Game Play

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The Rulewoman Melanie would be so proud of him.

  Ahead, he heard the sound of grinding rock, a restless, awesome force.

  The passage opened up, and Journeyman emerged onto a ledge overlooking a vast pit, the heart of the mountain.

  Below him lay Scartaris.

  Immense, huge beyond comprehension, bathed in colors that would have blasted human eyes from their sockets. Fluorescent orange and yellow and burning pink. Scartaris was a swelling, pulsing blob of energy, shaped like a vast brain the size of a small mountain.

  The golem sensed vibrations around him. The air itself throbbed and pushed at him as he stepped to the edge. The rock tensed, as if Scartaris could collapse the mountain on a whim, but Journeyman didn't hesitate. He stood glaring down at the Outsider David's monster. He planted his balled fists on his hips.

  "You know I'm here, Scartaris. But you don't know enough to be afraid," he shouted down into the roar. The colors on the blob shifted and moved.

  Scartaris was listening to him.

  He craned his head down on his flexible clay neck. "The Outsider David created you ― and the Rulewoman Melanie created me. You show off your power in extravagance. I carry mine hidden. The Rulewoman placed it in me. She knows your vulnerability."

  Scartaris shifted and raised up. Disturbed rocks pattered down from the ceiling. All the air around Journeyman seemed like a bowstring ready to snap, but he continued, spilling his words like a well rehearsed speech.

  "We are only imaginary characters created by the Outsiders. We have one great weakness, something none of us can withstand. It's a simple thing, a speck of dust from Outside, a piece of another world that is so deadly to us.

  "The Rulewoman Melanie brought it here, painted it into the map, inside me. It has made me see visions, made me speak of things beyond the boundaries of Gamearth.

  "Now it must be released."

  Journeyman ran a finger down the length of his chest, pushing a crease into the soft clay like a long zipper. He plunged his hands into his own skin and split a seam down the middle. He opened himself up where his heart would have been. Out of the cracks spewed a powerful white light, blinding bright.

  "Scartaris, behold the power of something you cannot possibly withstand. Gaze upon pure reality!"

  The light blasted outward as the golem spread his chest wide, folding back his body to make a great window, showing his core.

  "It worked!"

  "What did you do, Mel!"

  "God, look at that thing!"

  "David, you're sick. It's disgusting."

  "It's real! I can't believe it ― it's real!"

  "No, we're real. And nothing there can stand it."

  Journeyman did not dare look himself, but he listened to the astonished voices. One of them set him trembling, and he recognized the Rulewoman Melanie. He felt the clay dissolving from the inside out as his core of reality poured out.

  Scartaris made an agonized wail that ripped through the seams of the map itself and caused all the fighters on the battlefield to stagger on their feet. He lurched back, quivering against the jagged walls of the stone chamber. Journeyman knew he could not get away.

  Scartaris could not withstand even the sight of naked reality. He began to wither and shrivel as parts of the great bulk sloughed away into nothing, fading.

  Delrael felt his ears ringing with a roar of blood, and he could not focus his eyes. Somehow, Vailret was beside him, pulling him to his feet, dragging him out of the grotto. His vision went dim again, then sharpened around the edges.

  Vailret bent over and picked up the silver belt on the floor. The Earthspirits! Pieces fell into place in Delrael's mind.

  "Del, can you hold this? Do you want to carry it?"

  He grunted and nodded his head, but that made the rushing sound inside grow louder. The cold air snapped into his eyes, and after several breaths he felt more alert.

  "Mindar ― " he said. His voice came out in a croak.

  "She's dead," Vailret answered. "She died de fending you from the Slac, I think. Is that what happened? Is that how you got injured?"

  The memories came clear in his head, and Delrael stumbled on the steep path. Vailret caught him and held him up, thinking his cousin still too weak to run. Delrael hurried along ― Vailret didn't know the truth about Mindar.

  She would have wanted it that way.

  "Yes. That's what happened."

  Vailret led him down a steep, narrow path on the other side of Scartaris's mountain, down to the black hex-line in front of the battlefield.

  They ran, and Delrael found his strength coming back. The dizziness drifted away from him. "Journeyman ― ?"

  Vailret hesitated, then tugged on his cousin's arm. They crossed the hex-line and staggered onto the soft dirt of the desolation terrain. "He's gone to Scartaris, to use the Rulewoman's weapon. He told us to run as far as we can."

  The other monsters on the battlefield seemed to have lost their heart for the fight. Delrael turned and looked up at the jagged lair of Scartaris.

  The strange lights were flashing in wild colors.

  Gairoth stood panting in the opening of the grotto as he looked back out at the massed dim soldiers far below. He had climbed half the mountain, it seemed. His feet hurt. The wound in his ankle from the Slave of the Serpent throbbed and made him angry.

  He didn't know what the fighting was about, why the monsters had gathered. He only wanted to find Delroth. He suspected the fighter had something to do with it all.

  Delroth always made trouble.

  Inside the grotto bright lights flashed different colors from a tunnel at the far end. The sight gave him a headache. On the floor he saw two bodies, one woman and one Slac. He curled his lip.

  He squinted his one eye and stared down the tunnel, but he could not make out the source of the flashing lights, the throbbing roar that clutched at the back of his head. Gairoth didn't want to think about it. He was too tired and too angry.

  The burning colors seemed to beckon him. Yes, Delroth must be down there, down in the tunnel. Gairoth stooped under the low ceiling. He would sneak up on Delroth, find him, and bash him. He made sure not to drag his club against the floor as he worked his way forward.

  Gairoth thought of his lost dragon Rognoth and of his flooded cesspools. All Delroth's fault. The ogre snarled and ground his teeth together as he stomped forward, then remembering the need for stealth, tried to move quietly again.

  Gairoth squeezed the end of his spiked club. He had followed Delroth across the map, and now he would get his revenge.

  But when he moved past the last turn, the ceiling opened up above him into a huge vaulted cavern. ― He stopped and wheezed. The light danced in front of his eyes, some of it real, some of it burning reflections on his retinas.

  He sensed something was wrong. Something was going on. The bright lights and the heat and the roaring power channelled into the center of the mountain seemed to be screaming, fighting back in ways that Gairoth could not understand.

  Then he noticed Journeyman. The golem had his back turned and stared down into the pit, shining something out of his chest.

  The clay man had been with Delroth! Back in the forest, he had smashed Gairoth on the head and helped steal the little ylvan. The ogre frowned. If he could not get Delroth right now, he would at least get this clay man.

  He stepped up behind Journeyman on the ledge, raised his club to his shoulder, and belched out a loud "Haw! Now I got you!"

  He drew back his club to swing, smiling, peeling his thick lips away from brown teeth.

  Startled, the golem turned around, pivoting on a flexible clay waist.

  Gairoth saw that he had opened up his chest ― but his insides seemed to be a bottom less window, an opening shining out into some other place. He gawked at the vision, and for a fraction of a second he saw four humans crouched and staring down at him. Strange objects were scattered around the table along with food and colored dice.

  "It's Gairoth!
"

  Someone bumped over a glass and scrambled to catch it, spilling soda.

  Gairoth gaped his mouth like a dying fish and then the reality of what he was seeing struck him. Bright light washed over him and into him.

  He felt a blinding wonder, and despair, as his skin seared away, disintegrating into nothingness. A long, low "Awwwww..." echoed in the air.

  With nothing to hold it up, his spiked club dropped clattering to the ledge, bounced once, and pitched over to vanish in the molten blob of Scartaris.

  But in the moment that Journeyman turned away, Scartaris seized the opportunity and flexed his remaining power.

  He brought the entire mountain down upon Journeyman, sealing the reality beneath uncounted tons of rubble.

  The earthquake threw Delrael and Vailret to the ground. Delrael rolled onto his back to watch the mountain collapse. The horned peaks toppled aside in an enormous tremor that shook the heart of the map itself.

  The black hex-line split, and sections of terrain rocked and tilted upward at the seams, as if Gamearth were falling apart hexagon by hexagon.

  Delrael almost lost his grip on the silver belt in his hand.

  The roar continued, then slacked off as gray white dust poured up into the darkened sky.

  Then, from the broken rubble of the destroyed mountain seeped a glowing brilliant light ― pinks and oranges and yellows, sprawled and oozing over the debris. The immense blob crawled out of the rocks and sat pulsing, as if peering down at the gathered army.

  "Is that Scartaris?" Vailret gasped beside him, but the words made little sound in the thundering echoes of the air. Every creature on the battlefield stood hushed and staring.

  Scartaris moved, looking enormous and frail at the same time, damaged and retaining only enough energy to keep himself alive. He slid and rolled down the rocky slope toward the disrupted hex-line.

  Delrael thought for a moment that Scartaris would reach the cracked map and spill through to where he could annihilate the Outsiders. But Scartaris stopped and throbbed, heaving himself up. At the center of the blob Delrael could see glittering lights forming, like diamonds and stars, building up.

  "It's the metamorphosis!" he heard Vailret shout behind him.

  "Journeyman told us about it! Scartaris is going to end the Game right now!"

  "You must take us!" the Earthspirits cried in a metallic voice from inside the belt. "Take us across the last hex-line! Then we will be released."

  The starbursts inside the giant blob grew brighter, fissioning with energy. Once Scartaris released his pent-up energy, he could wash the map clean of all terrain. Scartaris had lost his Game. He and the Outsider David had wanted to savor the victory, to let the vast monster army march across and lay waste to everything, but now Scartaris was forsaking that fun. He would obliterate them all and call himself the Game's winner.

  "Hurry! He is greatly weakened now," the Earth spirits said. "Perhaps we can defeat him."

  Delrael ran toward the gaping hex-line, but the deep crack in the map cut him off from Scartaris.

  From a corner of the broken hex-line, a black wind sprang up, pouring straight into the air. Swirling, it formed into three dark hooded figures.

  They stood vast and awesome, cavernous hoods covered their heads, shrouding their faces.

  Delrael stumbled as he ran. The figures looked familiar and yet unfamiliar. He had never actually seen them, only their white counterparts.

  "The Deathspirits will not allow you to end the Game, Scartaris," the black figures said in unison.

  "Play your feeble war games for terrain, but you will not destroy the map. We are bound by the Rules here, too. If you destroy Gamearth, we cannot complete our own set of Rules. We are trying to escape from this existence.

  You may not interfere."

  The Deathspirits hovered tall and black. All the monsters on the battlefield stood in a hush, appalled and uncertain.

  But the starburst lights built up further within Scartaris, growing in intensity.

  Delrael scrambled ahead, stumbling on the new slope from the tilted hexagon of terrain. He saw himself struggling there, an unknown human fighter from across the map. No one knew he had come, but he appeared where he was needed, bearing the weapon to save Gamearth. Delrael smirked. "Maybe they'll call me the Stranger Unlooked-For."

  He crawled toward the crack in the map. When he reached its edge, the black lip of desolation sliced down into nothingness, a broad gulf apart from the adjoining mountain terrain. He could not crawl across. He could not jump the void. His body was too exhausted to do more than move.

  Scartaris's internal lights grew blinding at the point of his devastating metamorphosis.

  "We cannot cross the hex-line," the Earthspirits said.

  Delrael held the belt. "You're not very much good, are you?" Then he threw the silver belt crafted by the old Sorcerers, a gift from his father Drodanis.

  As it flew through the air across the hex-line, the silver links began to dissolve in white light. The three Earthspirits emerged just as their Deathspirit comrades swooped down upon Scartaris.

  Chapter 22:

  STRANGER

  "Let the Game go on forever, and may your score always increase!"

  ― Gamearth drinking toast.

  Three dazzling white figures rose into the air, hooded and powerful, billowing in the wind rising from the broken hex-line. They alternated with their dark counterparts.

  Vailret stared at the Spirits, all that remained of the ancient race of Sorcerers. He had read so much about them, and now he saw them towering in front of his eyes. Both factions had fought each other for turn after turn in the early days of the Game. Now, the six Spirits had reunited for the first time since the Transition, on the site of their worst battles.

  Without a word, they fell upon Scartaris before he could complete his metamorphosis.

  The titanic battle was difficult to watch. Vailret squinted, but the intangible fighters became an inferno of power and blazing lights, black and white and colors. The sounds of a storm rang on the air. Chunks of rock and dust blasted into the air in backlashes of power.

  Scartaris grew dimmer and smaller in the fray. The starbursts in his body twinkled and faded.

  Tension built up like a spring being wound tighter and tighter. The six Spirits combined their power into one final assault.

  And Scartaris fell.

  A great flare of light blasted into the air, a geyser of luminous power that sprayed outward and then faded on the winds, swirling, as if trying to find some dark corner where it could hide. One high-pitched shriek echoed around the rubble of the mountains; the astonished horror in it sliced through Vailret's bones.

  The silence on the battlefield held back for a moment as the dawn itself seemed to gasp. A sudden cold wind blew by and then died away to nothing.

  Professor Verne stood on the hillside, perplexed and angry. He rubbed his eyes. The flash from the battle of the Spirits and Scartaris left dancing colors on his vision, but he frowned with disappointment. The outcome of the battle didn't really matter, though the Spirits seemed to be fighting with magic rather than something more sophisticated.

  The Sitnaltan weapon had not worked. Something had gone wrong.

  "But it should have been foolproof!" He placed his hands behind his back and paced in front of a boulder. "It had to work. Did I miscalculate something? What did I forget to take into account?"

  He muttered to himself, parading ideas in front of his mind. He could imagine nothing that would lead to such a failure. A burning curiosity began to grow. He stared at the crumbled mountain and squinted his eyes, wondering how difficult it would be to locate the steam-engine car in the rubble. He wanted to find the weapon and study it.

  As dawn came up and lit the battlefield, Verne saw the monsters milling around, trying to organize themselves. The prime mover seemed to be the awesome manticore marching about, rallying the army of Scartaris.

  Verne blew through his lips as he l
ooked at the manticore. "What a hodgepodge," he thought. "Man's head, lion's body, scorpion tail ― probably has the brain of a cactus or something." To him, it showed clearly how little the Outsiders themselves understood the basic precepts of biological sciences.

  Scartaris was destroyed. Part of the map was disrupted, and he had no idea what effect such titanic forces would have on Gamearth and the Rules themselves. Perhaps it would allow technology a bit more freedom to operate.

  Perhaps he could fix the weapon, or dismantle it. He couldn't just leave it there.

  But the growing light reminded him how exposed he was on the barren terrain, with nothing but the monsters to see him. He wondered how he could possibly hide from Scartaris's entire army.

  Delrael crawled back toward Vailret, trying to keep his balance on the tilted terrain. Both of them stood panting with exhaustion and the aftereffects of terror.

  Around them the stunned monsters wandered about, no longer in the grip of Scartaris. Only the manticore had a purpose, growling orders and trying to terrify the other demons into ranks again.

  Delrael wondered how long the relative calm would last. The sky itself was a whirlwind of chaos, overloaded with power dissipating up and out of the map's boundaries.

  Delrael could see no sign of the six Spirits, or of Scartaris.

  The illusion army of human fighters shimmered and melted away as Bryl released the Air Stone. Some of the monster soldiers made angry noises, but most didn't notice in their own confusion.

  Hundreds of slaughtered demon fighters lay on the ground, killed by their own weapons and the firepowder bombs. Thousands of dead animals, birds, insects covered the sand, as if a part of the black cloud had settled to the earth. Pools of red mud dried slowly in the dim sunlight.

  The surviving animals and birds gathered in a thinner, less-organized black cloud that floated up and drifted off. They struck out across the desolation back to the forest and grassland terrain.

  "Scartaris is dead," Vailret whispered. He grinned and clapped a hand on Delrael's shoulder. "Scartaris is dead! We finished our quest."