Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "They're just starting to move now," she said. He listened to her teeth chattering.

  He watched the forms of Siryyk's army. The horde moved around their main encampment like ants from a stirred-up colony. A few creatures had surrounded the ice fortress at strategic positions. But as the morning fog burned off, Delrael knew that the monster sentries had done little or no good in the darkness.

  He watched a detachment of Slac march across the flat snow to reach higher ground, a hilly jumbled terrain of broken ice blocks and brown-stained snow. Plumes of steam poured up, like fumaroles from some underground volcanic vent.

  But as the Slac detachment moved onto the hummocks, they suddenly scurried away. The ground began to move around them. The lumps cracked, and powdery snow blasted into the air. The steam thickened and gushed upward. A dark form burst out from beneath its blanket of snow and ice.

  The Slac ran for their lives, dropping weapons and shields. Their black cloaks flapped behind them as they fled.

  Great pointed wings snapped free of the ice. A long serpentine neck rose up, sporting a pointed head filled with jagged fangs. Snorts of flame gushed out of the beast's mouth, blasting two of the Slac. The enormous wings beat, lifting the entire form.

  A huge, metallic-looking dragon rose into the air, sweeping cold gusts around it and craning its head. The morning sun glinted on blue and tarnished-silver scales. The dragon turned its head to stare down at the monsters that had disturbed it.

  The dragon looked formidable, though relatively small for such a creature. Seen in comparison to the little Slac, though, it appeared immense indeed. The monsters mobilized toward the new threat. Delrael could make out the giant form of Siryyk striding out to direct his horde.

  But the dragon flew up, circling around and shrieking down at the monsters as if greatly annoyed. It circled, and then flapped its wings again. Ice and snow flaked off, dropping to the ground in a jagged rain. The dragon let out another shriek and then swooped toward the ice fortress.

  Delrael ducked back inside and started to charge down the tower steps four at a time, stumbling and leaping, shouting as he went. He heard other sentries sounding the alarm. A dragon had destroyed the Ice Palace the first time, when Sardun had tried to defend it; Delrael didn't know what he could do that Sardun hadn't tried. His words echoed throughout the corridors.

  "Rouse everyone! We're under attack! A dragon! All characters to arms!"

  The human fighters stirred as he burst into the main room below. Several grabbed weapons; others scrambled to get into armor; a few blinked groggily, fighting off a deep sleep. A handful of fighters followed Delrael out into the courtyard just as the dragon slapped up snow and ice crystals where it landed in an open spot behind the protection of the walls.

  The dragon strutted around in the courtyard, blinking its eyes with audible clicks and breathing with the sound of wind moaning through a cave. "Bad monsters!" the dragon hissed in a broken, rumbling voice. The words sounded distorted from echoing out of such a long throat.

  Delrael stopped, gawking up at it. The dragon seemed to have no hostile intent. He wondered if it merely sought refuge from further disturbance.

  "No sleep! Bah!"

  Then Delrael recognized a rubbed-raw scar on the dragon's throat where the scales had been worn away long ago and had never grown back. The reptilian skin was discolored and hard, but Delrael remembered the thick iron collar.

  "Rognoth!" he said.

  The dragon stopped, swished its long tail and smacked it into an ice wall. It curled the tail around its haunches with a startled hiss. "Rognoth," it said.

  This had been Gairoth the ogre's companion, the ogre who had originally captured Bryl and held him in the swamps before taking over the Stronghold. Gairoth had let the runt dragon gorge himself on all the Stronghold's supplies ― until Delrael brought back Tryos. The larger dragon, furious at his little brother, had chased Rognoth far to the north and lost him.

  Rognoth had been in the frozen wasteland all this time, maturing, toughening.

  Rognoth looked down at Delrael, then craned his neck forward to push his monstrous head close to the man's face. Delrael stood firm.

  The other fighters rushed out, saw their commander face-to-face with the dragon, and backed up. Many drew their bows; others held swords and spears, but didn't know what to do.

  Delrael felt the thick stench of the dragon's breath pouring over him. Rognoth blinked his eyes again and reared back, as if finally recognizing him. "Delroth! Haw! Now I kill you!" he roared in a very good approximation of Gairoth's voice.

  Delrael thought at that moment that he was doomed, that Rognoth carried the ogre's grudge as well. Gairoth had followed Delrael across the entire map, trying to catch him, and had finally died on the threshold of Scartaris. Now Rognoth would finish the job.

  The dragon shook his enormous head and spat-sputtered flame and smoke into the air. "Stupid Gairoth! Haw! Haw! Hope I never see him again!"

  Delrael wanted to laugh with relief. "Gairoth will never come," he said. "We've taken care of him. We also took care of Tryos. They'll never bother you. They are all dead. You're safe."

  Rognoth flapped his wings and made a rumbling sound in his throat that sounded like a purr. "Then you are my friend, Delroth."

  Delrael felt relief wash over him like warm bathwater. He called to all his gathered fighters to stand down and to sheathe their weapons. "It's all right now, it's all right!"

  But later, when he went to Tareah's chambers to tell her the news, all he found was her note.

  She had taken the Water Stone and left them.

  ――――

  Chapter 22

  TECHNOLOGICAL FRINGE

  "I told you how Enrod turned his back on his Sorcerer heritage, but others have done far worse. I have even heard of one human city where all the characters have forsaken magic! How can this be? Without magic, Gamearth cannot function. All of these characters must be insane."

  ― Sardun the Sentinel

  Tareah stopped and stared at the enormous city of Sitnalta; though exhausted from her long journey, she ran forward. Its size amazed her.

  Tareah had never before encountered such a large city so close. After growing up with only Sardun for company in the entire Ice Palace, she found it difficult to conceive of so many characters packed together in buildings. All the noise and activity overwhelmed her.

  Entering Sitnalta, she strained her neck to gawk up at the tall buildings, down at the machinery puttering along the alleys. Her astonishment felt so unusual to her. These buildings and characters and clanking devices seemed as amazing to her as the grandest legends of old Sorcerer battles.

  Sardun had warned her of this place. A terrible city, where the characters turned away from all magic, he said. But her father had told Tareah many things she now questioned.

  Sardun had convinced her that Delrael, like the great Game heroes, was the type of character she should most admire. But though Tareah respected Delrael for what he could do, for his bravery and his drive to win ... she just didn't find him interesting enough for her. Vailret was the one who captured her attention; but she had never told him that. She wondered what he would have to tell her about his quest for the Earth Stone. She needed to find him first.

  Vailret and Bryl had gone to Rokanun, but they had to pass through here first. She would ask about them in the city, find out when they had departed for the island. If Vailret and Bryl had already returned, then she would have to catch them on their way back to Delrael's army.

  Somewhere a long distance away ― it seemed to be deep beneath her, shielded perhaps by rock ― Tareah could feel the tingling pull of the other Stones. The three remaining Stones together contained enough magic that she could sense it even here. The tingling grew stronger, and then vanished.

  She couldn't understand it, but she did learn one heartening thing ― that the Air, Fire, and Earth Stones had indeed come together. Vailret and Bryl had succeeded in that much at least.
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  "Excuse me, please," Tareah said to a muscular woman in a grease-stained jumpsuit. The woman tinkered with some kind of monitoring box connected to pipes and tubes that ran under the streets. She looked up, distracted, and turned, finally setting her eyes on Tareah. She blinked. "Yes, what is it?" Tareah saw a smudge of dark oil across the weathered wrinkles on her cheeks.

  "I'm looking for two companions. Their names are Vailret and Bryl ― Bryl is a magic-user, Vailret a scholar."

  "Oh, I don't think I know them," the woman said and then frowned. "A magic user? In Sitnalta? My!" She bent back to her work and continued tinkering with the metal box.

  Tareah caught the attention of another man who strode purposefully along. He wore dark clothes beneath a white lab smock. He didn't slow as she spoke to him, forcing her to turn and hurry along beside him.

  " ― a magic user, old, and he wears a blue cloak. He's with a young man, blond hair."

  The Sitnaltan man didn't turn to her as he hurried off. "No, neither of those sound familiar to me. Too much is happening in Sitnalta these days. I can't keep track of all the characters who come and go. I'm busy now. We don't have much time left."

  He grabbed a door and walked inside a tall building with low ceilings. Tareah followed after him. Her multicolored skirt swished as she moved. "What do you mean you don't have much time? Why won't anybody talk to me?"

  The man paced down a corridor. On either side Tareah could see rooms and tables strewn with glass tubes and bottles, experiments cooking, complicated notations scrawled on chalkboards. In one room several men and women sat by a table, throwing dice and chalking scores on a board; by the grim feverishness on their faces, she could tell they didn't consider their efforts a game.

  The man proceeded to the opposite side of the building, where a door led back out to the streets again. He shrugged out of his dirty lab coat, grabbed a clean one from a hamper, and pulled it on. He straightened his sleeves, then flashed a glance at her.

  "The invisible force, of course. It controls a handful of characters at a time, and it knows how to cause excessive destruction. It seems random, chaotic. Despite concerted efforts of our greatest teams and our most brilliant solo inventors, we haven't found a way to stop it."

  He stepped into the street. His black shoes slapped the steps.

  "It used to happen four times a day, like clockwork. We charted it on a graph." He turned and made squiggling motions with his fingers against the brick wall.

  Tareah didn't know what a graph was.

  "But then two days ago it suddenly jumped to six times a day. How are we supposed to resist that? We can't even understand what makes it work once. So ― " He stopped and slipped his hands into the wide pockets of his lab coat.

  "I apologize for our attitude. Welcome to Sitnalta ― but perhaps you could come back some other time when we're not quite so busy? Hmmm?"

  He turned and walked off again. This time Tareah didn't follow him.

  An invisible force, Tareah thought. Controlling characters? Attacking Sitnalta? That made no sense. When the man had said the force struck four times a day, then suddenly increased to six times ... something clicked inside her head. She couldn't be sure what it meant.

  While she stood pondering, Tareah leaned against a stone bench that ran along the side of the building. Scrawled in black and red markings on the smooth seat, she found nonsensical equations, numbers, and half-finished drawings of preposterous inventions. She imagined characters sitting there, doodling ideas while waiting for someone.

  From a nearby alley, Tareah heard a loud clanking, mixed with the din of ratcheting and chugging, like the slow approach of a weary behemoth. She stood up. Other characters also looked around; they seemed excited. Whatever made the noise, it moved out of sight behind the tall buildings. Above one rooftop, she saw a misshapen dome move forward with a lurch.

  Several characters hurried toward it, not afraid but curious. Tareah had seen so many wonders in the city that she followed, anxious to see what could be so spectacular that it amazed even the Sitnaltans.

  Rounding the corner, Tareah came upon other characters staring up at a colossal metal giant, fully as tall as any construction in Sitnalta. Its hands each looked as large as Tareah's entire body. The mechanical man had bulky legs of different alloys, draped with wires and cables and pulleys, with bolts to hold all the pieces together. Steam chugged up from an exhaust vent at the robot's shoulder. Polished brass rivets glinted in the light. Blinking indicator lights flashed on its square metal chest.

  Tareah heard the gears grind and the cables strain. The towering automaton lifted its left leg, bending at the knee, and dragging its foot off the ground. The robot pointed its toe and extended it forward for its next step, feeling its way, learning how to walk.

  The automaton had been armored and shielded with protruding iron spikes at its joints. It looked formidable enough to ward off any attacker.

  The automaton's head looked like a square bucket huge enough to hold food for an entire army. Its unblinking eyes were great paned windows, one larger than the other. Behind the eye-windows, she saw the shadowy figure of a human character moving about, pulling at controls.

  The automaton shuffled forward one more step, then raised its right arm as if flexing a muscle. It stepped toward the corner with a ponderous gait ― its steps proved so enormous that it passed along at a respectable pace.

  As the robot reached the corner, it swivelled on one foot to turn sideways and stepped forward again. It cut the corner too close and walked into the wall instead, slamming its shoulder into the bricks with a clang and a thud. Tareah watched crumbling shards of mortar tumble down.

  The automaton stepped backward, prying one of its long shoulder spikes free of the wall. It shuffled sideways, then advanced again, but it still could not clear the corner. Striking the edge with its metal arm, the automaton spun partway around to face the wrong direction.

  The robot repeated its back-step and forward-march one more time before it finally cleared the corner. By this time it had knocked down part of the building, leaving piles of brick on the ground.

  The automaton swiveled at its waist to focus the eye-windows down at the ground. The right metal hand extended toward a pile of brick in the street.

  The spectators observed all this with delighted expressions. Tareah glanced at them, then watched the robot again.

  Its right hand struck the ground to the right of the bricks. In a separate motion, its fingers curled together ― but it missed the target.

  The automaton stood again, straightened both arms to its sides, then bent over a second time, extending the right arm. The curling metal fingers missed the bricks again. Moving with meticulous care, the huge metal fingers could not grasp a simple object. The automaton bent over and stopped at its best guess for where the bricks lay. Steam burped and bubbled out of the exhaust slit, but the robot halted.

  Tareah saw the shadow moving behind the eye-windows, in and out of focus. A metal hatch opened in the metal figure's back, swinging upward. A single character emerged, a man wearing a dark helmet that appeared so heavy it nearly stopped him from moving. He worked his way down steps and rungs on the outer surface of the automaton until he reached the ground.

  Several of the Sitnaltans cheered and applauded. "Hooray for Professor Frankenstein!" someone shouted. Tareah looked at the man with sudden attention ― Vailret had told her about the brilliant Frankenstein. The professor seemed to ignore the attention of the spectators.

  Frankenstein went to where the metal hand lay a full two feet to the wrong side of the bricks. He stared at the automaton, swaying backward from the weight of the helmet on his head.

  He went to the wide foot of the robot, muttering and grumbling to himself. He kicked the metal leg out of spite, then let out a disgusted sigh. "None of this ever happened when Jules was here." He stopped beside the mechanical hand resting on the hex-cobbled streets.

  Frankenstein bent over, putting his back underne
ath the broad cables and pipes of the automaton's wrist. He heaved and strained with all his might, lifting the hand up, shuffling sideways and dropping it down on top of the bricks.

  "There!" He pulled a shining ratchet from his pocket and used it to tighten and readjust nuts and cables in the wrist. Straining upward, he tweaked something in the automaton's elbow. "How many times do I have to calibrate you?" he shouted up at it. "And why am I talking to you? You're just a machine!"

  Several Sitnaltans had dropped out of sight, back to their work. Tareah saw from their expressions that they were embarrassed to watch Frankenstein's difficulty with his own invention.

  Tareah went toward the professor, though, conscious of the menacing bulk of the automaton. "Are you Professor Frankenstein?" she asked.

  He stood up and swivelled his body at the waist to look at her. The heavy helmet gave him difficulties in turning his neck. He gazed at her with no recognition. "Who are you?" Then he frowned because, by her sapphire Water Stone and her hand-made clothes, Tareah obviously did not belong in Sitnalta.

  She took two more steps toward him. The giant automaton looked even more awesome. She stared at the countless connections and adjusting nuts, pulleys, all the tiny systems Frankenstein had installed.

  "My name is Tareah," she said. "I'm a friend of Vailret's and Bryl's. Vailret told me about you, about the last time he came here to Sitnalta. They rescued me from the dragon."

  Frankenstein looked at her, pursing his lips. "Yes. They thought you were someone important, I seem to recall."

  "My father was Sardun." She paused and, with some astonishment, realized that he did not recognize the name. "Sardun the Sentinel."

  "Was he a magic user?" Frankenstein asked.

  She couldn't believe what she heard. "Of course he was a magic user. He was a Sentinel. My father built the Ice Palace. He was one of the most powerful characters on Gamearth!"