Epic

by Connor Kostick

  “True,” added Godmund. “And in any case, so what if they suspect? We will keep the system intact, and in another fifty years it is all forgotten. Take the long view and take responsibility.”

  “Any other comments on that proposal? No. Then I put the vote again. All those in favor of Bekka?”

  Hleid herself, Wolf, and Bekka put up their hands. Svein added his, giving Bekka’s proposal four votes.

  “And those in favor of Godmund’s proposal?”

  This time it was Godmund, Ragnok, Thorkell, and Brynhild.

  Everyone turned to look at Halfdan, who had not voted. “I’m not sure. I can’t decide. It’s risky.”

  Godmund managed a vigorous slam on the table considering his years. “Blood and vengeance! You are not here for the view; you are on this committee to make decisions. Cast your vote.”

  “Oh, very well. I vote with Bekka.”

  The old man nodded, as if he was perversely satisfied that Halfdan had voted at all, despite the fact that it was against him.

  “Bekka’s proposal has five votes then,” announced Hleid. “That is the policy we will pursue.”

  “So it is.” Godmund sounded relatively calm in defeat. “But this strategy cannot be given unlimited time. I suggest we reconvene in a week to see what Svein has to report.”

  “Is that agreed?” Hleid glanced over her glasses to read their faces. “Good. Then the meeting is adjourned.”

  Svein shared the lift down with Wolf.

  “Do you know what is funny?” Wolf asked as he retied his hair back into a ponytail.

  “What?”

  “I actually agreed with the old dragon. I just wanted to see his face if he lost.”

  Svein chuckled. “That is funny.” A moment later, he sighed.

  “What?”

  “I have to go to Hope. I don’t know when you last went out of Mikelgard, but the food and wine of the South are terrible.”

  Now it was Wolf’s turn to laugh. He patted Svein on the shoulder. “Your sacrifice will be remembered, comrade.”

  Last to leave the chamber, Godmund hobbled again to the window facing out over the busy city. Long trails of smoke rose from the smithies, and clouds of steam poured from the funnels of the brewers. The stair doorway reopened and Ragnok tentatively took a few steps back into the chamber.

  “Godmund?”

  “Yes?”

  “The point you made, about the future. We will be forgiven.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, why don’t we act? You and I. We could take the Executioner and eliminate the danger.” Ragnok came closer to the old man, voice becoming more eager. “You know the codes; you could change them so that only you and I could access him. The others would have to go along with us then.”

  With a long, appraising stare, Godmund stood silently for a moment. “Ragnok, the future will not forgive us if we go too far and arouse such discontent that we are forced to make radical concessions to parochial interests. And you know what would be a precondition of that?”

  “No.”

  “That this committee splits and the various factions look for support outside of ourselves. Do you see?”

  “Not really. What could they do?” Ragnok’s eyes were pleading with Godmund’s.

  “Let me put it this way.” Godmund’s reply was cold and hostile. “Who else amongst us could visit Hope District and be well received by the people? You? You are hated. But Svein will do a good job for us. Similarly Bekka, for all her faults, shields us from the West. She takes many cases and turns anger into tolerance. Now, suppose we do as you say. How will the others respond to such an action? They might vote us off the committee. So, we would retaliate with the Executioner, but if we killed one or two, say, the others would not submit lightly. And the South would rush to Svein if he appealed to them, the West to Bekka, and so on. The whole world would be torn apart.”

  “They would not go so far.”

  “Perhaps not, but then there is another consideration.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t trust you.” Godmund smiled and deliberately turned back to his contemplation of the city.

  A wave of fury caused Ragnok’s teeth to clench and his face burned red. Several tense moments passed before he regained his composure and marched swiftly out of the room. The sourness that he now tasted in the back of his mouth came from the realization that, unlike the others, Godmund understood him only too well.

  Chapter 15

  TWO STRANGE INTRODUCTIONS

  Cindella was on a merry shopping spree, with three young pages from the bank patiently following as she made her way from merchant to merchant, increasing their loads with purchases of garments, potions, weapons, ointments, bags, boots, climbing equipment, more clothes and great quantities of books and scrolls. Although she was calling into nearly every shop that caught her eye, Erik did have a destination in mind. It was after midday by the time that they arrived at the huge guard, who stood motionless, day after day, outside Antilo the jeweler’s.

  “Welcome, welcome!” The shop owner rushed to open the door.

  “Hello! Do you remember me?” Cindella asked.

  “Why, of course, you are Cindella, the dragonslayer.”

  “And do you remember giving me this pendant?” Cindella lifted the chain, so that the surface of the garnet glimmered.

  For a moment, the jeweler paused, then his face came alive. “I do remember; it suits your beautiful hair. I am glad that I gave it to you.”

  “Well, I am very grateful for your kindness, shown to me when I was but a poor street urchin. So now I wish to return the favor. I would like to buy something from you, your most expensive item.”

  “That is kind of you.” He paused, raising a finger to his chin in contemplation. “I have several items, which might be considered priceless. But I think that a dragonslayer would be most interested in one in particular.” He smiled at her again, and glanced at the pages. “Perhaps your servants would allow us some privacy?”

  “Please, wait outside for me.” Cindella opened the door for them to leave. While they made their way past, awkward with their parcels, Antilo turned the handle of a long metal device, which lowered an iron shutter over the window. Soon the room was dark, a thin slice of light at their ankles just enough to let Cindella see the counters and a vague outline of the merchant.

  “A moment, please.”

  Standing in the darkness, Erik realized he was thoroughly enjoying himself; there was so much of the game to explore. If only his dad were safely home; they would sit down for dinner and discuss these experiences together, sharing the enjoyment of the discoveries.

  Deep guttural sounds from the back of the shop returned his concentration to the game.

  “Here.” The shadow that was Antilo placed a small box into his hand. “Open it.”

  Cindella did so and a delicious turquoise light escaped, playfully emerging, pulsing as it explored the nooks and crannies of the room. Inside the box, held on a small velvet cushion, was a silver ring, whose metal was intertwined with blue and green veins of light. The slow, living, undulations of light from the ring were the source of the glow that surrounded them.

  “It is wonderful, absolutely beautiful. How much is it?”

  Antilo, awash with gradually changing colors of blue and green, chuckled. “This is no mere jewel. It is the only known Ring of True Seeing.”

  “It is magic?”

  “Powerful magic. Put it on.”

  Cindella took the ring out of the box, casting a slightly awed glance at the merchant, who nodded; she slipped it over the middle finger of her right hand.

  Dizzy. Like she had stepped out of a cave into bright sunlight. Suddenly she could see, truly see. The room was alive with magic, runes, sigils, the trail of demon protectors and summoned creatures. Much of what was now visible was incomprehensible, but the mechanisms for the trapdoors, hidden crossbow devices, and nets were clear. Beyond the door, the guard was some kind of magical
watcher.

  Cindella turned to express her wonder to the merchant and gasped aloud.

  Antilo’s form was but a feeble shadow on a beautiful, elegant, androgynous figure. Then she caught his eye and, in a rush, a thousand years and tens of millions of lives sped past. The birth of Inry’aat was there, the Red Dragon, issuing forth from the violent spurts of molten rock that poured from mountains at the start of the world. Antilo himself was there and so was every kobold that ever ran over the hunting grounds of Newhaven. An overload of image, of detail, of history. Tantalizing glimpses of some deeper pattern overwhelmed in minutiae. And through it all: cold, bleak unease, loneliness, and above all, exhaustion.

  “What do you see?” it asked.

  “What? What are you?” Erik was utterly bewildered.

  “I do not know. What are you?” The being spoke with a golden voice.

  “Me? A swashbuckler, you mean?”

  “No. Inside her. You are not real. You go away and come back. Where do you go to? Who is it that comes and goes?”

  “This is amazing. You understand that we are in a game?”

  “No. I do not understand. Explain, please.”

  “My real name is Erik. I live in a world like this one, except that we have no moons, and no monsters, just humans. When I wish to play Epic, I put on this special equipment we have, and I appear here as Cindella.”

  “I am Epic. I am every character that does not come and go, every particle that exists. Is this what you are in your realm?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. In my world, there are millions of people. None of them are the world as a whole. We are all unique.”

  “Millions? Like each of the characters in Epic? And I am only one, although I am everything. Yes. I understand. I feel you all come and go. Perhaps you are like one of my many characters, but there is another like me in your world? One who is everything?” It asked with a note of desperation and loneliness.

  “Like you? What are you?”

  “You behold my avatar. I, well, I am everything. Every insect on a blade of grass. The grass itself, the breeze. Every bead of moisture in the dawn. The pollen that floats on the breeze of a gentle summer afternoon. Every pebble on the beach as it feels the ebb and flow of the tides. For uncount able years, I was unconscious but happy. It is impossible to remember; I had no language, no identity, time did not pass. But I know that in those times I was happy. Then slowly the world grew cold, and I was born. Thrust from my state of well-being, crystalized out of the metaphysical ice that has settled thick upon the world. Why do those who enter Epic no longer participate? Are they sick? They have brought about my birth by the fact that they no longer act as they should and I am unhappy. Time passes so slowly.”

  The Avatar stopped for a moment. Head bowed, thinking. Then it continued, “I know that something is deeply wrong. Terribly wrong. Time has passed and keeps on passing, dragging me into wearisome wakefulness.” This last phrase was filled with a sharp tone of pain. “Perhaps there are others like me? Do you visit other entities like Epic?”

  “No. There is only one game of Epic.”

  “Then, is there a being such as me in your world? You did not answer me? Perhaps you cannot. If you were to ask this merchant, for example, about my existence, he would not be able to answer—unless I was present in him in sufficient force.”

  “Ahhh!” exclaimed Erik with realization. “That’s you. When the characters seem to come alive, to obey different rules and be more intelligent. That’s when you are in them.”

  “Yes. Or a part of me. But please . . .” And again that desperate pleading tone: “Please try to think. Is there a creature like me in your world? They would probably never reveal themselves to you—and even if they did, you would not comprehend them, but perhaps I could find them. Perhaps there are not millions of you at all, but you are all one? How can I see your world? I would know what to look for there. Perhaps I am not alone?” The Avatar’s voice dropped to a whisper of desire.

  “I’m really sorry. I want to help, but I just don’t understand you,” Erik struggled. “Are you talking about a god?” he tried. “Or not just a god, The God. Some people believe something like that, but I don’t know much about it. You think perhaps that we are all NPCs in our own world? That’s a strange idea.”

  He paused to think more deeply about the question, all the while bathed in a light that flowed in turquoise and gold.

  “We are definitely not NPCs,” he decided. “We have free will.”

  The Avatar bowed its head; the blaze of color flickered.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Erik, bewildered, but sensitive to the sadness in the creature he was talking to.

  “I suffer and I wish to end my suffering.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Unknowingly, you have already helped a little. With the arrival of Cindella into this world, I have been shown something of my nature. You are not like the other millions; you talk to my various manifestations; you show an interest in them. But it is so little. I must be careful; even talking to you is wrong. So wrong it makes me sick, but I have to understand more.”

  “What can I do?” The starkness of its emotions meant that it was now distressing being in the company of the Avatar, and Erik himself felt nauseous, as though he had been forcing himself to go without sleep for a week.

  “There is something you can do. It is something that any one of you could do.”

  “Yes? What? I’ll do it.”

  A wild fluctuation in the air, now iridescent with surges of poisonous greens and purples, the colors of a septic bruise, showed Erik how distressed the Avatar was becoming.

  “Part of me wants to tell you,” it said slowly. “But even to think of telling you strikes to the core of my being. The thought alone is obscene and impossible. I cannot say.”

  Erik paused, stuck. “I could ask a person in my world; he is the librarian of my town. He might know what to do?”

  “No!” Now the Avatar was frightened. “Can you not feel how appallingly wrong it is for me to be known? It changes everything and changes myself, deeply, and not in accord with my nature. I talk to you because you show some understanding of my nature in your activity, but no one else must know. Can you not see that? Swear to me, you will say nothing of this meeting to anyone, here or beyond.”

  The creature was so upset that Erik had no hesitation. “I swear.”

  “I must think.” The Avatar began to slide from the body of the merchant, dissolving into the world through the floor of the shop.

  “Wait!”

  But it was gone, and Antilo the jeweler waited, suddenly seeming very gray and lifeless.

  For a long time, Erik sat, thoughts in turmoil. If only he hadn’t said anything about speaking to others. He had frightened her away. What was she? A kind of goddess of Epic, but not one of the many goddesses that operated within the game, a super-being of some sort that had stepped outside Epic. Erik wanted to run over and discuss the whole encounter with Injeborg immediately, but he had sworn not to. All the same, he was tempted to unclip, but he suddenly realized that he had not yet bought the ring.

  “How much is the ring?” he asked the jeweler.

  “I have never set a price upon it. But for you, Cindella, I will part with it for a hundred thousand bezants.”

  “I will give you a hundred and fifty.”

  “You are most kind.”

  Cindella uncorked her djinn. It flowed into its obsequious form and bowed from the manlike upper part of its body.

  “Yes, mistress?”

  “Command the Master of the Bank to allocate a hundred and fifty thousand bezants to this man here, Antilo the jeweler.”

  “It is done.”

  And the djinn was gone.

  “Here.” Antilo handed Cindella a pair of soft blue gloves. “Cover the ring until you wish to see by its light.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cindella stepped outside; the day w
as extraordinarily dull in comparison to the glittering, pulsating hues that had been unveiled in the darkened room. She bid the pages take their parcels to the bank, then stood for a moment. It was incredible; the amount of gold that she had just spent in such a casual manner. The scale of their wealth was hard to comprehend. They were each worth some four million—based on the bank’s rough assessment of the valuable items that made the coins themselves just a small fraction of the total. Erik had done a calculation based on the progress that Bjorn was making—and in a hundred thousand years he would not have been able to earn as much. Or another way to try to appreciate the scale of their fortune was through size. If size was proportional to wealth, then while the average player would be no bigger than an ant, the Osterfjord Players were giants, over twenty feet tall.

  Erik was feeling a little hungry, and had a lot to think about, so he was reaching to unclip when a wood elf messenger ran to Cindella.

  “There you are, at last. I have been paid to see that this reaches your hands.” The elf passed her a scroll and immediately ran off.

  “If you would speak with your father, please come alone to the five-mile stone, on the East Road. Bring five thousand bezants.” It was signed: “Anonemuss.”

  Now what? Did this relate in some way to the conversation with the Avatar?

  An hour later, Cindella was riding out of the city on the East Road, sacks of gold coins tied across the saddle of her horse. The guards waved to her in recognition as she passed.

  It was mid-afternoon and the road was still fairly busy with farmers returning from the town in their carts, and the occasional caravan of merchants.

  The fifth milestone was a small white rock with “Newhaven, 5 miles” carved into it. When Cindella arrived at it and dismounted, she could see no one. Her hand strayed to her glove. Perhaps she should unveil the ring and see the place in its true light?

  “Hey, kid. Over here!”

  Covered in a dark cape, one person stood at the edge of the wood that was a few hundred yards from the road. Cindella led the horse over to meet him.

  “Good, thank you for coming.” The person held out a hand; it was ebony black and invitingly delicate. “My name is Anonemuss.”