Game Alive: A Science Fiction Adventure Novel (15 page)

Jake thanked the boy, still distracted by his own thoughts. He hardly noticed when the underfed lad left the table. A few minutes later, Des came strutting through the front door with a huge grin and a bulging pouch dangling from one hand. Spotting Jake, he came straight over and sat down on the other side of the table.

“Fifty Imperial marks,” he declared, dropping the heavy pouch on the table between them. It clanked against the wood, large coins shifting inside. Des spread his arms, pleased with himself. “Not bad, huh?”

“Pretty good,” said Jake. “How many coins did you have to trade for this?”

“All of them,” admitted Des. “Let’s see, I think I had about twenty. The merchant said he’d buy more if we had them. So, if you have some…”

Jake shrugged. “Fifty marks ought to last us for a while. Let’s get something to eat, then get a couple rooms. After that, we’re off to see the Flightmaster.”

Des stayed at the table, waiting for Jake to go to the bar for some food and two mugs of cider. Jake returned after a couple minutes looking shell-shocked and very unhappy. Des sat up straighter in the uncomfortable chair. “What is it?”

“Twenty marks,” Jake muttered, shaking his head slowly. “Twenty marks for a room for the night and two meals.”

Des groaned loudly just as Gravin came out from behind the bar and hurried over to their table. Jake had left the bar in such a hurry, he’d forgotten to tell the innkeeper’s son they wouldn’t be needing the room after all. The lad looked hopeful as he came up to them, his mind obviously still on those twenty marks.

“We’ve only got fifty marks between us!” blurted Des, still reeling over the unexpectedly low value of his trade. Hearing this, Gravin drew up short and eyed the two adventurers skeptically.

“Smooth going,” Jake muttered as the innkeeper’s son frowned at him sternly.

“Fifty marks between you?” said Gravin. “And you wanting supper and two rooms first, not just the one,
and
asking after the Flightmaster? Mad, you are.”

“Forget the food and rooms,” said Des, just as his stomach growled hungrily. He winced, but plowed on. “We just need to get to the Flightmaster, right Jake? How much to get to…where was it called, Indigo Fjord?”

“Never heard of any Indigo Fjord,” said Gravin, sullen now that he knew these travelers weren’t planning to spend their coins in the Emerald Wing.

“It’s in the far north,” Jake said, pulling out his map and showing the boy. Gravin’s eyes widened when he saw the magical map shifting and changing its display, but then when he saw where the other two wanted to go he laughed out loud.

“What, up in the Wastelands? Way up there by the Great Blue Barrier? What’d you want to go
there
for?”

“Wastelands?” echoed Des unenthusiastically.

“Well, you’ll never get there,” Gravin went on, ignoring the sinking look on Des’s face. “Not for fifty marks, you won’t. Flightmaster Ovrun’ll never let anyone go that far for, let’s see, less than a hundred, maybe one fifty. Each.”

Jake and Des exchanged a despairing look. “It’s more than a week’s ride,” moaned Des. “We’ll never make it in time.”

“Time for what?” asked Gravin, cocking his head curiously.

Des and his big mouth, thought Jake sourly. First he gives away how little money we’ve got, now this. He looked at Gravin, wondering if they could trust the innkeeper’s boy or not. Then he looked around the dingy common room, taking in the disreputable looks of the other patrons.

“Say, Gravin,” he said, hiding his nervousness with a conversational tone. “Is there someplace else we can talk things over? Someplace a little more private?”

Gravin studied him curiously for a long moment before nodding his head. A small cloud of dust flew from his lank hair as he did, but before it had settled on the table the innkeeper’s son had turned away and started toward the kitchen door to one side of the bar. Looking back once, he motioned Jake and Des to follow. He led them through the sweltering kitchen, passing behind an enormously fat, sweating woman covered in flour that clung to her damp skin. There was a tiny storeroom in the back, tucked away next to the door that led out to the rear yard, and Gravin led them there.

When they were all crowded inside the cramped room, barely more than a pantry lined with shelves holding all manner of ingredients in clear glass jars or burlap sacks, Gravin eyed the two adventurers again. It was clear that he was just as uncertain of them as Jake was of him.

“We can talk here,” Gravin told them in a low voice. “Now what’s it about?”

Jake sighed, and launched into their story. He spoke quickly and left out almost all the details, sticking to the main points. “So this Prime, he’s kidnapped our friend Kari and we have to rescue her. That’s why we need to get to…what did you call it, the Great Blue Barrier? And we have to get there a little over two hours before the sun goes down tomorrow.”

Gravin listened to it all, nodding in places, shaking his head in others. He nodded when Jake named the Barrier, and Jake wondered about that. Objects under construction were blocked off by blue barriers. Was Prime building something up there? They had to find a way to get there!

Des handed the scrap of parchment over to Gravin, who looked it over with squinting eyes. “These are Universe Times,” the boy said with growing interest. He looked suspiciously up at Jake and Des, and tried to take a step back. There was no room, and he collided with a rack of shelves, causing several jars of large, oddly colored beans to shake and wobble. Gravin’s eyes were wide and he seemed afraid suddenly. “Only them that’s on the path to the Next reckon things by Universe Time.”

“The path to the Next?” Jake seized on what Gravin had said. He glanced at Des. “We heard Alys say something about that. What is it?”

Gravin gave him a look like the boy thought Jake truly was crazy, or maybe stupid. “You’re carrying this around, and you don’t know? It’s where the New Ones say they’ll go, once the Prime discovers the Final Answer.”

“Huh?” Des asked.

“Look, I don’t really understand all that stuff.” Gravin eyed them some more, then seemed to decide they were harmless after all. He shrugged, handing Des back the parchment. “For a minute there, I figured you two knew more than me. But you’re mixed up with the Prime. I don’t think I want to get involved in this.”

“Just tell us what you know,” pleaded Jake. “Please. We have to save our friend.”

Gravin shook his head quickly in vehement denial. “I don’t know nothing about it,” he insisted, a note of pleading entering his own voice. “I saw some numbers like that once before, on some papers one of the New Ones was carrying. They came through a few months back and I overheard some of what they said. That’s all I know about it, I swear. Please, leave me out of it.”

“Okay, okay,” said Jake, holding up his hands to placate the frightened boy. “Relax, Gravin. We won’t drag you into it.” He sighed, shoulders sinking in dejection. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Even if we sold the rest of our treasure, we’d never have three hundred marks to pay the Flightmaster.”

“Treasure?” echoed Gravin.

Jake nodded, pulling the last ten golden coins from his belt pouch. Gravin leaned close to inspect them in dim light of the cupboard. Jake told him, “We got the fifty marks by selling twenty of these, and this is all that’s left.”

“What are they?” asked Gravin, reaching out with one finger to poke one of the coins. “Brass?”

“No, gold,” said Jake.

“Gold!” Gravin’s eyebrows shot up as he exclaimed the word loudly, and then he clamped both hands over his mouth with wide eyes that darted back and forth to see if anyone had overheard. After a moment, he lowered his hands and shook his head. “Who gave you fifty marks for twenty of these? No, nevermind, it’s no matter. I’ll help you.”

“You will?” Des asked, taken completely aback by Gravin’s sudden change of heart.

“You don’t have to do that…” Jake started to say, but Gravin interrupted him.

“You can give me five marks each for the rooms and the meals,” he said. “I’ll tell my dad something, or make up the rest somehow. Don’t worry about that. Just give me those gold coins of yours and I’ll take care of everything.”

Jake and Des eyed each other, not sure if they could trust the innkeeper’s son. Des shook his head slightly, silently telling Jake he was against it. But Kari’s time was running out, and without the Flightmaster’s help or some miraculous teleportation spell Jake was sure didn’t exist, they’d never get there in time. What choice did they have?

A hand shook Jake’s shoulder, annoying him out of an exhausted slumber. He slapped the hand away without opening his eyes and rolled over on his side. The hand returned, shaking harder.

“Come on, get up.”

Grumbling, Jake blinked awake and squinted against the bright sunlight streaming through the window. The panes in the second floor windows were not so grimy as those below in the common room, and the early morning light blinded Jake as he fumbled through his memory trying to figure out where he was.

“Get
up,
” Gravin said again, urgently. “If you’re to reach the Barrier on time, you must get out of bed right now.”

Jake rolled over onto his back, still blinking the sleep from his eyes. Beside him, Des sat up with a sullen glare for the innkeeper’s boy.

“What’re you talking about?” he mumbled, the words slurred with sleep.

“I’m talking about the pair of you getting out of bed.
Now.
” Gravin snatched Des’s leather jerkin from the floor, flinging it at him. Des reacted slowly, lifting his hands to catch the garment but missing so that it struck him in the face and he fell back against the thin, straw-stuffed pillow.

“Get dressed,” Gravin said. “Hurry, we have to go.”

Jake swung his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his feet to the floor. The wood was cold. He just wanted to stick his feet back under the thin blanket and sleep for a few more hours. Why had Gravin woken them so early, anyway? “What’s the hurry?”

“Flightmaster Ovrun says you’ll have to leave before midday to reach the Barrier on time. It’s a half-watch until noon already. You must have been really exhausted, sleeping so late.”

That woke them. Jake and Des scrambled out of bed and began hurriedly dressing. As he pulled his armor on, Jake gave Gravin an appraising look.

“How’d you talk him into taking us?” he asked.

“By paying him,” said Gravin in a tone of voice that suggested Jake must be slow in the head. The innkeeper’s son produced a bulging leather pouch from behind his back and tossed it to Des. “Here’s the rest of your marks, by the by.”

Jake, looking at the size of the pouch, widened his eyes and urged Des to open it. The two boys looked inside, shocked at what they saw.

“How…how many…” Jake stuttered.

“Six hundred and eighty marks,” Gravin told the shocked boys. “You started with an even thousand, subtract three hundred for the Flightmaster and twenty for what you owed me. Now finish getting your gear on, we’re running out of time.”

“Wait a minute. Where’d you get a thousand marks? Where did
we
get a thousand marks, I mean.”

“From that street vendor, the one cheated you. Your coins were fifty marks apiece, easily. For twenty, he should have given you a thousand.”

Des shook his head. “And I thought I’d done well.”

“Yeah, well. You didn’t,” Jake told him, finished buckling on his steel breastplate.

“No you did not,” agreed Gravin, sounding amused. “But that’s alright, isn’t it? Seeing as how you’re not from Xaloria, so how were you supposed to know?”

Jake, latching his sword belt around his waist, looked up sharply. “We’re from Xaloria,” he said.

“Sure you are,” said Gravin with a small laugh. “That’s why you think the Great Blue Barrier is some place called Indigo Fjord, and you keep calling the Prime, just
Prime,
like it’s his name. Oh, and you just happen to carry magical maps and lists of Universe Times like a New One. If you’re from Xaloria, I’m from a crolorg den.”

Gravin waved off Jake’s hasty explanation. The innkeeper’s son didn’t care who they were or where they were from. When they were dressed and ready, he led them down the stairs and out of the inn. The three boys hurried along the street, heading north. Jake wondered why Gravin was helping them, then he remembered that they’d already given the boy ten marks last night – he had taken an extra ten for himself. Jake grinned, almost laughing. Let the lad keep the extra coin as long as he got them to the Flightmaster. The nuances to NPC behavior still surprised him even though he had read through every line of behavior subroutine.

Gravin led them to the edge of a canyon about half a mile from town. The edge of the cliff they stood on overlooked the canyon, which stretched as far as the boys could see in both directions. The sides were steep rock, smooth and worn by centuries of erosion. Thick white clouds floated through the ravine – actually beneath the level of the cliff the three boys stood on. Des whistled appreciatively, and Jake wondered just how deep the canyon really was.

“The combs are only down a hundred feet or so,” said Gravin, seeing Jake peering over the edge uncertainly. “You probably can’t see them through the mists.”

Jake squinted, willing his eyes to penetrate the thick clouds that drifted through the ravine. Shadowy forms resolved themselves through the fog, and he saw a sturdy-looking set of wooden stairs clinging to the rock wall below him. The stairs ended at a narrow bridge of wood planks and thick, woven rope that swayed in the wind where it crossed the expanse. On the far side of the ravine, the bridge met up with a solid stone platform on which stood a stooped and wizened figure. A momentary break in the clouds allowed Jake to see the Flightmaster clearly for a moment. Ovrun was an elderly man, leaning heavily on a thick, ornately carved wooden staff.

The stone landing on which the Flightmaster waited ran up the opposite wall of the canyon, connecting to a dense network of deep, shadowy holes in the stone. The holes were narrow and too regularly shaped to be natural. Taken together, they resembled a honeycomb built directly into the side of the ravine. Thin, wispy smoke issued lazily from the punctured stone.