Game's End

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "Prepare the cannon!" the manticore said. "I want those fortress walls down immediately. Delrael is inside. These ― " He glared at the attacking old Sorcerers. Blood-flecked saliva came down his black lips. "These are just diversions."

  Siryyk turned his squarish head and looked around the battlefield, seeing how many of his monster fighters lay slaughtered. It angered him that his own troops were such pathetic fighters.

  Throughout this entire march the humans had defeated him again and again. Siryyk's horde had once outnumbered the humans five to one ― and now the forces seemed equally matched.

  "Hurry!" he snapped at Korux.

  The Slac general leaped out of the steam-engine car and ran to the black cannon. Its surface gleamed in patches from where the goblins had scoured it that morning, but their work had been interrupted by the appearance of Arken.

  As the old Sorcerers continued to fight, and as wounded monsters kept screaming and snarling, Korux and several Slac assistants aimed the cannon barrel at the thick ice walls.

  Siryyk drew himself up. In a moment the fortress would crumble. He would march in triumph and snatch the Stones out of Delrael's dying hand.

  In the steam-engine car, Professor Verne squirmed and managed to get himself into a sitting position with his elbows propped behind him. He coughed. His eyes looked wide and bloodshot, his appearance haggard, a character at the end of his play.

  Korux and the Slac loaded the cannon with one of the last casks of firepowder, then they rolled the heavy cannonball down the gullet of the weapon.

  "Wait!" Verne said. His voice was weak, but desperate. "Please wait. I know how to make it better."

  The manticore turned to him. "I am quite satisfied with the performance of your cannon as it is."

  "You don't understand," Verne sounded too tired to shout. "You saw the avalanche you created when you fired it before. Do you want to destroy the entire ice fortress? Please, I can adjust the detonation, change it so that the impact is less brisant. It will merely shatter the walls and open a way for you to get in."

  "It is a trick," Korux said to Siryyk. The other Slac finished aiming the cannon and locked down the gears. They placed rocks behind the wheels to stop the recoil from hurling it backward.

  "No trick. Let me save those characters. If I show you a clean way to break in, you can take what you want from them. There's no need to slaughter the entire army."

  "Why should I bother?" Siryyk said.

  Verne's haggard face grew hard, and he snapped, "What if your unnecessary destruction ruins the Stones? How long is it going to take you to dig through a mound of rubble and dead characters just to find a few tiny gems?"

  "All right," Siryyk said. "But hurry." The vision of tedious sifting through the wreckage had not occurred to him. If they could overwhelm the human forces and take Delrael prisoner, Siryyk would enjoy drawing claws across the human commander's throat. It would be much more satisfying than just blowing up the place.

  "Korux ― watch him!"

  Siryyk yanked the professor out of the steam-engine car and used his claws to rip free the bindings on Verne's wrists and ankles. The professor cried out as the ropes snapped, and the manticore wondered if he had sprained the man's wrists, then decided it didn't matter.

  Verne stumbled to the cannon, as if on the verge of breaking into sobs. He adjusted parts of the back end of the cannon, moving the bronze support struts that Siryyk had always suspected served no purpose. Verne seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

  Korux stood beside Verne with a short sword poised against his ribs. The professor turned to the Slac general and sneered. "I am incredibly weary of your bullying. I have nothing left to fear, so you're wasting your energy."

  Korux hissed, but Verne ignored him and finished with the cannon. He glared at Siryyk. "It's finished. You may fire it ― and the rest of your efforts be damned!"

  Siryyk knocked Verne sprawling toward the steam-engine car and then took up his position behind the cannon. "Korux, bring me a torch! Prepare the entire army for a charge into the fortress when we blast the walls down. Have them ignore these other fighters."

  Korux bellowed to all the monsters who could hear him. One of the other Slac handed Siryyk a burning brand from a scattered campfire.

  The manticore, holding the torch in his huge paw, stepped behind the cannon.

  Verne crawled to his knees and watched the end of his work. He had lived in such terror for so long that his emotions were scoured down into apathy. Tears seemed to freeze across his eyes.

  Siryyk took his position directly behind the cannon, as he had done before, and raised his flame to the touch hole. The fuse hissed. The other Slac backed away, covering their ears.

  The entire cannon exploded.

  The back end of the barrel blew out in a tremendous sheet of flame and shrapnel. The iron cylinder blasted apart.

  Verne rolled behind the steam-engine car for shelter. As the smoke and flames cleared, he saw the twisted wreckage of his cannon tilted onto one side on a broken wheel. With a groan, it slumped and collapsed to the ground.

  Behind it, thrown backward five feet from the concussion, the bulk of Siryyk lay in a mess of blood and mangled tissue. His face and his broad chest had been blown away. His neck snapped backward, his spine turned inside out. A hiss like a leaking Sitnaltan air pump wheezed through the holes in the manticore's punctured lungs. With a crackle of sparks and a dying blue glow, the deadly scorpion tail twitched once and then lay still.

  The other monsters howled and shouted. Several ran to Siryyk's body like flies settling on a fresh kill.

  With a cry of triumph, Verne leaped to his feet and felt the raw edge of joy fill him again. In one blow he had destroyed the deadly cannon and killed the powerful commander of the horde ― perhaps he had even saved Gamearth.

  A sharp reptilian hand grabbed the hair behind Verne's head and dug claws into his scalp, tilting his face up. Korux, two feet taller than the professor, glared down with sizzling slitted eyes.

  "Now it's time for my fun, Professor. And no one is going to stop me." He put the point of his short sword against Verne's abdomen.

  Verne could not summon the energy even to struggle. Unlike when he had tried to throw himself into the void of broken hexes, this time his self-preservation drive did not try to assert itself.

  "You have begged for this a long time," Korux said.

  Slowly, an inch at a time, he pushed the blade deep into Verne's stomach until the bloody point came out his back.

  The professor's last thought was to wonder if he and Frankenstein had ever patented a sword-proof vest.

  In disgust, Korux tossed Verne's body down to the ground. Many of the monsters had stopped fighting. But the remaining old Sorcerer forces continued to drive forward and attack.

  Korux immediately took charge. "We will destroy them all now!" he shouted. His own Slac came to him, adding their instant support. He spoke to them.

  "We will use a tactic Siryyk himself feared. The professor created an ultimate weapon ― and after we detonate it, we will be the victors. Gamearth is ours!"

  With one hand, Korux snatched Verne's bloody body up from the ground and dumped him into the back seat of the still-chugging steam-engine car. "It's time for you to take a message to Delrael, Professor."

  Korux set the Sitnaltan weapon upright on the seat. It looked so much smaller, so much more harmless than the cannon, but though Korux did not understand how it functioned, he knew clearly the fear it inspired in Verne, and the hesitation that the manticore had felt when thinking about it.

  Korux pushed the arming button and then set the newly repaired timer. He had watched the professor fix the device, and as he held a knife to Verne's scrawny throat and hissed in his ear, he had forced the man to tell him how to use the weapon. For just such an occasion as this.

  Now, when he released the timer and it began to tick like the rattling of a viper, Korux adjusted the steering levers and disengaged the braking
lock. He jumped out of the car as it rolled forward.

  The Slac general signalled his own fighters to back away, to be prepared to shield their eyes. "This will be spectacular!" he said.

  The Sitnaltan weapon continued to tick as the vehicle drove in a straight line toward the ice fortress.

  ――――

  Chapter 26

  UNDERGROUND

  "Since all characters are different, with different skills, we should have many solutions to any problem. What cause is there for us to worry?"

  ― the Sentinel Arken, debates on the Scouring

  Frankenstein's Drone clanked and thudded as it continued along the streets of Sitnalta. The attack from the invisible force had stopped, and the giant mechanical man moved without hindrance.

  When Tareah pressed Frankenstein about possible damage to Drone, he just shrugged. "A few dings and dents perhaps. I took special care to develop adequate armor. I wasn't sure what it might be required to do."

  Drone walked into the center of a broad square and then stopped among large hexagonal tiles. A water clock spilled thin silver streams into a transparent receptacle etched with precise lines.

  The professor looked at the bank of dials and gauges in front of him, adjusted one, and tapped the glass surface until he saw a needle bouncing and moving.

  "Ah!" he said. "This is probably the best place."

  Frankenstein pulled a wide belt across his chest and buckled himself into the seat. "You'd better brace your body. I have installed gyros to stabilize this control compartment, but..." He shrugged in his chair. "I didn't have time to test them."

  He grabbed another switch and flicked it upward. A hiss of steam shot from the boiler, and Drone sagged on its joints, bending into a crouch.

  "But first," the professor said, "tell me about this Earth Stone. What are we fighting? Bryl mentioned something about his spells and the gems he carried."

  As Tareah answered him, she remembered how her father had told the tale over and over again. She purposely altered some of the words and changed the phrasing so that the tale became her own.

  "The four Stones together contain all the remaining magic of the old Sorcerers. Each Stone has power over one of the four elements. The Fire Stone controls fire, the Water Stone controls water and the weather, the Air Stone creates illusions out of the air ― Bryl probably told you all that. The Air Stone and the Earth Stone had been lost since the Scouring, but Gairoth the ogre found the Air Stone and used it. The Earth Stone lay buried in Tryos's treasure pile, until Vailret and Bryl went to get it."

  "But what does it do?" Frankenstein adjusted his lead helmet, cocking it sideways so he could hear her better. He seemed impatient with the history lesson, preferring practical information instead.

  "Well, the Earth Stone controls living things. Whoever uses it can manipulate characters just like one of the Outside Players."

  "Ah, another game master inside the Game itself." Frankenstein's eyebrows raised. "So at last we have a rational explanation for what has happened to my city." He paused, then pursed his lips. "I'm not sure magic counts as part of a 'rational' explanation, though." He appeared puzzled.

  "No matter. According to these readings, the controller ― the character who holds the Earth Stone and now, from what you say, also the Air and Fire Stones ― is directly below us. Deep in the earth.

  "With Drone, we will go down and attack. Between the technology of this mechanical fighter and your magical abilities, we should take care of every circumstance."

  Frankenstein powered up the engine, and Drone settled against the tiles. Then the professor thrust the entire steering mechanism forward. Drone bowed into a kneeling position, squeaking and groaning on its huge joints and gears. The control compartment tilted along its stabilizers, partially righting itself.

  Tareah pushed her body against the side of Frankenstein's seat and a bare section of the control panel. She placed one hand against the far wall, but snatched it away from the hot metal.

  Frankenstein narrowed his eyes and moved feverishly. Drone's hands spread out. The metal fingers twitched.

  Tareah watched through the eye-windows as the powerful claws scraped at the tiles. Drone pawed away the hexagons and exposed the raw dirt underneath.

  Its hands moved rapidly, shoveling out enormous handfuls of dirt with each scooping motion. It jerked out a long metal conduit buried under the ground, snapping the pipe and hauling it up. Frankenstein stopped the automaton's work and stared out the magnifying eye-window to see the broken metal end and the thin cables dangling inside.

  "So much for the new street lighting system," Frankenstein said. "Too ambitious a project anyway."

  Drone leaned forward as it continued to scrape and paw and dig into the earth. When its head pushed into the dark opening, all light blotted out from the eye-windows. In a distracted motion, Frankenstein flipped a small switch; a powerful light blazed out from the metal man's forehead. All Tareah could see, though, was the dirt and mud falling as Drone continued to tunnel deeper.

  The control chamber tilted again as the automaton plunged at a steeper angle, tunnelling like a gigantic rodent, scooping the dirt behind as it continued to plow ahead.

  Frankenstein kept monitoring his gauges. "Yes, getting closer, getting closer."

  Tareah's eyes stung from not blinking often enough. She felt her anxiety growing, and she gripped the Water Stone with her sweaty palm. She would get to the other three Stones soon. She had the last one in her hand. She could put an end to all this.

  But the main dread in her mind was that something terrible had happened to Vailret and Bryl.

  The two had taken a balloon and gone off to Rokanun days before ... but they had not returned. Somehow the Stones had come back here, under Sitnalta.

  The professor hunched forward to stare at one gauge that spun wildly. "Hang on! There's something unusual ahead, a lack of resis ― "

  Suddenly Drone broke through the dirt wall and nearly pitched forward into a gigantic underground grotto. Frankenstein yanked back on the steering yoke to steady the automaton.

  The spotlight stabbed into a chamber filled with writhing worm-men, with gray bodies and wet-looking skins and staring blind white eyes. They squirmed and covered their faces from the blinding light. Tareah saw more gems and crystals than even Tryos had kept in his treasure horde.

  Frankenstein moved Drone forward into the chamber. The spotlight fell on the far wall. Tareah froze. "Look, it's Bryl and Vailret! And the Stones!"

  But the words seemed ridiculous to her as soon as she said them. The most awesome sight was the terrifying clay face taking up nearly one entire wall and the colossal hand that held Vailret and Bryl in a crushing grip.

  "Great Maxwell!" Frankenstein said.

  "There's your controller," Tareah said. "There's the thing that's been destroying Sitnalta."

  The professor looked at the titanic clay face that scowled at them, and his own expression filled with fury. He slammed his activation levers forward, and Drone strode into the chamber.

  Tareah peered through the eye-windows and saw the metal feet squashing werem that could not wriggle out of the way fast enough. Some worm-men threw clods of dirt and gems, which did nothing to the automaton.

  Frankenstein gave a sidelong glance at the werem. "What sort of evolutionary process could have made that a viable survival trait?" He snorted. "Professor Darwin has have some explaining to do."

  He yanked another lever that extended Drone's dirt-spattered metal hands forward, as if he wanted to strangle the immense earthen face.

  Drone towered halfway to the ceiling of the grotto. As it stomped across the floor, Frankenstein had to step sideways to avoid the thick support columns spaced in the center.

  The Master's vast clay hands cast Vailret and Bryl carelessly to the floor. The hands extended from the wall, palms outward, and grew larger as they pulled more dirt and mud. Tareah watched the three tiny Stones patter to the floor.

  Frankenstein
made Drone's hands form two fists as the automaton steamed forward.

  The right clay hand swelled larger and struck across, swatting Drone. The giant mechanical man reeled sideways and staggered to the far wall of the grotto. The left eye-window cracked and splintered; two of the smaller panes split out to tinkle on the grotto floor.

  The control chamber rocked and tilted as the gyros tried to stabilize it against the violent motion. The professor grabbed at an emergency handle to regain control.

  Below them, in the bobbing, glaring spotlight, the werem continued to move and hiss, lining up by Drone's feet. But they could do nothing. They were soft.

  Frankenstein checked his control panel. "Some damage, but not serious. It'll be harder to walk. One leg joint doesn't seem to respond properly."

  "I have the Water Stone," Tareah said. "I could roll it in here and strike out at that thing."

  "No," the professor said without hesitating. "Wouldn't work. We're shielded in here. If the Earth Stone magic can't get in to manipulate us, then yours can't get out. Complementarity principle, or something like that. It only makes sense."

  "Then I have to get out of Drone! How will I make it past the worm-men down there? If I can just take my Stone to the other four ― " She looked through the shattered eye-window and saw Vailret and Bryl both scurrying toward the other gems. "If I can bring all four together, then we'll be done! We'll have the Allspirit. We'll have won."

  Frankenstein kept his jaw clenched tightly, and his voice sounded strange. Tareah wondered if he had ever been battered by an opponent before.

  "I'm going to charge forward, straight into that face and poke its big mud eyes out. When I start moving, undog the hatch and jump out. If you land right, you won't hurt yourself. We're not that high up. Help me out with your Water Stone if you can."