breath, and felt his muscles: arms that could still swing a sword, eyes that could still spot an enemy and aim an arrow.

Leaving the empty Pool of Peace behind, Drodanis walked out to the trees without turning back, searching for a quest-path that would take him back into the Game. Back into life again.

--------

*Chapter 9*

BLACK FALCON

"Few characters have a mission as clear as ours. Few characters have a responsiblity as great as ours. If humans are to win this Game, then we must be pure in our motivations and we must be decisive in our actions. We answer to no one but ourselves and to the Outsiders."

-- Annik, chief of the Black Falcon troops

When Delrael's army arrived at the ylvan settlement, the Black Falcon troops had already slaughtered most of the forest people.

The trees stood too dense for Delrael to see the smoke rising up until he could smell it. He heard distant sounds of shouting, some kind of struggle, screams. Delrael sent three characters to run ahead and investigate as he swung the rest of the army toward the disturbance.

He broke into a trot off the quest-path directly through the forest, urging his fighters to greater speed. He wrestled with his own impatience to strike against a tangible enemy rather than continuing a long, tedious journey.

"Prepare for a fight," he said to Jathen behind him. The other characters passed the message along so that Delrael did not have to raise his voice and alert an enemy. Delrael elbowed branches out of the way, kicking at brambles by his ankles. He drew his own sword. He heard shouts, the crackling of flames, scattered painful screams.

The three scout characters hurried back to Delrael. They looked shaken and gray, their eyes wide with terror. "They're being slaughtered!" said young Romm, a farmer from the village.

"I can hear what's happening," Delrael said, then he broke into a run. When he burst into the clearing, the apalling violence of the scene stunned him enough that he stopped for a moment and had to concentrate to keep from dropping his sword.

Three of the camouflaged ylvan nest dwellings crackled with orange flames that licked up the matted brush. The air smelled of oily smoke and blood. The towering trees all around were stained with soot and white gashes from axes and swords. Ruins of a campfire lay on the ground, stomped and scattered.

One of the blazing dwellings burned through its anchoring rope with a groan and split open at the bottom, dumping smoldering debris. Sticks and ylvan possessions tumbled onto the ground as the nest dwelling toppled after.

Around the clearing rode a dozen burly Black Falcon fighters on their own dark horses, outfitted as Corim had been. One towering woman rested a bloodstained two-handed sword on her shoulder as she pointed and shouted orders. The others charged around in circles, shooting arrows at a few surviving ylvans who tried to flee in the trees above.

In a snapshot second, Delrael saw the splashed blood and the broken bodies of little forest people dressed in greens and browns to camouflage them in the trees. A handful of others lay tied up in a net, struggling to break free.

Several more dangled from trees with their necks in poorly made nooses. Three still squirmed and kicked on the ends of their ropes, though their faces had turned blackish from lack of air. Their tongues stuck out and their eyes rolled up. The ylvans clawed at their throats, trying to tear the nooses apart with bleeding fingernails.

One Black Falcon rider lay motionless with several arrows in his throat, chest, and back. He had been propped against a tree trunk, but he was obviously dead. A riderless horse, apparently belonging to the dead fighter, wandered about.

Delrael made a wordless cry as he crashed into the clearing. His other fighters, still running to keep up with him, paused to gawk at what they saw. Delrael finally managed to form words, shouting "Stop! Stop!"

The Black Falcon troops whirled around at the new characters. After a moment of surprise, they appeared relieved to see humans coming out of the forest and not some other character race.

"Archers! Find your mark!" Delrael shouted. "All of you Black Falcon troops, stop!" Delrael's other fighters nocked arrows at the black riders, who appeared dumbfounded.

Jathen ran ahead of Delrael, got to the central tree in the settlement and severed the ropes hanging the squirming ylvans. They dropped to the ground. He ripped at the ropes and tried to open the ylvans' air passages. The skin on their necks was gnarled and puckered from the bite of the rope.

One of the ylvans had already died. Another, unconscious, broke her ankle upon falling to the ground; the pain woke her up, and she gasped in air as Jathen pulled off the noose. The third, a powerful-looking ylvan with a drawn face, dark hair, and pinched mouth, was still alive and aware. As Jathen cut the first woman free, the ylvan man pulled his own noose off. He rolled over to his knees and vomited, trying to wheeze in lungfuls of air and retch at the same time.

The Black Falcon woman on horseback turned her mount and glared at Delrael with a half-bemused expression. "What are you doing? Only enemies of Gamearth would interfere with us." She turned to her troops. "Ignore them. Go ahead and execute the rest of the parasites."

Delrael snapped at his own fighters, "If another ylvan dies, kill all the Black Falcon troops. All of them. I'm sick of this."

One of the Black Falcon riders cried out, and they all whirled to look at him. A small arrow protruded from his shoulder. Several barely seen ylvans scurried through the branches above, concealed by the smoke and fire.

The Black Falcon woman bellowed at the top of her lungs. "Get them! We're not winners until they're all killed."

"I said no!" Delrael stormed forward with his sword in front of him. He stood blocking the woman on her tall horse.

She stared down at him with an icy, amused smile. "Oh, I'm tired of your whining." She looked behind her. "Corim!"

Out of the forest terrain on the other side of the village emerged a full dozen more Black Falcon riders, each holding a long bow in hand with the string drawn fully back. They aimed their long arrows directly at Delrael. Corim led the group. His face remained dispassionate, with no sign of pity or recognition.

"Your army might outnumber us," the woman said, "but I guarantee that each Black Falcon will take out ten of your fighters before they fall."

Jathen stood up beside the still-choking ylvans, red with anger. As Delrael's army continued to emerge into the clearing, old Siya, and Enrod, and Tareah appeared. "Enrod, do something!" Jathen said.

As the Sentinel from Taire cocked his head without understanding, Delrael felt all twelve arrows pointing at his heart. The Game paused for a moment. He sensed his heart beating, and he wanted it to continue beating. Tareah took out her Water Stone, but looked uneasy about whether to take the risk or not.

"No," Delrael said. His voice sounded small to him. "You can't do anything in time."

The hanged ylvan man crawled to his feet and screamed in a voice hoarse from a damaged throat. "How dare you! What have we ever done to humans?"

He gaped at the bloodshed, the slaughtered ylvans. Though arely able to stand, the little man carried murder in his eyes. He started to lunge forward with his hands extended, claws ready to tear the Black Falcon woman's eyes out. Jathen grabbed him by the elbows and held him back.

Delrael stared into the Black Falcon woman's face. He wished Vailret had stayed with them -- Vailret was the talker. He could smooth things over between hostile characters. Delrael swallowed and tried his best, keeping his eyes on the riders. Occasionally he caught the gaze of Corim on the edge of the clearing.

"We're wasting time here, and wasting effort," Delrael said to the woman. "Didn't Corim bring you my message? We wanted you to join us. There's an enemy worth fighting. You're just throwing away your talent here. We can't afford to waste characters at this point in the Game, when everything may depend on the actions of one individual."

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Kevin J. Anderson - Gamearth 03 - Game's End

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