The Game Masters of Garden Place Page 6

  “Would you prefer ‘If Thou Art Happy and Thou Know It, Clap Thy Hands’?” Mirak asked. “We can sing that instead.”

  “I would prefer to have my ears cut off with a dull ax, to be honest,” answered Jandia in a very rude voice.

  Gerontius could be heard faintly ahead of them, calling them forward. Looking behind and noticing the halfling struggling so, Jandia sighed and tugged him out of the snow and carried him under her arm like a sack of flour bought at market.

  The wizard held his orb up, and the beam shone weakly into the densely falling whiteness. A short ways ahead of them, a light seemed to flicker. Torgrim nodded eagerly and set the pace, his stubby but strong legs churning the snow around them as he ran as best he could, his beard caked with frost.

  The flickering had come from the mouth of a cave set into the mountain. With numbed hands, Jandia lowered Bram and pulled her great sword from its sheath. There was no telling who or what was in that cave, but there was fire and fire was warm, and that was enough to risk even a cave troll or a garrison of goblin warriors.

  Bram slid ahead of her. He was after all, the smallest and quietest and had the instincts to smell out traps before the rest. He peered in and then gestured to the others to proceed with caution.

  They entered the cave and the sudden quiet of the large open area came as a shock. The whistling winds continued outside unabated, but here only the crackling of a large fire could be heard.

  It took a moment to get used to the relative darkness of their surroundings, having spent so long in the unending whiteness of the mountain. But they were soon aware that they were not alone.

  Stirring a pot over the fire was a curiously dressed figure. “Please join me and be welcome,” he said in a voice both deep and melodious.

  He was dressed in striped silk hose, with a checkered doublet with long puffed sleeves gathered at the wrists. His hair was pomaded and combed back, and his elegant mustache was waxed and curled up at the ends. Upon his head was a purple velvet cap, with a large peacock feather attached to it. He made an altogether ridiculous picture but seemed harmless.

  The party moved warily toward him, and he ladled some of the stew into a bowl and held it out in front of him. “You are cold and in need of food, I warrant. There is enough for all.”

  Torgrim eyed the bowl hungrily. He moved forward. “Good sir, we have interrupted your meal. Please eat first, and then we will join you.”

  The man paused to reflect on this and then burst out in a deep, easy laugh. “Oh, I see. You fear I have put something in the soup. I admire your prudence. I have eaten already, but if it eases your cares, then by all means.” He raised the bowl to his lips and drank a large sip. He swallowed it down. “You see? It may need some salt, but otherwise you should find it agreeable.”

  As they ate, Gerontius studied the man. “You have not honored us with your name or story. Who are you, who has saved us in this storm?”

  The man smiled, took off his cap, and bowed. It was a courtier’s bow, with many gestures and much hand-waving. “I am Chioni, official court minstrel to Andromodus of Athanos.”

  Jandia tensed and reached for her sword, but Gerontius gently waved her down. “I take it, Minstrel, that you are aware of who we are.”

  “But of course,” said Chioni, crossing his arms. “All Demos sings your praises.”

  Bram threw the remains of his bowl into the fire, which flared up. “Does that include Andromodus?”

  “As a matter of fact, he is exceedingly disappointed in your decision not to bring him the fruits of your labor,” the minstrel replied, “and has sent me to ask you to see reason.”

  “Reason has nothing to do with it,” said Gerontius, “but rather who is the rightful owner of the scepter.”

  Chioni looked concerned. “Ah. So it is like that. Well, suppose I put this to you more in the way of a challenge. You seek the fifth serpent. I have found it.”

  Mirak regarded the minstrel. There was little love lost between minstrels and bards. The former thought bards used their songs for war and magic, instead of for the beauty of the song itself. Bards found minstrels little more than simpering court servants, playing at the pleasure of their duke or prince, singing insipid songs of praise for unworthy patrons who paid them handsomely for their meager talents. “How did you get here?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Do not think that Andromodus has no magic of his own to call upon,” said Chioni. “He has been able to follow your journey on his Map of Enchantment, which shows not only you, but also all the others he has sent on the same quest.”

  “He knows we are here?” demanded Torgrim.

  “Of course. He has sent me by a spell of transport before you to take what is rightfully his.”

  Jandia’s eyes were slits. “Brave words, when you are one and we are five.”

  “You kill me, and you will never find the fifth serpent.”

  “And we are to hand over the others to you, just like that?” Bram asked, laughing.

  “Not at all,” the minstrel replied. “I propose a simple contest. If you win, you get the serpent I have found. If you lose, I leave with yours.”

  His face betraying nothing, Gerontius stared calmly at the man. “What type of contest is this to be?”

  Chioni smiled broadly. “A simple one. A singing contest, between the bard and myself.”

  “What nonsense!” Bram said. “Whoever heard of such a thing? And who will be the judge?”

  “I will challenge you to armed combat,” Jandia said, “which will be easy to judge, as you will end up in a puddle of blood.”

  “It is a song contest,” the minstrel said. “And the judgment shall be rendered by the four Great Winds—North, South, East, and West—who bless those of us with the gift of singing.”

  Gerontius raised an eyebrow. “And how will we know their verdict?”

  “They will make their decision known,” Chioni replied, “when they stop their wailing and sit silent.”

  He turned to Mirak. “Are you in agreement?”

  Mirak slowly picked up her harp and tuned it. The weather had loosened the strings, and it was now warmed by the fire. “I do not feel music is a thing to be judged. All who sing are blessed, from the commonest shepherd to the finest fool who sings for his supper in the court.”

  Chioni sighed. “That is a shame. In that case, your quest ends here, as only I have the fifth serpent.”

  “I will sing, but only for the Winds, who have blessed me with my voice and who play sweeter music than any mortal,” Mirak said, and sat cross-legged near the front of the cave.

  Chioni the minstrel joined her with his lute. “Shall I go first?”

  “As you wish,” she said softly.

  Chioni cleared his throat and began:

  “The snow fills the valley.

  My love waits for me,

  but I am lost.

  I cry out, but my voice is taken

  by the winds, and none can hear.

  O, Amortas, Goddess of the North Wind,

  Send my song to her.

  Alas, that she will see me nevermore!”

  The minstrel’s voice was deep and sweet, seductive and sad.

  It was Mirak’s turn. She raised her chin to the skies, plucked her harp, and began:

  “Ye winds of the North

  Will head back to your home.

  Your children await you

  To sing them to sleep.

  The tiny breezes, the yawning zephyrs,

  The gales and the gusts…”

  Mirak’s voice was not as sweet as Chioni’s, but it was clear, and rang like purest crystal.

  Chioni sang a second verse of a sailor lost at sea, crying out to Syandra, goddess of the South Winds.

  The whipping winds seemed to
be dying down. What had been a gale was now gusts.

  “The Winds are listening,” Torgrim muttered to Gerontius, who nodded.

  Mirak sang a second verse of her song, as the mischievous little winds of the South were set in their beds by their mother.

  Chioni’s verse sang of a farmer, crying out to Evandra, she of the East Winds, to bring him breezes so that his crops’ seeds would scatter and reward him with heavy wagons of food come the harvest.

  Mirak sang of Evandra soothing her little waterspout, who was crying. She rocked him in her arms.

  There was yet a breeze in the air. Neither had caused the winds to cease.

  Chioni closed his eyes and sang his last verse.

  “My lover fills my heart,

  The buds do burst so in spring,

  But I am lost.

  May you, Wysteria, Goddess of the Western Winds

  Send my song to her,

  And like the Snowbound, the Sailor, and the Tiller

  I will sing of the greatness of the Four Winds evermore!”

  There was total silence as the chord from the minstrel’s lute echoed in the cavern. There did not seem to be even a breath of wind.

  With a look of triumph, Chioni bowed low and turned to Mirak. “The Winds have listened and made their choice.”

  Mirak hung her head and wept. Great tears splashed upon the surface of the stones of the cave.

  “Wait!” Bram cried, and pointed at Chioni’s cap. The peacock feather fluttered. It was hard to see, but there was the gentlest of winds, kissing the feather. There was a whisper, from far away, but all could hear: “We have not chosen. We await the last verse.”

  Mirak looked up and plucked her harp once more.

  “Hear me, O Winds,

  Who lullaby your little ones

  To their cloud beds,

  My voice is not as pretty, and my verses may not be as smart,

  But the minstrel’s pretty words come from his pretty head,

  While I, your humble servant, sing from the heart.”

  The peacock feather grew limp and lay against the side of the fine velvet cap. The winds were still. There was a parting of the clouds, and the sun shone.

  Gerontius spoke. “The winds have made their final call. Will you dispute it, Minstrel?”

  Chioni calmly took off his lute and held it out in front of him. He slowly walked to the fire and put it in.

  Mirak gasped. “Your lute! No!”

  “It must be done,” the minstrel said as he watched the flames lick the veneer of the priceless instrument.

  They gathered around the fire, watching as the lute burned, faster and faster, the flames leaping up and disappearing into the darkness above.

  Finally, Chioni reached into the ashes and pulled something charred from the fire.

  “It was hidden inside the neck of my lute.”

  He knelt before Mirak and gave it to her. It was a flute, made of bone. As the others looked on, it began to twist in her hands, until it rested there, in the form of a serpent.

  Carved into the bone near the mouthpiece was a finely wrought sea scene, of a boat being drawn down into a swirling tower of water.

  “Is this a clue or a prophecy?” asked Jandia.

  “Perhaps both,” answered Bram. For once, he was not smiling.

  Jojo threw herself on her back and began to snore.

  “Enough singing!” said Noel finally. “I vote one song at most per session.”

  Three other players held up their hands.

  “Anyway, that was totally not how it goes in the story,” Noel continued. “They just go into the cavern and find the bone serpent in the rib cage of a kobold skeleton.”

  “I was trying to make it more interesting!” Persephone said, pouting.

  “More interesting for you, maybe.” Jojo smirked.

  Ralph narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. Noel, how did you know what was going to happen?”

  “I read ahead,” Noel said casually.

  Persephone was livid. “No fair! We all promised not to do that!”

  “She’s right,” Ralph said. “Why would you do that?”

  Noel shrugged. “Because I wanted to.”

  Not unexpectedly, Persephone burst into tears. “I was so selfish!” she sobbed. “I have been acting unforgivably! I am a terrible, awful game master!” She ran from the room.

  “That was acting?” asked Noel.

  Persephone bounded back in the room and walked up to Ralph as if nothing had happened. She presented him with the notes and the dice.

  “Your turn, RPG,” she declared.

  Ralph looked down at the board.

  It felt right. He felt a jolt of excitement go through him. He could bring together everything he had learned from all the books, and all the countless sessions watching Declan balance the various personalities around the table, and keep the action going. He was ready.

  The next Saturday, Ralph began as GM.

  All had to agree: the game changed as soon as he stepped in. It was decided that he would be the GM from now on.

  From the moment in January when he took over, Fridays now became Ralph’s second-favorite day of the week. That was when he would begin to plan in earnest the journey he would take his friends on come Saturday, trying to find ways to help them move their characters forward.

  For inspiration, he would often venture online. Warwick Wycroft had long ago sold the game to a large company, which had created an entire industry of ancillary goodies, including small figures you could place on the map during the game to match your character, and fictional books about brave heroes’ and heroines’ adventures in the fantasy world. Fans throughout the decades had also written their own stories and posted them online for all to read. And there were countless forums where players could compare strategies for making the game the best it could be, or just complain about members of their groups.

  Ralph had made friends online with a number of older GMs (he had been careful not to tell them too much about himself—he had learned in school when they showed that video with the corny name “Don’t Get Caught in the Inter-NET!”). He had originally gone on to ask for advice about how and where to get the final serpent to complete the campaign. The adventure he was following was tantalizingly vague about this.

  He learned that this was one of the great mysteries of the RoD world. The Seven Serpent Scepter was the last campaign actually written by the Great Wycroft before he sold the company, and he had deliberately left it unfinished. It was up to each GM to try to defeat the ultimate, seemingly unstoppable, monster.

  Ralph had been chronicling his group’s journey and discovery on the forum dedicated to the search for the Seven Serpent Scepter. There were many comments when he reported that their fifth serpent was the bone flute and not simply a bone taken from the kobold. Some congratulated him for bringing something new to an old campaign (he was always careful to credit one of his players for coming up with this), while others complained that part of the challenge was following the rules as set down in the adventure.

  The game was a welcome distraction from the real world—right about the time he had become game master, Ralph had gotten braces. Sixth grade was hard enough without a mouthful of metal to contend with.

  As spring approached, there was something even more distressing creeping into the game. Ralph was starting to suspect that the game simply wasn’t as important to his friends as it once was.

  As hard as he worked to keep the game as exciting as possible, he had to face the truth.

  Although Jojo was still wearing sweatpants and keeping her hair pulled back in her regulation tight ponytail during the weekend games, she had begun to wear it down at school. Now she wasn’t just doing gymnastics camp in the summer; she had also made the school
team.

  All of a sudden, she had started dressing more like her teammates. She was spending more time with them, too, no longer eating lunch with the RoD group. That was okay, because she seemed to enjoy her time with her old friends during the game. But once the fights over who was going to be GM started, it felt like RoD was mattering less and less to her.

  And Noel, who once would sit and discuss strategy with him for hours, was moving into computer games. He had found some online game about rocket ships and exploring other planets that it seemed like half the boys in the sixth-grade class were playing.

  Ralph had tried it, but it didn’t do anything for him. Not that he didn’t enjoy playing at his friends’ houses on a gaming console or playing on his PC. It just wasn’t as special. Everyone played Space Adventure, but the RoD campaign was theirs. They had made it together, creating characters and a story no one else ever had. And each of them had worked so hard and experienced so much together.

  Then Persephone was cast as the lead in the middle school play, to no one’s surprise. It made total sense that she would start to hang out with her theater friends, but Ralph was a little hurt that Cammi had joined them, too, once he had volunteered to work in the costume shop, sewing the dresses and other clothing.

  Cammi did seem happier than Ralph remembered ever seeing him. And Ralph’s parents told him when he had complained about this at dinner one night, “Ralph [they were the only ones who still called him that, apart from his teachers], part of being in sixth grade is finding your tribe. Your group. The kids you want to hang with. You have to allow Cammi and the others to do that.”

  The only thing was that Ralph thought he had found his tribe. They all had seemed as into the game as he was. And now they were deserting him.

  It hadn’t helped that the search for the sixth serpent was the most annoying, and this was about the time Ralph could feel the group starting to get restless. The picture on the bone was a waterspout, which turned out to be the name of a port city on the Isle of Nyfitsa. For some reason Wycroft set it in a small bustling town instead of some mystical castle or deserted ruin. It seemed so ordinary when the pompous Lord Mayor of Waterspout proudly gave them a tour of the various buildings, ending at town hall, where in his office they spotted in a glass cabinet behind the mayor’s desk a jade serpent. Inquiring after it, they were told it was a relic from the founder of the town, and its most prized possession. Of course the rogue tried to steal it and was promptly thrown into jail. The wizard tried to enchant the Lord Mayor into giving it to them but rolled too low a number and instead ended up turning the mayor’s pet cat into a tortoise.