5. Journeyman
“Rule #3: Questing characters may join with any other characters they encounter. Note, though, that the alignment of such newfound companions might not be clear. All characters have their own quests, their own preferred outcome to an adventure.”
—The Book of Rules
Journeyman clapped his clay hands together and stretched his face in a grin. “Well, are we off to see the Wizard?”
Bryl looked at the perplexed expressions on the faces of Vailret and Delrael, relieved to see their skepticism. It was a nice switch, since they usually trusted everything without a thought of caution. Bryl shook his head and scratched at his thinning gray beard. After seeing some of the things Delrael did on impulse, Bryl was surprised the fighter had lived as long as he had.
“Wizard?” Delrael said, “We’re going to find Scartaris, not just some magic user.”
“Merely a figure of speech.” Journeyman strode off into the forest terrain ahead of Delrael and Vailret. Bryl wrung some water out of his blue cloak, sighed, and followed them. The forest grew denser, but the quest-path marking their way shone plain on the ground. The sounds of the Barrier River faded, leaving them in the forest by themselves.
“Why do you always say such strange things, Journeyman?” Vailret asked.
“I don’t know nothin’. I just work here.” the golem said.
“Yeah, like that.”
“Well, I was created by the Rulewoman Melanie, so I have some … connection with the Outside. I can see some of the things she sees, know some of the phrases she knows.”
Bryl scowled in exasperation at Vailret and Delrael. They acted as if they believed what the golem said, just on the basis of his own word. When Scartaris was out to destroy the world, how could they trust anything? How could great questers be so naive? If the Outsiders wanted to eliminate their own world, who could trust any other character? Bryl huffed and came up close behind them, looking sidelong at the golem but speaking to Delrael.
“How do we know he’s from the Rulewoman? The Outsider David might have sent him to kill us while we sleep.”
Delrael frowned as if the thought had never occurred to him. Vailret scratched his blond hair and nodded. “He’s got a point, Del.”
Bryl sighed, relieved that they had conceded that much.
Journeyman spread out his hands and splayed his fingers even wider. “Cross my heart and hope to die?” When that didn’t appear to be good enough, the golem drew himself up, swelling his chest and stretching the pliable clay to make his shoulders broader.
“The Rulewoman Melanie commanded me to destroy Scartaris. That is my quest and that must take priority. I would rather join forces, offer my services, and accompany you—but if you don’t trust me, I’ll go alone.”
He tilted his head forward on a rubbery neck. “Delrael, I know your father Drodanis. And I’ve seen Lellyn, Bryl’s apprentice. They both reached the Rulewoman and her Pool.”
Delrael snapped his head up, blinking. Bryl saw a haunted look in the fighter’s brown eyes.
Journeyman nodded. “Your father is well, though he is in a daze most of the time. Drodanis wants to forget. He wants to be without pain, without memories. He wants to stop playing. And on Gamearth when a character wishes to give up the Game, there is nothing left of him.”
Delrael reached out to snap a twig from a branch. His knuckles were white, but he made no comment. Vailret put a hand on the shoulder of his cousin’s armor.
“What about Lellyn?” Bryl asked. The boy had been rather likeable, although an affront to his teacher. A pureblooded human who somehow, through the Rules of Probability, was able to work more magic than Bryl himself could. The boy worked spells intuitively, wielded greater power than his teacher, but Bryl had still taught the boy what little he could, before Drodanis took him along on his quest.
“Lellyn is a rulebreaker in many ways,: Journeyman continued. “He was nearly destroyed by his own doubts. The Rulewoman froze him in a block of forever-ice, sink to the bottom of her Pool, for his own protection.”
“Why would she do that?” Bryl said.
Journeyman tilted his head up again and moved a branch out of the way as they began to walk again. The branch gouged tracks into the soft clay of his arm. Absently, he smoothed his skin back into place.
“None of us is real. We are made-up characters created for the Outsiders’ amusement. You know that. We all know that. But the Rulewoman herself is a manifestation of one of the Outsiders. She is so beautiful, with her long brown hair and her big eyes filled with all the colors of mother-of-pearl. She moves with such grace and power.…” Journeyman paused, as if daydreaming.
“And when Lellyn saw her, maybe he saw more than he should. Somehow in his mind he knew that she was real and he was not. That doubt grew and grew until, when he completely disbelieved in his own existence, he would have vanished, winked out, annihilated. Reality is a powerful thing, too much for anything on this world to handle.
“In the last instant the Rulewoman froze him to save him from his own doubts. He is still here, but he is not here.”
As Journeyman spoke, Bryl remembered the ruined ship that had carried the Outsiders David and Tyrone into the Spectre Mountains near Sitnalta. That was how the Outsiders had brought Scartaris into the world. He also remembered the Scavenger, Paenar, who had come to the deserted fortress looking for treasure, and found instead the Outsiders. He had taken a brief glimpse of the Outsiders in their real forms, and the sight had blasted his eyes from their sockets. Yes, reality was a powerful thing.
Grudgingly, Bryl decided not to push the argument. They trudged on, crossing a hex-line into another section of forest terrain by mid-afternoon. Journeyman snapped his fingers and sang something about being “king of the road.”
Vailret’s eyes gleamed wide with delight. “Journeyman, tell us something about the Outside, since you can see parts of it. What’s it like?”
The golem grinned his huge smile again, puckering flexible lips. “More wonders than you can imagine! Good to the last drop and squeezably soft! Refrigerators that make their own ice cubes, fabric softener that goes into the dryer, microwave ovens, trash bags with handle-ties built right in!”
Most of the words made no sense to Bryl—which was to be expected, since the Outside was such an alien place.
“But the games they have! No wonder they’ve grown bored of Gamearth. They have interactive computer games, role-playing simulators, and video games that hook up to your own television set. And Trivial Pursuit—did you know that King Kong was Adolph Hitler’s favorite movie?” The golem lowered his voice to an awed whisper. “And they have a great Sorcerer named Rubik, who created a colorful enchanted cube that can either enlighten Players or drive them insane!”
Vailret frowned. “You lost me on most of what you just said. That song you were singing a while ago, was that an Outside song?”
Journeyman clapped his hands again with a wet, soft splat. “I’ll bet you I can name that tune in … three notes!”
Then he sang a long ballad about a man named Brady with three sons, who met a lovely lady with three daughters, and how they overcame their difficulties and became a single family unit. Journeyman then sang a sea adventure of how five passengers had set sail for a three-hour tour, but a storm shipwrecked them on a deserted shore. Over time they had formed the kingdom of Gilligan’s Island.
Vailret grinned. “When we get back to the Stronghold, please make sure I write those down.”
“What you mean ‘we,’ paleface?” The golem became serious. “I don’t expect to return. My quest doesn’t leave much room for that.”
Before Journeyman could say anything else, a high-pitched whine grew in the air. Delrael stopped and put his hand on his silver belt. His face appeared puzzled, then frightened. The piercing sound drifted louder and stronger until it hurt Bryl’s ears. It seemed to be coming from the silver itself, where the Earthspirits had hidden themselves.
Delrael grabbed at the catch of the belt and yanked it from his waist. The belt vibrated and bucked in his hands like an angry snake, still sending out its shrieking noise. Blue and white sparks skittered along the surfaces of the gems. Delrael dropped the belt to the forest floor. The noise suddenly ceased, and the rush of silence struck them like a whip cracking. The silver belt lay still among the twigs and curling leaves, shining in the forest shadows.
Delrael gawked at his belt in utter shock. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Vailret squinted down, but he offered no explanations.
Journeyman seemed unduly confused, astonished. “What was that? Which way did he go?” The clay eyelids in front of his hollow eyes blinked and blinked.
Delrael flicked his gaze at Vailret, then at Bryl. They couldn’t even talk about it. They couldn’t say anything about the Earthspirits, especially not in front of Journeyman. Delrael could not try to communicate with the Spirits either. The Rulewoman could be watching, and so would the other Outsiders. They had to maintain absolute secrecy about their quest.
But what if something had gone wrong? Was it a signal of some kind, a calling—or did they just hear the death scream of the Earthspirits? Perhaps Scartaris had somehow destroyed the Spirits, and when the companions got to the end of their quest, they might find themselves helpless after all. Bryl tried not to think of such things, but terrible possibilities floated in the back of his mind.
Delrael swallowed and picked up the belt, fastening it with trembling fingers. “Hmmm.” He shrugged, feigning a casual attitude. “Well, it’s stopped—we shouldn’t waste any more time here. We’ve got lots of hexes to travel.”
The day passed, and as darkness fell they reached the edge of their third hexagon for the day. The Rules forbade them to go farther, so they camped beside the black line. Another hexagon of forest terrain waited for them on the other side.
Vailret and Delrael talked with Journeyman. Bryl wondered and worried, trying not to think of what lay ahead or about the implications of the Earthspirits’ scream from the belt.
Journeyman scratched lines on the dirt and taught Delrael and Vailret an Outside game called Tic-Tac-Toe. Bryl always felt left out. Sometimes it made him angry; other times it just depressed him.
He recalled his parents—his father Qonnar, a full-blooded Sorcerer, and his mother Tristane, a half-breed. They had used their magic to try to save Delrael’s ailing great-great grandfather—but he had died anyway of a wasting disease. His widow, Galleri, then married a rough and close-minded human fighter named Brudane. Brudane started rumors that perhaps Bryl’s parents had actually poisoned the old man and not tried to help him.
Qonnar and Tristane grieved deeply for the old man’s death. They felt they had not done enough to save him, and they did little to fight the accusations, which made the rumors grow. Finally, in their guilt and despair, Bryl’s parents underwent the half-Transition on their own, annihilating themselves in sorcerous fire and liberating their spirits to wander the map.
Bryl had been a mere boy then, but he watched in horror. His mother and father did not even say good-bye; they gave him no advice, they ignored him. In the last instant before the blinding light consumed her, Tristane met her son’s eyes—but Bryl saw no recognition there. He was not even part of their lives. Their misery was all-important to them. They didn’t bother to consider what it would be like for Bryl to grow up alone under the shadow of their implied guilt.
At any time it might have been better for Bryl if he had wandered, gone to a different village where they did not know his past or his confused conscience. But he was afraid to leave. Some of the young villagers around the Stronghold taunted him. All characters around him were human—no one was qualified to train him how to use his Sorcerer abilities, and Galleri and Brudane certainly did not concern themselves with the problem. He knew only a few simple spells his parents had taught him in his early years, and a few others he had learned on his own.
In his mind, Bryl knew that he had grown up with his abilities stunted. Had he been properly trained at the right time, he could have been a powerful magic user. Three-fourths of his blood was from the Sorcerer race that ruled Gamearth so many turns ago. But nearly all the Sorcerers had vanished in the Transition, combining themselves into the Earthspirits and the Deathspirits. Few characters on Gamearth could claim to have Sorcerer blood anymore.
Then the human boy Lellyn had come along, flaunting his abilities, his enthusiasm, and his impossible Sorcerer powers that he should never have had. Bryl wanted all those incredible spells, the power that took years and years of effort and struggle and training. But he didn’t have years and years, and he didn’t have the patience.
Tareah had the skills, but Bryl didn’t seek to learn any forgotten spells. The desire to better himself, the challenge, had backfired on him many years before.
That was why he attached so much importance to the Stones: Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. He had used the Water Stone and linked with the dayid of the forest to save the panther people in Ledaygen. He had used the Air Stone to trick Gairoth the ogre into leaving the Stronghold. The Stones gave him his power immediately. That was the best way.
“Tic-tac-toe, I win!” Journeyman said. Delrael grumbled and smoothed the dirt with the flat of his hand before drawing a new grid for another game. “Tomorrow we’re playing with dice instead.”
* * *
They next morning they set off into the forest terrain. Journeyman looked around and smiled. Bryl hated the way he grinned all the time.
“In this hexagon there’s supposed to be a village of ylvan, the forest people. Maybe we’ll come across it.”
Delrael trudged on. He looked flustered from losing so many games to Journeyman at the campsite. “How do you know that? I don’t recall anything marked on our master map at the Stronghold.”
Vailret looked around in the forest. “An ylvan village is hidden in the trees—you wouldn’t know it was there until you were right under it.” His eyes gleamed. “They’re said to be master woodsmen, like chameleons in the forest.”
“But how do you know it’s there, Journeyman?” Delrael asked.
Journeyman shrugged his shoulders in a ripple of gray-brown clay. “It’s marked on the map the Rulewoman Melanie uses.”
The forest all around them looked the same as always, with tree and shrubs, vines, moss, and the faint but clear trail leading toward the east. But around midday the birds and insects fell silent, replaced with the sounds of a struggle and a chilling, familiar bellow.
“Haw! Haw! Haw! BAM!”
Terror jabbed like an icicle down Bryl’s spine. He knew that sound—Gairoth. He remembered being captured, drugged, placed inside a giant jellyfish in a stinking cesspool in the swamps. The massive ogre had forced Bryl to teach him how to use the Air Stone.…though an ogre should never have been able to use magic.
Delrael stopped and cocked his head. He looked concerned, then a smile drifted onto his face.
Vailret met his cousin’s eyes. “Be careful, Del. Gairoth almost got you last time.”
Delrael appeared to be intensely aware of everything around him. Bryl had seen him this way before. The fighter motioned the rest of them to silence, then he crept ahead through the underbrush.
Bryl would have been perfectly content to remain where he was, to turn and bypass the ylvan village. But then they heard a thin, angry voice piping out. “Go away and eat rocks, you Loser! Why don’t the rest of you help me?”
Vailret moved ahead to join his cousin, and Journeyman nonchalantly shouldered branches aside. Bryl held the Fire Stone in one hand and the Air Stone in the other—even with all that power, he felt frightened of Gairoth.
They looked through a clearing of branches, dry moss, and some leaves blushing with color from an early autumn frost. Massive trees stood straight and high, crowded together, but the undergrowth in one area had been cleared away. Dangling from the lower and intermediate branches of the great trees hung large globes of woven sticks and grass and leaves, meshed together and sealed with hard golden sap. The sap varnish glistened in the light of a small fire on the ground and the green-filtered sunlight above.
The hanging “nests” were the dwellings of the ylvan. Clumsily mounted pelts hung drying, and rotting, on a few branches. On the ground, four of the little people, about chest-high to Bryl, stood by a smoky fire. Beside them, arranged rocks marked a communal gaming area that looked as if it hadn’t been used in weeks.
The ylvans’ hair was dark reddish brown, their eyes deep-set but dull, as if a milky film of cataracts had crawled over them. The men wore trimmed and pointed beards; the woman’s hair had been tied in green ribbons. The ylvans all wore outfits of leather dyed green and crosshatched with blotches and stripes that would make them invisible as they moved among the tree branches.
The fire had died to embers, untended. Too late, one of the ylvans had added a leafy green branch to the fire, which only made pungent smoke curl up to the sky.
“Master woodsmen?” Delrael whispered to Vailret. “Looks pretty sloppy to me.”
Vailret appeared concerned. “But the ylvan are supposed to be shadows in the trees, expert ambushers. Something’s wrong.”
Near the ylvans in the clearing stood Gairoth the ogre, looking befuddled and angry. His muscles knotted like a twisted tree trunk. His one eye glowered at the four listless and dazed ylvans who stood by their fire and refused to shrink away from him in terror, or even to take notice of the ogre at all.
Fear made Bryl cringe even from his hiding place. Gairoth’s furs were stained, worn, and falling apart; the spikes on his wicked club were pitted and rusty. Gairoth’s eye was bloodshot, underhung with a bag of tired skin. The ogre’s skin was grayish and unhealthy looking, peeling with splotches and rashes. He appeared miserable and furious.
Journeyman had an exaggerated expression of distaste sculpted onto his face. “Gross! Gag me with a spoon!”
Gairoth waved a ham-sized hand of dismissal at the four ylvans by the fire and looked around the rest of the dangling settlement. He strained upward and swung the club to rip out the bottom of one of the low-hanging nest dwellings. Dirt and twigs pattered down onto the ogre’s head, and he snorted in annoyance. But then some ylvan possessions tumbled out: small wood carvings, colorful flowers, pots containing gems and small bits of treasure. Basket-like furniture, a chair perhaps, fell partway through the opening and then caught.
One of the other ylvan picked up a crossbow and turned it around. She paused, as if forgetting what she had been about to do, and then reached for an arrow. The ylvan dropped the arrow, bent over with sleepy slowness and tried three times before she managed to pick it up. When she finally fitted it into the crossbow, she gestured at the ogre and fired. The arrow missed.
Bryl heard a sound inside the torn nest, a sluggish movement. Gairoth hooked the bottom of the gash with the spikes of his club, then pulled it down until he could reach it with his fingers. The branches above creaked.
The ogre pawed around into the opening until he grabbed something. He tugged, and an old ylvan tumbled out to land roughly on the ground with little more than a grunt of surprise.
Gairoth scowled. “Bah—too old.”
The ylvan sat where he was on the dirt. His dark eyes were also covered with a milky dullness. He reached inside his camouflaged tunic, withdrew a knife, and stared at it.
“You leave him alone!” The piping voice came again, and an arrow whizzed through the air to stick in the ogre’s furs. Gairoth roared.
Bryl looked around to see. Finally he spotted another ylvan blending into the tree shadows. This ylvan was younger than the others, with barely a fuzz of beard along his cheeks and chin. He swung around from where he hung halfway up one of the trunks, then slithered down looped ropes set into the side of the tree. He landed on his feet.
“Come on, you big clod!” The ylvan shot another crossbow arrow that nicked Gairoth’s chin, enough to make him roar.
The little man crouched and glanced at the ylvans by the fire, at the old man who had been torn out of his home. Bryl noticed other dull faces peering from openings in the hanging dwellings. Somewhere above, in a long-delayed reaction, a child screamed. No one seemed aware of what was going on. Some moved slowly, half-asleep; others shook their heads, as if to drive away a buzzing that overpowered their thoughts.
Gairoth strode across the clearing. In only three steps he towered over the young forest man who had defied him. The ylvan stood his ground.
The ogre yanked out a sack tucked into his fur garment, popping another of the seams in the shoulder. As the ylvan nocked another arrow, Gairoth scooped him up and pawed him into the sack.
Two of the ylvans by the fire had taken out their own crossbows. One tried to fire without first nocking an arrow.
The young ylvan continued to struggle, but Gairoth twisted the mouth of the sack shut and tossed the bundle over his back. The little man cried out as he struck the ogre’s shoulder blades. The bag squirmed and kicked, venting forth muffled curses, but Gairoth ignored it. He let out a gravelly sigh that sounded like heavy furniture scraped across a stone floor.
Gairoth did not look happy, but resigned. “Fresh meat not good like aged stuff.”
He glared at the other ylvans who stared down at their crossbows and knives, as if struggling to remember what to do with them. Above, the child screamed again. Gairoth looked at the broken nest home, at the dazed old ylvan man on the ground who had finally succeeded in picking himself up.
The ogre sneered and, swinging his club in front of him, he stomped off to the other side of the clearing. Bryl could hear him mutter while he crashed along. Occasionally Gairoth would smash his club against a tree, grumbling “Delroth! BAM! Delroth! BAM!”
Vailret turned to his cousin. “I think he still remembers us. Wasn’t Delroth his name for you?”
Delrael pursed his lips and nodded. “Just no pleasing some people.”
“Well, ah, we should get on with our journey now.” Bryl could not keep his voice firm. He felt obligated to try and make them see sense, to set their priorities. But he knew what they were going to do anyway.
“We have to go rescue him. It’s part of the Game, you know.” Delrael sounded distracted when he answered, already making plans.
“We need to continue our quest and destroy Scartaris.” Bryl tried one more time. “Journeyman, you have to get there, too. We can’t delay.”
Journeyman pondered before answering. “Incidental adventures don’t happen by accident. There’s always something to be gained. Look in The Book of Rules.”
Vailret raised his eyebrows at him. “I thought you didn’t want to go on this quest in the first place, Bryl.”
“I don’t! But I don’t want to face Gairoth again, either. You don’t know what he did to me!”
“Yes we do,” Vailret and Delrael answered together. “You’ve told us enough times.”
“Well, why didn’t we fight back right then, when the other ylvans could help?”
“They didn’t help him,” Delrael said.
Bryl sat down heavily. Branches and leaves cracked beneath him, and he found his seat very uncomfortable. Arguing further would be wasted effort.
He hated questing.
***