An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3)

by Scott Meyer

  “Brakes!” Roy shouted. “Brakes!” He was fighting the tiller with both hands, trying to avoid rocks and keep the cart from overturning.

  Brit and Martin both attempted to crawl forward to the brake handle, but the cart reached a trough between two hills, slowed, and the monster struck the shield a third time, pushing them both back and knocking the wind out of them. Gwen let go of the emergency brake cord, knowing that using it in this situation would be disastrous. She threw herself toward the brake lever, pushing it back with both hands. The cart slowed.

  The hope was that if they slowed the cart enough, they might be able to get the beast to maintain constant contact with the shield. Then they could use its endless energy and enthusiasm for chasing to power them forward.

  That was the hope. The reality was that Gwen shoved the brake lever as hard as she could, and it slowed the cart enough that instead of sustaining a tremendous blow every few seconds, it sustained a hard blow roughly every second.

  “More brakes,” Roy yelled, struggling to keep the cart upright. “I think I can start turning this thing around, but we’re going to need more brakes.”

  “I’m trying,” Gwen yelled back, pushing with all her might on the brake lever, eyes squeezed shut with effort. No matter how hard she pushed, the lever didn’t seem to move any farther than it already had.

  Martin got to his feet and joined Gwen, but Brit said, “It’s no good. This is as slow as we’re going to get. We should have beefed up the brakes more.”

  Roy said, “Okay, that’s a design flaw. We can make this work as is, but we’ll remember the problem for Mark Two.”

  “Yeah,” Gwen shouted. “’Cause we’re totally going to do this again someday.”

  28.

  Phillip lost any doubt that the chasm ahead was the Chasm of Certain Doom when the straight-line route they’d been walking slowly changed to a marked path, paved with what appeared to be bones. Phillip was convinced, but that didn’t stop the chasm from trying to convince him further. The closer they got to the chasm, the louder it seemed to shout “Certain Doom.”

  After the path of bones, the next sign was the odor. They made a game of trying to describe what it smelled like, and settled on “somebody cooking rotten eggs and broccoli in a microwave.”

  A while later, they started hearing the sound. At first they thought it was a waterfall, but it was way too uneven. When they finally drew close enough to actually look down into the chasm, they saw what the noise was, but by then they were too distracted by the final, clinching proof that this was the Chasm of Certain Doom: the sight of it.

  The chasm was deep. Grand Canyon deep. It was easily a mile to the bottom and at least four miles across. The canyon walls dropped at an alarming angle to the dark recesses of the canyon floor.

  It was midday, and the sun was directly overhead, yet it was dark down there. It was as if the light from the sun could get to the bottom of the chasm but it didn’t want to. Phillip couldn’t blame it.

  They would have been looking down into a featureless, black morass if it wasn’t for the light cast by the river at the bottom of the chasm, which, instead of water, flowed with glowing lava.

  The four men stood at the edge of the chasm, looking down, joylessly.

  “That wouldn’t work,” Tyler said. “A river of lava wouldn’t cut a chasm like this. If anything, it would add rock.”

  Nobody bothered to agree or disagree. Whether the chasm made any sense or not, it was there, and they’d have to deal with it.

  Foul-smelling wind blew up from the interior, strong enough to make the remaining tail on Phillip’s abused fur coat flap like a plastic pennant. Waves of heat and thick, dark smoke radiated from the lava, obscuring geological features that, ironically, were only visible because of the light the lava also emitted. What little they could see, they wished they couldn’t. The flowing torrent of liquid rock flowed around islands of jagged stones and knifelike spires of glistening black rock.

  They had no idea how they would traverse the bottom of the chasm, but they knew how they would get down there to try. The bone path had led them directly to the cliff, where it made a ninety-degree turn to the left and started a zigzagging path down the wall. The path was narrow. It made the single-file path they’d taken over Cardhu Pass seem like a freeway in comparison.

  Gary asked, “So, what do we do?”

  If he’d been looking at Phillip, the question would have been straightforward enough, but he looked squarely at Jimmy as he asked. The note containing Jimmy’s thoughts on their predicament had fully made the rounds, and nobody had any objections, or at least any better ideas. He had asked what they would do, but by directing it to Jimmy, in essence, he had said, “I know what we’re supposed to do, but what are we really going to do?”

  Jimmy got the message loud and clear. He peered down at the path. He looked along the cliff’s edge to the left as far as his eye could see, then did the same to the right. He looked at the path behind them, for anything that might be of use. All he saw was desert, and a tiny dust devil way far off in the distance. Nothing of any use there.

  He turned to Phillip, who had been studying the situation as well. Phillip shrugged.

  Jimmy said, “We go down the path, Gary. I don’t see any other choice.”

  They spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how they would carry the blade on such a narrow path. Their standard method of splitting the load (and the danger) between three of them would not work. They briefly considered just throwing it down like a Frisbee and retrieving what was left of it when they reached the bottom, but they remembered Inchgower’s admonition that the blade must still be in good shape when they arrived. The idea of reaching the bottom of the chasm only to have some fictional character refuse to recognize the blade was not appealing. Climbing back up the cliff, walking back through the desert, going through all that with the blacksmith and the pumping and the spider again—none of them wanted that.

  They tried the path and found that the only way it could be traversed practically was to walk sideways, leaning back, as if they were walking on a high-rise building’s window ledge.

  They ended up having three men scuttle side by side. The man in front and the man in back would pinch the circular blade, supporting as much weight as they could but mainly adding control and stability. The man in the middle would hold his well-wrapped hand flat, at just about throat height. The blade would rest on this hand where the blade twisted. He had to hold it at throat height because if he held it any lower, the other two men could not assist him without crawling.

  The plan worked well until they reached the first switchback. Coordinating a turn for three people carrying something is complex enough, but the path was so narrow and steep that simply maneuvering the blade around the corner was out of the question. Instead, each switchback would cause a tense ballet. Everyone, even Phillip with his one good arm, would help move the blade through the switchback with a great deal of effort and insults. All were aware that to touch the blade’s cutting edge meant pain at best, and slow painful death at worst. (Quick, painless death was somewhere in the middle.) There were countless switchbacks between the cliff’s edge and the canyon floor, and before long they had perfected their switchback technique, and their insults.

  The descent was tedious, terrifying, and irritating, a unique combination that Todd had mastered. The only moments of levity during the entire trip to the canyon floor came when they were attacked by a cliff wolf.

  They had been descending for less than a half hour when the wolf appeared. Like the desert, the cliff offered no cover to hide the fact that the wolf was materializing out of thin air. Phillip saw it first and called out “Wolf,” as was the protocol. He prepared to fend it off with his one good arm, which would be difficult while walking sideways and clinging to a cliff, but he’d find a way. The others were carrying that cursed blade, and Phillip nee
ded to do his part.

  As with every other wolf on every other part of their journey, the wolf spawned somewhere just off the path, then scanned for someone to attack. Unlike every other wolf on every other part of their journey, this wolf materialized on the side of a sheer cliff. It did materialize over part of the path, but it fell with enough force that it didn’t so much land on the path as bounce off it.

  First the wolf didn’t exist; then it was falling; then it was bouncing; then it was falling again for quite some time; then it didn’t exist.

  If it had been a real wolf, it wouldn’t have struck them funny, but it wasn’t a real wolf, and it did strike them funny. Very much so. It helped that the wolves were so poorly designed and programmed. There was no barking or yelping or attempts to stay on the path, just an angry wolf snarling all the way to the canyon floor.

  Wolves “attacked” several more times while they were on the cliff, and it never stopped being funny. Even the last time, when they were near the bottom and the wolf survived the fall and ran back up the path to attack. Something about watching the wolf come all the way back up to where it had materialized in the first place made it that much funnier.

  By the time they reached the canyon floor they had lost all track of time. They agreed it had been hours, but none would venture a guess how many. It was dark, but they were at the bottom of the Chasm of Certain Doom. It was going to be dark down here. They had seen with their own eyes that even at midday it was dark. Acrid fumes from the river of molten rock obscured the sky. They knew it was late, but they didn’t know how late.

  What they did know was that they needed to rest. The trip down had been strenuous in every way imaginable.

  They bedded down on the forsaken hunk of rock where the path ended. It was broad and flat and surrounded with moving liquid rock. The flow was just close enough to be uncomfortably warm without quite starting to burn. On the bright side, no campfire was necessary. Also, the bare patch of solid ground was littered with wolf jerky from all of the cliff wolves that had fallen to their deaths.

  Tyler volunteered for the first wolf watch while the others got some rest. Later, Tyler woke Jimmy. Gary relieved Jimmy; then Tyler took another turn. Everyone knew that Phillip needed more rest and that he would deny this if asked, so they simply chose to not give him the chance.

  There had been the usual escalating wolf attacks while they slept. They had all gotten pretty good at sleeping through the sound of a man fending off multiple wolves. They certainly didn’t bother to wake each other over something as petty as anything less than eight wolves. That’s why Tyler was the only one who heard a horrible crashing sound coming from the cliff above.

  They all heard Tyler scream, which caused their lizard brains to take over. They scurried in every direction before even waking up enough to wonder why. They instinctively split their attention between making sure they didn’t jump into the lava and looking behind them to see what they were getting away from.

  They all heard the horrific crashing noise and saw what made it, and suddenly they were wide awake.

  29.

  They had only been driving across the desert on their dirt monster–powered oxcart for an hour before Martin’s rendition of the chorus of “A Horse with No Name” stopped being even slightly amusing.

  Of course, it took him another hour to actually stop, but they all knew that irritating everyone else is half the fun of singing.

  Brit was steering. They had not been going for long when they realized that both steering and braking were far too taxing for any one person to do single-handed without relief. Swapping out the brake position was easy enough, but changing drivers was tricky. The vehicle was not going to stop, or even slow down.

  The monster was pushing them just as Brit had predicted and would probably continue to until they either wanted to stop or screwed up. Watching the creature chase, then briefly carry Roy had given her the idea. She saw that the creature’s programming was simple.

  If the target is in front of you, chase it. If the target’s no longer in front of you, acquire target.

  She recognized instantly that if they could stay in front of the beast forever, it would chase them forever, possibly pushing them forward, at its top running speed, in theory, forever.

  The dirt creature’s top running speed turned out to be about fifteen miles per hour, which felt plenty fast. In a car, that would be “cruising around a parking lot looking for a space” speed. In a slightly modified oxcart with no sides, crossing an unpaved, hill-infested desert in the middle of the night with no headlights, pushed forward by a hulking creature that would stomp you into a puddle of ooze if you fell off, it was more than fast enough.

  Luckily, the sky was clear and the moon was out. Also, the trail of footprints they had started following had become a relatively well-marked path. It was just narrow enough for the cart to straddle it, and it was paved with some white, reflective, gravel-like material. Brit didn’t think it was rock, but she wasn’t going to try to stop the cart to identify it. Whatever the stuff was, it shone in the moonlight and made it much easier to follow Phillip’s party.

  That was how she thought of it. Phillip’s party. The others were here to rescue their friends and Jimmy. She was here to rescue Phillip and his friends, and Jimmy. She and Phillip had been a couple for years, but Phillip’s circle of friends was still her circle of acquaintances.

  That doesn’t seem healthy, she thought. It also doesn’t seem like Phillip’s fault.

  Brit had only been driving for an hour, but she was about ready to let someone else take over. Her arms ached and her nerves were fried.

  Roy was on the brakes, releasing them as the cart went up hills and applying them as it coasted down, trying to keep steady contact with the dirt creature’s head. The hills and valleys were small, regular, and gentle enough that they had spent some time debating whether you can call an illness seasickness if you got it on dry land. In the end, none of them could agree whether it was seasickness or not, but all agreed that talking about it was not making it better.

  Martin and Gwen were huddled together in the middle of the cart, resting. Not sleeping. None of them made any pretense at sleeping. The cart was not a relaxing place to be.

  If someone had asked Brit, she’d have sworn that she was concentrating on the path directly ahead, following the path, and trying to avoid any obstacles in their way. That’s what she thought she was doing, but subconsciously she was occasionally scanning the entire area ahead. She kept not seeing anything worth noting, so her brain kept erasing the useless information her eyes had gathered. That’s how people get to work with no memory of having driven there.

  Then, with no warning, Brit thought she saw something. It wasn’t really an object. It was more of a discoloration. A vast swath of the desert ahead of them just seemed to be a different color. The moon was putting out just enough light to let her see that something was there but not enough to tell her what it was.

  Whatever it was, it was large. As she crested a hill she saw that it seemed to stretch across her entire field of view. It was miles wide. She still couldn’t make out any features, just a line, parallel to the horizon, where the ground’s color just changed, and another, closer line where it abruptly changed back. At the far line, the ground’s color lightened and continued to get brighter, bit by bit, until the nearer line.

  What is that? she thought. I know I should recognize that.

  She stared at it, and she stared at it, and she stared at it, and then finally, she saw it.

  Sometimes, when a song is playing on a car stereo that’s turned way down, you’ll only hear the drums and part of the bass, and you’ll think, I’ve never heard this song before. What is this? Then you’ll turn the volume up and listen, confused, for a few seconds before realizing it’s a song you know well and have memorized. All at once the song snaps into clarity and you can’t believe that y
ou didn’t recognize it in the first place.

  Brit felt silly for not recognizing instantly that the thing before them was a vast, deep canyon, but she didn’t beat herself up about it. She was far too busy turning the cart as hard as she dared and yelling for Martin and Gwen to shift their weight to the cart’s inside edge.

  The outside wheels left the paved path and plowed through the dirt. The inside wheels spun freely in midair. Martin and Gwen perched on the upper edge of the cart, weighing it down and preparing to jump off if need be.

  Brit cursed herself for not seeing the canyon earlier. The wheels of the cart came within a few feet of the cliff as they careened past. Running parallel to the canyon, Brit straightened the cart out in an attempt to keep from turning it over and casting all of them into oblivion.

  Roy, oblivious to the danger, shouted, “Don’t turn so sharp! You’ll lose our motor!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do!” Brit replied.

  “Why?!” Roy asked.

  Brit grunted, “Can’t explain! We need to stop!”

  Roy said, “Oh, then you’ll have to turn sharper.” He looked back at the “motor”. The creature’s poor maneuverability had caused it to drift to the right side of the shield, but it corrected this, found the center again, and was still pushing. Just beyond the dirt creature, Roy saw a vast, yawning emptiness, the bottom of which glowed with fire. He yelped like a startled child, gripped the brake handle tighter, and yelled, “Okay, I see why we need to stop. Just remember to turn left.”

  Brit said, “I know that. But turning’s no good. We’re going too fast. We can’t turn sharp enough to lose it.”

  Brit was busy trying to steer. Gwen and Martin were trying to hold on to the side of the cart bed and looked as if they were thinking about jumping. Roy had a good grip, a good view, and a moment to think. He yelled to Brit, “Try a diminishing radius.”