Game Play (9 page)

"Why do you
always say such strange things, Journeyman?" Vailret asked.

"I don't know
nothin'. I just work here." the golem said.

"Yeah, like
that."

"Well, I was
created by the Rulewoman Melanie, so I have some ... connection with the
Outside. I can see some of the things she sees, know some of the phrases she
knows."

Bryl scowled in
exasperation at Vailret and Delrael. They acted as if they believed what the
golem said, just on the basis of his own word. When Scartaris was out to
destroy the world, how could they trust
anything
? How could great questers be
so naive? If the Outsiders wanted to eliminate their own world, who could trust
any other character? Bryl huffed and came up close behind them, looking
sidelong at the golem but speaking to Delrael.

"How do we
know he's from the Rulewoman? The Outsider David might have sent him to kill us
while we sleep."

Delrael frowned as
if the thought had never occurred to him. Vailret scratched his blond hair and
nodded. "He's got a point, Del."

Bryl sighed,
relieved that they had conceded that much.

Journeyman spread
out his hands and splayed his fingers even wider.

"Cross my
heart and hope to die?" When that didn't appear to be good enough, the
golem drew himself up, swelling his chest and stretching the pliable clay to
make his shoulders broader.

"The Rulewoman
Melanie commanded me to destroy Scartaris. That is my quest and that must take
priority. I would rather join forces, offer my services, and accompany you
―
but if you don't trust me, I'll go alone."

He tilted his head
forward on a rubbery neck. "Delrael, I know your father Drodanis. And I've
seen Lellyn, Bryl's apprentice. They both reached the Rulewoman and her
Pool."

Delrael snapped his
head up, blinking. Bryl saw a haunted look in the fighter's brown eyes.

Journeyman nodded.
"Your father is well, though he is in a daze most of the time. Drodanis
wants to forget. He wants to be without pain, without memories. He wants to
stop playing. And on Gamearth when a character wishes to give up the Game,
there is nothing left of him."

Delrael reached out
to snap a twig from a branch. His knuckles were white, but he made no comment.
Vailret put a hand on the shoulder of his cousin's armor.

"What about
Lellyn?" Bryl asked. The boy had been rather likeable, although an affront
to his teacher. A pureblooded human who somehow, through the Rules of
Probability, was able to work more magic than Bryl himself could.

The boy worked
spells intuitively, wielded greater power than his teacher, but Bryl had still
taught the boy what little he could, before Drodanis took him along on his
quest.

"Lellyn is a
rulebreaker in many ways,: Journeyman continued. "He was nearly destroyed
by his own doubts. The Rulewoman froze him in a block of forever-ice, sink to
the bottom of her Pool, for his own protection."

"Why would she
do that?" Bryl said.

Journeyman tilted
his head up again and moved a branch out of the way as they began to walk
again. The branch gouged tracks into the soft clay of his arm. Absently, he
smoothed his skin back into place.

"None of us is
real
. We are made-up characters created for the Outsiders' amusement. You
know that. We all know that. But the Rulewoman herself is a manifestation of
one of the Outsiders. She is so beautiful, with her long brown hair and her big
eyes filled with all the colors of mother-of-pearl. She moves with such grace
and power..." Journeyman paused, as if daydreaming.

"And when
Lellyn saw her, maybe he saw more than he should. Somehow in his mind he knew
that she was
real
and he was not. That doubt grew and grew until, when he
completely disbelieved in his own existence, he would have vanished, winked
out, annihilated.
Reality
is a powerful thing, too much for anything on this
world to handle.

"In the last
instant the Rulewoman froze him to save him from his own doubts. He is still
here, but he is not here."

As Journeyman
spoke, Bryl remembered the ruined ship that had carried the Outsiders David and
Tyrone into the Spectre Mountains near Sitnalta. That was how the Outsiders had
brought Scartaris into the world. He also remembered the Scavenger, Paenar, who
had come to the deserted fortress looking for treasure, and found instead the
Outsiders. He had taken a brief glimpse of the Outsiders in their
real
forms,
and the sight had blasted his eyes from their sockets. Yes,
reality
was a
powerful thing.

Grudgingly, Bryl
decided not to push the argument. They trudged on, crossing a hex-line into
another section of forest terrain by mid-afternoon.

Journeyman snapped
his fingers and sang something about being 'king of the road.'

Vailret's eyes
gleamed wide with delight. "Journeyman, tell us something about the
Outside, since you can see parts of it. What's it like?"

The golem grinned
his huge smile again, puckering flexible lips. "More wonders than you can
imagine! Good to the last drop and squeezably soft!

Refrigerators that
make their own ice cubes, fabric softener that goes into the dryer, microwave
ovens, trash bags with handle-ties built right in!"

Most of the words
made no sense to Bryl
―
which was to be expected, since the
Outside was such an alien place.

"But the
games
they have! No wonder they've grown bored of Gamearth.

They have
interactive computer games, role-playing simulators, and video games that hook
up to your own television set. And Trivial Pursuit
―
did you know that
King Kong
was Adolph Hitler's favorite movie?" The golem lowered his voice
to an awed whisper. "And they have a great Sorcerer named Rubik, who created
a colorful enchanted cube that can either enlighten Players or drive them
insane!"

Vailret frowned.
"You lost me on most of what you just said. That song you were singing a
while ago, was that an Outside song?"

Journeyman clapped
his hands again with a wet, soft
splat.
"I'll bet you I can name that
tune in ... three notes!"

Then he sang a long
ballad about a man named Brady with three sons, who met a lovely lady with
three daughters, and how they overcame their difficulties and became a single
family unit. Journeyman then sang a sea adventure of how five passengers had
set sail for a three-hour tour, but a storm shipwrecked them on a deserted
shore. Over time they had formed the kingdom of Gilligan's Island.

Vailret grinned.
"When we get back to the Stronghold, please make sure I write those
down."

"What you mean
'we,' paleface?" The golem became serious. "I don't expect to return.
My quest doesn't leave much room for that."

Before Journeyman
could say anything else, a high-pitched whine grew in the air. Delrael stopped
and put his hand on his silver belt. His face appeared puzzled, then
frightened. The piercing sound drifted louder and stronger until it hurt Bryl's
ears. It seemed to be coming from the silver itself, where the Earthspirits had
hidden themselves.

Delrael grabbed at
the catch of the belt and yanked it from his waist.

The belt vibrated
and bucked in his hands like an angry snake, still sending out its shrieking
noise. Blue and white sparks skittered along the surfaces of the gems. Delrael
dropped the belt to the forest floor. The noise suddenly ceased, and the rush
of silence struck them like a whip cracking. The silver belt lay still among
the twigs and curling leaves, shining in the forest shadows.

Delrael gawked at
his belt in utter shock. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Vailret squinted
down, but he offered no explanations.

Journeyman seemed
unduly confused, astonished. "What was that? Which way did he go?"
The clay eyelids in front of his hollow eyes blinked and blinked.

Delrael flicked his
gaze at Vailret, then at Bryl. They couldn't even talk about it. They couldn't
say anything about the Earthspirits, especially not in front of Journeyman.
Delrael could not try to communicate with the Spirits either. The Rulewoman
could be watching, and so would the other Outsiders. They had to maintain
absolute secrecy about their quest.

But what if
something had gone wrong? Was it a signal of some kind, a calling
―
or did they just hear the death scream of the Earthspirits? Perhaps Scartaris
had somehow destroyed the Spirits, and when the companions got to the end of
their quest, they might find themselves helpless after all. Bryl tried not to
think of such things, but terrible possibilities floated in the back of his
mind.

Delrael swallowed
and picked up the belt, fastening it with trembling fingers. "Hmmm."
He shrugged, feigning a casual attitude. "Well, it's stopped
―
we shouldn't waste any more time here. We've got lots of hexes to travel."

The day passed, and
as darkness fell they reached the edge of their third hexagon for the day. The
Rules forbade them to go farther, so they camped beside the black line. Another
hexagon of forest terrain waited for them on the other side.

Vailret and Delrael
talked with Journeyman. Bryl wondered and worried, trying not to think of what
lay ahead or about the implications of the Earthspirits' scream from the belt.

Journeyman
scratched lines on the dirt and taught Delrael and Vailret an Outside game
called Tic-Tac-Toe. Bryl always felt left out. Sometimes it made him angry;
other times it just depressed him.

He recalled his
parents
―
his father Qonnar, a full-blooded Sorcerer, and his
mother Tristane, a half-breed. They had used their magic to try to save
Delrael's ailing great-great grandfather
―
but he had died anyway
of a wasting disease. His widow, Galleri, then married a rough and close-minded
human fighter named Brudane. Brudane started rumors that perhaps Bryl's parents
had actually poisoned the old man and not tried to help him.

Qonnar and Tristane
grieved deeply for the old man's death. They felt they had not done enough to
save him, and they did little to fight the accusations, which made the rumors
grow. Finally, in their guilt and despair, Bryl's parents underwent the
half-Transition on their own, annihilating themselves in sorcerous fire and
liberating their spirits to wander the map.

Bryl had been a
mere boy then, but he watched in horror. His mother and father did not even say
good-bye; they gave him no advice, they ignored him.

In the last instant
before the blinding light consumed her, Tristane met her son's eyes
―
but Bryl saw no recognition there. He was not even part of their lives. Their
misery was all-important to them. They didn't bother to consider what it would
be like for Bryl to grow up alone under the shadow of their implied guilt.

At any time it
might have been better for Bryl if he had wandered, gone to a different village
where they did not know his past or his confused conscience. But he was afraid
to leave. Some of the young villagers around the Stronghold taunted him. All
characters around him were human
―
no one was qualified to train
him how to use his Sorcerer abilities, and Galleri and Brudane certainly did
not concern themselves with the problem. He knew only a few simple spells his
parents had taught him in his early years, and a few others he had learned on
his own.

In his mind, Bryl
knew that he had grown up with his abilities stunted.

Had he been
properly trained at the right time, he could have been a powerful magic user.
Three-fourths of his blood was from the Sorcerer race that ruled Gamearth so
many turns ago. But nearly all the Sorcerers had vanished in the Transition,
combining themselves into the Earthspirits and the Deathspirits.

Few characters on
Gamearth could claim to have Sorcerer blood anymore.

Then the human boy
Lellyn had come along, flaunting his abilities, his enthusiasm, and his
impossible Sorcerer powers that he should never have had.

Bryl wanted all
those incredible spells, the power that took years and years of effort and
struggle and training. But he didn't have years and years, and he didn't have
the patience.

Tareah had the
skills, but Bryl didn't seek to learn any forgotten spells. The desire to
better himself, the challenge, had backfired on him many years before.

That was why he
attached so much importance to the Stones: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. He had
used the Water Stone and linked with the
dayid
of the forest to save the
panther people in Ledaygen. He had used the Air Stone to trick Gairoth the ogre
into leaving the Stronghold. The Stones gave him his power immediately. That
was the best way.

"Tic tac toe,
I win!" Journeyman said. Delrael grumbled and smoothed the dirt with the
flat of his hand before drawing a new grid for another game.

"Tomorrow
we're playing with dice instead."

They next morning
they set off into the forest terrain. Journeyman looked around and smiled. Bryl
hated the way he grinned all the time.