A World Without Heroes

by Brandon Mull

  CHAPTER 7

  JUGARD

  The day was cooler than the previous one. White clouds crowded the sky, billowy masses suspended high above the countryside, casting huge shadows over the landscape. The dirt path, much narrower than the one leading up to the castle gate, wound down through an orchard, then along a fence across pasturelands.

  Jason moved at a good pace, impelled by the likelihood that the rider spotted from the castle was after him. Rachel remained beside him, matching his pace, stealing occasional glances back at the ruined castle.

  “Do you think any of this is really happening?” she asked.

  “It’s happening,” Jason replied.

  Rachel remained quiet for a moment. “Of course you think it’s happening,” she finally said. “You’re just a character in my dream.”

  “You wish.”

  “I didn’t mean my love interest,” she replied defensively. “You’d have better hair. You’re the character I dreamed up because the rest of the dream was making me homesick.”

  “Maybe you’re the character I dreamed up to scare myself awake.”

  “That’s not very nice!”

  “You made fun of my hair. I like it this way. Short and simple.”

  “I don’t mind short. Mine is short.”

  “Then what’s wrong with mine?” Jason challenged.

  “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

  “Like the guy on a horse coming to kill us?”

  “It needs more style,” she muttered.

  “The horse?”

  “Your hair.”

  “I forgot to bring my gel when I got eaten by a hippo.”

  “I’m sorry. Your hair is fine. I was trying to be funny.”

  “I’ll give you points for trying.” Jason sighed. “This isn’t a dream.”

  “I know,” Rachel said heavily. “I just wish it was.”

  When the path joined the lane, Jason scanned up and down the length of the road. To the east he could see the rooftops and chimney pots of a small town. In the distance to the west he saw the obelisk marking the crossroads. The lane appeared empty.

  Jason and Rachel hurried to the obelisk and turned south. He considered how easily a man on horseback could overtake them. Supposedly their pursuer was accompanied by someone on foot. That might slow him. But what if the horseman rode ahead? Taking his poniard from his pocket, Jason fingered the blossom on the handle that could eject the blade. Hopefully, the Blind King would somehow stall their pursuers.

  “You got the cool knife and the ring,” Rachel grumbled.

  “So what? You got a grenade.”

  “I can only use mine once. And that’s if I don’t blow myself up first. I can tell women aren’t very respected around here.”

  “I’m not sure anyone gets much respect around here,” Jason replied. “So the only stuff you had when you crossed over to this world was your canteen and your camera?”

  “Yeah,” Rachel said.

  “Digital?”

  “No, film. We develop our own photographs.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  “My parents have a lot of land,” Rachel said. “They have some extra houses and workspaces that they lend out to artists and writers and photographers.”

  “Wow, and I thought I grew up granola in Colorado. Do you guys have campfires and sing together?”

  “It isn’t that weird,” Rachel said. “I do lots of normal stuff too.”

  “Like attend school at home? Let me guess, were you most likely to succeed? Best dressed? Class clown? All of the above?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I bet you’re in a lot of the yearbook pictures.”

  She shook her head. “I miss out on having an official yearbook. But we take lots of photos.”

  “Don’t you miss having friends?”

  “I have friends!”

  “Besides your stuffed animals.”

  Rachel smacked his shoulder. “I have plenty of friends. Public school isn’t the only way to meet people. I’m part of a group of homeschooled kids who do stuff together. A few are oddballs, but most of them are cool and interesting. Plus all the visiting artists, and the kids on the track team, and my cousins.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” Jason admitted. “If I could still play baseball and do school at home, I might be sold. Especially if it involved lots of fancy vacations disguised as learning.” He tried to imagine how that would work. His family had only taken a few vacations together, none very impressive. His brother and sister were quite a bit older, and his mom and dad had always done their fancy trips without kids. His parents had never really shown as much interest in him as they had in his older siblings. He couldn’t imagine them taking the time to homeschool him.

  Jason glanced back. “I keep expecting to see enemies attacking from behind.”

  “I know,” Rachel said. “Kind of hard on the nerves. Do you get the feeling our lives might never be normal again?”

  Jason pressed his lips together. She had just voiced the thought that had been nagging him ever since the Blind King explained their mission. “Yeah.”

  They picked up the pace, alternating between jogging and walking. Jason was mildly surprised to find that Rachel could match any pace he set. Apparently she hadn’t lied about running track.

  They ate lunch and dinner walking, feeding on meat and cheese sandwiches created from provisions in the satchel. While scrabbling through the satchel for his dinner, Jason noticed a drawstring bag. Hefting it, he was surprised to find that the small bag felt fairly heavy. Inside he found little pellets of copper and bronze.

  “What are these for?” Jason asked. “Slingshot ammunition?”

  “Probably money,” Rachel suggested.

  “Could we be that lucky?” Jason asked.

  “The Blind King wants us to succeed.”

  “Somebody should tell these guys about coins,” Jason muttered, putting the little bag away. “It doesn’t seem very convenient to have your cash rolling around.”

  As time wore on, they walked more than they jogged. Jason’s feet felt sore, but Rachel hadn’t complained, so he hadn’t either. They passed no sign of human life but observed plenty of rodents and birds.

  As the sun grew fat and red on the horizon, a moist breeze began to blow in Jason’s face. Plodding up a long incline, he debated whether he should fish out his remaining energy berries. Cresting the rise, he finally saw the sea, a blue-gray immensity stretching to the edge of sight, still at least a few miles off down a long slope.

  “Low tide won’t hit until noon tomorrow,” Jason said. “Looks like we’ll have more cover up here than we will down there.”

  “The woods really thin out on the far side of this ridge,” Rachel agreed. She crouched and studied the hard-packed dirt lane. “I can see traces of our boots. We should walk down the path a ways, maybe leave it a few times, then double back cross-country. In case they’re tracking us.”

  “You’re right,” Jason admitted, thinking of Aster’s fate. “We should probably take precautions.”

  Jason followed Rachel farther along the path, stomping his feet. She glanced back at him. “Don’t step harder than you were earlier. It might alert them that we’re making a false trail.”

  “Have you done this before?”

  “Whenever I escaped from juvie.”

  Jason chuckled. “Right. You know, we’ll have to trade off keeping watch tonight.”

  She nodded. “Weird that we haven’t seen anybody. Nobody using the road, no houses.”

  “Yeah, it’s isolated. I’m going to miss my bed at the castle.”

  After leaving the path several times, Rachel gingerly followed an improvised route that took them back up the slope into the woods. She selected a spot a good distance from the road, with plenty of trees and bushes to screen their presence. Despite the cover, the location still afforded a view of the lane.

  Following a hasty meal, Jason offered to take th
e first watch. Bundling himself in cloak and blanket, cushioned by flattened weeds, he rested his back against a tree and fought to stay awake. As the light of day faded, the rhythm of Rachel’s breathing, the chirping of the insects, and the sensory deprivation of the darkness overcame his fears, and Jason sagged into a deep slumber.

  Jason jerked awake. He felt damp. Predawn mist shrouded the landscape, intensifying the morning chill. As he uncurled and stood, his shins felt sore, probably from all the jogging done in boots the day before. The noise of his motion disturbed Rachel. Wiping her bleary eyes, she sat up.

  “What time is it?” she asked. “What about my watch? Did you fall asleep?”

  “No,” Jason lied. “You looked tired. I wanted to let you rest.”

  “Then why do you have leaf prints and smudges of soil on your cheek?” Rachel asked. “Were you on guard with your face in a leaf pile?”

  “I didn’t try to fall asleep,” Jason apologized. “It got dark and really boring.”

  “Boring is the goal,” Rachel said, pulling her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. “The opposite of boring might be somebody cutting our throats.”

  Jason winced. Back home several of his classes had bored him. He’d spent tons of late nights trying to find something on television. Much of the time his life had felt planned for him, lacking real purpose, and his boredom had emphasized the problem. But Rachel was right. Boredom was now their friend.

  Jason squinted into the mist. “I can’t see the lane.”

  “If somebody is tracking us, the fog should work in our favor,” Rachel pointed out.

  “I wonder when the mist showed up?” Jason mused.

  “Hard to say,” Rachel said wryly. “We miss that kind of information when we’re both sleeping.”

  “Don’t be that way. At least it worked out. Now we’ll be well rested when we throw ourselves off a cliff into the ocean.” He stretched his arms wide and groaned. “Want some breakfast? We should probably get going while we have extra cover from the mist.”

  “Okay. Maybe just a bite before we start.”

  Jason sorted through their food, selecting some dried meat and tough bread. When he found that the remnants of the mushrooms the loremaster had given him were beginning to smell funny and had fuzzy patches of mold, he threw them out, wondering whether he would regret the loss once their rations ran out.

  Munching on bread and meat, Jason and Rachel tramped through dewy undergrowth back to the road, their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. Jason shivered. The damp cold seemed to seep through all layers of clothing.

  “Let’s check for hoofprints,” Rachel suggested.

  In the growing light, breathing foggy air, Jason searched inexpertly for fresh signs of a horse. “I don’t see anything,” he finally announced.

  “Then let’s be extra ready for our enemies to approach from behind,” Rachel replied.

  Briskly they followed the lane toward the ocean. After cresting the rise from the day before, the lane wound down to the coast, snaking back and forth to offset the steeper portions of the slope. The farther they descended along the path, the denser the fog became. Jason threw a stone as far as he could and watched it disappear into grayness long before it thudded against the ground, rustling the brush. Before long he could see only a few paces ahead. At any moment he expected a fearsome horseman to lope out of the murk.

  As they approached the cliffs, the view of the ocean returned. Low sunlight spread over the water from off to the left, texturing the surface in striking relief by shadowing the troughs between swells.

  “Pretty,” Rachel commented. “But I miss the cover of the fog.”

  They reached the point where the road elbowed left, paralleling the cliffs as far as Jason could see. As Galloran had instructed, they abandoned the road, continuing south. They soon reached a gentle trickle of a stream.

  The stream flowed toward the cliffs, slurping away into a narrow crack not ten paces from the edge. Unhealthy tufts of scraggly weeds flanked the feeble rivulet.

  Jason cautiously approached the rocky brink of the cliff. The view was spectacular. He stood more than seventy feet above the churning surf, at the center of a curving amphitheater of cliffs bordering a wide inlet. At either hand sheer faces of dark stone towered above surging bursts of foamy spray. No reef or shallows slowed the swells as they rose up and flung themselves in frothy explosions against alien formations of rock.

  Rachel came up beside him, her stance casual, a hand on one hip. Then she stepped even closer to the edge, leaning forward to gaze straight down. Her proximity to the brink gave Jason chills, but he kept quiet.

  “Looks like suicide,” Rachel said, drawing back from the edge.

  “Maybe it will look better at low tide,” Jason hoped.

  “There will probably just be more rocks poking up,” Rachel said. “You a good swimmer?”

  “I’m fine,” Jason said. “I’m no Olympian. How about you?”

  “I’m pretty good. I’ve done a fair amount of snorkeling and scuba diving. But no serious cliff diving. This is high.”

  Turning, Jason stared back at the slope they had descended, realizing that they commanded a clear view of the lane for miles. At least no manglers or other sinister creatures intent on hacking them into confetti should be able to sneak up on them.

  “I guess we wait here for midday,” Jason said, sitting down and settling back against a little wind-warped tree. Hands in his lap, he gazed at the long slope and its serpentine lane.

  “Let me guess; you’ll take the first watch? Then we’ll wake up at midnight?”

  “I’m not sleepy,” Jason protested.

  “Neither am I,” Rachel said, sitting down cross-legged. “So, how do you think we’ll get back up?”

  “There must be a way. Maybe the person in the cave knows how.”

  “Are we really going to do this? Jump off a cliff and swim into a sea cave? We’ll probably die.”

  “What else are we going to do?” Jason asked. “If there were any other option I might take it. But it seems clear that if we abandon this quest for the Word, we’re doomed. I’d rather risk my life than lose it for sure.”

  “You believe everything the Blind King told you?” Rachel asked.

  “Yeah, I think so. It matched what I read in the book, and what I heard from the loremaster.”

  “You believe him enough to risk our lives?”

  Jason paused. “No. I believe him enough to risk my life. I don’t see why both of us should jump.”

  Rachel scratched her arm. “Why do you get to jump? Because you’re the boy?”

  “It isn’t a prize; it’s a punishment.”

  “It’s something important that needs to be done.”

  “Do you just love to argue? If somebody wanted to jump off a cliff instead of me, I’d be relieved.”

  “I do want to jump instead of you.”

  Jason rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to be nice. And fair. I was the one who read the book. This quest is my fault. Besides, I’m bigger than you, which will give me a better chance of surviving the rough surf.”

  The explanation silenced Rachel for a moment. She picked at the small weeds in front of her. “It’s really nice of you to offer,” she finally said. “I can tell you don’t love heights.”

  “I don’t like edges,” Jason corrected. “I’m fine if you give me a guardrail or put me in a plane or send me on a roller coaster. Let’s not worry about this for now.” He closed his eyes.

  “What exactly is a mangler?” Rachel wondered aloud.

  He opened his eyes. “We never really had that explained, did we? I guess something nasty that chops people into sushi. I think we’ll know it when we see it.”

  She nodded. “Before we do this, maybe you should tell me the syllable you learned. You know, in case I have to continue alone.”

  “Are you trying to jinx us? Thanks for the confidence!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being prepared for worst-
case scenarios.”

  “You should sell insurance.”

  She huffed, standing up. “Fine.”

  “Wow, don’t be so touchy.”

  “You don’t have to make fun of everything.”

  “Maybe we should just enjoy the music of the waves,” Jason placated.

  She sat back down.

  Jason made himself as comfortable as possible against the contorted tree. “The first syllable is ‘a.’ Just in case.”

  “Was that so hard?”

  Jason grinned, deciding to quit while he was kind of ahead. Rachel certainly wasn’t a pushover. She had strong opinions, and little fear of sharing them. A good argument could help pass the time, but Jason found himself wondering whether traveling with Rachel would become annoying. If he were going to meet up with somebody from his world, why couldn’t it have been Matt or Tim? They could back him up in a fight, and would be more fun to hang out with. Or if it had to be a girl, why not somebody less obnoxious, like April Knudsen?

  The rhythmic crashing of the waves below, like a mighty wind rising and falling with unnatural regularity, lulled him into deep relaxation. Breathing the salt-tinged air, he closed his eyes again.

  And woke with a start, Rachel jostling his shoulder. Shadows were small. The sun was high. It was nearly midday. The air was still not warm, though the sun shone brightly.

  “Maybe you have narcolepsy,” Rachel suggested as he staggered to his feet.

  Jason wiped his eyes. “I just love naps.”

  “Well, warn me before you operate heavy machinery.”

  Scanning the slope, Jason detected no sign of pursuit. Feeling abashed for having dozed off again, he unlaced his boots and yanked them off.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m the jumper.” Jason proceeded to disrobe until he wore only his boxers—blue with narrow yellow stripes. He reflected that his boxers and boots were now the only clothes in his possession that he had brought from home.

  Rachel had turned away. “Not very shy, are you?”