Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Then all the heat ran out of Enrod, pouring down his body like warm oil until he stood panting.

  "We have to run, Enrod," Jathen said, afraid to touch his arm and pull him along. "We have to get out of the city."

  Enrod followed, and Jathen continued jabbering. "I knew you were going to do something! I was waiting. They'll be scattered now. The monsters won't know what to do with Siryyk injured and their Slac general out hunting down that professor."

  Enrod heaved a deep breath, but couldn't make words come out.

  "What took you so long? I was worried!" Jathen talked fast. "I waited for you to do something. I was afraid you really had surrendered."

  Enrod leaned against a building deep in the shadows. In the distance they could hear monsters running pell-mell around the city, but Jathen had no doubt the two of them would be able to escape now.

  "First spell failed." Enrod sighed and looked up at Jathen. "First spell. To turn poison into water. It didn't work."

  Jathen felt his heart thump, rising up and then falling. Enrod had tried to protect him from the poison, but it had failed. "We'll just have to trust to luck, then. That neither of us got the slow poison."

  "Yes," Enrod said. "Luck."

  Jathen began to stumble midway through the following morning as they crept behind the grassy hills west of Taire. At first Enrod thought it was merely weariness, because he was greatly tired, too. But the unhealthy flush in Jathen's skin and the strange disfocus of his eyes led Enrod to believe otherwise.

  The sun pounded down on them, and Enrod felt the focused rays heating his skin. It seemed much weaker than the heat he had made the night before. His own confusion was getting worse.

  They were both parched. The monsters had stripped Siya's food from them, so they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Enrod had no way to ease Jathen's growing misery as the slow poison ate its way into his body.

  "Keep going," Enrod said. "Back to army by night."

  Jathen broke out in a clammy sweat, but he said nothing and kept moving with Enrod. They plodded through the grass, avoiding the direct quest-path.

  They had escaped the monsters indeed, for all the good it would do Jathen. Enrod had used his fire. They crossed the hex-line into mountain terrain in the mid-afternoon, but as the path became steeper Jathen worsened rapidly.

  "I wonder which one it was," Jathen said. His lips seemed loose, and he mumbled his words. "The first needle, or the second one. It seems you got lucky."

  Enrod shook his head. "Burned any poison from my body. Fire inside my skin." He turned ahead, not wanting to pursue the conversation. "Come on."

  He moved ahead, but Jathen stumbled so slowly up the rugged path that rocks skittered behind him and rolled down the slope. Enrod paused and put one of Jathen's arms over his shoulder to help him along. Even that wasn't enough.

  When Jathen finally collapsed an hour later, Enrod took him to an overhang of rock. The setting sun cast long shadows from the mountains, like black hands reaching across the hexagons toward Taire.

  Jathen's legs started to spasm, and his feet jittered against the ground. His teeth chattered. He had retched several times, pulling up nothing from his empty stomach.

  Enrod positioned him comfortably, where Jathen could look across the landscape, toward the great desolation and the distant city walls.

  "If I'm going to die here anyway," Jathen said, wheezing great breaths of mountain air, "then I wish I had just died in Taire."

  Enrod sat next to him and placed a broad hand on his shoulder. His mind became sharp and clear for a moment. "Can't choose when and where we die. Not part of the Game."

  "I don't care about the Game anymore," Jathen said. Enrod could think of no way to answer him.

  Enrod looked out, and with his sharp eyes he could see Taire. Masses of figures poured out from the ruined gates. He sat up straight. As he hoped, Enrod had provoked the manticore to march out before he was ready.

  Jathen coughed, but he couldn't see. "Do you think we defeated them?"

  "Sure of it," Enrod answered. Without further words, he stared down at the desolation, where he could see Siryyk's immense army pouring out, mobilized and heading toward them....

  Enrod waited there until full darkness had come. By that time, Jathen died.

  Enrod did the best he could to pile scrub wood around the body, a mound of brush and twigs and stunted branches. "I can still make fire," he said.

  With a simple, powerful spell, he turned the pile into a blazing funeral pyre for Jathen. He stood, holding his hands up to the flames and feeling the heat.

  With a last glance behind him at the advancing monster horde, Enrod moved upward to rejoin Delrael's army. Jathen's funeral pyre crackled in the night.

  ――――

  Chapter 13

  FRANKENSTEIN'S DRONE

  "As our enemies find better ways of fighting us, so we must develop better ways to strike back. Is there any character in Sitnalta who is not willing to meet this challenge?"

  ― Professor Frankenstein, in a guest lecture to beginning inventors

  Frankenstein pulled Bryl toward the back of the cluttered workroom. The professor's fingers left greasy marks on his blue cloak.

  Vailret blinked in the dim light shining through cobweb-covered skylights. If anything, the workroom looked more chaotic than he remembered it from the first time he had visited there. He tripped on a stack of half-opened books, sheaves of paper, and scrawled drawings.

  "Hurry, if you please," Frankenstein said over his shoulder. "It's most disquieting to be so vulnerable out here."

  In the back of the room, the professor heaved open a trapdoor, then let it thud onto the floor. Bright chips of wood showed where the heavy trap had gouged marks from repeated openings.

  "Down you go!" Frankenstein practically stuffed Bryl into the hole.

  "Wait! I ― " Bryl said, but the professor lifted his foot and pushed down on the half-Sorcerer's shoulder.

  "Professor, why don't you just explain yourself?" Vailret said.

  Frankenstein climbed into the trapdoor as well. He turned with his shoulders above the floor. "You may follow us if you like, or not. I can't stay out where the invisible force might get me. I have too much at stake."

  He continued to descend. Vailret could hear Bryl's footsteps clicking on a metal staircase. Frankenstein reached up to grasp the handle of the trapdoor. "Are you coming or not?"

  Vailret squeezed past the professor and worked his way down the twisting stairs. Frankenstein used both hands to swing the trapdoor over his head and ducked as the heavy door crashed into place. "Ah, much better," he said. Frankenstein closed his eyes and sighed.

  The bottom of the trapdoor, along with the walls, ceiling, and floor of the entire underground room, had been covered with plates of dull, dark metal.

  Bryl stood at the bottom, waiting for them. Frankenstein descended the narrow stairs while Vailret squinted around the broad chamber. Serving trays, dirty plates, and half-eaten food lay piled near the stairs. The professor had obviously spent a great deal of time down here.

  "Professor Verne and I constructed this underground workroom years ago. Every inch of it is covered with lead shielding." He ran his fingers along the wall.

  "The lead prevents even the Outsiders from detecting what we do down here. We use this place for our most secret investigations into certain topics. We didn't want the Outsiders to know that such ideas had even occurred to us."

  He made a thin-lipped smile. "With that invisible force attacking four times a day, I took refuge here. The force can't penetrate the lead. That has been proven time and again." Frankenstein strode into the chamber. "Here I can work alone and undisturbed to develop some means to rescue Sitnalta."

  The entire chamber was piled with tools and raw materials: metal piping, pulleys, gears, glass spheres, switches, wiring, sheet metal. Boxes crammed full of rivets and screws lay stacked on top of each other. Wrenches, screwdrivers, and soldering irons rested besi
de half-assembled pieces of machinery.

  Vailret could make out little among the chaos. Bryl poked among the coiled wires on a table.

  "Don't touch anything," Frankenstein said.

  In the center of the room, propped up on solid blocks, stood a large squarish frame in which Frankenstein had hung a network of cables and pulleys. Wires protruded from the corners of the frame.

  Vailret stepped forward to peer at another object on one of the long worktables. Five curved cylinders as long and as thick as his leg protruded upward and bent in the middle. Vailret cocked his head, then stopped as the skewed perspective finally came into focus. The metal framework and the five cylinders looked like a giant hand as large as his own body.

  "What is all this?" he said, staring at the enormous central frame, the other scattered cylinders and gears. In his mind, a picture began to come clear.

  Frankenstein patted the "thumb" of the metal hand and picked up a long roll of paper. He tacked the top against a cork board he had mounted on the wall, unrolled the paper, then pinned down the bottom. The corners curled up, and the professor swiped with his hand, trying to get them to lie flat. Finally, he stuck the corners down with two other pins.

  He stepped back to display a sketch of a burly manlike machine, an automaton the size of ten characters. "I will call it my Drone," Frankenstein said. "My servant, like a worker bee." He paused a moment, as if for them to appreciate his work.

  "I have analyzed that magical force coming from below. It plays living characters just like a game master, but has no effect on Sitnaltan machines. If the controller could manipulate our machines, the entire city would have been leveled long ago."

  Frankenstein turned away from the sketch to look at Vailret and Bryl. "I spent my life discovering the way living creatures work. Professor Verne and I constructed small automatons, playthings like the mechanical fish in the fountains, or character-sized robots that played games against solitary characters." Frankenstein's eyes looked wistful. "A tremendous success, that. Our automated dicing companion never cheats, you know."

  Then he dismissed his nostalgia. "But those were just practice inventions. This is my crowning achievement. Drone will seek out and destroy the perpetrator of this vile force." He paused, turning his gaze away. "Verne was always good at implementing the mechanical manifestations. I just studied the life forms, explained them to him, and he made similar machines. Unfortunately, Drone has been an entirely solo effort."

  He pointed to the top of the drawing, snapping out of his distraction. "The human brain is far too complex for me to understand, much less imitate. I have dissected several brains and tried to discover how they work, but such organs are fairly difficult to come by these days."

  Frankenstein sighed, as if distressed at having to admit his failure. "So, since I'm unable to construct an adequate mechanical substitute, I will act as the brain of Drone. I'll construct a control chamber, also lined with lead, so that I can ride along with the machine to hunt out our enemy."

  Vailret watched him, listened to the speech, and had the odd impression that Frankenstein had taken on this task as a challenge to his problem-solving ability, rather than to stop the terrible manipulations from happening.

  "Dirac is dead," Vailret said. Maybe that would shake him out of it. "We thought you should know."

  Frankenstein continued to stare at his drawing, tracing a finger along a nested diagram of gears. Old oil and grease left a dark curve under his fingernail. "What?" He looked up.

  "I said Dirac is dead. The invisible force made him come after us in a steam-engine car. Dirac tried to kill us, but instead he crashed into your communications facility."

  "Oh, no," Frankenstein said. "Is it destroyed?"

  "Dirac is dead. There was a big explosion."

  Frankenstein made an impatient wave. "No, the communications facility. All of Morse's wires."

  Bryl blinked. "Aren't you listening? Your city leader is dead."

  Frankenstein frowned, and his voice grew hard-edged. "Plenty of greater characters than Dirac have already fallen. I choose not to tear my hair out in grief because of it. I've got too much to do." He looked at them in defiance. "Jules never returned from his mission ― he's probably dead, and I'd certainly mourn him sooner than I would shed a tear for Dirac."

  He plucked the bottom pins out of the drawing, which rolled back up into a loose cylinder. "If Dirac hadn't quashed the idea years ago that we Sitnaltans should attempt our own Transition through technology, we wouldn't be in this trouble right now. We might all be in a far better place. Dirac's own daughter Mayer was very disappointed with him about that."

  "Mayer?" Vailret interrupted. "How is she?"

  "Rather high tempered about this whole mess. Her heart is in the right place, but she's too bull-headed about the challenge. She will charge and meet it head-on, no doubt. But sometimes it doesn't help to charge into a brick wall. It's better to find a door. Fewer headaches that way."

  Bryl picked among the scattered dishes on the floor, as if looking for something still worth eating. "But what do you want with me, Professor? You dragged me in here."

  Frankenstein put a finger to his lips and raised his eyes. "Ah, yes! I can't find any explanation for this force other than that it must be caused by some evil sorcery. So, I've been thinking a lot about magic.

  "If the Rules have indeed been damaged, and magic can operate even here in Sitnalta ― then I'd better learn about it. You see, I was able to discover exactly how the old Sorcerers succeeded in their Transition spell. Oh, it took a while to track down the records and everything, but when I did I found something amazing."

  He looked to Vailret, who felt a sudden keen interest. The stone gargoyle Arken had told his own memories of the grand event, but Frankenstein, with his strange technical perspective, would have a different assessment.

  "The probability of the exact dice roll the old Sorcerers needed ― even though it took them day after day of constantly rolling the dice in the attempt ― defies common sense. To get five '20s' in the same roll should happen only once in three million two hundred thousand times! Some sort of magic must have had its hand in that.

  "Therefore, if Sitnalta is depending on me to combat a magic-driven enemy, I need to understand how best to strike back." He turned to Bryl. "Spend a few hours here with me, explaining spells and magic. Tell me what are the limitations, tell me how a spell works. What is it that you say to invoke the magic? It's very important."

  "We have a favor to ask as well, Professor," Vailret said, but Frankenstein waved his hand in dismissal, as if that were a trivial problem.

  Bryl finally found a half-eaten piece of cake. He brushed off part of it, flicked crumbs from his fingertips, then pushed the piece into his mouth. He spoke as he chewed.

  "At least here it's safe."

  ――――

  Chapter 14

  ROLE PLAYING

  "The merit of any sacrifice, small or large, can be judged by no one but the character who makes it. Small sacrifices gravely made may outweigh great deeds that are done without forethought."

  ― The Book of Rules

  By the time General Korux and the marauding creatures had scoured the ruins of Taire for the escaped professor, Verne had already crossed his second hexagon of desolation terrain at a dead run.

  The night was cool and clear. He wheezed in the dry air, but continued to forge eastward. Wherever possible, he stepped on rocks to hide his trail. It would likely be mid-morning or so before Korux began to investigate beyond the city walls.

  Before dawn, though, Verne wanted to be on the other side of the forested-hill terrain. The hills stood tall and covered with grasping skeletal trees. The thin branches were so long dead that they looked fossilized in the baking dry climate.

  While languishing in his miserable cell, Verne had calculated that eastward would be the least-expected direction for his escape. He could have gone south, back toward Sitnalta. He could have gone west, where the mounta
ins and the forest terrain would make it easier for him to hide. But Verne had no hunting or forest skills, and any of Siryyk's creatures would no doubt succeed in tracking him down. If they looked in the right place.

  His best chance lay in avoiding pursuit for as long as possible. He aimed for the awful forbidden zone of terrain where the climactic battle with Scartaris had broken the map.

  Everything would be strange there ― or so he had heard. The monsters were terrified of that place. No character would go there intentionally ― which was why Verne considered it a safe bet. And, though he didn't want to admit it, the sheer anomaly of the bizarre area had piqued his natural curiosity.

  Verne felt weak. He had nothing to drink, and had eaten little for weeks. But after Siryyk forced him to create the cannon, Verne knew he could not remain a captive any longer. Knowing the manticore also possessed the Sitnaltan weapon made things even worse.

  The weapon contained the power source from the Outsiders' ship ― a hybrid of reality and the imagination. If it was deadly to Gamearth, it might be just as deadly to the Players. The Outsider Scott had created a bigger stick than he bargained for. And the manticore wanted to use it.

  Verne cursed himself for not being able to dismantle the weapon or sabotage it in some way before his flight. But Siryyk kept the weapon under very close guard.

  He had verified that the device itself remained undamaged, and he hoped that the manticore would not discover how to reset its timing mechanism. But Verne held little hope of that; Siryyk had already shown himself to be highly intelligent.

  He wondered what Frankenstein would have done. He wondered what Frankenstein was doing now. Detectors would have shown that the weapon never detonated. Did Frankenstein think him dead? What did Victor think of him and his failure?