Mazes and Monsters (8 page)

At night he began to dream again about his brother. Sometimes Hall was sixteen, looking the way he had when he ran away five years ago, and sometimes he was an adult Robbie hardly knew. If Hall was alive he would be taller, filled out, perhaps he’d have a mustache or even a beard. He’d be different. Maybe he was a junkie; skinny, sick. Or maybe he’d been dead for years and these were only wishes that would never come true.

The dreams were more complicated now. No longer did Hall come to sit on his bed in the moonlight and talk to him. Now Robbie found himself in a maze, with walls and floor of graph paper, filled with a strange bluish light, and he was running down these frustrating corridors after his brother. It was so neat, like a hospital, or a sketch made by a player. Maybe the dream symbolized that Hall was in a hospital somewhere, perhaps with amnesia. Robbie was always running, out of breath, trying to call out and finding that he had no voice. He could never run fast enough; his legs would ache and he would sink to the floor, drawn inexorably down like someone with a wasting disease. How his legs cramped and pained him! How futilely he tried to shout to tell Hall he was here, to stop and wait for him … He would wake up drenched with sweat, crying. His tears felt scaldingly hot, the tears of frustration. They almost burned his cheeks. He would lie in bed for at least twenty minutes, trying to collect himself, to get out of the dream into the real world again. It was just as well he didn’t spend every night with Kate. He never wanted her to see him like this.

But then, inevitably, she did. She held him tenderly, rocking him like a baby. “It’s your brother, isn’t it,” she said.

He nodded. “I couldn’t get to him.”

“Was he in trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not your fault,” Kate said. “It’s not your fault.”

But of course it was.

Now the brother who had never been close to him—who had, in the two years preceeding his disappearance, undergone a personality change, becoming inaccessible—became kind and close to Robbie in his dreams. This was the Hall he remembered when he was very young, the brother who had patiently played catch with him in the backyard, who had told Robbie grown-up jokes he was not to repeat to his parents but could to his friends, even though Robbie only pretended to understand them. Robbie waited for his dreams with fear and anticipation. Fear, because of that paralyzing feeling of frustration; anticipation, because each time he felt he was coming a little closer to finding out how he could help Hall. He was sure that no one could dream so vividly, and so often, unless the dreams were trying to say something to him.

And then one night in a dream the most extraordinary thing happened. He was following Hall, and suddenly he was not Robbie at all—he was Pardieu the Holy Man. Looking down he saw his brown robes, the sandals on his feet, and around his waist the rope holding the little leather bag of potions and miracles.
Wait
! Pardieu cried, running.
I
am Pardieu! I will help you
! But Hall was gone.

Pardieu looked in his bag of magic spells. There was the coin of wishes, to undo what had been done. There was the incandescent liquid, which gave the ability to see into the mind of any being who was possessed of intelligence. His fingers closed around the last, most prized spell of all: The graven jade Eye of Timor. It was a mystery how it had gotten into his pouch, for he had never before been clever or worthy enough to win it. The Eye of Timor could be used by only the highest level of Holy Men, for it gave the user the greatest power of all—the power to raise the dead.

When he awoke from that dream in the morning, for the first time Robbie did not cry. He lay in his bed thinking, feeling at peace. It was as if he were surrounded by soft feathers. He did not understand why, but for the first time instead of dread and frustration he felt a gentle, blissful hope.

CHAPTER 11

Christmas vacation was coming soon, and people were already planning their escape. Kate, Jay Jay, Daniel, and Robbie had decided to have a last great game session before they departed for home, the game to be preceded by a private party with an exchange of gifts. The life of the dorm and the people in it swirled around them as lightly and unheeded as winter snowflakes. Some students had put up a tree downstairs in the common room, and decorated it, and decorations and wishes for Happy Holidays appeared on the bulletin board, along with an address where you could send Christmas cards to the hostages in Iran. A serious editorial in
The Grant Gazette
warned that potential accidents to our nuclear power plants might make this one the last Christmas ever. The immediate concern in Hollis East, however, was finding a free ride home to save train or plane fare.

Although Jay Jay had no shortage of money, Robbie was going to take him and Merlin, since he could drive through New York on his way to Greenwich; Daniel planned to take the train to Cambridge; and Kate’s mother had sent her a round-trip plane ticket to San Francisco.

“Are you going to miss me?” Robbie asked Kate.

“Of course. Are you going to miss me?”

“Like crazy.”

Kate went with Jay Jay to buy food for their party, which they decided would be held in his room. Parties were always held in Jay Jay’s room. They went to the gourmet section of the supermarket in the shopping mall, and in five minutes Jay Jay had already exceeded their budget. He even insisted on buying champagne.

“You and I should do stuff like this more often,” he said.

“I know. We should.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“It’s mine,” Kate said. “Next time Robbie and I go to the movies, you come too.”

“Okay.”

They were filled with warm Christmas spirit, and sang carols all the way home to the dorm in her car, the backseat piled high with bags of extravagant delicacies: huge, out of season pears and grapes, imported cheeses, pâté, English biscuits, a fruitcake which Jay Jay planned to soak in brandy.

They began the party at five o’clock, toasting each other with champagne. Jay Jay had arranged the food very nicely on top of his desk, and had taught Merlin to sing the first line of “Jingle Bells,” which they all cheered wildly. They had locked the door so no one would crash their party. Then they handed out the presents. Kate and Robbie exchanged thin gold chains to wear around their necks, and she gave Daniel a pair of very sexy-looking sunglasses she knew he’d been thinking of buying for himself, and Jay Jay a real find from the thrift shop: a top hat just like the ones in the old Fred Astaire movies. He put it on immediately. She gave Merlin a swing for his cage, with red and green ribbons on it. She and Jay Jay were the only ones who remembered to give Merlin anything. Daniel gave everybody records, and Robbie, who had conferred with Daniel on this decision, did the same for him and Jay Jay. Jay Jay gave each of them a beautifully lacquered little box, in which he had placed four perfectly rolled joints.

Then they tore into the food as if they were ravenous. It was not really because they were so hungry, but because they wanted to get to the best part of the evening: the game.

They were only dimly aware of how much the game had taken over their lives already. All they knew was that nothing else, not even this special party with its atmosphere of affection and luxury and celebration, was as real to them as the game. And each of them felt, in some secret, guilty way, that they wanted to get the party over with so they could go into Daniel’s room and enter their world.

“You have found the talking sword of Lothia,” Daniel said. He held the dice in his hand and looked at the three eager faces of Glacia, Freelik, and Pardieu. The dice he held were both chance and power. As he surveyed the underground perils he had laid out so carefully, he wondered whether all of these adventurers would still be alive at the end of this night. He didn’t want them to die. He was as excited as they were as they fought their way deeper and deeper into the maze, winning battles with strength and wits, amassing plunder. He knew he had to be objective in order to be an effective M.C., but he wanted them to find the treasure. It didn’t belong to him—it belonged to the evil King of the Jinnorak, who was very much alive; horrible, smoke-breathing, covered with scales, feasting off human flesh when he could find it, and the flesh of his part-human slaves when he couldn’t. If Glacia, Freelik, and Pardieu could survive until they came to the throne room of the King, and could kill him, it would be as if they had conquered all the evil in the world.

Glacia grasped the talking sword of Lothia and gazed into its polished surface. The light of her lantern glanced off it, gold and silver, and her heart turned over with fear. But this was
her
sword, no one else’s, and it would obey her commands. It would kill her enemies and it would speak to her of secrets none of them yet knew. “What lies beyond that door?” she demanded.

“I can only answer yes or no,” the sword answered.

“Is it treasure?” Glacia said.

Soft click of the dice. “No.”

“Is it danger, then?”

“No.”

“Then it’s neutral?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Glacia said. She turned to the others. “Shall we advance or go the other way?”

“Wait,” Pardieu said. “Talking swords have been known to tell lies. How do we know this is a truthful sword? We must test it.”

He was right, of course. Glacia was disappointed; first because she had been so pleased to have the aid of the sword, and second because she had never thought to test its loyalty. She of all people should have known better. Nothing was to be trusted at first sight.

“Do you cut stone?” she asked the sword.

“No.”

“Can you kill people?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always tell the truth?”

“No,” the sword said.

She looked at Pardieu and Freelik in angry exasperation. “What do we do?”

“Wait,” Freelik said. “Sword, can you talk?”

“Yes,” the sword said.

“Do you always tell the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell the truth just now?”

“No.”

“It tells the truth every third time!” Freelik squeaked triumphantly. “Now we can control it.”

Glacia smiled. She raised the sword high, filled with the sense of her own new power. The third answer had been that the unknown room was neutral. “Let us advance,” she said to the others.

They passed through the neutral room in safety, moving ever nearer to their goal. Up a narrow, winding staircase they went, steps that kept moving down every time they climbed higher, forcing them to run just to stay in the same place, until finally—after considering the consequences of not having it later—Pardieu threw his one-use-only spell of paralyzation and made the stairs stand still. It would be a long time before he could earn another such spell, and he would most probably need it for a randomly encountered monster, but if he hadn’t used it for the stairs they might have been trapped there forever. He thought that a Holy Man had more responsibilities than anyone else. He had to make more complicated choices, and he could heal as well as hurt. That was good, for Pardieu did not like to cause destruction, even of evil beings. He could slash with his sword as well as any but Glacia, but it made him feel guilty to kill, even though he did it only in self-defense. If he could use his magic spells to charm wicked spirits into being good, it was better.

Once in every generation there was a Holy Man, who learned all his secrets from the Holy Man who had come before him. Pardieu’s mentor had been a legendary Holy Man who had vanished many years ago, but who some said would never die and had merely chosen to spend his last days in peaceful retirement. Pardieu was not so sure. Sometimes, as he made his way through this treacherous maze, he felt that his mentor had been there before, perhaps was there still, waiting for him. The great one had gone away alone. He had enough power to do that, without a band of companions. But even the most experienced of Holy Men sometimes found themselves in unanticipated trouble.

Pardieu’s hand tightened around the little pouch of spells and potions he wore attached to his belt. He had given away a very strong one, but he had kept the most important one. Let others sing their songs and tell their legends of the olden days. He was the one who by his heroism would rescue and bring back the greatest Holy Man of all—The Great Hall.

None of the others knew it, but tonight he was not Freelik—he was Jay Jay. He had already gotten bored with the game. Compared to the way he wanted to play it, in the real mazes of the caverns, this was child’s play. He went through the moves, pretending for the others, but he was waiting for his chance to die. Now that he intended to die, it wasn’t so easy. He couldn’t make an obvious blunder; the others were too smart for that, especially Daniel, who felt responsible for the flow of the game.

Now Daniel had called up a bunch of the undead, and there was a fierce battle. This was going to go on all night, Jay Jay just knew it, and he felt dismayed. Getting rid of the undead took ages if they were the ones who weren’t afraid of light, which these obviously were not. He prayed for an unlucky throw of the dice. If everybody got tired they would quit after they routed the undead, and then he’d never be able to convince them to start his new game in the caverns. What a rotten way to spend Christmas vacation—still in suspense!

Kate was rolling great numbers tonight; he wished they were in Las Vegas. She was sending the undead back where they came from at a fast rate. Come on, Daniel, undead are boring, kid stuff. Let’s get on with it.… Hurray, the last of the undead had fled, leaving their black rags behind them. Now their brave troupe was advancing into a room where there was a pit, and deep inside the pit was glitter. It could be precious gems, or perhaps it was a trap. Daniel wouldn’t let them have such a big treasure so soon, would he? Maybe it was just a thin layer of diamonds, and under it were lethal spikes. Jay Jay remembered the pit with spikes from an old game, and it didn’t take much imagination to add the camouflage. Jay Jay knew Daniel’s mind pretty well by now. He wondered if Daniel knew his.