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"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 short-cut. 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!"
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*Chapter 17*
SIRYYK'S GAME
"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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]