Kevin J Anderson (2 page)

The venomous tail flinched when Verne gazed up at Siryyk. Sparks snapped against the flagstones, highlighting other blackened spots from other times the beast had twitched his tail in anger or annoyance.

"I brought you here, human, to give you the honor of assisting me in winning the Game." Siryyk's voice was deep and liquid, as if he were gargling with some caustic substance. He reached forward with one forepaw and scraped his claws against the stone.

Verne blinked in shock and cleared his throat. "But that's not why I came here at all."

A bright light and an explosion echoed from the floor as the manticore smashed his tail down. "I don't believe I asked your preference."

Verne tried to hold his ground, but he felt overwhelmed by everything he had seen and done in the last few turns. Under dreams and guidance from the Outsider named Scott, he and his colleague Professor Frankenstein had constructed a new kind of weapon. Verne had driven a steam-engine car all the way from Sitnalta to where the growing, destructive force of Scartaris appeared ready to destroy Gamearth. The Sitnaltan weapon would surely eliminate Scartaris ― but it was also so powerful it might destroy Gamearth as well. That thought had not occurred to Verne until much later.

He had driven his vehicle to the desolate battlefield where Scartaris had gathered his horde. Verne set its detectors on auto-pilot, adjusted the timer for his weapon. But a meddling ogre had appeared out of the battle, intent on something else entirely, and had tossed Verne out of the car. Taking over, the ogre rode the steam-engine vehicle on its way toward Scartaris.

The Sitnaltan weapon had never gone off as expected.

Verne, perhaps too perplexed for his own good, but obsessed with gathering all information he could about the performance of his own device, remained behind. Before returning to Sitnalta in disgrace, he had to discover what had gone wrong.

The following day, he tried to find the steam-engine vehicle in the wreckage of the mountains. After hours of searching, he had found it intact among the broken rocks with the weapon still primed. But before Verne could look at the mechanism and determine anything about the malfunction, other scavenging monsters had captured him.

At times, he felt like kicking himself for his own stupidity, his own naiveté. After the giant battle during which the Earthspirits and Deathspirits appeared and defeated Scartaris, Verne had not concerned himself with the remainder of the horde or what they might do if they found him. They seemed of no consequence to him. He couldn't be bothered with details like that when the question of the failed weapon loomed so large.

Unfortunately, the monsters didn't see it that way.

A troop of reptilian Slac had surrounded him among the deep shadows and broken rocks, drawing weapons. One of them carried a sputtering torch, and Verne could see their slitted eyes in the light. For an instant, the professor thought they were going to execute him without even attempting to communicate.

Several Slac drew dull black arrows; one pulled out a pronged knife. They hissed and drooled and stepped toward him ― all Verne could do was stand, gaping in disbelief. He had not thought his predicament through, and he hated to die while looking so stupid. The Sitnaltans admired his ideas, but some had chuckled, with good reason apparently, at their "absent-minded" professor.

But then the commander of the monster band, a powerful general named Korux, had ordered them to stop their attack.

"All of the other human characters have disappeared. Their army is gone. This is the only one of the enemy we have found." Korux looked at the Slac while Verne stood frozen, waiting to hear what he would say. "Take him. With minimal damage."

The Slac general stood staring at Verne and narrowed his yellow yellow eyes. "We must squeeze information out of this one. We can learn what happened here, and learn how we could have been so badly defeated by an army that doesn't even exist!"

Professor Verne did not resist when they grabbed his arms and prodded his sides with the blunt ends of their weapons. He watched with great dismay as the misshapen creatures grabbed the delicate Sitnaltan weapon ― so close to its detonation ― and passed it among themselves as the spoils of war.

Korux ordered his underlings to take the steam-engine car. Verne twisted his head to glance back at the once-beautiful red vehicle of Sitnalta, with its cushioned seats, the tattered canopy to shade him from sunlight during long days of driving, the great brass boiler that provided the car's power. The others pushed the vehicle along the blasted terrain, grunting and struggling against the rocks and broken ground.

So Verne had been taken prisoner, sweating, dirty, and hungry. Bound in rusty chains, he could barely move as his captors hustled him along, treating him like a piece of walking baggage.

The horde had gathered itself together once more under the leadership of the hulking manticore, and they marched westward, away from the dawn and toward the city of Taire.

Verne spent several days in confusion and despair. His captors forced him to eat the bubbling black porridge they slopped in front of him. It tasted of sulfur and ashes; the water they gave him to drink was warm and brackish. His hands were bound, his legs were shackled.

The professor's mind remained free, though ― a powerful advantage to him. But he had no resources, no way he could invent a means for himself to escape.

Finally, after the monster army reached the city of Taire, Siryyk the manticore took time in the evening to summon Verne, his prisoner of war.

Without explanation, two hulking creatures with leathery shrivelled skin and pinched faces hauled Verne from where he had been trying to sleep against a broken wall. They dragged him forward, pushing, elbowing, jabbing, forcing him to stumble as fast as his legs would move. He had given up asking questions of his captors ― he just watched and waited, cooperating as little as possible, as much as necessary.

His escorts led him into what appeared to be a great banquet hall supported by stone pillars. The walls were painted full of colorful frescoes showing humans at work building a city. All of the pictures had been defaced, by white skittering claw marks or splatters of black tar, smears of ash or excrement.

The hall looked empty and damaged. The vaulted ceiling left skylights open to a cold, star-studded night. Along the rafters hung glazed clay pots, some broken, some holding scraggly dead plants.

Firepits had been built deep in the floor, burning oil-soaked support beams from demolished buildings. Dancing orange flames reflected on the painted wall, making sharp shadows. Verne blinked in the thick, smoky air, trying to clear his vision.

Siryyk the manticore growled down at him, leaning forward and showing his sharp teeth in the firelight. Verne kept his mouth shut. He knew how delicate a line he walked as a prisoner ― any time Siryyk liked, he could order Verne's head sliced off and leave his body for the other monsters to feed on. The other characters in Taire had not been so fortunate.

Beside the manticore, the Slac general Korux stepped out. He was clothed in a black, oily garment; tassels marked the sleeves, and glints shone from blood-red gems stitched on one breast. Verne got the impression that Korux had risen in rank because of the professor's successful capture.

Korux spoke from beside the manticore. "We know who you are, Professor Jules Verne of Sitnalta." The Slac voice sounded thin and rasping after the manticore. "We know why you came here."

Verne straightened in surprise, trying to keep his expression neutral. Was Korux bluffing? Verne had never spoken about his past ― in fact, the monsters had never asked him, or interrogated him in any way. He thrust out his chin, making his gray beard bristle.

Korux raised his left hand and clicked the claws together. Two other Slac appeared from outside the scarred banquet hall, grunting and carrying between them the small but extraordinarily heavy weapon that he and Frankenstein had built. Verne's eyes widened as he saw the polished cylinder of whitish metal taken from the ruined Outsiders' ship, a set of red fins, a bullet-shaped brass top with lights and dials and gauges that might tell Verne what had gone wrong with the detonation. And also how many seconds remained on the bomb's timer.

Scrawled on the side in black grease-pencil stood the number 17/2, the patent number that Professors Verne and Frankenstein would have obtained for their awesome weapon. But they had sworn never to build another one. They had intended for the device to be used only once, only to destroy Scartaris.

The manticore spoke up. "We have found your personal journals, Professor Verne. They are very interesting.
Les Voyages Extraordinaires
. Is that some kind of code? Everything else is in plain language."

Korux reached into his slick black garment and removed a battered volume. The cover looked bent; some of the pages were loose and shoved back into the binding ― Verne's own account of his extraordinary journey and the thoughts he had had while traveling across the map to reach Scartaris. It told everything about his mission and about the Sitnaltan weapon.

Verne stared at the journal in astonishment. It had been pounded into him throughout all his years of education that, for the posterity of other characters, he
must
keep records of all his ponderings, all his ideas, all the inventions that he might envision. The ideas concocted by any Sitnaltan inventor were for the benefit of Gamearth.

It had never occurred to Verne that those ideas might fall into the hands of an evil creature such as Siryyk. He had not imagined the possibility that, even if that happened, the manticore could actually read and comprehend the information!

"I am a fool!" he muttered to himself.

Siryyk was the chosen commander of all the monster troops. He had to be intelligent. Scartaris had selected him to lead the most gigantic army ever to appear on Gamearth. He was not a slavering, brainless beast.

The manticore scratched his claws on the flagstones. "I understand the magnitude of power that this weapon contains. The map of Gamearth holds many things of such power. I want them all, and I will do whatever is necessary to get them." His distorted face took on a reflective expression.

"You see, when the six Spirits destroyed Scartaris and nearly obliterated themselves as well, all of Gamearth convulsed and broke. Something happened to the Rules. They may not hold as absolutely as they have in the past.

"And if the Outsiders do indeed plan to ruin Gamearth so that it troubles them no more ― I intend to have all the protection I can. I do not know what effect your weapon or any of these other things, magical things, might have on the Outside. But if the end of the Game is coming,
I
will be the one with the best chance to survive."

Siryyk lowered his head and hunched forward, widening amber eyes that looked the color of honey mixed with acid. Verne winced from the stench of the beast's breath.

"Listen to me, Professor Verne," the manticore continued. "The Outsider Scott may come to you in dreams and offer ideas ― but I have dreams too. In my dreams, I can see the Outsider David. I know what he intends to do. And I can feel the anger, the desperation he feels toward us. I also know how it is breaking him. I am no longer certain how this is happening, whether he appears in my dreams,
or if I appear in his!
"

Verne said nothing in his surprise. The other monsters seemed to be listening, but made no move.

"I am doing what I can to thwart the Outsider David's own plans, though he thinks that I am his ally."

Verne cleared his throat. "Um, that is very ... interesting, but I can't help you. That's all there is to it. Yes, I did construct the weapon, as you have learned from my own journals ― but as you also know, it didn't work! It malfunctioned, and I don't know why. Obviously, my idea was wrong. The Sitnaltan weapon is no weapon at all."

Siryyk stood up, and Verne could see the ripple of muscles running down his sandy leonine back. His huge shadow cast by opposing clusters of firelight rose in tandem against the bright frescoes on the wall, dominating them and swallowing them up.

"General Korux, would you please remove the prisoner's left shoe."

Making a husky sound deep in his throat, the Slac general moved forward, flexing his clawed fingers. Verne shrank back, but his two shrivel-skinned monster guards grabbed him by his bruised arms. Korux bent over and held Verne's black shoe in both reptilian hands. After fumbling unsuccessfully with the laces, the Slac general snorted and used one claw to rip them out of the leather. Tossing the broken laces aside, he peeled off the shoe.

Verne's foot was cramped and sweaty. He had not been able to change clothes, not even his socks, in days. But he felt no relief to be able to flex his toes now.

The manticore went to one of the firepits and, reaching into the coals with his massive hands, he pulled out a stubby, smoke-blackened dagger. Its blade glowed bright orange from the heat.

The twisted lips on Siryyk's human face bent upward, exposing overlapping fangs in his mouth. "I am going to play a game with you, Professor Verne. I think you can repair whatever went wrong with this weapon. And if that is not the case, I think you can make another weapon. Something different, a giant destructive toy for me to play with. Judging by your journals, your mind is filled with useful ideas such as that."

He looked down at the blade and placed his own thickly padded finger against the yellow-hot point. Verne winced as he heard the loud sizzle and smelled the wisp of smoke as the glowing metal ate its way into the manticore's finger pad. Siryyk withdrew his hand, looked at the wound, and frowned but showed no other sign of discomfort.

"Now then, our game." Siryyk looked around to the other monsters gathered at the entrance and standing along the walls. The manticore raised his voice.

"Shall we take bets on how many of the Professor's toes we will have to burn off before he agrees to cooperate with us?"

Verne swooned even as the monsters shouted out their bets.