Mountain of Black Glass (21 page)

“Heard of him? Hell, yeah, I've heard of him. He and Thargor have had more run-ins than you could count, but he used to be doin' a lot better than this. He used to have a whole country, y'know? Like, he owned it. That's when he was the Wizard-King of Andarwen. But he lost that to some demon in a dice game. The last time Thargor bumped into him, he still had a big old estate, and everything on it—servants, pack of hounds, you name it—was made out of living glass.”
Beezle considered for a moment.
“I'd say he's had some hard times since then.”

Ramsey could not suppress a snort.
“I guess so.”

“You
are
Orlando Gardiner, aren't you?” The enchanter, for all his bony, hardened look, sounded almost plaintive. He had a slight accent, something Catur Ramsey couldn't quite put his finger on. “I'll put a Table of Judgment seal on everything that happens in this room if you want. Dupping not, swear I won't tell. But I need to know.”

Ramsey hesitated, but he knew that even after weeks of investigation, he could not lie convincingly enough about this environment to pull off the deception. “No, I'm not. I've just been asking around about his character, Thargor.”

“Damn!” Dreyra Jarh stood up and stamped in frustration. “Locking mother of uttermost damn it all!”

“So that's why you brought me out here?” Ramsey asked when the other had calmed a little. “Just because you thought I was Orlando Gardiner?”

“Yes,” said the wizard sullenly. “Sorry.” The apology didn't sound very convincing.

After walking a half-dozen virtual miles through some of the least charming sights that Madrikhor had to offer, Ramsey was not going to be put off so easily. “What did you want to say to him?”

The thin face turned suspicious. “Nothing.”

“Look, I'm not just interested in Thargor, I'm interested in Orlando Gardiner, too. I'm working for his family—doing some investigating.”

“Working for his family? Why?”

“First off, I'm the one asking questions—and here's why.” Ramsey took a clinking purse out of his tunic. He had only planned to make it stretch through another couple of fact-finding missions, anyway. “I'll give you this if you help me out. All of it—twenty gold emperors.”

“Imperials.” But the wizard who had once ruled an entire nation was obviously interested. “Just to talk to you?”

“As long as you're reasonably interesting.” Ramsey set the money-sack beside his knee.
“Tell me if he says anything obviously false, Beezle, will you?”
he murmured. Aloud, he asked, “Why did you want to talk to Orlando Gardiner?”

Dreyra Jarh settled back onto his stool, long hands draped in his lap. “Well, he's been around a long time, like me. We've been enemies, kind of . . .”

“Enemies?” Catur raised an eyebrow.

“Not in real life! Just here. In the Middle Country. We've had some big contests, seen? I've tried to destroy him, he's tried to destroy me. We've never sixed each other, but we've gone back and forth, each won a few . . .”

“That's a lie right there, buddy,”
Beezle said loyally.
“Orlando never lost to this guy at anything.”

“. . . But then he got toasted by some low-grade sport demon, and the Table denied his appeal, and he was gone.”

Ramsey nodded. Accurate so far, to the extent it mattered. “And?”

“And there were all kinds of rumors that before he left, he was asking about some golden city—something nobody in MC had ever heard of before. But then he was gone, seen? So I never found out for posdef what the ups were.”

At mention of the golden city Ramsey grew very still. The sullen noises of the fire seemed unnaturally loud, the rundown hovel even smaller than it had been.

“Then I found this jewel thing,” Dreyra Jarh continued. “One of my zombie minions brought it to me from where they were excavating for me at the site of the lost Catacombs of Perinyum. Zombie minions don't care about jewels or that kind of thing—they make pretty good workers. Then, when I examined it, it kind of . . . I don't know, opened up . . .”

“Yes?” It was hard to keep the excitement out of his voice. “So . . . ?”

Before the enchanter could resume, Ramsey was jolted by Beezle's voice in his ear again.
“Hey, buddy, there's someone coming . . . !”

Ramsey climbed to one knee, trying to drag his sword free of the scabbard, a far trickier procedure than was apparent in adventure stories. He was still struggling to disentangle the hilt from the folds of his tunic when Belmak the Buccaneer and his companion the Red Weasel appeared in the doorway, wheezing in perfect unison.

“Gadzooks!” Belmak appeared to feel this was enough to state their case; he resumed struggling to catch his breath. After long moments had passed, the Red Weasel looked up beside him.

“The stranger moves . . . like the wind!” The Weasel made a broad gesture, trying to show how windily Ramsey had outpaced them, and how manfully they had struggled to keep up.

The corpse-skinned enchanter wiggled his fingers impatiently. “That's fine. We're talking. Lock it and rocket, okay?”

Belmak stared. “What?”

“You heard me, go on. Why don't you go down to Ye Tavern and wait for me.”

“We just got here!”

“It won't kill you. Go on.”

Belmak and the Red Weasel looked like it might indeed kill them. In a sudden fit of sympathy, Ramsey took a coin from his purse that he was pretty sure was smaller than an Imperial and flipped it to the Red Weasel, who almost caught it. Somewhat mollified, the adventurers recovered the coin and went clumping back out into a night lit by garbage-fueled fires.

“You can't use zombie minions for
everything,
” an embarrassed Dreyra Jarh said by way of explanation. “And I'm a bit short of resources lately. . . .”

“Just finish the story. You found a gem.”

The enchanter wove a tale much like what Ramsey knew of Orlando's. He had been obsessed by the golden city, so different had it been from anything else he had ever seen in the Middle Country, and so positive was he that it signified some quest that only the elite players would have a hope of successfully pursuing. But the quest had been fruitless, and he had exhausted every option both within the simworld and outside, in RL, trying to track the place down. He had used his position as one of the Middle Country's paramount enchanters to turn the simworld upside down, searching everywhere, questioning everyone, mounting expeditions to every dimly-remembered bit of virtual archaeology in the entire game environment.

“It broke me,” he explained sadly. “After a while I was spending Imperials I didn't even have. But I didn't find it. I kept thinking that maybe Orlando did, that that's how come he went off the system, but I couldn't get in touch with him.” The wizard tried to make his voice casual, and failed. “So . . . so did he?”

Ramsey was half-lost in thought, trying to put pieces into a recognizable shape. “Hmmm? Did he what?”

“Did he find the city, man?”

“I don't know.” After a few more questions, Ramsey stood up, irritated to discover that even sitting down for too long in a virtual environment could prove just as uncomfortable as in real life. He tossed the pouch into Dreyra Jarh's lap. “You must have information on some of the resources you used,” he suggested. “Research trails, like that?”

“Huh?”

“Just . . . records of things you did, trying to find the city.”

“I guess.” The enchanter was counting his earnings. It was clear that while he was happy to have the money, he wasn't going to be able to buy his country back with it, or even hire too many more zombie minions.

“Tell you what,” Ramsey said. “If you let me have access to all your records, strictly privately, I'll arrange to get you a lot more than that bag of funny-money.” He tried to figure out the true age of Dreyra Jarh's role-player. “How about a thousand credits? Real-world money. That ought to buy you a lot of spells. And maybe you could even get some decent gear for that poor guy running those Belmak and Weasel sims.”

“You want to give me . . . money? To see what's on my system?”

“I'm a lawyer. You can work it however you want to—a contract, anything. But yes, I want access to everything you did. And do you still have the golden city or the gem?”

Dreyra Jarh snorted. “Chance not. Whole thing went
pffftt.
Gone. Ate a little hole in my storage, too, like it had never been there at all. You'll see.”

 

Before he remembered that he could simply drop offline, Catur Ramsey had walked a fair distance back along the edge of the vast rubbish mounds. He was caught up in his thoughts, aware of little except the possible significance of what he'd just learned.

Whatever had happened to Orlando had happened to others, too. But for some reason it hadn't gone as far with all of them. The kid playing Dreyra Jarh was flat broke and not very happy about it, but he sure wasn't comatose.

Ramsey found himself standing a few hundred yards from a shack only slightly larger and more inviting than the enchanter's hovel. The sign swinging above the entrance proclaimed it Ye Tavern at the Dump. Two familiar faces stood in the doorway.

When he recognized Ka-turr of Rhamzee, Belmak the Buccaneer shouted for him to come join them.

“No thanks,” Ramsey called. “I've got to go. You two take it easy.”

Just before the dump, Madrikhor, and the entirety of the Middle Country vanished, Catur Ramsey saw first Belmak, then the Red Weasel, wave good-bye in sequence.

 

D
READ parked the Quan Li sim in a dark, quiet place and left it sitting there like a marionette with slack strings. Although there was much, much more of this newest simulation world to investigate, he had explored enough already to know that there was no shortage of places of concealment—knowledge that warmed his predator's heart. Also, with Sellars' troop of misfits left behind, there was no longer a need to pretend that the sim was always occupied.

Thinking of them and the way they had jumped on him, like jackals on a lion, he felt a brief and salty pang of hatred, but he quickly pushed it away. He was after a bigger enemy, and the idea that had kindled inside him was far more important than those small people and the small irritation they had caused.

With a single command he was offline, stretched on a comfortable massage-couch in his Cartagena office. He thumbed a couple of Adrenex tablets from his dispenser and swallowed them, then downed the contents of the squeeze bottle of water he had set beside the couch before beginning this most recent session. He switched the music in his head from the Baroque strings and phase-shifted bonebass that had seemed appropriate for exploring the new simworld to something quieter and more contemplative, more appropriate for the scenes of the hero beginning his great work—
magnum opus
music.

It would all be so, so sublime. He would execute a stroke so bold and audacious that even the Old Man would be stunned. Dread did not know the
how
yet, but he could feel himself drawing closer, as he felt the presence of his quarry when he was hunting.

He checked to see if Dulcie Anwin had returned his reminder call. She had. When he rang her again she picked up quickly.

“Hello.” He kept his smile small and cheerful, but the dark something inside him, fed by the adrenals, wanted to grin like a jack-o'-lantern . . . like a skull. “Did you enjoy the days off?”

“God, did I!” She was dressed all in white, a conservative but stylish slant-suit that emphasized the new, golden gleam a day's sunbathing had lent to her pale skin. “I'd forgotten what it was like just to do things around the apartment—read my mail, listen to some music . . .”

“Good, good.” He kept the smile, but he was tired of the small talk already. It was one of the few things he liked about men—some of them actually kept their mouths shut unless there was something to say. “Ready for work?”

“Absolutely.” Her return smile was bright, and for a moment he felt a twinge of suspicion. Was she playing some game of her own? He had not been paying very much attention to her in the last few days before he put her on hiatus. She was a dangerous, weak link, after all. He added some slow pinging tones to his internal music, like water dripping on rocks, and smoothed the momentary wrinkle out of his calm, confident mood.

“Good. Well, there have been some changes. I'll bring you up to date on them later on, but I've got something important for you to do first. I need you in your gear-master mode for this, Dulcie.”

“I'm listening.”

“I'm working on something, so for the moment I don't want you using the sim, but I've built a box routine within the simulation and there's something there I'd like you to look at. It looks like a plain old lighter—you know, the old-fashioned kind for cigarettes and things—but it's more. A
lot
more. So I want you to study it. Do everything you can to figure out how it works and what it does.”

“I'm not sure I understand,” she said. “What is it?”

“It's a device to manipulate gateways in the Otherland network. But I'm pretty sure it has other uses, too. I need you to find out.”

“But I can't get into the sim and try it out that way?”

“Not yet.” He kept his voice level, but he did not like having his directives questioned. He took an unobtrusive deep breath and listened to his music. “And there's one other thing. It'll have some kind of tags for its home system, but even if it doesn't, I want you to figure out where it comes from.”