Kevin J Anderson (27 page)

Now Tareah that spent time with Vailret and Delrael and other human characters, the Game had taken on a new perspective for her. No longer did she merely read and chronicle the legends about other characters. She participated in the adventures herself ― whenever Delrael allowed her.

She and Enrod trudged across the flat snow in the sunrise. They had walked the rest of the afternoon over the mountains, pushing ahead of Delrael's army. They traveled through the night, resting for only a few hours in the coldest and darkest time before dawn.

Tareah didn't feel tired at all, but eager. She would rebuild her old home.

She stepped into the boundary of the site, noting where the great ice pillars had collapsed, where the towers had melted and fallen to crumbling blocks. When she had returned here with Delrael and the others in the Sitnaltan balloon, Sardun had left a farewell message for her.

He would be greatly surprised if he could see her now. She had grown to her full height, and her joints had stopped aching. Tareah had become her own character.

The world hung silent around them. The cold made Tareah's fingers numb, but the breeze had died away. The jagged hexagons of mountain terrain stood behind them, bounded by the black hex-line. The blue expanse of the northern sea channelled down into the rushing hex-wide Barrier River. The air smelled clean, with other scents dampened by the snow.

"This is probably going to take all day," Tareah said.

Enrod squeezed a handful of snow until it melted through his fingers. He looked at the water dripping down.

She held the glistening sapphire cube in her hand. In the sunlight it reflected the white ice. Holding just one of the Stones, she could only use three spells, as would Enrod when she passed the Stone to him. However, Tareah hoped she could awaken the
dayid
that lived at the site, which would focus and intensify her spells far beyond anything she could do herself. Sardun had created the Barrier River that way.

She rolled the six-sided sapphire on the snow. The number "6" showed up, the highest she could roll. Tareah knew the
dayid
was already there helping her.

When the magic surged within her, she forced it through the facets of the Stone. She channelled the power to shape the surrounding water and ice and snow, sculpting it, pushing the towers and the parapets, making them rise tall and monolithic. She swirled the ice around into solid blue bricks.

She sucked all of the snow and mud and debris away from the underground vaults where Sardun had kept his old Sorcerer treasures. She scoured the area clean.

Tareah rolled sixes with all three of her spells.

For hours she kept herself submerged in the power, building up the walls, fashioning passages, opening rooms and adapting the structure to make it more appropriate for protecting Delrael's army.

When her last spell ended and Enrod took the Water Stone from her fingers, Tareah saw him trembling. Enrod had not used a Stone since the Deathspirits stripped the Fire Stone from him. She wondered if he felt afraid of touching that power again, that it might unlock some scar within him, something that had caused him to turn evil.

She wanted to snatch the sapphire cube back. She had nearly finished the Ice Palace herself, she didn't need his help. Perhaps by midnight, when she got three more spells, she could finish all the construction. Delrael's army would arrive by then, but maybe the monsters would not be too close behind.

Before she could say anything, Enrod rolled the Stone. Tareah watched him become strong again as he grabbed the sapphire and turned toward the new Palace.

Numbed by her own exhaustion, Tareah leaned back, not even feeling the cold. She sat in the snow and watched the dark-haired Sentinel build the outer walls taller, make a slippery mound on all sides of the fortress, adding other defenses against the monsters. He thickened the fragile towers. He made hidden places where parts of the human army could march out and attack the unsuspecting monsters.

Enrod rolled again, and Tareah drifted into sleep....

When the front portion of Delrael's army arrived, stumbling and weary, she and Enrod stood in the tallest tower and watched the army approach. The first fighters passed through the wide gap in the first wall.

Enrod gazed out at the mountains, the northern sea, the rushing Barrier River. He seemed pleased with his work. "I prepared Taire's defenses, too," her said.

Tareah paused to hide her initial skepticism. "It looks like a blocky fortress now. Not what I remembered at all." She tried to keep the sour tone out of her words. "But I suppose it can't be a fragile monument to the Sorcerer race anymore, not for our purpose."

Enrod murmured his agreement. "A place to make a final stand."

Tareah went down to meet Delrael and the others as they came marching into the courtyard and the main lodging rooms of the rebuilt fortress. Delrael seemed extremely tired, but his eyes glistened. He felt proud of her, she could tell. He stared around himself at the blue ice walls and grinned.

"There, Tareah," he said, "see how I'm using your abilities? I'm giving you tasks to do, just like any other fighter in my army."

He smiled, but Tareah scowled, feeling stung. It had not even occurred to her what Delrael thought he was doing. "You just ruined it by pointing that out to me, Delrael, rather than just making it seem like a natural decision."

He blinked, confused by her reaction.

She went outside into the courtyard and watched the last of the human fighters come in. She waited a few minutes, but the hexagon of wasteland remained empty behind them, marred only by a wide, slushy trail where the army had marched.

Tareah raised her arms and motioned toward the central gap in the wall where the soldiers had passed through. By closing her eyes and letting the back of her mind touch the magic still in the ice, she imagined the two separated ends of the outer wall. They clenched and flowed together into an unbroken barrier, sealing the army safely inside the ice fortress.

At sunset several sentries called Delrael to the watchtowers. As they stared eastward in the long shadows of the fading light, they could see the massive crowds of dark figures pouring out of the mountain hexagon, crossing the black line, and swarming over the frozen wasteland.

Seen on the flat terrain rather than hidden by the mountains, Siryyk's army appeared huge. They had arrived in seige.

――――

TUNNELS OF THE WORM-MEN

"I wish the Game challenged us with only one enemy at a time, but the Outsiders are not so simplistic. As soon as we defeat one adversary, another waits in line to take its place."

― Stilvess Peacemaker

Gold stood in puddles, still soft from the heat blasting out of the nearby lava lake. The seething temperature baked Bryl's face, made his blue cloak hot to the touch. He used one hand to shield his eyes as he took another step closer. His knuckles stung from the searing air. His eyes filled with irritated tears.

At the top of the crater high above, he could see the hole where the orange-dappled volcano walls opened to the night. But the bubbling lava burned away any cool breezes that swirled around the island.

"We don't even know there's a
dayid
here!" Bryl said. His throat felt raw; when he sucked in a breath, his nostrils seemed on fire. His nose hairs curled. He fought back the urge to cough, because that would mean gulping in more of the heat.

"There must be!" Vailret shouted back. He stood in the shade, behind one of the large boulders. "Try anyway!"

Bryl squeezed his eyes shut and felt tears ooze down his cheek in cool lines that rapidly evaporated. "Easy for you," Bryl muttered. "You're not standing out here."

Bryl had sensed the
dayid
at the heart of the volcano. It seemed likely that he would find one here, knowing what he did about the Sentinel spirits. But the volcano's
dayid
felt small and weak, perhaps even dormant.

Bryl had to call it up and somehow speak with it.

He didn't know if he could. Bryl's parents had killed themselves in their half-Transition when he was just a boy, and he had grown up without magical training, always feeling inferior. His simple heritage as a Sorcerer had been blocked away for so long he wanted to make up for it, to show all of Gamearth that he could indeed use the magic that was meant for him. He could do that if he got all four Stones, if he became the Allspirit.

He thought of the
dayid
and clenched his hands around the folds of his cloak to cover the exposed skin. He squeezed his eyes shut and recalled how he had touched the
dayid
in Ledaygen, working through the Water Stone. He had to feel that power now, seek it out, pull it in front of him.

The Earth Stone had vanished. If the
dayid
remained here, the
dayid
would know. The perfect ten-sided emerald was the most powerful of the four Stones.

The lava glowed orange, belched and sputtered. The air reeked of sulfur like a handful of rotten eggs smashed all at once.

"
Dayid
― show yourself!" Bryl said in the loudest voice he could manage. He didn't know what else to say. He knew no summoning spells, no binding he could place on the
dayid
. Either it would appear to him, or it wouldn't.

He felt a warm presence like melted honey reaching within him from the depths of his stomach and back, creeping up along the inside of his spine.

"Bryl, look!" Vailret said, peeping his head around the rock.

Bryl tried to shade his eyes from the oven heat. As he looked, he felt the searing temperature change, cocooning and softening and spreading out so that Bryl could stare at the center of the lava lake.

With a
pop
, a lava bubble burst, shooting a tall flame upward like an orange feathery pillar that grew brighter, shining into the gullet of the volcano.

Bryl felt his skin tingle. The raw burns faded away; his singed hair no longer felt stiff and crumbly. "
Dayid
, I am Bryl," he said. His voice pinged off the rock wall, tiny in the vast roaring chamber. Realizing that the name would have no significance, he added, "I am son of the Sentinels Qonnar and Tristane. If you can recall some portion of your past, you must remember them."

The flame brightened and wobbled, bending toward Bryl. Images shimmered up from deep within him.

He saw flashes of his mother, his father, and a flickering series of other Sentinel faces. He recognized some of them, but most remained strangers. He saw his father and mother accused of poisoning Jarriel by his widow Galleri. Bryl felt their despair, confusion at how their good works had twisted around to strike at them. He felt other memories of the
dayid's
components as they acknowledged Bryl's presence.

"
Dayid
, we came for the Earth Stone. We know it was here. We must have it or Gamearth will crumble apart. The Outsiders will put an end to the Game. You must be able to sense that hexagons are already flying off into space. It won't be long before this entire island is destroyed. With the Earth Stone, though, we can bring enough magic together to create an Allspirit."

He clamped his lips together to keep from babbling. He trembled with fear and awe of the presence in front of him. "Help us find the Earth Stone," he said again.

Images filled him again, congealing into an understandable message. Though his eyes still saw the fire and the lava in front of him, in another layer of vision he also watched Tryos's treasure, piles of gold coins, strings of pearls, carvings of onyx and jade, studded with sapphires, rubies, and garnets. Bryl's vision melted through layers until he saw the potent Earth Stone, as green as the heart of a leaf in the middle of summer. Ten-sided, the greatest stone of the four. Bryl felt elation to glimpse it even in this second-hand sight.

Then the
dayid
showed him other creatures, twisted forms with grayish skin, manlike torsos on bloated serpentine bodies. The creatures had blank saucer eyes, smooth heads, and clawlike hands protruding at the wrong angles from their shoulders. He saw swarms of the worm-men, werem, tunnelling up from below, breaking into the treasure vault. He watched grasping hands pluck away all the gems. They snatched the Earth Stone as well, intending to deliver it to their Master.

The visions faded. Bryl remained standing as the waves of heat returned, only this felt like the heat of anger. The worm-men had stolen the Earth Stone. The
dayid
felt outrage, but had no way of fighting. Not until Bryl and Vailret had arrived.

They needed the Earth Stone back.

"But where is it? How do we find it?" he said. His throat felt dry enough to snap if he raised his voice.

The flame of the
dayid
bunched up and flickered, breaking away from the lava. It shot through the air to blast at the inner wall of the crater. Among the jagged blobs of hardened lava, the flames struck and illuminated a blot of shadow, a passage descending into the rock.

Then the
dayid's
flame petered out. The melted-honey sensation dissolved inside of Bryl, and he found himself uncovered and unprotected in the searing heat again.

He pushed his face into the folds of cloth on his elbows and staggered backward. He felt Vailret grab him and pull him to the cooler sections of the grotto.

"What happened?" Vailret said. "I saw the fire and I heard you talking, but it didn't make any sense. Did you learn anything?"

Bryl's eyes felt red, and his entire face seemed stiff and prickling from the shallow burns. "Yes," he said. "I know what happened to the Earth Stone."

To Bryl, the tunnel felt dank and claustrophobic, closing around them with stifling shadows. It plunged down, away from the heat and away from the volcano. He and Vailret stumbled along until the slope finally flattened out, then they continued at a more normal pace.