Gamearth Trilogy Omnibus

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The heavy hatch on Drone’s back clanged shut but did not lock. It wobbled open and banged down each time the automaton took a step. Wet mud caked the Sitnaltan automaton, and a geyser of steam came from the exhaust vent on its shoulders. The steam grew black as Drone chugged toward the scowling visage on the wall.

  The colossal clay hands extended out, reaching for the automaton. Drone held out its own metal hands and charged at its top speed into the clay.

  Tareah rolled, got to her knees, and scrambled away. The werem hadn’t noticed her, intent on their Master’s battle. She grabbed the six-sided Water Stone and made ready to roll it, to call up some kind of spell to help Frankenstein.

  But it was too late. Drone jammed its spread metal claws into the towering eye sockets with an explosive thud.

  The huge face let out a howl of pain. The clay hands folded over Drone, and the face melted back into the wall, like a man sinking deep in a dark pool of water. The hands cupped around Drone, growing larger to cover the strugglings of the automaton. The hands pulled back into the earthen wall as well, dragging Drone down with them into an abyss of solid earth.

  As the wall swallowed Drone’s spotlight, Tareah became blinded before she grew accustomed to a dimmer glow. She felt sick. The worm-men stirred.

  “Vailret!” she called.

  “I’m here,” he gasped. He sounded hurt.

  She saw Bryl scrambling across the grotto floor, looking for the scattered Stones. He held the Air Stone in one hand and, as she watched, he grabbed the brilliant emerald Earth Stone.

  “Bryl! I have the Water Stone,” she said.

  “Yes, for the Allspirit!” he answered, wheezing. He crawled about, searching for the Fire Stone.

  Tareah moved toward him. The werem hissed, and she saw them rising up. Scores of them lay dead and squashed, oozing a thick, mudlike blood. Their broken segments and severed bodies continued to squirm in opposite directions.

  With a splitting smack, the far wall split open and Drone came flying out, stumbling backward, as if the jaws of the earth had spat out their morsel. Both eye-windows gaped, shattered, and she could see Frankenstein moving sluggishly inside, as if injured. He tried to regain control of his machine. The spotlight danced around like a glowing whip on the grotto walls, and then it flickered and went out.

  Drone whirled out of control. One leg didn’t move and, as it tried to take too many steps forward, the automaton tottered, staggered, and then tipped over. Professor Frankenstein used the metal arms to try and stabilize it, but Drone toppled like a prodigious tree.

  The automaton crashed into one of the thick support pillars. Dirt and chunks of cement-hard rock tumbled down. The ceiling groaned and split as a great fissure opened up.

  Bryl cried out, sprawling toward the gleaming Fire Stone he found among the debris on the floor. Drone had kicked it out of the way. “I found the last one!” He scurried across the floor.

  Frankenstein crawled out of Drone’s smashed left eye-window, heaving himself out and looking dazed. Blood smeared his forehead, and he staggered down, picking his way along the metal chest and shoulders of his automaton. He stared up at the behemoth he had built, now smashed and battered beyond all hope of repair. He blinked in shock and sorrow.

  Bryl’s hand closed around the ruby Fire Stone. He sat up. His face gleamed in a rictus of triumph. “We have won!”

  “Look out!” Vailret croaked.

  Then an entire section of ceiling broke free and crushed down on top of Bryl.

  27. Allspirit

  “Never bring all four Stones together unless you are prepared for what will happen. It’s like magical synergy. More power resides in the combined Stones than even the six Spirits possess. . . . The Transition was an awesome enough thing to do once in the Game.”

  —the Sentinel Arken

  Delrael watched the manticore die in the cannon explosion.

  He saw the havoc caused by the old Sorcerer troops as they slaughtered the monster army.

  “All fighters, get ready!” he shouted to his own troops. “We’re going to march out and end this. Siryyk is dead. The monsters are on the run. We will win this Game!”

  His army cheered and raised their weapons, eager to attack. But as soon as his army stood lined up and ready to charge, Delrael realized he didn’t know how to lower the ice wall.

  Instead, one by one, the fighters had to push through the low doorways Enrod had left in the wall. A constant stream spilled out to the opposite side of the barricade, waiting and regrouping.

  Inside the fortress, Siya blinked her eyes, still groggy. She looked devastated, burned out from the inside. But she managed a thin smile. “Was I brave, Delrael?” she asked in a small voice.

  “You were stupid!” Delrael said, but the harshness in his voice did not sound genuine.

  “I was brave,” Siya said and nodded. “That’s enough for now, I think. But you don’t have an excuse, Delrael. Go lead your army!”

  When he passed under the low frozen arch, Delrael saw that most of his army had already grouped and charged forward with no plan, just a frenzy of attack. Delrael drew his own sword and moved after them in disgust. “Thanks for waiting,” he muttered.

  He’d never had trouble managing his companions on a simple quest. They all acted as a team with the same goal; each knew his own responsibilities. But he did not picture himself as a domineering commander,.and this army was too much for Delrael to hold under rigid control.

  These characters had come to the Stronghold as a rallying point, to meet and gain some training before they went off toward their common foe. They had been fidgeting inside the ice walls for days, watching their enemy within grasp. They had been stirred by the duel of Arken and Rognoth, even by Siya’s bravery. Now they had no patience for waiting or listening to Delrael.

  But they were going to win the battle anyway.

  He saw that the monster army already appeared to be backing away, leaving behind the manticore’s bloody carcass and the ruins of the giant cannon. The remaining old Sorcerers followed them, leaving chopped enemy corpses in their wake.

  Then Delrael noticed the empty steam-engine car chugging directly toward them. He recognized it as a Sitnaltan vehicle—

  Finally, something else made sense to him. He thought of the manticore’s cannon and how improbable it had seemed that the monsters could have developed such an incredible weapon. He wondered with a shudder if Siryyk had somehow captured one of the Sitnaltan professors.

  What if the monsters were even now retreating from some new weapon, something planted in the steam-engine car that would cause even more destruction? Why else would they be running away?

  Most of Delrael’s army veered to the left to engage the surviving monsters. Delrael planted his feet and waited for the steam-engine car to approach. It frightened him; the vehicle did not belong here. The monsters would not have given it up so easily, not such a prize.

  Someone had sent it on a mission.

  He could see no driver. The steering levers had been tied down. A polished cylinder sat upright on the front seat, and a bloody human hand draped over the back, trying to reach the device.

  Delrael sprinted to meet the oncoming vehicle. He heard its chugging grow louder as the shouts from his army, the clash of weapons, the roars of monsters echoed across the cold, still sky.

  Far ahead, Delrael saw Ydaim Trailwalker and Tayron Tribeleader loping faster than any of the other fighters toward the front line of creatures. A tall Slac general stood directing the troops and trying to exert his control.

  Both Tayron and Ydaim attacked the Slac general at the same time, swinging down with their wooden swords, putting all the strength of their broad shoulders behind the blow. Delrael could see the muscles rippling in their backs. They reared up and raked sideways with their curved panther claws. The Slac general tumbled backward and flailed in his own defense, but the two khelebar struck him down.

  Delrael tensed as the Sitnaltan car reached him. He
dropped his sword in the snow, freeing his hands. He would not need the blade now—he needed his dexterity, and his mind. Somehow, he would have to understand and outwit a Sitnaltan invention.

  His boots kicked up wet, blood-spattered snow from the retreating monsters. He ran and grabbed the battered red body, letting his feet skip on the ground.

  Delrael dragged himself into the moving car, knocked the cylindrical device aside to make room for himself, and turned to the back seat. He looked with sick astonishment at the gaunt figure lying bloody in the back.

  He barely recognized Professor Verne. The man appeared too thin and haggard, with great bags under his eyes, his bushy gray beard torn and unkempt. Blood soaked his torn shirt, and drying red spots stained his hands. With his last gasps of life he must have tried to haul himself over the seat toward the device.

  A ticking sound came from it. Whatever this weapon was, it seemed far more sinister than the cannon.

  “Professor, can you hear me? Speak to me!”

  Delrael reached over the seat and tried to haul him erect, but Verne’s body felt stiff and cold. His jaws were strung together by dead muscles. Delrael let the professor fall back.

  He looked up and saw the car chugging straight for the ice fortress wall. He remembered how Mayer had pulled and yanked at the levers to steer her car. Delrael unlashed the ropes that someone had tied around the levers.

  He pulled at one, and the car lurched to the side, veering away from the ice fortress. He pushed another, and the vented steam increased. The vehicle picked up speed. Delrael needed to get away from his troops, away from the fortress if he couldn’t somehow learn what to do with this weapon of Verne’s.

  The steam-engine car ground past the ice fortress walls, spinning deep ruts into the snow and ice, bouncing on barely covered rocks beneath the frozen desolation. They sped onward.

  Verne had been trying to do something to the Sitnaltan device when he died. Delrael looked at the invention, but it made no sense to him: a cylinder of bright metal with red fins sticking out from the side; a trembling gauge protruded on an elbow, indicating some quantity approaching a red area on the dial. On the back he found scrawled numbers, “17/2,” but that meant nothing to him.

  Then he located where the ticking came from—a large knob with painted numbers descending toward a red line marked on the device. Smears of blood ran down the metal, long fat fingerprints like the trails of infernal slugs. Verne had been trying to do something to this knob.

  Delrael didn’t know what the knob did; he didn’t know what the entire device did. But some intuition—based on what little he remembered from Sitnalta and the gadgets Mayer had explained—told him that this had something to do with activating the device.

  If so, then the numbers on the side showed exactly how to stop it. He gripped the knob with both hands, using all his strength to turn it clockwise.

  Turning it toward zero. That would shut it off.

  The clicking increased like a rapid rattle, and the red line moved quickly around.

  Verne must have been clawing at the tight knob to do the same thing. Dying, the professor would never have been able to do it for himself.

  Delrael twisted with his wrist. The zero approached, and he pushed harder. He would shut it off in just a moment.

  Then his eyes flicked down, and he saw the curved smear of blood on the side of the knob. He stopped. It seemed too clear—Verne had been trying to rotate the knob the other way.

  Delrael squeezed the knob with all his fingers to arrest its motion. The clicking slowed, but continued as the slippery surface kept turning.

  A second possibility occurred to Delrael: If this were a timer of some sort, then zero would be the worst possible point, the point where the weapon would detonate.

  He turned the knob the other way, but it seemed locked, able to progress in only one direction. He bashed at it with his fist. Finally, he jerked the dagger from his belt and used the blade to pry off the knob. The tip of the blade snapped, but the knob popped out and clattered onto the floor. A thin central rod still turned inside the device, and the clicking continued.

  Delrael jammed the broken dagger into the slot and pushed it with his palm, bending the entire mechanism until something twisted and snapped inside. The device fell silent.

  He felt icy sweat burst out of every pore of his body. Behind him the ice fortress looked far away; the vehicle had sped across the flat terrain while he had been preoccupied.

  Delrael looked up and saw the Barrier River yawning in front of him, a huge plain of water ahead, swirling and churning.

  He leaped out of the car. He could hear the rushing current and wondered how he could have ignored it. Even the ticking of the weapon had not been so loud.

  Delrael landed on his belly in the snow and coughed as his breath left him. He crawled to his knees, attempting to suck in air. He wanted to pull Verne’s body free, to give the inventor some kind of safe burial.

  But the steam-engine vehicle, still gushing gray-white exhaust from its stack, passed over the black hex-line, wobbled, then plunged into the deep and ice-choked Barrier River.

  With a gurgle, the Sitnaltan car, its wheels still spinning, sank beneath the water, taking with it Professor Verne and the Sitnaltan weapon.

  Delrael stood up and stared toward the ice fortress and the last part of the battle he was missing. It would be a long walk back.

  #

  Tareah scrambled among the broken chunks of rock and earth. Dust and pebbles still rained down, but she had reached the pile of debris that covered Bryl. She could see only deep shadows and jagged edges. The werem writhed in confusion; many had vanished into other catacombs.

  “Bryl!” Tareah called. “Bryl!”

  Vailret scrambled up to her and helped pull the rocks aside. Bryl had been kneeling there just a moment ago. “It’s not fair! Not now—we’re too close to the end,” he said. Dirt and terror smeared across his face.

  With a grunt, he and Tareah rolled a large boulder away. She saw Bryl’s bloodied hand looking pale and fragile. “There he is!” Tareah said. She worked harder. Vailret reached down to grasp the half-Sorcerer’s hand and wrist. The thin fingers clenched in a weak but desperate response.

  “Hurry!” Vailret said.

  Together they uncovered most of Bryl’s body. The avalanche had crushed and broken him. Blood streamed out of his mouth, but somehow his head had escaped severe injury. The rock fragments had smashed his rib cage as well as his legs. One arm was pulverized.

  Bryl would not live much longer. His eyes were glazed and squeezed shut in pain, but he gasped out a single word, forming it around a scarlet bubble of blood. “Stones!” he said.

  In his intact hand he still held the three Stones. Tareah knelt beside him, holding her Water Stone.

  “Isn’t he too weak to become the Allspirit?” Vailret said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “He’s still alive,” Tareah said. “He could summon the magic. But you’re right—he is too weak.”

  She stared down at the frail form of the old half-Sorcerer. Enrod’s disjointed words came back to her. ‘Not even a pure Sorcerer. What kind of Allspirit would he make? Tainted! Tainted!’

  Sardun had always insisted that within Tareah rested a great hope for the future, some important mission as the last of the old Sorcerer race.

  She saw very clearly what she would have to do, how she could serve the destiny her father had claimed for her.

  “I’ll have to go with him. We can be the Allspirit together.” She looked down at the dying half-Sorcerer. “My knowledge along with his experience, my enthusiasm and fascination along with his age and understanding of power.”

  Vailret looked at her in horror. “Are you crazy Tareah? You have to stay here, stay here with me!”

  Tareah felt a longing in her heart when she looked at him. It was the first time he had said something like that to her. She understood her attraction now, with Delrael being the man she most admired, b
ut Vailret the one to whom she felt the closest kinship. But even so, she felt the greater calling of her Sorcerer blood.

  Tareah had worked so hard to fit in with the human characters, playing her role but never feeling comfortable with it. She had spent three decades isolated, burying herself in the history of the Game, in the Rules, in what characters must do. She had admired them all, studied the legends in an academic fashion, but now the choice weighed directly upon her.

  She could decide between remaining with Vailret, which she would enjoy greatly, or taking on this responsibility—a step as consequential as the old Sorcerers themselves choosing to take the Transition.

  “No,” Tareah said. “This is what I need to do, and you know it as well as I do.”

  Vailret stared at her with his eyes wide and devastated, seeing his friend Bryl dying and knowing she was about to depart as well. He moved his lips several times, but could say nothing. Tareah turned away from him; she couldn’t face any doubts.

  She took out her Water Stone and bent down to lift the three Stones from Bryl’s bloody hand. She took his slick grasp in her own. He lay shuddering and dying, with only a moment left.

  “We’ll go together, Bryl.”

  She held the gems in her hand, feeling their heat, feeling their magic blinding her from the inside. Still grasping Bryl’s wrist, she rolled all four Stones.

  #

  Vailret stumbled backward, shielding his eyes as light greater than an exploding star crackled out of the gems. White, blue, red, and green, soaring up to engulf both Tareah and Bryl, settling around them like incandescent snowflakes. Vailret couldn’t tell exactly at what point he stopped seeing Tareah altogether, when she and Bryl became indistinguishable from the glare. The pinpoints of sorcery spread and grew and swelled into a blaze unrivalled since the Transition.

  The remaining worm-men, with their thin gray skin unaccustomed to any sort of light, shrivelled backward as their bodies blackened. Those that did not die instantly fled deep into the earthen walls.

  Vailret turned away from the brilliance, feeling a devastating sense of loss. In his mind he realized that he and Bryl had gone on their long quest for the sole purpose of bringing this about. But as he stared at the inferno of magic, he knew that Bryl was now as dead to him as if he had simply bled out his life on the grotto floor; only this way, Vailret lost Tareah as well.