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by Vivian Vande Velde

  "Well," she said, obviously trying hard to please, "maybe a little. Yes. I think so."

  Cornelius didn't buy it, either. By his expression, he took the headache's continued presence as a personal affront.

  "What did you do?" Robin asked.

  "What did you try to do?" Marian asked, and for once I was ready to cheer her on.

  "That was a Deflect Evil spell," Cornelius explained to Mom.

  "Maybe you could try it again?" she asked hopefully.

  "I can't do any one spell more than once in any day." Cornelius considered. ("Game?" Abbot Simon said. Brynhild shuddered.) "Got it. Maybe your headache's the result of a spell. I'll do a Ward Off Magic spell." He wiggled his fingers and held his breath until his face turned purple, all the while making this humming sound like a sick generator. "How's that?"

  Mom shook her head, then winced at the movement. She looked awful, with her face all white and pinched, and her still-damp clothes clinging to her like some poor drowned creature. I wished there was something I could do: Here comes Arvin Rizalli, ready to save the day. I wished there was something anybody could do.

  "I don't know what else to try," Cornelius admitted. "It still might be a spell, but cast by someone stronger than I am. Or whose cure we're supposed to find later on. Or sometimes there's random plague. But maybe it's just from all the excitement. Hopefully it'll go away on its own. If not, then I can try again tomorrow."

  "Felice, can you travel, do you think?" Feordin asked.

  Mom answered, "I think I'll be all right if we can have the horses not going too fast." She glanced at Abbot Simon just as he said, "Game?" again, then spoke in a whisper as though her own voice hurt her. "I think it'd be good to get away from here."

  Brynhild shuddered.

  People hovered around Mom, telling her things would be all right, helping her stand, helping her up onto her horse. I couldn't even get close.

  We took the two now-extra horses with us, Abbot Simon's and Brynhild's, and headed back across the woods toward our original path. Just before the trees closed in around us, I looked back to the bank by the pool. I was just in time to see Brynhild twitch yet again, to hear Abbot Simon say, "Game?" yet again. Looping, Cornelius had said.

  Awfully touchy program, I thought.

  7. LUNCH

  "Maybe," Marian suggested to Mom after we'd ridden awhile, "your head hurts because we missed lunch. It's got to be way past noon. Maybe we should stop to eat."

  Girl's reasoning. And dippy girl's reasoning at that.

  But after all, Mom was a girl too, and maybe Marian knew what she was talking about. Maybe a meal would make her feel better. Maybe.

  Cornelius had already reined in. "Come to think of it," he announced, "I'm starved. This looks as likely a spot as any."

  "No," Nocona said.

  It wasn't that he raised his voice or sounded panicked or anything. But something about the way he said it stopped me, catching me between two breaths just as I shifted balance to dismount. "What?" I said, seeing him sitting up real straight, his eyes scanning the wooded area around us. "What is it?" I was suddenly aware how close the woods were to the road. Awfully close. I could pick no unusual sounds out of the silence. The rising and falling song of a robin. The distinctive chirps of sparrows, closer in. The background hum of insects. A hint of a breeze in the topmost branches.

  Marian glanced from me to Nocona. "I don't hear anything," she announced, at the same moment Robin said, "I don't see anything."

  Mom was looking like, "Oh no, not something else."

  Only half paying attention to us, still scanning, Nocona said, "This would make an excellent site for an ambush."

  Feordin released the breath he had been holding, a dismissive snort. "There's no way the townsfolk could have circled around and beaten us here."

  Nocona didn't bother with an answer.

  I said, "The townsfolk aren't the only ones we need to worry about."

  "You worry too much," Cornelius said. But as soon as he dismounted, he closed his eyes and raised his hands to shoulder level. "Mmmmm," he said, sounding more constipated than anything else. "Mmmmm." Very slowly he rotated 360 degrees. He was probably supposed to look like a human radar detector. "Mmmmm." He switched directions and did another complete turnabout. "Nothing," he finally told us. "I detect no magic."

  That seemed to satisfy most of the others, but Nocona said, "An ambush wouldn't have to be magic."

  "Fine," Cornelius snapped. "Shall I do another spell? A Reveal Evil spell? But wait, that would only work if it were someone inherently evil who wanted to ambush us. I better cast some Wizards' Lightning too and hope I hit something lurking out there. And then maybe a Fireball, just to be sure. In fact, maybe I should make us all invisible. Maybe I should expend all my magic making sure this place is safe enough for us to sit down for twenty minutes, since you think maybe, just possibly, this spot could be a good place for an ambush, if someone wanted to ambush us."

  Everybody else was already dismounted, more concerned about lunch than the possibility of attack.

  I swung off my horse, the last one except Nocona to do so. "Give it a rest, Corny," I said. "Sarcasm makes wrinkles around your eyes." That's one of my mom's sayings, and I hoped it'd cheer her up to have me say it; but Marian was bustling her away to a spot under one of the trees, and she didn't hear.

  Cornelius looked at me like he was considering detonating my head. Instead, he said to Nocona, "If you're so concerned about ambush, then you can stand watch for the rest of us." He turned haughtily and joined the group around the packhorse, rummaging for the field rations.

  Nocona stalked away from the rest of us and flung himself down under a tree. He sat there, his back rigid, his legs crossed, his arms crossed, looking inscrutable. More probably he was just sulking.

  For a few seconds, I stayed where I was. Listening. Looking. I even tried sniffing. (I smelled my own sweat, the leather breastplate, the horses, the brittle scent of greenery on which the sun has been beating all day.) Nothing amiss. Nothing dangerous. Nothing except the realization that this was a good place for an ambush.

  So were a lot of other places, I told myself. Jumpiness could easily progress to paranoia, and then we'd be no good to the kidnapped princess or to anybody.

  I stretched, pressing my hands against the stiffness in the small of my back. Come to think of it, I was hungry myself. Come to think of it, I had to go to the...

  Oops.

  Oh yeah. They didn't have those yet. I glanced around to make sure I knew where everybody was, then crossed to the woods on the other side of the road.

  Once there, I thought of my weapons, left with the horse, but didn't go back for them. I wasn't going far, no more than twenty or thirty feet. I could still glimpse my companions from between the trees and underbrush, and I could certainly hear them. Marian was laughing at something, her voice high and overly enthusiastic. That probably meant she was laughing at one of Robin's jokes. What an idiot.

  I was just starting back, when I heard a twig snap behind me, from where nobody from our group could have been. Aw no, I thought as something very hard crashed into the back of my head. Talk about being an idiot.

  8. WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR?

  The first thing I noticed was the smell.

  Oh nice, I thought. Now I'm looping.

  But I wasn't back in Rasmussem's stable. The smell here was worse than that had been—kind of a combination of un-flushed toilets, musty basements, and fifty-year-old gym socks. My head had been split open by whatever had slammed into me, I was sure of it, and now my brains were spilling out onto the ground, releasing stale memories as they hit the air. How come I couldn't have my life flash in front of my eyes, like everybody else did? How come my life had to flash in front of my nose? I groaned at the unfairness of it all.

  Take that back.

  I tried to groan at the unfairness of it all. There was a gag stuffed into my mouth, and all that came out was a pathetic little noise that s
ounded more like the whine of an overtired five-year-old than a protest against injustice in the universe. The gag tasted dusty and greasy, and I got a mental image of the gray, stiff rags my dad keeps in the garage—the ones he uses to wipe off the garbage cans or to clean the dipstick while checking the car's oil level.

  The Rasmussem program may be a marvel of technological sophistication, with cerebral stimulation instead of a dungeon master describing what we're supposed to be seeing, and with outcomes decided by instantaneous computer judgments rather than a roll of the die, but there's a lot to be said for a game that gets no rougher than pushing two-inch miniatures around on graph paper.

  "Harek," a voice whispered at me.

  Well, at least if I was dead, somebody else was dead right along with me.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was flat on my stomach, which I hadn't realized. The hard ground and the dampness had made me so stiff that it'd been impossible to tell which side was up. Another reason I was so sore was that my hands were tied behind my back. The next surprise was that I was indoors, which indicated some passage of time. In the dim, flickering light—torchlight, I knew instinctively—I saw that there was a wall about six inches from my face: a stone wall, dark and slimy.

  "Harek!" The whisper was louder, more insistent this time. It came from somewhere above me.

  I raised my chin off the dirt floor and found Robin. He was chained to the wall, his feet dangling above the ground. Oh, I thought, finally catching on. Dungeon.

  "Hello, Robin," I tried to say around my gag. It came out, "Huho, Huhin."

  It didn't make any difference how it came out: Robin was obviously in no mood for polite conversation.

  "Harek, get up." His voice never rose above a whisper, which probably meant there were guards nearby.

  I decided I'd better check before saying anything incriminating. I raised my head higher and looked around the cell. The place was about as big as a small bedroom. To the right was the corner obviously used as a latrine; to the left, a heavy wooden door with a barred peephole. The guards, if any, were outside. Robin and I were alone.

  "Harek." Robin was beginning to sound frantic. "Can you get up?"

  "Hi hont hoe, Huhin," I said.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Hi hont hoe, Huhin."

  "What?"

  I tried to push the gag out of my mouth with my tongue and repeated it. How difficult was it to understand "I don't know, Robin"?

  Either Robin caught on, or he'd had it with trying. From between clenched teeth he hissed, "Harek, if you don't get up by the count of five, I swear I'm going to pull loose these chains and jump up and down on your face."

  My head wasn't clear enough to wonder how he could pull himself loose, but it was clear enough to know I didn't want my face jumped up and down on. I rolled onto my right side and pushed with my legs.

  "One," Robin said, obviously unimpressed with my fish-out-of-water pantomime.

  I gave him a dirty look. OK, so I rolled over on my back, figuring I could do a sit-up. But that was so painful on my bound arms I kept rolling until I was on my left side.

  "Two," Robin said.

  Cut it out, I warned him with what was meant to be a menacing narrowing of my eyes.

  "Three."

  I sighed and squirmed on the floor until I had my back against the dripping wall.

  "Four."

  Muttering under my breath, I braced my feet against the floor and slid myself up the wall. Wet and rough. It did wonders for my already sore back muscles.

  "Thank you," Robin said. "Now take a look at my right boot. My right boot, Harek," he repeated, before I even moved.

  I did my impersonation of Cornelius thinking about blowing someone's head apart, but I looked at his stupid boot. I considered making a snide remark, like maybe, "Real nice boot, Robin," but the gag was soaking up all the moisture from my mouth, and it seemed too much of an effort. Especially since he probably wouldn't understand me anyway.

  "Look at the upper part of the boot," Robin said. "The other side: the outside of my leg. Do you see the fancy stitching?"

  I nodded eagerly. It wasn't immediately obvious, but now that he'd pointed it out, I knew what it was, even as he said it.

  "There's a secret pocket there that holds my lock pick. Do you think you can get it out?"

  It was either that or wait here for another four days or until we were rescued, whichever came first. Where were the others, come to think of it? Was there anyone left to rescue us? I turned around and groped for Robin's boot with my hands tied behind me. The first thing I grabbed was his thigh, and he kicked me—hard—in the rear end.

  "Hey!" I cried indignantly.

  "Hey yourself."

  We glared at each other until it suddenly occurred to me to wonder if all our noise was going to alert the guards. I pressed myself against the cell door and peered out the tiny opening. I could see a long curved hall lined with doors. To the left, the hall continued until it disappeared into darkness. To the right, there were maybe five or six doors on either side, and then the guard area. Three men were sitting there, bent over a table: cards or dice, they were too far for me to be able to tell. And having too good a time to notice a little noise from us. Apparently we were the only prisoners, or at least the only ones with a torch in our cell.

  I went back to Robin, turned my back to him, and tried to grab lower on his leg.

  This time I got his knee.

  At least he didn't kick me, but he gave this warning growl like I was too dumb to figure out the difference between a boot and a knee.

  I started to ease myself down onto my knees, but with my arms behind me, my balance was off and I dropped painfully onto the hard floor.

  "There, now you've got it."

  Thank you very much. I leaned back and found that my hands were even with his foot.

  "To the right. To the right. No, to the left."

  I couldn't tell which ached more, my knees or my shoulders.

  "Got it! Do you feel the flap?"

  I felt the flap. I felt the thin piece of metal under the flap. I couldn't get my hand turned around. Now my fingers were beginning to ache. Upside down, I got the pick between my index finger and my middle finger and lifted it out of its sheath.

  The miserable thing slipped between my fingers and hit the floor.

  I groaned. Robin groaned. But I was the one who had to retrieve it. I lowered myself all the way to the floor and tried to locate the pick from Robin's ridiculous directions.

  "To the left. My left. Now forward. Too far. Back about three inches. Straight. Straight, Harek."

  If the guards had come in then, I would have cheerfully volunteered to be on Robin's firing squad.

  I rested on my right side, panting.

  "Harek...," Robin started.

  I glared at him.

  "Do you think you can pick it up with your teeth?"

  With my teeth?

  "Pull the gag all the way into your mouth, then bite the gag down between your teeth. Then you'll be able to get the pick with your mouth."

  I couldn't think of anything else to do. And believe me, I tried. I chewed the soggy gag backward. It seemed enormous, but finally my teeth were free. I bent over and bit the pick, getting a nice mouthful of dirt floor at the same time of course.

  Meanwhile Robin had used the toe of his left foot against his right heel and had kicked off his boot. "OK," he said, "now give me the pick."

  Are you picturing this? Me with my poor aching body, on my knees with my hands behind my back and the pick between my teeth, and him dangling his bare foot in my face, flexing his toes?

  Somehow we did it. I sat back on my heels, wondering, Now what? Robin swung his leg up like a dancer doing high kicks, trying to get the pick up into his right hand shackled into the wall. I was torn between the desire to get out of there and the hope he'd kick himself in the face and knock himself out. He got the leg higher and higher, finally almost reaching his hand before t
he pick flew out from between his toes and sailed across the room. It clinked as it hit the stone wall, then went thunk! against the floor.

  "I'm sorry," Robin said, sounding close to whining, sounding ... sounding ... Well, to be honest, sounding as physically bedraggled and as emotionally exhausted as I felt. His arms had to be killing him, supporting his weight for who knows how long before I'd even come to. And those high kicks, and bouncing his heel back against the wall, and me giving him dirty looks all the time...

  "You're doing a fine job," I said, more or less articulate now that the gag was in a manageable wad.

  Robin looked amazed that I'd said it, which made me feel even wormier.

  I went and got the pick between my teeth again and knelt in front of his foot again.

  "I can't," he said, closing his eyes.

  "Robin," I said, my teeth clamped on the pick. "Robin."

  He could hear me, I was sure of it. Now I could sympathize with how he had felt, trying to rouse me to consciousness earlier.

  I nudged his leg with my shoulder.

  "Leave me alone, Harek." His voice trembled with the strain of talking.

  "Robin, I'll give you the pick, then you can step on my shoulders. Get the weight off your arms."

  That got his eyes open.

  "Go on," I said.

  He clutched the pick with his right foot, and I walked to the wall on my knees, where I slid to my feet. He got his left leg up first, the one that still had a boot. It hurt like anything, but I didn't have the heart to tell him to hang on a bit longer while I pulled it off. After he stepped on with his right foot, I could hear him take several deep breaths, the last much less shaky than the first.

  "OK. Tip your head to the left," he warned me.

  I closed my eyes, because I wouldn't have time to dodge if his foot accidentally came flying at me, and I didn't want to see it happening.

  I felt him swing his foot—could feel that he hadn't gotten very high at all. He swung again—not much better. He was too nervous about getting out of control, was worried about knocking all my teeth out on the rebound. Either that or he was too weak, which didn't bear thinking about.