The Iron Veil

by Randy Nargi

“No, not really. That’s part of the mystery. No one knows what the Iron Veil is. All I know, lad, is that we must find it. And soon.”

  “Why? What happens if we don’t?”

  “Bad things.”

  “What kind of bad things.”

  “The kind of bad things you don’t want to speak aloud.”

  Klothar didn’t elaborate, but Justin’s mind was reeling. So there were two different world quests out there. Ten-Spot had known about the Shadow Lance and he said that other people were talking about the Lance too. And that’s what was in Justin’s lore memory as well. But then Master Desiderius basically shut him down and said that the world quest was about this Iron Veil thing. And now Klothar said that he was looking for the Iron Veil too.

  This was so weird. Was it possible that NPCs had their own quests that were different from the players’ world quest?

  He really needed to talk to Pari. She knew a lot and would be able to set things straight. He decided to send her a voice message.

  “Message to Pari: hey, it’s Justin. I tried to find you this morning, but Chad said that you had gone home or something. Anyway, you’ll never guess who I’m with now—”

  Klothar rode closer and asked, “Who are you speaking with, lad?”

  “Shh! I’m leaving a message here,” Justin said to Klothar. Then he resumed his message.

  “Yup that was Klothar. I know, crazy, right? So we’re doing this quest and apparently you’re part of it too, and I have a ton of questions. I really hope we can meet up. We’re heading to Tashon’s Gate. Okay, I don’t know how much time these messages give you so I’ll leave it at that. Call me, please.”

  “Are you done conversing with the spirits?” Klothar asked.

  “For your information, I was leaving a message for Pari.”

  “You two have a telepathic bond?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you know where she is, lad?”

  “Afraid not. But hopefully she’ll get my message and call me—err, contact me telepathically, so, yeah.”

  They rode for another two hours before the dense forest gave way to a scrubby meadow dotted with the occasional pine.

  “We’ll stop here and hunt,” Klothar announced, swinging off his horse.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  “Are you partial to the taste of roasted spider mandible by any chance? I certainly am.”

  Justin gagged a little but turned away so Klothar couldn’t see him.

  “The silk sacs are also quite tasty.”

  “I’m up for whatever. As long as it yields experience.”

  They found a little brook so that the horses could drink and then Klothar tied them up using special quick release knots.

  The landscape was different here. Justin could tell that they were at a higher elevation. And instead of the rich farmland surrounding Holgate, the earth here was rocky and dry.

  Klothar was true to his word. They spent the next hour or so hunting all kinds of creatures, including giant spiders that were truly disgusting, fast-moving boars, and sylvan lions who were pretty tough. Justin would tag the mob and Klothar would assist with his bow or warhammer. The ranger was so fast that even when Justin got overwhelmed and nearly killed—which happened several times—Klothar was able to take out the monster before it could slaughter Justin.

  At the end of the hunting session, as they were washing the blood off themselves in the brook, Justin checked and saw that he was up to 1185 experience. Oh man! Not even half of what he should be. This was definitely a grind.

  He asked Klothar if there were any more powerful monsters they could go after.

  “What, like args?”

  Justin’s lore kicked in and he recalled that args were brutish, tusked, ogre-like creatures who lived in the highlands north of Tashon’s Gate. Arg warbands frequently raided Cotter’s Mill, Marby, Tashon’s Gate, and even the city of Skelheim. He had a faint recollection of his dad mentioning args as being the old Caves & Beasts version of orcs. Maybe they would yield more XP than wild boars.

  Justin asked. “How tough are they?”

  “You might be able to vanquish one,” Klothar said. “If it was old, blind, and missing a leg, that is.”

  “Thanks. Way to be encouraging.”

  “Lad, never forget that args are canny foes. They are twice as strong as humans and nearly as quick. Pray that we don’t encounter any. For your own sake.”

  They continued west on the road for another hour until a big wooden fort came into view. It looked like something out of the Old West with a high stockade wall made of massive tree trunks which had been carved into sharp points. Guards patrolled the upper wall as well as the area outside the fort.

  “Tashon’s Gate,” Klothar announced. “We’ll spend the night here and get a fresh start in the morning.”

  “But it’s early yet,” Justin said. “We have plenty of time left to hunt.”

  “We hunt when I say we hunt.”

  They rode through the front entrance, a pair of twenty foot tall wooden doors that were easily a foot and a half thick. The interior of the fort was as big as a football field with various low buildings. Justin could make out a stable block, a blacksmith, guard barracks, an inn, and some shops. On the northwest corner a stone tower rose up at least five stories. The yard was filled with people, but at least half of them wore the uniform of the guard. Most of the rest looked like merchants and farmers.

  Klothar led Justin towards the stables. “This outpost is not as welcoming as Holgate, and it can get a little rough. Best to keep your head down.”

  “I killed a giant spider today,” Justin said. “I’m ready for anything.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, lad.”

  They dropped their horses off at the stables and walked over to the inn and adjoining tavern. Justin ducked into the tavern half of the building, which was a dark, ramshackle place with ceilings so low, Justin could reach up and touch them. Unlike at the pub last night, there was barely anyone here in the common room—just a few grimy-looking old-timers. No players from the looks of it.

  “I think we’ve officially discovered the armpit of Greystrand,” Justin said.

  Klothar gave him a sharp look and said, “I’ll see about a room next door. Don’t move from here.”

  “Yes, dad.”

  The ranger left the tavern and Justin crossed over to the bar. The guy behind it was heavyset and had an epic beard which hung down so low it nearly touched the top of the bar.

  “Your finest ale, barkeep.”

  The man didn’t say anything. He just went out to the back room, where presumably, he kept the good stuff.

  Justin looked around the room at the old-timers. A few of them were playing some sort of card game at a corner table. Others were deep in hushed conversation. And a third group was looking at a large piece parchment spread out on their table. There was one guy sitting by himself.

  The barkeep returned with a large dust-covered bottle. He wiped the bottle down and presented it to Justin like a sommelier at a fancy restaurant.

  “Catfish 99 Bourbon Barrel Ale. Not only the finest ale in Tashon’s Gate, but likely the best in all of Greystrand. That’ll be one shield.”

  “A full shield? Are you serious?” Even though this was his first time actually buying anything, Justin knew the how the currency worked. A shield was worth 10 gold crowns, which was the basic unit of money here.

  “It’s exceptional beer. You want it or not?”

  “Okay, but it better really be good.”

  Justin took out his magical money bag and opened it for the first time. He remembered that he had earned 200 gold from his very first quest with the ratkin. Inside the magic purse were a number of different sized coins. Each was stamped with a different symbol that signified its worth. In the purse he could see two eels (worth 50 gold each), eight shields (worth 10 gold each), and twenty crowns (worth 1 gold each). He didn’t have any of the more valuable c
oins: goblets (worth 100 gold each) or pikes (worth 1000 gold).

  Easy come, easy go.

  Justin plonked the shield coin on top of the bar and the barkeep snatched it up in a fluid motion.

  After inspecting it with a practiced eye, the man tucked it into a pouch at his side and fetched a heavy ceramic mug from a shelf below the bar.

  “You’re going to like this, young sir.” He removed the wax seal on the bottle, then the cork, and then filled Justin’s mug. The beer looked creamy and dark and smelled delicious. Justin let the head settle for a moment and took a swig.

  Wow. This really was good. Very intense flavor with a slightly sweet aftertaste. It was much better than the mead last night.

  “What did I tell you, lad? Worth every penny. Now, speak the truth, was that your very first sip of beer ever?”

  “No. Why would you say that?”

  The barkeep shrugged. “Just a feeling I got.”

  All of a sudden, Justin felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see one of the old-timers beside him. The man had a scraggly wild fringe of white hair that ringed an otherwise bald pate. And he was a mess. His clothes were torn and crusted in mud and what very well might have been blood. His face was all busted up, too, but the man’s eyes were bright and the most intense pale blue color Justin had ever seen.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you, sonny boy.” He stuck his hand out. “The name’s Wreman. Wreman of Durrow.”

  “Justin of, um, Sacramento.”

  “Well met, Justin. So are you enjoying your Catfish 99? ’Tis a fine brew, in my humble opinion.”

  “Yeah, it’s not bad.”

  “You know where the name comes from, don’t you?”

  Justin shook his head.

  “Old fishing story. The hundredth fish is one that got away.” He gestured at the mug. “Thus, 99.”

  Okay, that didn’t make too much sense, but Justin forced a smile and nodded at the old guy.

  “Listen, Justin, I’ll be brief so you can return to your ale. I need someone to do something for me. It’s a quick little task.”

  Here we go. Could this be a quest?

  Justin looked straight into Wreman’s baby blues. “I’m listening.”

  “This morning our wagon was attacked by args, just south of here—no more than a quarter hour away. They killed everyone but me. I managed to crawl away and hide under some bodies. I’m not proud of that, but I’m a merchant, not a warrior.”

  “Okay… I’m not judging…”

  “In any case, I can live with the loss of my merchandise. They were only rugs, after all, but in the fracas, I lost something that was important to me. Very important. It was an amulet. My wife’s amulet. A keepsake of sorts. You see, Andra died many years ago, and I kept her amulet to remember her by. It is my most prized possession.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “In truth, I do not know. I wore it close to my heart at all times. I can only assume that it somehow was lost during the attack.” Wreman licked his lips. “I want to hire you to go to the site of the ambush and search for it. I’ll pay you handsomely.”

  “And how will you do that?” Justin asked. “Didn’t you lose everything in the attack?”

  “Not quite everything.” Wreman reached into his satchel and pulled out something. He dropped it on the counter.

  It was a light grey-colored cut gemstone the size of a walnut. Flickers of light danced within the gem’s interior.

  A cloud diamond!

  Justin’s knowledge skill told him that the cloud diamond was worth a fortune, but he decided to try to play it cool.

  “That must be some amulet,” he said, keeping his voice even.

  “As I said, it has tremendous sentimental value. Will you help me, Justin? Will you return my wife’s amulet to me?”

  Justin took another swig of his expensive beer. “Sure. Why not?”

  :::::. Quest accepted: locate Wreman’s amulet south of Tashon’s Gate .:::::

  Cool! It really was a quest!

  “So tell me what this amulet looks like,” Justin said.

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show you.”

  He took a wax tablet and stylus from his satchel and proceeded to sketch a design.

  Justin leaned in closer. The sketch almost looked like a five pointed star, but broken so it was missing a point.

  “Is it supposed to be a pentacle?” Justin asked.

  Wreman shook his head. “I’m not a very skilled artist, I’m afraid. It’s just a design. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Well, okay. And you say that your wagon was attacked south of here?”

  Wreman slumped into a chair with a sigh. “No more than a mile south. It should still be there, although picked clean, I wager.”

  “So all I need to do is go down the road and look for the amulet?”

  “You certainly ask a lot of questions, sonny boy.”

  “I like to be careful.”

  “Careful is good.” Wreman limped back to his table.

  Justin finished up his beer and then went out to find Klothar. He couldn’t wait to tell him about their new quest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “This is not good,” Dr. Margolin said, after Trudy Zhang had finished her report. “Not good at all.”

  “I know,” Zhang said.

  The two of them were in a “SCIF,” a secure conference room that was completely shielded from any possible transmissions. It was like a bubble inside a bubble.

  “Who found it?”

  “Wallis. James Wallis. He’s a junior analyst, but very sharp.”

  “Sharp enough to understand what he was looking at?”

  “Definitely.”

  Zhang gave him a brief rundown on James Wallis, and then Margolin asked her if anyone else knew about what Wallis had found.

  “I don’t think so. He’s one of ours, so he’s well versed in security protocol. We should just count ourselves lucky that a BerylBlue contractor wasn’t the one who found it. That would be a different story altogether.”

  Margolin let out a long sigh. There would be a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. He spent the next hour briefing Zhang. When they were done, he told her, “Let’s go see Mr. Wallis.”

  They walked down to Level D in silence, Margolin thinking about how he needed to start visibly shifting the inquiry out of SE into medical. Qadri would help with that.

  It felt cooler down here—cooler than normal. Maybe because of all the additional heavy equipment. They made their way down a long glass corridor which provided a view into the Hatchery where hundreds of beta testers were asleep in their stim-pods, dreaming in the paracosm.

  Margolin felt a headache coming on. There was no way he would allow Groves and his army of bureaucrats to jeopardize what was arguably the most important scientific breakthrough in human history. He had already come up with a plausible story for Wallis, and Zhang was now briefed enough to back him up. The thing they would have to jump on was creating the signals for the alternative narrative.

  He glanced back through the window into the Hatchery. For every beta tester sleeping in a stim-pod, there were a half dozen medical and technical workers monitoring all the bio and interface functions. It was an extremely labor-intensive process, and although they had shadow automation mirroring all the work that humans were doing, it still might be a year before they went full auto. Of course, Project: Reverie couldn’t scale without the automation coming online, but for now, that’s what they were working with. A lot of humans, and a lot of potential for human error.

  When all was said and done that’s what this whole thing would be chalked up to. Human error.

  As they walked, they passed knots of Loneskum-Alexander employees. Folks nodded deferentially to Margolin, but no one tried to engage him in conversation. They all knew better.

  Zhang had called ahead and arranged for James Wallis to meet them in a SCIF down here on D. He was already in the conference room when Margolin an
d Zhang arrived.

  “Mr. Wallis,” Margolin said, shaking the younger man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, and congratulations.”

  Wallis looked surprised. “Congratulations?”

  He was a short man in his late twenties with an unruly mop of hair and a somewhat disheveled appearance.

  “Yes, it seems you were the first one to find our hidden treasure. Have a seat.”

  “I… uh… don’t understand.”

  “The BerylBlue folks will be miffed, but I knew our team would find it before them, and you did not disappoint. Not at all.”

  “Sir?”

  Margolin glanced at Zhang disapprovingly. “You didn’t fill Mr. Wallis in?”

  “No, sir, he hasn’t met with a disclosure officer yet.”

  “Well, get Ackerman down here.” Margolin turned back to Wallis. “Sorry, Wallis, this whole security exercise is a SAP-8. It’s a pain in the ass, but we’re going to have to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s with Ackerman before we discuss this further.”

  “That’s fine, sir. I have to admit I’m pretty much in the dark about what’s going on.”

  “We’ll remedy that shortly, I assure you. In the meantime I just wanted to thank you personally for the outstanding work. There’s a nice bonus allocated for this, so enjoy that as well. I need to run to another meeting now, but Drs. Zhang and Ackerman will handle the debriefing and further security mandates.”

  He shook the bewildered junior analyst’s hand once more, nodded at Zhang, and left the conference room. This would all work out; he was sure of it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pari must have blacked out again. She awoke with a massive headache. But she was no longer moving, and it wasn’t completely dark in this weird diving bell thing she was in. Soft light streamed through the hatch’s window.

  What had happened?

  She had climbed in here to escape the Storm Reavers. And then she must have activated the sphere because the last thing she remembered was the whole thing falling into the water.

  Painfully, she managed to stand up and orient herself. The hatch was now at the top of the sphere. Reaching up on her tiptoes, Pari tried to turn the locking wheel. It wouldn’t budge.