by Ember Lane
“You said that Shylan was the most powerful wizard in the world, and I believe you, but you also said that ShadowDancer was waging war and stirring up Ruse. Why doesn’t Shylan just zap him?”
Once more, Greman fiddled in his seat’s cushions and withdrew his pipe. He brought out a little pouch and packed the pipe with its brown leaf. Lighting it, he puffed a couple of times before tapping the pipe’s end to his chin; a sign—I was recognizing—that he was mulling over my question.
“Are you sure your wisdom's a mere single point?” he asked, though the question was clearly rhetorical. “For that is not a question I expected. It is one that is packed full, so full of potential answers that if it were to burst; they would spread far and wide. Put quite simply, as I fear I must, it is simple numbers. Take a great, black bear ranging through the forest. It takes what it wants and kills what it will, but there are smaller animals that can kill it, some as small as spec on your fingernail—fleas can bring down a bear, if there are enough of them. Thus is the way of the world. A thousand of ShadowDancer’s warlocks could block one of Shylan’s spells; ten thousand might end him altogether. The powerful must also be the wise and work in less obvious ways.”
I nodded, for I saw his logic, but for some reason, it brought me great sadness. Whether it was the thought of the great bear falling, or the fact that evil could not just be vanquished, I did not know, but it made me quite mellow. “We’ll just have to get the ticks and fleas on our side,” I whispered.
Greman looked at me, surprise gracing his face for the tiniest of moments, and then he started nodding and smiling. “Well said,” he whispered.
Congratulations! You have shown great wisdom. It takes a lot to impress Greman Ramjook. Your wisdom has increased to 2 points. Wisdom increases mana regeneration. Learn more—gain mana faster.
“And a secret little bonus too, if you don’t mind me saying,” he continued. “Perhaps we should address that first.”
“What?” I asked.
“There are two things that you need if you are to hope to keep up. The first is a boon, a gift, and I can freely give you it. However,” and his eyes grew serious. “It is a gift not to be trifled with. I know many high-level folk who would kill for such a gift.” He closed his eyes and I felt my head go a little fuzzy.
Congratulations! You have been given the boon, Tongues of Time. Tongues of Time allows you to understand every language spoken and scribed in the Land of Barakdor, now, before, and ever after.
I gasped. It hadn’t dawned on me that there would be loads of languages, but it kind of made sense. At least I didn’t have to learn them all.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, thank you.”
But Greman raised his palm to stop me jabbering. “Essential, essential. The other, alas, I cannot give you. You must learn it yourself. You need to be able to read people and things, in order to understand their level and their makeup. You need the skill of Perception, and you can only get that by practice.”
“What must I do?” I said, my voice hushed.
Greman grunted. “Start looking at things, living things, and try to understand them. Take a frog, for instance. Look at it, study it, and see if you can see its information, its level, type, that sort of thing. Practice your running, increase your stamina, and study everything around you.” He reached forward and patted me on the knee. “That should be enough for even one as eager as you. Those will be your tasks for the day.”
After my tea, I ventured back outside. The wind had stilled, and the vale seemed peaceful, even tranquil. Looking up, I followed the skyline, truly looking around for the first time. The vale was surrounded on three sides by mountains, mostly clad in dark green conifers, apart from a fat square of mauve just above Greman’s house. Where the forest ended, the mountain’s sheer rock and snowcapped slopes and peaks took hold—the tallest by quite a margin being at the valley’s head, rising up like a great fang.
Opposite, in the direction of the see-through tower—that I was still skeptical about, even though I’d smacked straight into it—the land fell, though what was beyond the trees that edged the vale’s end, I could not see, and could only guess.
I guessed it was a rich land, carpeted with a checked blanket full of fields of bursting, yellow corn, vast-leafed green cabbages, swaying, golden hay and rolling grasslands. An idle river would curl through all: the fields, tiny hamlets, to waterfalls and deep blue lakes. That was what I imagined, and I couldn’t wait to see it.
But to the matter in hand, I had to learn to study things. I didn’t quite understand what Greman was getting at. He wanted me to see things for what they were. The problem was, I’d looked at Greman plenty, and nothing had popped up. So I just plain couldn’t see what I was looking for. I glared at the grass, but it just sat there being green. I ambled over to the stream and looked into its babbling water, but could see nothing. Confused, I scratched my head, shrugged my shoulders and put the hourglass on the rock I usually did, and set off upstream. Somewhere along the way, I sank into that strange sense where I was at one with my legs, where I was Petroo, and before I knew it, I was at the top of the vale. My energy wasn’t even blinking red. Checking its level, I saw I was still at 32/50.
“Hmmm,” I muttered. The only thing I could conclude was running—like I imagined Petroo did—not only speeded me up, but also conserved my energy, and that meant one thing. I could now set the hourglass and run there and back. I smiled to myself. Twenty grains, Greman had said, and I wondered if I could get close. I screamed back down the slope, as fast as my legs would take me, and made it with energy to spare. Drinking from the stream, I soon replenished my stamina.
As I leaned over the water, I spied a small fish lurking poolside of a swirl of rocks. I say little; it was about the size of my hand, and chubby—for a fish—chubby. It glinted silver, though its scales were mottled brown, and it had big, boiled-egg eyes, a little like Greman’s—a lot like Greman’s. I swore it was looking at me. And then it did the strangest of things, in the blink of an eye, it turned a brilliant sapphire color, then amber, and emerald, and all the way back to mottled brown. I stared hard, narrowing my eyes to squeeze out even more concentration, but nothing else happened.
Was that it? Did the fish just give me a load of clues? Did the colors mean anything? Rainbow fish, I decided, it had to be a rainbow fish. I nodded to the fish, knowing the truth of its identity, and sat back, pleased with my achievement. Standing, I stretched my arms wide, filled my lungs full of the sweet mountain air and turned the hourglass over. I shot off like an arrow fired from a mighty bow, my legs pumping, my arms thrusting back and forth. The head of the valley soon came within my sight, and I neared its emerald cloak of conifer trees at a perilous pace. Skidding to a halt, I spun around and bolted back down the vale. Grabbing the hourglass in victory, holding it up to count the grains in the bottom, I saw it was nearly two thirds full.
I nearly slammed it down in frustration. Checking my energy, I was at 14/50, so that was something—something that was improving. Then it dawned on me that though I’d mastered a new skill—getting creatures to communicate by changing colors, or whatever it was called in Barakdor—my menu hadn’t blinked or announced it. I checked my display and saw that it wasn’t there. Looking back down into the pool, I saw the fish had gone, so I shrugged my shoulders and drank some water. A glitch, I decided, must be some kind of in-game glitch. Not to worry, my new skill would drop soon—must drop soon—better damn well drop soon.
“Why have you changed your run?” a deep, booming voice rang out.
I looked around, but could see no one.
“Up here,” the voice called out again.
Downstream, where the supposed invisible tower was—floating about thirty feet in the air—was the same head I vaguely remembered from before. His long, black-and-gray hair hung down—and slowly, but surely—a neck and shoulders appeared, followed by a pair of clasped hands, and arms that vanished at his elbows. It was just like he was lean
ing out of an invisible tower’s window. Ohh, I thought.
“Hello,” I shouted back, though somewhat nervously, as I assumed the head belonged to either Shylan or Cronis.
“Wrong answer!” he bellowed, and vanished.
I sat there stunned. How could “hello” be the wrong answer to anything? I didn’t have long to wonder—as before I’d even blinked—the same man appeared in the vale, this time walking across the grass like he intended to beat me to a pulp.
“The question was,” he called, “‘why have you changed your run?’ The answer, quite plainly, isn’t ‘hello.’” He was closing the distance fairly fast, and I was debating whether to employ my apachalant run and hightail it out of there. I elected to use my charisma instead—at least that had two points.
“It was a greeting, is all.” I beamed from ear to ear. “I abandoned that run to avoid hitting your tower again. You see, I can’t see it, as I have no magic.”
He stopped dead in his tracks, and raised a finger to his lightly bearded chin. It gave me a little time to study him. As I’d already noted, his hair was long—beyond his shoulders—and about halfway down his chest. He was wearing a full-length, leather-looking coat with a large upturned collar that framed his neck. A white lace-up shirt poked through the coat and was tucked into a heavy pair of dark-blue pants, which in turn vanished into a pair of knee-length, brown boots. The man hardly looked the wizardly type, more a soldier or cattle thief—that kind of thing.
His finger snaked out and pointed at me. “Are you using your two feeble charisma points on me? On me?”
“I… I… I don’t know who you are,” I cried, crawling back a little to increase the space between us. It was like his finger was pulsing with power.
He put his hands on his hips and grunted. “Well, why don’t you read me? Read me with your perception point,” and then he raised his finger in the air. “Don’t answer. Don’t answer with another ‘hello,’ let me tell you…” And then I swear he reared up and increased in size, leaning toward me, his head closing as if his neck were extending. “You can’t read me because you haven’t got a perception point. Numbskull.” He threw his head back, laughed, and ruffled his hair.
I felt crushed, and sat, pulling my knees up to my chest, staring at the stream, searching out the pretty fish, with its changing colors, that had lied to me. My eyes watered with burst of teardrops, and I wished I was with normal folk, folk my level, people I could learn with, level up with. Then I felt a hand on my knee and realized he had sat next to me.
“Blah,” he said. “Bit harsh, but I have spent the last two hours forming an archway in my tower so you could run through without banging into it. To be truthful, I was a bit miffed when you ran the other way.” He grunted out a laugh. “You woke Cronis up, bugger is still raging, and when Cronis rages, the tower becomes incredibly small. It’s like his foul temper follows you around.”
“Like a bad smell,” I mumbled, cuffing my tears away.
“That’s it,” said the man, who I presumed was Shylan. “Cronis is like a fart, an obnoxious smell that sticks to you—exactly,” he said. He snapped his fingers and chuckled to himself.
“Are you Shylan?” I asked.
“Indeed,” he said, and pulled out a white, bone pipe, much like Greman’s. He brought out a small brass-colored box about the size of his palm and opened its lid. “A tinderbox,” he told me. He fished out a small lens, then looked up at the sky and held it over the pipe’s packed pot. “It’s a burning glass. Don’t ask me how it works—Cronis knows. I just know what to do. Things are mostly easier that way, Alexa.”
“You know my name?”
“Of course, I could read you from my tower. You were close with the fish, but the fish was too clever.”
“What do you mean?”
Shylan looked out and over the stream. He began to nod. “Exactly what I just said.”
“No, I mean, why was the fish too clever.”
He took a puff of his pipe, and shuffled around, sitting and facing me. It was then that I noticed his piercing, green eyes. They almost drilled into me. He was middle-aged, hardly the elder wizard I was expecting, but had a hint of playfulness tinged with sadness—a very strange combination of expressions.
“The fish in question was the kaban fish, a rare and precious fish. If you are ever lucky enough to catch a kaban and you get to eat it, be very careful. Its meat is very hallucinogenic, it will have you climbing the walls of Zybond, swimming with mermaids in the sea of the Ethmiall Carafore, cutlass to cutlass, fighting the pirates of Striker Bay—the kaban will take you places you could only dream about. And that is why it is hunted above all other—fished above and beyond all other.”
“But why was it too clever for me?”
Shylan sighed. “This is going to be hard work.” He took a breath. “It was too clever because you’d just about persuaded it to give up its name. It was hiding in the pool as a carp, but you looked straight through it. Just as its identity was about to be revealed, it changed color and baffled you with beauty. If you’d have ignored that, you’d already have the skill, Perception, but you didn’t, so you haven’t.”
“So it hid because it thought I’d eat it?”
“Exactly. You should have tried a frog.”
“Why?”
“Good grief, may Scholl save me.” Shylan tapped out his pipe, popped it into his coat pocket and jumped up. “Whom, Alexa, who eats frogs?” He wandered off down the vale and vanished into his tower.
I sat there for a little while, a sense of despondency filling me. Then I thought, why get all down in the dumps? Hadn’t I learned to run like apachalant did? Hadn’t I met the most powerful wizard in Barakdor? Wasn’t I in an enchanted vale, learning from the best? Heck, Shylan had even put an arch in his tower so I could run through it.
I smiled, jumped up, puffed my lungs once more and burst down the vale.
Smack! Straight into an invisible wall.
Damage: You have received 7 damage points to your health. At 3/10 you are nearly dead.
Congratulations! You ran into the same wall but sustained less damage to your health. Your vitality must be getting stronger. You are awarded 1 vitality point. Tip: Avoid running into walls. Tip: Twice.
A head appeared in the air above me. Shylan’s laughter boomed around the vale.
Name: Alexa Drey. Race: Human. Type: Chancer.
Age: 24. Alignment: None. XP: 100. Level: 2.
Profession: None. Un/Al pts: 6. Reputation: Nobody.
Health Points: 13/20 Energy: 49/50 Mana: 10/10
HP Regen: 2/Min EN Regen: 5/Min MA Regen: 2/Min
Attributes: (Level, Bonuses)
Vitality: (2, 0), Stamina: (5, 0), Intelligence: (1, 0)
Charisma: (2, 0), Wisdom: (2, 0)
Skills: (Level, % to next level, Boosts %, Level cap)
Running: (1, 21, 0, 12)
Talents:
Tongues of Time.
Quests:
Seek out the Legend of Billy Long Thumb. Status: Incomplete. Reward: Unknown.
5
A Wizard’s Tower
It was Day three; that was the way I was going to look at it. The third day I’d been in the land, and so far—for a gaming novice—I hadn’t done too bad. It was quite obvious that the wizard, Shylan, thought I was some kind of joke. I also knew that he looked out of the tower and watched me run. Day three, and I woke up determined to show him that I wasn’t just something to laugh at, to make a fool of.
Greman had made me a delicious soup the night before, and afterward, I had wanted to talk, to learn about the Land of Barakdor, but he’d merely puffed on his pipe and then dozed. The sound of his snores had lulled me to sleep soon after, and at some point, I had ambled over to my bed and slept. Like the night before, I slept a deep and dreamless sleep, but I woke up determined to push forward.
Today was all about leveling up my running and trying to get that perception skill on my board—as I’d named the stats screen
in my mind. I knew I could now make the top of the vale and back without stopping, so I wasn’t going to worry about my stamina—that would gain points throughout the day if I kept at it. No, it was skills all the way today. I grabbed the hourglass and went outside.
The other thing I was determined to do was completely ignore the lower vale. Even if he looked out of his window and floated thirty feet up in the air, I was not going to take any notice of the wizard.
Setting the hourglass down, dipping my head in the freezing cold stream, I gasped in the morning air, shook my hair out and started running. I immediately felt the surge of the running skill—the way my feet pumped, my arms drove forward and back, and rather than a chore, rather than toil, it was exhilarating—it was everything. One moment, I was at the top of the vale, the next, I was checking the hourglass.
Each time it was still half full, but I took a drink of water while the sand ran through, turned it back over and carried on. Up, down, up and down I went, and at some point I gained another stamina point, but took little pleasure in it as all my attention was focused on my running progress percent. Each half length of the vale gave me one percent progress, or there abouts. I ran ten circuits and got to forty one percent. That brought out a smile in me, and I decided it was time for a rest.
It was odd that I wasn’t actually tired. Every time I did a circuit, I replenished my energy and felt completely rejuvenated. I wondered if it were a quirk of the game, that muscles couldn’t truly be tired, but berated myself that thought. I had to forget it was a game, forget everything but the way it had to be played. Now where was that fish?