‘I’ve been keeping watch on them,’ Arlan said. ‘They’ve not moved a muscle. Sometimes you can see a Manipulator fighting back, even in this state, just by the flicker of a finger or the blinking of their eyes. But not with these ones. I think they might be gone for good.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Arna snapped.
‘Apologies, my lady.’ Arlan bowed, before returning to the side of the courtyard.
Canning studied the Manipulators, glancing from one to the other. He felt something, as he gazed at them: a kind of presence, as of a great pressure bearing down on them all, or a fog blocking them from view.
‘Where are they?’ he asked.
‘We don’t know.’ Darrlan was speaking, now. ‘They’ve been taken somewhere, by this thing. We can’t do anything for them. We’ve tried.’
‘Perhaps you could help, Great Manipulator.’ Arna’s voice. ‘This Autocrat would be no match for you. You could find them, and bring them back.’
There were more noises; more words being spoken. But Canning could no longer hear them.
‘What did you say?’ he asked.
He realised, too late, what had happened. He had gone to the other side of the fog.
‘Who are you?’
The question seemed to come from far away, repeated in a pained voice. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Brandione paid it no mind. He focused on the sand, the black, black sand, as it fell away beneath his boots.
‘Who are you?’
The desert was empty. The desert had always been empty.
‘Who are you?’
There was no one there but him. The desert was empty.
‘Who are you?’
He looked up from his feet. He looked away from the sand. And he saw that the desert was not empty at all.
There was a young man at his side: a man of many contradictions. He appeared youthful, at first, with unlined, pale skin and long blond hair. But there was an air of age about his watchful eyes, which could not be concealed. Stranger still was his gown, a green thing that writhed with symbols and shapes, numbers and figures and moons and stars.
How did this young man come to be here, in this desert of black sand, under a red sun in a dark sky? Where had he come from?
This is the Underland, and things are not the same here.
Brandione stopped walking, and the man came to a halt, too.
He grinned at the one-time General, and clapped his hands together. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Charls Brandione. At least, that’s who I was.’
‘So you aren’t him any more?’
‘I used to be a soldier. Now I’m nothing.’
‘Nothing? Hmm. You wouldn’t be here if you were nothing.’ He snapped his fingers together. ‘I have it! The Queen. You are the Queen’s pawn.’
Brandione nodded, and braced himself. He knew what was coming next.
‘The Last Doubter,’ the man whispered. ‘I have heard your name. She has seen such things for her Last Doubter. Oh, I know what she thinks. I’m the Gamesman – I know what everyone thinks will happen, in all the games. She thinks you’ll find the First Memory. Amazing!’
He laughed, and Brandione was struck with a sudden image of this man, long ago, standing before so many tables, a dominant figure, a power of the world.
The Gamesman, as he called himself, came up close to him. ‘She is deluded. Do you know why, Last Doubter?’
Brandione shook his head.
‘Because this is the game. The Old Place runs this game, Brandione. Hmm? We do not know what it is thinking. We do not know the rules. When it decides to …’ He snapped his fingers again. ‘When it decides to end the pawns, or take them away, we do not know what forces its hand. All we can do is watch. Now tell me this, Last Doubter – why, exactly, would the Old Place want to show you the First Memory? Why would it reveal its most powerful secret, and risk losing it forever? It wouldn’t, is the answer. It never has, and it never will.’
‘Then how is it played?’ Always the same question, over and over again. ‘I think I should know, if I’m a player.’
The Gamesman shrugged. ‘That’s the delicious thing, Brandione. It changes all the time.’ He looked up at the sun. ‘It knows when we are coming to play. It knows what we want. And it does what it likes. The Operators watch you all, on my lovely table: helpless.’
‘So I’m not playing a game at all. I’m only walking through a nightmare, until it decides it’s had enough of me.’ Brandione felt perversely piqued at the injustice of it all. ‘There is no fairness, here. There is only death. It kills us in the order it wants, or throws us in some corner of this place, never to return.’
The Gamesman turned suddenly serious. ‘Perhaps, perhaps. But to survive in the game, even for a while, is such an honour. The Old Place is everything, Brandione. I never question it, and neither should you. Its mind is unknowable, its highways endless, its thoughts too subtle to comprehend, even for the Queen herself – its first child!’
Brandione held up a hand. ‘Enough. I can’t listen to this nonsense any more.’
The Gamesman cocked his head to the side. ‘Interesting. Nonsense.’ He giggled. ‘Well, here’s something you’ll understand. If one person lasts longer than the rest, it would be better to be that person, than any of the other pawns, wouldn’t it? You would have time, then. Time to defeat the game.’ He laughed derisively.
Brandione nodded, and looked out to the desert. ‘That I can understand.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Where does it take them – the ones it doesn’t kill?’
He turned back to the Gamesman, and found he was alone again.
Brandione walked on, through the black sands. At one point – he did not know when, or if ‘when’ even mattered here – he looked up and saw the outline of an object far ahead. He kept his eyes on it as he went. Once, he turned in another direction. But as he walked, the lines of the object reappeared. It is meant for me.
It became clearer over time. At first, he thought it was some kind of building: another tower, perhaps, like the one where he had met the Dust Queen. But soon he realised it was not a manmade structure at all: it was a mountain.
It was the smallest mountain the General had ever seen; so small, in fact, that it took him time to realise it even was a mountain. But soon it was clear. Rising from the desert before him was a sharp mound of rock, small but perfectly formed, its peak frosted with snow, its body wreathed in shadow.
Its size was deceptive. As he walked, the mountain seemed to leap towards him, growing with every jump. The experience was familiar; he had seen it many times before, in the Overland. In those days, he thought it was some trick of perspective or light. He wondered, now, if he had seen the Underland itself, back then, seeping into the real world. Perhaps there was