An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3)

by Scott Meyer

  Roy said, “Ladies.”

  Martin winced. Gwen looked disappointed. Brit had taken on an expression of serene fury.

  “So,” Brit said, “you think you’re better equipped to deal with wolves because you’re gentlemen?”

  Roy scowled and walked away, up the path. Brit gave chase.

  “I must say,” Brit shouted at Roy’s back. “I simply cannot wait to watch our strapping he-man champion engage in the gentlemanly art of fisticuffs with those ill-mannered poodles! I bet he’ll slap them silly until they apologize!”

  Martin and Gwen watched them walk away, looked at each other, shook their heads, then followed.

  9.

  Jimmy took the lead when they left camp, but they made a point of rotating every hour or so to make sure that they all got their share of wolf murder. The path continued to cling to the side of the mountain. They had grown used to having a drop that meant certain death on their right. They were still terrified of falling, but they were accustomed to the terror.

  They never reached a peak as such; they just realized that the path was now going downhill instead of up.

  Slowly, chatter started to pick up as they walked. They had started walking in depressed silence, then angry silence, then resigned silence. When they started talking, they made depressed conversation, then angry conversation, then finally, resigned conversation.

  Eventually the path led them down from the edge of the cliffs and onto a wooded hillside, which meant that their usual technique of heaving attacking wolves off cliffs would no longer work. Tyler tried it once out of sheer muscle memory. He body-slammed the wolf, which was satisfying but did not stop it from attacking again.

  They camped that night, eating their customary dinner of wolf jerky. The next day they walked through sparse forest until the path led them to a sheer rock wall, with a massive carving set into its face. It was a statue, at least fifty feet tall, depicting a solidly built man standing with his legs apart. In one hand he held a pickaxe. In the other, a cartoonishly large gemstone. The statue’s splayed legs framed a hole that reached far into the mountain. A small railroad track led out from the hole and terminated at a large pile of rock, next to an old wooden sledge that looked designed to be pulled by a mule.

  Jimmy said, “Behold, the cursed Mines of Mortlach.”

  Phillip groaned.

  Jimmy shrugged. “What? We’re stuck in this thing. We might as well get into the spirit.”

  They approached the mine’s entrance. Gary looked up at the statue and said, “They’re trying a little too hard to make an impression, I think.”

  Tyler said, “You live in a cave shaped like a skull.”

  “Yes,” Gary said, “a skull. A whole skeleton would be overkill. You have to show some restraint.”

  As they reached the entrance, they could see dim lights inside. They entered, instinctively bending over slightly even though the opening was more than tall enough to accommodate them. The inner chamber of the mine was surprisingly vast. As their eyes adjusted, they could see that there were dim lanterns placed randomly throughout the chamber.

  As their eyes became more accustomed to the dark, they could make out the miners who were holding the lanterns. They were short but extremely stocky, with massive, bulging arms, stooped shoulders, and sad, grimy faces. If they had been presented as statues or paintings, they’d have been impressively realistic, but they were being presented as living, breathing people and looked unmistakably fake.

  Between the miners who held lanterns were many other miners who only held pickaxes. They stood not quite motionless and looked at their uninvited guests with an expression that was not quite hostility.

  The miners looked at the wizards and said nothing.

  The wizards looked at the miners and said nothing.

  The whole situation seemed infused with a sense of foreboding. Everyone seemed worried that bad things might happen to whoever dared break the silence.

  Jimmy turned to Phillip and mouthed, “May I?”

  Phillip nodded, and made a shooing gesture with his hands.

  Jimmy stepped forward, spread his arms, and said, “We mean no harm. We are travelers, fresh from traversing Cardhu Pass. We seek Blandoch, who we are told heads the mining guild. We have business to discuss.”

  A murmur spread throughout the miners. They seemed more excited than upset by what they heard. They parted like a curtain, revealing the back of the chamber. The rough rock wall held a chunky timber post-and-lintel structure that framed a passage that receded into the darkness. No doubt, this was the actual mine shaft.

  Next to the shaft entrance sat a miner who looked similar to all the other miners, except that his body language reeked of depression. Also, his pickaxe was made of gold. He sat on the mine floor with his pickaxe in his lap and his head hung low. He glanced up toward the visitors without moving his head, and in a voice drenched in sorrow, he said, “I am Blandoch, but I have no business with you, nor anybody.”

  Jimmy said, “We have business with you, sir.” Jimmy walked toward the moping wretch. He took a few steps, stopped, turned back to the rest of his party, and beckoned them to follow.

  Phillip shrugged and followed Jimmy. Tyler and Gary followed Phillip.

  The miners watched them silently as they walked the thirty feet or so to the back of the chamber. In its way, it felt like a longer trip than the walk that had brought them here.

  They stood, looking down at the sulking form of Blandoch. He looked up at them and said, “State your business.”

  Jimmy said, “We seek the rare mineral dailuaine.”

  Phillip leaned toward Jimmy and whispered, “How do you remember all this stuff?”

  Jimmy muttered, “It’s a skill I work on. People tend to think better of you if you remember their names. Comes in handy for other things too. I could teach you.”

  Gary asked, “Hey, is that the stuff?” He pointed toward the ground, just inside the mouth of the mine shaft. There were several round boulders roughly the size of basketballs. They were a dull gray color that did not match the rock walls.

  Jimmy said, “Let me handle this.”

  Blandoch said, “Aye, we have dailuaine. More than enough for your needs, but alas, we cannot get to it.”

  Tyler said, “He started that sentence with ‘Aye,’ but you hadn’t asked a question. I think he’s another recording.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “I figured.”

  Gary had walked over to the strange rocks. “If this is it, we could just grab some and be on our way.”

  Phillip said, “Gary, please let us handle this.”

  With tremendous effort, Blandoch got up on his feet. With even more effort, he explained, “We cannot get you your dailuaine, for we are cursed. We are miners, but we cannot go into the mine without our beloved canary, Oban.” Blandoch gestured to his right. The miners who had been watching moved aside to reveal a simple stone pedestal. There was nothing on the pedestal, but above it, carved into the rock, was a homey little sign that said “Oban.”

  Phillip asked, “What happened to your canary?”

  Jimmy said, “Oban.”

  “Yes,” Phillip said, “Oban. What happened to Oban?”

  Blandoch said, “Without him, it is too dangerous to enter the mine.”

  Tyler said, “That’s not really a curse. It’s more of an equipment problem.”

  “They don’t have to go into the mine,” Gary said. “I think I have some right here. Look, it’s not even that heavy!” Gary was hunched over with his legs spread wide, holding one of the gray boulders between his legs like a small child with a bowling ball. Jimmy, Phillip, and Tyler all glared at him until he dropped the boulder and stood up straight again.

  Blandoch said, “He was taken from us.”

  Phillip said, “The bird.”

  “Oban,” J
immy corrected him.

  “By an evil king,” Blandoch explained, answering a question nobody had asked yet. “King Milburn the Mad. He and his vile viceroy, Flagler. They stole our beloved canary.”

  “Oban,” Jimmy interjected.

  “And took him to Castle Cragganmore,” Blandoch said.

  Tyler said, “Milburn the Mad and his vile viceroy took the canary to Castle Cragganmore. It appears our author is agog for alliteration.”

  Blandoch’s face took on a look of amazement and childlike glee. He clapped his hands together. “Yes! Indeed! If you were to go to the castle and retrieve Oban, we would gladly give you all the dailuaine you could ever need!”

  Phillip said, “Well, that seems settled, then. If you all would just tell us the way to this castle.”

  “Cragganmore,” Jimmy said.

  “Quite,” Phillip said. “Please tell us the way to go . . . there.”

  The miners erupted into spontaneous cheering, followed by singing and a surprisingly well-choreographed dance number. Giant flagons of beer appeared as if from nowhere, seemingly for the purpose of spilling on the ground as they danced. Delicious-looking roasted drumsticks from some animal that was far too large to be a chicken, or even a turkey, also appeared but were waved in the air, rather than eaten.

  Tyler said, “I figure they’ll tell us the way when they’re done celebrating.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Jimmy agreed.

  The miners enjoyed their preprogrammed celebration all through the night. The next morning the wizards were given fresh water and directions to Castle Cragganmore. Of course, the directions had consisted of pointing to one of the three paths that led away from the mine and saying “That one,” but still, it saved the wizards some guesswork.

  The mountains had given way to rolling hills, so the terrain itself no longer seemed to be trying to kill them. The downside of this was that instead of only having to watch in front of them and behind them for attacks from mountain wolves, now they had to watch in all directions for attacks from what the miners referred to as “hill wolves.”

  Hill wolves differed from mountain wolves in that they lived in the hills instead of the mountains. That was where the differences ended. They looked identical, attacked via the same pattern, and appeared with the same regularity. The only real difference from the wizards’ point of view was that you couldn’t just chuck them off a cliff, because there was no cliff. Hurling them down a hill only worked if you were standing at the top of the hill, and even then it only gave you a moment to regroup while the wolf ran back up the hill. Instead, they took to counting to three, then simply stabbing the wolves out of the air.

  The path was wide and well trodden and began to parallel a large, fast-moving river. The river started to descend into a picturesque canyon, which seemed to have been carved by the river.

  Phillip thought, For the first time since this ridiculous quest began, we’re almost having a nice time. Sure, we’re trapped in a poorly designed death maze, at the mercy of a man who doesn’t know what the word means, because he’s both cruel and stupid, but the weather is nice and thanks to the river and its gorge, the hill wolves can only attack us from two directions again.

  Phillip was torn from his reverie by Tyler, who was pointing at the water and yelling, “River wolf!”

  A wolf swam clumsily though the treacherous currents, dragged itself up onto land, growled for the traditional amount of time, then leapt for Tyler’s throat, got stabbed, and hit the ground with a wet thud.

  The river canyon twisted and turned through the landscape, and the path followed. The walls around the wizards grew steeper, and the blue sky above them narrowed to a blue slit visible beyond the canyon rim.

  It was still broad daylight outside the canyon, but in the shadows down along the riverbank, it felt like dusk. They became aware that the canyon seemed to widen ahead of them. Soon, they saw that the course of the river had gently turned one direction, then bent back upon itself in a turn so sharp it almost created a full loop. The forces of gravity and erosion had worked together, most likely at Todd’s direction, to form a giant bowl with steep rock walls easily a hundred feet tall. The river shot around the bottom of the bowl so quickly that it actually raked outward at an angle, like the surface of a whirlpool, before completing its right-hand turn and then taking a violent left, away from the bowl, and down the remainder of the canyon. The riverbed was littered with immense boulders that had no doubt fallen from the high walls around the bend. They poked up through the surface of the water, creating violent currents and making navigation of the river by boat impossible.

  In the middle of these turbulent hairpin turns, the canyon’s far wall narrowed into a teardrop-shaped spit of land that formed the inner bank of the bend. On this dry, stony outcropping, there was a castle so Gothic it might as well have been wearing black eyeliner. Buttresses supported larger buttresses, which supported arches, which supported stained-glass windows, balconies, gargoyles, and spires so numerous and packed together so tightly that there appeared to be no visible building at their source. From a distance, it looked like a black stone pincushion.

  The castle’s island narrowed to a knife’s edge of stone. The path the wizards had been following led across this land bridge, but it offered little reassurance. The path was lined on both sides with rushing white water, heading in opposite directions. To fall from either side would mean certain death. Between this natural bridge and the castle stood a small army of large men; thus, making it safely across the bridge also meant certain death.

  Tyler said, “That must be Castle Cragganmore.”

  “Are you sure?” Gary asked.

  “We’re on the path to Castle Cragganmore,” Tyler explained, “and the path ends at that castle, so unless there’s another smaller castle hiding inside that castle, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  The men backtracked, ducking around the corner to make themselves harder for any prying eyes from the castle to spot. They climbed as far up the canyon wall as they dared, in order to get a better view. They surveyed the situation and started to plan.

  “I say we give up,” Phillip said. “This is madness. Clearly Todd has set this up just so he can watch us all die horribly at the hands of those soldiers, or maybe, if he’s very lucky, we’ll fall into the river and be dashed on the rocks before we get within killing range. Either way, I say we refuse to move and make Todd come down here and show us the courtesy of killing us himself.”

  Gary said, “I don’t think it’s as hopeless as all that.”

  Phillip said, “Think again.”

  “No, seriously,” Gary said, “look over there, guys.” He pointed across the river, to the far canyon wall. Because the river had effectively cut a groove in the earth, the various strata formed by different layers of minerals were visible in cross section.

  Tyler squinted and said, “What am I looking for? I see striations in the rock, but that’s about all.”

  “Striations. Do you mean stripes?” Gary asked.

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “I guess I do.”

  “Then why don’t you just say that?” Gary asked.

  “Because those kinds of stripes are called striations.”

  “Whatever,” Gary said. “There are a couple of them that are bigger and flatter than the others. They make kind of a ledge, just wide enough that if we went sideways, one at a time, I think we could walk on them.”

  Jimmy said, “Yeah, I suppose, if we could find a way across the river, but what good would that do us? The castle is on this side of the river, not over there.”

  “Those soldiers aren’t on that side of the river either,” Gary said. “And if you look down there, where the river goes around the castle, you see all those boulders?”

  Jimmy and Tyler said that they did.

  “Some of them are pretty close together, aren’t they? Almost close eno
ugh that someone could jump from rock to rock and make their way across the river.”

  Phillip said, “The whole way along the cliff we’d be sitting ducks. If they have any archers, they’ll use us for target practice.”

  “So we wait for nightfall,” Gary said. “It’ll be clear tonight. There’ll be plenty of moonlight for us to see by, but the soldiers won’t be looking for us. They’re guarding the path.”

  Phillip considered this for a moment, then said, “Okay, say we do scrabble along the cliff face in the dark of night, then successfully leap across the rapids. What then? How do we get the canary?”

  Gary smiled. “We steal it. We go in like burglars, find where they’re keeping the canary, take it, and get out the same way we got in.”

  Phillip looked over to Tyler and Jimmy. Jimmy was peering into the distance at the rocks, planning. Tyler was deep in thought, but there was a hint of a smile on his face. Phillip shook his head. “That’s pretty optimistic, Gary. What makes you think we can pull this off?”

  Gary smiled broadly. “I know something none of you know. Something that will help.”

  Tyler and Jimmy both turned and looked at Gary. Phillip was also waiting to hear what he would say next. Gary savored the moment, then said, “I know the stealth secret of the ninjas!”

  Tyler turned to Phillip and said, “He really had me up until he said that last bit.”

  Gary said, “No! Really! Guys, we can do this! Tyler, you know I’m telling the truth. I’ve used the secret to sneak up on you. Remember that one time I stuck your hand in that bowl of warm water?”

  Tyler said, “I was asleep.”

  “Yeah,” Gary said, “and I didn’t wake you up. That’s gotta count for something.”

  Phillip turned to Tyler and asked, “Does that really work, the bowl of warm water thing?”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “If your goal is to make someone wake up with a wet hand, it works every time.”