Kevin J Anderson by Game's End Page B

"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?"
    "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