Gameplay (17 page)

She wanted to hurt Scartaris. That was all for now.

“Do it, Bryl,” he said.

Hands shaking, the half-Sorcerer took out the eight-sided ruby. “Move your feet. Give me some room.”

Bryl stood, brushed himself off, then rolled the ruby. The Fire Stone clacked on the flagstones, showed a “6.”

Mindar whirled to point at the tannery. Bryl grabbed the Fire Stone and launched fireballs with all the strength of his high roll.

Stone splinters from the tannery exploded outward as Bryl hurled crackling spheres of flame. Inside, the doors buckled. Roof shards erupted into the air; smoke belched through the window slits, reeking of burned skin, oily wood, and vats of preserving chemicals.

The tannery collapsed with a long, low rumble. The wide walls of two nearby buildings cracked with the concussion. Smoke curled around the wreckage up into the air again.

The red
S
-scar on Mindar’s forehead glowed a flaming red with unnatural light. She worked her jaw convulsively and stared to the east. “I curse you, Scartaris. I will use every resource to destroy you.”

Then the Tairans arrived.

Gray-clad, mindless people surged out of the buildings and moved down the streets toward them, shoulder to shoulder, a massed wall of flesh like a living, unthinking vise.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Delrael cried. He grabbed his horse. Mindar stood unable to move. Her eyes looked devastated.

“Show us the way out of here!” Delrael grabbed her by the shoulders, and she seemed to snap out of her confusion. She saw the Tairans coming.

Mindar hustled them down a narrow alley, leading the horses and shouldering aside three Tairans who blocked their way. At the end of the alley, another group of characters moved into place to block off their escape. Mindar stopped and looked at a large pavilion to their left.

“This way. We can cut through here.” Grabbing her mare’s reins, Mindar ran up the steps to the pavilion and into the wide interior. Delrael and the others followed.

The stone roof overhead echoed the sounds of the horses. They passed under lattices strung with decorated clay pots from which hung curtains of dead vines. The vines must have once been lush and cool, but now the brittle strands were like dangling claws trying to scratch down.

“Quick, we can go out the other side!”

They reached the side door where polished steps spilled down onto another street. An obsidian trough that had once served as a reflection pool sat empty, caked with a ring of lime from the evaporated water.

The street in front of them looked deserted. But as they charged down the steps, Tairans moved into the area, crowding at the intersections.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Mindar said. They turned right and ran down the only street still open to them.

“I wish I’d had a chance to study the map of Tairé,” Delrael said, breathing hard. “I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know how to get out of this.”

“I don’t know
either
,” Mindar said, “But we’re going to find a way.”

The haunted buildings around them stood tall, disorienting. The sun hung straight up in the sky, giving no indication of direction. Delrael followed Mindar, feeling that he could trust her instincts. She fought like he did.

They led the horses, running around one corner, and came abruptly to the tall, smooth stone barrier of the Tairé city walls, blocking them off from the desolation terrain.

“Now what do we do?” Bryl said.

Vailret moved to the wall and put his fingers against the cracks of the hexagonal stone blocks. He looked up, frowning. “We can’t climb this. We can’t get over.”

A wave of Tairans closed in from all sides, moving in a bizarre lock-step, rippling as they pushed forward. Their eyes were all empty, cold and pupilless.

Delrael pulled out his sword. Mindar crouched with her back to the wall, holding the rippled blade in front of her. Delrael could feel her tension, flicking her dark gaze from side to side. They would fight together here, to avenge the ghosts in their pasts.

Without warning, Mindar let out a cry and lunged into the approaching crowd, swinging her sword. Some of the unresisting Tairans staggered from their wounds, but the others continued forward without heeding their injuries. They took no notice of Mindar’s attack. They folded around her and kept pushing toward Delrael and the others.

She took out the whip instead, lashing out. The Tairans moved away from her, but did not stop. Mindar whipped a Tairan woman in the head, leaving a bright streak of blood across her temple.

“Scartaris! I will make you notice me!”

The horses backed and reared, closed in by the stone wall behind them.

“Mindar!” Delrael called.

The Tairans moved slower, as if Scartaris wanted to relish the victory. Mindar fought her way back to the wall. Delrael used the flat of his blade to drive the people away from her. He grabbed Mindar’s arm and yanked her to him.

The Tairans formed a semicircle around them.

Journeyman turned to face the wall, spreading his clay hands out against the stone. His flexible face bore an exaggerated, perplexed frown. “If we can’t go over the wall—” He drew his arm back. The clay flowed, making a giant bulldozer fist. “Why can’t we just go … through it?”

With the force of a thunderclap, he smashed his arm into the wall blocks. Dust trickled down. He slammed again, and the blocks, not held together by any mortar, jumbled loose.

The Tairans let out a unanimous hiss of anger and pushed forward.

Journeyman struck one more time and, with a rumble, the blocks toppled outward. “Look out!” he said and reached out to deflect a stone block that would have struck Bryl’s head.

The horses reared.

The Tairans grasped at them. Their fingers bore dirty, broken nails. Many of them gushed blood from wounds made by Mindar’s sword.

The dust from the rupture in the wall stung Delrael’s eyes. He coughed. “Let’s get out of here!” He leaped on the back of his horse. “Come on, Mindar!”

Vailret grabbed Bryl and they both scrambled onto their horse. Journeyman, looking immensely pleased with himself, pushed around the rubble and let out a strange, primitive yell—“Yabba dabba doo!”—and crashed into the Tairans, knocking many over, cracking some ribs. He picked up bodies to fling them against each other.

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” he said.

Delrael and Mindar rode side by side through the opening in the wall. Vailret led his horse over the rubble.

They galloped out into the desolation. After a moment, Journeyman leaped after them, bounding with great resilient strides and following them into the desert. “Thank you, come again!” he called back at the city.

The air was hot, and reflected sunlight rippled up from the broken stone and caked dust. The sun had just begun to dip into afternoon.

“We have to ride—get as far away from here as we can.” Mindar’s voice came in gasping, clipped phrases.

Delrael looked at her and saw how torn she was inside. But a great fear seemed to underlie her anger. “I think we’ll be safe now,” he said, trying to be reassuring.

Mindar shook her head. “Until tonight.” The dust in her hair stiffened the kinks from where she had braided it. “Out here we’ll have no protection at all from the Cailee.”

***

15. The Sitnaltan Weapon

“Our greatest treasure is our ideas. All of the inventors in Sitnalta share them freely, and we reward any visionary with a patent of his or her own. The greatest inventors are elevated to the exalted status of Professors. The free exchange of information has made our city great—not one of us would consider changing this.”

—Dirac,
Charter of the Sitnaltan Council of Patent Givers

The cot creaked beneath him as Professor Verne sat up sharply in the middle of the night. The musty smell of the room and his folded overcoat used as a pillow signaled that he was not in his own quarters back in Sitnalta. He blinked his eyes, astonished. He felt disoriented in the darkness—too many fascinating ideas charged through his brain, clamoring to be put down on paper before he forgot them.

His heart pounded from the dream. The Outsider Scott had sent him another message.

The room was dim and cold. He noticed that the electrical heater had stopped functioning again. Outside, the wind rushed around the walls of the Slac fortress, stirring up drafts. Verne’s eyes grew adjusted to the shadows, and he could see Frankenstein on the other side of the room also sitting on his cot, pulling socks on his feet. Frankenstein flung aside his blankets and began pacing the room.

Verne got up from his cot and wrapped the blankets around his shoulders. On bare feet, he hurried to the corner and flicked the electrical heater on and off, but it was no use. The device had failed again. He wished he had brought slippers along.

A sulfur match flared, and Frankenstein lit a candle. He waved the matchstick in the air until the flame went out, then he set it beside the paraphernalia on his makeshift worktable. Orange candlelight flickered in the room, disturbed by transient drafts.

“Did you dream it, too?” Verne said. Looking at the wide-eyed expression on the other inventor’s face, he didn’t really need to ask.

“What are we going to do about it?” Frankenstein ran his fingers through his dark hair. “How are we going to implement the construction? It’s so complicated.”

“First we must decide even if we
should
implement it,” Verne said, pondering. He pursed his lips. He picked up the matchstick and relit its end from the candle flame, sucking the flame down into the bowl of his pipe. He puffed absently and kept his voice quiet. “The idea is so awesome. I sensed it might be an incomparable weapon.…but I never imagined anything so terrible.”

Frankenstein snorted and ruffled through some papers on the table. He flattened a piece of parchment and picked up a scribing pencil. “Can you imagine what a buffoon like Dirac would do with such an idea?”

Verne swallowed. He had not thought of that aspect.

Frankenstein’s voice became grave. “We want to do this one ourselves, Jules. And I don’t think we should leave any blueprints behind. We won’t even apply for a patent on this. Let’s just build the weapon, make it do its task, and hope we never need to construct another one.”

Verne began pacing. “This weapon is so powerful it might be worse than letting Gamearth surrender to its own fate. What if it cracks the map open, destroys us all, and backlashes to the Outside?”

“Then it serves the Outsiders right. Nothing is ever impossible, Jules. You, of all characters, should know that. But when the power is so tremendous, I don’t want to leave hints around so others can try.”

Verne walked from his cot to the table. His feet were numb on the cold stone floor. “You are suggesting that we knowingly withhold scientific information from the people of Sitnalta.”

Frankenstein tapped his teeth with the scribing pencil. “I am suggesting that we build this weapon ourselves, with the tools we have on hand here. Once it has destroyed Scartaris, we will never need to concern ourselves about such a weapon again. It will be an obsolete, useless invention that would serve no further purpose anyway.”

Verne remained withdrawn. Frankenstein pointed to the parchment, impatient. “Come, I need your help. Is this the way you remember it from the dream?”

Within a few moments, Verne had become so caught up in the problem that he forgot about everything else.

* * *

They crept outside, careful not to wake the technicians asleep by the big fire pit in the Slac dining hall. Some of the workers had commandeered their own quarters in empty chambers, but they left the doors ajar.

The fortress was silent as Verne and Frankenstein slipped into the courtyard. Frost sparkled on the rocks, and smooth ice patches dotted the ground where standing puddles had frozen.

The ruined Outsider ship stood black and skeletal under the starlight. Verne had stuffed candles in his pockets and several sulfur matches. Frankenstein carried two electric illuminators powered by galvanic batteries. He switched them on before the two of them entered the ship’s main hatch.

The illuminators shone circles of yellow light, reflecting from the polished sections of the alien alloys. They walked down the sloping central passage, under the black girders. Wind whistled through holes and cracks in the hull.

Verne saw strange light shining from behind one of the sealed portholes. After a quick inspection, he unfastened a knob holding the metal covering in place, but before he could lift the shade to look through the glass, Frankenstein grabbed his wrist.

“I wouldn’t do that, Jules.” He paused while the metal sections creaked around them. Frosty breath came out of his mouth when he spoke. “We have no idea what those windows look out upon. Remember what we’re dealing with here.”

Verne froze and backed away, apologizing for his own curiosity, his lack of control. Frankenstein was perfectly correct, of course—one glimpse of
reality
would be enough to blast them all into nonexistence. It was conceivable that he could simply push a button, energize the motive apparatus, and propel them Outside—some of the knobs and dials in the control room might still be functional. Verne wondered if perhaps he could develop some sort of protective goggles that would let them look upon
reality
and survive.…

Unfortunately, they had other plans for the energy source trapped in its fragile containment below.

When they entered the excavated corridor of the ship and descended the groaning metal staircase to the control room, their electric illuminators both flickered and went out. Frankenstein tapped the lens and tried the switch several times before he set his device on the floor in disgust.

“I hate working on the technological fringe. Nothing functions the way it’s supposed to.”

Verne struck one of his matches against a corroded section of the hull. He lit a candle and passed it to Frankenstein before lighting one of his own. “I never imagined we would assemble a doomsday weapon by candlelight.”

The control panels with their rows of dark indicator lights and color-coded buttons looked like the unblinking eyes of dead men. The air smelled dusty and metallic. Rags spotted with oils and solvents filled a container by the exterior hatch.

Outside, the girders creaked and shifted as wind whistled around the mountains. Verne knew they were alone, but he felt things watching them from the shadows. He recognized it as an irrational fear and tried to ignore it—but then he remembered the Outsiders probably
were
watching them.

“Come, Jules. We have to get started. Most of the tools we need are already here from the excavation and analysis work.”

Verne blew cold air out of his nose, pondering how to put the pieces together. It all seemed so clear in his mind. “We should be able to lift enough other instrumentation from our devices at hand, especially some of the steam pumps and generator coils.”

Frankenstein bent to the control-panel bulkhead. “Help me lift this cover plate off.”

Working feverishly, Outsider-inspired, Professors Verne and Frankenstein hammered away at their contraption, using pieces of metal taken from the ship’s hull, adapting equipment dismantled from other Sitnaltan apparatus.

They rarely spoke, but worked together, knowing what needed to be done. Verne blew on his numb fingers and searched for another instrument. All the tools felt icy in the still air of the chamber. The candles made exaggerated shadows of their movements against the curved walls.

The delicate part was encapsulating the power source in a makeshift containment vessel. Verne hoped the new rivets would hold and that their sealant goop would keep the valves and control switches in place. Verne found he was trembling, not just from the chill air but from the fear of working with such a dangerous thing.

The candles burned down, one after another, and finally as dawn broke across the sky, Frankenstein rubbed his elbow against a bronze plate at the front of the weapon. He cracked his knuckles and sighed. When Verne looked at him, the other professor’s eyes were bloodshot and weary. Verne knew he must look as haggard himself.

Frankenstein sighed. “With a device so important, I think we should make this official, even if only between ourselves.” He withdrew a black grease pencil and bent over the smooth cylindrical body of the weapon. Pondering a moment with the pencil against his lips, Frankenstein scrawled a number on the silvery-white metal. “17/2.”

“I think this counts as a patentable invention, don’t you, Jules?” He straightened. “Even though we dare not ever tell how we created it.”

Verne forced a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “I will never know how you keep track of all the numbers.”

“A simple matter of concentration. Last month we ran out of certificate numbers from the Council of Patent Givers. We forced them to create a second series, all our own. This weapon is our seventeenth invention in the second series. Such a weapon,” Frankenstein said, letting his voice trail off.

He looked up at Verne with a hard light in his eyes. “It is the most powerful thing ever to come of Sitnaltan technology. But now we have to take it to Scartaris—and detonate it.”

Frankenstein looked at Verne. Their eyes met in the uncertain candlelight, but neither spoke until Verne finally lowered his gaze.

“One of us will have to do it, of course.”

“Yes. We must roll for it.”

Verne reached deep into the folds of his woolen coat and withdrew a hand-held device. In his other hand he found two red dice with painted white numbers. “We’ll use the random generator.”

He placed it on a level surface of the gutted control panel, brushing dust aside. “High roll makes the journey?” He raised his eyebrows. Frankenstein nodded.

Verne inserted the two dice into the opening at the top of the device. “You roll first.”

Frankenstein pushed down the spring-loaded lever on the side. The dice fell, scrambled and bouncing around inside the machine, and then tumbled out the opening in the bottom. A “5” and a “4.”

Verne picked up the dice and tossed them into the top. He reset the lever, then pushed it down. He heard the dice clattering, but he felt a cold hand in his stomach. He
knew
before the dice rolled out.

Boxcars—two sixes.

Frankenstein put his hands behind his back, blinking. Verne couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

“I will help you load the weapon into one of our steam-engine cars. It will take the two of us to carry it.”

Professor Verne nodded. Frankenstein hesitated a moment and then turned to extend his hand.

“Luck, Jules. Our future rides on this.”

***