The Gang of Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  “Maybe not,” said Heidi, “but there are some great foreign exchange programs out there. You could study abroad, here in England, or maybe China …”

  Carson only said sadly, “I don’t speak Chinese.”

  Heidi gently patted his arm. “There, there.”

  I led us to one of the tables. Borrick sat beside me on the shorter edge, Heidi guided Carson into seats opposite (and also moved aside a massively unkempt Boston fern in a black ceramic pot, which had almost tripled in size in the four days since treating it with fertilizer from ‘bigger-horses’, which Benson assured me was the creatures’ actual species name). Bub pulled up a chair from the opposite table to sit on the other short edge, at odds to Borrick. He perched on the seat, looking as comically oversized as ever, and I made a mental note to look into getting something for him that was a little more in proportion.

  “Right,” I said, “first: the Borrick issue. Carson, I know what we’ve been through with him before—believe me, I have not forgotten—but he’s … changed.”

  “I have,” Borrick said.

  “Changed how?”

  “Well, for one, I’ve teamed up with Mira rather than hiring an army of fairixies to do my bidding and usurp her goals.” When that did not elicit the smile Borrick apparently expected, judging by the subtle rise of his own lips, Borrick said more seriously, “My father has pushed me my whole life. After Vincin’s quest, I realized—no more. I’d become a shadow of him, and when I took a look at myself and saw that, I didn’t like it. Therefore … here I am.”

  “Like a reformed criminal,” said Heidi.

  Borrick’s lips thinned. “I was never a criminal. I may have employed methods you do not agree with—”

  “Hard to, when you’re being swiped at by hordes of orcs and marachti—”

  “—but the worst that can be said of me is that I held your friend hostage as a bargaining chip.”

  “Actually you threatened to kill him.”

  Carson’s eyes bulged. “What?” he squeaked, channeling the beret girl from the university campus. “When?”

  “I didn’t harm a hair on his head though,” said Borrick.

  “Oh, geez …” Carson cleared his throat. His glasses were slipping down his nose again, on a film of sweat. He pushed them up with a finger, then clasped both hands tight around the strap of his manbag. “And you all trust him now.”

  Heidi said, “‘Trust’ is a bit of a strong word.”

  “Yes, I trust him,” I said, “at least enough to have him here in the hideout.”

  “Oh, geez …”

  Pursing his lips, Borrick said, “I’d really rather you give me the benefit of the doubt. I’ve been here for almost a fortnight now, sometimes alone—” he wagged his mug, which wafted the pungent, bitter odor of coffee beans into the air “—and I’ve done nothing untoward.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “If he wanted to—I don’t know—steal the Chalice Gloria or something, he has had plenty of opportunity, and he hasn’t acted on it.”

  “I’m not a thief,” said Borrick, “which is more than I can say for some of us.”

  He glared at Bub—all of us glared at Bub.

  “What?” the orc asked.

  “I’ve told you more than once about my shampoo,” said Heidi. “You keep using it, and you never replace it.”

  “How much are you even using?” I asked. “Because you stink the place out for days with it.”

  Bub rolled a shrug, armor clanking as the plates shifted. “Half a bottle?”

  “Half a bottle?” Heidi spluttered. “You’ve hardly even got any hair!”

  “But it’s so enchanting,” Bub singsonged dreamily.

  “You’ve got to start hiding it up,” I told Heidi.

  “I thought I did,” she grumbled. “I’ve been putting it at the back of the cabinet, behind the first aid box.”

  “Ahh,” said Bub. “So that’s why it was all the way back there. Doesn't matter; I follow my nose to it in any case, and it takes me away to a beautiful place where bubbles fill the air.”

  “Borrick has proven himself to be kind of an arse in the past,” I went on to Carson, steering us back on track—Borrick scowled—“but he has also proven himself, recently, to be a man of his word. He has changed; we can trust him. And I do.”

  Borrick’s expression lightened. “Thank you, Mira. Mostly.”

  Carson didn’t appear to be having any of this though. Shaking his head, he rocked on his seat. “The world has turned upside down.”

  “Oh, Carson,” Heidi said. “Didn’t you realize? It’s always been a bit bonkers.”

  He looked back at her with wild eyes—and then, before he could say anything, an animal that looked like a tabby cat and a black mole had had a baby hopped up onto his lap from under the table. It prodded at him with its long nose—then, with a noise like the hum of a hive of bees turned down low, it began to nibble on a spot of dirt on his sweater.

  Carson stared.

  “Err—what is this thing?”

  “Meet Slash,” I introduced. “He’s a nurfnout.”

  Carson looked at me like I’d spouted Egyptian. “A what?”

  “A nurfnout,” said Heidi, patting Slash on the rump. The little creature had gotten its forepaws involved now too, gripping to Carson’s sweater and gently chewing on it. “They eat dirt. Mira figured we should get a few; save ourselves from having to polish and dust this place.”

  “There are a few around here,” I said, looking over the back of my chair to peer for them. Sure enough, I caught sight of one, with a dull orange coat and murky eyes, perched on one of the very top shelves of a bookcase, dozing. “We named them after rock singers.”

  Slash released Carson’s sweater. The patch of dirt was gone, although in its place was a dark wet patch.

  “It’ll dry soon,” said Heidi. “And it smells like fabric-softener.”

  The nurfnout rotated on Carson’s lap, then settled down. He closed his rheumy brown eyes. Carson stared, boggle-eyed.

  “The second thing we need to discuss,” I went on, “is what we’re going to do about this quest.”

  “Quest?” asked Borrick.

  I filled him in on what we had discussed with Burnton. Borrick’s eyebrows lifted. “The Spoon of Abundance … the Antecessors were really having a field day with that dinner theme, weren’t they?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Tyran didn’t say—he wants to go on the quest together. I mean, we could possibly find out ourselves …” Not likely, though, I thought, glancing to Carson. Short-notice breakthroughs required all of us working at maximum capacity—Carson working at maximum capacity; I was very well aware that Heidi and I offered very little input to the whole thing.

  I didn’t think I could really rope Carson into that sort of thing just now though.

  “Tyran wants to go on the quest together,” I said. “All the objects throughout the questline are needed for the final reward, so I’ll need to be involved at the end of it anyway if I want to get my hands on … whatever it is.”

  Carson groaned.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s up?”

  “I thought you’d changed,” he said. “I thought you’d actually had some sort of breakthrough about the pointlessness of fame and ‘glory’.”

  “I have,” I said. “It is pointless, all of it. The Antecessors aren’t interested in anything more than watching us scrabble over each other and skirt death for their weird reality TV type thing they’ve got going on.”

  Carson looked suddenly lost. “Huh?”

  “Oh, right—you don’t know yet. Right, well in that case, I have a lot to fill you in on.”

  “Get him up to speed later,” said Heidi. “Burnton has us on a clock.”

  “Okay.” I breathed, trying to steady my thoughts. So much to juggle here. “The quests are pointless, totally pointless. Nevertheless, I need to be involved with this one, otherwise I loc
k off Tyran and anyone else from proceeding with it—or invite the Seeker world to come murder me for the Chalice Gloria and the Fork of Undying.”

  “Fork?” Carson echoed.

  “The Antecessors were clearly planning some sort of dinner party,” said Heidi.

  “This questline lives or dies with me,” I said. “And, totally pointless as it most definitely is, I owe it to the Seeker community, past, present, and future, to at least see it through.” Eyebrows knitting together, I added, “Plus, head up his backside or not, I kind of like Tyran Burnton … in a weird sort of way.”

  Borrick murmured, “I’ll have to meet this Tyran Burnton sometime.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said—and then quickly corrected, “That is if we’re all in on this.” I looked around the table.

  “I’m … in,” said Heidi hesitantly. “It’s not going to take long, right? Because the Flames …”

  “I’m sure it’ll be quick,” I said. “In, out, and then Burnton and his crew can do all the legwork in figuring out where the last part of the questline leads.”

  “Gotcha. Then, yep, I’m in.”

  “Bub? What about you?”

  “In, Miss Mira,” he said.

  “Borrick?”

  “Count me in.”

  I nodded. That was all of us—except for Carson.

  We all looked to him.

  He bit his lip. Clutching tight onto his manbag, he said, “I don’t see why you can’t just give Burnton the parts he needs for this quest and just be done with it. I thought you’d grown.”

  “I have—”

  “So why are you still doing this?”

  “The prizes are meaningless,” I answered, “but the adventure—that’s not. I enjoy that—a little bit too much sometimes, yes—but that’s what means something to me—that and doing it with my friends.”

  His jaw clenched. “It just sounds as self-aggrandizing as ever to me.”

  “It’s not,” I said. “I promise you. This spoon thing—Tyran can have it, it and the final prize.” Doing my absolute hardest to meet Carson’s gaze—he would not level it at me except for the briefest of glances—I said, “If you want to go home, then I will take you. But I do think you need to lay low for a while, after what happened just now.”

  “And what better way to lay low than by throwing myself into danger all over again for a spoon,” he muttered. “This sounds like an episode of The Tick.”

  I flashed an apologetic smile. “We’re almost done. The last thing in this questline we’ve been working on—we’re almost upon it. Isn’t a little part of you at least slightly excited?”

  “No,” he said firmly. Then he sighed. “But … seeing as I can’t go back home right now … maybe not ever, when those videos hit the news … I might as well go with you. But after this, I am done—no more.”

  I grinned. “That’s fine by me.” It wasn’t the acceptance I’d been hoping for, not even a fraction of it—but Carson was on board. And maybe, as we saw this through, he’d change his mind on a somewhat more permanent basis.

  7

  I was walking through the halls of Lady Angelica’s house. Her robot butler guided me, past plinths with relics from other worlds—only the relics had been replaced with holographic QR codes, and the robot butler was a box-bodied automaton with long, writhing arms.

  The stairs leading to the next floor went up and up. I climbed them, the automaton loping ahead of me. Its hugely long legs let it take the stairs four at a time.

  If this were her actual home, it could reach the landing in only four steps.

  But here, something had changed. The steps here went on and on, round corners, higher and higher. Alcoves were carved into the walls, and again there were those holographic QR codes. If I had my phone, and a code reader, I’d take it out and scan one, see what it said or where it led. But my pockets were empty, all of them. I didn’t even have the line launcher, or Decidian’s Spear—but there was the compass, oversized, for some reason in my hand. The needle spun madly, drawing frenetic circles round and around. The face flashed—one moment there were hazardous peaks, the next a room full of crystal, then a view of—was that a night sky?—galaxies and stars; then the crystal room was back again, a purple pillar rising in its center …

  Anyway—I couldn’t scan one of these codes even if I had the means. My legs carried me without instruction, moving entirely of their own accord. Like the automaton leading me up the nigh-endless flight of steps, I didn’t think I could stop them.

  At any rate, the higher we went, the more scrambled the holograms were becoming. They broke apart, looking like a sledgehammer had sailed through them and broken the images into disparate fragments.

  By the time we finally got to the top, the holograms were little more than staticky fuzz.

  The top landing was small, a couple of meters square. It was walled in on the left and right. A door occupied the final wall, oak and polished.

  The automaton placed one of its long arms on the door handle. It split open, splintering into human-like fingers—but too long—and enclosed the doorknob.

  Turning to me, it had become a robotic hawk, its beak sheared off.

  “MIRA BRAAAAND,” it intoned—and then it tugged the door open and vanished.

  Darkness inside, looming down from all angles.

  I peered in.

  Wasn’t Lady Angelica supposed to be here?

  I glanced behind me.

  The stairs were gone. The landing was nothing more than a two-meter-by-two-meter room, with only myself to occupy it—and, of course, this door to the shadows.

  The compass whirled.

  The crystal room was back in it.

  Where had I seen that before?

  I stepped through the doorway—legs carrying me of their own accord?—and the lights clicked on.

  I was in the crystal room.

  Faceted and gleaming and white, all around me, I peered through it. It was expertly polished, all fractal—and yet, clear as it was, it must have stretched for miles and miles, for at some point my eyes could peer no farther. Darkness pressed in, like the shadows that had blotted this room from my sight before I stepped into it.

  In the center of the room, a pink crystal spire grew, connecting ceiling and floor. It tapered in at the middle, widening at the base and top, like a stalagmite and stalactite had embraced in a kiss after millions of years peering at each other across this short abyss.

  I’d seen this place before—I knew I had. It was where—

  “Manny.”

  I whipped around at the sound of Burnton’s voice.

  The door was gone.

  I was boxed in again.

  And he was there, when I turned back, leering at me around the crystal pillar. He paced, a couple of steps this way and that, trailing a hand across its surface.

  His gold garb was strangely muted in here.

  “He’s still in here, Mira,” said Burnton.

  Then a flash—a timer, ticking down on the compass face now—and Burnton’s face was bloody. A rivulet of crimson trickled down from his hairline, streaking over one eye. The white had turned red.

  “We’re all still in here.”

  The flash again, colors, like I was falling through a gateway to another place—

  Burnton was gone … except for bloody bootprints left behind on the crystalline, polished floor.

  I trekked around them, granting as wide a berth as I could.

  Walls, walls …

  I’d been in these walls.

  The compass spun.

  And Manny …

  Every corner looked the same, every stretch from edge to edge of the room. Not identical, at least I was pretty sure—but how to discern one part of the room from any other similar section? The walls were cut, a million tiny little faces all glinting in a light that came from nowhere. I would need to peer at the walls with a microscope, to see all of its many angles, and come to know which walls were which—

  Which wa
ll Manny had disappeared into.

  I stalked round the edge, eyes roving, searching for him.

  He’s still in here, Mira.

  The voice echoed. Blood trickled—out of my palm, around the compass edge.

  He’s still in here.

  But where?

  I tracked around and around, losing sense again of which direction was which. Where had I come in from? Had I peered into the depths of this wall before? Certainly I had—but how many times? I’d stopped counting, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one … how to know where I looped again, where I came back around and around, to do it again and again?

  At some point I’d stepped through the blood. Now my bootprints joined Burnton’s, circling over and over, faded in places where much of the blood had already been traipsed over the crystal floor, darker where I’d just gone through and given the treads a fresh coat.

  “Where are you?” I whispered.

  He’s still in here, Mira.

  “Where?”

  A flash.

  Burnton was bleeding.

  We’re all still in here.

  He vanished—

  I was in the walls again. Floating.

  A gargantuan presence floated alongside me—watching.

  Manny hurried to a wall—cut a gate—

  No—!

  He sailed through just as I swam back through the crystal, like it was a permeable membrane and not a shiny, transparent, very solid rock.

  I hurried after him, hands outstretched, blood dripping from my palm around the compass—

  His gate closed.

  My fist slammed the crystal wall—

  FOOM!

  A cataclysmic blast shook the chamber. Thrown backward, I yelped, smashing into the crystal pillar in the room’s center. It shattered around me, fragments scattering like I’d sailed through a glass sculpture.

  The lights went out.

  The presence shifted, outside the room, looking in curiously.

  I blinked in the darkness, dazed. Shards had embedded themselves in my palms—the cause of my bleeding? No, the ordering for that was wrong; I’d been bleeding before the fall, hadn’t I?