The next fire-card was placed; on earth. The castle seemed to shift under Gurgeh. The wind tore in through windows, rolling lighter pieces across the board like some absurd and unstoppable invasion; it whipped at the robes of the Adjudicator and his officials. People were piling out of the galleries, falling over each other to get to the exits, where the guards had drawn their guns.
The sky was full of fire.
Nicosar looked at Gurgeh as he placed the final fire-card, on the ghost-element, Life.
“This is looking worse and worse all — grrreeeeee!” Flere-Imsaho said, voice breaking, screeching. Gurgeh whirled round to see the bulky machine trembling in mid-air, surrounded by a bright aura of green fire.
The guards started shooting. The doors from the hall were thrown open and the people piled through, but in the hall the guards were suddenly all over the board itself, firing up into the galleries and benches, blasting laser-fire amongst the escaping crowds, felling the screaming, struggling apices, females and males in a storm of flickering light and shattering detonations.
“Grrraaaaak!” Flere-Imsaho screamed. Its casing glowed dull red and started to smoke. Gurgeh watched, transfixed. Nicosar stood near the centre of the boards, surrounded by his guards, smiling at Gurgeh.
The fire raged above the cinderbuds. The hall emptied as a last few wounded people staggered through the doors. Flere-Imsaho hung in the air; it glowed orange, yellow, white; it started to rise, dripping blobs of molten material on to the board as it went, enveloped suddenly in flames and smoke. Suddenly, it accelerated across the hall as if pulled by some huge, invisible hand. It slammed into a far wall and exploded in a blinding flash and a blast that almost blew Gurgeh off his stoolseat.
The guards around the Emperor left the board and climbed over the benches and galleries, killing the wounded. They ignored Gurgeh. The sound of firing echoed through the doors leading to the rest of the castle, where the dead lay in their bright clothes like some obscene carpet.
Nicosar strolled slowly over to Gurgeh, stopping to tap a few Azad pieces out of his way with his boots as he advanced; he stamped on a little guttering pool of fire left from the molten debris Flere-Imsaho had trailed behind it. He drew his sword, almost casually.
Gurgeh clutched the arms of the seat. The inferno shrieked in the skies outside. Leaves swirled through the hall like dry, endless rain. Nicosar stopped in front of Gurgeh. The Emperor was smiling. He shouted above the gale. “Surprised?”
Gurgeh could hardly speak. “What have you done? Why?” he croaked.
Nicosar shrugged. “Made the game real, Gurgeh.” He looked round the hall, surveying the carnage. They were alone now; the guards were spreading through the rest of the castle, killing.
The fallen were everywhere, scattered over the floor and the galleries, draped over benches, crumpled in corners, spread like Xs on the flagstones, their robes spotted with the dark burnholes of laserburns. Smoke rose from the splintered woodwork and smouldering clothes; a sweet-sick smell of burned flesh filled the hall.
Nicosar weighed the heavy, double-edged sword in his gloved hand, smiling sadly at it. Gurgeh felt his bowels ache and his hands shake. There was a strange metallic taste in his mouth, and at first he thought it was the implant, rejecting, surfacing, for some reason reappearing, but then he knew that it wasn’t, and realised, for the first time in his life, that fear really did have a taste.
Nicosar gave an inaudible sigh, drew himself up in front of Gurgeh, so that he seemed to fill the view in front of the man, and brought the sword slowly towards Gurgeh.
Drone! he thought. But it was just a sooty scar on the far wall.
Ship! But the implant under his tongue lay silent, and the Limiting Factor was still light years away.
The tip of the sword was a few centimetres from Gurgeh’s belly; it started to rise, passing slowly over Gurgeh’s chest towards his neck. Nicosar opened his mouth as though he was about to say something, but then he shook his head, as though in exasperation, and lunged forward.
Gurgeh kicked out, slamming both feet into the Emperor’s belly. Nicosar doubled up; Gurgeh was thrown backwards off the seat. The sword hissed over his head.
Gurgeh kept on rolling as the stoolseat crashed to the ground; he jumped to his feet. Nicosar was half doubled-up, but still clutched the sword. He staggered towards the man, hacking the sword about him as though at invisible enemies between them. Gurgeh ran; to the side at first, then across the board, heading for the hall doors. Behind him, outside the windows, the fire above the thrashing cinderbuds obliterated the black clouds of smoke; the heat was something physical, a pressure on the skin and eyes. One of Gurgeh’s feet came down on a game-piece, rolled across the board by the gale; he slipped and fell.
Nicosar stumbled after him.
The screening equipment whined, then hummed; smoke gouted from it. Blue lightning played furiously around the hanging machinery.
Nicosar didn’t notice; he plunged forward at Gurgeh, who pushed himself away; the sword crashed into the board, centimetres from the man’s head. Gurgeh picked himself up and leapt over a raised section of board. Nicosar came tearing and trampling after him.
The screening gear exploded. It crashed from the ceiling to the board in a shower of sparks and smashed into the centre of the multi-coloured terrain a few metres in front of Gurgeh, who was forced to stop and turn. He faced Nicosar.
Something white blurred through the air.
Nicosar raised the sword over his head.
The blade snapped, clipped off by a flickering yellow-green field. Nicosar felt the weight of the sword change, and looked up in disbelief. The blade dangled uselessly in mid-air, suspended from the little white disk that was Flere-Imsaho.
“Ha ha ha,” it boomed above the noise of the screaming wind.
Nicosar threw the sword-handle at Gurgeh; a green-yellow field caught it, propelled it back at Nicosar; the Emperor ducked. He staggered across the board in a storm of smoke and swirling leaves. The cinderbuds thrashed; flashes of white and yellow burst from between their trunks as the wall of flames above them beat towards the castle.
“Gurgeh!” Flere-Imsaho said, suddenly in front of his face. “Crouch down and curl up. Now!”
Gurgeh did as he was told, getting down on his haunches, arms wrapped around his shins. The drone floated above him, and Gurgeh saw the haze of a field all around him.
The wall of cinderbuds was breaking, the streaks and bursts of flame clawing through from behind them, shaking them, tearing them. The heat seemed to shrivel his face on the bones of his skull.
A figure appeared against the flames. It was Nicosar, holding one of the big laser-pistols the guards had been armed with. He stood just within and to the side of the windows, holding the gun in both hands and sighting carefully at Gurgeh. Gurgeh looked at the black muzzle of the gun, into the thumb-wide barrel, then his gaze moved up to Nicosar’s face as the apex pulled the trigger.
Then he was looking at himself.
He stared into his own distorted face just long enough to see that Jernau Morat Gurgeh, at the very instant that might have been his death, looked only rather surprised and not a little stupid… then the mirror-field disappeared and he was looking at Nicosar again.
The apex stood in exactly the same place, swaying slightly now. There was something wrong though. Something had changed. It was very obvious but Gurgeh couldn’t see what it was.