“I’m not certain if I can give you permission. But I can show you how to pilot her, and I can assure you that I will not be here to stop you if, say, tonight you wished to take her and go.”
“Why are you dancing around your words?” Paenar said.
Verne shoved both hands in his pockets. “I am a prolific inventor—I cannot remember how many certificates I have acquired from the Council of Patent Givers. But I am also a Sitnaltan. Since we rarely encounter strangers, and since none of our devices will function far from the city anyway, the question has never arisen if one of my inventions belongs to me, because I invented it, or if it belongs to the people of Sitnalta, who have constructed it and manufactured the materials.
“So, you see, if I were to ask Dirac about giving you the Nautilus, he would say the ship belongs to the city and not to me.” His eyes sparkled. “However, if I do not ask the question, then the issue will not be raised. And no one will deny you the right to take the boat.”
Vailret digested the logic and grinned. “Admirably devious, Professor. You are shrewd in other ways besides being just a great tinkerer!”
Verne stepped on the narrow deck of the Nautilus. He lifted up the round metal hatch and climbed into the control room. Vailret saw panels filled with switches, dials, and other controls. It all looked exotic and exciting.
The professor paused, looking up at the sun’s position in the sky. He withdrew a ticking timepiece the size of an apple and cracked it open, nodding. “We should have sufficient time. Would you like to learn how to pilot her?”
#
To celebrate the liberation of the Stronghold, Jorte dug up one of the last vats of the previous year’s spring cider outside of his gaming hall and broke open the top. He took a wooden rod and stirred sediment from the bottom before everyone dipped cups into the cool brown liquid. Jorte waddled over to a table to drink and enjoy himself for the first time in a month.
Early in the afternoon, the veteran Tarne and several other villagers had crept out of the sheltering forest. They had seen the dragon in the sky, heard the loud battle inside the stockade fence. But now the Stronghold stood silent and ominous. Tarne hoped the ogres had killed each other. The gates were ajar and somehow intact again. He climbed Steep Hill alone, standing in front of the open gates, not knowing what to do next.
And Delrael rushed out to greet him.
After the word had spread, the other villagers flooded back into their old homes and buildings like a long awaited sigh. Lantee the butcher and his wife stared stricken at their demolished, empty smokehouse. Others were relieved that the destruction had not been greater. Most drifted off to Jorte’s gaming hall, not yet ambitious enough to start the job of putting their lives in order before the harvest.
For two days they assessed the damage to the land and recovered from their shock. After his battle with Gairoth, Bryl seemed to be held in higher esteem by the villagers. Delrael stood with Tarne and Bryl inside the Stronghold fence, looking out over the landscape visible from the top of the hill. Tarne pointed to one of the cleared hexagons of cropland. “Our harvest this season will be poor. We tried to come out at night and do the weeding, but that was risky. The storehouses are empty.
“It’s going to be a hard winter for all of us.”
Delrael looked across the cleared land, past the beginning of the hexagon of forest terrain, but he said nothing.
“If the game lasts that long,” Bryl muttered.
A reptilian shriek sliced through the air. Delrael crouched, letting his fighting instincts take over. Tarne and Bryl looked up to see the huge form of Tryos sailing overhead.
The dragon flapped his wings, splaying his pistonlike legs so that he landed with grace on the flat training area. He beat his wings a final time and folded them across his back, ignoring Tarne and focusing his attention on Bryl and Delrael.
“Finished!” Tryos cried in his high-pitched, clipped voice. “Rognos far from here! Never come back. Never.”
“Very good, Tryos,” Delrael said. “Gairoth is gone, too.”
Tryos blinked his eyes-and bobbed his head up and down. “Isss good! No more Rokanun for me! Ssstay here now! Home of Tryos!”
Tarne stared, but Delrael ignored him. Bryl fell silent, standing back from the discussion.
“No more Rokanun?” Delrael asked, speaking in a slow and careful voice.
“Nah! I have thisss land.”
“Okay,” Delrael fidgeted, looking first at Bryl and then at Tarne. He got no encouragement from their appalled expressions. “But what about your treasure? All those years you worked to gather it, surely you don’t just want to leave it there for robbers?”
Tryos lifted his head, snorted smoke. “They would not dare!”
Delrael crossed his arms over his leather jerkin. “Who do you think you’re kidding, Tryos? If you stay away, it’s a treasure for the taking.”
The dragon turned his blazing eyes away. But Delrael smiled. “You could, of course, bring your treasure here. Look at these big empty storage chambers we have—wouldn’t they make a great start for a new set of catacombs?”
The dragon cocked his head, extending his long reptilian neck into the musty darkness of the storage pit Rognoth had gutted. “Pah! Smellsss like grain!” His voice echoed in the chamber; then he lifted his head back out again, blowing dust from his nose. “But they make good cavesss. I bring my treasure here.”
“We’ll help,” Delrael volunteered. “Can we go right away?”
The dragon turned around in circles, then slumped to the ground, stretching his neck out and plopping his chin on the dirt. “Nah—long flight.” He closed his eyes. “Tired now.”
Within moments, low rumbling sounds of the sleeping dragon drifted into the air, drowning out the faint noises of the villagers still rejoicing in the gaming hall.
In their private room in Sitnalta, Vailret and Paenar discussed everything Verne had showed them. All afternoon the professor had bombarded them with instructions, filling the Nautilus’s control room with his accented voice.
Paenar remained rigid on the edge of his cot, staring at the blank wall. They sat listening to the steam-engine vehicles chugging into storage bays to let their boilers cool until morning. The manufactories had closed down for the night. Vailret waited for the gas streetlights to be lit and for the Sitnaltans to go to sleep.
“Our plan has one big flaw,” Vailret said, disturbing Paenar from his daydreaming. “We have even less to fight with than Del and Bryl did. At least they had the Water Stone.”
“We’ll manage,” Paenar said, but the bulky goggles masked his real expression. Lenses floated in their oils, hypnotic in the shadowy light. Vailret shook his head.
“Against a dragon? How? Neither of us can even fight with a sword or shoot an arrow. Not that it would be terribly effective against Tryos, anyway.”
Paenar spoke slowly in the new silence. “Sitnalta has a weapon that’s effective against the dragon.”
They stole down the steps of the Sitnaltan ziggurat in the darkness, lugging the heavy Dragon Siren between them. Vailret sneaked a glance at the streetlights of the jagged cobblestone streets below them. The sleeping city remained silent, but Vailret felt eyes watching them from the blind windows.
“I’ll go first,” Paenar said, “my eyes can adjust to the dark.”
Vailret obliged, following behind and watching where he put his feet. “It seems like we’re betraying Professor Verne by stealing the Siren.”
“Heroic decisions are always questionable . . . until you win.” Paenar shifted his hold on the Siren. “You’ll never be remembered if you don’t take chances.”
“I’d rather be alive than be remembered, if it comes down to a choice between the two.”
After reaching the base of the ziggurat, they hurried through the deserted streets, dodging puddles of yellow lamplight. They stood on the bank of the seawall, listening to the crash of restive waves below them. They stumbled down the worn steps to the
docks below. The metallic dish of the Siren dragged at them, but they gritted their teeth. Out of breath and sweating in the chill air, they reached the swaying hulk of the Nautilus on the docks.
Then Mayer stepped out of the shadows. She had wrapped herself in a thin cloak, and looked cold and blown, as if she had been there waiting a long time. She pressed her lips into a thin line and tried to look haughty.
“First my father turns down your request for a boat, then Professor Verne spends the afternoon showing you the Nautilus. Did you honestly think I could not extrapolate what you intended to do?”
Vailret regained his composure and answered her coolly. “We are trying to help our friends, since you Sitnaltans seem quite willing to ignore the rest of Gamearth. Professor Verne graciously offered us the use of his Nautilus after your father refused to help. We’re not trying to hide.”
Mayer laughed sharply. “Who could suspect you of trying to hide, when you creep to the docks in the dead of night?”
“The tide is at its best point now.” Paenar sounded smug. “Professor Verne told us so.”
“No doubt he ‘graciously offered’ to give you our Dragon Siren as well?” She flashed an angry glare at Paenar. “Or perhaps you barbarians have no moral restrictions against stealing.”
Vailret and Paenar said nothing.
Mayer’s short dark hair whipped about in the wind like the barely seen waves, but the tone of her voice changed. Vailret suspected she was addressing something different entirely. “What is it you know? I can see it in you. Any idiot can recognize that Sitnaltan ways are superior to your primitive life in the outside world—yet you don’t admire our city. It’s almost as if you . . . flaunt our technology. What do you know that we do not?”
She seemed honestly curious. Paenar fidgeted. Vailret pondered on the silent dark dock. “I can see and accept some of the advantages your way of life has—especially since I have no Sorcerer blood. In Sitnalta all humans can use the magic of your technology. But you haven’t even made an effort to see if perhaps we ‘barbarians’ do some things better than you.
“You tinker with your calculating machines and your street-cleaning engines, but when faced with a problem your technology may not be able to solve—Scartaris—you dismiss it as something not to be considered.”
Paenar cleared his throat and placed a large hand on Vailret’s shoulder. “We are going to fight against Tryos, and then against Scartaris—it is not likely we will win. But we are trying anyway. Your science has made you blind to the fact that sometimes you can win the impossible fight. Many dice rolls are not likely, but they are possible.”
She hardened her expression. “If you take the Dragon Siren and lose, then Sitnalta will be defenseless.”
“Or,” Paenar countered, “if we take it and win, you need never fear the dragon again. Then your greatest inventors can start to work on the problem of Scartaris.”
“After we’re gone,” Vailret said, “go and talk to Professor Verne. Let him show you his data and his extrapolations. Be objective. Ask yourself if there isn’t a remote possibility that the threat truly exists. Then scrap your frivolous gadgets and invent something to stop this thing! If we fail, all of Gamearth could be depending on you.”
As if that settled the discussion, Paenar slipped past her and clambered on board the Nautilus, lugging the Dragon Siren down into the control room. Vailret stared at Mayer for a moment in silence, then surprised himself by shaking her hand. He jumped onto the deck of the submarine boat and slipped down the hatch without another word. He closed the hatch above him.
Mayer remained on the dock looking flustered and confused, as if puzzled that the confrontation had not turned out as she had planned.
The Nautilus slipped away from the moorings, churning water into foam behind its propellers. The ship poised for a moment on the surface, nosed out into deeper water, then sank beneath the waves like a giant predatory fish.
#
The next morning Tryos smashed his tail on the packed dirt, let out a yowling yawn, and demanded that Bryl and Delrael “Wake up!”
Delrael had slept in his own creaking bed for the first time in a month, but it seemed as if he hadn’t dozed for more than a few minutes. When Bryl came out into the morning sunshine, red eyed and wrapped in his blue cloak, he seemed too tired even to be afraid of Tryos.
He and Delrael sat on the great dragon’s back and watched the ground drop away with each thundering beat of Tryos’s wings. Tarne stood watching them with a defeated expression on his face.
The journey back to Rokanun took two days. The dragon followed a drunken course, losing and then recovering his path. The island and its tall volcano reared up at them from the mosaic of clear blue hexes of ocean. Tryos made a beeline for the wide crater opening. Heat and fumes from the boiling lake of lava hissed up at them as the dragon swooped into his treasure grotto.
Tryos scraped the hardened lava floor with his claws and moved his head from side to side, loosening up. He folded his wings and stood tall in the grotto, admiring the gleaming hoard. Bryl and Delrael climbed off, stretching and looking around. The dragon strutted among the jewels and gold, crunching treasure under his feet.
“Ahh Good thing I not leave thissss!”
Bryl acted eager for another look at the old Sorcerer objects, but did not want to make Tryos suspicious. Dekael found Tareah in a corner by the shadow of the treasure, trying to remain unobtrusive. She looked frightened, determined, but very weak. She had been feeding herself with supplies from a trivial Sorcerer maintenance spell, like Bryl’s, but she needed more.
“You came back,” she said with a sort of wonder. “Now we can go back home.” Delrael clasped her shoulder and gave her a reassuring hug. He found himself feeling deeply sorry for her—Tareah had been isolated for all three decades of her life, with only Sardun for company. He had no doubt she would be inept in dealing with other people, unpracticed, and not accustomed to being totally alone either. No one came to visit the memories in the Ice Palace anymore. Delrael could imagine her loneliness.
Tryos had blasted his way into her sheltered world, taking her and leaving her with no one on whom to depend. No one on the entire island.
Delrael smiled and felt warm inside, wondering if she would see him as a brave prince come to her aid? Just like in the old days of the Game.
But when he hugged her, Delrael noticed how much Tareah had grown, more than an inch in five days. Delrael blinked and stared at her, doubting that he could be mistaken. He was usually quite good with spatial relationships.
Tareah had filled out, adding a year to her apparent age. Perhaps because she had been far enough away from Sardun’s sorcery for so long, her body was making up for lost time.
Delrael interrupted the dragon’s silent inventory. “You will need to work a long time to move all your treasure, Tryos.”
The dragon bobbed his head. “Many trips!”
“You’ll get done sooner if you start sooner. You’d better take a load and go right away.”
Before Tryos could sputter anything else, Delrael continued. “I know. It will be hard work, but well worth the effort.”
Bryl stood by the fighter. “Delrael and I will stay here to guard your treasure. We promise. Don’t worry.”
Tareah looked at him in disappointed alarm.
Tryos narrowed his eyes and glared at the half-Sorcerer, assessing him with a piercing reptilian stare. “How do I know you not take treasure for yourssselfsss? No tricksss!”
Bryl turned his eyes from the dragon’s horrible stare, cringing, but he looked down at the jewels and gold and reasserted his outward calm. “Did we steal any treasure the first time you caught us? And didn’t we find Rognoth for you so you could punish him? And didn’t we take care of Gairoth, too? And didn’t we find you a big new land to live in?”
Tryos hung his head and fidgeted under Bryl’s high pitched outburst. “Yesss.”
“Trust us.” The half-Sorcerer smiled broadly.
>
“I come back sssoon—not long! Wait here!”
“Of course.”
Like a monstrous reptilian shovel, Tryos opened his huge mouth and scooped up an indiscriminate mouthful of his hoard. He lifted his head with some effort, straining his muscles against the great weight of treasure. The rippling scales in his serpentine neck glittered rainbows from the reflected gold and jewels. A few scattered gems and odd coins jingled back to the ground through cracks in the dragon’s mouth. Tryos shook his head, letting the last few loose items fall free back to the grotto floor. A pearl necklace snagged on one of his fangs, swaying back and forth in the weird orange light from the lava.
“Don’t hurry back now, Tryos—it’ll be all right.” Bryl waved at the dragon. “We promise.”
Delrael nodded. “You could tire yourself out by flying too fast.”
The dragon tried to say something but could not spit the words past the wadding of treasure in his mouth. He almost choked. Delrael didn’t want to hear the question—he wanted to get rid of Tryos as soon as possible. “Don’t talk now, Tryos. You can ask us next time. Have a good trip.”
Flustered, the dragon stopped trying to talk and strode over to the edge of the grotto. Bryl and Delrael waved, smiling so much their jaws ached, before Tryos spread his wings and launched himself out over the lake of lava.
The dragon fell like a stone, headfirst, dragged down by the immense load of treasure. Delrael’s heart leaped with hope, praying their problem could be ended so simply. Tryos’s reptilian eyes widened in alarm, and he beat his wings frantically, flaring his nostrils. The dragon slowed his plunge and labored his way back up to the top of the cinder cone. He puffed with the effort, flew over the rim and into the distance.
“Let’s get up the tunnel out of here.” Delrael turned and ushered Tareah toward the opening. The hiss and bubbling of the lava added a layer of background noise. “We’ll have to run like mad to the balloon. I counted the hexes—we can do it in a day and a half.”
Bryl tallied on his fingers. “It’ll take Tryos at least four days to get to the Stronghold and back, even without resting. Once we reach the balloon, we’ll need time to inflate it and then two more days to fly back to Sitnalta. Once we’re up in the air, Tareah and I can summon up a good wind with the Water Stone—but the magic might not work once we pass the technological fringe.” He shook his head and sighed. “It’s going to be close, very close.”
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