Without the influence of the magic, the prevailing breeze had picked up again, stronger now, pushing the fire toward them.
Bryl let his voice drop to a whisper. He held the Water Stone in his grimy hands, but it was just a colored rock to him now. "I can't do anything else. I'm helpless until tomorrow."
"Now it's our turn." Vailret indicated the other khelebar he had brought with him. "The less thick-headed among them have decided the situation is desperate enough. They're willing to try something else."
Bryl saw the other khelebar carrying oar-shaped shovels made from dead branches to beat at the flames and dig at the earth. Ydaim went forward to take one of the shovels. "Noldir Woodcarver shaped these?"
Vailret pulled off his tunic, baring his chest. He looked thin and not strong enough to fight against the fire, but he shook his head, making sweat fly from his hair. "You should have seen him ¯ using his palms to slap off slices of wood from the ends, like it was butter."
Bryl hauled himself to his feet. His old bones creaked with weariness.
Ydaim Trailwalker looked at him, then at the others and at the shovel in his hand. Bryl waved in dismissal. "I'll find my own way back to Delrael."
"We have to keep working," Vailret said. "Thilane wouldn't let Del come and help."
The khelebar seemed terrified of the fire, but their fear for the trees outweighed it. They beat at the flames on the forest floor, attacking an enemy.
Before Bryl stumbled off into the forest toward the council clearing, Vailret stopped him. The young man lowered his voice and placed a hand on Bryl's shoulder. With a nod of his head, he indicated the approaching flames.
"You know this won't do any good, don't you?"
Bryl shuddered. He had hoped he was wrong, but he had seen through the Water Stone how good a grip the fire had on the heart of Ledaygen. If the Stone could not extinguish the blaze, wooden shovels would not.
"I know. This is all going to be one black hex."
Vailret took his shovel anyway and went toward the edge of the fire with a show of enthusiasm. "I have to get to work."
They labored through the morning, exhausted, until they had depleted even their adrenaline. The fire, gaining strength, pushed them steadily back.
Vailret could barely lift his shovel to beat down against smoldering leaves, to dig trenches that the fire leaped across. Dirt and sweat and soot trickled down his raw skin. A dozen glistening welts scored his back from flying coals. His soaked blond hair hung in ropy tangles, powdered with ash.
At noon he saw the despair reach its peak. Gorak Foodgatherer, a slim, sunken-eyed khelebar who had worked closely beside Vailret, paused and stared at the flames. Without warning, he shouted and hurled his blackened shovel deep into the burning forest. Clamping his hands against his ears and temples, he screamed and ran into the blazing mass of trees, plunging through showers of hot coals. He moved like a demon, severing burning trees from their roots with his bare hands, knocking them down with his shoulder. His fur smoldered and caught fire, but he ran faster, lopping at trees and putting them out of their misery.
The other khelebar watched. No one attempted to stop him.
"We can all hear the death screams of the trees," Ydaim Trailwalker said. "It haunts us from within."
Gorak Foodgatherer burst into flame, but still he stumbled and knocked down two more doomed trees, positioning himself so the flaming hulk of one oak mercifully fell on top of him.
The khelebar stood in grim silence for a moment, then drowned themselves in work again. Vailret stared in horror, feeling his heart pound.
Ydaim turned to him, listless. "What else can we do?"
Fiolin Tribeleader scratched another line across the hexagonal map in the dirt, leaving less than a quarter of Ledaygen unburned. The fire had looped along the boundary lines, cutting the khelebar off with flames to their faces and the cliff to their backs.
Shaking with exhaustion, Vailret collapsed next to Delrael in the clearing. He glared at Fiolin. "We could have escaped before. You knew we were getting walled in by the fire ¯ is it going to make us martyrs to your dayid?"
The Tribeleader refused to answer.
Helpless and disgusted, Vailret drew a deep breath of the oppressive air. He coughed, and the inside of his nose and throat burned.
The khelebar heard the roar and snap of burning trees. Their terror and helplessness grew, but they could find no outlet for it. Many congregated under the sweeping boughs of Thessar, the ancient Father Pine. They beseeched their dayid for help. Vailret shook his head in sadness.
Bryl cracked his knuckles incessantly, as if trying to loosen the cramps caused by clutching the Water Stone for so many hours. Delrael sat, looking helpless and dismayed, unable to do anything.
Ydaim's black braids had long since come undone. He had lost his pine cone pendant somewhere in the fire. Other khelebar wandered back into the clearing, looking broken ¯ sweat had plastered soot to their bodies, and their emerald eyes were glazed with the knowledge of their deaths and the death of Ledaygen.
"I don't suppose you can do anything else with the Water Stone?"
Vailret asked Bryl, but did not take his eyes from the flames he saw moving between the trees, coming nearer. He blinked, trying to make his vision clear.
The half-Sorcerer stared at the palms of his hands. "I've already used up my spell allotment for today. And even with that I couldn't stop the fire.
If I do anything else before midnight, it would be breaking the Rules. When Sardun did that, he paralyzed almost his entire body ... and he's much more powerful than I am." Bryl stared at the sky, then at his hands again. "I failed, too. This must be how my parents felt when your great-great grandfather Jarriel died of the tumor sickness."
He shook his head, and Vailret listened to his words.
"They had tried to save him for nearly a year, but Jarriel wasted away and died. I was very young then, but I remember them working, discussing what they should try next. But they failed, and when Jarriel's wife Galleri married a new husband, Brudane ¯ oh, he was a rough man ¯ they talked as if my mother and father had poisoned Jarriel.
"When my parents learned that, they wallowed in shame at their failure, and went through the half-Transition, disintegrating in flames brighter than any of these ¯ " he waved at the forest, "Right in front of my eyes. They didn't apologize or even say good-bye. I was ten years old, I think.
"How could they not expect their action to make them appear even more guilty? And they left me to grow up under that shadow. Among people who did not know how to train me or what to expect of my powers ¯ "
Bryl stopped talking, then shook his head. "It is useless to dwell in the past. Drodanis wasted years doing that, before he went off on his quest to find the Rulewoman Melanie." He brushed at his knees under the soot-smeared blue cloak.
The wind picked up and skimmed over the forest. Smoke rippled across the clearing, stinging Vailret's eyes. Oddly, he felt no tears there.
Swinging his kennok leg along with him, Delrael walked awkwardly to the edge of the hex-discontinuity and gazed over the cliff. Vailret joined him, and he stared down at the bottom of the mountainous hexagon far below. He squinted, but the details were even more blurred than usual with the smoke making his eyes raw. He saw no ledge, no narrow trail they could use for escape.
The fire glared brighter between the trees now, sweeping toward them, a hungry monster ravenous for a last morsel. The heat increased until the air was thick with it. They had nothing to do but wait.
The fire rushed along the scattered dry leaves. The khelebar stood in grim positions, muttering to the dayid for salvation. But the dayid had fallen silent even to them.
"There's extreme risk in doing this ¯ " Bryl trembled as he hefted the Water Stone in front of him. He stood up, trying to be steady. "But if we're going to die anyway ¯ "
"Luck," Vailret said with all the sincerity he could muster.
"Luck," Delrael added.
The hal
f-Sorcerer closed his eyes and rolled the sapphire. The Stone came to rest with "1" staring upward and rolled no farther. The dayid had ceased to offer its help.
Bryl let out a cry as if struck by a blow. Eyes closed, he dropped to the trampled ground and lay motionless. His fingers convulsed, clutching the Water Stone. He still breathed. But the fire approached, and Vailret decided it might be better not to wake him.
The khelebar made no sound as the nearest flames skittered across the treetops to land on Thessar, the Father Pine, the last tree. Orange curtains of heat lapped at Thessar's green needles and the dry, flaking bark oozing with sweet pitch. The air filled with the stench of smoldering evergreen ¯
Thessar seemed to sigh as the heat made sap boil and hiss.
The Father Pine ignited in an instant, exploding into a pillar of brilliance, burning, burning. Some of the khelebar sang their keening wail, but most stood in defeated silence.
Thessar groaned, weakened by the fire as flames weighed down its branches. The ancient pine toppled forward to crash with a horrible noise to the grassy clearing. From Thessar's boughs, the fire rushed into the grass and slithered toward the khelebar like a gigantic serpent.
Vailret swallowed hard, silent in his own awe. He took a step sideways to be closer to Delrael. His cousin stood white-lipped and staring with clenched fists.
Like a sharp hook had yanked at him, he felt his insides wrenched with pain. An instant of nausea replaced itself with utter despair and total emptiness. His head spun, and he could not understand until he heard the cries of the khelebar.
"The dayid has fled Ledaygen! We are forsaken!"
Some of the khelebar screamed. Vailret lifted his heavy gaze and watched in horror as five of them ran to the edge of the hex-discontinuity and cast themselves over the cliff.
The young Tayron Next-Leader turned red with disgust and pain. He shouted at others moving to the edge of the cliff, "Are you ashamed to die on the soil of Ledaygen? I will stand here as bravely as the trees and resist the fire until it consumes me!"
Delrael snatched up one of the ash-blackened shovels. "Come on, Vailret!" He lurched toward the edge of the fire, furious to do something.
"All of you ¯ we can use the shovels to beat out the fire on the grass as it comes toward us!"
Vailret ran with his cousin and began banging at the creeping flames, though his sore arms felt as if they had been skewered with knives.
"What does it matter?" Fiolin turned to him. "Ledaygen is dead. The dayid has left us."
"Damn Ledaygen!" Delrael shouted back. "I'm talking about us!"
But the khelebar refused to move. Reluctant and apathetic, Ydaim Trailwalker offered some help. They stood, insignificant against the towering flames.
"What about Bryl?" Vailret asked, turning to look at the fallen half-Sorcerer. He stared and the words crumbled in his mouth.
Bryl hauled himself to his knees. His eyes were glassy. He could not focus, but he seemed to be seeing through a million different minds. Power surged from Ledaygen into the Water Stone and ricocheted into his mind. His consciousness expanded outward as if to encompass the whole map of Gamearth in one glance.
He felt like a giant with his new power, towering over the council clearing. His small body shimmered with strength, and the milling panicked khelebar below seemed to be mere specks in the grass. When he saw the smoldering wreckage of his entire forest, he felt anger tighten around him.
In the back of his mind, Bryl felt the magnitude of power that Sardun had used to create the Barrier River. He grew afraid.
The grass in the clearing burned rapidly, and the already dead trees in the forest fell into festering ash as the wave of heat sterilized the soil of Ledaygen. He saw Delrael and Vailret both turn to stare at him in awe ¯ but Bryl ignored all that. He dimly noticed the other khelebar pointing at him, shouting: Their voices seemed so tiny over the roar of the fire and the echoes of his strange strength.
He found it exhilarating.
"The dayid! The dayid has fled to Bryl Traveler!"
Bryl allowed himself only an instant to taste the churning voices of the hundreds of Sentinels whose spirits had collected together to form the dayid: all the tragedy and despair that had caused them to remain behind from the original Transition, the years of waiting through the violent Scouring as Gamearth fought with itself. He felt the grief that had finally driven them to undertake their own partial Transitions that liberated their spirits and sent them here.
The fire swept toward the khelebar, ready to destroy them as it had ruined Ledaygen. Bryl let the thunderous magic pound in his temples and behind his eyes. He knew that the dayid could not allow the khelebar to be destroyed, even if it meant casting the Rules to the wind. The dayid seemed willing to take whatever consequences would come.
Bryl clutched the Water Stone in his hand, shouting in a booming voice.
He wondered if the sapphire cube might shatter from the force of his desperate anger.
"Water of the earth, I summon you!" Rippling with waves of energy from the dayid, he sent a thought through the Stone."Save my khelebar! All water, come to the aid of Ledaygen. Come!"
The Water Stone bucked and writhed with the command. The soil beneath Bryl's feet became laden with water he summoned from the deep underground springs. Black thunderclouds gorged the sky above, dumping their contents in a heavy downpour.
Water built up in the center of the council clearing, pushing below the turf. A huge geyser of sparkling cold water blasted a pillar of white froth into the air.
Bryl laughed. Power continued to pour from the Water Stone.
The water erupted higher, beginning to whirl, rotating faster until it skipped away from the ground in a tremendous waterspout. The spout veered away from the cliff and plunged into the still-burning forest, spraying water onto the blazing trees, extinguishing the fire without damaging the tree hulks.
More cold water spilled upward from beneath baked rocks, splitting them. Smaller geysers spewed forth, detaching themselves to become cyclones that careened through the smoldering wreckage of Ledaygen until the fire had been vanquished.
The hiss of vanishing steam lingered in the air.
The glowing Water Stone slipped from Bryl's fingers as he collapsed to the sodden ground. He tried to hold onto the power, but the dissembling spirits fled like the smoke in Ledaygen.
The dayid left him, and died.
* 8 *
War Games
"We can defeat the Game if we can succeed in not fighting. The Outsiders must see that we will not Play along. Their amusements do not amuse us."
¯ Jorig Falselimb of the khelebar
Fiolin Tribeleader clenched his hand, and the charred wood crumbled to ash. He stared at his fingers in numb helplessness ¯ the black dust had once been a living, vibrant tree. He gazed with reddened eyes at the desolation of Ledaygen, at the black hulks that were the corpses of trees. Steam rose from the ruins of the fire. "It's ... all ... gone."
Vailret dipped his shirt in a puddle of cool water. He bent over Bryl and mopped the unconscious man's face. The half-Sorcerer looked as drained as Sardun had after creating the Barrier River.
Delrael bent his kennok limb and sat down beside Vailret. He watched Fiolin and the other khelebar until he finally spoke out loud.
"We're still alive, Fiolin. You can help the trees grow again. Birds will come. You can plant flowers. In time, Ledaygen will be what it was before."
"Ledaygen can never be what it was!" Tayron Next Leader said. The rest of the khelebar took no interest in the subject but stood around like character figurines.
Fiolin heaved a sigh and forced himself to look at Delrael and Vailret.
"Ledaygen is dead. The dayid is dead. Could you not feel it? Why should the rest of us live? Perhaps I made the wrong decision. Perhaps we should not have fought at all." He stared up at the skies and shouted to the Outsiders. "What value is life now? Why don't you change the Rules?"
Tayron Next-Leade
r glowered at his father, surprising Vailret. "I will not forsake my hope until I have seen that not one tree still stands in Ledaygen. If my heart can bear it, I will scout every inch of this forest."
Ydaim Trailwalker squared his shoulders. "I will be proud to help you look for life in our ashes, Next-Leader. If a single acorn or pine cone remains unharmed, we will find it."
Some of the khelebar cheered, but most just stared as the two galloped off into the ashen wasteland.
When Bryl dragged himself back to consciousness, he blinked up at Vailret in astonishment, then stared into the sky. "We're still alive." He glanced at his hands, then at the Water Stone. "I remember touching the Stone, and I remember feeling ... it was the dayid. Ah." His body shook from jolted nerves, but he said nothing more, though Vailret was anxious to hear.
Much later, Tayron and Ydaim returned, coated with a thin dusting of ash stirred up by their paws. Fiolin's son blew hard to catch his breath, but he kept his green eyes lowered. The rest of the khelebar stood, fragile and waiting to hear something that would restore their faith. Fiolin padded forward. "What have you found?"
"Five trees still live." The optimistic tone in Ydaim's voice sounded artificial.
"But they will soon die. They have given up their lives," Tayron said.
"But ... but at the edge of the forest, where the fire seems to have started, we found something else ¯ "
Fiolin Tribeleader turned away as if he did not want to hear. Ydaim reached forward to grip Fiolin's bare shoulders, forcing him to face his son.
"We found the cause of the fire. We found footprints, we found sign.
There is no doubt ¯ the Cyclops has done this to our Ledaygen!" Tayron's green eyes blazed as he glared at the khelebar, then at the burned forest.
The khelebar muttered among themselves. "Didn't I tell you?" Vailret said, but he did not want to make an issue of it.
"Father, the Cyclops has burned our forest, murdered the dayid!"
The Tribeleader's expression maintained its mask of duty. He looked at his surviving people, saw the restless anger simmering within them.
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