by Scott Meyer
Gwen looked at the empty space between Blandoch’s hands, then looked to her compatriots and shrugged. The three of them shrugged back, so she turned and put her hands out, accepting whatever it was that Blandoch was offering. Blandoch carefully placed the nothing in Gwen’s arms, and she immediately let out a startled grunt and started shaking and sinking toward the ground.
“It weighs a ton,” she said. “Help!”
Martin dove forward to help her carry her burden, but he could not see her burden and ended up jamming his fingers on the void, which caused him to yelp in pain and surprise. The force of Martin striking the invisible mass caused Gwen to lose control of it. It rolled out of her hands, away from Martin.
Gwen had not seen Roy lurching toward her on the other side to try to help her with her load. Because her load was invisible, she did not see it land directly on Roy’s foot with an audible thud. Roy yelled and cursed and reached down with both hands and pushed whatever it was off his foot.
While Roy checked for broken toes, and Martin checked for broken fingers, Brit went to the spot where she estimated that a heavy, round object would stop rolling. She carefully explored the area with her foot until she found what she was looking for. She crouched down, felt the contours of the object, and when she was convinced that she knew where it was and what shape it was, Brit sat on it. She seemed to hover in an impossible squatting position.
Okay, Brit thought. We’ve got something invisible that we’re going to have to transport who knows how far. We have to do something to make it visible. Think, Brit. What is the most visible thing you know? Something you can’t miss, something obnoxiously obvious.
Brit thought for a moment before saying, “Martin, can I borrow your robe?”
17.
After more hiking through what the wizards had dubbed Falling Wolf Forest, the path led them to a town. A smattering of nearly identical buildings was the backdrop for a set of nearly identical peasants doing obviously repetitive things. A man whittled. A woman kneaded dough. A child ran in a circle for no apparent reason. It was all clearly designed to be just convincing enough to be boring. A stack of damp hay here, a chicken darting across the street there. A dilapidated oxcart tucked between two buildings. The wizards’ eyes were drawn to the only interesting thing in the town, a blacksmith shop set in the center of the village like a jewel in a setting. It wasn’t a workshop so much as a large open pen with a rough awning overhead and a metal sign out front that said “Ye Olde Towne Smithy.” Beyond that, Phillip couldn’t make out any detail. Just motion, flame, and rhythmic clanking noises.
It was Phillip’s turn to drag the sledge, and he was good and tired of it. He didn’t really mind so much, though, because he was also tired of not pulling the sledge at this point, so it made little difference. Phillip chose not to slow down and lose momentum. He knew that the next step in the quest was to have the cursed chunk of ore he was dragging fashioned into some sort of weapon, so he assumed that the blacksmith shop was his destination. He leaned forward, the taut rope wrapped over his shoulder, resting on his full-length fur vest. The collar stood high, warming his ears. The sleeves had long since fallen away and now were wrapped around his forearms like leg warmers on a dancer on the cover of a Jazzercise video.
Jimmy approached the woman who was endlessly kneading a large lump of bread dough and asked, “Pardon me, can you tell me, is this the town called Bowmore?” Jimmy held no illusions about having a real conversation or about his courtesy even being noticed. He was polite out of habit.
As with all of Todd’s artificial creations, her response almost fit the question, but not quite. “How can ye not know where you are? This be the town of Bowmore.”
Jimmy said, “Right, thanks” and moved on.
They reached the blacksmith’s shop and left the sledge and its heavy cargo out front. They weren’t particularly worried that anyone would try to steal it. Knowing how difficult it had been to get here, they would have enjoyed watching someone try.
Under the awning, there was a smoking black pile of bricks with a fiery hole in the front, like a New York City pizza oven, only much hotter and slightly dirtier. All around, laid out on metal racks, there were metal implements, all clearly used to form more metal implements. Every vertical surface was covered with handmade hasps, hinges, nails, hooks, and horseshoes. In the center of the room, a tall man with arms thicker than a normal man’s legs was using tongs and brute force to bend a glowing metal bar.
Tyler took the lead in interacting with the blacksmith. He was over any pretense at playing along with the fantasy of this quest. They were not knights performing tasks to fulfill some prophecy. They were mice trapped in a poorly made maze, trying to find their way out as efficiently as possible. Pretending that this blacksmith was anything other than a preprogrammed puppet was a waste of time at best, and a source of entertainment for their tormenter at worst.
The blacksmith stopped hammering the glowing metal and turned his soot-covered face to look at Tyler.
“Greetings, stranger,” the blacksmith said. “How does this day find you?”
Tyler said, “We got the rock,” and pointed over his shoulder, toward the sledge that waited out front.
The blacksmith put down his soot-encrusted tools and walked to a soot-encrusted basin, which seemed to be full of a mixture of equal parts water and soot. He “washed” his hands and dried them on a soot-black towel, saying, “I am Inchgower, skilled blacksmith and crafter of fine weapons.”
Tyler said, “We got the rock.”
The blacksmith nodded as if listening intently, then said, “Aye, ’tis a long journey to be sure. I’m certain you didn’t come all this way without good reason.”
Tyler said, “We got the rock.”
The blacksmith raised his eyebrows. “I see. You’ve come to the right place, but sadly, I cannot help you.”
Tyler rolled his eyes and made the motion of a yakking mouth to Gary, then repeated, “We got the rock.”
“I know all about the prophecy,” the blacksmith explained, “but to make the weapon you need, I require certain raw materials, materials that have not been available for quite some time, I’m afraid.”
Tyler glanced back at Phillip, who chuckled lightly. Tyler turned with a flourish, motioned toward the sledge with much fluttering of hands, bowed deeply, and said, “We got the rock.”
Inchgower dropped the soot-soaked towel on the soot-covered floor and walked slowly past the wizards to the front of the shop. He gazed down in amazement at the dull gray lump of stone they had dragged all the way from the mine. “You have it,” he said. “You managed to procure the dailuaine. I cannot believe it.”
Gary said, “We got the rock.”
“I can handle this, Gary,” Tyler said.
Inchgower spread his massive arms wide, turned to face the wizards, and said, “Gentlemen, I will make you your weapon.”
He stood there, almost motionless, cycling through some small subroutine designed to make him seem less statue-like while he waited for the next bit of stimulus to which he would respond.
Tyler looked back at the others, then looked at the cheerful, benevolent look on Inchgower’s face. Tyler sighed. “What’s the catch?”
Inchgower laughed and seized Tyler by the shoulders, shaking him slightly. “We will need bricks! Lots of bricks, my friends. Come with me—there are wheelbarrows out back.”
Sometime later, and several hundred yards away, the wizards stood beside a massive clay pit. They had found a seemingly endless row of recently sun-dried bricks that were just irregular enough to make it painfully obvious that Todd had only created a few of them, then endlessly replicated those. Much like Chicken McNuggets, the slight variations only made them seem more identical.
“Fantastic,” Phillip said. “Todd’s going to try to work us to death.”
Gary said, “Oh, I dunno. This mig
ht not be so bad. A little physical activity might be nice for a change.”
“Nice for a change?” Phillip asked. “Doesn’t hiking count as physical activity? Because it seems to me that’s all we do anymore.”
“That’s my point,” Gary said, stretching his back, limbering up. “We’ve been doing the same things over and over. Maybe this’ll break up the monotony.”
“Ah, I see,” Phillip said. “Stacking and hauling bricks seems like a source of variety and mental stimulation to you.”
“At least it’ll work the upper body,” Gary said, stretching his hamstrings. “We haven’t really been doing all that much with our arms.”
Tyler asked, “What about sledge dragging?”
“And wolf stabbing?” Jimmy added.
“Yeah, I see your point,” Gary allowed, “but you have to admit, we’ve been working the same muscle groups over and over. This will give us a chance to hit some new ones. See my point?”
The other three made eye contact for a moment, silently reaching a consensus; then Phillip said, “No, we don’t.”
Gary exhaled. “Look, I’m just trying to keep a positive attitude. Is that okay with you?”
Again they silently took a vote. Again Phillip spoke for the group.
“No, it isn’t.”
They piled as many bricks as they dared into the two wheelbarrows and, as was now their custom, took turns maneuvering them back to Inchgower’s shop.
Inchgower was waiting for them to arrive. He rubbed his hands together excitedly, generating a small cloud of soot in the process. “Good work. Well done. You can unload them right here.” Inchgower pointed to a specific bare patch of ground and made it clear that he would not move again until all the bricks were unloaded.
No sooner had Jimmy placed the final brick on the stack than Inchgower sprang back to life, bustling around his shop, gathering certain tools he would need, and clearing work space in the middle of the floor. Inchgower rummaged through his tool rack, and when he turned to them, he had four shovels that had seemed to appear from nowhere. He said, “Now, we’re ready for the clay.”
Later, they returned from the clay pits, carrying well-used shovels and fully loaded wheelbarrows. Their arms, like their tools, were coated up to their shoulders in a thin gray coat of cracking clay.
“This stuff is gonna take forever to wash off,” Tyler complained.
“Nah,” Gary reassured him, “I bet it’ll dry and most of it will crack off on its own. In the meantime, we’ll all look like the Thing, and that’s always cool.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, “that’s what the Thing was famous for, looking cool.”
They hauled the wheelbarrows full of wet clay to the rear of Inchgower’s shop. Predictably, Inchgower was waiting for them with vague praise and specific instructions.
They unloaded the clay in a sullen, exhausted manner, but they did it all the same. Inchgower stood almost motionless, pointing at the spot where they were piling the wet clay, waiting for them to finish. Jimmy was just about to gather the last shovelful from the wheelbarrow when he stopped. The others looked on, puzzled.
“Come on,” Phillip said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“No,” Jimmy said. “Let’s not get this over with.” He put down his shovel and sat in the shade for a moment. It did not take long for the others to get the idea. They rested for a while, ate some wolf jerky, explored the town a bit, and got a good night’s sleep under the awning that formed the roof of Inchgower’s shop; all the while, Inchgower stood silently, pointing to the clay pile, waiting for them to complete their task. When they were good and ready, they moved the last shovel of clay.
“Well done, lads,” Inchgower said. “Now we can start making things.”
Inchgower led them from the rear of his workshop to a spot out front and said, “We’ll start by making a pile of bricks! Bring in the bricks, and I’ll tell you how they should be stacked.”
Tyler asked, “Why can’t we just stack them behind the shop, where they already are? And already in a stack, for that matter.”
He hadn’t expected a real answer, but when Inchgower said, “There’s a good lad,” it was particularly unsatisfying.
Phillip reminded him of the real answer. “Because Todd designed this whole thing to irritate us, remember? He knows we didn’t become wizards, or get into computers in the first place, because we love manual labor.”
The wizards took their time, but they did as they were told. Each time they’d return from out back with an armload of bricks, Inchgower would talk them through the process of stacking them. Soon, they had a solid square base, three feet long and three feet wide, with the beginnings of walls that had small holes along the base.
“Splendid,” Inchgower said. “Now one of you will bring some of the clay to my worktable, and the rest of you will continue building the walls. You should be able to keep going without instructions from here.”
Jimmy, Gary, and Phillip spent a good long time stacking the heavy bricks, piling up the walls of whatever they were building. Inchgower instructed Tyler (most likely because he was standing closest to Inchgower at the time) to bring him some clay and place it on a worktable.
When the clay was on the table, Inchgower said, “More clay, please.”
After several repetitions of this cycle, Inchgower thanked Tyler, then got to work. Work, in this case, meant moving his hands in a vague, repetitive manner so as to give the impression that something was getting accomplished without ever actually touching the clay. After a few seconds of this, the heap of clay disappeared and was replaced by some sort of vessel, like a crude pot made of soft clay, about eight inches across and a foot tall, with thick walls.
“If Todd can have all this crap done automatically,” Gary asked, “why are we having to do any of this?”
Phillip said, “To go into detail about the things the blacksmith has to do, the skilled labor, that would be extra work for Todd, so he glosses over it. The stuff that’s extra work for us to do, the grunt labor, that’s easy for him to just order us to do, so we’re getting all that in exquisite detail.”
When the brick structure was an almost perfect three-foot cube, Inchgower stopped construction. He put the pot he’d made, and a lid he’d quickly slapped together for it, in his forge fire and closed the metal door.
“We’ll just let that harden for a while.” He turned his back to them, poking around his tool rack. When he turned back around, he had four large hand scoops. “In the meantime, lads, we’ll be needin’ charcoal, and plenty of it.”
Hours later, they returned from the surprisingly distant bonfire pit, dyed pitch-black with coal dust and pushing wheelbarrows piled high with chunks of charcoal.
They unloaded the charcoal, triggering Inchgower to tell them to pack clay around the walls of the cube but to leave the holes in the cube’s bottom accessible.
Their arms had no strength left, so packing the wet clay onto the cube seemed to take forever. Their hands were caked with sweat, dust, clay, and soot, and they were too exhausted to care.
Inchgower removed the crude cylindrical pot from his forge and told the wizards to get a good night’s sleep. “For tomorrow, you do battle.”
Phillip said, “Yup, fair enough,” as he settled into his bedroll. After the half second his brain needed to process what he’d heard, he sat bolt upright and asked, “Wait, what? Do battle? We’re not here to fight anything. We’re here to make a weapon.”
Inchgower nodded in inappropriate agreement. “In order to complete my work, I will need a bone from a wretched beast known to the villagers as Strathisla. It comes once a fortnight to eat a villager. We have been quite powerless to stop it. You will slay the monster for us. I will consider that my payment for all of my work.”
Gary asked, “Your work? You’ve been working?” But being, essentially, a recording, Inchg
ower ignored him.
“When you have killed Strathisla, bring me one of the beast’s bones so I can channel its strength into your weapon.”
Inchgower smiled like a doctor telling a new father that he has a healthy baby. “Sleep well, for as fortune has it, Strathisla attacks tomorrow.”
The wizards reacted like a new father who had expected the doctor to tell him that his wife had appendicitis.
18.
The next morning, shortly after dawn, Phillip, Jimmy, Gary, and Tyler were lined up across the road through Bowmore like gunslingers waiting for a long-overdue showdown, except that they had swords and had no idea who or what they’d be fighting.
The artificial villagers were locked into some sort of “acting terrified” subroutine. They would peek out the windows of the buildings, then emerge to sprint across the street, darting into a building on the other side of the street so they could peek out different windows.
“What do you think it will be?” Gary asked anyone who’d answer.
Phillip said, “Something with bones. That’s all we know.”
Gary considered this. “Well, that narrows it down a bit.”
“Not really,” Phillip said.
“Sure it does,” Gary explained. “At least we know we won’t be fighting a giant slug. That’s good, at least.”
“Giant slug? That’s what you’re worried about? A giant slug?”
Gary rolled his eyes. “Phillip, do you want to fight a giant slug?”
“No. You put it that way, I have to admit I don’t want to fight a giant slug.”
Gary said, “Good. Apology accepted.”
Phillip started to react, but he saw both Jimmy and Tyler subtly shaking their heads and decided they were right.
They waited.
An old lady ran across the street.
The wind picked up.
