The Deadliest Game

“Done.”

“One less thing for you to worry about anyway.”

He sighed, looking down at his folded hands on the table, then looked up again. “I love this place,” he said. “You should have seen it when it started. Little, scratchy, sketchy, video-only universe. You could have fitted the whole thing into a PC.” He laughed. “Then it got out of hand. They do that, supposedly, worlds: get out of the control of their creators. Now I’ve got something like four million users…. people inhabiting a world. People who really seem to think it’s special.” More soft laughter. “I got an e-mail from somebody a few months ago saying that we should petition the government to get them to let us terraform Mars, and set up Sarxos there. I get a lot of mail from people who’d like to move. I mean, this…” He thumped the table gently. “This is pretty real, pretty good. You can eat here, drink here, sleep here, fight here…do all kinds of things here. But you can’t stay. People have started saying that they want to stay here…live here.”

He shook his head. “The only thing I didn’t foresee…. is that people would start doing things to each other in the real world based on what they do or don’t do here. This has never been a peaceful place. It wasn’t built to be a peaceful place. It’s a war game! Though peace keeps breaking out…and that always surprised me, that people wanted to live here, not just campaign all over the countryside and fight each other to a standstill. But now…it’s like the serpent has gotten into Eden. I don’t like this serpent. I want to stomp its ugly head.”

“So do we,” said Megan.

“I know. That’s why we’re having this conversation.”

“We intend,” Leif said, “to keep going…until we find the serpent. And stomp it.”

“Do,” Rodrigues said. “This kind of abuse, if it once takes root and it’s not dealt with immediately…it’s going to tear this world apart. I don’t want to see that.” He looked around him at the splintery walls, and the tattered thatch of the roof, and the cobblestones and the stuff spilled on them. “I don’t want all this to vanish. This, and the mountain ranges where the basilisks nest, and the oceans with the sea monsters in them, and the moonlight…the stars…the people who come to my world to play…I don’t want to see it all collapsed and put away in a box. I want it to outlive me. That would be a good immortality, to have a world that kept going while its maker was gone, or in hiding….” He smiled a little. “Sort of like what we have now, out there in the physical world.”

Rodrigues looked at them, intense. “Do what you can…but be careful. If you’re going to do this, I can’t be responsible…you signed the waiver when you came in.”

“We’re pretty good at responsible,” Megan said. “We’ll manage.”

“Okay. Here, take this.” He reached into his pocket and came out with another token with the S on it: not ruby, this one, but plain gold, or at least it looked like it. “You’re going to be working together, so just take this one then. If you need something from the system — information about other players, within reason, or extra abilities — you’re a wizard, you know the kind of things I mean — query the system. It’ll give them to you. This also com-links to me or my account. You can leave me e-mail, or talk to me if I’m in the game.”

“Hey, thanks. This is really—”

“Don’t thank me. I should be thanking you for what you’re doing. There are a few others like you who’re making discreet inquiries. I figure the more of us who’re looking, the better it is. But in the meantime, just be careful.”

“We will,” Leif said.

Rodrigues stood up. “Okay…it’s getting late at home where I am. I’ve gotta go. Thanks again.”

They nodded to him. Rodrigues sketched a little wave at them…then, with a pop of displaced air, vanished.

Leif and Megan looked at each other. “Not Lateran,” Leif said. “Merde.”

“Back to the drawing board…” said Megan.

They got up and left the Scrag End, carefully closing the door behind them.

Wayland was waiting for them in the marketplace in the morning, all packed up and ready to go. He had on what Leif remembered as his “traveling hat,” a large floppy one with a bedraggled feather that made him look like a cross between a run-down Musketeer and an unemployed Norse god. “I haven’t been up to the High House yet today,” he said, leading them up into the next circle of the city, “but there shouldn’t be any trouble with finding old Tald the majordomo. He’ll get you in to see the Lord right enough. Fettick isn’t as standoffish as some of them are, anyway. No big ceremonies up in these parts. People wouldn’t stand for it.”

“I thought they liked ceremonies up here,” Leif said. “There’s the Winterfest, after all, when they burn the straw man, and the Spring Madness, when everybody has to get drunk for three days.”

“Probably old Tald wouldn’t care for that,” Wayland said, going through the gate leading up into the next circle, and waving at some acquaintance up the road as they went along. “But he’s all right, he won’t give you trouble.”

Megan glanced at Wayland, a little lost by the sudden obliquity. But he was turning through another gate ahead of them, with Leif behind him. She shrugged and went on after them.

The innermost wall of Errint was the old castle itself, built of glacier-boulders that had been sliced neatly into blocks as if they had been so much cheese. “How the Old People did that, we still don’t know,” Wayland said, looking up at the walls. “No kind of magic you can get these days.”

“Might’ve been lasers,” Megan said, looking at the smoothness of the cuts, and the way the surfaces were glazed without being polished. Inside, she was thinking with some admiration of the creativity of a man who could take the time to leave details like this all over his world: not just elaborate or unusual workmanship, but mysteries and puzzles to work over at any of several levels — the place itself could be the subject of hours of cheerful pastime as you tried to work out whether Rod had just tossed in some detail as a throwaway, or meant you to mull it over and find some hidden meaning therein. And there was always the possible joke that there was no meaning: the kind of joke that Megan suspected a Creator might be inclined to pull.

“It’s pretty enough, that’s for sure,” Wayland said, and led them up to the gates of the castle, which were open. Out in its front courtyard, people were spreading out laundry to dry in the sun, and a big florid man in dark blue was walking around and visibly bossing everybody, waving his hands, giving directions. As the three of them walked in, he immediately boomed at Wayland, “No vacancies, good smith, there are no further employment opportunities here!”

“Master Tald,” Wayland said, “don’t you start shouting. These people are here on business!”

“What kind of business?”

“Better ask them,” Wayland said.

Leif bowed politely enough to the majordomo and said, “Sir, if possible we need to see Lord Fettick, on a matter of some urgency.”

“Now, I don’t know about that, young man, he’s very busy today.”

“You think it was magic they used on these stones?” Megan said suddenly to Wayland, pointing up at the closest wall. Wayland turned to follow the gesture, and as she did so, Leif slipped the token out of his pocket and showed it briefly to Tald.

Tald’s eyes got wide. “Well,” he said, “it’s early yet, and I doubt the first appointments will be along for some time. Come on, then, young sir, young lady.”

“Hard to say,” Wayland was saying as Leif pocketed the token again, “at this end of time…”

“I guess so,” Megan said. “Look, Wayland, we may be a while.”

“I’ll be down in the marketplace then,” he said, “or I won’t.” He waved at them, and set off through the gates again.

Leif threw Megan a briefly questioning glance as they followed the majordomo up through the castle door proper, and up a winding stairway that started making its way up around the walls of the central, circular tower. Megan shook her head, and shrugged.

The second floor was one big airy room, rather like the keep in Minsar, except that all the tapestries seemed to have been taken down for the summer. With the weather fairly warm and pleasant here this time of year, it was not a problem. The majordomo ushered them into the middle of the room, where there were a table and a chair, and in the chair, a man.

“Lord Fettick,” said Tald, “these two travelers come on urgent business, bearing the sigil of Rod.”

The man in the chair looked up, somewhat surprised, then rose to greet them — old-fashioned courtesy,