Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (2 page)

Now, though, the one-eyed ogre stopped in front of the cesspool and looked around, unaware of the two men. The dragon strained against its chain, tongue lolling as it tried to reach the cesspool.

Vailret made fists, as if he were trying to strangle his knuckles. He had only a dagger with him. He wished he could cast a spell that would make the ground open up beneath the ogre's feet, but he was only human.

Delrael reached forward to clasp his cousin's shoulder. He squeezed, making it more than just an empty gesture. "What if he's got Bryl?"

Two weeks before, Vailret had been studying in his rooms at the Stronghold. Several candles burned on his table, and he had all the windows open to let in as much light as possible. Otherwise, Siya would nag him about reading in the dimness and ruining his eyesight further. Vailret disliked the candles because the crumbling old manuscripts were highly flammable.

Old Bryl, the half-breed Sorcerer who lived at the Stronghold, came in to bother Vailret, bored from watching Delrael train his students at the chopping posts or the archery targets. "Nobody's ever going to read a history of Gamearth, Vailret. Why bother with all this work?"

"It's important to me." Vailret looked up at him over the candle.

"Don't be so defeatist all the time."

Bryl was short and frail-looking. Gray hair and a narrow gray beard stuck out from his head and chin. He wore the scarlet hooded cloak his father Qonnar had given him. At one time, Bryl had claimed the slick and shiny fabric had been woven of the threads from caterpillar cocoons, but nobody in the gaming hall believed him.

Vailret touched his fingertips together and explained to Bryl as if he were lecturing to a child. "Someone should set down the events of the Game. To the Outsiders, we're just an amusement, adventures to free them from their ennui
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everything must be too perfect in their world. But to us, that's our
history
. The Game is worth nothing if we don't learn from previous turns."

Bryl puttered around with the artifacts and manuscripts on Vailret's table. The young man eyed him, exasperated. "What do you
want
, Bryl? Go play a game or something."

The half-Sorcerer shrugged and picked up a worn scrap of sheepskin. On the rough side, tiny letters had been painstakingly scratched into the surface. "What's this?"

Vailret removed the scrap from Bryl's fingers. He brushed at smudges the old man had left on the edges. "Please be careful
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do you know how much we have to pay Scavengers for any one of these scraps?"

"I'm sorry." Bryl didn't seem to care. "Well, what does it say?"

Vailret sighed and put his elbow on the table. "If I tell you, will you leave me in peace for awhile?"

"Of course," Brylmon looked away, uneasy. He mumbled, "I thought you'd be glad I'm showing interest."

Vailret scowled, mostly at himself, and tried to cover up his expression by studying the manuscript. "It tells how the four elemental Stones were created as a parting gift from the old Sorcerers before they went on the Transition. They made one Stone with special powers for each element
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Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. The ones who stayed behind were supposed to use the Stones as weapons to protect the humans and half-breeds left on Gamearth after the rest of the Sorcerers had gone."

"Where are the Stones now?" Bryl asked. He reached for one of the other scraps of writing, but Vailret deftly moved it out of his reach.

"Why don't you pay attention to things like that, Bryl? How many full-blooded Sentinels are left in the world?" He held up three fingers, flaunting them in front of the half-Sorcerer's face. "Enrod, who lives far to the east in the rebuilt city of Taire
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he holds the Fire Stone. And Sardun keeps the Water Stone in his Ice Palace to the north. He lives with his daughter."

Bryl narrowed his eyes. "My parents never taught me anything like that
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they killed themselves when I was a child. As you're so quick to point out, there aren't very many Sentinels left. Who was going to teach me?" He waited in silence for a moment, then pointed to the manuscript. "Well, what about the other two Stones?"

"As near as I can tell," Vailret considered the scratches on the leather, searching for details, "the Air Stone and the Earth Stone were both lost during the battles. The magic in the Stones helped us wipe out a lot of surviving monsters, but now those Stones are gone."

He waited for Bryl to remember his promise and leave, but the little half-breed sat watching the dancing flame on the candle. He seemed hypnotized by the trails of wax crawling down the candlestick. Then Bryl snapped his gaze away from the flame and stared eastward with glassy eyes, as if looking through the walls of Vailret's dwelling.

He said in a distracted voice, "I have to go now." Muttering something about the Air Stone, he stumbled toward the door. Vailret watched him, baffled, and turned back to his work.

Next morning, Bryl was gone from the Stronghold. He had left a clumsily scrawled note behind. Vailret could imagine the length of time it had taken him to remember how to write all the letters.

"Think I know where AIR STONE is. Vision yesterday while listening to V. tell story. East, 10-12 hexes. Swamp terrain (?). Stone is in eye of skull, on pile of bones. Adventure and treasure. Going to get it."

Bryl's father had been a full Sorcerer, and his mother was a half-breed herself, but they had died when he was young, many, many years before, and no other Sorcerer had given Bryl full instruction on how to use his magic. Not that Bryl ever seemed concerned about it. And he had seen a glimpse of where he could find the lost Air Stone. He could have the Sorcerous power immediately, with no hard training. Maybe Bryl thought it would make up for the magic he had never been able to use before.
Bryl
, a man who couldn't care less where the Stone came from or what its history was
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Vailret resented the way the Rules excluded him from such revelations.

Being only a human, he had to sweat over old manuscripts, sift through folktales and remembrances, cramming his brain with details he hoped would come together. Bryl had such power handed to him on a serving platter. If the half-Sorcerer brought the precious Air Stone back to the Stronghold, Vailret could never use its magic, not even to study it.

Since then, two weeks had passed, and still Bryl did not return.

Delrael decided to go find him, and Vailret followed.

At the cesspool the dragon bounded forward, jerking the ogre's arm and nearly pulling him off his feet. The ogre grumbled and kicked the dragon, catching one of its back ridges with his bare toe.

Unconcerned, the dragon stopped at the brink of the cesspool and waited as the ogre scooped at the surface, exposing fresh bilge water.

"Aww, it shore be hot, Rognoth," he rumbled at the dragon, wiping his brow with a muddy finger. The ogre bent to scoop up a handful of the thick water, slurping it with satisfaction on his face. Green scum ran between his fingers to plop back into the water.

Vailret winced.

Rognoth the dragon bent to lap up some of the water as the ogre straightened and pointed a proud finger at himself. "Ahhhh! Gairoth knows how to keep his cesspool!" The dragon's tail twitched like a convulsing python.

"Ogres aren't supposed to be able to talk!" Vailret whispered.

"Maybe he's part human," Delrael said. "A human breeding with an ogre?

That's disgusting."

Vailret scowled. "The Outsiders have a sick sense of humor sometimes."

The ogre rubbed his hands together, as if getting down to business. He raised the club over his head, bringing it down with a crash on the edge of the pool. A chain of shock-wave ripples marched across the coated surface of the water. Gairoth slammed his club down again and again, sending thunderclaps through the swamp.

"Wake up, you!" the ogre bellowed at the cesspool. The dragon bolted for the forest, slinking close to the ground, but Gairoth jerked on his chain.

Rognoth whined miserably.

The ogre grinned as a translucent, spine-covered tentacle reached up from below the surface. The tentacle coiled in the air, reaching for Gairoth, but the ogre bent back out of the way. The pool stirred again, and more thin tentacles whipped in the air. The body sack of a gigantic jellyfish, hemispherical and milky translucent, broke through the scum. A lumpy ridge crowned the creature, speckled with dots of color. Deep inside the thing's skin, a splash of scarlet outlined a small human form.

Vailret stiffened, startled. Bryl! He tugged on his cousin's arm, and Delrael nodded.

The jellyfish churned in the water, waving tentacles. "In you go, Rognoth!" Gairoth caught the dragon as he made one last attempt to flee, then hurled him into the cesspool with a grunt of effort. The dragon paddled frantically back toward the shore.

The tentacled thing ejected the form of Bryl, apparently seeing more interesting prey. Gairoth rubbed his hands together as the jellyfish drifted toward the dragon, then he lumbered toward the other side of the pool where the red-cloaked Bryl floated facedown in the bilge.

Rognoth whimpered as the first thin tentacles wrapped around his tail and lower body, but his patchy scales provided temporary protection from the paralyzing needles. Gairoth waded into the cesspool, fished out the half-Sorcerer, and sloshed back to shore before the jellyfish could notice him.

Finished with his work, Gairoth strode back to the dragon. The ogre dropped the slime-covered burden of Bryl and picked up his club. "Come on, Rognoth. We gots to go home."

Two more tentacles had coiled around the dragon's neck. Rognoth floundered in the water. Gairoth gave a sigh of disgust and fished in the pool for the end of the dragon's chain. He found it and pulled with enough force to stretch Rognoth's neck out of joint. The dragon ripped free, tearing off three of the jellyfish's tentacles in the process. Rognoth scrambled to the shore and collapsed, panting and wheezing A laugh belched from Gairoth's lungs.

"Haw! Haw!"

He grabbed Bryl's pale foot and dragged the half-Sorcerer behind him into the forest. A thin trail of slime trickled along the ground. Rognoth lay on the ground shivering, then got shakily to his feet, following the ogre into the trees.

Delrael sighed. "It's all part of the Game."

Vailret's anger bubbled up within him, but he brought it under control.

He had never seen an ogre up close before, and now he wished he could destroy Gairoth and finish the job his uncle Drodanis had begun. Wheels turned in his head as he considered the possibilities. They would have to think of a sophisticated way to fight Gairoth. Vailret's father had pitted his luck and battle skill against an ogre
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and he'd lost. This would take something more.

A slow smile grew on his face.

"You're thinking of something, aren't you?" Delrael cocked an eyebrow and looked at him. "What are we going to do?"

"I always think of something." Vailret took a deep breath. "It's going to be good. Even the Outsiders might enjoy it."

"That's what we're here for." Delrael shrugged, ready for anything.

Gairoth's feet had left deep impressions in the soft ground. Following, Delrael bent low, taking one careful step at a time. Vailret tried to imitate him.

Up ahead, Gairoth snapped branches and grumbled curses. After a brief silence, Vailret and Delrael crept closer. Uneasy and afraid of what they would see, they slipped behind a large lichen-encrusted boulder and looked into Gairoth's encampment.

The ogre sat cross-legged in a small and cluttered clearing, munching on a bone torn from the rotting carcass of what appeared to be a goat with reptilian legs. The dragon drooled and fixed large yellow eyes on the oozing meat, intent on his master's jaws as they churned up and down. The spiked club lay close beside Gairoth's leg.

Behind the clearing stood the ogre's abode
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the hollowed-out rib cage of some massive beast. Dried sinews and scattered furs covered the bones to provide some shelter but left plenty of gaps for flies to get in (and out again after they had smelled the stench). A small pile of treasure lay beside the tumbledown dwelling: jewel-studded weapons, gold artifacts, and gaudy ornaments.

Wedged into one of the monster ribs sat a small skull the size of a child's ... and inside the skull's eye-socket shone a fist-sized diamond, triangular-shaped, like a four sided die. It glinted in the hazy swamplight.

Though Vailret's weak eyesight blurred the details, he remembered Bryl's vision of the diamond. "Stone is in eye of skull, on pile of bones."

Vailret's eyes reflected the splashes of sunlight shining through the woven swamp foliage. The Air Stone
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he thought of holding something so old, so powerful in his hands. The old Sorcerers had made it before they left Gamearth.

He thought of all the stories he had heard about the Stone, its origin, its history
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and the power of illusion it held. It was still the weakest of the four Stones, but it could be used very effectively with a little imagination.