Reality's Plaything

by Will Greenway

  Bannor pulled on his dry clothes and shouldered Wren’s pack. He still had no clear plan. His body ached, but his mind seemed clearer. He would have to find the key that would somehow disconnect Nystruul from Hecate. Without the goddess’ power to animate it, the battered zombie would be a puppet without strings.

  Sarai kept glancing in the direction of the sea cliffs. It was difficult for him to guess what she might be thinking. She hadn’t shown fear even trapped in the alcove with the monster. She might only be reacting to his unease.

  They headed inland. The thick forest made going tough. The undergrowth and deadfalls were constant obstacles. Wren’s sword could hack through all but the thickest foliage and he simply chopped his way through rather than go around.

  Where to go? With no landmarks and no knowledge of this world, any place would be as good as another as long as they stayed away from Nystruul.

  Sarai spoke little. She stayed at his side as though attached. Occasionally, she pointed out animal paths concealed by the brambles.

  He needed a destination. What was the point of running if he wasn’t going anywhere? It was all for time, the opportunity to come up with some scheme to get the avatar off his back. Rest time had been a plunge into unconsciousness. Little if any reflecting went on then.

  They maintained a steady course for over a bell. The terrain grew steeper and the trees sparser. He knelt by a stream and quenched his parched throat. The water was cold and mineral bitter. Sarai took a few tentative sips, apparently not very thirsty.

  “Where do we go?” He wondered aloud.

  “Home,” Sarai answered.

  “Yes, but how?”

  She shrugged.

  Odin, how he longed for his mate’s normalcy, sharp tongue and all. When she’d regressed, her control over the stone increased dramatically. Only so much could be done with that ability. Right now, they needed strategy, not power. The avatar could only be overwhelmed on the short term. Nystruul wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  Bannor headed out again. As they forded another shallow stream, he followed a rutted dirt path. Weather-worn stone markers with unfamiliar runes engraved in them jutted from the soil every fifty paces along it. The first signs of habitation they’d seen.

  Where people lived, there might be help. He felt a twinge of unease. If they are people.

  Sarai knelt by a marker and ran her fingers down a depression. “Old.”

  Bannor raised an eyebrow. “How old?”

  Sarai met his eyes. Her brow furrowed. She looked to the pale sun in the East as if it could give her the answer. She nodded and walked to a huge tree that looked similar to a scalebark, the branches gnarled and twisted from harsh seasons and bouts with insects and disease. She patted its rough side. “This grow many times.” She pointed at the markers. “Tall, much buried.”

  “Several centuries,” he repeated. She understood more than he thought.

  They followed the path to where it opened into a large grass covered glade. Rocks and markers ringed a pond at the center. The water looked clear and placid. As they drew closer he could see where algae shrouded stone shelves descending beneath the surface. What could those be for?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a hissing sound. Wood shattered. A blackened, dirt encrusted stick figure stepped into the clearing on the far side. Bannor felt that hot spike of frustration drive into his guts.

  Such blasted, utter futility. Either he killed the avatar, or it killed him.

  “It’s ended, savant. This running stops.”

  “I won’t give up, Nystruul. I’ll die first.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll take you and your goddess with me.”

  “Such words are stupidity. Surrender.”

  “No.”

  The avatar glared at him with its pinpoint eyes. Bannor could smell its stench even at this distance.

  A strident female voice came from behind. “Hey, Bannor, is this loser bothering you?”

  * * *

  A parable says that one of Gaea’s faithful trekked to a high mountain and for days concentrated on summoning the Green Mother.

  After a tenday of efforts, she was rewarded with plumes of green smoke that surrounded her, and from it a voice asked.

  “You called me, Daughter?” The savant who had labored so hard, half starved and weak could only croak out the words. “Y-y-you came!”

  “Of course,” Gaea replied. “I came simply because you thought I wouldn’t…”

  Every time I think the universe is perverted or unfair, I remember the words of she who gave birth to it and know it to be true…

  —From the Dedriad, ‘musings of an immortal’.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  « ^ »

  The voice emanating from behind Bannor made his chest tighten. It caused his view of the lake, surrounding clearing, and the scarecrow-like avatar to blur. He didn’t dare turn his head for fear that he’d only imagined who belonged to that twanged western common.

  The breeze seemed to go quiet. The birds ceased their chirping. Even the ripples on the glassy pond appeared to stop. A white glow cast reflections on his arm and he smelled seaweed and salt.

  Nystruul was the first to speak. He spoke in a disgusted rasp. “Kergatha.”

  “Hethanon,” the feminine voice replied, bright and cocky. It was the most welcome sound Bannor had heard in weeks. “Or what is it you go by now—Nice-drool or something? You look a bit-err, words fail, you’ve looked better. Bannor and Sarai been keeping you busy?”

  “This isn’t your business, bitch,” Nystruul hissed. “You’re dead.”

  “See, Bannor, try to be polite to this assassin and he insults you. What a low, heathenish, lurkabout—and on top of it, he’s ugly!”

  His heart bursting with relief, Bannor could spare a look now. “Wren!” He paused and frowned. “You—you’re—glowing.”

  Still dressed in her soaked guild leathers Wren stood at the edge of the clearing. The savant’s blonde hair hung wet and soggy around her face. Everything else about her was dazzlingly white. Wren’s skin glowed and light shone through rips in her clothing as if someone had put a brilliant white beacon where her heart should be.

  “Pretty,” Sarai murmured, eyes wide.

  Wren’s gaze shifted to Sarai and her eyebrow rose. Something about the savant’s eyes frightened Bannor. No longer were they the sparkling blue he remembered. They looked intense—infinitely blue.

  “Never mind,” Wren said, her gaze shifting from Sarai to him. “I’ll ask later. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the glowing part too—Bannor.” She growled when she said his name.

  His skin prickled. As she finished, Nystruul snarled and launched a fire bolt across the clearing.

  Bannor ducked and Sarai lurched to one side.

  Barely stirring, Wren put up a hand. The thunderous energy impacted her palm and flared around it, crackling and sizzling. She lifted a leg and followed through as if she were pitching a stone.

  A bolt identical to the first jagged back across the clearing and smashed Nystruul back into the trees. The avatar writhed in the grass cursing.

  Wren made a fist. “On the chin,” she cheered. She helped Bannor up and put a hand on his shoulder. “Stupid, he knows that never works. Guess he figures if he keeps trying, eventually it will.”

  Her hand felt hot, much like Sarai’s skin. Wren looked jubilant, perhaps insanely so. “What happened?”

  She held up a finger and pointed at Nystruul. “Let’s deal with—” Her brow furrowed. “It.” Wren chuckled.

  Bannor didn’t see what was so funny. Obviously, Wren didn’t know how to kill this creature or she would already have done so.

  Nystruul climbed to his feet. It took a long time. The blackened creature wavered. The smell of charred flesh drifted across the clearing. He moved until he stood at the far edge of the pond. “I despise you, Kergatha. Some day I shall celebrate your passing.”

  “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, Heth, old boy, but I think you
beat me to it. I grant that you’re sturdy, but the smell…” She waved a hand in front of her face.

  “Mock me, Kergatha, I shall dance at the party when the mistress serves the soup of your soul.”

  “Now, that’s not funny.” Wren’s features hardened. “I’ll give you one chance to leave Bannor in peace.” Her voice dropped. “Otherwise, you’ll become the corpse you should be.”

  Nystruul snorted. “You cannot kill an immortal.”

  Wren’s jaw tightened. “It’s your life, scum.”

  The avatar started around the pond. “I shall drown you, and silence your miserable squeaking forever.”

  “Bannor, while I was lying there in the sand, I remembered a lot of things,” Wren said, her hand clamping on his shoulder. “How I worked your power, for one thing.”

  He fixed on Wren. It hurt to look into her eyes. “And?”

  She pointed at the approaching Nystruul. “I know his secret. Without it, he’s only singed flesh and bone.”

  “What?”

  “It’s all in his pattern.”

  “But, I don’t know—”

  “Yes, you do. Look.”

  Nystruul was almost on top of them. Sarai tensed at his side. The charnel smell grew until it was palpable in the air.

  “Sarai, hold him!”

  His mate clapped her hands. Two huge bulges in the ground swelled and slammed together with Nystruul at their center.

  The avatar’s muffled scream of frustration rumbled through the massed rock and loam. Bits of dirt and hunks of grass dropped off the mound.

  “My, she’s gotten good at that.” Wren eyed Sarai. “Poor Nystruul, he’s taking a beating because you’re no good to them dead.” She looked at Bannor from the corner of her eye. “And you are so stubborn.”

  “Wren,” he breathed. This strange casualness she was showing, scared him. Where was the dark serious woman he remembered? “That won’t hold him long. He might forget he needs me alive. Tell me.”

  She nodded and pulled him back forty paces from the quivering hillock. “Stare at it. Look for his pattern. It will look similar to your own—and mine.”

  Bannor studied the mound. All he saw was a grass covered bulge sitting in the middle of the clearing. It looked like pustule ready to split open and disgorge its infected contents.

  “I don’t see anything, Wren.”

  She reached up grabbed the back of his head. His hair stiffened. “You want me to die, boy? I’ll die right here next to you, and so will Sarai. I can’t kill that bastard. You have to do it.”

  “I don’t know how,” his voice sounded weak.

  She pushed on him. “I’ll tell you how, damn it. Do as I say. Concentrate! Find the picture within the picture. I know you can do it. Nystruul isn’t this injured because he did it to himself. You had a hand in that—and this.” She held a glowing hand up in front of his eyes. “Focus.”

  A split opened in the hump’s top and a blast of crimson energy burst skyward. Melted soil and rock boiled out. A blackened mummified-appearing hand thrust out and tore at the dirt confines.

  Bannor’s stomach knotted. His heart pounded.

  Sarai gripped his hand. “Dead,” she murmured.

  Thoughts jangled in his mind. Focus. He stared, searching for the tracery that would reveal Nystruul to him.

  The sulfurous smell grew. He wanted to vomit. Wren stood frozen by him. Sarai wrinkled her nose, but did not stir. Would Wren really stand there while the avatar came to kill her?

  Why couldn’t he find the pattern? When he had needed it, the power came.

  Hunks of the mound ripped away. Nystruul would be free in moments.

  “Wren, I can’t … I need more time…”

  “This is all the time you’re going to get. You won’t get lucky twice. I’m not coming back a second time. You’ll spend the rest of your existence being chased by this stinking filth.” She made a fist. “Emotion, Bannor. Desire is the trigger, emotion drives it, and you have to let yourself see.”

  A large section of the hump tore, sod ripping and smoldering as Nystruul battered away the obstruction. The avatar had weakened greatly. The flesh was less substantial with each new ordeal it was put through.

  You have to let yourself see.

  See what? Nystruul’s hands wrapped around Wren’s throat? The pond frothing as she drowned beneath its surface? Emotion. Desire.

  Why did the power hide from him, but not Wren?

  Let yourself see.

  Did he block himself? Even before Wren told him of the danger, some hidden part of him must have sensed it.

  The hillock’s side collapsed and Nystruul stepped out.

  “I’m going to make an awful fuss when I start suffocating,” Wren warned. “Better do it.”

  “Wren…”

  The avatar stepped forward. He moved slowly, apparently confused by the fact they weren’t running. Bannor still didn’t know how the creature got ahead of him and Sarai, or for that matter, how Wren found them.

  “Do it!” Wren gritted.

  Bannor focused on his own tracery. In it, lay all the answers to every question he had ever asked himself.

  As he concentrated, Bannor felt the wild thing, the Garmtur, growling in the corner. It wanted to be separate, autonomous, unconstrained—alive. He could feel it feeding on his emotions. It flourished on his primal urges. The Garmtur only acted when he was in danger, or his desire for it became great enough.

  Desire is the trigger. Emotion drives it.

  The Garmtur snarled. All evidence of it slid from his grasp. It sent a tremor of fear through Bannor. Gone. Then he noticed his tracery had changed. The complex whirl at the center was different now. It hid in the heart of his pattern. The essence that made up his Nola.

  “You shall die slowly, Kergatha.” Nystruul staggered toward Wren, hands clawing the air. The stench of death grew overpowering.

  Wren stood her ground.

  She means to do it. She’s going to let that ugly bastard drown her and strand Sarai and me forever!

  Sarai braced at his side. She stared up at him, glowing eyes pleading with him. It appeared she wouldn’t attack the monster again without his urging.

  Bannor’s mind whirled. Have to do it. The pattern continued to gleam and pulse, throbbing like the hammering of his heart.

  He reached out mentally and touched his Nola. A shock jolted through his body. Pastels and colored weaves danced through everything in sight. The world became dazzling and immense.

  Traceries in everything. The trees, grass, the pond and sky, Wren, Sarai—every iota had its own signature and identity. In that instant, he sensed them all. Interlocking weaves, relationships between things he’d thought were simple turned into mazes of boggling complexity. Within each pattern, he found another and another…

  Bannor’s stomach turned to fire, and he felt dizzy. His heart pounded. He had always known the universe was huge beyond measuring. The land he called home made up only tiny portion of the cosmos and he could never see all of it within his lifetime.

  This sight, this curse brought home how infinitesimal his view had been. Infinity could be found in a handful of the soil at his feet. Now, he could see not only into the sub-patterns but the macro-patterns that comprised the workings of the sky and beyond…

  Too much. He knew why Wren had started to go mad.

  “Die.” Nystruul closed his fingers around Wren’s throat. The savant impassively let him.

  Her infinitely blue eyes burned into him, accusing-daring.

  No!

  Bannor felt like a colossus. Everywhere patterns and lines. He couldn’t move without disrupting a subtle balance or a scheme. Rules, so many rules.

  The avatar clamped down, his stick-like arms tensing as he squeezed Wren’s throat. The blue glow of her Nola flickered around her neck and licked down her arms and legs.

  Wren’s intense eyes never left Bannor. She didn’t struggle. Only the Kel’Varan Nola kept the avatar from snapping her neck.
The blackened figure cursed and snarled, then started dragging her toward the pond.

  Chaos ravaged Bannor’s mind. How had he managed to stay alive? The balance—so precarious. One little tug…

  The image of his body arms raised to heavens came back to him. Wren’s voice, his, echoed in his mind. All comes tumbling down. No more games. No more fun in the sun. Nobody laughs or cries. It’s over. He felt as if his insides were turning inside out.

  Sarai gripped Bannor’s arm. “Mine.” She pointed at Wren. “Ours.”

  The more Bannor understood, the more he realized Wren’s importance. Without her, not only would they be stranded, he might destroy the universe he was trying to protect.

  All comes tumbling down.

  Nystruul was half way to the pond now, Wren simply limp in the creature’s grasp. Somehow, she managed to glare at Bannor. If she died, he would remember that stare for the rest of his life.

  Still afraid to move or even twitch, he focused on Nystruul and the whirling lines in the avatar’s body. He studied the patterns, unable to understand what Wren might have meant by a secret.

  What secret?

  They reached the water.

  “Bannor!” Sarai shoved his arm. “Ours!”

  Nystruul thrust Wren into the water.

  Bannor’s heart raced. He started to reach for Sarai’s hand and stopped. So fragile. Everything tenuous as gossamer. He could see the web of power connecting Sarai to her element. Brush it the wrong way…

  The power. Sarai’s power. The connection, without her power she was a normal elf. Without his power, Nystruul was a…

  “Corpse,” Bannor growled.

  The line connecting Nystruul to the sky was easy to find. He barely even needed to reach out to touch it.

  One little tug.

  He took hold with infinitesimal care and gave a little pull.

  The avatar, vigorously plunging Wren under the water froze. His jaw dropped open and his limbs drooped. Nystruul didn’t even have time to scream, he simply disintegrated into a pile of blackened ashes at the pond-side.

  The avatar was gone. It had taken barely a shrug. Wren’s ranting in his voice filled his mind. Ripped Mazerak’s Nola out by the roots. Just felt like it. So I did. The frightening ease with which he’d finished the creature made Bannor numb.