Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (39 page)

Tryos sat back, his mouth full of treasure in the dark and humid chamber. He grunted, trying to call to Delrael and Bryl. He sniffed but found the human scent was cold. He plodded deeper into the cavern
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the scent of the men disappeared into the narrow tunnel leading up and out of the mountain.

Then he looked frantically around: one of his treasures was missing, the daughter of Sardun, the last remaining Sorcerer woman
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more valuable than any of his baubles. Tryos let out a roar of rage and betrayal, spraying the gold jammed into his vast mouth in a molten starburst on the grotto walls.

"Tricked! Tricked!" the dragon roared. In his fury he intentionally set fire to one of the stolen Sorcerer tapestries. He forgot how Delrael and Bryl had led him to Rognoth, he forgot how they had shown him a vast new land. The only thing that mattered was their trickery.

Tryos surged out of the grotto and into the night sky. He wheeled around to the opposite side of the cone, picturing in his mind how he would make the two men writhe as he crisped them with his fire.

Delrael, Bryl, and Tareah traveled two hexes by night fall, when the Rules forced them to stop. They had skirted lava rubble and crossed a hex-line that separated the perimeter of the volcano from the surrounding grassy-hill terrain.

Delrael stayed close beside Tareah as they traveled, seeing to her safety. The wind whipped in his face, fluttering Tareah's long hair in front of his eyes. Delrael carried his old Sorcerer sword again and his hunting bow, neither of which would help at all against Tryos.

"My bones hurt." Tareah rubbed her arms and elbows. "I think I'm growing too fast. I don't know why."

On the top of a tall rise they stopped to rest. They had crossed a hex of grassy hills and waited on the black edge of thick forest terrain. In half an hour or so it would be midnight, and they could push on for another day's allotment of distance. Delrael turned back to see the outline of the stark volcano etched in the haze from its inner lake of fire. Then his mouth went dry as a winged and monstrous form flew up against the fiery glow. He heard a distant outraged cry.

"Bryl! Look!" he said.

Tareah fell silent, rigid with her own fear. "Now he's come back for us." The dragon came after them, blasting the countryside with his flames.

Bright orange pinpoints of fire made him appear distant, but Tryos flew at them fast.

"We have to get out of here!" Bryl turned around in panic.

"We can't go into the next hex until midnight," Delrael said, standing in a fighting stance but feeling helpless.

Tareah kept her despair in check, making Delrael proud of her. "You won't have another chance to talk with him. You tricked him, and he'll want to blast you to ashes. He'll be more intent on destroying you than he'll be on keeping me from harm."

"I'll protect you," Delrael vowed quietly. "I just wish I knew why he came back so soon."

They searched for a place to hide, a place they could defend ... although they had nothing to fight with. Tryos moved erratically across the sky, searching. Delrael felt alone and exposed on the clear grassy hills.

"Is it midnight yet?" Delrael stared up at the stars. Bryl stood at the black hex-line, pushing against it
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but he could not force his feet to move.

In the distance they heard Tryos roar again. An orange tongue of flame flicked out to destroy a few lone trees.

"What are we going to do?" Tareah asked. "Have you planned for this?"

Delrael just put a hand on her shoulder. He looked at his hands, at his sword and bow.

Bryl shouted. "Now
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now we can go!" He danced on the other side of the hex-line. "Hurry!"

They ran into the dense forest. The black shadow of Tryos had come much closer.

"We can't outrun him. We'd better look for a place to hide."

They found an area with a few skewed blocks of stone surrounded by thick trees. They crouched under a smooth overhang of rock. Bryl held his two Stones with sweaty hands, whispering to the gems as if praying.

"Are the Stones going to help?" Delrael asked.

"Not likely." He sighed.

"The Water Stone belonged to my father," Tareah said. "He used it to try and save me." Tareah closed her eyes and mumbled a lesson her father had told her many times. "But the old Sorcerers created dragons to resist magic, so that they could attack and leave the enemy helpless."

Bryl stared at her, thinking. His eyes were red and watery. "It makes the most sense for me to keep the Stones
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if I hold both, then I get a spell bonus. After I've used up my five spells, then I'll give you both Stones and you get the same bonus
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that way we'll have ten spells between us instead of eight. It's a loophole in the Rules."

"My father let me use the Water Stone." Tareah did not take her eyes from the blue facets of the six-sided sapphire. "Once."

Her answer did not much comfort Delrael.

After only a few minutes of hushed waiting, they heard the coming of the dragon. Tryos rained fire down on indiscriminate patches of the forest as he bellowed roars of rage and challenge.

Bryl rolled the Air Stone on the ground and closed his eyes. "There, we're invisible now," he whispered. "Tryos will be able to see through the illusion if he makes the effort and if he knows where to look. But he might pass us by and never know it."

The wings sounded like the heartbeat of an immense giant, pounding the air. Tryos skimmed over the ground, sharpening his anger against the human characters who had tricked him and stolen his treasure.

Delrael held Tareah, staring up at the night sky in utter silence, too frightened to breathe. Tryos casually belched out a river of fire near them, then flew on into the darkness.

"He passed us by!" Delrael said.

"Maybe..." Bryl whispered.

A moment later, when the dragon realized he had lost their scent, he bellowed and wheeled around, backtracking. They heard him returning seconds before he soared back into view.

"Now we're doomed for sure," Bryl said. He stared at the blue Stone and the white Stone in his hands.

Tryos backflapped his wings, thundering the air. He hissed at the three crouched under the shelter of the overhang. "Now I sssee you! You tricked me!

Ssstole my treasure!"

Bryl winced and tossed the Water Stone at his feet. He rolled a "2".

The dragon let loose a missile of fire.

The half-Sorcerer used the spell to hurl up a wall of water as a shield, feeding it with his own powers. Steam boiled from the surface of the water wall. The dragon flame struck, spattered outward, and continued to bombard the shield.

Bryl's protection held until Tryos stopped his assault to draw another breath. The half-Sorcerer sank to his knees. "If I miss a single roll, we're dead."

Another gout of dragon fire struck at them, and Bryl barely had time to roll again and get the water wall up before the flames could incinerate them.

A puff of super heated air squeezed in, and Delrael felt his eyebrows singe.

The water wall strengthened, but Bryl looked drained when the dragon finally backed off again.

"I've only got two more spells left
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then it's all up to Tareah." He panted with exhaustion. "I don't know if Tryos has any limitations with his fire."

"Then it's time for us to take the offensive," Tareah said. She looked at Delrael and raised her eyebrows. Her color was returning, and vigor had appeared behind her eyes, a quick-thinking intelligence forced upon her now that she had to fight. She had studied so many battles, so many legends. Now she could put it into practice. She plucked the Water Stone from Bryl's hand and stepped out from the overhang of rock.

The dragon reared back, recognizing his treasure. Delrael wanted to yank her back into the shelter, afraid the dragon might blast her for coming between him and his intended victims. But Tareah did not wait long enough for the dragon to overcome his own surprise. She held the sapphire Water Stone in front of her like an elemental talisman, then she rolled a "6".

She looked like a powerful Sorcerer queen of ancient days, swelled with magic. Balls of blue static danced in her hair as she summoned the Sorcery her forefathers had left inside the gem.

Tareah called forth a storm, blasting Tryos with gale winds, buffeting his wings and bending them back so that they almost snapped like firewood. The dragon roared, and the force whipped at his sinewy neck, twisting shut his windpipe. He tried to blast fire, but the flames came back in his face.

Outraged words were torn from his mouth.

Tareah summoned lightning bolts to skitter over the dragon's scaled hide, leaving blackened intaglios on his armor. Tryos strained his wings and made a small headway against the hurricane winds. Sardun's daughter exhausted her reserves of strength. She had been sustaining herself with magic for too long. The storm started to weaken.

Delrael stepped out of the rock shelter and shot three arrows at the dragon, but they proved useless against the reptilian armor.

"Bryl, what about the Air Stone?" he said.

The half-Sorcerer shouted over the howling winds. "What can I do? Tryos will see through any illusion I can make to hide us. Wait!"

Just as Tareah dropped her storm and collapsed, Delrael caught her. He pulled her back to the rock outcropping. Bryl snatched up the sapphire Stone from the ground.

Tryos hovered in the air, stunned at the ferocity of her attack, but then he surged forward with renewed anger.

Suddenly, an illusion Rognoth appeared in the air
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fat, with stubby wings, flying clumsily but looking terrified of his vengeful brother. Rognoth spurted past Tryos's face, and the large dragon's eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. "Rognos! You, too!"

Rognoth flapped his little wings and buzzed away. The larger dragon plunged after him, forgetting his other victims.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here!" Bryl said.

Tareah seemed groggy and drained from summoning the storm, but she soon regained her strength. Delrael looked at the rock overhang sheltering them. It was bubbly and molten from the dragon fire.

They ran as fast as they could into the forest.

Above them, the sky looked bruised and clotted, choked with the smoke and steam and fragments of Tareah's storm. Bryl left the weather to repair itself and focused on the ground around them. Taking back the Water Stone, Bryl drew a deep breath and rolled again. "This is my last spell for another full day."

"Luck, Bryl," Delrael said.

Thick fog swirled up from the forest floor, seeping out of the earth and blanketing them from view. The vapors rose upward, dank and foul. "Now he can't see us, or follow our scent."

Tareah no longer needed to lean on Delrael's side, but she remained close to him anyway. Her face was ruddy from excitement, fear, and exertion.

"The illusion of Rognoth won't fool him for long. He'll see through it once he starts to think."

Above them they could hear the dragon as he returned for the kill. "Not real Rognos!" Tryos said. "Another trick! Tricksss! Kill you for tricksss!"

Delrael could not see the dragon overhead through the fog. Tryos would be looking down on a cottony bank of mist, a real mist created by the Water Stone, not an illusion.

But the dragon would find them again before long. Tryos jetted flame on the mist, leaving a burning and blasted landscape behind him. He methodically swept over sections of the fog, spewing fire on the mist, searching for them.

Exhausted, scraped, and bruised, Vailret and Paenar pulled themselves to the towering lip of the volcanic cone. Paenar slipped the knotted rope from his shoulders, and they balanced the battered Dragon Siren on the rough ground.

The top of the volcano commanded an incredible view of the entire island. Starlight reflected off the hexes of seawater that hid the wreckage of the
Nautilus
. Volcanic debris lay all around them where lava had oozed out centuries ago, hardening and crumbling into hexagons of desolate terrain.

Tendrils of smoke curled up from the simmering lake of fire; splashes of orange light danced around the interior of the cone, illuminating the opposite rim.

Paenar stood up, scanning the distance. A brisk wind blew the smoke away from his face. "I see a disturbance over there." He pointed toward the central forests of the island, and then sighed in annoyance. "My sight is gone again. Please look and see. Maybe it was only a mirage through the oils." His voice was flat and clipped, but quivering with anticipation.

Vailret withdrew the small optick-tube he had taken from the
Nautilus's
equipment bunker and turned the magnifying lens to sight on the distant flashes of fire. The telescope still baffled him, but he quelled his dizzy sensations and lined up his field of view. Tryos sprang in front of his eyes, blasting flames.

He cried out in surprise. "Tryos is attacking someone
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I think it's Del and Bryl! I can't make out the details."