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"Game?"
    Feordin said, "Rasmussem wouldn't have loops in their programs."
    "Sure they would," Cornelius snapped. Of course he was Shelton. Plain as anything—now. Shelton knew a challenge to his hacking ability when he heard one. "Something this complicated? There's no way their programmers could anticipate every single thing the players might say or do. Real people are too variable. Every once in a while they're bound to come up with something so unexpected it never even crossed the programmers' minds."
    I heard Abbot Simon say "Game?" but I wasn't watching him to see if he'd given his head that ridiculous sideways tilt. Of course he had. He always would. I wasn't watching Cornelius either. I was watching Brynhild. A moment later she gave another shudder.
    "The thing with Rasmussem," Cornelius went on—and I caught just the slightest shifting in his eyes, as though he'd been distracted—"the thing with Rasmussem is that they've got people monitoring. They see a loop, and they interrupt and patch around it before the players even know what happened."
    "Uh-huh," I said. "Something unexpected? Like when somebody starts talking about the game like it is a game? Or when somebody starts talking about computers and programmers and loops during a medieval adventure?"
    As if on cue, Abbot Simon said, "Game?" and Brynhild did her somebody's-just-walked-on-my-grave shiver. This time I was sure Cornelius noticed it.
Everybody
noticed it.
    "Wonderful," Nocona said, standing and wiping his buckskinned knees.
    "It's not important," Cornelius said. What else could he say? "We don't need them."
    Nocona stepped close enough that Cornelius had to lean back. "Clerics are the ones with the healing spells." Nocona threw the wizard's own words back at him. "What are we going to do if we need to raise somebody from the dead?"
    "Well"—Cornelius grinned at us—"we're just going to have to be careful not to die."
    Nocona gave him a disgusted look and pushed past.
    Cornelius's grin lingered a moment longer, then he said, "And I've got some good spells, too, you know." He faced my mother and raised his arms. "
Sassafras Saskatchewan,
" he said—or anyway, that's what it sounded like. He lowered his arms and looked at Mom. "All better?"
    "Well," she said, obviously trying hard to please, "maybe a little. Yes. I think so."
    Cornelius didn't buy it, either. By his expression, he took the headache's continued presence as a personal affront.
    "What did you do?" Robin asked.
    "What did you
try
to do?" Marian asked, and for once I was ready to cheer her on.
    "That was a Deflect Evil spell," Cornelius explained to Mom.
    "Maybe you could try it again?" she asked hopefully.
    "I can't do any one spell more than once in any day." Cornelius considered. ("Game?" Abbot Simon said. Brynhild shuddered.) "Got it. Maybe your headache's the result of a spell. I'll do a Ward Off Magic spell." He wiggled his fingers and held his breath until his face turned purple, all the while making this humming sound like a sick generator. "How's that?"
    Mom shook her head, then winced at the movement. She looked awful, with her face all white and pinched, and her still-damp clothes clinging to her like some poor drowned creature. I wished there was something I could do:
Here comes Arvin Rizalli, ready to save the day.
I wished there was something anybody could do.
    "I don't know what else to try," Cornelius admitted. "It still might be a spell, but cast by someone stronger than I am. Or whose cure we're supposed to find later on. Or sometimes there's random plague. But maybe it's just from all the excitement. Hopefully it'll go away on its own. If not, then I can try again tomorrow."
    "Felice, can you travel, do you think?" Feordin asked.
    Mom answered, "I think I'll be all right if we can have the horses not going too fast." She glanced at Abbot Simon just as he said, "Game?" again, then spoke in a whisper as though her own voice hurt her. "I think it'd be good to get away from