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  I stepped back into the cell.

  Robin had the decency not to ask me whether it had been dark.

  I grabbed hold of his arm to steady myself. "Something's wrong, Robin," I gasped.

  "Yeah, tell me about it. Let's get out of here."

  We stumbled out of the cell, down the hall past the dead guards, through the guard area with the tipped-over bench. Robin snatched up the abandoned playing cards. I didn't wait, but he was only two steps behind me when I reached the stairs.

  The stairs were carved out of the ground and slanted first one way then the other. They were worn lower in the middle than at the edges, so that I continually felt off balance as though I were about to fall.

  At the top was a foyer. In one direction a door led outside, guarded by one of the bandits, who had his back to us. It was night already. I could see the not-quite-full moon low in the sky, and bright pinpricks of stars.

  To the left of the stairs was a hallway leading farther into the bandits' hideout; but when I looked in that direction, my eyes watered and I lost track of where my feet were. It must have had a similar effect on Robin, for he never suggested exploring. He indicated my dagger—his dagger—tucked into my belt.

  This wasn't like a bloodless miniatures-and-graph-paper game, nor like a video game with cartoonish graphics; so instead of challenging the guard, I sneaked up behind him and whacked him on the back of the head with the pommel of the knife.

  He'd barely stopped twitching when Robin started searching his pockets.

  "Would you cut that out?" I demanded between clenched teeth. "What if he comes to?" But I picked up the crossbow that had clattered to the ground beside the guard.

  There was a courtyard ahead of us, a stretch of maybe ten yards, unoccupied land between the bandits' rather shabby fortress and the outer wall. The wall was stone, but it had a wooden door with a crossbeam lowered into a slot for a lock. I'd taken about two steps in that direction when another guard came strolling around the corner, unenthusiastically checking the perimeter. He was obviously as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but I had the crossbow.

  I killed him before he had a chance to make an outcry.

  For once Robin refrained from looting the body. Instead he ran ahead and pulled on the rope that eased the beam out of its slot.

  We inched the door open and peeked outside. There was a clear area between us and the forest, and no obvious guards. But there were an awful lot of trees. An awful lot of shadows.

  "We're sitting ducks here," Robin said. "Our best bet's to go fast."

  He was right. If the trees could hide guards, they could hide us too. It was just a matter of hoping there weren't any guards, and of getting from the doorway to the forest. At a run, it should take us about five seconds. I nodded and told him, "On the count of three."

  "Onetwothree," Robin said, taking all of about a quarter second to say it and to fling open the door and to start without me. I sprinted across the packed dirt toward the edge of the forest, counting off the five seconds I had estimated till safety. One ...no sign of movement;... two ...no shouts to stop, no clang of metal weapons, only my pounding heart;... three ...I scanned the shadows ahead of us, aware at the same time that there might be guards behind us;... four... surely if there was someone there, he would have reacted by now;... five... the trees loomed, menacing or friendly, I couldn't be sure; ...six... OK, so I'm a lousy estimator of distance;... seven. The branches whipped my arms as I pushed through them.

  I took several steps more, but there was too much underbrush for mad dashing.

  "Whew!" Robin leaned against my shoulder for a moment, his face sweaty but exultant.

  Just off to his right, a hand pushed away a branch. Just as that registered in my race-numbed brain, a voice said, "Nice work, boys."

  11. REAPPEARING ACT

  Human-shaped shadows separated themselves from forest-shaped shadows. Two of them grappled with Robin, to keep his sword sheathed. Somebody seized my wrist also, even though I hadn't moved.

  "Easy, easy." Our wizard, Cornelius, stepped closer to Robin, making sure we could see his face. "Don't you know your friends when you see them?"

  "When I see them," Robin said. He pulled free from Marian, who was one of the people holding him. The other was Thea Greenleaf, and she continued to grip his arm for a couple more seconds, as though to make sure he knew that she wasn't letting go till she was good and ready to let go.

  The stocky shadow by me, Feordin, had released me already. The others, Mom and Nocona, weren't there.

  "What's your problem?" Cornelius demanded of us. "We came here to rescue you."

  Robin glared at him. "You. You're our problem. Harek and I don't need rescuing. We're perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves, and"—he cut off any possible rebuttal—"and you might be a second-rate wizard, but you're a complete failure as a hacker."

  Cornelius sputtered in angry amazement that anyone could say such a thing.

  "Stop it," Thea demanded in an urgent whisper—a reminder that we might not be alone in the woods. "Just stop it."

  Cornelius and Robin stood glaring at each other, both breathing hard. I stepped into the breach. "We ran into a problem—a serious problem."

  "Yeah?" Feordin asked, not willing to commit himself yet. For all he knew—for all any of them knew—we'd had a rough encounter and were taking out our frustrations on them.

  "We got away from the guards no problem. But we found a hole in the program."

  "What do you mean—hole?" Cornelius asked.

  Feordin elbowed him aside. "Let me handle this. What do you mean—hole?"

  "We went exploring in the dungeon," I said. "We walked into this one cell, and there was nothing there."

  "Nothing," Robin repeated for emphasis.

  I paused to let that sink in.

  Feordin looked from me, to Robin, to Cornelius.

  "Nothing," Robin said yet again.

  Cornelius shrugged. "Some kind of ... optical illusion—"

  "No," Robin and I chorused.

  "Or a spell—"

  "No." We got it in unison again.

  "Or a..." Obviously Cornelius couldn't think of any other explanation.

  "Hole," I suggested.

  "Hole," Robin said.

  Cornelius sighed.

  "You're missing a level," Robin told him. "You copied the program and you missed a whole stinking level. We're stuck here for what's going to feel like five days, and there's nonplayer characters looping, and gaping holes in the program, and ... and who knows what will go wrong next." He threw his arms up in disgust.

  "Shhh, keep it down," I warned, Thea's anxious face reminding me that we were in hostile territory. "1 don't think it's that bad."

  Robin gave this highly betrayed, I-can't-believe-you're-on-his-side glare.

  "Listen. How did we end up in that dungeon? Inept playing." Now they all looked ticked-off at me. "I mean, think about it: we were captured because we didn't fight off the ambush well enough—"

  "Well, excuse me," Marian cut in.

  I ignored her. I was already saying "we" to be polite. What more did she want? "Why didn't we fight off the ambush? Well, for one thing, we declared ourselves to be at much higher experience levels than we really are."

  "That—" Cornelius started.

  "And secondly," I talked over his objection, "we were short two players because we inadvertently got them looping."

  "Does all this have a point?" Robin asked me. Boy, he was OK alone, but get him near Marian and he turned into a real pain.

  "The point is, in normal circumstances we wouldn't even be here. There was nothing in that cell because Rasmussem didn't think we'd even see the fortress, much less go exploring in the lower levels. If—if—this were a regulation game"—I paused to let that sink in—"there'd have been someone monitoring, someone who would have switched us over to some subroutine."

  It took a moment for that to settle. Then Marian said, "But we are on our own,
children." Tenth-graders. But she was right.

  We all looked at Cornelius. "Oops," he said. Then he grinned. "But think of all the money you saved."

  Everyone groaned.

  "Come on, let's get out of here," Thea said. "Before those creeps find us and drag us all in there and we all get to spend four days doing nothing."

  "What about," Feordin said, "my mace?"

  What was this, Riddle Time? "Ahh, I don't know," I said. "What about your mace?"

  Feordin gave me a dirty look. "I was using it back there, during the battle where we stopped for lunch. I killed three of our attackers, and then one of the miserable dogs knocked it out of my hand."

  "One of the ones you'd killed?" I asked.

  "Funny, Harek. For someone who wasn't even there. Where were you, by the way?" He gave me about half a second. "Never mind, tell me later. Anyway, we had to make a temporary retreat. Then, when we came back, my mace was gone. One of those louts must have taken it." He nodded toward the bandits' fortress. "It's got to be here."

  We all gave each other anxious looks.

  "We're not going back in there, Feordin," I said. "For all we know, that part of the program may dissolve while we're in there." All around me, our companions nodded.

  "That's my mace," Feordin cried.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Don't you remember my name?"

  "Ahh—"

  "I'm Feordin Macewielder—"

  "Yes, but—"

  "—son of Feordan Sturdyaxe"—Oh, no, he'd gone and started—"grandson of Feordane Boldheart, brother to Feordone the Fearless, great-grandson of Feordine Stoutarm who served under Graggaman Maximus."

  "Yes," I said, "but—"

  "Feordin Macewielder," he repeated. Not again, I thought, but he left it at that. "Macewielder. I'm Feordin Macewielder, and now I don't have a mace."

  "Well," I said hopefully, "maybe you can get another."

  He growled at me, and for a moment I actually thought he was going to bite me. "Cowards. Then I'll go alone."

  "No, Feordin. This has nothing to do with fighting the campaign. This is the program's seams showing."

  Of all people, it was Marian who came to my rescue. "Feordin, you've got to think of the good of the company. You go in that fortress and you may not come out again. We're already two people short."

  He was considering trying it anyway—you could tell by his expression. But finally he relented. "All right," he mumbled.

  "Good," Cornelius said. "Let's get back to the camp."

  "Is that where the others are?" I asked. "Nocona and ... Felice?"

  "Yes," Thea said. "Felice was feeling so wretched, we decided it'd be best if she stayed behind. Nocona stayed with her in case there was any trouble."

  Nocona? They'd left a wounded man to protect my mother? I was furious, but I only said, "Still has her headache, huh?"

  Thea gave me a sharp look, then nodded without saying whatever was on her mind.

  Darn, I thought. Somehow I'd hoped that in the hours Robin and I had been held captive things would have changed, improved—would have worked themselves out for the best.

  All things considered, I should have known better.

  12. DAY TWO

  At the camp, Robin, who hadn't had anything to eat since lunch, and I, who hadn't had anything to eat at all, got a cold dinner of everybody else's leftovers. The only good thing was that the group decided that I—along with Robin, Mom, and Nocona—needed to rest to regain our strength. So the others divided up the night watches among themselves, and I got to sleep.

  In the morning I awoke to Feordin muttering to himself as he went along, scuffing his feet and bumping into people and pushing them out of his way.

  "Mumble, mumble mace," was the first I caught. "How do they expect me to do my job without a mace?" I missed part of the next, but then heard the names Feordan Sturdyaxe and Feordane Boldheart. Then he called someone—probably me—a lazy, stupid wimp. "Mumble, mumble sword or bow." And then he said something about the good old days of Graggaman Maximus, but by then he was loading up his horse, too far away for me to hear clearly. In any case I was less interested in listening to Feordin complain than in finding out how my mom was doing.

  But as soon as I saw her, I could tell that her headache hadn't gone away.

  She was sitting up, with her blanket wrapped tight around her, her knees drawn up to her chest, resting her head in her hands. Marian hovered over her, trying to get her to drink from a tin cup.

  "Harek!" Mom called as soon as she spotted me. But the effort, or the noise, must have hurt, because she winced and pressed her hands tighter to her head.

  "Here, let me make a fire," Cornelius offered, "then we can have some nice hot—"

  "No!" Nocona and Thea said together. Thea added, "We can't risk a fire being seen. We'll have to have a cold breakfast."

  By then I'd made it to Mom's side, and she reached up to take my hand. "Are you all right?" she demanded in a quivery whisper-voice. "I woke up during the night, and Cornelius told me you were all right."

  "Yeah, I'm fine." Considering how she looked, it seemed pretty stupid to ask how she was, and I didn't know what else to say. "What's the plan?" I asked Cornelius.

  "No fire."

  "Yeah," I said, "no fire. What else?"

  He shrugged.

  "You going to try some magic on her headache, or what?" I was fast losing my patience and I still couldn't bring myself to call Mom Felice.

  "I tried already," our wizard said. "While you were busy snoring away."

  How come I always ended up looking like a fool, no matter what?

  "I tried the Deflect Evil spell, and I tried the Ward Off Magic spell."

  "No effect at all?" I asked, though I could see for myself. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.

  "I'll be all right," Mom said. "Only ... what? Four more days of this? That comes to ... ninety-something hours." She groaned. "How many minutes does that make?"

  Who knows? I thought. She was always the one who was good at doing math without a calculator.

  "Can we get out early?" she asked. "Can I get out early? I'm sorry to be spoiling everybody's fun, but if you can't make this headache go away, I don't think I can stand four more days of it."

  We all looked at each other hopelessly. Even Feordin, who was mad at us, was clearly upset.

  "I'm sorry," Cornelius said.

  "There's no way to get out?" Mom demanded, sounding somewhere between wanting to cry and wanting to shake him.

  "Well, if we were at Rasmussem—"

  Almost everybody groaned. We all glared.

  "Well, now we know for next time. If we just leave someone by the equipment to—"

  "Quit while you're ahead," Nocona warned.

  "Sorry," Cornelius said again.

  "Well, I think," Marian said, "that we missed something."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

  "Obviously"—how come, I wondered, girls always have to talk in that irritatingly superior tone of voice whenever they're explaining something?—"obviously Felice wasn't meant to have this headache for two days. Obviously we were supposed to pick something up at the town and missed it."

  And how come, even though she kept saying "we," I kept hearing "you bozos"?

  "What sort of something, Marian?" Thea asked.

  "Well, I don't know. Probably something magic."

  Robin said, "That's pretty lame, Marian."

  "Well, I'm not hearing anybody else come up with something better," she snapped.

  Oh-oh. Trouble in Love City.

  "Listen," Robin said. "Like Harek pointed out last night, we took one long side trip yesterday. I think we were supposed to find the cure yesterday afternoon, beyond where the bandits attacked us. If we get back on the road, we'll find what we need by noon today."

  "Yeah," Marian said, her voice getting louder and shriller. "Fine. But what if it's behind us?"

  "There was nothing in the town," Robin said,
his snotty tone matching hers exactly.

  "But if there was, we'll be pretty darn far from it by noon today."

  The two of them stood glaring at each other.

  Cornelius started, "I think—"

  "What?" Both turned on him and he took a quick step back.

  "I think," he suggested meekly, "it'd be best to cover both options."

  "Separate?" Thea asked, her voice an incredulous squeak.

  "Well," he said. "Yes."

  We all thought about that for a while.

  "I'm so sorry," Mom said.

  "Shh, it's OK," Marian said. Pain that she was, I was glad she was there. Boys aren't good at comforting girls, and Mom needed all the comforting she could get. Marian stooped down to take Mom's hand, but what she said was for all of us. "I'll go back."

  I figured Robin was probably right, that the answer lay ahead of us, not behind. Still—just in case—I was glad when Nocona told her, "I'll go with you."

  "But you've been hurt," Mom protested. "What about your poor leg?"

  "Almost all better." Nocona flexed his leg to show her. "Injuries here heal real fast, or the game would drag." He seemed suddenly to realize what he had said. "Generally," he mumbled.

  "I'll go too," Feordin said in the uncomfortable silence. He glared at Marian and Nocona. "Keep them out of trouble." He glared at the rest of us. "Maybe find a replacement mace."

  Robin looked at me and Thea and Cornelius.

  "I'll go on," I said.

  "Me too," Thea said.

  Cornelius nodded.

  "Then we should go as quickly as possible," Robin said.

  I half expected Marian to back down, once she saw that Robin was going to be stubborn about it. But she didn't. We divided our provisions, gulped down another cold meal, packed the horses, then Marian, Nocona, and Feordin rode one way, and Thea, Robin, Cornelius, Mom, and I rode the other. And the worst part was my nagging fear that neither group was right.

  We backtracked over a part of the forest through which we'd already traveled—even though I'd been unconscious for the trip—and we were fairly certain that the whole bandits' fortress had been one enormous dead end. So—assuming there'd be no new dangers, no clues, nor objects we'd need for later on in our quest—we pushed the horses to the limit.