The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes

by Wade Albert White

  “What do you mean?” asked Anne.

  Hiro pointed to the tower. “The herald called it the Infinite Tower, but it’s not infinite. It’s not even close. We can see the top of it from here. It’s maybe two miles high at the most.”

  “That’s tall enough, isn’t it?” said Penelope.

  “I was just pointing out that it’s inaccurate,” mumbled Hiro.

  Shard drove the sand wolves down into the valley below the tower, where a campsite was already set up. Three tents had been pitched next to a pool of water surrounded by trees and sheltered by a rock formation. Shard released the sand wolves from the sled, and then he led Anne, Penelope, and Hiro into the largest of the tents. The temperature was several degrees cooler inside, and Anne shivered with delight. She had known it was hot out, but she hadn’t appreciated how much until that moment. A large table occupied the center. Spread across it were maps, writing quills, measuring devices, and several stacks of books.

  Shard went to the back of the tent and returned with a tray of hard biscuits and strange pieces of orange fruit they had to peel with their fingers. He also brought a large pitcher of water and three glasses. After a hurried meal (curiously, Shard neither ate nor drank anything himself), they helped him unload the sled. Or rather, Shard pointed to the crates and bags and explained where to put them, somehow managing once again to avoid touching a single item of cargo. They put most of the items in the two smaller tents, with the exception of two boxes of books.

  “Can we go see the tower now?” asked Anne once they had finished, anxious to solve the first line of the riddle. It was now well into the afternoon, and the clock on their quest was relentlessly ticking away.

  “Patience, patience, eager explorer,” said Shard. “I must gather a few items first.” He rummaged through the boxes and every now and then added another book to the stacks already on the table. Hiro selected a book from one of the piles and began flipping through the pages.

  “What’s this?” asked Penelope. She was standing next to a large ceramic ball in the corner. A diagonal wooden rod attached to a wooden stand entered through a hole in the bottom of the ball and exited through the top. The surface of the ball was primarily blue with large sections of green and brown. Anne thought it looked like a map, but she’d never seen one like it before.

  Shard walked over, placed his hand on top of the ball, and pulled down. The ball spun around the rod. “A trinket, a knickknack, a bauble.”

  “It’s a globe, isn’t it?” Hiro said suddenly.

  Shard frowned. “A what?”

  Hiro pointed to the spinning ball. “Some historians say the Old World used to be shaped like a ball. They called maps of the Old World globes.”

  Shard shrugged. “I have no idea, my learned young friend.”

  Hiro gave him a curious look and went back to reading the book.

  Once Shard finished combing through the boxes, he directed them each to pick up a stack of books from the table (along with their packs), and then he led them out of the tent. As they trudged up the sandy slope toward the tower, Hiro counted under his breath. When they reached the base, he took a book out of his pocket and flipped through it.

  “Did you know your campsite is currently located inside the designated fireball landing zone?” he said.

  Shard raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

  Hiro held up his copy of Rules for Questing. “It’s all in here.” He read from the page, “The area one hundred yards due east of any major quest location shall be designated as the fireball landing zone, to cover an area no less than twenty yards by twenty yards.”

  “I don’t own a dragon,” said Shard.

  “No, but you see, it isn’t only for outgoing fireballs, it’s the area for both arrivals and—”

  Shard snatched the book out of Hiro’s hand, closed it, and dropped it onto the stack of books he was carrying. “I think we’ve all read enough for now, yes?” he said, his eyes flashing.

  Hiro swallowed. “O-okay.”

  Shard guided them over to the tower. It was circular and easily a hundred feet in diameter. A platform extended ten feet out from the base around the entire circumference. The tower itself was one smooth unending surface with no visible seams.

  “Well, I guess we’re not climbing up the outside,” said Penelope.

  Shard stepped onto the platform and walked over to the tower itself. He tapped the wall, and a rectangular blue grid appeared on it, seemingly out of nowhere. Like magick. The grid contained all the letters of the alphabet along with various arcane symbols Anne couldn’t identify. To the right of the grid was a single blue square with a dot in the center.

  “What is it?” asked Anne.

  Shard leaned over conspiratorially. “I only recently discovered it. I believe it to be the way inside.” He tapped on some of the letters. As he touched each one, they appeared again in order in a space above the grid. He spelled out D-O-O-R, and then tapped the blue square. The string of letters flashed once, turned red, and a beep sounded. The word Shard had typed was replaced by two other words.

  “‘Access denied’?” Anne read.

  “That’s the only message I’ve ever received,” said Shard. “But if we combine our efforts, I think we might be able to find the right password.”

  “The right password for what?”

  “To open the door, of course. Logically, there must be one. Simply think of the password as knocking. So go ahead and try anything you can think of. Once you run out of ideas, we’ll try random words from these books.”

  “Okay,” said Anne, wondering what words she could possibly know that an archaeologist didn’t.

  Shard stepped away from the grid and gestured for Anne to go ahead. Figuring there was no reason not to begin with the obvious, Anne tried E-N-T-E-R. ACCESS DENIED flashed again. She tried O-P-E-N, A-C-C-E-S-S, and U-N-L-O-C-K. None of them worked. Anne continued punching in word after word, but without success. She even tried B-L-A-C-K-S-M-I-T-H. After twenty minutes, Penelope took over, and then Hiro after her. Despite their attempts, all anyone received was a beep and the words ACCESS DENIED. The sun beat down mercilessly the entire time.

  While Penelope took a second turn, Anne brought out The Adventurer’s Guide, hoping it might have changed to something more useful, but it was still filled with letters written by not-so-famous people. Hiro offered to skim through it and search for unusual words no one had thought of yet. Anne grabbed a dictionary to do the same thing.

  Jeffery appeared over the gauntlet. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “Looking for words,” said Anne.

  He hopped over to the stack of books lying in the sand. “If you let me eat a few of these, I might be able to help.”

  Anne shook her head. “I can’t. They’re not my books.”

  “But I’m starving,” he whined, “and you have all of these tasty-looking volumes just sitting here. We’re over a day and a half into this quest and I haven’t had a single bite. It’s animal cruelty.”

  Anne looked at his colorful feathers. “Are you even a real animal?”

  “That’s beside the point.” He sniffed the blue-covered book on the top of the pile. “I’d settle for part of a book. Even just a short poem.”

  “Jeffery, I’m sorry, I really am, but we don’t have time for this. If you want to help, you can read the books like everyone else. I’ll find you something to eat later once we’ve solved the first line of the riddle. I promise.”

  “Fine,” he said. “See what happens when you really do need me.”

  And he disappeared.

  “Jeffery?” she said, but he didn’t reappear. She decided to ignore him for the time being.

  Penelope walked over and flopped onto the sand next to Anne. “I’m dying out here.”

  “Me too,” said Anne, shutting the dictionary. “I feel like I’ve forgotten every word I ever knew.”

  “Pssst.”

  Anne looked up. Hiro motioned for her to join him. She scoote
d over, and he handed her the guidebook.

  “Check out this letter,” he said.

  Anne read the entry he was pointing to.

  Dearest Kaarle,

  My attempts to gain entry to the structure continue to be unsuccessful. No tool or weapon is able to mark it. No spell or magick is able to penetrate it. Despite my lack of progress, however, I am certain that something lurks inside. I have heard it late at night, and even observed the occasional flash of green light from the top.

  I am convinced more than ever that the Old World was indeed originally a sphere, that it was split apart by some catastrophic force (whether natural or unnatural I cannot even begin to speculate), and that the Hierarchy is all that remains. I have several new pieces of evidence to support my hypothesis, but I need to see what’s inside this blasted tower before I can publish my findings. As things now stand, I would be laughed out of the Society, and rightly so.

  I will find a way inside, no matter what, even if I must spend the rest of my life searching for the answer. Even if what lives in there kills me.

  With much affection,

  P. H. S.

  “Do you think this is about the Infinite Tower?” asked Anne.

  “I do,” said Hiro. “And look at the signature. I bet it stands for Plutarch H. Shard.” He checked behind them to make sure Shard couldn’t overhear. Then he said in a low voice, “Shard knows more than he’s telling us. He claimed not to know what the globe was, but it’s clear from this letter that he does. And what about these comments about something living in the tower? Why didn’t he mention anything about that?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to frighten us,” Anne suggested.

  “Maybe.” Hiro lowered his voice even further. “But listen to this. Earlier, back in the tent, when I asked him about the globe, I was holding a book on Old World mythology, which has a whole chapter on globe theory. I found it in one of his piles and recognized it from my classes. He saw me holding it, so why would he deny being familiar with it?”

  Anne read the letter again. If everything Hiro said was true, it was unsettling.

  Hiro started to get up, but Anne motioned for him to stay. “I’ll take another turn,” she said. “See if you can find out anything else in there.”

  Anne walked over and tapped the wall. The grid appeared. She raised her right hand to start entering words again, but paused. What if they had been going about it all wrong? They could be there for days on end trying every word imaginable. That seemed to be Shard’s plan. But didn’t riddles usually provide some key for solving their own puzzle? Then it occurred to her: Shard didn’t know about the riddle. The riddle was meant only for their quest.

  Anne considered the first line again:

  Climb the tower with no door.

  The Infinite Tower definitely matched that description, and coupled with the map from the guidebook, Anne felt certain they were in the right place. But what if there was another layer of meaning? Obviously, here was the tower with no door, but was there another way to read the line? Anne pondered the first phrase:

  Climb the tower.

  Somehow, they had to get to the top of the tower. If there was no way to scale it from the outside, then there must be a way inside.

  With no door.

  Maybe that phrase didn’t only describe the tower. Maybe it was an instruction. Maybe with didn’t just mean containing but also using, and the hidden key was the phrase no door. With a growing sense of excitement, Anne tapped in the letters N-O-D-O-O-R. At first, nothing happened, but the words ACCESS DENIED didn’t appear, either. Then—

  “What did you do?” exclaimed Penelope.

  Anne stared at the wall but still saw no change. “What?”

  Penelope motioned for Anne to step back. “Come over here.”

  From the edge of the platform, Anne could now see that one section of the hard, smooth wall looked… fluid, like the surface of the Saint Lupin’s moat on a windless day.

  Shard ran over. He had noticed the change, too. “Fantastically fantastic! Extraordinarily extraordinary! Outstandingly outstanding!”

  “How did you do that?” asked Penelope.

  Anne explained how she had come up with the password.

  Penelope hugged her. “That was brilliant, Anne! Absolutely brilliant!”

  “Well done,” Hiro agreed, handing the guidebook back to Anne.

  Anne stood in front of the shimmering rectangle. “So how does it work? It’s not like any door I’ve ever seen.”

  Shard picked up a pebble of coarse sand and tossed it. The pebble disappeared into the fluid section of the wall, sending ripples outward from where it struck the surface. The ripples expanded and then stopped, like waves hitting a riverbank, forming a tall retangular outline.

  “Well, I’m guessing the sand went somewhere,” said Hiro.

  “As shall we, dear boy, as shall we,” said Shard, clapping Hiro on the back and nearly knocking him off his feet. “Let us collect our things.”

  While everyone hastily gathered their belongings, Penelope pulled Anne aside. “Are you sure about this?” she whispered.

  Anne shrugged. “It’s what we came here for. I don’t want to turn back from our quest now.”

  “Not that. I mean, do you really want to go in there with him?” Penelope nodded in Shard’s direction.

  In truth, Anne very much did not want to go anywhere with Shard. If the letter they’d read in The Adventurer’s Guide was indeed his, then he was hiding things from them. Then again, what choice did they have? Shard now knew the password, too, so they couldn’t keep him out. Nor could they delay their quest.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she said to Penelope, despite her own misgivings. “Everyone ready?” she asked as they rejoined the others. Penelope and Hiro lined up behind her, with Shard bringing up the rear.

  Anne took a deep breath and stepped into the doorway.

  One by one, the others followed her in.

  And one by one, they disappeared.

  THE TALE OF THE INFINITE TOWER

  Once upon a time there lived a young princess who wished to visit the sky. So she traveled to the Infinite Tower (which was really just a very tall tower, but hey, advertising is everything). Unfortunately, an evil witch lived at the top of the tower, and the witch didn’t like visitors, most especially princesses. When the princess drew near, the witch sent down an evil knight to kill her. But the knight fell in love with the princess, and to prevent the witch from harming anyone ever again, he cut the tower in two and sent the top half crumbling to the ground, where it scattered to dust. This actually annoyed the princess, who preferred sensitive knights who wrote in their journals and didn’t take out their anger-management issues on poor innocent landmarks.

  So the princess bought a circus and traveled the countryside, and the evil knight was never seen or heard from again. To this day, though, there are people who say he lives at the top of the broken tower still.

  Inside the Infinite Tower

  To the extent that a wall is capable of spitting out a person, the wall spit Anne out. Or, more accurately, spit Anne in. She stumbled but managed to stay on her feet. The lighting was extremely dim, and she couldn’t make out her surroundings other than sensing that she was inside a large space. She heard several gasps, which suggested the wall had also deposited the others.

  “W-where are we?” Hiro said from somewhere to her right.

  “My guess would be inside the tower,” Anne replied.

  Behind her came a tapping sound. “The wall is solid again,” Penelope said. “And the grid doesn’t appear inside.”

  “Fear not,” exclaimed Shard from somewhere in front of them, “for I shall protect you against whatever nefarious evil might lurk within.”

  “Great, I feel so much safer now,” muttered Penelope.

  Thin shafts of light trickled down from somewhere far above. As Anne’s eyes adjusted, she could make out the others, if indistinctly, as well as the tower’s interior.
It was mostly empty. The floor was covered in sand, which in places had drifted into piles, along with large chunks of dark jagged stone. The one prominent feature was a single pillar in the center that extended upward as far as they could see. It would have taken at least eight large people holding hands to reach all the way around it.

  The other feature of interest was a staircase. The steps were approximately six feet wide and spiraled upward along the exterior wall. Presumably, the staircase led all the way to the top. Of particular note, it had no railing.

  “Spectacular,” shouted Shard, his voice echoing in the tower. “Outstanding. Monumental. A true test of skill and bravery. All too fitting for such a hardy group of explorers as we. Incidentally, I’ve been experiencing some mild back pain, so I wonder if you might help me with my equipment.” He dropped a pack into each of their arms, stretched luxuriously, and marched up the stairs (or rather, given his short legs, hopped up the stairs).

  Anne sighed and slung Shard’s bag over her shoulder.

  Hiro crouched next to the first step and moved his hand along it.

  “Is there a problem?” asked Anne.

  “I’m measuring,” he said. “Each step is approximately seven inches high, so that’s an elevation of seven feet every twelve steps. One mile contains five thousand two hundred eighty feet, so that means we’ll climb a little over nine thousand steps for every mile we go up, or a total of over eighteen thousand steps, presuming I’m right and the tower really is two miles high. If we average, say, twenty-seven hundred steps per hour… uh, this could take a while.”

  “I could have told you that just by looking up,” said Penelope.

  “How long?” asked Anne.

  “Almost seven hours,” said Hiro. “And that’s if we can keep going at the same pace. The reality is, we’re going to get tired and progressively slower as we go.”

  “So what?” said Penelope.

  “It’s late afternoon already. We’re not going to make it to the top before nightfall,” said Hiro.