Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "Not here he wasn't," Frankenstein said. "Wouldn't have been able to make an ice cube this side of the technological fringe. Magic doesn't work here, or at least it didn't. Does that mean you're a magic user, too? A good one?"

  She drew herself up, trying to look impressive. "One of the last two on the whole map who carries full Sorcerer blood."

  Frankenstein's dark eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "Ah! That could be most useful, then. Cover some of the contingencies in my plan."

  Before the professor could elaborate further, they heard shouts and mutterings. Tareah looked around. A broken brick struck the cobblestones at her feet, throwing shards in a star-shaped pattern.

  Frankenstein held onto the side of his mechanical man and craned backward to look up. Characters had gone out on the crumbling rooftop of the building broken by the automaton. They shouted and moved stiffly, picking at the bricks and pelting them down.

  Two shards clanged on the broad back of the robot. "Stop that!" Frankenstein yelled. Then the Sitnaltans started throwing bricks at him.

  Other characters came down the street, but Tareah saw from their contorted expressions and bizarre synchronous movements that they were all being guided, driven by something she could not see. "What is this?" she asked.

  "Oh, bother ― they're doing it again!" Frankenstein groaned. "I'm protected by my helmet, but you'd better come with me inside Drone. Wouldn't want the controller to get hold of a magic user."

  A rain of bricks pattered down on the street and bounced off the metal hull of the mechanical man. One ricocheted and struck Frankenstein's shoulder. "Ow! Time to go. Come on!"

  The professor grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the nearest metal leg. He scrambled up the footholds and handholds to the hatch, swaying with exaggerated movements because of his helmet. Tareah slipped once, then climbed up after him. She stumbled through the hatch.

  Frankenstein had seated himself in the cramped control compartment. "This was never meant for two characters, but we'll make do. You're shielded in here. Close that hatch!"

  Tareah reached up and pulled the metal lid down. Rocks and bricks continued to strike the automaton, making dull echoes inside.

  "You can lock it down with those flanges on the side." She fumbled with the metal strips and soon had the hatch secured.

  "Hang on." Frankenstein pulled controls and steering levers. "No more time for practice." He leaned back in his seat, and Tareah grabbed onto a support handle as the bulky automaton straightened at the waist. The professor played with the panel in front of him, turning dials, punching buttons, and engaging gears.

  The inner compartment moved and shuddered. She heard the hiss of steam. Drone lifted one foot and set it down again. It began to walk.

  All around her she saw a cluttered chaos of controls and wires; the metal floor of the pilot compartment felt warm where heaters boiled water for the steam engine. She could smell oil and grease and stuffy air in the chamber.

  "Why did they start attacking you?" she asked. "What's wrong with them?"

  "Six times a day. I certainly hope I can find the source and stop it. I am beginning to lose patience."

  Tareah looked through the two eye-windows installed directly in front of where Frankenstein sat. She stared from one to the other down at the street; the view jumped, and Tareah saw that the panes of the left eye-window had been set at angles, curved into lenses so that the view out of one eye was magnified from what she saw through the other.

  Drone jerked and bounced as it moved away. Outside, the Sitnaltan characters converged, and the steady patter of blows continued to ring on the hull of the automaton. Lines of characters stood on the rooftops, throwing things.

  "Where are we going? How can we get away from this?" she said.

  But Frankenstein jerked feverishly at the levers and tried to do dozens of things at once. He spoke to her in a clipped voice through lips that barely moved. "Don't bother me! This is taking all my concentration."

  Tareah stared at the controlled characters around them. Every day this had happened four times, forcing the Sitnaltans to destroy their own buildings; recently the attacks had increased to six times a day.

  Then her jaw slowly opened. A magic user with one Stone would have four spells a day. If that same magic user somehow obtained two more Stones ― say, the Fire Stone and the Air Stone ― the spell allotment would increase to six.

  "Oh, no!" she said. The professor didn't seem to hear her, but he glanced up when she spoke again. "That invisible force ― it's the Earth Stone! Someone is using the Earth Stone to do this."

  ――――

  Chapter 23

  THE LAST MARCH OF THE OLD SORCERERS

  "Commanding an army is much more complex than leading a small group of questers. A good commander must play all his forces as a unit, much as the Outsiders play the characters on Gamearth"

  ― General Doril, Memoirs of the Scouring

  After only a few days inside the ice fortress, Delrael's army grew restless, angry to go out and fight again. But Delrael bided his time, safe inside the high walls.

  The manticore led three separate assaults against the fortress. Delrael's fighters took great glee in shooting arrows or throwing spears at the approaching monsters. Siryyk's troops could not scale or penetrate the ice walls.

  The humans suffered only a single loss ― one man who stood carelessly away from any of the defenses, laughing down at the impotent monsters. A stray arrow caught him in the chest, and he toppled over the wall. If the wound did not kill him instantly, the fall broke at least his legs, and the monsters rushed up to grab their symbolic captive. They dragged him away and made a great show of plunging their spears and swords into his form.

  Delrael's fighters grew angrier.

  In the days since Tareah had taken the Water Stone away, their morale had initially dropped and then returned to its former high. The characters felt invincible within the ice fortress, and they were tired of waiting.

  The fighters sat down against ice walls or hunched crosslegged on the floor. Many kept blankets around them, most wore their armor. Small groups amused themselves with dice games or tic-tac-toe scratched into the ice with knife points. Delrael spoke with them at least once a day, asking for their suggestions.

  One woman with short brownish hair and wide-set dark eyes stood up and waved her hand. Delrael nodded for her to speak.

  "I think we should strike a quick blow. A quick one. March out, attack, use our element of surprise, and then hurry back in! Our losses should be minimal. Just think of what damage we could do to the monsters."

  Minimal losses, Delrael thought. Drodanis and the remaining Black Falcon troops had been 'minimal losses.' The other fighters in the chamber murmured their agreement. One man who remained seated, huddled in his blanket, said, "At least we'd be moving around. It's always so cold in this place."

  "It would be foolish to go out and attack!" Delrael raised his voice. They had been through this before, and his decision remained. "There's no reason for more of our characters to die. The horde still outnumbers us."

  Romm stood up. A flush passed across his pale skin. "If you don't think each of us can kill at least two monsters, Delrael, then we're not suitable fighters. What difference does it make if they outnumber us?"

  Delrael frowned. "Look, Siryyk is getting desperate. He's already lost half of his fighters, and he has no more supplies. They only have enough wood to make one or two campfires every night. We can just wait him out and laugh at him in here."

  "Some commander," one character mumbled, but Delrael couldn't see who it was.

  "What if Tareah and Bryl don't come back with the Stones?" someone else shouted. Delrael chose to ignore that possibility.

  Old Siya turned her head toward Delrael and kept her voice low, speaking to him alone, but her words carried well in the cold air of the broad chamber. "Fighting monsters is what the Game is all about, Delrael. Isn't that what you always said? You can't win by sitting and wa
iting. What would Drodanis think of you?"

  Delrael scowled. "That's uncalled for, Siya."

  She scowled right back at him.

  "Wait!" Enrod said from the wall. He had held his hand against the ice block for so long that water trickled down; when the Sentinel removed his palm, Delrael could see a dark indentation from where his body heat had pressed the skin into the wall. Enrod's hair remained wild, and his eyes clicked back and forth, as if tracking and trying to focus on something.

  He paused at inappropriate times in his sentence. "I know how ... we can win this game." Enrod drew several deep breaths; just when Delrael thought he had completely lost his train of thought, the Sentinel swiveled his head. He met Delrael with a piercing gaze.

  "Kill Siryyk. That alone ― " He paused again, and then locked his eyes on Siya, and then out into the audience at Romm, as if he were playing a kind of staring game. "Will do a lot of damage. Siryyk commands them. Kill Siryyk. The monsters won't know what to do then."

  The other fighters muttered agreement or questions. Enrod laughed. Delrael said, "But how would you kill him?"

  The Sentinel nodded, but answered a different question. "A Slac general will lead after Siryyk falls." Enrod grinned. "Then the Slac will feel favored in the army. The other monsters won't like that. There'll be in-fighting before ― "

  He stopped, stretched out his hand to the wall again and carefully lined up his fingers and his palm with the indentation he had already melted into the ice. "You see? I still have fire!"

  "How would you kill the manticore?" Delrael asked again, raising his voice this time.

  Enrod looked at his fingers and the ice; then with his other hand he reached inside his tattered robe to pull out a small scroll. Delrael could see words written on its surface.

  Enrod nodded. "Arken."

  Siya stepped into the courtyard and felt the biting cold on her hands and arms. She had not bothered to bundle up. Standing next to the dragon would keep her warm.

  She carried a large cauldron, swinging it to keep her balance. She stepped out under the muffled sky. The metal pot remained warm from the noon meal.

  Rognoth the dragon beat his tarnished-silver wings and craned his neck, already waiting for her. As the dragon moved, Siya smelled a rank warmth that overwhelmed the cold.

  Rognoth bowed his long neck and hissed as he stuck his head into the cauldron and began lapping out the leftovers. His breaths sounded like a blacksmith's bellows echoing within the chamber. She heard the scraping sound of his tongue against the inner surface.

  She had been bringing food, scraps, and garbage to the dragon since he had arrived. Rognoth distracted her from the haunting images in her head ― Drodanis, an insignificant black figure falling in a rain of rock down the infinite cliff slope, or thoughts of her husband Cayon battling to the death out in the forest someplace without her.

  What did these two know that she did not? What had Siya failed to understand? It seemed so clear how her life should be lived; and yet these questers who went out for adventure and swordplay and bloodshed ... they seemed to know something. Siya looked around herself every day. She watched Delrael. She tried to understand.

  "More?" Rognoth said, sticking his head into the cauldron again and plucking it back out. Globs of porridge stuck around his nostrils and pointed chin.

  "No more," she said. "Later." They went through this ritual every day.

  "More?" Rognoth said in a quieter voice, then turned his head away, as if in deep disappointment.

  Siya reached into her cloak and took out five biscuits. "Here," she said and tossed them to him. Delighted, the dragon snapped them up and seemed satisfied.

  Rognoth appeared strong and happy, vibrant with energy. She looked at him and felt a pang inside herself. Even this dragon knew his place in Gamearth. He knew something she didn't know.

  The dragon lowered his head, and Siya felt warmth radiating from his nose and throat. He spoke again, the longest conversation he had ever had with her.

  "Gairoth bad to me. Tryos bad to me." He raised his head.

  "Yes, they were bad to you," she said.

  "But you ― nice." He drew the last sound out into a long hiss, and then said it again. "Nice!"

  Not sure she could stand anymore of this, Siya hurried back inside, leaving the empty cauldron with the dragon.

  Long after darkness, when Enrod summoned up the magic to call Arken forth, he heard the whispering voices of the dayid within his mind. Any time he had worked magic inside the fortress, the voices tugged at him, distracted him, called to him. But Enrod didn't mind. He was accustomed to hearing voices in his head. They kept him company.

  Enrod watched the lump of rock protruding from the packed snow in the courtyard behind the ice walls. Moonlight shone down, making the rock dark with exaggerated shadows. Two characters held torches under the tall arches, lighting the area with reflected orange. Trickles of water ran down the ice walls next to the flames, then refroze before they reached the ground.

  "Arken!" Enrod said again under his breath.

  The boulder shifted, elongated, until it formed itself into a bulky body. The bottom half split vertically and thinned into two pillars that became legs. Arm columns lifted up. Protrusions from the back of the stone torso extended into wings. The forehead shoved forward and cracked open to show a single crystalline eye.

  Clumps of snow clung in rough spots of the gargoyle, but they fell off as Arken moved and took a single step. "I am called again?" he asked in a gravelly voice.

  Delrael went forward to take charge. Enrod watched, flicking his gaze to the gargoyle then to Delrael, back and forth, trying to see everything at once.

  "We need to ask your help, Arken. Do you remember us?"

  The blocky stone head turned, but all expression was lost on the rough features. "Of course, traveler. But is Scartaris not destroyed? I could feel that when it happened. I was free."

  Delrael nodded. "We need you to fight against the manticore who now leads his army."

  "Manticore?" Arken said. His stiff stone wings pried open and then closed again with a crunching sound. "Ah! It will be good to fight him again. He destroyed me last time."

  "Go out at night and wander among the creatures encamped around the ice fortress," Delrael said. "In the morning when the other monsters can see, you'll challenge Siryyk to single combat. We hope you can kill him."

  After a moment, the gargoyle spoke. "The manticore has already defeated me once."

  Enrod spoke up, clutching the scroll he had found in Sardun's vaults. "Then we will summon you again! And again!"

  Arken swung his head from side to side in a stiff motion. "No, fashioning this body grows more difficult each time. When Scartaris forced me to return and serve him ― twice ― I lost much of my strength. You see ― " He held out one arm; the hand was just a blocky lump of stone without fingers. "I have done a poor job this time. It will get worse."

  Enrod crumpled the scroll in his hand. "Kill Siryyk the first time."

  The manticore strode out of his tent, slashing at the flaps with his claws. The burning sores on his face felt worse, continuing to burn from the venom Enrod had blasted at him.

  Siryyk heard preparations among his troops, but he ignored them. He shook his maned head to clear away the last muddled nightmares, the backwash of fear and the Outsider David's loss of control.

  The Game would end soon, one way or another.

  Siryyk had to capture the Stones before the time came. He didn't know what he would do with them, but somehow their enormous magic could shield him. And if that didn't work, and they were all going to die anyway ― then Siryyk would use the Sitnaltan weapon to destroy everything, the Outsiders along with Gamearth.

  The horde had trampled most of the snow and ice in the area, leaving only bare rocks and frozen footprints. General Korux watched as two Slac scooped snow into the boiler of the steam-engine car, making it ready. On its front seat sat the Sitnaltan weapon that Professor Verne had
repaired. Other monsters wandered about, none of them knowing what to do. They were growing hungry, Siryyk knew. The human riders had ruined most of their supplies.

  Three small goblins used pumice to scour off oxidation from the surface of Verne's cannon. Today, Siryyk decided, he would blast the ice walls down.

  Out of a nearby group of demons, a bulky stone figure plodded forward. Siryyk turned toward him. A gargoyle ... he did not recall having seen this creature in his army before.

  Then the manticore remembered him ― Arken, the gargoyle who had broken from Scartaris's control and attacked him instead. Siryyk had blasted him into shards of broken stone ―

  "Siryyk, I bring you a message from Delrael," the gargoyle said.

  Siryyk let out a rumbling roar, not knowing what Arken wanted. The other monsters stopped what they were doing and turned to watch. The manticore raised his scorpion tail, feeling the angry energy just behind the stinger. He wanted to destroy the messenger, but first he wanted to hear what Arken had to say.

  "What is this message?" Siryyk said, rearing up to glare down at the blocky gargoyle.

  In response, Arken bunched up one mammoth arm and put his entire body behind an enormous roundhouse punch, striking upward and cracking into Siryyk's jaw.

  The manticore stumbled one step backward with an astonished grunt, swayed, then fell into a sitting position. He tried to clear the black explosions of pain from his head. The world spun.

  He must have lost consciousness for a few seconds, plunged into distorted dreams of the Outside. Vaguely, he realized that the other monsters were firing arrows and throwing spears at the gargoyle. Some left little white nicks on the stone, but otherwise caused no damage.

  Siryyk shook his head. Blood dribbled down the side of his black lips, and he could feel a splintering ache in his mouth. The instant his vision cleared, he spat out a roar mixed with flying droplets of blood He lurched to his feet again and, throwing all his energy into the attack, he struck out with his scorpion tail.