User Unfriendly (22 page)

"Yeah," Cornelius said, "what if you put that in here and can't get that back out either?"

"Better this than one of our hands." I wedged the holder in between Cornelius's right hand and the hinge. I pushed. I twisted. I shoved it as close to the hinges as it would go.

Nothing.

And it came away from the box as easily as it should have.

"What am I going to do?" Cornelius said.

Mom, who I hadn't thought was with us, so to speak, said, "Can't you use one of your magic spells?"

Cornelius shook his head. "I need to use my hands for my spells," he explained. "Each spell has its own words and gestures. I can't do any magic with my hands ... locked up like this."

"Felice," Thea said, "you're a thief. You're supposed to be able to open things."

"I can try," Mom said. She leaned forward. And her hand passed
through
the box.

"Whoa!" Feordin exclaimed. "Neat trick!"

But he was wrong. I knew it right away. It wasn't the box:
I
had touched it when I'd shoved in the candlestick holder.

"Mom." My voice quivered like I was talking through an electric fan. "Can you touch this?" I picked up a piece of treasure, it didn't matter what. I think it was a golden bowl.

Her hand passed right through it.

She was fading away.

I dropped the bowl, turned to look for something else—as though that would make a difference. I saw the huge mirrorlike platter on the wall. I saw my reflection, smack in the middle. And Thea's. I saw Feordin, Nocona, Cornelius with his hands caught in the box. I didn't see Mom.

"I hate this stupid game!" I yelled.

And then I saw something else in the platter, a blur almost off the edge of the shiny surface. A movement by the stairs.

"Look out!" I shouted.

But that was useless. In the doorway, five steps away, impossibly distant, a heavy metal grate emerged from a crack in the ceiling and slammed down to the floor.

We leapt to our feet, but of course we were already too late. The gate was down, and the single goblin soldier who had released the lever on the back wall of the guard area dropped behind the heavy oak table to hide from any possible retaliation. A squad of goblin guards charged down the last several steps and stood there aiming ... nine, ten, eleven, twelve loaded crossbows, two pikes, five swords, and what looked like a miniature catapult at us.

"Drop your weapons," one of the goblins told us.

Each of us waited to see what the others were going to do.

"Drop your weapons, or we start picking you off one by one."

Our weapons weren't going to be any good to us in this situation anyway, so I let my sword drop. The others did likewise, including Nocona with his bow, which was probably the only weapon the goblins, out there, were really worried about.

"Don't," I told Mom as she reached for the knife she wore at her side.

She hesitated.

"They can't see you," I said.

I could see the goblins giving each other sidelong glances, like they were thinking they'd caught themselves a load of psychiatric refugees. "Everybody drop everything," the one in charge commanded, which I guess he figured covered every contingency.

Mom folded her arms defiantly. She would have looked more convincing except that she was wincing, like her head hurt so much she was afraid it was going to burst open.

Not that it made any difference. The goblins looked right through her.

"Now the one with his hands caught," the goblin said. "Somebody toss his knife down. Now kick everything over here." He indicated the grate, whose bars were spaced widely enough that the stuff could fit through. "Now back off." Apparently we didn't move fast enough. "
Back off.
"

Two of the lackeys rushed forward to gather up our weapons.

"What about this?" Cornelius said, indicating his hands trapped in the box.

"Tough," the goblin commander said. He pointed out three of his men. "You, you, and you. Watch them. Any funny business—kill them all." He led the rest of the squad upstairs with never a glance back for us, like we were lower than grubs.

Our three guards brought our weapons into the guard area. They took off their helmets, revealing bland, almost identical, Silly-Putty faces. They cleared a space on the wooden table, pushing aside apparatus for inflicting pain—thumbscrews, branding irons. I began to sweat, but all they had in mind was a game of mumblety-peg. They tossed a knife repeatedly into the wooden table, using Nocona's knife so as not to dull their own.

I motioned for the others to gather around Cornelius, where we sat, our backs to the guards. I reached and touched Mom. She felt solid to me. "This is weird," I whispered, so the guards couldn't overhear what we said.

"Felice," Nocona said. "Can you ... Does your hand go through your knife?"

She picked it up, handed it to him.

He turned it over in his hand to show us that it was solid.

"Better give it back to her," Thea said. "The guards can't see it if she's got it."

"But it's no use to us if she's got it," Nocona argued.

"Give it back to her." Feordin's voice was a soft but dangerous rumble. "It's her knife."

Nocona was going to fight us for it, I was sure. But then he flipped it into Mom's lap.

"Idiot," I whispered. "You could have cut her."

"But I didn't," Nocona snapped.

"Knock it off," Cornelius said. "We're in deep enough trouble as it is."

We all glared at each other, as though we were the enemy. From the guard area, we could hear the murmur of the goblins making calls, the thud-thud of Nocona's dagger hitting the table.

"What are we going to do?" Mom asked.

"Can the knife," Thea asked, "with you holding it, inflict damage?"

Mom tried to pierce a link in a gold and ruby necklace, but the point passed right through.

"Can you..." Thea glanced at the rest of us, as though concerned about our reaction. "Can you leave the cell?"

Slowly, for fast motion made her dizzy, Mom stood. She walked to the barred door.

And walked through.

I motioned her to come back. "What good is it," I asked, "if she can't touch anything?"

One of the guards cheered at a point gained.

Mom sighed as she sank down to the floor. "No good," she said. "It's no good at all."

The hours crawled by, minute by minute.

The guards changed.

Dinner was shoved under the door, a meat stew we didn't dare touch because there was no telling what meat goblins would serve.

Dinner was taken away.

The guards changed again.

The hours crawled by, second by second.

Nocona selected an emerald, tossed it and caught it one-handed several times to get the weight and balance of it. Then he lobbed it through the bars of the door at one of the goblin guards.

The guard picked that moment to score in the game of dice he was playing and raised both hands above his head in a winner's cheer. The flung gem struck his armored shoulder rather than his head. With orcs, they wouldn't have noticed. Or even if they had, with the emerald ricocheted away into a dark corner, they wouldn't have known what had hit and wouldn't have made the connection with us, ten yards away.

But these were goblins, not orcs.

All three leapt to their feet and went for their crossbows. They aimed. Cornelius, with his hands caught in the
MAGIC ITEMS
box, obviously had an alibi. Thea and Feordin had both fallen asleep: Thea sprawled in the golden chair, resting her head on the table, Feordin leaning against the back wall. Mom, also asleep, they couldn't see anyway. Nocona had whipped around so that his back was to them.

Leaving me looking right at them.

They aimed at me.

It was no good protesting my innocence; they wouldn't believe me anyway. In the absence of innocence, I went for repentance. "That was a mistake," I said. "Sorry. It won't happen again. Sorry."

They glowered, evaluating my sincerity.

My heart pounded in my throat and I couldn't swallow. Behind me, I was aware of Cornelius sitting up sharply, suddenly aware that something had been going on while he wasn't paying attention. One of the others was snoring softly. Nocona didn't twitch.

"Anything," one of the guards said, "
anything
happens, and you die first."

"Yes," I said. "All right. I understand." Then, because it couldn't hurt, I again added, "Sorry."

Slowly, very slowly, they backed off. They put the crossbows back down on the table, first one, then the other, then the other. They sat down. They resumed their game of dice.

Periodically they would glance at me, glaring.

"What happened?" Cornelius whispered.

"Nothing." Nocona whispered also. "Go back to your magic box, old man."

"Jerk," Cornelius said.

One of the goblins glanced up then, and we sat there looking saintly. At the first chance I punched Nocona in the arm. "Thanks a lot," I whispered between clenched teeth.

Nocona had the sense not to make a noise. "You handled it," he said.

"What were you trying to do anyway?"

"Knock out his eye."

"How would that have helped?"

"It wouldn't have," Nocona admitted. "Just something to pass the time."

"That's sick," I told him.

Cornelius seemed no longer interested, now that the excitement was over. He resumed trying to extract his hands from the box.

"Give me a break. Give us all a break." Nocona's voice had gotten louder and the goblins glared again. He waited till they returned to their game. "You're acting like an old woman, Arvin."

"Harek," I corrected automatically. "And what—"

"You liked the game well enough before. Now all of a sudden your mother's here and you're going"—he switched to a sissy singsong, " 'Oooo, bloodshed, I can't stand it.' And—"

"This has nothing—"

"And, 'Oooo, let's try to get through this without hurting anybody, can't we, guys?
I'm
too nice a person to get involved in all this barbarian stuff.' "

"This has nothing—"

"I've had it up to here—" He indicated beneath his chin, and I grabbed his hand to shut him up. Practically shouting, I told him, "This has nothing to do with my mother."

"Shh," Cornelius warned.

I didn't even check to see if the goblins were watching.

Nocona said, "Well, what
does
it have to do with,
Arvin,
besides you thinking you're so good and pure and superior to the rest of us bloodthirsty savages?"

"I never said that." I glanced around the cell and saw that Thea and Feordin were wide awake and listening. Mom was still zonked out, looking so pale and fragile, I was beginning to think / could almost see through her. And she was Mom more and more, Felice melting away almost as I watched. "I never said that," I repeated. I groped for the words to describe how I felt: that the danger was too real to be exciting any longer, that it had become too personal.

But that wasn't it exactly.

Was
it my mother? Embarrassment that she could see what I really was? That didn't seem quite right either. Embarrassment that I could see what I really was? Melodramatic. I realized I didn't know how I felt.

Well, maybe I felt like when you're at the amusement park on the Over the Falls ride and you've just gone over the edge and you know it only takes three, four seconds to hit the water at the bottom, but it seems like your heart's stopped and your eyes don't register what you're seeing and you know you're going to be falling forever, and then you do hit the water and your friends say, "Wow, neat ride!" and you say, "Want to do it again?"

All I could get out was, "I-I-I—"

Nocona said, "You're just taking things out on us because you're worried about your mother."

Without stopping to think, I said, "And
you're
just taking things out on
me
because you're worried that you're turning into a werewolf."

Nocona stiffened and went white.

"What's all this?" Feordin asked.

Instantly I regretted my hasty words. "Nothing. Just ... Never mind." Dominic was my friend. I felt like one of those scuzz-balls in the movies who turns his neighbor in to the Nazis or the KGB or the Ku Klux Klan.

But Feordin was already on his feet. "What are you talking about? That sprained ankle? That
has
taken an uncommonly long time to heal. And he
has
been uncharacteristically surly. I think it's time one of us took a look at that, Nocona."

Nocona drew his leg under him. "Leave me alone."

I glanced at the goblins. They were watching us. Apparently their dice were less interesting than the possibility that we might knock each other's heads against the walls. "We've got to stick together," I started.

Thea said, "Nocona, just let us see your ankle. You're not helping your case by acting this way."

"Don't you touch me," he warned.

She took a step toward him and he leapt to his feet.

Still sitting, Cornelius swung his leg around and smacked the back of Nocona's knee. Nocona staggered and Feordin tackled him. Together they slid into a pile of treasure, which rained down on them.

The goblins whipped together a quick wager on the outcome.

Nocona wriggled away from Feordin, but trying to get up, he set his foot on some loose coins. He went down on one knee, and Feordin grabbed that foot. Nocona pitched forward.

Feordin threw himself on Nocona's back. Both went down in another flurry of treasure.

Thea stepped on Nocona's right leg, the injured one. Once she had him pinned, she leaned over and pulled up the pants leg. We could all plainly see his ankle was bloody. She unwrapped it anyway, just to be sure.

Puncture marks, obviously a bite.

"I'm not a werewolf," Nocona protested.

Thea took off her belt, and between her and Feordin, they tied Nocona's hands behind his back.

"Come on, guys," Nocona said. "It's me. Don't do this to me. Please. You can't leave me tied up for the rest of the campaign."