“Lieutenant, you’re catching on,” smiled Marion.
“Sixteen,” said Bill Fox.
Jay Omega glanced at Marion. “He’ll be out for four hours game-time, and he’s down ten hit points,” he told them. Too many damage points could have fatal results—but this one, while serious, was not life-threatening.
“Am I drowning?” wailed the elf, who was still flailing in the sea near the boat.
The party looked worried. Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a Monty Haul dungeon after all.
Donnie McRory tossed his clothes into his suitcase, wondering if he ought to call the British Embassy just to let them know he’d been questioned in a murder case. Probably not, he decided. The police hadn’t even asked him to postpone his next booking, just to leave a list of the places he’d be staying for the rest of the tour. Still, it had been an annoying interview.
“I suppose I’ll have to call Scotland Yard to verify this information,” Lieutenant Ayhan had warned the suspect.
“Bloody hell!” moaned Donnie McRory. “Don’t you Yanks know anything? New Scotland Yard-New Scotland Yard, mind you—only deals with crimes in London.”
“Sorry,” grinned Ayhan. “My investigations are more likely to involve the Salvation Army flophouse than Interpol, so I’m not up on these things.”
“Yes, well, when you figure out who to call, by all means check me out. I assure you that I am no more than a name on the Scottish Archaeological Society’s mailing list. And I’ve done my share of charity benefits in my time, but shooting a bloke in the States just to get a donation for a lot of moldy castles is not my idea of philanthropy.”
“Just the same,” said Ayhan, not entirely convinced, “we must stay in touch.”
Donnie McRory sighed and shook his head. It was just as well that he was leaving this loony bin, before things got even more cocked up. He wondered if his agent would consider a murder charge good publicity. Probably not. The punkers would thrive on it, but as a folksinger he attracted the more sedate crowd himself. Aging ’Sixties types who didn’t want to let go of Back to the Earth. Anyway, the whole thing was too bloody stupid. Why would anyone shoot a fantasy writer? Probably one of the Martians had gone off his head. He shouldn’t be easy to spot in that crowd, then. “I wish you luck in your investigation, Mr. Ayhan,” he had told the policeman at the end of the interview. “I think you should be looking for a crazy person, and it’ll be like trying to find a tree in a forest.”
Ayhan had only smiled. “I’ve got my computers working on it.”
Watching the
D&D
game from the sidelines, Brenda Lindenfeld smiled to herself, basking in a feeling of exhilaration that she usually got only from two scoops of Swiss chocolate almond ice cream. It was an unlikely reaction to occur from staring at Richard Faber—certainly no one had previously gotten much pleasure from contemplating him, but Brenda felt that he was the answer to prayer. He was still as unattractive as ever, a dismal bed partner, and gratingly boring, but she had learned that he was majoring in computer engineering. Brenda saw the words spelled out in a string of little credit cards across her mind. Finding a computer-anything major was like winning the state lottery—and the odds were better. These microchip nerds were paid indecent amounts of money. Brenda wasn’t sure just what it was they did for all this money, but then she didn’t care, either. If you could manage to marry one, you were home free. No more parents to nag you about school; no more hassles to support yourself on a minimum wage job; no more worries about how to pay your long-distance phone bill. Brenda didn’t think she ought to take a chance on letting this one get away. She’d better get pregnant.
During a lull in the action, Richard Faber looked over to the sidelines at his beloved, watching from among the spectators. He gave her a little wave, thinking how lucky he was to have found such a soul-mate; and Brenda, thinking of a big-screen TV and the complete collection of
Star Trek
videos, smiled back.
Since Jay Omega was handling things so well on his own, Marion was taking an Oracle break, leaving Lieutenant Ayhan in charge of miracles. She had slipped out to the Coke machine in the hall where Joel Schumann was feeding a succession of nickels into the money slot. “Getting rid of my small change,” he explained. “I think there’s a hole in these jeans. How’s the professor doing?”
“Surprisingly well for a novice,” said Marion. “He’s very adaptable.”
“Yeah, he’s a nice guy,” Joel conceded. “Even students like him. Are you two engaged or something?”
“Or something,” Marion agreed. “We’ll let you know in two years.”
Joel looked puzzled. “Two years?”
“Right. That’s when we both come up for tenure. If we both get it, then everything’s fine, and if we both get turned down, that’s okay, too. But if only one of us gets it…”
She might as well have been speaking Bantu to a puzzled Joel. “Yeah, well, I gotta get back to this program I’m running on the IBM in there,” said Joel. “I hope it works out for you two.”
Marion smiled. “That’s why I keep writing journal articles.”
In the high-tech room the mood among the adventurers was tense. Everyone was down at least two hit points, meaning that their chances of survival had diminished greatly, and the only thing anyone had gained thus far on the expedition was an ivory chessman they found on the beach at lona. An hour and a half had passed, hitting them
with a succession of insect swarms, rock falls, rainstorms, and other unheroic inconveniences. Diefenbaker found something else quite unusual. According to his legend card, his healing spells did not work on the elf’s sprained ankle, and the woman warrior was more upset by maggots in the food supply than she had been by the rock fall.
“Things are looking pretty bad for the group,” whispered Ayhan to Marion. “Imaginary maggots and all.”
“Yes, Jay is giving them a run of bad luck,” Marion agreed. “Sort of like Job in the Bible, isn’t it?”
At a quarter to twelve some of the spectators began to wander away. Brenda Lindenfeld was signaling frantically to Richard Faber.
“Can we break for lunch?” Faber asked the Dungeon Master.
“No,” said Jay Omega. “We play straight through. Until you win or die.”
A few more people got up and left.
“Is it okay if I go to lunch now?” asked Lieutenant Ayhan, tapping the Dungeon Master on the shoulder.
“No,” said Jay Omega without turning around. “You stay, too. I’ll explain later.”
Lieutenant Ayhan groaned. “Now what?”
Marion grinned at him. “How about an imaginary sandwich?”
Jay Omega ignored the looks of discomfort on the faces of the adventurers. Those who skipped breakfast for economy reasons were experiencing very real misery. The Dungeon Master consulted his game plan, and announced: “You are walking through a meadow on the way to the lona monastery,
and up on the hill, you see a stream of water.”
“Do we see anyone there?” asked Bill Fox. “Weapons ready, everyone.”
“No,” said Jay Omega. “You don’t see anything except a couple of rowan trees, rocks, and the creek.”
“I say we keep walking,” said Faber to the other adventurers.
Jay Omega paused for effect. “Tratyn Runewind claims to have seen something.”
The adventurers looked alert, waiting for the Dungeon Master to produce a clue as to the next situation.
“We ask him what he sees,” said Diefenbaker.
Jay Omega relayed the information from the non-player character Runewind, whose actions and utterances could only be conveyed through the Dungeon Master. “He says it looks like a woman washing clothes in the stream. She is dressed in green, and she is weeping. The clothes leave trails of red in the water.”
“Oh, blast!” whispered the woman warrior, recognizing the description from her folklore text. “The Bean-Nighe! Has she seen us yet?”
“Wait a minute!” said Clifford Morgan. “What’s a Ben-Nee-Yah?”
“They’re supposed to be the ghosts of women who have died in childbirth,” the folklore fiend explained. “They are always seen washing the blood-stained clothes of
those about to die …”
“Why did Tratyn Runewind see her, when we didn’t?” Morgan demanded.
Mona shrugged. “Maybe he’s …” Her voice trailed away when she saw the look on Morgan’s face.
Jay Omega pretended not to hear. “You see a stone tower on a hill in front of you. It seems to be in ruins.”
Bonnenberger peeked through the door of the high-tech room, and saw the
D&D
game in progress. He had decided that watching a few minutes of
D&D
might be preferable to seeing
The Wrath of Khan
for the seventh time. Besides, someone might have a sandwich that was going to waste.
“Pardon,” he said to a scowling Brenda Lindenfeld, who was trying to edge her way past him, “Lunch break soon?”
“Apparently not,” she snapped. “Apparently he’s going to keep them in there until they drop!” Brenda’s cash reserves of two dollars and twelve cents would not cover the lunch in a Chinese restaurant promised her by the unavoidably detained Richard Faber. Brenda wished he would die so that he could buy her lunch.
Bonnenberger blinked and shrugged. “Candy machine.”
Brenda Lindenfeld looked at him with a loathing undisguised.
“Bon appetit!”
The adventurers had taken a few minutes to discuss the implications of a stone tower on the horizon. Some of them felt that it might be a fort full of enemy soldiers, but others suggested that the monks might have used it as a hiding place for items that might prove useful to the expedition. Magic swords, perhaps. Jay Omega sat silently through their deliberations, offering no divine inspiration to help them out.
Finally Thrumpin the Elf decided to continue the
action. “I approach the tower by myself. Do I see anything?”
“You see a partially open wooden door with weeds growing around it,” said Jay Omega. “Tratyn Runewind offers to go with you.”
“Hmm. That might be helpful in case of ambush. Okay. I accept his offer to go with me,” said the elf. “We walk up the hill toward the ruins, and I push the door open.”
Jay Omega could have invented an ambush, or a booby-trap, but he didn’t. “Nothing happens.”
“I use my elf vision to look around in the darkness.”
Written on the Dungeon Master’s plan for the adventure was a list of all the things contained in the tower. Jay Omega noted that the elf was in Room One, and he informed him of the contents listed for that room. “You see a door in the far wall, and a wooden chest beside it. Above the inside door is a branch of oak leaves that has been dipped in gold. The chest is an old one with a carving of mistletoe decorating the lid.”
“Hey, look what I have on my legend card!” cried Bernard Buchanan, who had been injured in a pit trap near the beach, and wasn’t good for much anymore. “My card says ‘Treasure by the Golden Bough.’ A bough is a tree branch, isn’t it?”
They looked around for the folklore expert, but she had gone to the bathroom. Knowing that she could help them out of his well-planned trap. Jay Omega decided to force them into a hasty decision. “You hear a sound from outside.”
The elf thought fast. “I’m only six on strength,” he said. “I tell Tratyn Runewind to open the door and look for the treasure.”
“Okay,” said Jay Omega. “Tratyn Runewind opens the door…”
“What’s going on?” asked the returning woman warrior, stopping to peel a bit of toilet paper off her shoe. “What have you done?”
Bernard Buchanan told her about the golden bough legend. “So Thrumpin the Elf sent Tratyn Runewind through the door under the gold oak leaves.”
Despite her status as Oracle, Marion was grinning.
“You dummies!” yelled Mona. “The golden bough is
mistletoe
. Haven’t you read Frazier? Don’t you know anything?”
The chastened adventurers looked back at the Dungeon Master for a verdict. With a solemn stare, Jay Omega sprang his trap. “Opening the inner door has weakened the structure of the ruin. Rocks begin to fall.”
Thrumpin gulped. “I dive after Tratyn Runewind.”
“A boulder hits you as you approach the doorway. Roll for falling damages.”
Ashen-faced, the elf threw the six-sided dice a grand total of twenty times. Fellow adventurers gasped as the numbers mounted up. “Sixty-three,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m sorry,” Jay Omega said, forgetting his omnipotence. “You have died.”
“Doesn’t he get a saving throw?” asked Richard Faber.
“No.”
Clifford Morgan turned as white as his hair. “What happened to Tratyn Runewind?” he whispered, plucking at the edge of his cloak.
Jay Omega met Morgan’s wide-eyed stare with a look of detached interest. He almost told him the answer to his question but then he remembered to picture the scene. In order to know what happened to Tratyn Runewind, Morgan’s character would have to have been present in the tower, so the Dungeon Master was not obliged to tell him. Omega deliberately prolonged the suspense a bit by pretending to consider the matter. At last he said to Morgan, “You are down the hill with the rest of the party. Are you going to go up to the tower and find out?”