“They were contacted, in various ways,” said Walker. “And offered a way out of their problems. They agreed, and were brought here. They all considered themselves lost, you see, damned, and running out of time and hope. Now look at them—almost giddy with relief at the chance of a last-minute reprieve.”
“You are not Walker,” Chandarru said suddenly. “Walker is dead.”
“That’s no problem here,” said Walker. “But you’re quite right, of course. I look like Walker, because someone here wants me to. I wonder who, and why . . .” He looked happily around the small group, and they all looked thoughtful, as though any of them might have their own reasons.
Unless, I thought, Walker is just pretending not to be Walker, for reasons of his own. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I turned to Molly. “Sorry it took so long for me to get to you.”
“What are you talking about?” said Molly. “It’s only been a few hours since they grabbed me from the Wulfshead.”
I looked at her, and then at the others. They were all nodding in agreement.
“It’s only been a few hours for us,” said Charles. “Since we were abducted from the hotel in Nantes.”
The others all chimed in, saying the same thing. No matter how long they’d been gone from the world, as far as they were concerned they’d been in the Shifting Lands only for a few hours. Everyone turned to Walker for an explanation.
“Time is a matter of choice and intent here,” he said, just a bit grandly. “Like Space, Time is made to serve the purposes of the Powers That Be. You were all taken from your world at different positions in Space/Time, but arrived here at the same moment. Because that’s what the Powers That Be wanted.”
I turned to Molly. “He must be finished, because he’s stopped talking, but I can’t say I feel any wiser. Do you feel any wiser? No? Thought not.” I glared at Walker. “Just tell us what we need to know! Tell us what the Big Game is, and what it’s for.”
“And what the rules are,” said Molly. “If only so I can have the fun of breaking them.”
“There is only one way out of the Shifting Lands,” said Walker. “A Door is waiting, to take you home. But it will only open once, for one person. So the only way to be sure of winning the Game, of freeing yourself from your obligations and returning home . . . is to kill everyone else in the Game.” He smiled about him, into the sudden silence. Everyone was thinking hard, and looking at one another speculatively. Walker carried on. “Let me be very clear; there can only be one winner, one survivor. If you want your debts paid.”
“No,” I said immediately. “I won’t do it. I won’t kill for you. I don’t do that any more.”
“Not even to save Molly?” said Walker.
“I don’t need saving!” said Molly.
“Or your parents?” said Walker, still looking at me. “Though of course, in the end, you could only save one of them. Would you give up your life for the parents who abandoned you? And if so, which one would you choose?”
I gave him my best cold smile. “Like Molly said, rules are made to be broken. I’ve spent my whole career winning games by kicking over the board and scattering the pieces.”
“But you never played a Game like this,” said Walker.
Everyone else in the group was still staring at one another, weighing people up and judging the competition.
“You’re a Drood,” Tarot Jones said to me suddenly. “I can See your torc. My people have heard of you. The authority figure’s authority figures. You maintain the status quo, by any means necessary. I don’t think I’d have any problem killing you to protect my Tribe.”
“Butt out, hippy,” said Molly.
“I have a mission and a cause to return to,” said the Sin Eater. “Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of that.”
Chandarru remained quietly thoughtful, as though still considering the odds, and the possibilities.
Charles and Emily looked at each other and smiled over some shared secret thought. They took each other’s hands, and turned to face Walker.
“Screw the rules,” said Emily. “We won’t kill our son, and we won’t kill each other.”
“You can’t make us play the Game if we choose not to,” said Charles.
“Damn right,” said Emily. “Any debts or obligations we may have incurred, we’ll take care of ourselves.”
“We defied the Droods,” said Charles. “Do you think it bothers us to defy your precious Powers That Be?”
“You can’t leave here except through the Door,” said Walker.
“Then we’ll stay here together,” said Emily. “To protect our son.”
“Damn right,” said Charles. “We understand duty, and sacrifice.”
“We’re Droods,” said Emily.
Molly shot me a quick grin. “All right, Eddie . . . Your parents have style!”
I looked coldly at Walker. “I can see why everyone else is here, but why my parents?”
“They made deals,” said Walker. “To be able to leave the Droods and remain undetected by your family.”
Emily nodded slowly to me. “We had to disappear completely, Eddie. Become entirely different people, to protect you.”
“Some people might have put pressure on you,” said Charles, “if they thought we were still alive. To get us to return.”
“Or they might have hurt you, even killed you, to get at us,” said Emily. “Your grandfather, as Regent of Shadows, was able to hide us away in his organisation, but only as long as we were someone else.”
“Patrick and Diana,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Charles.
“So we entered into Agreements,” said Emily. “To make sure you could never be put in danger.”
“Who did you make these Agreements with?” I said.
Charles and Emily looked at each other and didn’t say anything.
“We were so mad at you,” said Molly. “Or I was, anyway, thinking you’d just run away from Casino Infernale . . .”
“We were abducted!” said Charles. “Right in the middle of our mission!”
“Right in the middle of our game plan,” said Emily.
“You do know,” Charles said to me apologetically, “that we lost your soul, as well as our own, gambling at the Casino?”
“I did find that out, yes,” I said. “Don’t worry; I won them all back again and broke the bank.”
“Of course you did,” said Emily. “You’re our son.”
“We were a little concerned,” said Charles. “About being trapped here, and leaving you in the lurch.”
“Our game plan would have worked,” said Emily, glaring at Walker, “if we hadn’t been interrupted!”
I gave him one of my best glares too. “What is to stop any or all of us from working together to win the Game?”
“Nothing,” said Walker. “But in the end, the Door will still only open once, for one person.”
“Hah!” Molly said loudly. “I never met a Door I couldn’t unlock.”
“I never met a Door I couldn’t force open,” I said. Which wasn’t strictly true, but Walker didn’t need to know that.
He just smiled easily, apparently entirely unmoved. “The rules are different here. Because the Powers That Be decide what the rules are.”
Chandarru suddenly stepped forward and thrust out a hand at me. Savage green lightnings sprang from his extended fingertips, but I already had my armour in place, reacting instinctively to his movement. Magical lightnings crawled all over my armour, trying to force their way in, only to fall away defeated. Chandarru immediately turned his lightnings on everyone else, and the rest of the group scattered to avoid them. Somehow, Tarot Jones was never where the lightnings struck. The Sin Eater stood firm, protected by a magical circle. Emily grabbed Charles’ arm and stepped back into a concealing shadow, reappear
ing only after the lightnings had passed. She grinned, delighted.
“My abilities are back! I’m a shadow dancer again!”
“Somebody must want you to have them, for the Game,” said Charles.
“More fool them,” said Emily.
And of course, none of the lightnings got anywhere near Molly. She just stood her ground and faced them down, until Chandarru lowered his hand and the lightnings stopped. He bowed briefly to Molly and to me, and smiled inscrutably, apparently completely unembarrassed by his sneak attack. I armoured down.
Tarot Jones turned angrily to Walker, who had quietly stepped behind the Somnambulist until the attack was over.
“Is that allowed? Can he just get away with that? Attacking us without warning, before the Game has even started?”
“The Game started the moment you all arrived,” said Walker.
“We should kill the conjurer now,” said the Sin Eater. “All of us, together; while we have the chance. We can’t concentrate on winning the Game if we have to worry about being stabbed in the back all the time.”
“That’s part of the Game,” said Walker.
Chandarru just smiled around at us. “You are, of course, welcome to try . . .”
“But some or all of you might find you have need of his particular talents, at some point in the Game,” said Walker. “Shifting allegiances is a standard tactic amongst the most powerful players.”
“Whose side are you on?” I said.
“Nobody’s,” said Walker. “That’s the point.”
“Why is the Somnambulist here, really?” I said. “To enforce fair play among the participants?”
“Hardly,” said Walker. “She’s here to enforce the rules. You must play the Game, all of you. No complaints, and no way out. Fight and win, or die. The Powers That Be must have their amusement. And their pound of flesh. If anyone refuses to participate in the Game, the Somnambulist will kill them.”
“No!” said Molly. “Carrys wouldn’t do that!”
“Possibly not, but Carrys isn’t here right now,” said Walker. “She won’t know anything about it until she wakes up. She might be very upset at that point, but it will be far too late to do any of you any good.”
“Who are you really?” I said.
“Who do you want me to be?” said Walker.
And I have to say, that did sound a hell of a lot like the real Walker.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That’s Not Playing the Game
Everything disappeared. As though the whole world had been taken away. I couldn’t see or hear anything, couldn’t even feel whatever it was I was standing on. I waved my hands back and forth in front of me, and there wasn’t even the pressure of resisting air on my palms. I called out to Molly. My voice sounded flat, diminished. It didn’t carry and it didn’t echo. There was no reply. My hands clenched into fists. I was almost out of my mind with rage. I couldn’t have lost Molly again, so soon after finding her.
Light rose up around me, slowly and uncertainly. Details of a new world appeared, fading in and out of the gloom. I was standing somewhere in the midst of a desolate empty moor, bathed in a foul leprous moonlight. Just the look of it made me feel unclean, and I almost flinched as the light touched my bare face and hands. I looked quickly around me. The moor was a dim, deserted setting, nothing moving, not a sound anywhere. Nothing to suggest there was a single living thing present apart from me. A cold wind blew from no direction in particular, hardly disturbing the air, but enough to chill me to the bone in a moment. I hugged myself tightly, and stamped my feet hard on thick, glutinous mud. The moor stretched away in every direction. A whole world of mud and dirty water, bubbling bogs, and the occasional tuft of unhealthy-looking vegetation.
This was no real, material setting. I could tell. Someone had made this place, brought it into being through an act of will imposed upon the chimerical nature of the Shifting Lands. And then, that same someone had dropped me in it.
It all seemed solid enough. I could even smell the mire. A ripe stench of fermenting gases, oozing and bubbling up through the thick, viscous mud. And when I crouched down to study a stunted tuft of grasses close up, I could make out each individual blade of grass in the blue-white moonlight. At least this time, all the details had been filled in. A living world. Real enough to die in . . .
The ground beneath my feet collapsed without warning, the solid earth becoming saturated mud, a sucking bog, pulling me under. I yanked my feet free of the mud with an effort and lurched forward, forcing my way across the mire. But I just sank in deeper with every step. I struggled on, mud already lapping up around my thighs, but I couldn’t seem to find my way to solid ground. There didn’t seem to be any, anywhere. Or at least nothing strong enough to support my weight.
I was soon waist deep and sinking fast. The harsh, urgent noises I was making as I fought my way forward sounded clearly on the quiet. I didn’t like the sound of them. They sounded dangerously close to panic. With my next step I plunged down even further, almost falling forward onto my face. I fought fiercely to regain my balance, but I was quickly chest deep in the mud; and it took all the strength I had just to keep moving forward, pressing against the resisting mire with all its slow strength and tenacity. I didn’t dare stop; I couldn’t feel anything solid under my feet.
I was breathing hard now, my heart hammering in my chest. The stench of gasses bubbling up grew even worse, disturbed by my progress through the bog. It filled my head till I couldn’t seem to think straight. I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, and breathed through my fingers. That seemed to help. I made myself concentrate on my situation.
I was sure I’d read somewhere that you could actually swim through quicksand, if you took it slowly and carefully and kept your wits about you. I eased myself slowly forward, spreading my weight out across the surface of the mud, but it didn’t help. Within moments my whole body was submerged, and the mud was lapping up against my chin. My neck ached from holding my head up. I could hear myself making harsh animal noises as I struggled. My arms and legs thrashed helplessly, unable to gain any traction in the enveloping mud. I was still sinking, if only a little more slowly, and I’d stopped making any forward progress.
I didn’t want to armour up. I was pretty sure the weight of it would drag me under. And while my armoured mask would let me breathe under the mud, there was no telling how deep the mire was. I might just sink and sink and sink . . . But as the mud crept up over my chin, and lapped against the underside of my bottom lip with its cold, clammy touch, I didn’t see what other choice I had.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and the golden strange matter swept over me in a moment. Sealing me in, protecting me from this awful, sucking world. And the moment I took on my armour the mud suddenly became hard as concrete, solid and implacable, holding me in place. As though it had just been waiting for its chance. I fought it with all my strength, yet couldn’t move at all. I had nothing to push against; no traction, no leverage. But I was still sinking, very slowly. Going down, into the mud, into the dark.
I stopped fighting and lay still. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer, but I concentrated on slowing my breathing as I made myself think. Walker had said something to me . . . about the Shifting Lands. That the psychegeography of the world responded to the wishes and the needs of the people in it. That it didn’t matter who created whatever world you ended up in; you could still affect or change your environment through an effort of will. Make it be what you needed it to be. So I closed my eyes, focusing my mind on just one thing, one definite objective. I needed something to stand on. I needed to stand up.
And just like that, I wasn’t lying flat in the mud any more. I was still buried up to my chin, but now I was standing bolt upright; and there was something wonderfully solid under my feet. I might not be able to see it, but I could definitely feel it. Thinking hard, I visualised another step, just like
the first; and slowly I raised my left foot through the thick mud and stepped onto it. The mud still resisted my every move, but it wasn’t strong enough or solid enough to hold me. Not now. I visualised more steps, and one step at a time I rose up out of the clinging mud, until I was standing on the surface of the mire once again.
Thick, dark foulness dripped off my gleaming armour, falling away in sudden slurps and rushes. I shook myself hard, and more of it flew away. I cried out, in triumph and relief, and thrust both my arms up, into the shimmering moonlight. It felt so good to be able to move again.
I glowered about me, my hands clenched into fists, ready to lash out at anyone. This had been a deliberate attack. A world designed to kill me, slowly and horribly. If my willpower hadn’t been up to the job . . . But I was a Drood. And self-control is one of the first things my family teaches its children, from a really early age. Self-control is vital if you’re going to live with your armour. One of my competitors in the Big Game must have made this place just for me, one of the few kinds of death trap that might just work against a man in armour.
I frowned. A place like this couldn’t have come from anywhere inside me, could it? Not even subconsciously . . . Walker said the Shifting Lands took their shape and direction from conscious and subconscious needs and wishes, but even so . . . I shook my head firmly. In my current circumstances, in the middle of the Game, self-doubt was just a distraction. I made myself concentrate again, on the one thing that really mattered to me.
“Molly!” I said loudly. “I want Molly! Where is she?”
A door appeared before me. A perfectly ordinary-looking wooden door, standing alone and unsupported, about a dozen feet away. It seemed almost to hover on top of the mud, barely touching the surface, but it didn’t have the look or the feel of a dimensional Door. I studied the slowly heaving mud, bubbling away between me and the door, and didn’t trust it. I visualised a series of steps, lying on the mud in a straight line between me and the door, and immediately there they were, gleaming golden in the unhealthy moonlight. Like so many stepping-stones. Solid and firm, as though they’d always been there. I walked steadily forward across the stones, trusting my weight to them one step at a time, and they didn’t give at all.