Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (15 page)

Delrael's leg flowed like water, bending in too many places. The man's face writhed in the pain he felt even through his stupor.

Thilane walked around the clearing, touching a tree or staring at a plant. She waited, listening for something.

"This will require the extent of my knowledge,
dayid
," she said out loud to the forest. "You make me belittle myself with the scratches and scrapes of the khelebar, but now I must tend the injuries of a human as well?

He is not even of Ledaygen."

Thilane put her hands on the point where her human abdomen joined the sleek panther body. She received no answer. "I want to serve
you
!" Thilane stopped herself short of clawing the ground in her anger.

The Healer continued to mutter as she touched a young tree that formed part of the woven walls of her room. "I will heal his petty hurts, but I can do nothing for his leg." She shrugged. "I will not waste my time or the resources of Ledaygen."

A thin, painful bolt of lightning jumped from the young tree, stinging her fingers. Rebuffed, Thilane gaped in silent wonder, then swallowed twice before she spoke again. "You judge this one significant,
dayid
?" She glanced over her back at the man lying on the broad stump. "Is this to be a test of my abilities?"

Thilane smiled more with pride than embarrassment. "Well, I am significant, too, and I will make you proud of the abilities you have given me." The Healer's emerald green eyes sparkled. "I promise."

The background sounds of birds and wind soothed her, lulling her as she selected a thin branch from the sapling. Without effort she separated it from the main trunk; the branch detached itself willingly. With her fingers, the Healer massaged the bark, working it like clay and sealing the small wound to remove any scar on the tree. She sniffed the sap end of the severed branch.

Thilane returned to the motionless man and waved the twig over his face. She hummed a quiet song as she passed it over the bruises and scrapes from when he had fallen on the streambank. The superficial blood and mud disappeared from his skin. The bruises faded. The scratches and torn skin healed.

The branch crumpled to torn, oozing pulp in the Healer's hand.

"That is for appearance only, I know." She sighed to herself, "But at times appearances can help immensely."

She turned to pluck a branch of oak leaves from another tree, stretching up on her hind legs to reach the highest, healthiest bunch. She placed the leaves on the man's ruined leg, scattering them evenly across the protruding bone splinters. Thilane sang another quiet song, and the leaves withered, turning brown and brittle. She brushed them away, careful not to hurt Delrael, and continued her song without pausing. She laid more leaves on the leg. She sang louder. The leaves died a second time.

"Oak should be stronger than this." She held up one of the withered leaves, staring at the sunlight through its shriveled veins. Thilane frowned and tried once more, singing in her strong, harsh voice. Her words trailed off as her lungs emptied, but she wheezed out a few more notes.

The leaves still turned black and lifeless. She had taken the pain away and stopped the bleeding
¯
but Thilane could never heal his leg.

The
dayid
refused to accept her failure.

Delrael muttered to himself, whimpering. His gray eyes fluttered open, but they stared far away. He seemed unable to focus, though he could sense someone beside him. "Am I hurt? I don't remember." He sighed, and even his breath trembled. "Vailret?"

Thilane snatched a few pine needles from an overhanging branch.

"Sleep!" She crushed them in front of Delrael's face, letting him breathe the smell of the pine oil. "In sleep the
dayid
can help restore your wounded spirit."

She watched the overpowering scent of evergreen engulf him. He melted back into a blissful sleep.

Thilane stared at his unconscious form, scowling at her failure. She pressed her lips together, nodding in silence and knowing that the
dayid
approved of her decision. Drawing a deep breath to steady herself, she smelled the forest, the power, the vibrant life.

I've never done this before. Only once in all our legends has it been successful
. She padded over to a sturdy oak tree. The Healer placed her forehead against the tree and wrapped her arms around the wide trunk, pressing her chest against the rough bark.

"Send Noldir Woodcarver to me," she said, and Ledaygen took her message.

Thilane went back to Delrael again, watching him breathe, hovering over his leg. She waited.

A khelebar man entered her enclosed room so silently that Thilane would not have heard him approach had she not felt the faint tremors of recognition in the
dayid
. She turned and met his questioning gaze.

Noldir Woodcarver had black hair, unbraided and sheared off in a square mass around his shoulders. An intricate totem hung on his chest, representing a dream Ledaygen had sent him one night; only Noldir understood its symbolism.

His arms were heavily muscled, but Thilane knew his hands were nimble and delicate.

She nodded at Delrael lying on the wide stump. Noldir's eyebrows lifted, but he waited for her to speak. Thilane respected him for that. She had no patience for the others, like Ydaim Trailwalker, who marred the silence of the forest with useless talk.

"The
dayid
says you must help this man."

Noldir took a step backward, carefully sidestepping Thilane's flowers with his large feline paws. "I am always willing to offer my assistance..." He let the sentence hang, asking for more of an explanation.

The Healer crossed her arms over her breasts. The spicy smell of the flower garland at her neck made her feel more relaxed, more confident.

"His leg has died. The forest will take it, and the forest must give him a new one in exchange. You will fashion it
¯
from the wood of a
kennok
tree."

Noldir Woodcarver bit back a gasp but recovered his composure. Thilane knew how powerful, how rare the
kennok
wood was, blessed by the
dayid
and containing many secrets. She was pleased to see how quickly Noldir grasped her intent.

"Are you planning to repeat what was done with Jorig Falselimb? That was many years ago."

"Yes. The khelebar do not remember how it was done. But I need to try.

The
dayid
will assist me." Her eyes burned. She wanted to relax in a meadow, look out over the mountains, smell the flowers and trees. Not surround herself with so much pain.

She drew in a deep breath and returned to Delrael's side. "Study the man's other limb and make a reproduction from living
kennok
wood. When will it be ready?"

Noldir bent down, shying from the color and the smell of the man's blood. He inspected both the whole and the damaged leg. "No sooner than dusk, I think."

"So long?"

Noldir answered in a tone of voice that convinced her he was making no excuses. "His limb is strange. I have never attempted to carve such an object."

She sighed and nodded.

"I promise," he said. "By dusk."

Thilane impatiently sent him away.

Vailret slurped cold water from the pool, drinking until his teeth throbbed. He splashed the rest on his face, gasped from the chill, then drank again before shaking the wet clumps of straw-colored hair out of his eyes.

It seemed mechanical to him, but he kept following the procedure by habit. He scooped up fine sand from the bottom of the pool and scrubbed himself. Afterward, his body ached but he felt clean at last, and very cold.

"The water comes from underground springs beneath Ledaygen," Ydaim said. "You will find it refreshing. You may dry yourself by the fire before nightfall."

Bryl shivered as he sat naked, waiting for his clothes to dry. His wrung-out blue cloak lay spread on a sun-warmed rock. His thin gray beard and wisps of hair sent drips of water down his neck.

"Any word yet?" Vailret asked. "Is Delrael going to be all right?"

The khelebar smiled blithely. "You can trust Thilane. She will do her best."

He rubbed his hands together and looked from Vailret to Bryl to Vailret again. "Will you tell me where you are from? What is your home like?" The young man found the lush green of Ydaim's eyes disconcerting; the pupils were oval, catlike.

"The Stronghold. It's far to the west from here, many hexes away."

Vailret didn't feel like talking.

"I have not heard of it," Ydaim said. His expression looked grave and serious.

Vailret shrugged. Bryl coughed twice.

Ydaim stretched out his supple feline body on the long grass beside the pool. "I would like to travel someday, but I do not wish to go far from the
dayid
. I have wandered the lands around Ledaygen more than any other khelebar. The others are content to do their appointed tasks for the forest.

But I like to explore. And the
dayid
always takes me back home."

Bryl finally made a rude noise. "I am getting tired of you constantly talking about your
dayid
."

The khelebar rolled himself back into a sitting position and brushed a leaf from his shoulder. His face took on a baffled expression. "The
dayid
cares for us all. The
dayid
will offer its assistance to Thilane Healer as she strives to save your friend."

Ydaim didn't seem to have any conception of what a
dayid
really was.

Vailret considered telling him, but decided to hold those particular loaded dice for later. Instead, he pulled on his still-damp tunic and laced up the front. "So, does the
dayid
keep your forest so clean all by itself?"

Ydaim spread his arms out to indicate all of Ledaygen. "This is the forest of the khelebar. We keep it clean because that is our covenant with the
dayid
. We live in peace with Ledaygen. All life is our friend, and we hold it sacred."

The khelebar fingered the pine cone pendant on his chest.

To Vailret, though, the words sounded flat and memorized. Flashing across his memories, he continued to see the monstrous Cyclops heaving boulders, the obsidian claws scraping sparks against the stone, the boulder smashing Delrael's leg as he tried to twist himself out of the way....

The Outsiders would consider this just an incidental adventure along the path of their quest.

He looked down and saw that his hands had clenched into fists.

"And how did the khelebar get this miraculous covenant that forces you to hold life so sacred that you can't even strike back at a monster who attacked us? Some say the Outsiders put the monsters on Gamearth just to kill and be killed."

Ydaim ignored the sarcasm in Vailret's voice. "That is exactly why we must not kill the Cyclops. We must bend and twist the Outsiders' Rules in whatever way we can. We need to show them that we own our lives and that we will do what we wish."

Ydaim withdrew his long wooden sword and held it in front of his chest.

The late afternoon light made the blade's hardened pitch coating look deeply golden. Splotches of the Cyclops's blood speckled the flat surface. Ydaim sounded embarrassed when he spoke again.

"Long ago, just after the old Sorcerer wars, the khelebar were violent and warlike. We had no respect for nature. We ... mistreated the forest. We chopped down trees, letting them crash wherever they happened to fall, maiming the forest. Often we left the hewn trees to rot on the forest floor, useless!"

Ydaim shuddered. "But the force of the
dayid
was strong in Ledaygen.

The trees banded together and the forest retaliated against us. The trees ceased to bear fruit. The wood refused to burn. The branches tangled together and the trunks moved so close that we could not pass among them. The trees shifted their positions regularly, making all the trails disappear. The khelebar sensed that the forest was their enemy, and so my ancestors fought back, chopping down trees and salting the soil. But the trees fell backward, on purpose, crushing the khelebar."

Vailret looked around, wishing he had some way to write down the legend. He wanted to remember it for his chronicle of Gamearth. Ydaim seemed lost in his words.

"Many trees and khelebar died before the
dayid
finally spoke through Thessar, the Father Pine. You saw Thessar when we first reached the council clearing, on the verge of the great cliff."

Vailret nodded.

"Thessar spoke aloud the terms of the
dayid's
truce. The khelebar are charged with keeping Ledaygen free of decay and sickness, free of parasites and any animals that might injure the trees. We must remove dead branches wherever they may be and see to it that seedlings grow far enough apart.