Game Play (33 page)

Delrael saw Vailret
flinch and shifted his short sword from one hand to the other. "The
Serpent bound us with single combat protocol. We
couldn't
help."

Mindar let that
sink in for a moment, and then a slow smile crossed her face. "Scartaris
wanted to bind you with a strict interpretation of the Rules
―
and
we turned the tables on him, hah! We can find loopholes, too. Since Scartaris
kept me unaware of anything that was going on, I didn't hear the challenge."
Her grin broadened. "I beat Scartaris with his own trick!"

Then her expression
fell again and she became serious. "I learned one other thing, though
―
we're already too late.

"Scartaris has
informed his army that they will march tomorrow night.

They will charge
across the map, pillaging and laying waste to every hexagon.

Even if you destroy
Scartaris, there's no way you can stop the whole army."

Delrael felt
betrayed. He wondered if the Earthspirits knew what Mindar had said, if they
knew anything beyond Scartaris. In his belt, the Earthspirits gave no sign, no
communication. If Mindar was right, then the quest, Tallin's death, the first
plea in the message stick from Drodanis
―
everything they had done
was for nothing!

"One problem
at a time," Delrael said. At least they were questing and
trying
to do
something. No one had thought of a better way to confront Scartaris.

The Slave made a
grunting noise to attract their attention, but remained standing where he was.
"Sadic will help."

Delrael scowled at
the hairy, reptilian monster, feeling his aching ribs. The Slave plastered his
paw against the deep sword cut in his thigh to slow the bleeding.

"Serpent made
Sadic do bad things. Scartaris controlled Serpent. You freed Sadic. Sadic will
help. Sadic knows you want to destroy Scartaris."

Bryl muttered,
"Seems just about everyone knows that by now."

"Remember Rule
#3, about taking new companions," Vailret said. "We could use all the
help we can get, especially powerful help like that."

"The plot
thickens," Journeyman said.

Delrael turned,
still feeling weak from the combat. The wide white quest-path stretched across
the desolation.

He saw the towering
black cloud charging toward them, little more than a hexagon away. He heard an
eerie buzzing sound, a cacophony of many noises, like a storm of voices,
tormented souls. The cloud itself looked fuzzy and indistinct, rolling along
the ground in thousands of frenzied pieces, large and small, looking for
something to attack. Huge clouds of dust from its passage bubbled into the air.

"I want to see
Scartaris destroyed," Mindar said.

"Cross
tunnel," the Slave said. "Do not trust Sadic. He will cross by himself."

Mindar nodded at
Delrael. "Three of us should cross, then Sadic, then the last two. Otherwise
he might push the tunnel bridge over the edge when we're all inside it."

"He looks
strong enough to do it," Delrael agreed.

Sadic hunched his
hairy shoulders. "Yes. Go."

They cast dice in
the dust to see who would go first. Delrael, Vailret and Bryl won the rolls and
stood at the edge of the foul-smelling opening.

They entered the
rotting and ancient bridge of vertebrae.

Wind whistled
around and through the cracks. The dried sinews stretched taut, and the giant
vertebrae swayed and rattled over the gulf. Delrael took the lead and put his
boot on the rough, curved surface of the inner bone wall, checking his footing.

The passage was
wide and tall. Delrael strode forward. He didn't want to think about traps,
didn't want to worry. Gaps and holes between the segments of vertebrae showed
too plainly the depths of swirling blackness far below, the shadows of things
he didn't want to see.

The sinews were dry
and leathery, holding the vertebrae together.

Delrael kept
telling himself that armies had funnelled through this, that heavy cartloads of
supplies and pounding Slac regiments had gone through. The bridge would hold.

They pushed ahead
and saw the other side not far away. He listened to Bryl whimper behind him.
Then they hurried out of the last segment, anxious to be on solid ground again.
Gasping and trembling, they emerged, each trying to cover the look of fear he
wore.

Sadic came next.
Delrael kept his sword drawn, uneasy. He could see the vertebrae in the tunnel
sway as the massive Slave lumbered through and then emerged beside them.

"Sadic will
not hurt you," he said in a low voice, trying to be reassuring.

Mindar and
Journeyman rapidly followed. The shadows grew longer around them with late
afternoon.

"We should
hurry," Mindar said. "Within another day we'll be near Scartaris. We
have to be ready."

Delrael swallowed
in a dry throat. "We will be."

They set off across
the packed white quest-path.

The Serpent's head
lay on the sand. Its eyes remained dead and pupilless, storm-colored jelly.
Then the eyes lit up, glowing red again.

Scartaris looked
through them at the questers as they set off toward his mountain lair.

Chapter 19:

PROFESSOR VERNE'S
EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY

"I never realized
the map was so huge. I never fully conceived of the parameters of Gamearth from
one edge to the other. If the Outsiders can create such a world as a
Game
,
then they must be powerful indeed."

―
Professor Verne,
Les Voyages Extraordinaires

(unpublished
journal).

The steam engine
car chugged along, hissing and sputtering. Professor Verne's ears ring with the
racket. The steel-shod wheels rattled along over the uneven and rocky terrain.
Harsh sunlight made him sweat and scratch at his gray beard. His forehead and
nose stung with sunburn
―
he didn't usually sit unprotected in the
open air for so long. His legs ached, and his buttocks felt sore from the
bouncing ride hour upon hour, day upon day.

Grit and dust
puffed into the air behind him, stirred up by the rolling car. Verne's warm
woollen coat lay wadded in the seat beside him, but he would not put it on
until the sun fell toward the horizon and the air grew cool again.

The Sitnaltan
weapon was secured in the seat behind him. One monitoring gauge stuck out on an
elbow of pipe. Polished bronze rivets reflected against the old metal around
the chamber that contained the deadly Outside power source. The controls of the
weapon consisted only of a timer knob and a detonation button. Angled red fins
protruded from the sides for no reason other than that Verne had dreamed it
that way.

The vehicle rolled
along. The desert sprawled out gray-brown and lifeless in front of him. For a
while the sweeping emptiness of hexagon upon hexagon filled Verne with an awe
at the sheer size of the Gamearth map. Then it all grew boring until he spent
his time daydreaming and working out difficult ideas in his head.

In the pockets of
his overcoat Verne had tucked neatly folded sheets of paper on which he
scribbled concepts and designs for other inventions. Verne's handwriting was
difficult to read, and the diagrams were shaky
―
the vehicle jostled
him too much as it bounced along. But neatness didn't count. The ideas did.

The professor also
kept track of his progress so he could mathematically deduce the variation in
travel allotments while journeying long distances with the steam-engine
vehicle. Rule #5 specifically listed walking rates, but the supplementary
tables in
The Book of Rules
made no mention of the Sitnaltan car. Verne came
to the conclusion that with the vehicle he could proceed at about three times
the pace he could go on foot.

But even as he made
the calculation in his head, something made an odd
clunking
noise inside the
boiler of the steam engine. The clean white exhaust belching up from the stack
hiccoughed, curled black for a moment, then dissipated entirely. The machine
hissed. The vehicle clattered, then slowed, coming to a stop all alone on the
dusty rocks. The boiler groaned again, and the pistons locked.

Verne pursed his
lips. "Hmmmm," he said, tugging at his beard. He climbed out and went
around to the engine. He removed a toolkit from the sidebox and began to
tinker, making sure nothing mechanical had gone wrong.

But he had expected
this to happen at any time....

At dawn, three days
before, Professor Frankenstein had helped him carry the Sitnaltan weapon to the
back of the vehicle. Before the Sitnaltan technicians were awake, shivering but
ready for another day's work excavating the Outsider's ship, Verne and
Frankenstein had filled the car's main boiler and the reserve water tank from
the stagnant cistern in the Slac citadel.

The boilers heated
the water, raising the temperature and building up steam. Verne and
Frankenstein waited, chatting, killing time and making plans.

A few of the others
stirred and came out into the frost-covered courtyard before the
pressure-release valve in the boiler hissed, spitting out its announcement that
the car was ready to travel.

Verne climbed
aboard and made sure the weapon was safely secured. He waved to all of their
puzzled expressions as the vehicle chugged forward, gaining momentum and
traveling away from the citadel, out of the mountains.

All that day Verne
rolled on without stopping, despite difficult times on the harrowing
switchbacks of the forested-hill terrain, and then going through the easier
forests or, better still, the hexagons of flat grassland.

Black lines marking
the sections of terrain passed beneath his wheels.

Verne consulted his
own map of Gamearth to make sure he was indeed taking the shortest and most
efficient route. He calculated the speeds and estimated travel allowances for
the best types of terrain.

He made sure to
keep well away from the city of Sitnalta, just in case the weapon detonated
prematurely.

The first evening
he had pulled up the vehicle and let the boiler fires run low. He found a stream
and, handful by handful, he refilled the water tanks for the boiler.
"Victor, why didn't you remind me to bring along a simple bucket?" He
sighed. "I hate poor planning."

Verne lay down in
the grass to sleep, but woke up in the middle of the night, cold. He curled up
next to the metal of the still-warm boiler and slept again.

The second day he
headed due east around sloping grassy hills, around a spur of the Spectre
Mountains. When the mountains ended, he turned straight north across grassy
hexes. At the end of the day, he entered the first section of desolation. Verne
stared at the growing boundary where Scartaris's influence had drained all life
dry. The long-range detectors in Sitnalta had suggested this would occur.

Verne had spent the
entire day moving across barren terrain, chewing up dust and sand and rocks. He
felt thirsty, but he kept most of the water in reserve for the engine. His lips
were cracked, and he felt grit between his teeth. He had covered five hexagons
in one day.

But now, far from
the Sitnaltan technological fringe, the steam engine had died. He couldn't
complain
―
the Rules of Probability stated that technological
devices would have a smaller and smaller chance of functioning as they moved
farther from the city of Sitnalta.

Verne tapped at one
of the gleaming bronze piston shafts with a wrench, but it was no use. Unless
he got the steam engine moving again, he could not destroy Scartaris, and Verne
would be stranded out in the middle of the wasteland with a doomsday weapon
powerful enough to blow a hole right through the bottom of the map.

Verne checked and
rechecked the steam-engine. He didn't know what else to do. He could never
carry the heavy Sitnaltan weapon by himself. Nothing
mechanical
was wrong
―
that much was obvious. Nor was it any surprise. He muttered to himself about
the vagaries of Gamearth, and the rigid Rules that dictated everything. He
hoped the Outsiders enjoyed making things difficult for him.

After the long day,
he decided to reward himself with a precious cup of tea while waiting for the
car to function again. He poured a little of the water out of his canteen into
a tin cup from the car's supply case, then used his fingertips to hold the cup
over the flames by the boiler. He shifted his grip from one hand to the other
as the handle grew hot, but the water began to boil at last. He sprinkled tea
leaves into it. They swirled with the heat currents in the water, and sank to
the bottom as they let brown coloring seep into the cup. Steam rose from the
hot tea.

Then Verne stood up
so quickly he sloshed some of the tea onto his pants. "Incredible!"
he cried as the idea struck him. This was one of his own ideas, something
clearly his own, not inspired by the Outsider Scott at all.