Gamearth

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Bryl was already grabbing the gem. "I know!" He touched the flat blue facets, rubbing his fingers along the surface of the sapphire, and then plunged his mind into the mental keyhole, unlocking the power trapped within.

  He rolled the Water Stone on the ground. "Come on!" The gem came to rest with the number "4" facing up. Bryl curled his lips against his teeth.

  Vailret hoped he really did know how to use the stone.

  The Cyclops bellowed as a thick cloud appeared like a glove over his towering head. He tried to dodge it, to run ¯ but the mist followed him, covering his face and blinding him. The tip of his veined horn protruded from the cloud. Groping around in circles, the Cyclops stumbled on boulders and tripped across the stream as he staggered toward the towering sandstone cliff face. He stubbed a cabbage-sized toe on a boulder and howled, but the thickening cloud-stuff muffled the sound.

  Bryl glanced at Delrael helpless on the turf with his leg mangled and bleeding. A fury of lightning bolts burst from the hanging cloud. The Cyclops yowled, launching himself forward to flee the storm ¯ ramming headlong into the rock face with a crunch that reverberated through the canyon.

  Bryl let the cloud dissolve, and the Cyclops collapsed to the rocky ground. The monster grunted once and lay still.

  Vailret stared at Delrael lying on the ground. He trembled, amazed at all the blood. Sweat made Vailret's blond hair stick to the sides of his head, but his face grew stormy with anger. He bent down to unfasten the ancient sword from Delrael's side. The injured man whimpered when Vailret moved him.

  Vailret pulled the sword out of its scabbard and held it awkwardly. If he tried to use a sword in battle, the odds against him would be so great as to make it not worth the attempt. But this was not battle. The Cyclops lay unconscious. This would just be revenge. He took a determined step toward the monster.

  "No. That would be needless killing." The panther man padded up to him.

  "I will not let you kill even the Cyclops when it is unnecessary."

  Vailret confronted the panther-man for a long, frozen moment, flicking his eyes from the brute sprawled among the rocks to Delrael lying on the bank of the stream.

  The panther-man stared back at him with eyes as green as leaves and moss. A long black braid ran down the length of his human back to rest against his feline fur. A pendant made of pine cones and acorns bound together with pitch dangled in the front of his hairy, naked chest.

  "You're a khelebar," Vailret said.

  The panther-man met the young man's eyes. "Yes. I am Ydaim Trailwalker."

  Vailret glared at the khelebar. "Why would you help us and then stop before the fight is finished?"

  Ydaim seemed puzzled by Vailret's logic. "When is a fight ever finished?"

  Vailret turned away in angry disgust. He threw the sword back down on the canyon floor. "It certainly isn't finished yet." He stared with watery eyes at the Cyclops.

  Bryl knelt beside Delrael, doing little more than straightening his hair. The man's skin was a clammy gray and glistening with the diamond dust of sweat. His shallow breaths came from between gritted teeth. Blood poured onto the ground.

  Vailret cut a strip from one of the blankets and bound up Delrael's thigh. He pulled the tourniquet tight, then used a twig to twist it tighter.

  But the blood continued to flow. "This won't do much."

  "I don't know how else to help him," Bryl said. "Do we just wait here for him to heal? The Water Stone controls the weather ¯ it won't do anything for Delrael. I never learned any healing spells!"

  The khelebar leaned over to touch Delrael's chest. "My tribe lives in Ledaygen, the forest just above this valley. We can take your friend there."

  Tears streamed from under Delrael's eyelids. He shuddered violently.

  "He has already lost his leg," Ydaim said. "If we get him to Ledaygen soon, perhaps our healers may be able to save his life."

  We don't have any other choice." Vailret tried to make his voice sound firm, as Delrael's had been. Bryl looked at him, afraid and confused.

  Together, the two of them carefully lifted the man onto the khelebar's broad back, where Ydaim held him. Delrael's left leg fell limp and rubbery, bending in a thousand places where a leg should never bend. Blood dripped down the khelebar's tan hide, marking a trail down his flank.

  Ydaim Trailwalker trotted ahead, but he set each foot fall down with care. "Come! Follow me."

  They jogged after the khelebar, leaving the Cyclops senseless on the floor of the narrow valley.

  * * * *

  The khelebar climbed steadily up out of the gorge. Ydaim led them directly east into thicker forest, crossing the hex at its narrowest point. He moved with quiet confidence and rarely glanced at the humans.

  Bryl acted withdrawn, as if cursing himself for not acting sooner, for not being able to help. Vailret looked down to see the stream below them, a thin ribbon winding over its bed of rocks. But he kept his attention on Delrael sprawled on the panther-man's back.

  He wished Ydaim would stop for just a moment so he could place a blanket over Delrael. But they had no time.

  Flecks of blood painted the silver belt made by the old sorcerers Sentinels so many years before. Delrael's skin was cold and clammy, and sweat pasted the brown hair to his forehead. Vailret couldn't bear to look at the splinters of bone jutting from the crushed leg.

  Adventuring!

  Rule #1: Always have fun!

  This was irrational, ridiculous. Vailret resented Drodanis and his message stick that had sent them on this mission. He resented Sardun and his daughter. And most of all he resented the Outsiders, for amusing themselves with brutality to their own characters.

  "That Cyclops is going to attack the next adventurers who come peacefully through here, too. And the next, and the next, just like he attacked us. It will never stop, because you don't believe in 'needless' killing."

  Ydaim kept moving ahead, ignoring Vailret's anger.

  "How much destruction does the monster need to cause before killing him becomes necessary?"

  The khelebar loped along in silence, without missing a beat. "Do not worry, Vailret Traveler. The healing arts of the khelebar are greater than any other you will find on Gamearth. The dayid of Ledaygen helps us. Our healers may be hard-pressed, but you must have hope."

  "You're not listening to me! When an ogre killed my father, my uncle Drodanis was so outraged he took a band of men out to exterminate the ogres once and for all. But his anger died too soon, and he returned before finishing the job. Now, the ogres have taken the human Stronghold and destroyed our entire village. If Drodanis had completed the task he started, we would never be in that mess! You're doing the same thing ¯ who knows what else the Cyclops will ruin? And you will be responsible because you refused to do anything about it."

  Ydaim raised his eyebrows and appeared deep in thought as he continued to lope down the unseen trail. His wide paws whispered through the underbrush that encroached on the fringes of the path. "I find you difficult to understand, but I am trying. Some of our elders will be intrigued by your philosophy."

  His voice held a puzzled tone. "Tell me again how the Cyclops's death will help your friend. Do you believe your friend will absorb the Cyclops's life force if you kill the monster?"

  Vailret blinked. "No ¯ don't be ridiculous."

  "Then how can the killing the Cyclops help your friend in any way?"

  "I'm not just talking about Delrael! What if other travelers come through here? They'll be attacked, too."

  "But if no other travelers pass through the gorge, then we would have killed him for naught."

  "Haven't you ever heard of preventing disasters before they happen?"

  The khelebar shrugged. "The Cyclops is our nemesis, yes, but I have never considered killing him just to be rid of the nuisance." Ydaim was silent again for a long time, managing to keep a good speed along the path without losing his breath. "We believe the only way to get the Outsiders to stop inflicting these senseless adv
entures upon us is to face them with complete indifference. One day they will see that we no longer wish to Play, and they will leave us alone."

  Vailret swallowed in his dry throat. "That won't work." Bryl stumbled along beside them, silent. The khelebar did not know what was about to happen to Gamearth ¯ and the khelebar were on the eastern side of the Barrier River, the wrong side.

  The panther-man ignored Vailret's comment. "You have strange but valid points. It is not for me to decide. I will take it up with the khelebar council and allow you to speak. But our first priority is to see that your companion is taken to the healers in Ledaygen."

  Thinking he had been rebuked, Vailret silenced himself. The afternoon sun fell toward night. Each time Delrael made a sound, Vailret clenched his fists.

  Ydaim brought them across a low grassy rise, and they reached another, more verdant forest, isolated in the depths of the mountains. The khelebar surged forward with new energy.

  "Ledaygen! Can you feel the dayid's presence?" He let out a high-pitched sound and plunged into the forest, bearing Delrael with him.

  Though exhausted, Vailret and Bryl rushed to follow him.

  An enveloping presence folded over Vailret, and a quiet eeriness penetrated even his sense of urgency. He had spent much of his life in the forest, thinking and walking among the trees and seeing the precise details of how the Gamearth wilderness was constructed. Yet, Ledaygen was somehow different.

  Overall, the cleanliness amazed him. No lichens or shelf-mushrooms clung to the trees, no dead and rotting branches lay strewn about the forest floor. The trees, almost entirely oak and pine, were tall and straight, healthy, without crippled branches. The forest floor had been covered with an even blanket of dry leaves and mulch, interspersed with frequent and exactly positioned flowers and plants. Vailret saw no choking underbrush, no thick brambles or tangled vines. He drew in a deep breath of the loamy air.

  Delrael groaned again. He looked even weaker now, and his skin seemed translucent with pain. Only a hair's breadth separated him from death.

  "Almost there!" Ydaim Trailwalker called in a strong and hopeful voice.

  The trees of Ledaygen broke away from them like parting curtains. Ydaim entered a wide, grassy clearing that overlooked a stunning panorama of the Spectre Mountains. Vailret realized they had taken the short way across the forested-hill terrain and had already arrived at the hex-line.

  In one of Gamearth's rare flukes of nature, the line of forested-hill terrain did not exactly match up with the adjoining hex of mountain terrain.

  The hills rose upward and the slope of the Spectre Mountains plunged downward, resulting in a yawning, mismatched cliff that dropped nearly a thousand feet to the roots of the mountains. One tall, ancient pine stood alone on the verge of the cliff, straight and powerful, with boughs sweeping upward and outward to watch over Ledaygen.

  Ydaim looked around the clearing and shouted into the air, "Thilane Healer!" The birds instantly fell silent, and it seemed that the trees carried his words, spreading them throughout the forest. Vailret saw other khelebar emerge from the surrounding trees, responding to the summons. The panther-people stared in horror at the injured man on Ydaim's back.

  "See what your Cyclops has done?" Vailret said, intending to shout, but the forest muffled his words.

  The panther-people parted to let a bare-breasted female khelebar come forward. Gray-streaked blond hair cascaded down her naked back in two long braids. Tiny yellow and white flowers had been woven into her hair and draped in a sweet-smelling garland along her neck. Her panther body was a dusty gray, and lines of strain and weariness etched her face.

  "Thilane ¯ " Ydaim Trailwalker began, but she motioned him to silence.

  She flowed forward to inspect Delrael before anyone else could speak. She bent down, reaching out with her fingers but hesitant to touch. Thilane inspected Delrael's bruised and scraped face, his mangled leg. She brushed a fingertip against a protruding shard of bone and drew her hand away, looking at the blood clinging to her finger.

  "Can you heal him?" Bryl whispered, speaking after a long silence. "Do you have that kind of magic?"

  The Healer ignored the question and frowned as she continued to inspect Dalrael's leg, then felt his forehead. "He will live. That is all I promise."

  The harshness in her voice startled Vailret. She turned to Ydaim. "I must set to work at once. Give him to me."

  Vailret and three of the khelebar lifted the man's broken body onto her dusty gray back. She winced as Delrael's blood flowed down to mat her fur.

  Without another word, Thilane bounded into the thick greenness of Ledaygen, where the trees swallowed her up. Vailret set off after her, but Ydaim Trailwalker blocked his way. "She must work alone."

  "I need to be with him," Vailret insisted.

  Ydaim turned to the other khelebar in the clearing. "I will take these two where they may eat and wash and rest. Tell Fiolin Tribeleader that this human, Vailret Traveler, wishes to call a meeting of the council this night!"

  Confusion. Throbbing pain. Anger.

  The Cyclops stood, felt the smoldering bruise on his forehead. The rock wall. He remembered. Pain. He grew angrier. The clouds had cleared around his head.

  He turned in slow circles. Remembered the humans. He had thrown rocks.

  Hit one of them. Something else. One of the man-animals. The man-animal had shouted, warned the humans. The man-animal had hurt him. The man-animals.

  Pain. Fire. Death. Revenge. Pain.

  Vague ideas, not real thoughts ¯ but they were good ideas. He knew where the panther-people lived. By the trees. He didn't like the trees. He preferred rocks, caves, shadows. The trees didn't like him either. He would burn them all. Fire. It would make a very bright light.

  He scraped his flint claws against the stone of the canyon wall. Sparks flew.

  Pain. Fire. Bright fire.

  * 6 *

  Khelebar

  "Trees and hills and water and sky. What do the Outsiders know of all this? They have created more than they realize."

  ¯ Jorig Falselimb of the khelebar

  Thilane Healer followed a path only she could see, gliding among the trees until she reached a room fashioned from the living forest. Trunks and branches had grown together to form walls. A roof canopy of leaves filtered the afternoon sunlight with green; lush weeds, herbs, and flowers dotted the ground. In the center of the clearing jutted a gigantic stump, polished smooth on top like a flat wooden table.

  By herself, Thilane removed the unconscious man from her back and placed him on the flat surface of the stump. The concentric age rings glowed brown and gold, drawing her eyes. A splash of blood shattered the beauty of it.

  Delrael's leg flowed like water, bending in too many places. The man's face writhed in the pain he felt even through his stupor.

  Thilane walked around the clearing, touching a tree or staring at a plant. She waited, listening for something.

  "This will require the extent of my knowledge, dayid," she said out loud to the forest. "You make me belittle myself with the scratches and scrapes of the khelebar, but now I must tend the injuries of a human as well?

  He is not even of Ledaygen."

  Thilane put her hands on the point where her human abdomen joined the sleek panther body. She received no answer. "I want to serve you!" Thilane stopped herself short of clawing the ground in her anger.

  The Healer continued to mutter as she touched a young tree that formed part of the woven walls of her room. "I will heal his petty hurts, but I can do nothing for his leg." She shrugged. "I will not waste my time or the resources of Ledaygen."

  A thin, painful bolt of lightning jumped from the young tree, stinging her fingers. Rebuffed, Thilane gaped in silent wonder, then swallowed twice before she spoke again. "You judge this one significant, dayid?" She glanced over her back at the man lying on the broad stump. "Is this to be a test of my abilities?"

  Thilane smiled more with pride than embarrassment. "Well, I
am significant, too, and I will make you proud of the abilities you have given me." The Healer's emerald green eyes sparkled. "I promise."

  The background sounds of birds and wind soothed her, lulling her as she selected a thin branch from the sapling. Without effort she separated it from the main trunk; the branch detached itself willingly. With her fingers, the Healer massaged the bark, working it like clay and sealing the small wound to remove any scar on the tree. She sniffed the sap end of the severed branch.

  Thilane returned to the motionless man and waved the twig over his face. She hummed a quiet song as she passed it over the bruises and scrapes from when he had fallen on the streambank. The superficial blood and mud disappeared from his skin. The bruises faded. The scratches and torn skin healed.

  The branch crumpled to torn, oozing pulp in the Healer's hand.

  "That is for appearance only, I know." She sighed to herself, "But at times appearances can help immensely."

  She turned to pluck a branch of oak leaves from another tree, stretching up on her hind legs to reach the highest, healthiest bunch. She placed the leaves on the man's ruined leg, scattering them evenly across the protruding bone splinters. Thilane sang another quiet song, and the leaves withered, turning brown and brittle. She brushed them away, careful not to hurt Delrael, and continued her song without pausing. She laid more leaves on the leg. She sang louder. The leaves died a second time.

  "Oak should be stronger than this." She held up one of the withered leaves, staring at the sunlight through its shriveled veins. Thilane frowned and tried once more, singing in her strong, harsh voice. Her words trailed off as her lungs emptied, but she wheezed out a few more notes.

  The leaves still turned black and lifeless. She had taken the pain away and stopped the bleeding ¯ but Thilane could never heal his leg.

  The dayid refused to accept her failure.

  Delrael muttered to himself, whimpering. His gray eyes fluttered open, but they stared far away. He seemed unable to focus, though he could sense someone beside him. "Am I hurt? I don't remember." He sighed, and even his breath trembled. "Vailret?"