The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes

by Wade Albert White

  The giant walked over to the outer edge of the tower where the wall had crumbled away. Black, scorched wasteland stretched in all directions. Shard thrashed even harder now, his shirttail whipping in the wind. When they reached the edge, the metal man didn’t hesitate. He simply stretched out his arm and opened his hand. Shard dropped over the side of the tower, leaving a trail of billowing black smoke.

  “SHE’LL FIND YOU!” he hollered as he fell. “SHE’LL FIND YOU, AND SHE’LL STOP YOU, AND SHE’LL TAKE BACK WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY HERS, AND YOU’LL NEVER EVER WIN AND—”

  Soon Shard’s words became indiscernible and were eventually swallowed by the wind. Anne didn’t know how long it would take him to hit the ground, and they couldn’t hear or see what happened anyway, which was fine because Anne didn’t want to think about that sort of thing.

  The metal man faced Anne. Her knees trembled as she waited for his next action.

  “Initiating security scan,” he said. The green beam of light swept over her.

  “Security scan complete. Intruder classification: friendly. Standing down from security alert.”

  Anne let out a breath in silent thanks, and relief flooded Penelope’s and Hiro’s faces as well. She was about to greet the giant metal man, but looking into his face, she found herself at a loss for words.

  The metal man’s eyes were yellow, just like hers.

  “Hello,” the metal giant said to them. “I am a PAL series robot. How may I be of assistance?”

  AN EXCERPT FROM THAERESA’S COMPENDIUM OF ROBOTS AND OTHER MYTHICAL CREATURES:

  Of all the creatures of legend, robots are perhaps the most terrifying, with their reinforced steel armor and their laser beam eyes and their extra-capacity memory modules that make them really hard to beat at word puzzles. Parents tell stories about them to frighten their children into eating vegetables and going to bed on time. They lurk in the shadows, prey on our fears, and live in our nightmares.

  So lock your doors, pull up the covers, and hang magnets from the rafters, because you never really know. They might be more real than you think.

  The Knight Who Never Lived

  Anne pushed Shard’s words about the Matron and everything that had just transpired out of her head for the moment. She edged her way around the metal man until she reached where Penelope and Hiro were standing. The metal man watched her with apparent interest but made no further moves, hostile or otherwise.

  “Are you two okay?” asked Anne.

  Hiro rubbed his neck. “A little sore, but I’ll be fine.” He turned to Penelope. “Thanks for that. You saved my life.”

  Penelope was clutching her stomach. “I was only trying to make him let you go. I had no idea a wooden sword could do that.” She tried to sheathe the sword, but it took her three attempts. “And you know what no one tells you about cutting off limbs?” she continued. “That it’s completely gross and makes you want to vomit afterward. Oh, wow, that is not at all what I thought real fighting would be like.”

  “If it helps, I don’t think Shard was human,” said Anne.

  “It doesn’t help. That much was obvious.”

  “No, I don’t mean the hyena thing. I mean the black smoke thing.”

  “Still not helping.”

  Anne moved to pat Penelope on the back, but Penelope held up her hand. “Seriously. If anyone so much as touches me right now, Hiro’s going to be wearing what little I ate for dinner last night on his shoes. Just give me a minute.”

  “You were very brave, Pen. I’m so proud of you.”

  “I’ll be proud of me, too, if I can avoid seeing my bread and cheese a second time.”

  “My shoes would like that as well,” said Hiro.

  Anne turned back to the metal man. He was holding out his hand to her. Jeffery’s tiny form lay in his palm next to Shard’s magick twig. Anne took the twig and put it in her pocket, and then she gently scooped up the sparrow.

  The metal man pointed at Jeffery. “Your sparrow has sustained an injury. Do you require assistance? My medical database is currently offline, but I will signal for another unit to come and provide any necessary first-aid treatment.” The metal man paused for a few seconds. “No other units are responding to my signal. Please remain calm. I will try again in sixty seconds.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Anne as Jeffery began to stir. “He’s just a little stunned, is all.” She nudged the tiny sparrow. “Jeffery, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  “I’m not sure,” mumbled Jeffery. “I’m seeing weird things, like a big metal guy.”

  “He’s real.”

  “Oh, okay then, I’m good.” He hopped up onto her gauntlet.

  “Thank you for protecting me,” she said.

  “Hey, what kind of sparrow would I be if I didn’t have my Keeper’s back?”

  Anne smiled at Jeffery, and then she regarded the metal man again. She’d spent her entire life around the iron knights, but this was different. Where the knights were uniform in appearance, this newcomer had a more haphazard look, as though its builder had had to make do with whatever materials were available. In fact, it reminded Anne of the pocketknife she’d made, now lost, built from whatever scraps she could find. Also, none of the iron knights had ever spoken or shown any signs of intelligence beyond the ability to recognize and carry out simple commands. And none of them had bright yellow eyes. Was it possible this creature held some link to Anne’s real home?

  “My name is Anne,” she said. “This is Penelope and Hiro. And Jeffery.”

  The metal man nodded at them. “Hello, Anne, Penelope, Hiro, and Jeffery. My name is Rokk.”

  “Nice to meet you, Rokk. May we ask what you’re doing up here in this tower?”

  Rokk looked around. “I am uncertain. I know that I was sent here to guard this place, but some of my memory modules seem to have sustained damage and/or been removed. Thus I am experiencing severe memory gaps. Are any of you by chance a licensed technician?”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say no, sorry,” said Anne.

  “That is most unfortunate,” said Rokk. “Well, it has been nice chatting with you, Anne, Penelope, Hiro, and Jeffery. I must now return to my patrol.” Before Anne could say anything more, Rokk turned and walked off through the rubble, sweeping the pillars with his green beam.

  “What is he?” hissed Penelope. “Or it? Or whatever?”

  Anne shrugged. “He referred to himself as a rowboat or something, but I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Maybe it’s another riddle?”

  “He didn’t say rowboat, he said robot,” said Hiro. “It’s an Old World term. It refers to a person who isn’t really a person. A kind of machine made to look like a person.”

  “Why make a machine that looks like a person?” said Penelope. “Were they running out of actual people in the Old World or something?”

  “They used robots for a variety of tasks,” Hiro explained. “Such as personal servants, construction projects, even to fight in wars.”

  The full impact of these implications hit her, and Anne began to tremble. Is that what she was? A machine? Built to do someone else’s bidding?

  “Anne, what’s wrong?” asked Penelope.

  “D-didn’t you see his eyes?”

  “Yeah. They kind of glow, like there’s a little fire lit inside each one.”

  “They were yellow, Pen. I’ve been wishing my whole life to find someone who has eyes like mine, and the first person I meet who does turns out not to be a person at all. What does that mean? What am I?”

  Penelope took Anne’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Oh, Anne. You’re being ridiculous. His eyes are more like lights or something. Yours are definitely of the human variety. Besides, you’re not made of metal. You’re flesh and blood, just like Hiro and me. I’m one hundred and fifty percent positive you’re not a robutt.”

  “Robot,” said Hiro. “It’s pronounced ro-bot.”

  “But what if I am?” said Anne. “M
aybe I’m missing memories, too, and I just don’t know it.”

  Penelope placed both her hands on Anne’s shoulders. “Even if you were, it wouldn’t change anything. We would still be best friends. And we would still have this quest to complete.”

  Right, Anne thought. The quest. The reason they had climbed the tower in the first place. The reason they were all together. Anne might actually get the answers she was looking for at the end of this quest, and that was why she could not afford to get sidetracked.

  Anne looked over at Rokk. “Do you think he knows anything about the quest?”

  Penelope shrugged. “Why don’t we ask him?”

  Rokk was examining a fallen pillar. As Anne, Penelope, and Hiro walked up from behind, Anne noticed some severely worn letters written across his back. She had to squint to make them out, but they seemed to spell a single seven-letter word:

  Anne pointed it out to the others.

  Penelope frowned. “I thought he said he was a PAL series robot, not a PALADIN series.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t entirely remember that, either,” offered Hiro.

  Anne snapped her fingers. “But that’s it, don’t you see?”

  “What’s it?” said Penelope.

  “A paladin. We’ve read about them, Pen. They’re an elite type of knight, the best of the best. And Hiro, you said robots are machines, which means they aren’t really alive, right? So if Rokk is both a paladin and a machine, that makes him the knight who never lived!”

  Penelope nodded. “Sounds plausible.”

  “I think you might be on to something,” said Hiro. “Everything fits.”

  Anne beamed. If Rokk himself was the knight, that meant they had solved the second line of the riddle, and they were halfway through the quest. Actually finishing didn’t seem quite so far-fetched anymore. They might really be able to pull this off.

  “Okay, okay, so if he’s the knight, what do we do now?” asked Penelope.

  “The riddle says, ‘Ask the knight who never lived,’” said Anne. “So I guess we’re supposed to ask him a question.”

  “Oh, about the key!” said Penelope. “It’s the third line of the riddle. I bet he knows something about the key you can’t hold.”

  “That makes sense, too,” said Hiro. “Maybe only robots can hold it or something.”

  Rokk had moved across the room and was shining his green light on the broken pillars. They approached and got his attention.

  “Hello again,” said Rokk. “I regret I am unable to offer you any refreshments as per my programming. Our supplies ran out ten thousand thirteen years, two days, seven hours, and thirty minutes ago. If you wish, I can take your order now and bring it to you once we have been properly restocked.”

  Anne cleared her throat. “Rokk, do you know anything about a key?”

  Rokk tilted his head. “Key. Definition: an instrument, usually metal, by which the bolt of a lock is turned.”

  “Uh, yeah, we already knew that,” Anne said. “We want to ask you about a specific key. It’s called ‘the key you cannot hold.’”

  “A key you cannot hold logically cannot be held,” said Rokk.

  “Yes, true,” Anne acknowledged. “But we were hoping maybe you could explain that part.”

  “The input parameters are unsound. Are you also in need of a licensed technician?”

  Anne turned back to Penelope and Hiro. “This isn’t going well.”

  “Try The Adventurer’s Guide,” said Penelope. “Maybe it knows what to ask him.”

  Anne took out the book. The title was the same, and Shard’s letter was still the only thing inside. “Maybe it’s broken,” said Anne.

  “Shard’s notes,” said Hiro suddenly.

  “What?” said Anne.

  “The guide keeps showing us this one letter from him, but maybe he left other letters, too. Maybe that’s what the book is trying to tell us. Shard gathered a lot of information about this tower. The question we need to ask Rokk could be somewhere in all of Shard’s notes. We could return to the base and bring Rokk with us.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Anne, shoving the guidebook back into the inner pocket of her cloak. “Jeffery, how much time is left?”

  “A little over one day and sixteen hours,” said Jeffery.

  “And how long did it take us to climb up here, minus the time we stopped?”

  “Close to nine hours.”

  Anne shook her head. “We can’t afford that much time. Didn’t anyone in the Old World invent something faster than stairs?”

  “If you jumped, you could reach the bottom in under a minute,” said Rokk.

  “We’ll call that Plan You Go First,” said Penelope.

  “Do you have any other, preferably nonlethal, suggestions?” asked Anne.

  “You could always use this vertical transport device,” said Rokk. He walked over to the center pillar and touched it. A crack appeared and a set of double doors slid apart, revealing a small square room.

  Penelope stuck her head through the doorway. “You want us to squeeze into this closet?”

  “It’s okay,” said Hiro. “I think it’s something called an elevator. They used them in Old World buildings to travel between floors.”

  “Is it faster than walking?” asked Anne.

  Rokk nodded. “This device is capable of returning you safely to the bottom of the tower in 2.78 minutes.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” said Hiro, stepping into the room.

  Anne turned to Rokk. “Will you come with us?”

  “I am not permitted to leave my patrol without a direct order,” said Rokk.

  Anne was certain Rokk was a piece of the puzzle they needed to solve, but she felt uneasy about telling him what to do. “We’re trying to solve a riddle and complete a quest, Rokk, and we could really use your help, but I think it should be your decision.”

  Rokk paused for such a long time that Anne began to wonder if he had stopped working altogether. “I will accompany you,” he said finally.

  “Great.” Anne held out the gauntlet to Jeffery. “Maybe you’d better hide back in the gauntlet until we’re out of the tower.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Jeffery, and he dove into it with a splash of light.

  Anne, Penelope, and Hiro fit into the elevator easily, but Rokk had to crouch and shuffle in sideways, forcing Anne and the others to flatten themselves against the walls to make room.

  “I am unable to reach the control panel from my current position,” said Rokk. “Pressing the downward triangle symbol on the top left will instruct the vertical transport to descend to the bottom of the tower.”

  Anne pressed the white triangle and the doors closed. There was a brief jerking motion.

  “I think we’re moving,” said Hiro nervously.

  “Do not be alarmed,” said Rokk. “We are now descending.”

  It was an unsettling feeling, as though they were almost falling but not quite. After slightly less than three minutes of this, the room jerked again, throwing Anne off balance. Thankfully, given how cramped the space was, her body had no place to go. The doors slid open again, and they found that they had indeed traveled back to the bottom of the tower. Rokk squeezed out first, and Anne and the others followed.

  “How about nobody points out how much easier and faster it would have been to reach the top of the tower if we had known about that elevator thing in the first place,” said Penelope.

  “Agreed,” said Anne and Hiro in unison.

  “Affirmative,” said Rokk.

  They walked over to the wall.

  Anne stepped forward. “We tried opening the door again, but couldn’t get the grid to—”

  “Activate interface,” said Rokk, and the grid appeared. He shone his green beam of light on it, and a nearby section of wall became fluid. One after the other, they exited the tower.

  The air was considerably warmer outside, although the morning sun was still low enough in the eastern sky that the dunes cast
a shadow over their campsite in the valley below.

  “Anne, over here,” called Penelope.

  Anne joined Penelope, who was standing next to a pile of well-tailored clothes, the ones Shard had been wearing. Penelope bent down and picked up the shirt. Coarse, dark sand spilled out the arm and neck holes. Shard himself, or his body, was nowhere to be seen.

  “What was he?” asked Penelope, kicking at the sand.

  “It’s like he was made of sand, too, just like the wolves,” said Anne. Despite all the stories she’d read, and all the fantastic creatures they had contained, it unnerved her to think they had spent nearly an entire day with Shard and never realized his true nature.

  Something glittered in the pile of sand that had poured out of Shard’s clothes. Anne reached down and pulled out a gold chain with a crystal on it. Shard must have been wearing it. It was identical to the one the Matron always wore.

  “So where should we start?” asked Penelope.

  Anne stuffed the gold chain and crystal into her coat pocket. “Let’s check the main tent first. His most important documents are probably in there.”

  The four of them started down the slope toward Shard’s tents—

  —and stopped short as a green fireball dropped out of the sky and obliterated the entire campsite. They watched in disbelief as small bits and pieces of burning tent canvas and parchment fluttered down from above. The burning globe rolled across the sand and came to a rest in front of them.

  Jocelyn stumbled from the smoking remains of the large tent, coughing and sputtering. Anne, Penelope, and Hiro yelled in surprise and delight, and they ran down the slope to her. Penelope found a chair, and Anne guided Jocelyn to it. Hiro brought a canteen of water and offered it to her. He also gave her a big hug.

  “Sorry I blew up your academy,” Hiro said.

  Jocelyn patted him on the shoulder. “Not to worry, dear. Sometimes it takes a while to work out all the kinks.” She took a drink of the water and surveyed their surroundings. “And speaking of working things out, who went and pitched their tent in a designated fireball landing zone?”