Kevin J Anderson (22 page)

The gondola skipped and bounced on the hex-cobbled streets, dragged forward by the half-inflated balloon as the intermittent breezes through the alleys picked up and slacked off. They moved again, rising, this time skimming a hand's-width off the ground.

"Isn't there any way we can steer this?" Vailret said.

"Just push against buildings."

Then the invisible controller struck again. The Sitnaltans began to approach, moving with a lockstep that Vailret had seen before. They carried sharp fragments of brick, sticks, and pointed shards of glass that cut their fingers.

"Uh oh," Vailret said.

The balloon skipped against a building and rose higher, picking up speed as a breeze gusted. The Sitnaltans unsuccessfully tried to counteract their own actions, but they continued to stumble forward, brandishing their weapons.

"Should I use the Fire Stone to blast them away?" Bryl said. "An illusion won't do us any good."

"No!" Vailret said. "Remember what Verne told us before. The gas is flammable. One spark and this whole thing goes up in a giant fireball."

They rose another foot off the ground as the cannisters continued to hiss into the balloon sack.

"Pull in the ropes, quick! We don't want them to grab hold." They yanked up the ropes, but the balloon still rode low enough that the Sitnaltans could clutch the bottom of the basket itself.

Vailret could see their anguished expressions as they tried not to continue. But the invisible role-player directed their actions. One of the pointed sticks jabbed through the bottom of the gondola, snagging on Bryl's blue cloak.

"We've got to make this lighter!" Vailret cried.

"We have nothing to spare," Bryl said, putting his hands on his cheeks.

"Here, help me throw one of these half-empty canisters over." He disconnected the nozzle from the end of the balloon.

"We won't have enough gas to get back!"

"If we never get there in the first place, we won't have to worry about getting back."

Bryl didn't argue. Together, they heaved the bulky cannister over the side. It clanged and thudded to the cobblestones, leaving a smashed dent in the street.

Immediately, the balloon lurched another full ten feet in the air. They began to drift away from the city. The Sitnaltans gathered below, growing smaller, with loud shouts that sounded more like cheers than cries of anger.

Vailret stared down at the receding city terrain. In the late afternoon they soared out toward the broad hexagons of water. Off in the distance lay the murky terrain of the island of Rokanun.

The balloon floated along in the darkness. They heard no night sounds other than the ripple of waves far below. Not even the wind made noise as they drifted along. They felt no rocking, no gentle motion ― just a constant peace that made Vailret sleepy.

Vailret leaned back against the criss-crossed wicker of the gondola, trying to get comfortable. Bryl seemed uneasy and afraid to doze. "We should get the Earth Stone in another day or two," Vailret said. "Are you afraid about what you're going to do? The Allspirit, I mean. It's not a trivial task."

Bryl took a long time to answer. "Vailret, I'm old. I remember Delrael running the Stronghold, and before that Drodanis, and all the way back to your great-great grandfather Jarriel.

"Every day my joints hurt, and my body feels stiffer than it should be. When I had a warm room at the Stronghold I could hide it, but this constant traveling makes everything worse. My hair is falling out, I'm tired all the time, I always feel cold.

"And then I remember how I felt when I used to Water Stone to link up the the
dayid
in Ledaygen. It was so ... wonderful. The power gave me an entirely new perspective. I can't describe it to you. I remember how Sardun looked when he used all his magic to create the Barrier River.

"I've touched that much power before, enough to know that I'm not afraid of it. I'm anxious for it. I'm eager to do what I can." He stopped and swallowed.

"Crashing in this balloon, though ― now
that
frightens me!"

They landed just after dawn on the western side of Rokanun.

Vailret let out the bouyant gas from the balloon, and they dropped. This time, at least, they did not have to worry about hiding from the dragon Tryos.

As they came down, the wind currents around the island brushed them with updrafts and downdrafts, swirling them around. Vailret readied the tie ropes.

"When we get close enough, I'm going to drop over the side and hang on with the rope. If we get where I can tie off the balloon without letting out all the gas, our one cannister may be enough to get us back across the water."

"You've been to Sitnalta too many times," Bryl said. "Coming up with hare-brained solutions to things."

"Look, do you want to get back or not?" Vailret asked.

The balloon dropped low over forest terrain. He hoped they wouldn't crash into the jagged treetops. Then they passed over the next hexagon, sweeping closer to the rocks of the volcano.

Vailret crawled over the edge of the gondola and let himself down as the rope dragged along the ground, catching among chunks of hardened lava. A large boulder approached in his path, ready to smash his knees; but Vailret bent his legs, kicked up over the top, and dropped down again.

Above, in the basket, Bryl called down, "Well do something! Tie it somewhere."

Vailret let his feet touch the ground and stumble-ran after the balloon, refusing to let go. Finally, he managed to jam the rope in the crack between two large boulders. The balloon's own motion wedged it tight.

"Throw down the other ropes!" he called. A moment later they came snaking down, one after the other. As he tied a second rope around the rocks, a third struck him on the back of the neck.

"That's all of them," Bryl said.

"Thanks a lot." Vailret flexed his stiff fingers and his raw palms. Then he looked at the steep side of the volcano. "This is going to be easy. We're already halfway up."

A few hours later, when the lava rocks still held pockets of frost in the mountain's shadow, they trudged up the steep quest-path, panting. Vailret stopped counting switchbacks just to keep his sanity. He remembered doing the same climb with blind Paenar, guiding him around corners because his technological Sitnaltan eyes no longer functioned.

The climb took them all day. In the hot afternoon sun, they began to wish for the morning chill. Sweat drenched the back of Vailret's tunic.

"It didn't seem this bad when I climbed up here with Delrael," Bryl said.

"You're older now. You said that yourself."

"That's part of it." Bryl stopped around a corner by a rockfall and let out a groan of despair. Vailret looked at the jumbled rocks and couldn't see what the half-Sorcerer meant.

"There," Bryl said. "It was the passage Delrael and I took inside the volcano. A shortcut. It must have collapsed in the eruption when Tryos died."

Vailret kept plodding up the path, not wanting to lose his momentum. "That means we'll just have to go all the way to the top."

"If the Outsiders think all this is fun," Bryl muttered, "I'd like to drag one of them up here."

The sky had taken on a purple pallor of dusk as they hauled themselves over the lip of the volcano and rested at the highest point. Vailret remembered standing here when he used the Sitnaltan Dragon Siren to summon Tryos.

The air remained silent except for the wind. The western sky was shot with red and gold fingers of cloud extending from sunset. Far below he could see the small colorful sack of their balloon, partially deflated like a squashed ball.

Bryl stopped and put his hands on his hips. His cloak blew behind him. Vailret heard his sharp indrawn gasp of breath. Instead of gazing down into the mouth of the crater they would descend, Vailret turned to follow Bryl's line of sight out across the ocean.

Far out across the flat panorama of the map, giant blue hexagons of water terrain lay spread out, butted against each other and delineated by a webwork of black hex-lines. But off in the distance toward the edge of the world, he saw something that struck terror through his heart.

The black hex-lines had widened, and the most distant sections showed great cracks as the map itself broke apart. Between the fissures he could see an enormous gulf of blackness spattered with stars from a sky that did not mirror Gamearth's.

Off to his right, at the nearer edge of the map, he saw places where entire hexagons had broken away and fallen into the void, leaving a jagged nothingness.

Even from this great distance, they could hear a cosmic rumble as the farthest section of ocean snapped and drifted away, lifting up and floating off to vanish into the maw of emptiness.

"It's true!" Bryl said. "It's really true! The map is falling apart."

"We don't have any time to lose," Vailret said. "We have to get the Earth Stone and take it back to Delrael. We need the Allspirit ―
now
― to hold the map together before we lose any more hexagons."

He turned toward the sloping inner wall of the crater. Rough black splotches showed where lava had spattered. "We can't wait until morning to get down into the crater."

Bryl stared at the inky shadows in the mouth of the volcano, but even those seemed less frightening to him than to watch Gamearth fall apart.

Vailret's boots echoed on the rock floor of the dragon's treasure vault. The fireball in Bryl's hand lit the grotto with jittering flashes of light, while simmering lava in the center of the volcano cast a steady orange glow and waves of baking heat.

Running splatters of gold covered the walls of the treasure grotto, destroyed in Tryos's rage when he learned how the human characters had betrayed him. Heat from the volcano's eruption had caused golden chalices and silver figurines to slump and droop. Some gold coins had baked together into lumps.

"I don't like it in here," Vailret said. "It's too quiet."

Contradicting him, the lava lake bubbled and hissed as it belched out exhaust gases into a flickering lobe of flame that died away. "Relatively speaking, I mean." He looked around. "Can you find the Earth Stone?"

Bryl walked among the treasure heaps with a puzzled expression that turned to distress. He pawed among the piles of gold, casting metal chits aside.

"What's wrong, Bryl?"

"Look around here," he said. "Do you see any jewels at all? Any gems? Look at all this gold and silver. Back in the alcove you'll even find some blackened statues and ruined tapestries from the height of the old Sorcerer days. But no gems! There used to be rubies and diamonds, emeralds, sapphires."

"I don't care about them. What about the Earth Stone?"

Bryl looked at him with panicked eyes. He set his fireball hovering in the air above his shoulder, and he bent to dig his fingers deep into the piled gold. He closed his eyes in concentration. He remained silent for a long time, but his lips trembled. When he stopped, his jaw hung open.

He turned back to Vailret. "That's what I mean! The Earth Stone is not here. It's gone!"

――――

"Single combat against a talented opponent requires skill and speed. However, a large-scale battle is choreography of vast groups of characters, requiring much effort, planning, and strategy. It is perhaps the most difficult game any of us will ever attempt."

― Drodanis, to trainees at the Stronghold

Delrael's army moved at a rapid pace northward, charged with elation from their victory in Ledaygen. Rear scouts estimated that a third of the horde had been killed in the fire. Siryyk's remaining army had drawn together, not spread so thinly along the terrain. But the monsters still outnumbered them four to one.

When Romm and the other scouts returned that afternoon to report, Delrael sat back and listened. They knew from the maps that mountain terrain lay along their path. But they did not know the characteristics of each hexagon, or how they could use it to their advantage.

"The mountains are particularly rugged in the next hex," Romm said. He sat down on a lichen-spattered boulder and brushed a few sweat-clumped strands of hair away from his forehead. His long face had been sunburned from the altitude, and his lips were chapped. Delrael gave him a flask of water, and Romm dutifully took a sip, but he seemed more preoccupied with making his report.

"We found a few places where we might set up an effective attack. In particular there's one path along a cliff in a narrow canyon. Our numbers could really work to our advantage there."

"One other thing," the second scout said. She was a wiry woman with short brown hair; she came from one of the mining villages northwest of the Stronghold. Delrael could not remember her name. "We saw Black Falcon riders in the mountains, but they didn't notice us."

Delrael frowned. "Corim said they might shadow us. We can only hope he chooses a better enemy than Annik did."

He saw his father sitting by himself and sharpening his sword. Drodanis had watched and complimented his son's work on the ambush in Ledaygen. Most of the other characters shied away from the old war leader, in awe of all they had heard about his legendary quests and adventures.

"Father!" Delrael called. Drodanis looked up and tossed his flat stone to the ground. "Come here. I'd like you to help plan strategy for our next attack."

Delrael felt warm as he saw his father's face light up with sudden interest. "I would be honored to offer my thoughts."

Tayron Tribeleader went alone off the quest-path into the steep rocks. The rest of the army didn't see him leave. A few of the khelebar watched; they made solemn nods.

Using his agile panther body, Tayron climbed into a sheltered place, a kind of ampitheater he had found. Shallow soil and some grasses stood in the middle of a ring of rocks, a place where water trickled down, where the winds did not blast too fiercely ― where the new Father Pine could have a home.

He placed the wooden pot beside him on a flat rock and bent down to scoop a depression in the soil.