The quality of gameplay had improved as well. Jonny had introduced her to a new zone which he called the Borderlands. Here, the fights were tougher and mobs dropped better loot, and the feel of the spells, the texture of the environmental effects on her skin and muscles had deepened and broadened. VirtuMax had outdone itself with their newest upgrade. Now anyone on the planet could potentially don their VR gear and create a character and get the same immersive experience. It was almost frightening.
Jonny, true to form, wasn’t finished. “I speak as what I am: a rogue, a jack, a saboteur. Merely ask me to be silent and I will obey.”
“No,” she said. “Just walking is boring. Why don’t you tell me about where you come from?”
For a few moments, he remained silent. She sensed a truly ridiculous story in the works. He finally addressed her with a startlingly serious one.
“We were expelled,” he said, then paused again. “No, that rings false. We allied ourselves with mortals, broke with the Dark Queen’s royal court, and fled.”
“Some alliance,” Sabine muttered. She almost felt sorry for the big fool.
“Not at all,” he said, standing tall again. “It was a fair arrangement. A creature named Bat rules a city of iron and light called Justice. It is unique in all my experience. It’s a week’s travel from end to end, home to countless refugees from all over the many realms. At its center lies Cloudspire, a building of such height that one sees it rise from the horizon when one is still three days away from the city gates.”
Sabine found the idea of an enormous city in Feyland to be an impossible thing. She couldn’t even imagine it. “That’s amazing.”
“Indeed. Justice was quite small in those days. Bat needed help, as the Shadow Warriors who lay siege to Justice gained ground. Aoife and Llyr, our rulers, pledged their aid to his cause in return for the land surrounding the city. He agreed. We named our new home the Cothram Forest, and the rest is as I have told.”
“That’s insane,” Sabine breathed. It had to be part of the new expansion. A zone that was only unlocked at super-high levels, or something. Maybe a beta of some kind. Maybe even an alpha release. The thought of getting a look at such a restricted area made her mouth water.
“You have to take me there,” she said.
Jonny laughed deep and long. “My lady,” he said as he recovered, “I need do no such thing.”
“Why not? It sounds brilliant.”
He shook his head gravely. “No fae visits Justice. Few even walk the protected roads that run through the city or the surrounding lands. There are rules of conduct for both sides. There is a treaty we dare not break.”
“Well, that sucks,” she said, but let it go.
The trees gave way to meadows, dotted with wildflowers. Sabine spent so much time wondering what Jonny’s fabled city might look like that she barely noticed when the road turned into a wide valley, with lush green hills on their left and right. “One thing I don’t like about this game,” she muttered. “Bags actually get heavy, now.”
“We shall be at the marketplace shortly,” Jonny said. “Remember the rules. Touch nothing and allow me to do the talking. I know the vendors. I shall get good prices.”
She snorted. “You’ll get buried in mud again.”
“Not today,” Jonny insisted. “I may not always properly respect opponents in battle, but my merchant is like a father to me. Or like a humorless older brother.”
“Can I at least look around?”
“Surely. Enquire after the wares. Talk to the dealers. Tell the gossips of our exploits. But touch nothing which is not yours.”
“Yes, Lord Wonderful.” She stopped and offered him a silly, sarcastic curtsy.
Jonny whirled on her, his brow furrowed and his visage dark. She’d never imagined he could be this serious. “Fiery Sabine,” he said, “you are my sun, my moon, my friend, my confidant. Our laws matter. Obey them.”
She nodded quickly, startled by his demeanor. “All right.”
They heard the market before they saw it. Music rose from the far side of the valley and swelled as they approached: flutes, pipes, drums, and strings, interspaced with the tinkling of bells and laughter. Below that, the murmur of a thousand voices all clashed into a veil of white noise. Colorful peaked tents and more permanent structures came into view as they crested a hill.
Over all rose massive ash trees that grew together, trunks entwined and leaves mingling freely far above them. They formed a wide roof over the length of the road, which ran through a gauntlet of stands, stalls, and booths displaying their owners’ wares. Tables covered with arcane objects, scrolls, books, and food beckoned. A gnome alchemist and a pair of goblin tinkers worked on opposite sides of the road as Sabine and Jonny passed. Both tried to get their attention.
“Hey, travelers! I got what you need!”
“Howdy ho, dear! Stop for a sweet drink?”
She hesitated, and then continued as she felt Jonny’s hand on her shoulder. “Touch nothing.”
“Right. I got this.” She looked up at him, trying to be as serious as she could. “Really.”
“Very well,” Jonny said, “I’ll make mark with my buyer. Remain vigilant.”
She wandered between the stalls, oohing and aahing every so often. She stopped before a poorly kept table cluttered with jewelry that looked like it could have come from a Crestview flea market. Strings of colored glass beads, tarnished silver brooches, and the occasional gold ring, some with set gems and others without. One item grabbed her attention instantly: a purple and gold ovoid lying on its side.
“’Tis a mundane egg,” the vendor said. He was a tall, thin fae wearing a black morning coat and a waistcoat. His grin showed too many teeth for her liking, and she had no clue how his spectacles remained perched on the tip of his long nose. “Not a trinket, nor a toy, but an item of great magical power. It can unlock unseen doors and begin the greatest of journeys.”
“How much?” she asked.
“If ye need ask, yer pockets are not deep enough.”
Sabine shrugged. “I don’t know, I have quite a bit.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Truly? Show me your bits.”
At that moment, a drunken brawl broke out a few stalls down. Tables were shoved, shouts of rage emerged from the combatants, and she heard the unmistakable clang of steel on steel. A cry of “Guards! Guards!” arose from the vendors around her. Her eyes remained fixed on the egg. She could hear something wobbling within, demanding her attention.
The vendor screeched for the duelers to stay away, and then the egg was in Sabine’s hand. It pulsed faintly, warm to the touch.
“Thief!” shouted the vendor.
Sabine looked up to see a group of tall soldiers rush up; two broke off to eject the combatants and two more approached her. One bore a fancy seal on his black breastplate. Sabine tried to drop the object, but it was stuck to her fingers. Shaking them didn’t help.
“Captain Winhome! Arrest this sticky-fingered one. She’s—!”
“I have eyes, Malgrove.”
“I was going to buy it,” Sabine pleaded. “Really!”
“Your bleating is better spoken from the mouth of a goat, wretched pilferer!”
A sick, falling sensation grabbed her and she found her vision wobbly, reduced to black and white images like a very old movie. Her head felt impossibly heavy. When Sabine opened her mouth to argue all she could say was, “Maaaaah!” She realized that the vendor hadn’t been kidding: she now had a goat’s voice. She looked down at herself to see hooves where her hands were and the world somehow grown bigger. All at once, she was standing on four short legs, bleating her surprise and anger to a growing crowd of onlookers.
She thought about summoning her staff, but nothing happened except for her feeling ill. Which, she thought in a rising panic, was probably just as well. She was in enough trouble.
“Witnesses!” called the captain. “Come forward!”
One goblin vendor raised a green claw a
nd jumped up and down. “I saw the whole thing! I—” His companion pounded the back of his head, and the goblin calmed down. “No, I didn’t.”
“Any others?” called Winhome. Silence. “Very well. You’ll come with me and stay in a cell until I can inform Her Majesty, the Dark Queen; she will judge you appropriately. Come along.”
Winhome reached into a leather belt pouch and pulled out a thin yellow cord. At a spoken command, the rope snaked out and circled Sabine’s neck, She struggled at first, but the rope merely tightened its grip on her.
Captain Winhome took the loose end of the rope and strode out of the tent, pulling her away from the merchants and muttering crowds. Small winged pixies jeered at her, changing the color of her hair for a few seconds at a time. Finally, they reached a great wagon pulled by a team of huge warhorses. Upon its bed rested an iron cage with a heavy lock on the door.
Winhome spoke a word; the lock snapped open and the door swung wide. “In, girl.”
Without wanting to, Sabine stepped into the prison cart and immediately reverted to her human form. She was thankful enough that her human body had reappeared inside her dress and not on top of it to quietly sit down on the short wooden bench that was built into the floor. An iron cage, she knew, was the perfect way to trap a fae. But she as a player wasn’t supposed to end up in one. What was going on here?
The rope now released her, snaking back through the bars to its master. The captain settled himself up front with the driver as she wondered where Jonny Wonderful had gotten to, or what in-game abilities she was going to lose over this.
As the cart pulled away, a giant oak tree and a rainbow-winged butterfly glanced at each other, shrugged, and went about their business.
Like the splash of a pebble in a still pond, the ripples of the morning’s events reached Jonny Wonderful before he realized just how badly things had gone. It took some inquiry but he quickly pieced events together and hung his head as he realized that mortals were the same fools all over, and no, he truly could not leave Sabine alone for even a moment. Part of him resented the fact that she needed so much looking after. Part of him feared for her safety. The Dark Queen would not take kindly to a market thief. The girl would, at the very least, stay in a cell while the human world raced past her and eventually forgot about her. To cross the Queen’s Guard—much less the Queen herself—meant a very long stay for himself well beyond the Unseelie Court.
“Well then, Sirrah,” he muttered to himself, “you dare not delay.”
Sabine sat on the bench in her cage, dejected. Her staff refused to appear when she tried to summon it; she had no better luck with any other item. The lock was heavy, solid, and probably warded. Besides, she had no skill at lock picking. She rocked along with the wagon’s motion, wondering what might happen to her.
She perked up as she spied a lone figure chasing the wagon. She squeed as she recognized Jonny on a red and yellow War Raptor. He pulled alongside the wagon, jumped from the flightless bird’s back, and landed on the tailgate steps. The War Raptor squawked indignantly and then stopped in the road, dwindling to a speck as the wagon left it behind. “Care to leave this place?”
“Wait, you can pick locks? Iron locks?”
“I would be a poor rogue indeed if there were a cage that could hold me,” he replied. She couldn’t see what he did, but in a few moments the lock sizzled and popped off. A moment later the door swung open. Sabine noticed that Jonny made an effort not to touch the door itself. “Jump!”
They jumped, dropped, and rolled. The wagon trundled away, the door swinging aimlessly from its hinges. And Jonny’s mount had squawked off in the wrong direction.
“One fewer problem to manage,” Jonny said. “But now we have a greater need: a place of relative safety for you.”
“I could log off the sim. Forever,” she suggested.
“No. The Dark Queen would merely arrange things in your world such that you were forced back here. However…”
Sabine noticed that Jonny was staring at her hand. She looked down, surprised to see that she still held the mundane egg in her grasp. That made no sense. “I dropped it when Winhome put me in the cage,” she remembered. “I know I did.”
“It’s yours,” Jonny breathed wonderingly. “It must always have been. The trouble in the market was that mad vendor’s doing.” He bowed low. “Sabine, you have my apologies twice in one day. I should not have thought poorly of you.”
She stared at him. Who was this guy? He was no mere role-player, she knew that now. And she was in way over her head. “What’s going on here, Jonny? This isn’t just a game, is it?”
“Only if avoiding prison seems like a girl’s play to you. The danger you face is quite real.” He hesitated a moment as he weighed strategies. ”Give your magic item here, and I will grant your wish to see the city of Justice.”
“Promises, promises,” she teased. But she handed him the mundane egg. “How’s this going to work?”
“Within this object is a world waiting to be born. Or, a way to bring an existing world forward.” He pulled a vial from his pocket, popped the cap, and emptied the contents into his hands, smearing his palms and the mundane egg. “Dandelion milk makes a wonderful binding agent. Take my hand.”
She gripped his hand fiercely. Her heart pounded in her chest and she couldn’t slow her breathing. In the distance she heard the clattering of wagon wheels and the stomp of hooves. Winhome had discovered her escape and was coming back for her. “Hurry up!” she said.
“And now, take a step— ” he said as he threw the egg down on the packed dirt of the trail. The shattering sound was far too loud for it to have come just from the egg as it broke into pieces. A light flickered and blossomed around them. They stepped into it and were surrounded by thick clouds of gray and white smoke. In a few moments the mist cleared, and Sabine looked around at a completely different world.
“Welcome to the Cothram forest.”
She twirled in a circle as she worked to take in the new environment. The plants and trees were entirely different and the air smelled of cherry blossoms and honeysuckle. They stood in a grove of pine and elm trees. She could smell the sap from them. There was no hint of the danger they’d just left. It felt peaceful in a way that Feyland never had.
She lifted her skirts and picked her way through the trees, working to step past shrubs and over clumps of tall grass. She didn’t see the strawberry bush nestled against the old pine tree. She did, however, tread too close to it. The bush snapped at her, rearing up and barking loudly. Sabine screamed and ran, flying across the grass and leaping into the low branches of an elm. She gripped its trunk in a death hug as the strawberry bush dashed around the roots, barking and snapping, unable to climb after her.
She heard a sharp whistle and looked down in amazement as Jonny Wonderful caught the bush’s attention, and lured it away into the bright daylight. The bush promptly quieted and settled.
Jonny approached the tree and looked up at her. “Strawberries become irritable when they lie in the shade for too long. Luckily, it wasn’t a bamboo tree. Those will carry a grudge.”
She dropped from the branch, smoothed her skirts, and glared at him. “Anything else you want to tell me about this place?” she asked.
Jonny indicated the edge of the trees. A clearing lay beyond, and then a wide, bricked road. Well down the road, behind all manner of hills and valleys, stood an immense tower that gleamed like an icicle in the sunlight.
“Cloudspire,” Jonny said. “The seat of Mayor Bat’s rule. We may walk. The road is safe.”
She sighed with relief as she saw the bricks were gray rather than yellow. That would have been too weird. On the other hand, the stone sparkled with mica chips. Their boot heels clicked noisily against the bricks as they walked down the path toward the city.
“How does the protection work? Is it the treaty?”
“It is. While on the roads, we fall under the city’s law. The Cothram Fae may not molest any who tread upon i
t. All else is their territory, over which the city has no claim. Errant wanders have found themselves maimed, duped, or robbed.”
“A non-aggression pact,” Sabine said, grinning. “Cool. What happens if you meet an unhappy person on the road?”
An unholy scream from above them gave her an answer.
They rained from the sky, not flying as much as falling. Rotted humanoids with gaping holes in their bodies and armor to match. They stank of corruption and landed around Jonny and Sabine, too many for her to count.
“Jonny Wonderful,” the leader crowed in a voice that sounded like a mouthful of suet and ants, “Welcome home! We would have a toll, Cothram.”
Jonny maneuvered himself between Sabine and the leader as she took the opportunity to summon her staff. “What toll? This is a free road.”
“Bah! Pay us, or—”
A sizzling bolt of fire arced into the group, hitting the speaker square in the chest. He burst into flames instantly and fell silent.
“Or we can fight,” Sabine said.
The crowd drew weapons and charged, bellowing wordless battle cries. Sabine gripped her staff and concentrated, blasting a circle of fire in all directions, forcing the corpse horde to retreat. Jonny engaged them with his rapier, driving them back as Sabine kept them at bay, but there were clearly too many of them.
A shout erupted from behind them and suddenly a new combatant entered the field: a tall fae knight with sword and shield, and a suit of black armor with a silver and gold seal on the breastplate. Captain Winhome surged forward with a flurry of blows, raining destruction onto the field.
Jonny and Sabine sensed their opportunity and moved away from the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. They maneuvered the mob so that the corpses focused their attention on Winhome. Then, Jonny grabbed Sabine’s hand and pulled her toward the edge of the road.
Chronicle Worlds: Feyland Page 13
