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Crawling out of her warm outer clothing, Mayer felt the breeze cool the sweat on her skin, raising a few goosebumps. Once she started riding uphill again, the effort would keep her warm enough. She tucked the discarded clothing inside her pack without bothering to fold it, cramming it into any pocket of space. With a deep indrawn breath, she shouldered the pack again and righted her clumsy bicycle.
Mayer set off again, puffing and pedaling up the steep slope but making steady progress.
She had marked on her own small map exactly where to find the ruins of the ship, which lay crashed next to an abandoned Slac fortress. The first Sitnaltan expedition had left the excavation site the morning after Professor Verne rode off alone. Frankenstein had declared their mission over and ordered them to pack up and depart immediately, giving no explanation. Not until later, through hints, did the professor tell about his and Verne's dream from the Outsider Scott, showing them how to create a devastating weapon with what remained in the wreckage in the ship.
After they had finished, Frankenstein used a firepit in the old Slac fortress to burn all their plans and notes, so that no other character might know about the weapon they had developed. Mayer and many others in Sitnalta found this attitude appalling. Professors Verne and Frankenstein had created enormous numbers of inventions -- they had always shared every detail, every nuance. Just the thought of them destroying information that was common property, by law, of all characters caused friction with the other inventors.
Frankenstein remained firm, though. He and Verne had made a vow -- this was one invention they would not share. Not ever.
Returning to the ship, Mayer would find a way to learn what they had learned, or some other means to fight for Sitnalta. She remembered the words the Vailret had said as he confronted her on the docks at night, just before he and blind Paenar had stolen Verne's _Nautilus_ sub-marine boat.
"_You tinker with your calculating machines and street-cleaning engines, but when faced with a problem your technology may not be able to solve, you dismiss it as something not to be considered,_" Vailret had said. "_Scrap your frivolous gadgets and invent something to stop this thing! If we fail, all of Gamearth could be depending on you._"
Mayer had no idea if Vailret had been successful on his journey to the island, though the dragon Tryos had not been seen again. She didn't know what had happened to their greater enemy, Scartaris -- but Verne had disappeared with his secret weapon, and even Frankenstein didn't know what had gone wrong.
The force corrupting Sitnalta might have something to do with Scartaris, or the Outsiders, or the rumored end of the Game. Their own detectors showed nothing, and Mayer had no idea. But she would take Vailret's challenge and try to invent something to counteract the danger.
Her dark eyes glazed with the effort to keep pushing uphill, focusing only on the quest-path before her. Her skin was flushed, her face set in the obsessive expression she thought might be like the one she saw so often on Professor Frankenstein's face. He was one of the greatest inventors since Maxwell. But he apparently did not have the same admiration for her, since he spurned her assistance.
In late afternoon she crested a peak and abruptly crossed another hex-line of mountain terrain where the slope changed and the crags spread out before her in a different pattern. The quest-path zig-zagged ahead like a white line carved into the cliffs. The air felt cold, like rough cloth against her face, but so far she had not encountered enough ice and snow to make for treacherous riding.
Some of the peaks on Mayer's left blocked the setting sun, filling the air with shadows. As she looked ahead, she could discern the stark parapets of the crumbling Slac fortress, the tiny black window slits, the jagged and forbidding spikes. She stopped for a moment, drawing a deep breath.
As the fading light glinted around the cliffs, she saw gleams and reflections of the collapsed metal from the Outsiders' ship, excavated girders that the Sitnaltan expedition had left exposed.
Mayer pedaled furiously, picking up speed as the quest-path plunged downhill. The narrow tires were awkward on the rough trail, sending her careening against loose rocks as she tried to stop herself. The ship seemed to be waiting for her, a box filled with wonders and ideas, all the things she could discover.
With the incentive burning in her, Mayer felt the need to discover something of tremendous significance to the entire Game. The answer lay buried somewhere in the ruins ahead.
"I'll show you Professor Frankenstein," she muttered between teeth clenched with effort and the cold, "and I'll show you, Vailret."
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*Chapter 8*
POOL OF PEACE
"I shall never return. I am done with the Game, and the Game is done with me."
-- Drodanis, on his departure from the Stronghold
The great still Pool, as smooth and flat as a puddle of quicksilver, began to drain away. It seemed as if a hole had cracked open at the bottom of the map, letting it all pour to the Outside, into nothingness.
Drodanis stood beside the trees, staring down at his reflection. His face shone back at him, but he also saw through the placid water to the depths of the Rulewoman's Pool.
Near the bottom he glimpsed the boy Lellyn, frozen in a block of forever-ice. The Rulewoman Melanie had encased Lellyn there to protect him from his own destructive doubts. But now as the level of water in the Pool fell visibly, without a sound, Drodanis realized that even her protection could not last.
The Rulewoman had not shown herself to him in many turns. She had come occasionally to speak with Drodanis, to talk of the rest of Gamearth and how it continued without him. Drodanis had been one of her favorite characters, she said. When the Outsider David began his work to destroy the map, she had allowed him to send a warning to his son Delrael, but then she had departed and never returned.
The Rulewoman would be occupied with other concerns, more serious adventures with a bearing on the entire Game, he thought. Drodanis remained in the silent forest, resting ... existing, but doing nothing else. The past had left its crippling scars on him. His mind had replayed the tragic events of his life so many times that the memories had exhausted themselves --
The death throes of his beloved Fielle, sweating, her skin warm and damp to the touch as Drodanis knelt over her and watched the fever course through her system like a serpent's venom. He felt weak, barely recovered from the fever himself ... the fever he had passed on to her while she tended him back to health. Fielle died as he stood there. He watched the milky glaze on her eyes when the delirium faded into a thicker glaze of death....
He saw again the last cocky grin on the face of his brother Cayon while he fought the deadly ogre out in the forests. Cayon: always trying to compete with him, to outdo his older brother, to prove that he could tackle this monster on his own. But he was desperately mismatched, and didn't even realize it until it was too late....
Again and again those memories had flooded Drodanis's mind, focusing his thoughts. It had made Drodanis leave his life behind, to come here in search of forgetting, to avoid the responsibilities of questing and amusing the Outsiders. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]