“We’ll try it after someone clones a saber-tooth,” Nadia said. “Shall we?”
We followed her through the door and found a pair of sliding sidewalks running the length of the hallway. The windows gave an excellent view of the hotel’s main atrium and the shops of Stormhaven’s Trade Ward. The shopping district was an exact replica of the in-game area. I should have recognized the fountain.
The sidewalk ended at another set of elevators. One silver, one gold, one crimson. We took the gold elevator. It turned out to be glass-sided as well, giving us a view from Fremont Street to the west, all the way south to the Luxor’s Sky Beam.
Rose pressed against the glass, touching her fingers to it as though she could reach across the miles and grasp a claw full of light. “That’s so beautiful,” she said. “I wonder how far away you can see it.”
“Mother’s pilot invited me into the cockpit once and pointed it out to me. It was just after we’d left LAX and reached our cruising altitude. Two hundred and fifty miles away, and we could see it. Pilots on the commercial LA–Vegas routes use it as a navigational reference.”
“I love this city, David.” Rose shivered, pressing against me. “I can
feel
the money moving around, pumping through the city like blood. This is the first place I’ve been on this world where I’m treated with proper deference.”
I rubbed her shoulders as the elevator slowed to a stop. “Yeah, it’s all good until you run out of money. Every light out there is someone who lost everything they had hoping to strike it rich.”
Rose snorted. “Care to guess how much of my hoard came from looting the corpses of would-be Dragon slayers? Every few years, someone is dumb enough to try taking one of us down. The last time someone invaded my lair was two hundred years ago. I let them live. I just tied them naked to the well in the middle of town.”
The elevator opened up to a large lobby with a skylight. Leather couches, marble tables, life-size portraits of famous historical figures from
Warblade
lore on the walls, and, in the center of the room, a ten-foot-tall bronze statue of the Great Dragon Manduvexilloncar himself, rearing back and ready for battle.
Rose made a
Mrr-ROWWW
noise when she saw the statue. “Kind of a short tail there, but, mmm, nice haunches.” She winked at Nadia. “I’d let him fly me.”
“Let’s see him try after taking a crossbow bolt to the knee,” I muttered.
Nadia smirked, but the smile faded as she reached to run her keycard through the reader. She closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath. “No matter what race you are or what world you’re from, sometimes your family can be a giant pain in the ass. There’s a reason I went to high school in Gilead.” She took another breath and unlocked the suite door.
The Trove has three Legendary suites to offer their whales—the Sun Palace, the Mountain King, and the Forest Heart. Gordon, and presumably Lorena, were in the Mountain King, while the Avalanche senior staff members were sharing the Sun Palace. The Cullan family had the Forest Heart.
Just as a side note, the Trove also has nine Epic suites and twelve Rare villas—I’ll leave the basis for those specific numbers as a matter for speculation.
The Forest Heart suite took up eleven thousand square feet—three times the size of my house. It was designed to look as though it had been built into the side of a giant tree. Hardwood floors and golden oak on the walls complemented the branches supporting the upper floors. Silk sunscreens printed with flowering cherry blossoms could be lowered across the windows for shade and privacy. Flower sprays, hanging vines, and curtains of bamboo served to separate and define areas. The overall effect was surprisingly close to what I’d seen of real Elven architecture in Tianisa. However, it was still a hotel room, with hotel amenities, all of which were detailed in a leather-bound guest services manual you could take home as a souvenir of your stay. I talked the concierge into giving me a copy when we went back to our rooms for the evening.
The first floor included a kitchen larger than one of the hotel’s standard rooms, a private gaming room with blackjack and poker tables—dealer provided on request—an outdoor patio with grill, infinity pool and hot tub; a twenty-person theatre; a private workout room with sauna; and a family-slash-social room featuring a one-hundred-forty-four-inch television connected to three game consoles and a world-class gaming rig preloaded with
Warblade
.
Six bedrooms and a lounge filled the second floor, with the top floor taken up by the master bedroom, an outdoor Jacuzzi surrounded by foliage fit for a rainforest, and an office. An S-curved wooden stairway linked all three levels, along with a hidden elevator. Butler service and a private chef were available twenty-four hours a day. I had to assume both the cook and the butler were out for the night.
Danya sprawled on one of the couches, pencil skritching away in an oversized sketchbook. Whatever magic made her look Human was gone, revealing skin as black as polished onyx and eggplant-purple eyes. She’d colored her hair the bright scarlet of fresh arterial spray and was wearing a matching silk gown. Dozens of colored pencils jutted from her hair. She didn’t look up as we entered.
Behind her, a young man who appeared to be in his late teens was blasting his way through a mid-level mission in
Glory of War VI.
He didn’t look up, either. He appeared every bit the Southern California surfer dude—trim and muscled with golden-bronze skin and wavy blond hair that never needed conditioner and always seemed to be blowing in the wind. A clean-cut guy with the Llewellyn logo pinned to his suit coat sat on the couch near the surfer, watching us with his hand inside his jacket.
Nadia sighed. “Danya you know. She’s got her ‘do not disturb’ flag set. That’s my brother Matthew. He’s a Beach Elf. Elven physiology, Human physique, and the brain of a surfer. He’s too young for the casino and doesn’t have a job. Shooters and
Warblade
are all he’s interested in right now. He’s not even interested in dating unless he runs into an available gamer girl. Grant is Matthew’s bodyguard, and he prefers to be ignored.”
Grant half-nodded and went back to his newspaper. The giant TV screen gave us a terrific view of Matthew’s avatar teabagging the corpse of an opposing player. To the victor, the spoils.
Aerin and Angus were out on the patio. Angus was seasoning a pile of thick steaks while a dozen lobster tails wrapped in foil waited in neat rows. A cast-iron Dutch oven filled with cubed potatoes was getting busy on the grill. The scents of bacon, garlic, and spicy peppers wafted out of it, making my stomach rumble.
Geneva sat next to Aerin, drinking coffee and working away on a high-end tablet. As we sat down, Riki the mongoose jumped off Aerin’s shoulder and ran along the backs of our chairs, sniffing and chittering as he went. He hopped back onto the table, washed his front paws in a bowl of water, and plucked a deviled egg off a serving tray. He took his time eating it, licking the filling out as though it were candy.
Aerin gave Nadia a hug and said, “You just missed a call from Daria. She made the cut for the national touring company. We have tickets for the show’s final night on Broadway and she’ll get us on the list for opening night in San Francisco. Did Matthew notice when you came in?”
“Of course not. He’s practicing for his tournament tomorrow.” Nadia looked around and asked, “Where’s Lilah?”
“Out in the desert,” Aerin said. “She’s off with her ladies doing a wilderness survival thingy.”
“I still don’t see why she refused my offer. I told her I’d do it free. Her friends would get better lessons, too.” Angus growled. Well, his voice always sounds that way, but he did seem irritated. “I’ve only been teaching outdoor survival for two hundred years.”
Aerin sighed. “They want to learn from another woman. You can’t fix that.” Glanced around at us. “Sorry. My wife Lilah runs a support group for women who have been assaulted. She set this camping trip up because she doesn’t like Las Vegas. Geneva, what am I missing?”
“Willow.”
“Oh, yeah.” Aerin turned back to Nadia. “Willow decided to go out and join them, which makes no sense to me. If she’s upset about having so little time with Danya, she should stay here and enjoy it. She didn’t get away with taking my car, did she?”
“No, she didn’t,” Geneva said. “The roads are too rough. Your car doesn’t have the ground clearance. She hired a helicopter to take her out there and she’ll be riding back with Lilah.”
“Why would anyone want to tent camp in Death Valley when there’s a perfectly good hotel room waiting for them?” Aerin held her elbow out for Riki as he finished washing his paws again. He bounced up her arm and chittered into her ear before snuggling around the back of her neck. Aerin gave him a quick pat. “Riki says we should pour some wine while the steaks cook. Nadia, could you find the glasses?”
While Nadia rummaged through the kitchen, Aerin looked through the items dangling from her silver charm bracelet. She found a clear spot between two tables and removed one of the charms. As soon as it touched the floor, it expanded into a cabinet six feet tall and five feet across.
It smelled of wood smoke, flowers, and earthy spices. The shelves inside overflowed with paper-wrapped bundles, bottles of seeds, and vials of assorted powders. The inside of both doors held a dozen inverted wine bottles. Aerin selected three bottles and the cabinet returned to being a charm on her bracelet.
Rose was all but sniffing Aerin’s charm bracelet. “That is glorious magic. Did you create it?”
“No, I took it off some jerk I killed.” Aerin cupped her hand over the mouth of the first bottle and caught the cork as it popped out. “From the style and age I think an Elven noble paid someone to enchant a family heirloom.”
Nadia set out the wine goblets and a plate of sliced bread with oil and salt in small ramekins. “This is a custom from home,” she said, dipping her bread into the oil. “Eating the salted bread together is an oath you will do no harm to the other person for the next three days. If you don’t think you can keep that oath, you’re better off refusing to eat than eating and breaking your word.” She sprinkled salt onto the bread and took a bite.
I nodded. “I can agree to that.”
Angus shook his head, but ate the bread Aerin fixed for him. “The steaks have salt on them, too.”
“I like the ritual of using bread and salt,” Nadia said. “It’s a considered decision. Salting the bread yourself shows acceptance of the peace bond. That’s why it’s always part of state dinners back home.”
“On that subject,” I said. “I’d like to find out what you meant by ‘Crom planned all this’, but first I have to ask…where is home?”
“We’re from a world called Iargolon,” Aerin answered. “Both Iargolon and Earth are part of a cluster of worlds with extensive parallel development. Similar physicality and similar historicity combine to produce cultural parallels and comparable individual historical contributions.”
I shook my head a bit to clear it. “I think I followed about half of that. I’ve seen the word ‘Iargolon’ before, reading some old Celtic tales. It’s the name of the land beyond the sunset. You’re talking about two worlds developing the same cultures and historical figures, correct?”
Angus finished plating dinner and started serving. “Mmm-hmm. Both worlds have identical land masses. Comes in handy for investments. We own gold, salt, and diamond mines. We also own companies doing captive breeding of rare animals like the dodo, the short-face bear, and the thylacine. Good money in selling them to zoos.”
Rose asked, “How does a parallel like that happen? I’ve never seen worlds develop identical landmasses.”
“Common origin. “Aerin finished pouring the wine and opened the second bottle to let it breathe. “All the planets in this dimensional cluster split off from the same world. Some friends of ours who do a lot more travelling than we do tried to track back to the original world, but weren’t able to conclusively prove which one it was.”
“Based on the fact that Iargolon still has dinosaurs, we think our worlds split at the K-T event, though it may have been even earlier. Iargolon’s core is a bit cooler and less active than Earth’s. The temperature underground stays around seventy degrees for the first fifty miles or so, and there are hundreds of city-sized former magma chambers that have been explored and settled.”
Angus nodded. “I grew up in an old magma chamber, five miles long and half a mile across. I was over four hundred years old before I saw sunlight the first time. It was agonizing, but…beautiful. It changed my life.” Angus picked up his wineglass. “So. To making the world a better place.”
I nodded and murmured agreement. As we touched glasses, I thought back to Thirteen’s world. Making it a better place would be a hard trek indeed. I lifted my glass and drank.
Merciful Mother…I tasted sunshine and rain, the scent of the land, the cold nights and warm afternoons, the wind rustling through acres of grape leaves, the constant, quiet hum of the world simply going about the business of life. I lowered the glass and asked, “What is this?”
Angus topped my glass up. “Crimson Wonder. This pressing is Brighid’s Fire, bottled Beltane, 10,054, on the Isle of Apples. One hundred-fifty years old. Perfect age for Elven wine.”
“It’s magnificent.” Rose took another drink and her eyebrows jumped upward. “That’s odd. I shouldn’t feel an amount this small.”
“You will,” Angus said. “This, you will.”
“I wish this winery made smothered burritos.” I started to take another drink and decided to wait. “It’s obvious Iargolon is, well, what Earth folks would consider a fantasy world. Is the level of magic you’ve used here considered normal, or would you be exceptionally powerful by your world’s standards?”
Aerin shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite understand your question.” She looked down and cocked her head to the side so the mongoose could whisper in her ear. “Oh! I see. Thank you.” She turned back to us. “Riki explained what you were asking. Iargolon is a lot like the worlds you people run role-playing games on. A campaign world, you call it. Angus and I are…well, Riki says we’re retired high-level characters. Or, we would be if we were in one of your games. We actually are retired, in real life, I mean.”