The Clan (30 page)

With a start, the Vets shrunk back, drawing their weapons and raising their shields.

"WTF?" I turned round to take a look. It was indeed impressive—the dragon, glistening in the sun, was heading in our direction. I waved to the Vets—no worry—and rode out to meet her.

"Priest, I'm ready! Thanks for your help. I owe you. But now I'd love to see my children."

No, I definitely wasn't a dragonologist. Was she a boy or a girl? After the dressing-down the Hell Hound had given me, I didn't dare ask. Or maybe, her skeleton didn't have gender by definition, but once it accumulated a bit of energy, it could start laying again?

In an
y case, she didn't need to yell. I shook my head restoring my hearing. "Don't mention it. And turn the sound down, will you? My brains are about to explode. In any case, how do you expect us to travel? You're a bit too bulky to teleport."

"We can fly!" the dragon bared her teeth and lowered one wing to the ground as an improvised boarding ramp. "Put yo
ur critter back into his artifact and climb up. The sky's the limit! There you can find the ultimate freedom!"

Oh, well. Teleporting would be faster, of course, but who was I to resist the invitation of a dragon ride? That wasn't some Boeing-manufactured aluminum tube shared with a hundred sweaty bodies. This was an honest-to-God, wind-in-my-hair, ea
rth-the-size-of-a-handkerchief
flight
. Yes!

With a pat on Teddy's neck, I folded him back into his artifact and ran up the bony steps. So! The game developers had thought of everything. A reclining bone chair with anatomic armrests was just as comfortable as your office one. I had barely sat down when the dragon took a quick run and kicked herself up into the air, spreading her wings. A flying mount, the first one in AlterWorld, had taken her rider to the sky!

My inbox pinged.
Need to talk
, Dan PM'd me, followed by a new message, from Eric this time,

You're too much, dude! Can I borrow your dragon for a ride?

Chapter Twenty-Two

A
s we approached the castle, I didn't sense any of the chicks' emotional pressure. Below lay the Valley of Fear, rather sad and boring, striped by ancient roads and pockmarked with ruins. All that I diligently marked on my map. You can say what you want but air recce is a great thing. From the ground, you don't notice one tenth of what I copied from half a mile's height.

The dragon emitted occasional broadband impulses, scanning the horizon and listening in to the echo. It was probably why the chicks had quietened down, their sensitive hearing detecting their mother's sonar.

Finally, the Castle. Now the outer walls looked much more presentable than the sad picture of bombed-out desolation that had been revealed to me a week ago from the top of the hill. The sleepless Lurch had done a great job. His hands were oozing magic. The inner courtyard had been transformed, too, and now looked like a botanical garden set amid a field of flowers. And the Castle! I nearly fell off the dragon when the clouds parted and the sunrays illuminated the once gloomy stones. The donjon's gray towers erupted in billions of colored sparks that glistened rainbow-like as if some upscale interior designer had studded them with countless handfuls of precious stones.

Precious stones? Lurch!

"Lurch!" I yelled into the communications artifact. "Why are you sparkling like a diamond factory on steroids?"

"Greetings, Master! It
is
beautiful, isn't it?" he asked rather timidly.

"You can say that! Now answer my question."

It haltered while I was hurriedly leafing through his access levels. Where had he gotten the resources for all this magnificence?

"Master, when the chicks were crying, everything here cried and wept with them. These are Tears of Stone. They seeped through thousands of its pores until they hardened and turned into perfect crystals. I must be the most beautiful castle in the entire AlterWorld now. I wonder, Master, if you wouldn't mind me taking part in this year's exterior design contest? I'm more than sure we'll get first prize."

"Wait! You and your contests! The crystals, do they have stats?"

"Random ones, from +1 to +20 depending on their caliber. But please don't start ripping anything off, I beg you!"

"Or what?" I teased him, repaying him for the moment of anxiety. "You gonna cry too?"

"Dunno..." Lurch whispered.

His voice was filled with so much sadness I felt like a real piece of work. "Not to worry. It is very pretty. You are undoubtedly the nicest castle in the whole of AlterWorld. Just in case, could you please calculate your square surface and the average quantity of gems per square foot? I'd love to know how many gems you've got stuck to you. And if you think you can grade them by size, that would be-"

I shut up midword and grabbed at the bone armrests as the dragon banked in a steep turn and began to land.
She zoomed down onto the tower and flapped her wings, damping the speed with their power field. Softly she landed onto the ancient stones.

A powerful surge of emotions threw me out of the saddle. I switched off. No idea how long I was out. When I finally came to, I was sitting on the flagstones with my back against the rough rampart. Lena was fussing around me, shouting, about to raise her hand for an encouraging slap on my cheek. I caught her hand in mid-air and shook my head, returning my thoughts to their usual places. I must have missed something, anyway. The dragon sat on her nest brooding like a chicken, the two fat-bellied chicks squawking happily under her wings.

"How's it going?" I asked, my throat dry and coarse.

"Fine! It's you I was worried about. You just collapsed flat out."

I tried to swallow. "It's all these phantom emotion generators assaulting my brain. I'd love to know why those idiots don't classify emotion amplification as mental attack."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. I was talking about an ability I have, a very useful one, too, shame it only works when it wants to."

I pointed at the baby dragons. "Did they cry a lot when I was gone? And by the way, where are all the Dragon's Tears? I thought the tower would be knee-high in them by now?"

"Almost none left!" she beamed. "A couple still left in the corners, maybe. I found how to calm down the chicks so they didn't cry any more!"

"Eh? Oh, shit. You really shouldn't have. So they'd have sniffled for another half-hour, big deal. That was millions in gold which," I glanced at the cutest chicks, "which we'll never have now."

Lena shrugged, disinterested. "At least they didn't cry. They forget everything when they eat! So I remembered you normally gave baby chicks the egg shells for calcium or whatever, so I gave them some. They gobbled it down like there was no tomorrow!"

"Eh? The egg shells? The gray ones with a funny pattern?"

"Yes! They ate every single bit of them and licked my hands afterwards. How's that for a waste-free production?"

I groaned. "Lena, sweetheart. I had plans for
them myself. Really, really big ones."

She shrugged again. "You should've told me. I'm not a mind reader. You should be grateful I've kept your gold and silver. They very nearly ate that, too. It was a good job there was a lot of scrap metal in the nest, so I distracted them with that."

"Which scrap metal?" I grabbed at my head with a groan. I already knew what she meant.

"Sort of purple. Some bent helmets, pieces of tank tracks and a handful of cartridges
—they kind of explode in their mouths with those little flames going everywhere, it's so cute. I called the chicks Draky and Craky. You'd never think those tiny things could go through two tons of metal. Only then I noticed that they'd grown double in less than five hours."

I fumbled around me for something to satisfy a sudden urge. The gods in their eternal kindness had sent me exactly what I needed: a long rod (no idea what stray wind had brought it up here). Grabbing it, I scrambled to my feet and offered Lena a knightly hand to help her get up, then gave her a hearty lash across her perfect backside.

"Ouch! What's that for?"

"For those stupid quests of yours!"

"Ouch!"

"And this is for your lack of subordination and attempts to take control!"

"Ouch! Uncle Max, that's enough!"

"For those goddamn eggshells!"

"Ouch! I'll be angry with you!"

"And that's for the two remaining Tears and for the millions lost!"

Shhh
, one of the chicks opened a purple eye watching us. A powerful surge of emotion—that felt more like a baseball bat—knocked me over.

"You see, Uncle Max? Now you hurt yourself. You could have fallen off the tower, you know."

"Come here, you! I still owe you for that silver. And another one for the scrap metal. And I'm not your uncle!"

"No way!" she stuck out her tongue. "Don't be so mad, Max," she added with a nice smile. "We all know how kind you are. Thank you so much for finding their mom, we were worried about her."

Quest completion alert: Request of a &#ç$ Priestess. Quest completed!

Reward: a new skill %*#@$#@$$@ ##@$$# @@$$%

"Er, Lena, how do you do it? What kind of skill is that? I can't read a thing."

She shrugged.
"No idea. It just happens. I'm off, anyway. Dad needs me."

"Wait!" I managed but she activated her bracelet and was gone with an artful glint in her eye.

"Spare the rod, spoil the child," I whispered. "Discipline is gold."

Enough for today. Time to crawl back into my castle. Bedtime. The rest had to wait till tomorrow. Okay, collecting the Tears probably wouldn't. So collect them I did.

I teleported to the Temple and rushed up the stairs to the inner rooms. Soon I was back in my apartment. Peeling my armor off and stuffing it into my bag, I staggered to the bed and collapsed on top of the comforter.

Weeeeeoooo!
the wretched White Winnie squeaked from under my backside.

I jumped straight back to my feet directly out of the prone position. The wretched creature lay in a tangle of sheets, blinking his sleepy eyes at me. Oh-kay. He couldn't have found a better time.

I lunged forward and, not believing my own luck, managed to grab the scruff of his neck. I flung him in the air and gave him an almighty kick that sent him flying like a sleepy football through the window. There! I didn't miss. I'd never managed to do this trick in real life. The receding stream of interjections was broken not by a slap against the flagstones as I'd hoped but by the popping of a portal. Apparently, he'd woken up in midair. Shame.

Was he really hoping to become an unwanted lodger in my bedroom and sleep in my bed? I didn't think so. My picture-perfect idea of family life didn't include any peeping fluffballs. It was time I brought him down a peg.

The clinking of coins dropping into my account awoke me the following morning. I'd forgotten to mute the internal interface. Actually, I found the sounds of gold rather pleasing. I might install them as the alarm clock tone. And in any case, who was it sending me money at 6 a.m.?

Apparently, it was Doc:
Here's a hundred grand gold for the Wing Two repairs, plans and drawings attached.

Who did he think I was, his foreman? I forwarded the message to Lurch:
Rebuild and refurbish according to the cost sheet. Hire whoever you deem necessary, you know, carpenters, masons, decorators and electricians... What do you mean, what are electricians? Ah, never mind. Were those children ever going to shut up?

Wait. I sat up in bed, listening. Children? That's right. Their thin voices and occasional laughter were coming through the narrow window
—so narrow it had been a miracle how I'd managed to hurl Winnie through it last night. The walls' stucco moldings in combination with abundant foliage prevented me from seeing what was going on at the foot of the donjon. I donned some clothes and rushed down the steps.

I walked out into the yard and froze.

About a dozen quiet children between two and five years old were walking, crawling, running and rolling around amid the lush greenery of the inner court. Some were chasing butterflies while others sat quietly studying a flower or just listening to the gentle song of the colored bluebells. One especially brave boy was cuddling a puppy that he'd somehow—no idea how exactly—taken from its Hound mother. Surprisingly, the Hell mother was nowhere to be seen.

Lena's father sat on the porch, chin in hand, smiling vaguely as he watched the children. I sat next to him. We shook hands. We didn't say anything. Finally, I asked,

"What's that, Doc?"

He shrugged. "Not
what
—it's
whom
. It's children."

"I had a funny feeling they were not gnolls. Why? Where from?"

He glanced at me. "Did they tell you what kind of doctor I was?"

"No. Does it change anything?"

"I'm the chief physician at a children's hospice."

If he was waiting for my reaction, he didn't get it. "Sorry, I don't know what that means."

"That's good. I just wish fewer people had ever heard about them. A hospice is a place where people come to die. Not all diseases can be cured. Some have a definite prognosis that comes with a rather limited life expectancy."

I shuddered. It was so alike my own story.

"We accommodate terminal patients from all over the country. All we can offer these children is love, care and attention. Then they die, usually quickly. Our mortality rate is over 98% and average life expectancy, two months. These kids are some of the worst cases. In real life, most of them are hooked up to IV drips after all the radio. The're given pain killers and antidepressants by the handful. Legally, what I'm doing now is a crime. But I'm sick of burying children. First thing when I arrive at work every day, I ask the doctor on duty, "Who is it?" And almost every day he gives me a child's name. You probably heard it before that every doctor has his own personal cemetery of the patients he's lost. Mine has twelve thousand one hundred forty-three graves. You might not believe it, but I still remember every single name. I'd love to forget them but I can't. That's the funny way that the mind is wired. Even brandy doesn't help me switch off. Soon I might start pilfering their morphine."

I looked at them with different eyes now. Quiet and clumsy, so amazedly happy. Doc was completely different, too. What a giant of a man. How was he even pulling this load?

"My wife and I, we sold our apartment and bought ten FIVR capsules with the money. I installed them in the hospice cellar. Our admin is human, too. He helped me hack them. This is all I can give these kids—one last chance."

"But how are they going to live here? They're only two or three years old! At least you could have chosen older bodies for them."

He squinted at me. "Would you be prepared to take their childhood away from them? I'm not even talking about the potential mental problems of a three-year-old in an adult's body. I'm only talking about their chance to have the happy childhood they've been deprived of. All they know is a chain of hospitals and operation theaters. I did my research. I know there're children here. Not many, a few, but they do exist and, more importantly, they do grow. Provided they want to, of course. So will my kids. Once they're fed up with being so small in a big world where they can't even reach the door handle, they'll start inching up. Where there's a will there's a way."