Falling ash, the volcano in the distance… Nick reached up into the air and re-created the "asbestos" golf umbrella he normally carried, and then started making his way toward the keep, to see who he might meet along the way. As he looked around, he was a little surprised by how few players seemed to be around. This was an unusually quiet period for this time of day. Normally Death-world started to get noticeably busier around the time that high school and college classes let out in North America, though obviously there would have been plenty of Europeans and Asians in over the earlier part of the day.
Nick shrugged and made his way along through the black ash "snow," keeping an eye open for crevasses. For the moment they seemed to be avoiding him, though he saw what looked like a huge one opening away across the plain, and faintly he thought he heard some yells of surprise from that direction. It was a little too far for him to do any good. By the time he got there, everybody involved would either have saved themselves and each other, or fallen in.
He kept going, making for the Keep of the Dark Artificer. Shade's warning about the size of the place had been a useful one. Its interior was, Nick thought, probably bigger than the whole gigantic plain that surrounded it. This posed problems of topology that he didn't bother his head about, for the attraction of the Keep lay in the music that was in there, and also in the exploration of the countless dark rooms, deep caverns, and hidden towers associated with it, and (most important, Nick thought) the solution of the great Maze at the Keep's heart. He couldn't get rid of the feeling that the access to the fabled Ninth Circle had to do with that maze. Probably nothing so simple as just getting to the middle of it. Nick was sure you needed to do more than that, or have some specific piece of information once you arrived.
Nick skirted around the lake and headed for the doors of the Keep. The demons on guard there-little blackleather-skinned, batwinged guys about five feet tall, wearing ornate doormen's costumes and affable gargoyle faces-saw him coming and started pulling on the giant braided bronze ropes that opened the doors. He waved at them, in what was beginning to be a ritual. "Hey, there, boys," Nick said to the two nearest demons, "how're things going?"
"They stink," said the demons nearest the doors, in the ritual answer. One of them, pausing from the work, wiped his forehead with a big smudgy hankie and added, "And the boss turned down the union's request for the pay raise."
Nick made tsk, tsk noises as he passed them by, walking in over the shiny dark pavement, which some beneficent agency kept clear of the ash that was always falling outside. "Keep working on it, fellas… " he said.
The doors closed behind him, and Nick paused there in the huge "front hall," looking around to see who else might be there. The Keep's vast entryway, lit by a huge crystal and onyx chandelier shaped like one more stalactite hanging from the great dome of the ceiling, routinely held a surprise or two. You might hear a snatch of music here that you hadn't caught elsewhere, or meet someone who would do your quest some good. At the moment, though, it was nearly as quiet inside as it had been outside. The place was practically empty. A slack period, Nick thought. Coincidence.
He walked on in, looking around at the bizarre portraiture that hung on the walls of the entryway. They were supposed to be images of gameplayers who had passed on successfully to Nine, Nick knew, normal people living in his own time. But the portraits made them all look like crazed royalty of two or three centuries back, in rococo clothes and wigs that looked like they might come alive and crawl off their wearers' heads. He wondered what his own portrait would wind up looking like if-When. When they did it.
Nick smiled slightly and headed in toward the doorway on the far side of the entry hall. Past that door was where things got interesting. Six staircases apparently designed by Escher led off toward the roof, and six more toward the basement, though none of them felt particularly like "up" or "down" when you were climbing them. Somewhere in this vast pile, in which none of the normal directions mattered, the Maze was hidden-a huge tangle of paths and walkways, arched and open, covering all six of the walls of a great cube of space somewhere in the Keep. Nick had actually found it accidentally, once, when he was first in here and just wandering around in the place trying to get a feel for it. Then he'd lost the Maze again while trying to work out how he'd found it to begin with. A whim of the system, he thought. Never mind. Over the weekend there'll be time to start doing some proper searching-
"Hey, Nick…"
He turned quickly at the sound of a slightly familiar voice. It was Shade again. In here she looked a little less like her name, but only a little less,justa young girl of maybe fifteen, in a long black outer coat, a short dark purple skirt, and a black sweater, dark purple hair, and eyes that shaded from violet to almost black depending on how much light there was. Those big dark eyes, and the somber set of her mouth, suggested some old sorrow hanging over her. She was pale. In this light, almost right under the great chandelier, Nick could see much better how frail she looked, how fragile. Not that Nick was so foolish as to be misled by appearances down here. As in most virtual environments, anyone could look like anything they pleased. For all he knew, up in the Real World, Shade was a six-foot-six, two hundred-and-eighty-pound football player. Somehow, though, Nick doubted it. There was a brittle feel to conversations with her that made him wonder if she was either a plant from Joey Bane Enterprises, someone used to see how players treated each other, or someone who wasn't really cut out for this particular virtual experience, but was just too stubborn to give it up.
"Hey, Shade," he said. "You doing okay?"
She sighed. Most of her conversations seemed to start with a sigh, or contain several of them. "I guess so," she said. "It's quiet today… you'd almost think everybody was scared off by something… "
Nick shrugged. "Not me." The whole business with the Angels of the Pit had rolled off his back pretty quickly once he got into the Keep and started working on the business of solving it.
"I don't know… " Shade said. "I wonder if maybe there's something to it."
"To what?"
She shrugged, gazing up and about her. "What they did…" She turned those violet eyes on him. "I keep wondering if it's really so terrible. When everything's going wrong. "
The way she trailed off, Nick had a feeling that she was about to tell him how everything was wrong for her, if he didn't stop her. He shook his head. "Some people might think it isn't," he said slowly. "I guess there are times when everything really does seem to stink. But that's not where I am at the moment."
"Things are better for you, then, at home?"
"I don't know about better," Nick said. "A little quieter, maybe." Certainly his father had been letting him alone… whether he was unwilling to restart their fight, or not, Nick wasn't sure. Just the news that Nick had a job lined up for the summer seemed to have quieted things down somewhat. For the rest of it, it was as if his mother and father had declared a truce for the moment. The lightening of the atmosphere in the house had been noticeable. "I'm not thinking about that right now, Shade. I'm on my way to the Maze… "
"Aren't we all," Shade said, and laughed a little. "But I haven't finished exploring the Keep yet. There's still a lot of ground that I haven't covered yet… "
Nick laughed. "You sound like you enjoy rummaging around in here for its own sake. Not me! I want the music."
"Oh, I do, too… "