Game Play

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The death of Tallin was a sharp ache in her.

  "At least I learned what Melanie's trying to do with her characters and her secret quest," David said. He smiled and leaned back in the chair. "But hiding the Earthspirits in a belt? Don't know where you came up with that idea, Mel, but it isn't going to work. I'm not sure we should even allow it."

  He took off his black denim jacket and draped it over the arm rest, then reached forward to scoop up more of Tyrone's dip.

  "If it won't work anyway, then why bother complaining about it?" Scott said with a half smile. "You're the one who keeps wishing the game would get more interesting ― let Mel take a few more risks."

  "Sounds like fun to me," Tyrone said. David scowled, trapped by his own complaints.

  Melanie stopped herself from saying that she had nothing to do with the Earthspirits in Delrael's belt ― any more than she had conjured up the Deathspirits to stop Enrod.

  It was the game playing itself again.

  That sent a thrill up her spine, pushing aside some of her sadness at Tallin's death. She knew something strange was happening with Gamearth. They all knew it. The characters were doing things with their lives outside of the Sunday gaming sessions.

  Melanie made a smile of her own, hard and businesslike. She sat back down at the table. "Your characters don't know about the Earthspirits, David, so you can't do anything about it. Ryx is the only one who knew, and she's dead."

  "Good point." Scott joined them, slouching down in his chair.

  "In fact, David, you can't even prepare for my characters, because you officially don't know about their quest. Because of Tarne, Scartaris thinks Delrael is dead and the Fire Stone is still hidden somewhere at the Stronghold."

  David drummed his fingers on the table. "I have so many armies camped around Scartaris that nothing could ever get through. I've gathered all the Slac, I've teamed up all the wandering monsters, stirred up some old antagonisms. There's a larger pool of monster fighters here ― " he tapped the painted map over the mountains of Scartaris, "than we ever brought together for the old Sorcerer wars."

  He cracked his knuckles. "Your characters will never get through, Mel.

  I have no doubt of that."

  Melanie glared at him, but to her surprise Scott was the one who made a comment. "Well, David, we'll just have to wait and see. We've got other characters in this game, you know, not just the ones Melanie's playing."

  He picked up the dice and pointed at one of the hexagonal map sections near the city of Sitnalta. "I'm starting there. It's my turn."

  Chapter 9:

  THE OUTSIDERS' SHIP

  "We must continue to learn, continue to study. As Sitnaltans, our quest is to understand everything about the Rules and how they affect our lives.

  With such an intimate knowledge perhaps we can defeat the Outsiders and free ourselves from this Game."

  ― Professor Verne, speech to the Sitnaltan Council of Patent Givers.

  Mountain air whistled around the empty turrets of the ancient Slac fortress. The sky above the excavation site was clear and cold and painfully blue.

  Professor Verne rubbed his hands together and pushed them deep into his pockets as he walked back and forth outside the fortress. The other Sitnaltan engineers worked meticulously on the Outsiders' ship. When Verne blew steam from his mouth, clumps of frost made his full beard spiky.

  Overhead the wide, blind wall of the citadel was dotted with black spikes and narrow windows from which the Slac could fire down on visitors.

  Moss crept up the walls, brown and green. A pool of stagnant water half filled a pitted cistern.

  The bulk of the Outsiders' vessel lay half buried in the dirt of the courtyard. Boulders and fallen stone blocks from the abandoned fortress had dropped around it.

  Vailret and blind Paenar had told Verne and his colleague Professor Frankenstein about the ruined ship. Apparently, the Outsiders David and Tyrone had used it to travel to Gamearth, bringing with them a destructive monster to plant in the east. In exchange for this information, Verne and Frankenstein had constructed new mechanical eyes for Paenar.

  "Did you find anything else?" Verne shouted down. He sucked on his lips, making his gray beard protrude. The tip of his nose felt numb in the cold mountain air.

  "We don't know," Frankenstein called back from below. He cocked his head up at the other professor. "We haven't figured out what most of this is yet."

  Frankenstein had a flushed face and close-cropped dark hair. His eyes bore a fiery, obsessive look, part of his impatient temperament. But Verne found Frankenstein's ideas exciting, and the two professors collaborated well together.

  The two of them held more patents than any other inventors in Sitnalta's history. Verne himself didn't even know the total number anymore -nor did he care. The main point was inventing things, creating things, bettering life for the characters in Sitnalta. Some said the two professors were inspired directly by the Outsider Scott, who watched over the technological city.

  In the barren courtyard, the Outsiders' ship had crumbled after many turns of disuse. Twisted ribs of metal and cross girders outlined the great size of the fallen hulk. The controls and engines were hidden and difficult to decipher, buried deep beneath the ground. Verne urged the other Sitnaltan workers not to experiment with any devices they found around the ship. He didn't want someone opening up an uncontrolled vortex to reality, where they would all be annihilated in an instant.

  Professor Verne brushed off his knees and walked down the path into the wreckage of the ship. Around him, remnants of the hull looked as fragile as an eggshell, but patches of the metal gleamed pure and uncorroded, with rainbow colors that Verne had not seen in any alloy produced in Sitnalta. He stood beside the other professor.

  "Some of our analytical machines still won't work," Frankenstein snorted. "The electrical ones are the worst."

  "We are standing on the technological fringe, Victor. What else can we expect?" Verne bent over to inspect the place where tiny perfect rivets joined two metal sections together. "I am surprised even the mechanical instruments function as well as they do."

  Verne drummed his fingers on his chest. In Sitnalta the characters had developed science and technology enough to overthrow the Rules of magic that held sway for the rest of Gamearth. As the Sitnaltans used their technology more and more, they expanded the radius in which it worked out to a point where science and magic held each other uneasily at bay. Verne called this point the "technological fringe."

  The Outsiders' ship lay squarely on the boundary.

  A team of three Sitnaltan women in work clothes and lab coats sat concentrating on their sketch pads, measuring and recording detailed portions of the ship. Two other Sitnaltan workers used fine brushes to remove dust and debris from the wreckage.

  One burly man, sweating and exhausted, was put to work moving rocks and some of the fallen girders. His face was flushed in the cold air, and he looked put upon because of his strength. Verne smiled encouragement at him.

  "Can't we rig up some pulleys and a winch over here to help this man?"

  Frankenstein called. "Come on, you're supposed to be engineers!" Two of the technicians hurried to implement the scheme.

  Just the presence of the ship itself awed Verne. So alien, so unlike anything else he had seen before. He always had a sense of wonder at how things worked. But this ship was tangible evidence of a visit from the Outsiders. What they would learn just from the shapes of things, the construction, the way the metal was held together ― it would give the characters of Sitnalta many turns of intense study.

  If they had many turns left in the Game.

  Vailret and his companions had brought news of how the Outsiders planned to end the Game. Most of the other Sitnaltans scoffed at the idea. But Frankenstein and Verne had picked up the energy readings of something powerful, something malignant, growing in the eastern section of the map. Only Vailret had been able to explain this anomaly to the professors' satisfaction.<
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  Gamearth would be doomed if they did not find some way to destroy this monster from the Outside. The ship was the key, Verne felt. Perhaps with what they learned from it, the Sitnaltans could find some solution, or some escape.

  Maybe they could develop a weapon with which to fight back, or maybe, if they could discover how the vehicle worked, they could all escape to a different world.

  It had always been a Sitnaltan dream to find a way for human characters to make a Transition of their own, as the old Sorcerer race had done with magic. Human characters should be able to do the same thing ― with science.

  Verne had never heard of a spell yet that could not be imitated by properly developed technology.

  "Professors! Come here, we've found something," a woman's voice called.

  Verne squinted into the shadows of the wreckage and recognized Mayer, the daughter of the Sitnaltan inventor-cum-bureaucrat Dirac. The tone in her voice suggested something important, and Verne and Frankenstein hurried.

  They passed through a broken doorway down a tilted metal staircase into a chamber that had been buried in the dirt. Over the past three days, Mayer's team had excavated the room. Dust and dirt still caked the controls and equipment, but a team of men and women used gloves, trowels, and heavy brushes to clean the area. An older woman technician scrambled past the professors, carrying a bucket filled with debris up the groaning stairs to dump it in the courtyard.

  Mayer stood there, her short dark hair mussed. Dirty handprints covered her lab coat, but she indicated a polished bulkhead with gleaming panels of buttons and dials. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched the reactions of the two professors, allowing the discovery to speak for itself for a moment. Then she could restrain herself no longer.

  "These are the controls," she said. Her bright eyes gleamed with awe.

  "My hypothesis is that this system connects directly to the power source. If you touch the bulkhead, it is still warm after all this time. And there's another sealed compartment directly underneath."

  Verne opened his eyes wide and went forward. Frankenstein also looked amazed. "This could be it," he said.

  Verne let his imagination wander. He had his best ideas that way.

  Possibilities sprang into his head, ideas and applications with such an intensity that he wondered if he was indeed inspired by the Outsider Scott.

  This ship had an awesome power source, even if it was just imaginary to the Outsiders David and Tyrone, even if they had only created this artificial ship as a prop to act out their games ― regardless, it existed here on Gamearth. And it had to do what the Players imagined it would do.

  Verne thought of what incredible energies could power such a ship, of the danger and the potential those energies would have if applied in a constructive ― or destructive ― manner.

  "You must be very very careful with it," Verne said. "Treat it as if it were the most hazardous laboratory substance we have ever investigated."

  "And indeed it is," Frankenstein added. His dark eyes shone with an unfathomable excitement.

  Verne turned to Frankenstein and lowered his voice. "It will take some testing, but this could be the key to the most awesome weapon ever introduced on Gamearth."

  He took a deep breath. "We could stop Scartaris."

  Frankenstein allowed his thin lips to curl up in a smile. "This could be a way for us to prove the superiority of Sitnaltan technology once and for all."

  He and Professor Verne shook hands.

  Chapter 10:

  THE SPECTRE MOUNTAINS

  "RULE #4: "Evil" and "Good" are not absolute concepts in the Game.

  Characters act in their own self-interest. For example, companions on a quest may have the same purpose but for opposing reasons."

  ― The Book of Rules

  Vailret watched Delrael deal with Tallin's death, not knowing how he could help. He remembered how blind Paenar had died, but Delrael wasn't there when Paenar rode the dragon down into the boiling volcano. This type of grief was new to Delrael. It seemed to be a rude awakening for him.

  The fighter pushed on across the next hex-line just after midnight, when the Rules allowed them to continue for another day. "I want to get away from this place," he said under his breath. His footprints were barely visible in the starlight ahead of them. In the cool air Vailret sweated to keep up.

  They entered a sweeping hexagon of grassland. The grass hissed around their legs as they walked, but they picked out the quest-path even in the darkness. A few small animals rustled along the ground; night birds swooped around the sky, dropping low as they hunted.

  Journeyman remained silent, making none of his inane Outsider comments or observations on reality. The aurora began to fade into the pinkish-yellow of dawn, and the golem finally turned his head and spoke. He talked as if he had been pondering his words for a long time.

  "You didn't tell me about your quest. Or the Earthspirits in the silver belt."

  Vailret didn't know what to say. Delrael ignored the conversation entirely.

  Journeyman stared ahead and puckered his clay face in an expression of consternation. "You accepted me as a true companion. I told you my quest -that the Rulewoman Melanie planted a secret weapon in me, so that when we reach Scartaris I will destroy him. But you told me you were just going to find information. You kept secrets from me."

  The clay frown deepened. "We were supposed to be one for all and all for one, you know? That's what this questing business is all about. The Three Musketeers, Batman and Robin, Cisco and Pancho, Kirk and Spock, Laurel and Hardy. We're all a team. At least I thought so."

  Vailret swallowed and took a deep breath to explain. Delrael strode on, keeping himself isolated. Bryl didn't look as if he wanted to join in the conversation either.

  "We swore not to tell any other characters, especially not someone from the Rulewoman, even if she is on our side. The Outsiders knew nothing about our real quest. We didn't want Scartaris to prepare for us coming."

  Journeyman's clay eyebrows twitched on his forehead. "Scartaris has already gathered armies of wandering monsters, he already contains enough energy to wipe out Gamearth if he feels threatened. He needs only to go through a rapid metamorphosis, and that will be the end of our world. How much more can he prepare?"

  Vailret kept his gaze on the dim path as he continued behind Delrael.

  "Scartaris must not consider us a big enough threat ― yet."

  The golem stretched his flexible lips in an exaggerated pout. "You still should have told me." Then he shrugged. "I don't care what kind of weapon you have, or what the Earthspirits can do. It's my quest to take care of Scartaris, and I intend to do it. By myself if I have to. Hi ho, Silver!"

  Vailret patted Journeyman on the shoulder, trying to reassure him. The clay felt soft and sticky. "Doesn't matter how it gets done ― I just don't want Scartaris to wipe the map clean. I won't even ask about your weapon."

  "You better not, because I'm not going to tell."

  Vailret rolled his eyes and let the golem go ahead of him.

  They continued as the Spectre Mountains in the distance became backlit in orange, then sharply silhouetted with dawn. By morning they crossed into an identical hexagon of grassland.

  Delrael remained withdrawn, saying little. In the early afternoon, when they crossed into a lush hex of forest terrain, he appeared even more gloomy.

  The dense trees seemed to remind him of Tallin....

  It took them until early afternoon of the following day to get through the next hexagon of rugged forested-hill terrain. The trees, valleys, and green undergrowth made Vailret think of the khelebar forest of Ledaygen before the fire. They climbed the hills, looking down the steep slopes covered with trees and rock outcroppings. The quest-path guided them back and forth to the top of a ridge.

  They trudged on at a steady pace, then stopped early to rest. Vailret and Journeyman played tic-tac-toe on the ground. Delrael watched for a few games, but when they asked him to join in
, he declined and went off by himself to sleep.

  The quest-path wound ahead of them across the next hex-line into the steep Spectre Mountains. Though the air was cool, Vailret found himself sweating and itching under his jerkin. His legs were tired, but he had settled into a pace that allowed him to keep going. Delrael gained ground ahead of them, then waited, fidgeting, for the others to catch up.

  Vailret thought the sheer mountains ahead were like a wall to cut Delrael off from memories of the Anteds. Perhaps by replacing the anger and sorrow with a quest, Delrael would be able to heal his wound. Maybe climbing the rocky slopes would somehow purge him.

  Around them stones protruded along the path. Tufts of grass and sturdy scrub brush grew in sheltered crannies. Rock walls lurched upward like battlements, wind-carved and rain-washed into stark peaks and deep gullies.

  The quest-path was smooth and chalky, like hardened plaster washed down from the cliffs.

  The sun spilled over the peaks in late morning. They came to a flat promontory jutting westward from the mountainside. Vailret stumbled to the edge for a rest. His lungs burned as he tried to catch his breath in the chilly air. The wind blew around them, ruffling Vailret's hair. Bryl joined him, pulling his blue hood over his face like a cowl.

  Delrael squatted down to look back across the vast panorama of the Game board. Perfect hexagons of terrain lay immediately below, forested-hill, forest, grassland; in the distance they could see the desolation dotted with tiny pock marks of Anted holes. Other sections of terrain swept in a beautiful mosaic to flat dimness at the far edge of the map.

  Vailret squinted, trying to determine what he was seeing. Bryl pointed and stretched his gnarled hand out of the billowing sleeve. "Look at that!"

  At the first hex of desolation terrain moved a dense gathering of black static the size of a thunderhead. It moved and slithered forward, scattered and fluttering in a formless clump. Vailret's eyesight was not sharp enough to catch any details, but he could tell that the others had no idea what they saw either. Where the dark gathering touched the desert, clouds of dust swirled behind it as if a great army, indistinct and enshrouded in black mist, marched across the hexagon.