Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (20 page)

Shaking with exhaustion, Vailret collapsed next to Delrael in the clearing. He glared at Fiolin. "We could have escaped before. You knew we were getting walled in by the fire
¯
is it going to make us martyrs to your
dayid
?"

The Tribeleader refused to answer.

Helpless and disgusted, Vailret drew a deep breath of the oppressive air. He coughed, and the inside of his nose and throat burned.

The khelebar heard the roar and snap of burning trees. Their terror and helplessness grew, but they could find no outlet for it. Many congregated under the sweeping boughs of Thessar, the ancient Father Pine. They beseeched their
dayid
for help. Vailret shook his head in sadness.

Bryl cracked his knuckles incessantly, as if trying to loosen the cramps caused by clutching the Water Stone for so many hours. Delrael sat, looking helpless and dismayed, unable to do anything.

Ydaim's black braids had long since come undone. He had lost his pine cone pendant somewhere in the fire. Other khelebar wandered back into the clearing, looking broken
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sweat had plastered soot to their bodies, and their emerald eyes were glazed with the knowledge of their deaths and the death of Ledaygen.

"I don't suppose you can do anything else with the Water Stone?"

Vailret asked Bryl, but did not take his eyes from the flames he saw moving between the trees, coming nearer. He blinked, trying to make his vision clear.

The half-Sorcerer stared at the palms of his hands. "I've already used up my spell allotment for today. And even with that I couldn't stop the fire.

If I do anything else before midnight, it would be breaking the Rules. When Sardun did that, he paralyzed almost his entire body ... and he's much more powerful than I am." Bryl stared at the sky, then at his hands again. "I failed, too. This must be how my parents felt when your great-great grandfather Jarriel died of the tumor sickness."

He shook his head, and Vailret listened to his words.

"They had tried to save him for nearly a year, but Jarriel wasted away and died. I was very young then, but I remember them working, discussing what they should try next. But they failed, and when Jarriel's wife Galleri married a new husband, Brudane
¯
oh, he was a rough man
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they talked as if
my mother and father
had poisoned Jarriel.

"When my parents learned that, they wallowed in shame at their failure, and went through the half-Transition, disintegrating in flames brighter than any of these
¯
" he waved at the forest, "Right in front of my eyes. They didn't apologize or even say good-bye. I was ten years old, I think.

"How could they not expect their action to make them appear even more guilty? And they left
me
to grow up under that shadow. Among people who did not know how to train me or what to expect of my powers
¯
"

Bryl stopped talking, then shook his head. "It is useless to dwell in the past. Drodanis wasted years doing that, before he went off on his quest to find the Rulewoman Melanie." He brushed at his knees under the soot-smeared blue cloak.

The wind picked up and skimmed over the forest. Smoke rippled across the clearing, stinging Vailret's eyes. Oddly, he felt no tears there.

Swinging his
kennok
leg along with him, Delrael walked awkwardly to the edge of the hex-discontinuity and gazed over the cliff. Vailret joined him, and he stared down at the bottom of the mountainous hexagon far below. He squinted, but the details were even more blurred than usual with the smoke making his eyes raw. He saw no ledge, no narrow trail they could use for escape.

The fire glared brighter between the trees now, sweeping toward them, a hungry monster ravenous for a last morsel. The heat increased until the air was thick with it. They had nothing to do but wait.

The fire rushed along the scattered dry leaves. The khelebar stood in grim positions, muttering to the
dayid
for salvation. But the
dayid
had fallen silent even to them.

"There's extreme risk in doing this
¯
" Bryl trembled as he hefted the Water Stone in front of him. He stood up, trying to be steady. "But if we're going to die anyway
¯
"

"Luck," Vailret said with all the sincerity he could muster.

"Luck," Delrael added.

The half-Sorcerer closed his eyes and rolled the sapphire. The Stone came to rest with "1" staring upward and rolled no farther. The
dayid
had ceased to offer its help.

Bryl let out a cry as if struck by a blow. Eyes closed, he dropped to the trampled ground and lay motionless. His fingers convulsed, clutching the Water Stone. He still breathed. But the fire approached, and Vailret decided it might be better not to wake him.

The khelebar made no sound as the nearest flames skittered across the treetops to land on Thessar, the Father Pine, the last tree. Orange curtains of heat lapped at Thessar's green needles and the dry, flaking bark oozing with sweet pitch. The air filled with the stench of smoldering evergreen
¯

Thessar seemed to sigh as the heat made sap boil and hiss.

The Father Pine ignited in an instant, exploding into a pillar of brilliance, burning, burning. Some of the khelebar sang their keening wail, but most stood in defeated silence.

Thessar groaned, weakened by the fire as flames weighed down its branches. The ancient pine toppled forward to crash with a horrible noise to the grassy clearing. From Thessar's boughs, the fire rushed into the grass and slithered toward the khelebar like a gigantic serpent.

Vailret swallowed hard, silent in his own awe. He took a step sideways to be closer to Delrael. His cousin stood white-lipped and staring with clenched fists.

Like a sharp hook had yanked at him, he felt his insides wrenched with pain. An instant of nausea replaced itself with utter despair and total emptiness. His head spun, and he could not understand until he heard the cries of the khelebar.

"The
dayid
has fled Ledaygen! We are forsaken!"

Some of the khelebar screamed. Vailret lifted his heavy gaze and watched in horror as five of them ran to the edge of the hex-discontinuity and cast themselves over the cliff.

The young Tayron Next-Leader turned red with disgust and pain. He shouted at others moving to the edge of the cliff, "Are you ashamed to die on the soil of Ledaygen? I will stand here as bravely as the trees and resist the fire until it consumes me!"

Delrael snatched up one of the ash-blackened shovels. "Come on, Vailret!" He lurched toward the edge of the fire, furious to do something.

"All of you
¯
we can use the shovels to beat out the fire on the grass as it comes toward us!"

Vailret ran with his cousin and began banging at the creeping flames, though his sore arms felt as if they had been skewered with knives.

"What does it matter?" Fiolin turned to him. "Ledaygen is dead. The
dayid
has left us."

"Damn Ledaygen!" Delrael shouted back. "I'm talking about us!"

But the khelebar refused to move. Reluctant and apathetic, Ydaim Trailwalker offered some help. They stood, insignificant against the towering flames.

"What about Bryl?" Vailret asked, turning to look at the fallen half-Sorcerer. He stared and the words crumbled in his mouth.

Bryl hauled himself to his knees. His eyes were glassy. He could not focus, but he seemed to be seeing through a million different minds. Power surged from Ledaygen into the Water Stone and ricocheted into his mind. His consciousness expanded outward as if to encompass the whole map of Gamearth in one glance.

He felt like a giant with his new power, towering over the council clearing. His small body shimmered with strength, and the milling panicked khelebar below seemed to be mere specks in the grass. When he saw the smoldering wreckage of his entire forest, he felt anger tighten around him.

In the back of his mind, Bryl felt the magnitude of power that Sardun had used to create the Barrier River. He grew afraid.

The grass in the clearing burned rapidly, and the already dead trees in the forest fell into festering ash as the wave of heat sterilized the soil of Ledaygen. He saw Delrael and Vailret both turn to stare at him in awe
¯
but Bryl ignored all that. He dimly noticed the other khelebar pointing at him, shouting: Their voices seemed so tiny over the roar of the fire and the echoes of his strange strength.

He found it exhilarating.

"The
dayid
! The
dayid
has fled to Bryl Traveler!"

Bryl allowed himself only an instant to taste the churning voices of the hundreds of Sentinels whose spirits had collected together to form the
dayid
: all the tragedy and despair that had caused them to remain behind from the original Transition, the years of waiting through the violent Scouring as Gamearth fought with itself. He felt the grief that had finally driven them to undertake their own partial Transitions that liberated their spirits and sent them here.

The fire swept toward the khelebar, ready to destroy them as it had ruined Ledaygen. Bryl let the thunderous magic pound in his temples and behind his eyes. He knew that the
dayid
could not allow the khelebar to be destroyed, even if it meant casting the Rules to the wind. The
dayid
seemed willing to take whatever consequences would come.

Bryl clutched the Water Stone in his hand, shouting in a booming voice.

He wondered if the sapphire cube might shatter from the force of his desperate anger.

"Water of the earth, I summon you!" Rippling with waves of energy from the
dayid
, he sent a thought through the Stone."Save my khelebar! All water, come to the aid of Ledaygen. Come!"

The Water Stone bucked and writhed with the command. The soil beneath Bryl's feet became laden with water he summoned from the deep underground springs. Black thunderclouds gorged the sky above, dumping their contents in a heavy downpour.

Water built up in the center of the council clearing, pushing below the turf. A huge geyser of sparkling cold water blasted a pillar of white froth into the air.

Bryl laughed. Power continued to pour from the Water Stone.

The water erupted higher, beginning to whirl, rotating faster until it skipped away from the ground in a tremendous waterspout. The spout veered away from the cliff and plunged into the still-burning forest, spraying water onto the blazing trees, extinguishing the fire without damaging the tree hulks.

More cold water spilled upward from beneath baked rocks, splitting them. Smaller geysers spewed forth, detaching themselves to become cyclones that careened through the smoldering wreckage of Ledaygen until the fire had been vanquished.

The hiss of vanishing steam lingered in the air.

The glowing Water Stone slipped from Bryl's fingers as he collapsed to the sodden ground. He tried to hold onto the power, but the dissembling spirits fled like the smoke in Ledaygen.

The
dayid
left him, and died.

* 8 *

War Games

"We can defeat the Game if we can succeed in not fighting. The Outsiders must see that we will not Play along. Their amusements do not amuse us."

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Jorig Falselimb of the khelebar

Fiolin Tribeleader clenched his hand, and the charred wood crumbled to ash. He stared at his fingers in numb helplessness
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the black dust had once been a living, vibrant tree. He gazed with reddened eyes at the desolation of Ledaygen, at the black hulks that were the corpses of trees. Steam rose from the ruins of the fire. "It's ... all ... gone."

Vailret dipped his shirt in a puddle of cool water. He bent over Bryl and mopped the unconscious man's face. The half-Sorcerer looked as drained as Sardun had after creating the Barrier River.

Delrael bent his
kennok
limb and sat down beside Vailret. He watched Fiolin and the other khelebar until he finally spoke out loud.

"We're still alive, Fiolin. You can help the trees grow again. Birds will come. You can plant flowers. In time, Ledaygen will be what it was before."

"Ledaygen can never be what it was!" Tayron Next Leader said. The rest of the khelebar took no interest in the subject but stood around like character figurines.

Fiolin heaved a sigh and forced himself to look at Delrael and Vailret.

"Ledaygen is dead. The
dayid
is dead. Could you not feel it? Why should the rest of us live? Perhaps I made the wrong decision. Perhaps we should not have fought at all." He stared up at the skies and shouted to the Outsiders. "What value is life now? Why don't you change the Rules?"