The Sleeping Dragon Read online

  The Sleeping Dragon

  Guardians Of The Flame

  Book I

  Joel Rosenberg

  A Baen Books Original

  The Sleeping Dragon © copyright 1983

  ISBN: 0-7434-3589-3

  Cover art by Monty Moore

  Dedication

  For Felicia

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank the people who helped me through this: Allan Schmidt, who gave me the crazy idea in the first place and helped to make the gaming aspects work; Cara Herman, who gave much needed encouragement as I struggled through the first draft; Harry F. Leonard, who annoyed the hell out of me by quibbling endlessly over minor flaws until I saw the light and corrected them, much to the betterment of the story, if not my disposition; Robert Lee Thurston and Judith Heald, who gave me good criticism and better friendship; Doug Kaufman, who put his money where his mouth was; Barry B. Longyear, whose advice always helps when I'm wise enough to take it; Kim Tchang, who told me to relax and write the damn thing; my agent, Cherry Weiner, whose help and support went beyond the call of duty; my editor, Sheila Gilbert, who not only knew a good thing when she saw it, but knew how to make it better; and the members of Haven: Deborah Atherton Davis, Mary Kittredge, Mark J. McGarry, and Kevin O'Donnell, Jr., who gave this book the line-by-line, word-by-word examination and dissection that a first novelist so desperately needs.

  And, most particularly, I'd like to thank Robert Anson Heinlein, whose work has been both example and inspiration, for Thorby, Colonel Baslim, Oscar Gordon, and so much more.

  The great problems of life . . . are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious . . . The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic, but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

  —Carl Gustave Jung

  . . . for every human being there is a diversity of existences . . . the single existence is itself an illusion . . .

  —Saul Bellow

  It seems to me that there might well be the equivalent, with regard to the collective unconscious, of the concept in physics of "critical mass." Are we approaching it? Quite possibly—consider the resurgence of spiritualism, in all its guises, and don't neglect the function of the fantasy role-playing games. The characters, the situations . . . all seem to touch something that is basic and fundamental.

  But where would the locus of crisis be? And how can it be exploited? The Elder Edda, The Song of the Harper, The Book of the Dead, even The Great Hymn to the Aten offer only hints, suggestions, intimations.

  Perhaps the best approach would be neither induction nor deduction, but, rather, empirical experimentation. Perhaps . . .

  —Arthur Simpson Deighton

  CONTENT

  Dramatis Personae

  Part One: The Student Union

  Chapter One The Players

  Chapter Two The Game

  Part Two: Lundeyll

  Chapter Three "It Isn't a Game Anymore"

  Chapter Four "It Should Be Relatively Easy"

  Chapter Five Lundeyll

  Chapter Six Second Blood

  Part Three: Pandathaway

  Chapter Seven In the Midst of the Sea

  Chapter Eight "Welcome to Pandathaway . . ."

  Chapter Nine Maps and Dragons

  Chapter Ten The Inn of Quiet Repose

  Chapter Eleven The Games

  Part Four: Bremon

  Chapter Twelve The Waste of Elrood

  Chapter Thirteen To Bremon

  Chapter Fourteen The Warrens

  Chapter Fifteen The Dragon at the Gate

  Part Five: And Beyond

  Chapter Sixteen The Way Back

  Chapter Seventeen Payment

  Chapter Eighteen Profession

  Dramatis Personae

  Karl Cullinane/Barak: dilettante and acting major/warrior

  Andrea Andropolous/Lotana: English major/novice wizard

  James Michael Finnegan/Ahira Bandylegs: computer sciences major/dwarf warrior

  Doria Perlstein/Doria of the Healing Hand: domestic arts major/master cleric

  Walter Slovotsky/Hakim Singh: agricultural sciences major/journeyman thief

  Jason Parker/Einar Lightfingers: history major/master thief

  Louis Riccetti/Aristobulus: civil engineering major/master wizard

  Arthur Simpson Deighton, Ph.D.: Associate Professor of Philosophy, gamemaster

  Wen'l of Lundescarne: peasant and freefarmer

  Frann of Pandathaway: Innkeeper

  Lordling Alahn Lund: heir to the throne of Lundeyll

  Marik, Arno: men-at-arms

  Avair Ganness: captain and owner of the Ganness' Pride

  Airvhan ip Melhrood: customs official

  Challa: man-at-arms

  Callutius: Junior Librarian of the Great Library of Pandathaway

  Oreen: Specializing Librarian of the Great Library of Pandathaway

  Ellegon: a young dragon

  Tommallo: owner of the Inn of Quiet Repose

  Khoralt ip Therranj: Winesellers Delegate to the Pandathaway Guilds' Council, Games official

  Ohlmin: master slaver

  Blenryth: master wizard

  The Dragon at the Gate

  The Matriarch of the Society of the Healing Hand

  Part One:

  The Student Union

  Chapter One

  The Players

  Karl Cullinane reached out his fork and speared the last stick of asparagus from the stainless-steel serving plate in the middle of the table, not bothering to set the asparagus on his own plate before taking a bite. It was cold and mushy, almost tasteless; he swallowed quickly.

  "Karl, you're a pig. A skinny one, granted, but a pig." Andrea Andropolous' smile took most of the sting out of her words, pitched low enough so that nobody else in the crowded cafeteria would have been able to hear her over the clatter of dishes and the chatter of a hundred or so students.

  Karl put it down to a natural gentleness. Hell, she'd been able to make him like it—almost—when she'd turned him down. Usually, the let's-just-be-friends routine drove him into a silent, stomach-churning rage.

  "I gotta rush, Andy-Andy. There's a game tonight." He took another bit, added a mouthful of lukewarm black coffee, and swallowed quickly. "If I'm late, sure as hell they'll start without me, put Barak out to pasture for the night."

  "You mean that they'll put him out to stud." She chuckled, revealing a mouthful of even, white teeth.

  Karl liked her laugh, her smile. He had always thought that the notion of somebody brightening a room with a smile was just a fantasy. Until he had met Andy-Andy, that is. Not that he had anything against fantasy, quite the—

  "It's bullshit, Karl," she said, smiling sweetly. "Just an absurd male power fantasy." She reached out and stroked his skinny forearm with a long, dark finger. Was it tanned, or not? Andy-Andy always seemed to find something better to do during afternoon tanning hours than loll in the sun like some well-oiled, roasting slug. Probably the olive tone of her skin was natural coloration. Maybe not. Of course, there was a way to tell. Trouble was, Karl had never had the chance to check her for bikini marks.

  Damn. "No, it's just a game. A way to spend a little time, have a little fun."

  "A little fun?" She arched an eyebrow. "You call pretending to chop up a pixie, rape a virgin or three, slice an ogre—you call that fun?" Quirking a smile, she sat back in her chair, crossing her arms almost defensively over her blue velour pullover. Which was amply filled out, but not tight. Karl liked that; Andy-Andy was more than a little pretty, but not an exhibitionist.

  "First of all
"—he tapped his index finger on the table, forcing himself to pay attention to the conversation—"you're missing the point. Pretending isn't the same thing as really doing it. I mean—take last week's session, for instance. Barak strangled an elf, chopped a half-orc in two—hey, now the critter's really two halves of an orc. Or should that be quarter-orces? Never mind, the point is that he took three points of damage. One's a light wound, two's more serious, going up to five, which is certainly lethal. Three's the equivalent of getting sliced up pretty bad." He reached for his shirt's top button. "Care to check for scars?"

  "Some other time." She tossed her head, sending shoulder-length black hair whipping around her face. "Maybe." A strand came to rest on her slightly too long, slightly bent nose. She blew it off. "Then again, maybe not."

  "Teaser."

  "That's only half the word, Karl. You don't have to use that bullshit with me."

  "In my neighborhood, mother was only half a word." That might sound good, but it wasn't true: Karl was a product of middle-class suburbia. "And besides, I was . . . kind of pointedly told to watch my language around—women." If you consider having your mouth liberally washed out with Lifebuoy to be a pointed telling. Which it was, after a fashion. "But to get back to the point, it's all just a fantasy, a game. No harm; no damage. Anyway, Barak isn't that sort of character—he'll violate a law, but he's no rapist." That was true, but omitted a new character Doc Deighton had helped him roll up, one Lucius of Pandathaway. Lucius was not a nice person. Not at all. "The trouble with you is that you feel perfectly free to judge something you haven't tried. How many times since the start of the semester have I invited you—ten? Twenty?"

  She shook her head. "I don't have to jump out a window to decide that I'm not going to like it."

  "Irrelevant. If you try role-playing and you don't like it, you quit. Period. No scars—not even on your psyche. Which is part of the fun." He shrugged. "Besides, it's probably beneficial. You get to work out some aggressions without hurting anybody. Not yourself, not anybody else."

  "Stop trying to sound like a psych major. You're supposed to be studying to be an actor, these days."

  "I used to be a psych major—"

  "—and a poli sci major. Plus American lit, engineering, philosophy, sociology—am I missing something?"

  "Prelaw. And two weeks of premed, back when I was a freshman. What's your point?"

  "You're a dilettante, Karl. This role-playing stuff is just another one of your temporary obsessions. Remember last year, when it was bridge? You spent a whole semester nattering about Stayman conventions and South American Texas transfers, whatever the hell they are—"

  "South African Texas, not South American." He dipped two fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette, then lit it with his shiny new Zippo. Karl let the flame flare for a moment before snapping the cover shut. He figured that he might as well enjoy it while he could; he'd lose it soon. Karl could never seem to keep track of things; the Zippo was the third lighter he'd bought that semester. "I still play bridge," he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "It's just that this is more fun—particularly with this group. Sometimes . . ." He let his voice trail off.

  "Yes?"

  "Sometimes, when you get the mechanics of the game out of the way—rolling the dice, keeping track of what you're carrying—it's almost like you're there." He lifted his head and smiled. "And that's something. How often do you think I'm going to get the chance to, say, rescue a princess or slay a dragon?" He glanced down at his wrist. 6:48. Karl pushed himself to his feet.

  "Well, I've got to run, if I'm not going to be late. See you later?"

  Andy-Andy's brow furrowed. "How late are you going to be? Getting back, I mean."

  "Mmmm, probably be back before midnight. If you want to meet me in the lounge, I'll help you go over Deerslayer, if that's what you mean. It's a rotten book, though—I've got a Twain piece on it that pretty much—"

  "No." She shook her head. "I'm caught up with that, but I do have a quiz in astronomy tomorrow. If you're sure we can be back by twelve, I'll come along, give it a try. If the invitation's still open." She stood, taking her bulky yellow ski jacket from the back of her chair and slipping it on.

  "You know it is."

  She sighed. "Yes, I do." Andy-Andy shook her head slowly. "Which is part of the problem. Never mind; let's get going, shall we?"

  * * *

  James Michael Finnegan was the first player to get to Room 109 in the Student Union. It was a matter partly of habit, but mainly of pride. The others, well, they'd wait for him, sure. Only for him, dammit.

  They wouldn't wait for him because he was now the most accomplished player in the group. Davy Davidson had been the best in the group until he'd dropped out last year, and nobody would wait for Davy and his character, Erik of the Three Bezants, on the not infrequent occasions that he'd arrive late.

  James Michael shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his hands limp in his lap.

  No, they wouldn't wait for him because he was a nice person to be around, with a dry sense of humor and an always friendly smile. That monomaniac flake Karl Cullinane cracked better jokes; that hick jock Walter Slovotsky always seemed to have a grin pasted on his face—and everybody always liked being around Doria. But if one of them showed up late, it was well-too-bad-it-seems-your-character-is-down-with-a-cold-tonight. Just last week, Doria had fluttered in breathless, just five minutes after they'd started, and even Riccetti had ignored her implied promises and threats; Doc Deighton had just turned a very cold eye her way and suggested that lateness was an implicitly hostile act.

  He spun his chair in a tight circle and swore softly under his breath.

  It wasn't all that bad, not always. The one time he'd had to wait for the Special Student Services truck (all the way muttering a spell to change the driver into a toad, a particularly small, unusually ugly toad—with one eye) and had been wheeled into the elevator late, coming out on the first floor late, his car-battery-powered chair zipping down the tiled hall and into Room 109 LATE—

  —nobody had said anything. Except, "Hi, James," and "Nice to see you, James," and "Let's play, James."

  The tolerance, the implied pity, was bad. Not playing would have been worse. Much worse.

  All cripples fantasize, you see. They have to, just like normal people, although not always about the things normal people do.

  And when you've spent your whole life with muscular dystrophy, you're really lucky, in a way. There's lots more things to dream about. Like being able to punch a computer keyboard at better than a scorching ten words per minute. Like sleeping in a top bunk. Like feeding yourself quickly, wolfing down food so you could run off somewhere. Like using a goddam bathroom without having someone else wipe you off.

  Like not having to be so goddam cheerful all the time since because you're a feeb in a chair, people will let you get away with anything as long as you don't touch them.

  But the game . . . ah, there it was. All at once. "I'll walk across the room, heft my axe, and chop at the ogre," you'd say, and everybody would react to it, just as though you'd really done it.

  A miracle? Well, not quite. An addiction, yes.

  James Michael lifted his right hand to the steering knob and wheeled himself over to the long table in the middle of the bright room, getting himself so close that his chin was directly over the edge of the battered mahogany surface. He reached into the denim bag on his lap, secured there by a long cloth loop around his neck, and pulled out a large plastic bag, bringing it up to the tabletop.

  And the whole . . . wonder of it depended on this little bag, and the dice inside it. Standard six-sided dice for the attack tables. A twenty-sided die, generating a random number to compare to Ahira's intelligence, or endurance, or strength. And Ahira was strong, although not terribly wise, perhaps, and certainly not handy with anything except an axe or hammer.

  And then there were the pyramidal four-sided dice, and the eight-sided ones to—but why bother thinking about
the mechanics of it? They didn't matter; the rules were soon learned and subsumed, the way a normal person would learn to ride a bicycle by technique, and then forget the technique, to ride . . .

  James Michael closed his eyes and dreamed of riding a bicycle, seeing the ground slip by smoothly beneath him. Sort of like riding in a car, but being there, and—

  "James!"

  His eyes snapped open like twin shutters. Doria Perlstein stood over him, concern creasing her too-round, too-smooth face, her short blond hair only making her seem chubbier.

  "James, are you okay?"

  "I'm fine." He smiled up at her, making a special effort to keep the traitor muscles of the right side of his face under control. Doria . . . tried, that was it. The little dwarf in the chair revolted her and scared her, as though his disability could rub off. But she tried to hide it.

  He brought his hands down into his lap, out of sight. No shame, just a reflexive kindness, although he really wanted to reach out and shake her. I'm not contagious. "I'm just fine. It's been a busy week; I guess I was just dozing off."

  She dropped into a chair, visibly considered the possibility that it would seem to him to be too far away, took a half second to fight with her own fear of James Michael Finnegan, and compromised by wiggling herself a scant inch closer.

  Someday, he thought, I'm going to tell her that she doesn't have to sit next to me, if she's so uptight. Then again, maybe this is better for her than sitting across the table from me; it's natural for her to avoid my eyes, this way.

  She forced a smile, drumming crimson fingernails against the tabletop. "I see I'm early this time."

  "I'm glad you're here. We ran into a fairly heavy-duty goblin last time; could have used a cleric."

  "How bad?"

  "Both Barak and Ahira took quite a bit of damage. He got three points; I got away with just two."

  "Wait a minute—where was Sandy?"

  "Dropped out. Which leaves you as the only cleric around. The team's top-heavy with warriors."