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by Vivian Vande Velde

  "You're doing fine," I told him. "Consider me your cheering section. Consider yourself cheered on."

  "Rah," Robin muttered. He kicked up. Again. And again. He inhaled sharply, and I thought he'd lost the pick, but I didn't hear it fall. I opened my eyes and didn't see it between his toes. I raised my eyes, saw that his fist was clenched. "Got it?" I asked, barely able to get the words out of my gag-dried mouth.

  As though hardly daring to believe it himself, Robin nodded.

  9. ENCOUNTER

  The chains weren't long enough for Robin to cross one hand over to the other wrist, even with the slack I provided by supporting him on my shoulders. So with the pick in his right hand he worked to unlock the shackle from the same wrist, and all I kept thinking was that if I twitched at the wrong moment, he was going to drop the stupid thing and we would have to start all over. Or if his hands were half as sweaty as mine, he'd drop it without any help from me at all.

  The tremor that had started in my shoulders was traveling down my legs when I heard the faint click of the lock. I almost dropped Robin in my relief.

  "Hey!" The chains rattled as he scrambled to grab hold.

  "Sorry," I mumbled.

  He pulled his right wrist free of the loosened shackle.

  "Could you hurry it up?" I asked as he gingerly worked the stiffness out of his fingers, wrist, elbow, and—finally—shoulder. Sweat was running down my face, trickling into my eyes and making them sting.

  Robin reached over and started picking at the lock on the left shackle. By then my knees were shaking and I was concentrating so hard on not embarrassing myself by passing out or something that I didn't hear the second lock click open. But I heard Robin's triumphant, "Ta-dah!" and I said, "Coming down," and sank to the floor.

  Robin must have jumped off my shoulders—for a few seconds black shadows crowded the edges of my sight and I wasn't aware of anything—but then I was on my knees, and Robin had cut my wrists free with a blade he'd gotten from his left boot. Now he was hugging me while jagged pains shot through my shoulders and upper back, pains that flashed messages to my brain: You thought that was pain before? THAT was numbness. THIS is pain.

  "We did it!" Robin said. "What a team!"

  What a team, sure. We knelt there for about five minutes, trying to work the kinks and the soreness out of our muscles before we even got the strength to remember to keep our mouths closed while we breathed. I untied the foul gag and threw it to the ground. The game was a lot easier the old way, with the dungeon master rolling dice to compute the amount of damage a character took.

  I checked our peek-hole and saw that our guards were still engrossed in their game. "Safe for the moment," I said. "I think we should take a couple minutes to catch our breath."

  Still flexing his shoulders, Robin nodded.

  "What happened?" I asked. "Back in the woods, I mean."

  He jerked his head up. "What happened to you?" he countered.

  "I went to take a leak behind a tree, and the next thing I knew..."I indicated the cell.

  "And they say girls are always having to go." Robin shook his head. "We were attacked. These guys came tearing out of the woods—"

  "What guys?" I interrupted.

  "I'll get to that."

  "But they were human?" I guessed, judging from the guards I had seen down the hall. "You could see whether they were human."

  "They were human," Robin agreed. "And there were a lot of them. Twenty-five, thirty of them compared to—what? eight, well, you weren't there—seven? no, but Felice was in no condition to help—six?—compared to six of us. They had us surrounded before we even knew they were there."

  I rested my head against my knees. "Go on."

  "The only thing that saved us was that apparently they wanted us alive."

  I sat up sharply. "Why?"

  He gave me that look that warned I was rushing his story again.

  "Well, then, hurry it up," I said.

  "Marian and I were using our swords, fighting back to back. I killed two of the attackers—well, one for certain; the other was wounded, but I don't know for sure if he died. Marian must have taken out at least four, but then we got separated. People were shooting arrows, Cornelius was shooting Wizards' Lightning. The thing is, Harek, it happened so fast." He shrugged helplessly. "Whenever we've played before, it was so orderly: people would get their turns one by one, then the dungeon master would say what the results were, then we'd take another turn ... but this way..." He shook his head. "People were shouting, the horses were rearing—out of control and flailing with their hooves—and the Wizards' Lightning stank like anything and made our eyes burn, and there was all this dust and smoke so you couldn't see what was happening. Then Cornelius threw a Magic Web and caught about ten of our attackers. And me." Again he shrugged.

  "They didn't stay to help you?"

  "It would have only gotten more of them captured. Besides, they would have had to come back anyway for you. We figured you'd been captured already."

  I was feeling pretty sorry for myself by then, and I wasn't too sure any of them would have come back for me. But Marian would see to it that a rescue attempt was launched for Robin. "So they took off without you," I prompted.

  "Yeah. By then, I'd seen Nocona get hit by an arrow."

  "How bad?"

  "Hard to say. It got him in the leg." He indicated just above the knee.

  "Bad but not horrible," I said. "Unless it severed a major artery, which would be horrible but not too horrible. Unless he passed out and the others were too busy to help, which would be—"

  "Hard to say," Robin said again.

  "Hard to say," I agreed.

  "Thea got the creep who wounded him, and Feordin—"

  "What about..." The name stuck in my throat. "Felice?"

  Robin was sitting cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees, his chin on his knuckles. He looked at me levelly for maybe seven, eight seconds and never said a word, and I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Then, just when I was ready to shake him, he said, "She did the best she could. She picked up a sword from one of the dead attackers, but that's not her specialty. And she's not well."

  What was this, Noah Avila defending my mom to me? "Look—" I started, but he cut me off. "We all did our best. But we were outnumbered."

  I held my open hands out, indication that I wasn't looking for a fight.

  Robin didn't look convinced, but he nodded.

  I said, "So Nocona was injured, you were captured, and the others..."I didn't want him to accuse me of being judgmental; what was another word for "lit out"?

  "Left without me," Robin supplied.

  "Left without you. Any of the bad guys follow them?"

  Robin shook his head. "No, those who were left worked at freeing their friends in the Web. Course, once they got me free, they tied me right back up again. Then they threw me facedown across a horse. I saw them carry you out from the woods, and you looked like you were dead, but I figured they wouldn't've bothered with you if you were."

  "I wonder why they bothered at all?"

  "They're slavers. I overheard them talking. They're collecting for a ship that's coming in next week."

  It made sense. A local robber baron turning his gang to commerce during hard times. "Do they have the princess?" I asked.

  "Didn't sound like it."

  "All right. Think you can unlock that door? Without the guards hearing?"

  "Sure as my name's Robin Hood," Robin said.

  "Wonderful."

  He took his lock pick and started fiddling with the mechanism on the door.

  "Ah, Robin?"

  "What?"

  "Maybe you better give me the dagger."

  He hesitated, and I sure hoped he wouldn't argue with me, because I didn't know how he'd take to my pointing out that I was a warrior while he was only a thief. On the other hand, I was just thinking how I'd messed up everything I'd started this campaign, and that maybe I'd be better off letting him handle thi
ngs, when he pulled the blade out of its secret compartment and passed it to me.

  "Thanks." Small, but a clean edge. Good balance. Lucky for me, the thing wasn't iron but some lightweight alloy—made for hiding. I tried to get the feel of it in my hand, tried to let my mind go blank, to let Harek the professional elf warrior in, and Arvin—who-knew-how-to-cut-his-meat-with-a-knife-but-that-was-about-it—out. I'd have to act instinctively. If I stopped to figure things out, that'd be the end of all of us: Harek, Arvin, and Robin.

  I stood out of Robin's way but close enough to see through the little barred window. I was watching the guards when the lock clicked open, and was sure they hadn't heard.

  "I'll go closer," I whispered, indicating the darkened doorways to the other cells. "You stay here and create a diversion."

  I slipped past him and into the hallway. Don't look up, I mentally begged the guards. On tiptoe I ran to the first alcove, the doorway of the cell closest to us. I leaned against the door, sure my heart was beating loud enough to alert the guards. When they didn't look up, I took a deep breath and ran to the next doorway, shrinking as far back into the shadows as I could, out of the puddle of light where the guards were playing cards.

  I glanced back to where Robin was waiting. No sign of him, but, assuming he was where he was supposed to be, I waved for him to get going.

  Robin gave me an instant to flatten myself into the shadows again, then went into action. He stepped out into the middle of the hall where he was illuminated by the torchlight from our cell, and pulled the door closed behind him with a rattle loud enough that the guards had to hear it.

  "Hey!" one of them yelled.

  For the briefest moment Robin froze, looking like a headlight-startled rabbit. Then he took off down the hall.

  The guards jumped up from their game, upsetting one of the benches. I heard the scraping sound of swords leaving scabbards, and then the pounding of feet down the hall, toward the fleeing Robin. And, thanks to my own plan, toward me, too.

  The shadows preceded the guards as they left the well-lighted area. I held my breath and shrank as far into the alcove as I could while they came closer, closer. The one in the lead passed, never seeing me. I let him go. The second passed., Almost. My foot caught him totally unawares, and he went sprawling, his sword skittering down the hall without him. I stepped out into the hall, and the third guard ran straight into my outstretched dagger. Conditioning kicked in totally. I didn't even flinch as the guy doubled over—I braced my free hand against his helmet and shoved him away from me as though I'd been killing people all my life.

  The first guard had skidded to a stop and rounded back on me. Beyond him, Robin had realized the trap had been sprung, and headed back, but there was no way he'd get here in time to be any help at all. I kicked the guy I'd tripped just to keep him off balance a bit longer, then thought, Who am I trying to kid? There I was with a five-inch knife, facing a guy with a three-foot-long broadsword, and I was closing in for hand-to-hand combat? I threw the knife. It hit the first guard in the throat and he keeled over backward with an awful gurgling sound.

  The second guard started to get up and I kicked him yet again. Now what? Suddenly all the instinct was gone, and here I was without a weapon and burdened with this man who refused to lie still and surrender. I put my foot down on the small of his back, but I could tell that wasn't going to keep him long. "Surrender or die," I told him.

  His hand whipped behind his back and grabbed my ankle. I hit the floor hard and rolled, half expecting to find him on me.

  I found him dead.

  "What a team!" Robin said. He was holding the sword with which he had just killed the guard, the man's own blade.

  "What a team," I answered.

  Robin retrieved his knife from the guard's throat and returned it to me. "You all right?"

  "Yeah."

  This was, I reminded myself, just a game. And Harek was a trained warrior who had killed many times before.

  It didn't help.

  10. DISAPPEARING ACT

  Robin looked up from riffling through the pockets of the dead guards. "Half of this is yours."

  "Ahhh...," I said, unenthusiastic but worried about getting the reputation for being a killjoy. I just wanted to get out of there.

  Robin stuffed some copper coins and a small throwing knife into various hidden compartments about his person, then buckled on the dead guard's sword belt. After all, his inclination was to be a thief, and he certainly wasn't going to twist my arm to force this booty on me. "Let's explore," he said.

  "Ahhh...," I hedged.

  "Harek, look around you. This is a dungeon. We're supposed to explore dungeons."

  "Ahhh..."

  "There might be treasure here. There might be magic items that we'll need for later on in the quest."

  He was right, of course. Not that it seemed likely. Still. There was no use getting all weird on him just because I was grossed out by our having killed the guards.

  "But we'd better make it quick," I said. "We don't know how long till the next shift of guards comes on."

  Robin saluted to show he understood and jangled the ring of keys he'd filched from one of the guards.

  I went and got the torch from our cell. It stank—something like burned hair—and sputtered and threw distracting shadows on the walls so that I kept jumping, sure that someone was coming out at us. But Robin had already opened the door of the next cell and was waiting for me.

  The room looked pretty much like the one in which we had been locked: chains dangling from the wall, cesspit in the corner. "Nothing here," I said, pulling back.

  Robin gave me a you're-not-getting-off-that-easy look and stepped forward. "Something written on that far wall?" he asked.

  It looked like a four-lines-and-slash accounting, where someone had been keeping track of days—a lot of days. But I held the torch higher and Robin took another step forward.

  And disappeared.

  There was no shimmering, no fading out, no flash of smoke or crackle of electricity in the air. But no Robin either.

  "Robin?" Gingerly, I held out my hand. Being an elf, I should have been sensitive to the presence of magic. But I felt nothing. "Robin?" My voice was shaking, though Noah Avila had certainly never been a special friend. 1 took a step away.

  Suddenly Robin was there again, stepping backward from ... wherever. He swore, using the kind of language that lands kids in principals' offices. Finally he asked, "Where was I?"

  "I don't know," I fairly screamed at him. "You tell me."

  "I don't know." He rubbed his arms, looking at the air before him warily. "Nowhere," he said. "I was nowhere."

  "Don't give me that. You were gone. You weren't here."

  "But I was nowhere," he insisted. He shivered. "There was nothing there, Harek. Nothing."

  "What do you mean, nothing? Do you mean it was dark? You couldn't see anything because it was dark?"

  "I don't know."

  "What's that supposed to mean? Either it was dark or it wasn't."

  "No."

  "Robin." I was ready to shake him: it seemed such a basic question, but I switched tactics. "Could you hear me call you?"

  He shook his head.

  I lowered my voice. I'd been close to yelling, and I suddenly remembered where we were. "Some kind of magic?" I asked. A powerful enough wizard could have put warding spells around an area, to hide it from detection. "Some place we have to pass through?" Now, there was a thought.

  Robin was shaking his head. "I don't think so. You try it."

  "What if I get stuck?"

  He shouted at me: "There's nothing there."

  "I know there's nothing there," I shouted back. "You keep telling me there's nothing there. All right, I get it: there's nothing there."

  We stood nose-to-nose, glaring at each other, both breathing hard. We were being stupid—loud enough to attract unwanted attention. All of a sudden I could feel every ache from being whacked on the head and tied up and thrown
into a cold, damp dungeon.

  I looked beyond him to the perfectly harmless-seeming air into which he had disappeared. "How did you get back?" I asked.

  "Just stepped back," he told me.

  I took a steadying breath. I flexed my hand on the handle of the torch. I was taking it with me, to light up Robin's nothingness. I started to take a step forward.

  In the half moment as my center of balance shifted, Robin said, "It's just a matter of finding your body so that you can step back."

  I finished the step.

  And I was nowhere.

  No walls around me. No floor under my feet.

  No feet, come to think of it.

  I was slightly dizzy, though I wasn't aware of having a body, as though my head—if I still had one—was stuffed with cotton.

  Was it dark?

  I don't know.

  Not, I don't remember. Just, I don't know. I didn't have eyes to see with, or a brain to think with. Dark or light? The question was meaningless, like asking, Is the sky afraid?

  I wondered if this was death. Or rather the computer equivalent of death. But Robin had come back from it. And only a cleric can bring people back from the dead. Game rules.

  I wanted to step back, but I couldn't.

  I didn't know how.

  Just like I don't know how to wiggle my ears, can't find the right muscles to spread out my toes, couldn't begin to flex my appendix.

  I couldn't see.

  Couldn't hear.

  Couldn't feel.

  Couldn't scream.

  Couldn't move.

  I was beginning to dissolve, to spread out, to lose track of who I was. In my head (I think) I formed a picture of myself. I made that image step backward.

  Nothing.

  I remembered that I wasn't Harek Longbow of the Silver Mountains Clan, tall and fair and muscular and self-possessed. I was Arvin Rizalli. And while I couldn't remember exactly what that meant, I knew it was the opposite of Harek. I got a vague image in my head (I think) then gave it a mental shove backward.