Too Young to Die

by Michael Anderle

  He blinked his eyes rapidly when he felt tears welling in them. Of all the things he had thought his father might say, he’d never imagined this. He’d never thought this was even within the realm of possibility.

  All of us have things that are important to us, and one of those things for you is video games. I look forward to learning more about the games you play. I see now that loving you means loving all of who you are, not only the parts I understand.

  One thing I always admired about you was your problem-solving ability. When you were little, there was nowhere we could hide the cookies that you wouldn’t find them and get to them. We always bought your presents on Christmas Eve because you could find them otherwise. Whatever puzzles or trials you face in this game, you can overcome them the same way. Good luck and know that we are fighting for you as hard out here as you are fighting in there.

  Also, your mother says not to fall in love with any tavern wenches.

  Love, Dad

  Justin laughed and exited the message. The world around him unfroze and the jostling resumed.

  “Did anything happen?” Zaara asked. “I pressed it. Should I press it again?”

  “No. Not yet.” He chewed his lip. “Give me a minute. I’m thinking.”

  “I don’t think we’re all that far from the tower,” she told him, “so think quickly.”

  He should have left the message up. Lesson learned. Justin considered the insights that had come from it.

  His father had often told him about how he was aimless and had no ambition in his teenage years, but he had never listened. In large part, his refusal to listen was because he knew the man would follow up that story with an admonition for him to be strong, play touch football on the weekends, and get a wife and kids immediately.

  Justin had never paused to think that maybe his father wanted him to start doing all those things because his life had gotten better when he had listened to the advice he wanted to impart to his son. To him, his father was the annoying man who looked good in a suit, crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is, and did well in life because he’d been born with the good looks and charisma to make business deals.

  He had never thought of him as someone who struggled—or had to work at all.

  It was possible, he reflected now, that he’d been an idiot. He could remember nights when his father came home and sat at the dinner table with an exhausted expression. Memories surfaced of his parents speaking in low voices while he played with his trucks in the other room.

  It gave him a fair amount to think about.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t think about that right now, though. What he needed to focus on at this particular moment was how to kill Sephith and how to get the Christmas presents out of the video game. He snickered and could remember piling different chairs and boxes together to get onto the counters and look in all the cupboards. His parents had tried decoy presents one year, but he’d found the real ones too—they’d been at his grandparents’ house.

  “Any ideas?” Zaara whispered over her shoulder.

  “One,” Justin said cautiously. “But it might hurt.”

  She heaved a sigh and thought about it. “More or less than getting killed by a wizard?”

  “Less.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Justin wished he’d managed to study more of the spell book. He wasn’t sure he could get it out of his inventory right now, and he ran the risk of it falling off the cart or being stolen by the cart driver.

  Which left him with the one spell he knew. He curled his hand as far as he could and breathed in deeply before he closed his eyes and tried to picture flames. Sternly, he told his brain he didn’t want a fireball. All he wanted was a little flame, enough to singe the rope.

  “Ow!”

  Too much fire, he realized. He cut the spell off hastily and pressed his bound hands into his back to smother the flames.

  “Sorry, sorry. Let me try again.”

  “Again?” Zaara asked plaintively. “Really?” She sighed and twisted her hands in an effort to look at them. “Fine, fine. But only because you seem to be getting somewhere and I don’t have a better idea.”

  “I can’t tell you how much your support means to me,” he said dryly.

  It took three more attempts to get one of their hands untied and then the two of them scrabbled with their free hands to undo the other knots. From there, it was a massively undignified process of trying to work upward as one person slid down while the other slid up to free their arms from the ropes.

  “Promise me something.” She paused and panted halfway through the process.

  “What?”

  “We never speak of this.”

  “Agreed.” Justin got his arms free, gave a sigh of relief, and promptly fell flat on his face when the cart went over another pothole. He rolled onto his back with a groan, pushed up to untie his feet, and snickered when Zaara sprawled a moment later.

  “How do we wake the dwarf up?” she asked.

  “I had an idea for that, too,” he said.

  “I hope for his sake it doesn’t involve fire.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t.” He began to work on the ropes that held Lyle in place. When his teammate was finally down and free on the floor of the cart, he leaned close to hear what he muttered in his sleep. He made out the words “lovely beard,” grinned, and set about preparing for his plan. With a silent apology to Lyle, he brought his hand up and slapped the dwarf as hard as he could.

  He had no response.

  “Huh,” Zaara said. “Try again.”

  Justin slapped the other cheek this time, which seemed to do the trick. Lyle opened one eye, saw the blue sky, and tried to go back to sleep. It took three more slaps to wake him fully, only the final one of which he seemed to notice at all.

  “Here, now. Why are you slapping me? And why does my arm hurt? And—”

  He put his hand over the dwarf’s mouth, motioned for quiet, and indicated for him to turn around and look at the wizard’s tower. This close, it blotted the sky out entirely. He hadn’t noticed from the other side of the valley, but it rose from the center of a large building.

  Lyle gave him a confused look. “What?” he mouthed. He looked around the wagon, noted the untied ropes, and darted a suspicious look at the front of the conveyance.

  “Later,” Justin mouthed emphatically. He gestured to the three of them, made walking motions with his fingers, and pointed into the woods the road wound through. The dwarf, for whom this was not an appreciably strange situation, shrugged and proceeded to leap out of the cart without a backward glance. He threw his hands up and followed, and Zaara scrambled down behind him. The three of them pelted into the woods and didn’t look back as the cart continued on its journey.

  The woods extended as far as the walls of the palace, so they had excellent cover in which to circle toward it from the side. Lyle led the way and whistled a tune at one point before Zaara lobbed a branch at his head. Every once in a while, one of them would creep closer to see if they could see anyone on the walls, but there was no evidence that they were manned.

  By mutual agreement, they had decided not to attempt entry through the front gate, and they were almost at the back of the building before they located a wooden gate. It was made of slats set widely apart and opened onto a small corridor of green grass. Storerooms could be seen, as well as gardens beyond.

  Justin considered this and then pointed his palms at the gate. He closed his eyes, pictured a fireball, and let loose. With a little woof of noise, the fireball struck the metal lock, backfired, and bounced off his face. He flinched and cursed before there was a hiss behind him and the sound of water pattered onto leaves.

  “You can’t use a fireball,” Zaara whispered. She shook her hand free of the water she’d summoned, took his place at the gate, and conjured a tiny vortex of air that swirled into the lock. With a series of clicks, the tumblers rotated into place and the gate swung open.
/>   “You have to teach me that,” he told her.

  “We have to survive this plan of yours first,” she whispered in response. She poked her head into the grounds, began to creep inside, and whispered, “Run! Follow me!”

  Justin and Lyle raced after her as she sprinted down the avenue of green to hide behind a storehouse. The little square storehouses were made of stone and covered in slate. Nothing looked patched or worn—Sephith could afford the best. Zaara motioned for them to be quiet and they remained motionless as a patrol of guards passed.

  The guards didn’t seem to pay particular attention to anything, and when they had moved on, Lyle said quietly, “Those’ll be some of the villagers. Poor bastards.”

  “Maybe we could get them on our side,” Justin pointed out. His companions both frowned at him. “What?”

  “He means…” Zaara wrinkled her nose. “Those were the villagers’ bodies.”

  “Oh, God.” His stomach heaved. “Oh, that’s so bad.”

  “Where do you come from that only has one god?” she asked him. She waved a hand when he opened his mouth. “It’s not important right now. We need to get to the tower, and I think I can tell you one of the problems we’ll have to deal with.”

  “You hear it, too,” Lyle said grumpily.

  “Hear what?” Justin asked.

  “Come with us,” she told him. She beckoned for him to follow her and took a cautious step into the alleyway. “This way.”

  They crept forward and followed the path of the patrol, careful to always have one person peek around corners first. When they reached the edge of the outbuildings, his eyebrows raised. This place was bigger than he’d thought, and he began to think Kural had done the same tricks there that he did in the cottage. There was no way the grounds of the tower looked this big from outside.

  The outer wall enclosed a large, open space with multiple distinct areas. Where they had entered, there were storehouses and the distant sound of a forge. Across the way, they could see horses being trained for some of the guards—live ones, Justin assumed. Between the stables and the trade area was a garden they stood on the edge of now.

  The gardens had the same too-perfect look of fake plants, in his opinion. The greens were a little too bright, the hedges were a little too regular, and nothing seemed to move. However, the hedges would provide some cover as they sneaked toward the next wall, which enclosed the tower.

  This place was huge. Also, it didn’t look like Sephith used any of it. What a waste, he thought. If this were his castle…

  Well, if it were his, he would probably be holed up in the top of the tower playing video games, so he couldn’t judge the wizard on that score. He’d stick to judging him for the rampant serial murdering.

  Patrols of guards went around the edge of the garden, but it was easy enough to avoid them if the group ran at a crouch and hid behind the hedges. Justin caught the smell of roses and, at one point, various herbs. He wondered vaguely if any of them were useful in magic but he probably wouldn’t have time to learn any other spells or potions right now. They needed to move fast.

  When they came to the edge of the garden, though, he saw what Lyle and Zaara had been complaining about. He’d heard rushing water but thought it must be a fountain in the middle of the garden.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It was a moat.

  Justin rested his chin in one hand. “Huh.”

  “Huh, indeed.” Zaara looked at where the tower wall rose directly out of the water. “Any ideas for this one?”

  He leaned out from behind one of the bushes to look at the front gate, where a drawbridge was evident, and noticed a smaller door on their side of the tower that looked like it would come straight down to form a bridge. Unfortunately, it looked as if it could only be opened from the inside.

  Regretfully, he supposed it had been too much to hope for that Sephith would be stupid.

  There was one thing they could use, however. Water poured out of a wide pipe at the base of the wall. It didn’t look like the water went all the way to the top of it, which meant that someone might be able to swim up it. He pointed.

  “That could work,” Zaara said. “Although I don’t swim.”

  Justin looked at Lyle.

  “I can drink like a fish,” the dwarf said, “but I can’t swim like one. Although, come to think of it, I never have seen a fish drink ale.”

  He rolled his eyes and stripped his cloak and boots off. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I swam in that mountain stream, remember?” Plus, his gear had a buff to keep him from fatiguing as quickly. He didn’t know how to say that in game language, so he merely grinned. “I’ll get that drawbridge down for you soon.” He waited for the next guard patrol to disappear behind the hedges before he slipped into the water and began to swim toward the pipe.

  The water was cold, which he didn’t like, and he began to worry that maybe there were sharks or eels in there. It provided a nice incentive to swim as fast as he could. He tried to minimize his splashing and eventually reached the pipe. It was an awkward maneuver to pull himself up and into it, but he managed it without too much flailing or splashing.

  Once inside, he half-swam, half crawled into the darkness. Every once in a while, he touched the wall of the pipe cautiously to make sure it wasn’t branching off. He could see a distant light ahead that grew brighter as he approached. Given how tired he felt by this point, all he could hope was that it wasn’t some kind of heavenly door.

  When he drew closer, he realized he was staring at a pool of water that bubbled from somewhere and came into this pipe as well as many others. Justin was close to the pool itself when he saw a bucket plunge and he froze. He remained still and tried not to move forward or backward while the bucket was reeled up. Voices called to one another and receded.

  He didn’t know when he would get another chance. Quickly, he swam out into the pool itself, found cracks in the wall, and climbed up. He was in the tower now, he thought. Windows high up let tiny shafts of sunlight in and the walls were hung with hams, onions, bandages, and barrels of ale.

  With a grin, he told himself he should not tell Lyle this was there until they were done with their mission.

  Justin made his way to the wall and left a sopping wet trail behind him. He tried one of the doors that led back in the direction of the pipe. It opened onto a garden that was filled with herbs and lined with hedges, as well as being patrolled by far too many guards for his liking.

  But there was one thing he saw on the side of the outer wall—the door that could turn into a drawbridge. Justin eased out of the door, closed it as quietly as he could, and took shelter behind one of the nearby hedges.

  He heard footsteps come closer and then recede and had the sickening realization that there had been several sets of footsteps but no conversation and no breathing. Lyle had been right. These must be the villagers and the servants Sephith had turned into lifeless husks.

  Justin wondered briefly what the wizard did with all the souls but decided he didn’t want to know.

  As soon as he had the opportunity, he darted through the garden and tapped his fingers with impatience on his legs each time he was forced to stop and wait. He had to remind himself that patience was a critical part of sneaking and puzzle games. The guards moved in three sets and each circled their section of the garden in a different way, which meant he could only move when the three circles were aligned correctly. There was no point in trying to be quicker about it if he would immediately be killed.

  It took him a while to reach the wall, but when he was almost there, shouts at the front gate made him hesitate. The cart must have arrived. Justin waited as several of the guards peeled away to make sure this wasn’t an invasion.

  He wouldn’t have a better chance than this. Seizing his moment while all the guards were facing away from him, he pushed the narrow drawbridge sharply and held onto the chain to slow its descent once it opened.

  On the far bank, Zaara and Lyle raced to meet it and bounded o
nto it in a moment.

  “You did it!” she told him. She carried his boots and cloak.

  “Quick,” he said. “I’m not sure we can do this without—”

  “Hey!” They froze at the call.

  “Being caught,” he finished. “Aw, man, I couldn’t even get my boots on first?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tad finished sorting the piles of documents on his desk into piles by session and began to slide them into folders. He had eventually bowed to the necessity that he could not read every relevant document for every session, so he had devised a system whereby his aides provided a one-paragraph overview of each document and recommended the most important two. In addition, they gave him a one-page briefing of numbers. He prepared his questions himself.

  His constituents hadn’t sent him there to be a figurehead in a suit, after all.

  He needed to be on point today. Several spending bills were coming up, and he had begun to wonder how both parties had produced such wildly ineffective strategies. They were so ridiculous that he couldn’t even try to find a middle road. As a junior senator, he did not yet have much pull but he had prepared his questions carefully, nonetheless.

  A knock sounded on his door and one of his aides looked in. “Senator? Mr. Metcalfe is here to see you.” The young man caught the flicker on his face. “I informed him that several votes were coming up in a few minutes.”

  He smiled. “Thank you, Jeff. I do have to leave in a few minutes but I’ll see what Mr. Metcalfe wants. Show him in.”

  “Yes, sir.” The aide opened the door and stepped aside to allow Dru Metcalfe in.

  Tad decided to take a page out of his wife’s playbook. His blue-blooded grandmother hadn’t been a fan of her grandson’s country girlfriend, and Mary had displayed a remarkable knack for setting the older woman off her guard. He looked up neutrally as Metcalfe sat opposite him.