A Dwarf Stood At The Door

by Norman Crane

clicking up the hall to the sun-room. "Please come with me now."

  I stood up.

  Olaf Brandywine rolled away from me and went back to staring through the window at the storm outside.

  "Sir, we have rules," the guard said. He was tapping his foot against the floor. Tap, tap, tap, like the tapping of fingers on a keyboard. Rules about prison visitations, rules about permadeth. Even our world had hard code and restrictions. In our world, no one could be invulnerable, not even a character. "But didn't you ever try to do it?" I asked Olaf Brandywine. "If you know his weakness why didn't you exploit it?"

  The guard stopped tapping and closed in on me. "Sir..."

  "Because," Olaf Brandywine said, "you possess something that I never did—not after 1983. A friend. I told you that you're a foil to Dogor. Use what you have and he doesn't, use it against him. Do, together with your friend, what I could not do alone. And after you do it do not contact me. Do not attempt to find me. Remember that for you this past hour appeared suddenly, whereas I have been waiting for it for over thirty years."

  The guard grabbed me. As he pulled me away down the long corridor leading to the reception area, I realized the reason why Olaf Brandywine had taken all of our allotted time to tell me what he could have told me in five minutes: at last he could air share story—his whole story—with someone who knew enough to know he wasn't off-his-rocker crazy.

  At reception I picked up my valise and my phone and said goodbye to the girl chewing bubble gum behind the counter. "He's a real sweetie, isn't he though?" she said. I smiled and nodded, and walked out through the automatic doors. The weather outside was an unpleasant mix of fog and wet blanket. I got moist waiting for a taxi. At the airport I checked my guerillamail account. Wayne had sent me a message. It was dated several hours ago. "I don't know how long she's gonna buy just sitting around with me, bud. She keeps talking about going home to get her things or else seeing her mother and all I can talk about is how you're a real scumbag to cheat on a woman like her. You would be a scumbag to cheat on her. Hurry up and tell me what's up as soon as you can."

  I bought a ticket back to the real Ontario and typed out a response to Wayne: "Talked to X. Success. Got a plan. Will return soon. Will need your help. D is going down."

  I don't why I wrote it in code like that, but it made me feel like a spy reporting from behind enemy lines, which itself made me feel foolish once I sat down to wait for my plane and overheard lawyers and engineers discussing actual serious business. Not that my business wasn't important, it was life and death, but for every moment that I feared turning a corner and meeting an axe with my chest, there were moments when I felt like the world's biggest dork.

  I got out my Thinkpad and booted up.

  Dogor wasn't waiting in my room in The Yawning Mask—I envisioned him creeping around my neighbourhood, peering into houses through front-facing windows—so I left a message with the Innkeeper. I wanted Dogor to know I'd been in California. I wanted him to feel that wheels were in motion.

  > tell the innkeeper to tell dogor that i was in another land

  > tell the innkeeper to tell dogor that i have new information about the hooded rat brotherhood

  > tell the innkeeper to tell dogor that we need to have a talk with wayne

  The Innkeeper swore he'd remember my exact words, and I believed him. He was a good innkeeper. He also reminded me that I owed him more money because I'd only paid for a few days in advance. I gladly handed over the gold.

  My flight home was uneventful.

  Back on Canadian soil, I took a Robert Q minibus from the airport to a motel that was just off Highway 401. I mused that my life had become a collection of motels. The internet at this one was flaky, but the food tasted decent and I didn't need much bandwidth to email. I found another message from Wayne: "I'm all aboard. Just tell me what what to do. Tell me what the plan is."

  I wish I could claim that I didn't feel the itch of paranoia then, that the image of Wayne and Annie bound together with rope and forced to communicate with me by Dogor threatening to douse them with gasoline and burn them alive didn't flash through my mind, but I crumpled the image up and tossed it away. Olaf Brandywine had reminded me twice that I was Dogor's foil. Dogor would have been suspicious. Therefore, I couldn't be. I organized my thoughts even more neatly than I'd organized them on the flight and typed out a response to Wayne. I spoke plainly.

  "I'm back from California and hiding out in a motel by the highway. The situation is grave but winnable," I wrote. "First things first, Dogor is as real as you or me. Not that I ever doubted you, but I'm sure you'll feel a little better knowing you're not the first person to see him in the flesh. I'll tell you his history later. Right now, the main thing to know is that he has a weakness. In Xynk he is immortal, there's no way to kill him, but when he comes into our world he comes into it without his in-game protection. He's got one life and no continues just like the rest of us. Which brings me to the plan. We have to kill him and send his corpse, if that's what it's called, back to Xynk so that he stays there in a permanently dead state. To do that we have to find out what he uses to enter our world. That's step one. My idea is to use his suspicion of you as a member of the Hooded Rat Brotherhood to lure him to us, then follow him when he retreats back to Xynk through whatever portal he uses. If we're successful, the next step is to lure him out again, end his life, and send him back through the same portal in a casket, metaphorically speaking. So here's the deal. Tonight, I want you to argue with Annie and give in to her demand to go to her mother's. Drive her there, then come back to the motel. Buy some sort of sorcerer type clothing, i.e. dark, long, hooded. Tomorrow around lunch, dress up and be at your store. Unlock the back door. Dogor's not waiting around at The Yawning Mask but I'm willing to bet he'll show up soon, and when he does I'll have a chat with him. I'll tell him he's right about your allegiance and that we need to pump you for information, and what better time than tomorrow at lunch when you'll be all alone? I'll make sure we show up at a quarter past noon. Exactly five minutes later, a car will come to pick you up. It might be a taxi, it might not. I don't know yet. That's your getaway. It'll take you back to the motel. In the commotion, I'll change clothes or something and get myself lost, then I'll track Dogor to wherever his portal is. If everything goes off without a hitch we'll plan out step two. Tell me what you think. Respond ASAP."

  I hadn't written an email that long in ages, probably since the invention of Twitter. I didn't have time to rest, though. After clicking send, I checked The Yawning Mask for Dogor, who was still out and about, then went outside to the pay phone and dialled my thesis sponsor. The phone rang four times. She greeted me in her usual, elegant way. I responded, "Hi. It's me," like the uncultured Canadian that I was. "Are you still at the motel?"

  "Of course, my dear."

  "I need your help with something."

  She purred. "Helping is what thesis sponsors are for. With what do you require my assistance?"

  "There's a store," I said and gave her the address of Wayne's computer repair place. "I need you to show up there tomorrow in a car at exactly twenty minutes after twelve. Park on the street right in front of the entrance. A man, probably dressed in a cape and hood, maybe wearing a funny hat, will run out and get in. He'll give you an address to a motel. Take him there."

  I heard her writing. The writing stopped. "That is all?"

  "Yes, but it's important."

  "If I may ask, has it to do with the dwarf?"

  "Yes."

  "Excellent."

  "Please be punctual," I said.

  "Be assured I shall be." She unwrapped something, probably a chocolate bar, and took a bite. "Have you known me ever to be otherwise?"

  "I owe you."

  "You owe me what you always owe me, an improved draft of your thesis."

  "I think I owe you much more than that."

  "Everything I do, I do for love of truth, research and the destruction of evil dwarves," she said, "for they—as you Americans li
ke to say—are real sons of bitches."

  I pointed out her accidental rhyme.

  She giggled. "I was something of a minor Akhmatova in my day."

  "You were a poet?"

  "Till tomorrow at twenty minutes past twelve o'clock."

  She hung up. I replaced the pay phone receiver and watched the cars zoom by on the 401, letting the noise and air rush into me, rubbing out the motel smell and reminding me that I never wanted to live anywhere near Los Angeles. I returned to my room. Because Dogor still wasn't back, I ordered food—two medium pizzas with salami, mushrooms, black olives on both—and watched TV until it arrived. I gave the delivery guy an extra large tip because I thought maybe by being generous I could improve my luck for tomorrow. The delivery guy smiled from ear to ear and sprinted back to his car, probably afraid that I'd change my mind or realize my mistake. But it was my twenty-first century gift to the gods, and I wasn't about to tempt fate. I would have gladly tossed another hundred dollars in coins into a fountain, had there been one in the motel bathroom.

  Half way through a scoreless hockey game, Dogor entered my room at The Yawning Mask.

  > "You have new information about the Hooded Rat Brotherhood," Dogor says.

  > tell dogor i visited olaf brandywine

  > Dogor licks his lips. "The great traitor, yes. For years he has evaded my attempts to locate him. How did you find him? Did you