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My blue-gray eyes were the shade of faded denim, and the eyebrows tipped upward, giving me the appearance of cool disdain. The pointy ears were a bit too large, and I pulled the hair in front of them; but that made me look like a girl. Next time, I thought, I'd have Shelton make the ears shorter. And wasn't that a laugh? Two minutes ago I'd been hating it, and here I was saying "next time" with the campaign not even started yet. Maybe this was going to be fun after all, despite the bad start.

I'd just thought that, when someone kicked open the door beside me. It was a dwarf, looking meaner than the men or the women, and he was dragging a dead body behind him.

Several people jumped to their feet for a closer look. Others quickly settled up, gulping down their drinks or abandoning them, eager to get out before trouble started. Those who were quickest to the door collided with a group on their way in—townspeople who'd followed the dwarf and his grisly burden from the street. Instant traffic jam, right there by my table.

I took a swig from my mug, because that's what people on TV do to steady their nerves. But the liquid was more bitter than I expected, and warmer and fizzier, which made me cough and sneeze at the same time.
Wonderful start,
I thought, wiping my face on my sleeve. I became aware of something resting against my ankle and looked before I thought not to. It was the corpse's hand. His glazed eyes seemed to be looking directly at mine.

I've never liked the kind of stories with exploding heads or severed limbs or brains trickling out of people's ears, and I gulped. This was make-believe, I reminded myself: a computer-generated image that looked and sounded and smelled and tasted and felt so real because it was hooked up directly to my brain. But make-believe just the same.

It didn't help.

"Quiet!" bellowed a voice about two inches from my ear. The crowd inside the inn settled a bit. From the edges of the group people were still demanding to know what was going on, or complaining that they couldn't see.

The dwarf climbed onto my table. The noise level dropped several decibels more. "I am Feordin Macewielder, son of Feordan Sturdyaxe, grandson of Feordane Boldheart, brother to Feordone the Fearless, great-grandson of Feordine Stoutarm who served under Graggaman Maximus."

With dwarfs, this can go on forever. They always introduce themselves by introducing their ancestors.
All
their ancestors. And the names always sound alike. As Harek, I had memories of seeing dwarfs kill people for trying to rush them through the litany; they killed them and then recited over the dead bodies, starting again from the very beginning.

But this dwarf, Feordin, must have come from an undistinguished family line. Or he recognized the need for uncommon urgency, for he stopped after a mere four generations and pointed to the corpse by my foot. "And that man,"—as if on cue, everyone took one giant step back, so that I had a clear view of the man's arrow-ridden body. I gulped, but my stomach didn't lurch this time. Computer conditioning again: as an elf warrior, I wouldn't be unsettled by death. "That man," the dwarf said, "was a soldier, dressed, as you can see, in the livery of the Grand Guard of your king, Ulric, known as The Fair."

The computer had planted a memory, something I would have known as an inhabitant of this land. Ulric, I knew as soon as I thought about it, was king of the human community. He was respected—as not all human kings were—by elves and dwarfs and halflings alike. They sometimes called him "The Fair," which referred both to his reputation as a just ruler and to the straw-colored hair he'd had in his youth. Now more often he was called "The Old King." He'd had three wives—one at a time, of course—but they'd all died. He'd outlived four sons also, and had only one daughter, Dorinda. Blond-haired, blue-eyed Dorinda, ten years old and loved by everyone. Ulric had formed the elite Grand Guard—twenty-five of the fastest, strongest, best men in the kingdom—to watch over her and accompany her wherever she went.

And one of them was dead.

"Orc arrows," I murmured, noting the raven feathers and the pattern of fletching.

Feordin heard and turned on me. "Oh aye," he said, his tone indicating I was the biggest jerk he or his ancestors had ever met. "Orc arrows."

A woman who was dressed in a plain green gown stooped to get a closer look. "Not likely a Grand Guardsman would find himself surprised by orcs," she said. It was the same thing Feordin had hinted at with his tone. The same thing I knew. Orcs couldn't tie their shoelaces without a captain to tell them to and three sergeants to show them how. I'd never said the guy'd been killed by orcs; I'd just said orc arrows.

The woman stood. Dawn Marie, I was sure of it, butting in where nobody needed her. "Where was the body found?" she asked Feordin.

The dwarf nodded his head to the left, west. "Toward Sannatia," he said, a name that meant nothing to me.

But it meant something to most of the others. "Ah," the crowd murmured in a tone that gave me goose bumps.

"What's Sannatia?" someone else asked, sparing me the burden of having to play the jerk again. This person looked like a native American Indian. I figured he was from our group. For one thing, while we can be whoever we want, from whatever time period or piece of fiction we choose, the nonplayer characters that the computer provides are all matched to the setting. Probably Dominic, I decided, who usually chose to play trackers and rangers and solitary warrior types. Another way I knew he was one of us was from the incredulous looks he was getting, like all the townspeople already knew what Sannatia was.

The dwarf looked at him contemptuously. "The deserted city," he said. "Nobody lives there."

The Indian shrugged.

"Nobody," Feordin repeated, "
lives
there." He paused to let that sink in. "Twenty years ago it was a settlement, a big one. Mostly there were humans, but also dwarfs lived there, and elves and halflings. Thousands of people. There was an army garrison there, and seven or eight temples. A bazaar second to none. The city was said to be so crowded you could hear the noise of it from five miles away, and at night the lights could be seen from as far away as the River Gan."

And?
I thought.
And?
I waited for the other shoe to drop, for the part of the story that could make the townspeople here say, "Ah," in that combination of awe and fear.

"And then," the dwarf said, "between one day and the next, they were gone. The buildings were undamaged, the livestock unharmed in their pens, but the people were gone. Nobody remained. Whatever had happened, you'd have thought that the soldiers at least would have put up a fight; but the garrison storerooms were provisioned, the weapons clean and neatly stacked, the horses safe in the stables. Just ... no people. King Ulric sent soldiers to investigate. But though the miller and his wife who live across the desert at Miller's Grove saw lights over the desert sands, just as they did every night, the soldiers never marched back. Since then, no one who has spent the night in Sannatia has ever come out again. And every night, the lights of the city still brighten the western sky."

There was a moment of silence. The woman in green said, "Still, if that's where the king's daughter has been taken..."

People shook their heads and walked away, afraid to get involved. In a moment the crowd was nearly gone. Only nine people remained around me and my table. These would be the seven other members of my group, plus two nonplayer characters, computer generated to accompany us on the campaign. I looked them over and tried to decide who was who.

The woman in green had her arm around the waist of a man also dressed in green, who in turn had his arm around her. Dawn Marie and Noah. I just knew it by the gooey expressions on their faces.

"Hi," the man said. "I'm Robin Hood and this is Maid Marian."

Of course they were.

"I'm unofficial king of Sherwood Forest and bane to the wicked sheriff of Nottingham. Expert thief extraordinaire. Climbing walls, opening the unopenable, and picking pockets my specialty." He held out his hand, revealing a small knife held flat on his open palm.

The Indian must have recognized it. He slapped his hand against his buckskinned thigh, against the empty knife sheath. He snatched the weapon away from Robin, who just grinned.

"And this is my..."—Robin smiled at Marian—"able-bodied assistant, a swordsmaster of unsurpassed ability."

Marian blew him a kiss.

"Harek Longbow of the Silver Mountains Clan," I said to put an end to all this mutual admiration before I threw up.

"Cornelius," said an old man dressed in a robe and conical hat embroidered with silver stars and moons. He swept off the hat. "The Magnificent." That was probably Shelton, who always chooses to play a magic-user.

A man in a plain brown robe and a haircut like Saint Francis bowed. "Abbot Simon," he said. "At your service." Oh-oh, a cleric. They have magic powers too, so that killed my theory about Shelton's having to be the wizard.

"Feordin Macewielder," said the dwarf. "Son of Feordan Sturdyaxe, grandson of Feordane Boldheart, brother to Feordone the Fearless, great-grandson of Feordine Stoutarm who served under Graggaman Maximus." He knew too much about the opening situation to be one of the group and had to be a computer-generated aid. But on the other hand he
was
black, and I know how proud Cleveland is of his African heritage.

The Indian, who I had already pegged as Dominic, was still sulking that Robin Hood had managed to steal his knife. "Nocona, chief of the Comanches," he grumbled.

There was another elf warrior in the group, but this one was a woman. "My name is Thea Greenleaf," she said, looking right at me, "of the Greenmeadow Clan."

Another of those computer-generated memories kicked in. There was long-standing rivalry between the Greenmeadow Clan and my own Silver Mountains group. Giannine Bellisario? I wondered. Or was Giannine the swaggering halfling woman who pushed her way to the front? She might have been only four feet tall, but she had biceps bigger than anybody else's here and she wore a metal bra, which may have accounted for the sour look on her face. "Brynhild, of the Sisterhood of the Sword, and better than any man here." She spat on the floor, which I thought was pretty rude whether she was Giannine or a computer facsimile.

Things were going too quickly, and I was getting lost about who must be who. But there was no doubt about the last character, the fourth woman in this group. This was one of the Rasmussem's serving wenches, dressed like a gypsy in an embarrassingly low-cut blouse. "I'm Felice," she said, with a self-conscious giggle. "Isn't this fun?"

Mom. How humiliating.

I tried to look like "Ho-hum, don't bother noticing me because I'm nobody you know," but Mom picked me out straight off. Mothers have a knack for that sort of thing, like being able to tell when you're spitting your lima beans out into the napkin instead of swallowing them, or knowing just when to say, "It's too quiet in there—what are you doing?" Recognizing their kid from a lineup of warriors, thieves, and assorted nonhumans must be one of those gifts that come with motherhood. She fixed me with this kind of goofy smile of hers that let me know I was getting off lucky—that she could have ruffled my hair and said, "Hi-ya, Arvin."

The other elf, Thea, came to my rescue. "What do you do, Felice?" she asked.

"Do?" Mom repeated.

"Warrior-maid?" asked Brynhild, but she didn't look very hopeful. "Magic-user? Thief?"

"Oh." Mom looked directly at me. "Am I supposed to tell?"

I squirmed and pretended not to realize she was asking me. Everybody had to know who she was. The only way I could escape dying of embarrassment was to hope that they didn't know me.

"Yes, my lady," Cornelius was telling her, "you most definitely are supposed to tell."

"Oh," Mom said again. "I'm a thief." She put a finger to her lips in a "don't tell" gesture and giggled again.

"Six fighters," Maid Marian counted out loud, as though someone had died and left her dungeon master, "two magic-users, and two thieves. Good mix."

"I'm so pleased you're pleased," Feordin grumbled. "Are we going to stand around introducing ourselves all day, or does anybody actually plan to do something?"

"First order of business is weapons and equipment," Robin Hood said, cutting off Marian, who was obviously winding herself up for a rebuttal. "What say we all meet back here in a half hour at the latest?"

Made sense to me. The only ones who already had weapons were Nocona, with his knife—while he had it—and Feordin Macewielder, with—appropriately enough—a mace. But even they would need supplies for the quest. The group started to break up. I avoided meeting my mom's eyes. As a thief, she'd be looking for stuff totally different from what I'd be needing as a warrior. She was better off with Robin Hood anyway.

There was only one armorer in the town, and from him I bought a leather breastplate. Chain mail would have been nice, but it was twice as expensive. That's the kind of pennypinching that can cost dearly later in the game, but I'd already spent more than I should have, trying to buy information at the Rasmussem.

From a booth on the same street I also bought a bow and a quiver with two dozen arrows, but for swords and knives, I had to go to a blacksmith. It took me all of five seconds to decide the guy must be the Rasmussem barkeep's not-so-friendly brother. All the while I was there, he cleaned his fingernails with a knife as long as my arm.

"May I see that one?" I asked, pointing to a long sword that hung over his work area.

With a sigh as though I'd been there all morning, he fetched the weapon and slammed it down on the counter, then resumed picking under his nails.

I lifted the sword.

Take that back.

I started to lift the sword. Pain shot through my arm as though I'd whacked my elbow against a brick wall. The sword dropped from my numb fingers and I doubled over.

The blacksmith looked at me for a few seconds while he cleaned off his blade on his pants leg. He started in on the other hand. Philosophically he said, "I always heard tell elves couldn't handle iron. Never seen one dumb enough to try before."