The Secret of the Dark Forest ( (The Way of the Shaman: Book #3)

by Vasily Mahanenko

  "Mahan, are you sure you know what you're doing?" whispered Clutzer, who happened to be standing closest to me. "I don't seem to recall us discussing this."

  I put my finger to my lips once again, showing that now was not the time to distract me and returned to my conversation with Ehkiller. How could I explain to the guys that Anastaria would work much better for free than for money? For her the concept of being indebted was not just some random collection of sounds, but the worst possible curse, one that, once placed, would have to be lifted as soon as possible. If I took money off her for the Guardian's quest, Seathistles wouldn't be getting a mercenary, but the leader of the Phoenix clan. Despite this being one and the same player, in fact there were two different people in there. Knowing this, how could I share the High Priestess's quest with her? It's just not gonna happen. So, she either joins us for free or we'll have to do without her.

  "Then it's fifty-two," continued the shadow leader of the Phoenix clan without any change in tone, as if he'd counted on this from the outset. "We are offering you twenty million gold for everyone."

  "That boils down to less than four hundred thousand per head," I said after some quick number crunching. "That's a laughable amount!" The scenario has no time limit, therefore I can wait a couple of years, gain some levels and complete it myself just with my clan. That'd be more profitable."

  "So tell us your conditions. Just stop going on about a million and a half – you give the impression of someone with more sense than that."

  "All right, I realize that getting that much money wouldn't be realistic." I was dragging out the conversation until I saw with some relief that Leite looked up at me and signaled that he was done with the Agreement. Finally! We had discussed almost all possible options earlier, so now it only remained to turn our decisions into a well-worded text, the task that Leite had taken upon himself. And there was me potentially getting it all muddled up with the bit about Anastaria joining us for free ...

  "Mahan, are you still here?" Ehkiller gave a polite cough, returning me to the negotiations.

  "Sorry." I quickly scanned through the text, taking note of all the main points. "Let's talk everything over in a proper, business-like fashion. Five hundred thousand gold per head is too little for what essentially amounts to 18 levels. I believe that the most reasonable price would be a million gold each. There's little sense in going any lower. Any gold looted during this assignment will be split equally amongst everyone in the group. In this quest my clan will be carried and there's just eight of us, so you won't even notice our presence. We'll divide all the loot through an Imitator – it will do it better than any of us – but I will retain the right to claim any eight items that drop irrespective of the norms of sharing loot, including rolls of the die and class suitability. Any quests acquired by any member of the group while completing this scenario will be shared with all other members of the group. Each player will have to make a decision concerning the amount of time they are present in the Game during this scenario. However, I take no responsibility if you happen to be logged out during a key event or during the completion of the scenario. In this case I ask that no claims are made against the Seathistles clan – this point will definitely be included in the Agreement. There is another point of considerable importance to me: there should be no members of the Dark Legion clan in on this quest. I have nothing against them, except for the fact that they're obliged to send me for respawn on sight. I think that's it for now."

  "No, it's not," came Hellfire's voice. "Who's going to run the raid? Who will be the leader and who will be calling the shots?"

  "I will be the one making the decisions, after first consulting Anastaria. She will be the one leading the raid, no-one else would do it better." I glanced at the girl, who immediately composed herself. Whatever happened to that playful fire that was dancing in her eyes a few minutes ago? I was now looking at the real Anastaria: focused, capable of making split-second decisions even with limited information, clever and incredibly beautiful. Right, that last point has nothing to do with anything.

  "Anastaria, can you hear us?" Ehkiller asked the girl.

  "I'm here and agree on all the points except the one on making decisions. Undigit, are you planning to bring Donotpunnik with you?"

  "Yes," the voice of the Azure Dragons leader, which I recognized from the time of the Beatwick battle, came from the amulet.

  "In that case, I propose that, aside from me, you should also add him as an advisor. Is my recommendation sufficient for this?" Anastaria asked me.

  "Sure. Leite, add him to the Agreement." I passed this on to my bureaucrat. "I'm prepared to share out the quest under the terms we've discussed. I’ll hand the Agreement over to Anastaria and she’ll send it to Ehkiller and everyone else for examination. Now we just have to settle the price and write in the full list of the participants." I sent the amended Agreement to Anastaria. It now contained just a few blank sections: the price, names of those taking part and the destination coordinates.

  "I see," Ehkiller responded thoughtfully. "We'll need a couple more minutes to talk over your words and come to a decision. I'll call you back."

  The amulet fell silent and, exhausted, I slumped to the ground. If sweating were possible in Barliona, I would've been sweating buckets from all the tension. I’d never had to conduct negotiations at such a level before, so completing my very first attempt with this enormous profit would be quite a feat. And I think I managed to pull it off, so I could only hope that a million gold was a reasonable price for the respective clan heads and the like.

  "Mahan, are you sure about a million?" Clutzer crouched next to me, staring into the distance. "I remember us agreeing that six hundred thousand was a good price. Especially if we'll have that many people on board. And what if they don't go for it? What then? Agreeing to a discount a second time is lame – they'll start taking us for fools. And what's the deal with Anastaria doing this for free?"

  "Clutzer, go chop some trees." I'd barely had time to reply to this very reasonable remark from my fighter, when Anastaria appeared next to us. "I need to talk to Mahan. Please," added the girl when Clutzer didn't flinch.

  "You might have failed to notice, but I'm also talking to him right now."

  "You'll have time enough to chat later."

  "The same goes for you. If someone butts in on your conversation with Hellfire, just how far will you send him flying?"

  Anastaria stood there for a couple of moments, trying to stare Clutzer down, and then turned to her fighters and shouted: "Rick, what's with this idling about? Did you forget what we've come here for? Let's get back to the herbs so that the Seathistles can get their chit-chat over and done with."

  "I think you're letting this lady have her way a little too much.” Clutzer turned back to me as soon as Anastaria left us. "The times of going it alone are gone. Now you're the leader of a clan, for which you are responsible. You're also starting to let the wrong part of your body do the thinking. Forget about the gold we might be losing on account of Anastaria – if all goes well we'll make it back from the higher price you've demanded, but I am asking you not to act so rashly next time."

  "But we do need her. All of us did decide, after all, that we'd take her along for the High Priestess's quest," I pointed out in my defense. "We won't be able to get past the Vampires without her and if she ends up paying to take part, we won’t just get her, but the entire Phoenix clan. Is that what we really want?"

  "That's why I kept quiet when you came out with all that nonsense to Ehkiller. The sooner you understand that you're not on your own and that the clan is there to back you up, the better. Right, I should get going or she'll incinerate me with her eyes. Just remember, you're a clan leader and not some lone 67-level player. If you roll over now, you'll be rolling over for the rest of the game."

  "I can see you've got some fierce fighters there, quite hair-raising." Anastaria sat next to me as soon as Clutzer was gone and, unlike him, used a Scroll of Impenetrability, c
oncealing us from the rest of the world. No-one could hear or even see us; our senses were in no way impeded as we continued to watch the others at work. A convenient thing for those who want to hide, the only drawback being that it couldn't be moved once activated.

  "Mahan, are you under a dome?" A message from Elenium immediately appeared in the clan channel.

  "Yup, Anastaria put it up," I replied to the guys to stop them worrying. "She's being terribly mysterious!"

  "Remember our chat," came a message from Clutzer, "And why didn't we talk like this before? It's very convenient when others are far away.”

  Leaving Elenium to explain to the others why clan chat is accessible to clan members only, I returned to Anastaria.

  "They're worried, eh?" asked the girl with a smile. "Afraid that I'll eat their leader?"

  "No, rather, they asked me not to do anything bad to you," I parried. "After all, this is none other than Anastaria we're talking about here: I could end up doing something stupid and then spend all of five minutes regretting it. Was it so obvious that I was using the chat?"

  "Yup. Damn! I caught that stupid word off you! Were those your first negotiations of this caliber?"

  "There's also this other word: yer."

  "Good for you, you handled yourself well. I remember when I was taken to a similar meeting for the first time. 'Killer was negotiating the purchase of a key to another world, same as that Eye of yours. That was so long ago! Almost ten years now! I was just a foolish little girl, who had just joined Phoenix. I was watching wide-eyed how serious grown men were haggling over the purchase of an artifact worth three million. I just didn't get it – how can you hand over so much money for a bunch of numbers in a database? At the time I had just started university and had a generous monthly allowance of a thousand gold – if you converted it to Barliona currency – which allowed me to survive in relative comfort. And you can stop sniggering! That money gave us an entire month of truly magnificent dinners of ramen and corned beef. Someone who's never been a student wouldn’t understand. For example, are you familiar with the special skill of persuading a teabag to produce something resembling tea at third brewing? I am! The funniest thing was that everyone brought their kids to the dorms in limos or expensive convertibles ... yet the taste of a piece of bread toasted under a gas grill, washed down with a freshly-opened carton of milk, will stay with me forever. It was then that I understood that it's not the money or the status of your parents that makes you who you are; you're the only one responsible for how people really see you."

  "Why are you telling me all this?" I asked the suddenly nostalgic girl.

  "Because you also managed to level up your Reputation with me and ... that's just it ... so you know. All right, enough memories for today. Tell me instead whether you managed to solve the riddle?"

  "Riddle? What riddle? Aaahh! The one with the three formulas? It was pretty easy!" I lacked Anastaria's skill of switching conversation topic at the drop of a hat, so felt a little lost at first. Perhaps I should get her to give me a master class in this? She sure could teach me a thing or two ...

  "You don't say. My troopers spent ages wrestling with it. We had to do a good deal of digging before we came up with a possible answer. It's beautifully put together, wouldn't you say? How did you stumble upon the solution? I'll never believe that you simply solved everything in five minutes."

  "I had the swearing filters on, then a certain player swore in front of me and the system corrected him ... in a helpful way. Before that I also spent a long time grappling with it, you might even say it began to haunt me in my dreams, but eventually something clicked and I realized what had to be done. I need your help now though. I'm sending you a line of text." I sent Anastaria the cipher I got from the Dwarves. "There's no key or any information on what type of cipher is used, so I'll never solve it by myself. Could you run it past your deciphering team?"

  "Of course, I'll send it to my guys. They'll pick this line apart into all its constituent elements. So, you trust me so much now that you're not even demanding an Agreement?"

  "I have to trust someone in this game, so why not you?"

  "And yet the Karmadont Chess Pieces are still a no-go zone?"

  The girl's question caught me completely flat-footed, so I had to close my eyes and silently count to ten as I tried to keep my emotions in check. All I wanted to do right now was grab Anastaria by the shoulders and shake all the baloney out of her. How long can she badger me with these chess figurines? I opened my eyes, looked at the grinning girl and counted to ten once again, but slower and more thoughtfully this time. No, things can't carry on like this. The matter of the chess pieces has to be settled once and for all, or I'll spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, to see if Anastaria was there, waiting to make her move.

  "You're a strange one, Stacey. Sometimes I get the feeling that you're not even human, just some soulless machine bent on pursuing its aim, oblivious to anyone or anything else." The girl was silent, so I couldn't think of anything better to do than to take out all the Orc Warriors and put them in her lap. "If these things can make you risk your character by misusing the Sirens' Poison and you can't help constantly bringing them up and teasing me about them, then clearly your life isn't complete without them. They're yours. Your peace of mind is worth more to me than a collection of algorithms. Take them and do what you like with them."

  That's it. The die had been cast – as one of the ancients said, there's nowhere left to retreat, the bridges are burnt. As soon as I spoke the phrase 'they're yours', the owner of the figurines changed and I no longer had any claim over them, except authorship. Now, even if I came to my senses and decided to take the Orcs back, my fingers would go right through them. To be honest, I was playing it far from straight with her by giving her only the Orc Warriors, staying stubbornly silent about the Dwarves. She could think that's because I did it in the heat of the moment. I made my move, now it was Anastaria's turn. All our future relations depended on what would happen next.

  "One of the Orc Warriors from the Karmadont Chess Set," said Anastaria thoughtfully, turning the figurine around in her hands. "You have no idea what I would've been prepared to do to get my hands on them, and here you just gave them to me, without any conditions at all. ... Not so long ago I wouldn't have given a second thought to immediately throwing them in my bag. But now ... I had to know for sure that the Chess Pieces did in fact exist – that it wasn't some error in the Game code, which spread this announcement throughout Malabar. Here," Anastaria handed the figurines over to me, "they're yours. No-one in this game apart from you has any claim over them. There's a reason I was remembering my student days ... as corny as it may sound, you've made me respect you and not just the results of your crafting. Whatever you may think of me, for me a relationship of trust is more important than gold or the Karmadont Chess Pieces. You can buy everything except that ... thank you!" The girl leant over to me and did something completely unexpected: she kissed me. Intensely, passionately, unforgettably ... there were no words.

  "All that I ask of you is that no-one else finds out about this kiss." When Stacey drew back, my head was still floating in the clouds amid beautiful dreams. I have no idea how, but an ordinary kiss gave me so much pleasure that, compared to it, any visits to the Dating House seemed to pale into insignificance.

  "Judging by your expression, you're not exactly immune to the magic of Delight after all." Anastaria's laughter sounded inside the dome, "I'm sorry, I just had to check. Now I just need to find out why my poison had no effect on you. How do you know about it, by the way?"

  Like a giant cold shower these words shook me out of the pink clouds and sent me crashing back down to earth. She really is such a ... woman ... Wothebugs take her!

  "I think we've had enough revelations for today." I tried to regain composure, which, despite Anastaria's last phrase, was an uphill struggle: the pink clouds were refusing to let me go and my face still sported a stupidly happy smile that I just cou
ldn't shake off.

  "Will you tell me what the other two quests you have are?"

  "Will you tell me what you're prepared to give me for them?"

  "Without even looking at their descriptions first? The correct answer would be – nothing."

  "All right, let's take a different approach. Do you know who the Patriarch of the Vampires is?"

  The girl's silence, as well as her wide-eyed surprise, were a clear enough answer to my question. She knew who that was, all right!

  "Mahan, this is Ehkiller." The call of the amulet interrupted my intimate meeting with Stacey, allowing her to regain composure and start trying to figure out whether I was bluffing or not. "We've discussed and accepted the Agreement that you've sent. We'll pay the price of one million per participant and will be sending you the list of players in a moment. Please confirm that the location coordinates will appear in the Agreement as soon as it is signed and the money arrives in your account."

  "Confirmed, but it shouldn't be my account, rather the account of the Seathistles clan. Thank you for reaching a decision so quickly," I thanked Ehkiller. "I have another question – do you want to start the quest today or tomorrow morning?"

  "We will settle the formalities today and start the assignment tomorrow," the Phoenix representative assured me, "Anyone who wishes can join you today, but we'll set out tomorrow morning."

  "You know, the more time I spend with you, the more I think that you're a spy for the Corporation," said the girl, now quite recovered, the moment Ehkiller disconnected. "There are just too many coincidences for a simple prisoner, don't you think?"

  "No, I can call the Emperor as a witness (although I have no idea how he would be able to check); I have nothing to do with the Corporation. I did work for it once, before the mines, but only odd-jobs here and there."

  "You do know that the Patriarch is as legendary a figure as the Dragons? Or that no-one has seen him in the entire 15 years of the Game? But it looks like you're already acquainted with him and all ..."