Gemworld Read Online Free Page B

metal pellets in your body! It took me near an hour to seal all the holes, what with the meager dribble of mana that the guards allow us to wield in here…”
    The bullets! Sal thought back to the raid. He must have taken a dozen rounds or more. Those alone would take weeks to mend properly, but for the life of him, he couldn’t feel a single one. Gingerly, he ran a hand along his left side, searching for the bullet holes that peppered him, but all he found were a few small, puckered scars. What in blue blazes—?
    “I wish I could do something about your eye,” Jaren continued. “Even if they gave you proper access to a healer this very moment, I doubt they could repair it properly. Even I couldn’t do it, and I must say my command of the emerald soulgem is quite extensive. Your injury’s practically set now. You’d have to gouge it back out and start all over at the nerve to—”
    Sal’s mind reeled from the buzz of impossibilities. “What in the...? Are you saying that you could rebuild my eye?”
    “Of course,” Jaren shrugged, nonchalant. “I am an emerald, after all.”
    “I don’t care who or what you are! That kinda thing’s just not possible. If someone loses a body part, you can’t just put the scraps together and make a new one.”
    “Why not?” Jaren asked, now completely at a loss.
    “What do you mean, ‘why not’? You just can’t do it!” Sal shouted incredulously. Or tried to shout, anyway. What actually came out was more like a wheeze. “I mean, that’s like the sun shining purple! Or the Cubs winning the Series! Or flying horses!”
    “Well, I’ve never seen a purple sun, true enough. And I can’t say what cubs or series you’re referring to. But as to flying horses, the Earthen Rank is in no short supply, let me tell you,” Jaren said, jabbing a thumb back over his shoulder.
    As Sal followed Jaren’s aim, he got his first good look at his surroundings. He lay against the back wall of some stone building, in a large open room with filthy bodies sprawled all over the dirt floor. Rotting corpses lined one of the side walls. And some of the living didn’t seem too far from joining them. Ragged clothing was in abundance, stripped from the maggot-ridden bodies of the dead. Sal was suddenly very conscious of his makeshift eye patch.
    Metal bars lined the front of the communal cell, allowing semi-fresh air and sunlight to flood in from the courtyard beyond. And in that courtyard, plain as day, stood a small herd of winged horses in armored livery, with guards in matching leathers.
    “Dear God, where am I?” Sal said breathlessly.
    “The prison at Schel Veylin,” the young man answered sympathetically, mistaking the disbelief in Sal’s voice.
    ***
    Jaren prattled on about this issue or that for quite a while before abruptly cutting himself off. “You need rest,” he stated judiciously. “Call me if you need anything, and I’ll attend you if I’m able.”
    “How’s about a lobotomy?” Sal croaked.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Never mind.”
    As the “mage” departed, Sal nodded to himself. Yep. I ’ ve gone off the deep end. You ’ d figure I could at least conjure up a better looking cell in the asylum or something. But no, that didn’t seem right. As much as he’d like to chalk this whole experience up to insanity, it didn’t seem to fit. Simply the fact that he was “with it” enough to suggest insanity seemed to lend itself to the contrary. Okay, so if I ’ m not crazy, then what? Surely this can ’ t be real!
    Could it?
    Sal spent the better part of the day playing with the logic, but every road seemed to lead back to reality. He could feel the pain, the scars, the mound of eyeball where there should have been an empty socket, so hallucination was out. It couldn’t be a dream, because things were just too vivid, with too much detail to minutia. The winged horses, for example—they looked too real to be imaginary, from the ratted manes to the discolored hooves of