Mazes and Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

nodded yes.

CHAPTER 5
    The four of them were sitting in Daniel’s room after supper, beginning to play the new game he had spent the summer contriving. They had already chosen their characters: Kate was Glacia, the Fighter, again, Jay Jay was still Freelik the Frenetic of Glossamir, a Sprite, and Robbie was Pardieu, a Holy Man. They sat in a circle on the floor, pencils and graph paper ready to chart their dangerous and difficult course, and Daniel had put up the small screen the Maze Controller used to hide the pages of the scenario he had invented to take them on their imagined trip.
    Beginning players used rule books, and as their skills grew more advanced they progressed to ever more complicated and imaginative books of adventures, departing from them when they wished. Daniel used a combination of advanced books and things he had invented. He had to, because Jay Jay with his photographic memory had memorized nearly every book that could be bought. Daniel didn’t even want to think how much money Jay Jay had spent. But Jay Jay was rich, and those things didn’t mean much to him.
    Holding the dice in his hand, Daniel began to talk. The other three looked at him with rapt attention. He knew they were visualizing everything he told them, and he was aware how real it was, for he had been a player once himself.
    “A half day’s walk from a small town there is a wasteland of gnarled hills, covered with withered trees and dried grass. Beneath these hills is the entrance to the forbidden caves of the Jinnorak. As long as anyone can remember, no one has entered these caves, and it is rumored that within them lives a mutated people, once human, now changed from generations in the foul depths to creatures unrecognizable and vicious. But perhaps that is just a rumor, and perhaps the last of them have died. Still, there are other dangers, but it is also known that there are wondrous things within, for those brave and clever enough to take them. Shall you enter?”
    “Yes,” Kate said, and the other two nodded.
    “The entrance is only five feet high,” Daniel went on. “As you enter, you find you are in a small room, pitch-dark, with the sound of running water.”
    “Give the dimensions of the room,” Jay Jay said, writing.
    “Six paces wide, twelve feet long. On the right there are two doors.”
    “Whose pace?” Jay Jay demanded.
    “A human’s.”
    “Okay, eight feet. I can see in the dark. I see the doors.”
    “Is there writing on them?” Kate asked.
    “Yes,” Daniel said. “But it is in an unknown tongue.” He threw the dice. An eight. “Pardieu can understand the message, but it will be garbled.”
    “It says Ladies’ Room and Men’s Room,” Jay Jay said, and rolled on the floor laughing.
    “Come on, Jay Jay,” Daniel said sternly. “Stop fooling around.”
    “Sorry.”
    “What do I see?” asked Robbie.
    “ Journey here forever, unless … and the rest is unknown to you.”
    “I think we should feel the doors,” Kate said. “If the running water is behind one of them it might be magic water and we don’t want to let it out.” She threw the dice. A twelve. “What can I do?”
    “You can open one of them,” Daniel said.
    She felt herself entering the landscape of the game now, and her heart began to pound. She had brought some armor, a short sword, food, a lantern, and a few coins in case there was anyone to be bribed. Pardieu had his magic spells, and Freelik had his own powers as well as the ability to deceive. It was dangerous to light her lantern in case there was a monster in the room who would then be able to see them and attack them. But darkness frightened her more. Darkness was one of the most terrible things she knew, with the sound of breathing; the thing that had happened that night … but she wouldn’t think about it now. Now there was only the game, where she would take revenge on creeping, soft-breathing things, where she would flash her sword and kill, and conquer. She lit