Jory was at the hen house at dawn, scattering grain and arguing with the cockerel. Tam had tipped the sand into the gloves before he came down the ladder. He held them out, cuffs folded over.
"For you," he said. "From the desert."
Jory looked at the gloves. Then at Tam. "They're gloves."
"Look inside."
Jory unfolded one cuff and tipped it, carefully, into his palm. A little stream of pale gold sand ran out and made a heap in his hand.
He stared at it.
"From the desert?" he whispered.
"From Al Kharid. Last night."
"Is it magic?"
"It's sand, Jory."
"It's desert sand," said Jory, as if that settled it. He poured it carefully back, tipped the other glove's sand in after it, and packed the cuff down tight. The cockerel took the chance to steal his grain. "Can I keep the gloves too?"
"They're yours."
Jory put the empty one on. It came halfway up his arm, and the fingers flapped. He looked at it with deep satisfaction.
"I'll grow," he said.
At breakfast Gillie looked at the glove on Jory's hand, and at the other one, fat with sand, beside his bowl.
"Where did those come from?"
"Tam," said Jory, with his mouth full. "From the desert."
Gillie looked across the table at Tam. "You were in the desert last night."
"Yes."
"And back before the brothers woke."
"Yes."
She didn't ask how. She buttered her bread slowly, and didn't look at him again until the meal was done.
* * *
The day was long and ordinary. Tam mucked out with his own spade. He carried water and mended the stile in the bottom field. All day the clue sat in his inventory, and he thought about it.
Always walking around the castle grounds and somehow knows everyone's age.
In the game that was Hans, and nobody else. You talked to him, he gave you the next step, and you didn't wonder how. Here it would have to be stranger than that. Ranael had a box that had turned up behind her counter with a note in it. What would Hans have?
He did the castle round in the evening, with the milk churn and the egg basket. Then he went back out through the kitchen yard and around to the courtyard.
The fountains splashed. The sun was going down behind the keep. And there was Hans, walking his laps close to the wall, at his usual steady pace.
Tam waited by the near fountain until Hans came around.
"Hans," he said. "How old am I?"
Hans stopped dead.
He had never stopped before. He stood in front of Tam, his hands twisting together. His face went white.
"Twenty-three days," said Hans. "Eleven hours and six minutes."
Tam felt cold.
That was the count Hans gave him every time he passed: how long since the river. Tam had asked his age, and Hans had answered with that.
Twenty-three days old, he thought.
Hans was fumbling at his feet. He stood on one leg, pulled off his left shoe and shook it. A folded scrap of paper fell out onto the flagstones.
"It was in my shoe," said Hans. His voice was high and frightened. "This morning. When I put my shoe on. It said..." He picked the paper up between two fingers, as if it were hot. He held it out at arm's length without looking at it. "It said to give it to the one who asks how old he is. Nobody asks me anything. They tell me to stop walking."
There was writing on the outside of the fold. Tam could see it from where he stood: the same neat, spidery hand as on the clue in his inventory, and on Ranael's note.
He took the paper.
"Thank you, Hans," he said.
Hans was already walking again. He went past the steps, past the far fountain and around, faster than usual. He didn't look back.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
* * *
Tam unfolded the paper by the fountain.
This time it was a map, drawn in fine black lines. A shoreline ran across it from corner to corner, with little wave marks on the water side. There were five trees, a fish and a rock. A dotted line of steps started at the rock and wandered down to a small, neat X.
He knew it at once. It was the Draynor willows map: the shore south of Draynor Village bank, the willows, the fishing spot where a thousand new players had caught their first shrimp. In the game you dug at the X with a spade, and a casket came up out of the ground.
Draynor, he thought. Half a day west, if the roads stretched. And he would need the spade, which was lucky. Seth's month of mucking out meant he carried it anyway.
He put the map away. Draynor would have to wait for a rest day. Tonight he had other plans. In the game, the giant at the forge east of Al Kharid wanted it mended first: three oak logs, ten nails, a chisel and a raw fleece.
* * *
Fred's farm was the wrong way, but it was close. Fred was in his yard in the dusk, leaning on his pitchfork and glaring at a hen.
"You," said Fred. "The egg lad. The wool lad. Whatever you are."
"Evening, Fred. Have you got a fleece to sell? Unspun."
Fred narrowed his small eyes. "You did all my wool already. Twenty balls of it. What d'you want a fleece for?"
"A giant."
Fred looked at him. Then he laughed.
"A giant," he said. "Ha. Very good." He went into his house and came back with a fleece, rolled up and smelling strongly of sheep. He dropped it on the gatepost. "One coin. And you didn't get it from me."
Tam paid him one coin, picked the fleece up off the gatepost himself, and put it away.
It stayed. Tam stood at the gate and thought about that.
He had bought from shops all month, and the one time he'd paid a man, for Seth's milk, it had turned out he needn't have. In the game, an ironman couldn't trade with other players, and somewhere in his head he'd put everybody in that box. But Fred wasn't a player. Fred was a man with more fleece than he needed, and a coin was a coin. A man would sell what he could spare.
He looked down at his bare feet, black from three weeks of road. Somebody would have sold him an old pair of boots on his first day. Fred probably had a pair behind that door.
Three weeks, he thought. Barefoot. Like an idiot.
He nearly asked. Then he thought of Crafting 7, two days off, and the experience a pair of leather boots would give him if he made them himself. He'd waited three weeks. He could wait two days.
* * *
The pickaxe was from Bob, who said goblins had been at his bins again and that somebody should do something. The hammer was from the general store, a coin. The chisel could wait for the morning. Tonight he needed every square.
"Again," said the shopkeeper.
"Again."
"You'll sell me the hammer back tomorrow."
"Probably."
The shopkeeper wrote something in his little book. Tam had never been allowed to see what.
Then he walked south, through the little gate at the back of the graveyard and down the swamp path. It was dark before he reached the reeds.
He did the sums as he walked. He was Smithing 14, and 15 was close. Fourteen bronze bars should just do it. That meant twenty-eight ores: two loads of seven copper and seven tin, which was all he had room for.
* * *
Monlum was still on his stump, smoking in the dark with a lantern at his feet, and the swamp noisy behind him.
"Lad," he said. "At this hour."
"Evening."
"Story?"
Tam told him about Ranael's box: the box that had turned up behind a shop counter in the desert, with a note beside it that nobody had written.
He'd meant it as a funny story. It didn't come out that way. When he finished, Monlum didn't laugh. He sat with his pipe in his hand and looked out at the dark reeds for a while.
"My grandmother," said Monlum at last, "used to say the gods leave notes for people who are looking. The trouble is, she said, you never know who else is reading them."
He put his pipe back in his mouth, and didn't say anything else.
Tam mined. Seven copper, seven tin, with his back to Monlum. The ore went into his inventory as it broke loose, a lump to a square. By the fourteenth ore, Monlum's lantern was the only light.
He walked a little way into the reeds, out of Monlum's sight, and cast Home Teleport.
* * *
Fourteen seconds. The castle courtyard, empty now except for the night guard on his stool, who opened one eye and closed it again.
The smiths' building north of the castle was dark, but the furnace never quite went out. Tam fed it seven pairs of ore. Seven bars came out, glowing, into the tongs. He took the first bar to the rusted anvil and cut it into short pieces, hammered each piece to a point, and gave it a flat head. Fifteen bronze nails lay on the anvil, and went into his inventory in one stack. The giant would need ten. Five spare would do no harm.
The other six bars became two kiteshields, for the store in the morning.
Then the walk back down to the swamp in the dark, an hour of it. Monlum had gone home, and the frogs were shouting. The nails and the two kiteshields had taken three squares, which left him fourteen, exactly. He mined seven copper and seven tin by starlight. On the twelfth ore the warmth came.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Mining level. Your Mining level is now 20.
He cast Home Teleport from the same patch of reeds, and made seven more bars and two more kiteshields. At the anvil, with the last bar in the tongs, he counted his bars against the experience he still needed. It was going to be close.
He made a med helm, because it was one bar and that was all he had.
The helm was plain, round and a bit dented on one side, the worst thing he had made in a week. As he lifted it off the anvil, warmth ran down both his arms to his fingers.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Smithing level. Your Smithing level is now 15.
He let out a whoop that echoed around the smiths' building and set a dog barking somewhere in the town. The helm went into his inventory with the shields.
The last bar, he thought. The very last bar. Chat would've lost their minds.
* * *
He didn't wait. He sat down on the edge of the furnace's stone hearth, with the warmth on his back, and opened the Grouping panel. The Minigame Teleport was there as well as in his spellbook.
Its list ran down the panel. Most of the names had been grey since the river, because he didn't meet what they asked for. A few, like Soul Wars, had always been lit, because they asked for nothing.
One more line was lit now.
Giants' Foundry.
In the game, the Giants' Foundry was a forge inside a cave. A hill giant called Kovac stood outside it, and asked you not to hit him. The teleport landed you right beside him.
He wanted badly to try it right then. He didn't. Home Teleport needed its rest, and he still needed oak.
* * *
The woods past the east fields were black and quiet. He crossed his clearing among the stumps, by starlight, to the five oaks together on the rise.
He felled one. It took a long time with the steel axe. It came down with a crash that sent birds up out of the trees, complaining. The felling gave him one log. He cut two more from the trunk and stopped there. The rest of the trunk could lie where it fell for another night.
He walked home under the stars smelling of smoke and hot metal. He thought about Hans.
Twenty-three days old. In his old life he had been twenty-four.