Chapter 9 - Riding a Quanthor

  Arlo awoke feeling like crap. His back ached and stung, and pain lanced through him when he rolled onto his side. He lay still, wondering if his wounds had oozed in the night. Maybe his undersheet had stuck to him.

  Afraid to move, he remained bathed in a shaft of sunlight from the window, buried under his blankets. He whispered for his screen to activate. Once the image lit up, he said in a low voice, “What’s the quickest way out of this madhouse?”

  Text immediately flowed:

  Complete the quest to reach Pinnacle. There, you will make a choice to determine the future of the realm.

  “I don’t care about the realm,” he growled. “How do I get home?”

  Your destiny is intertwined with the realm’s. Complete the quest to reach Pinnacle. There, you will—

  “Oh, shut up,” he snarled. To his surprise, the text stopped flowing, ending with a long dash to indicate his interruption. At least the stupid screen was obedient. “Why do I have to ride a dumb quanthor? What’s the point? There has to be something else I can do to speed this up.”

  Oracle seemed a little more thoughtful this time: Making a breakthrough is essential to your quest.

  Arlo sighed. “I’m guessing you won’t tell me what kind of breakthrough you’re talking about here?”

  Predictably, no answer appeared.

  After shutting the screen off, Arlo gingerly sat up. As expected, the sheet had stuck to his back, and he nearly cried out in pain. He must have winced and sucked in his breath, because Emery suddenly appeared from the kitchen. If he’d known she was already up, he might not have kept his voice so low. Then again, he hoped she hadn’t heard his dismissive attitude toward the realm’s destiny.

  “Here, let me put some more ointment on,” she said, kneeling behind him.

  She was dressed in dark-brown pants and boots, and a pale-yellow button-up blouse. She also wore gloves in readiness to apply the foul-smelling stuff on his back.

  Arlo gratefully allowed it, sitting upright and leaning forward as she worked the ointment into his skin. The relief was immediate, and he thanked her profusely.

  “Are my pants dry?” he asked as she hurried back to the kitchen.

  “Yes, your clothes are washed and dried.”

  How had she done all of that while he’d slept? Arlo barely remembered dozing off last night. She couldn’t have stayed up for much longer, yet here they were—his folded clothes sitting once more on top of the chest of drawers. It was almost like a reset of yesterday except for his makeshift bed on the floor. He dressed carefully, mindful of his wounds.

  “So you want to ride a quanthor?” she commented when he shuffled into the kitchen. “Why?”

  “Because that’s the hint I received, what I need to do to progress through the—” He nearly said ‘game’ but decided against it. “To help me get to Midway.”

  “How will riding a quanthor help you get to Midway?”

  “I have no idea, Emery. Do you need me to put some ointment on your back?”

  She nodded, and he put on the gloves this time. She slid her blouse down off her shoulders, and he gently applied the nasty stuff over the two long gashes.

  They set out shortly after, skipping breakfast to leave room for mage pomelos and maybe some blue marulas. The day was warm, thankfully.

  “I slept good,” Arlo admitted. “The ointment’s amazing. By the time it wore off last night, I was completely out of it. How late did you stay up after me?”

  “Just long enough to wash our clothes and hang them near the fire. We probably managed a solid six hours of sleep before sunrise.”

  Arlo had to think hard about that. They ventured out of the village and into the forest, taking the same route as the day before. The early morning sun was bright even through the canopy of branches.

  “Six hours?” he repeated. “I don’t understand. We went to bed right after the sun went down, wasted maybe an hour with the shriekers and patching ourselves up, then slept for six hours solid? So, seven hours of darkness. But the days are also short. It doesn’t add up.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Seven hours of day, seven hours of night, fourteen total. What doesn’t add up?”

  He stopped dead. “Wait, really? For real?” He glowered at her. “You realize that’s not normal, right?”

  “What isn’t?”

  “A fourteen-hour day!”

  “It’s not a fourteen-hour day. It’s seven hours of day and—”

  “I meant in total. Emery, it should be twenty-four.”

  She blinked. “Twenty-four hours? Twelve hours of day and twelve of night?”

  “Not exactly, but . . .” Arlo shook his head and gave up. “I don’t know how I’m adjusting to all this.”

  They paid a visit to the mage pomelo plants. It took a lot of ducking and weaving under vines to reach the center of the patch, where the leaves were big enough to block out the sunlight as well as the breeze. A stillness hung over the fruit-laden vegetation. It reminded Arlo of stepping into a cave in the side of a mountain.

  In the center, the mage pomelos were extra ripe. Arlo and Emery started plucking at once, and they crammed their mouths and chewed for a full minute before slowing down. As they swallowed, Arlo felt a curious tingling on his back. An oddly warm, comforting sensation seeped into his body, and he paused to focus on it.

  Emery smiled at him. “You can feel the healing.”

  “I can,” he whispered, awestruck. “My God, this is . . .” Suddenly curious, he pulled off his shirt and turned his back to her. “How’s it look now?”

  “Much better.”

  “Can I see yours?” He moved toward her.

  She popped half a mage pomelo into her mouth and, unbuttoning, turned her back to him. When she let the blouse drape off her shoulders, he gazed at her bare upper back for a long moment. He refrained from running his fingers over the ointment-smeared wounds.

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  They were healed over, nothing more than faint red marks. Now she had three old-looking scars.

  “That’s . . . incredible.” He had sudden illogical visions of escaping from the realm with a stash of mage pomelos. Imagine if such fruits could be cultivated back home! “So your people can heal from any kind of injury?”

  Emery shrugged and pulled her blouse back on. She turned to him while buttoning it. “Up to a point. Mage pomelos can’t replace a missing leg. They can barely set a broken bone.”

  Arlo thought about the man who’d been brutally attacked in the street. “And the sacrifice yesterday? You said he was dying anyway . . .”

  “He was beyond healing. His sickness was too strong. No amount of mage pomelos or ointment would have given the poor man comfort in his dying days. Layton put him out of his misery.”

  “There are nicer ways to do it, though,” Arlo muttered.

  They resumed their journey, stopping by the blue marula plant on the way. Arlo eagerly ate a couple, and energy pulsed through his veins. He felt amazing.

  “You’re not partaking?” he asked Emery.

  “Not without a good cause,” she said with a smile. “We all know blue marulas are limited in supply and try to refrain from adding them to our daily diet. Besides, they become less effective with ongoing use.”

  “Are there any other fruits I should know about?” he asked as they finally approached the field of quanthors. “Anything that enhances, say, dexterity?”

  Emery looked askance at him. “There’s a shoot you can chew on for balance. Does that count?”

  “A shoot? For balance? Huh. Could be useful if I’m riding a giant cow. Do they grow nearby?”

  She firmly shook her head. “They sprout from a sparkling pool in the foothills of the cliff. Climbers use them.”

  More questions. Arlo’s mind would never stop spinning at this rate. It took an effort to file that nugget away and continue with his original line of questioning. “What else? How about endurance?”

  At that, she nodded. “Visit the Fortitude Pool.”

  Arlo blinked at her. “That sounds suspiciously like it was created for one specific purpose. So it increases endurance, then?”

  Emery now seemed more interested in the quanthor that grazed just ahead, but still she answered him. “Sometimes, those who are below quota for Midway’s collection day are ordered to stand in the Fortitude Pool for a while, to remind them there are no excuses for laziness. It’s easier to gather the necessary bounty than to suffer an hour in that pool.”

  Her response prompted a slew of other questions, but Arlo had no time to delve into them, because they now stood before a massive quanthor. It continued grazing, turned sideways with one deep brown eye fixated on them, watching warily from beneath its dark lashes.

  The muscular animal was larger than a normal cow in every way, but it seemed just as docile. This was a female. Arlo knew very little about cattle. He ate beef and drank milk, and that was about the extent of his knowledge.

  “So . . . I just climb on?”

  Emery smiled and nudged him. “We both will. Lift me up first, since you’re now strong.”

  He’d almost forgotten! They cautiously approached, and the quanthor stopped chewing the cud for a moment. Arlo gripped Emery’s hips and lifted her with ease. He felt like he was putting a toy on a shelf as he hoisted her aboard. She had only to lift her legs and slide onto the quanthor’s back.

  “It’s so wide,” she exclaimed, grinning down at him as she tried to get comfortable. “Come on up.”

  It was much harder for Arlo, because he had nobody to give him a boost. Emery reached down, and he took her hand, but she lacked the strength to pull him on board, and he didn’t want to yank on her arm. But, with some fumbling, he climbed up by using a combination of her hands and one leg. Once seated, he struggled to get comfortable in front of her. She was right—its back was broad!

  “Okay, go,” he called to the animal.

  Naturally, his command fell on deaf ears.

  They sat perched for a while, wondering how to get the beast to move. No amount of spurring with his heels or slapping with his hands helped. The quanthor simply didn’t understand—or didn’t care—what he wanted.

  “Well, crap,” Arlo complained. “This is the first task of the game, and I’m failing miserably.”

  “Game?”

  “Quest. I mean quest.”

  He brought up Oracle’s mission hint again:

  Riding a quanthor is one way to make a breakthrough.

  When he read it aloud, Emery looked askance at him. “Where are you getting this riddle from? Is it like a voice in your head?”

  “Uh, yeah, sort of.”

  She considered, then said, “If it means we’re to break through a wall, wouldn’t it just tell you that riding a quanthor is one way to break through? But it says to make a breakthrough. I think it means to discover something, or to have a revelation.”

  “You’re right,” Arlo admitted. “Well, good, because I don’t think this monster’s going anywhere fast. Still, it says riding a quanthor, and we haven’t exactly done that yet. We’ve sat on one, but we haven’t ridden it.”

  “If we could ride one, wouldn’t that count as a breakthrough?”

  Arlo laughed. “Maybe. Seems a bit like circular logic, though, doesn’t it? Kind of like putting a sign on a wall that reads, ‘Do Not Throw Rocks At This Sign.’”

  They sat for a while longer, trying to figure it out. Arlo realized he felt pretty good despite their failure to make a giant cow move. He and Emery had survived an attack by shriekers and almost completely healed their wounds. He’d also boosted his strength and had ample means to do so again once the effects wore off. To top it off, the scenery was pleasant, the sunshine warmed his shoulders, and a pretty, blue-eyed young woman clung unnecessarily to his waist.

  Was that the breakthrough the game hint referred to? If so, it was a little trite for his liking.

  He sighed. “I have a feeling that the breakthrough is to do with—”

  At that moment, the quanthor lurched forward. Emery let out a short squeal and clutched his waist harder, then giggled uncontrollably as the quanthor began a ponderous, extremely bumpy trek across the field.

  “Damn,” Arlo laughed. “Talk about slow reactions. I told it to move ages ago, and it’s only just now getting around to it.”

  The quanthor let out a somewhat mournful bellow as it picked up speed. Arlo and Emery bounced on the broad back with nothing much to hold onto. And as they began to rue the day they’d climbed on, the uncomfortable ride sped up even more.

  “Well, crap,” Arlo muttered from his constantly jarring mount. “What’s got into this thing?”

  “I don’t know, but the others are on the move as well.”

  Emery tapped his shoulder and pointed off to the side. In the distance, many more quanthors lumbered across the long grass, either running toward something . . . or away.

  “What’s spooked them?” Arlo asked.

  “I wonder . . .”

  “You wonder what?”

  As if in answer, a noise from above caused Arlo to jerk his head up. He gasped at the sight of the lozenge-shaped flying vehicle from Midway descending on the field.

  “It’s the Skiff,” Emery said, fear in her voice.

  “Hell no!” he yelled. “What’s going on? Why are they here?”

  “They do this sometimes.”

  “Do what?”

  The Skiff came barreling down in the distance, its deep engines roaring as it leveled off and shot across the field toward them. Long grass whipped about in its wake. The vessel’s bullet-shaped nose glinted in the sun.

  It flew over their heads with yards to spare, causing Arlo and Emery to flinch and yell. The rush of wind almost pulled them from their perch.

  “They’re coming around again,” she cried. “I think they’re going to fire on us this time. You want to talk about games? That’s what blasting quanthors is to them. And this time, they’ve found one with people sitting on its back. I promise you, they can’t resist.”

  The Skiff tore around the field in a wide arc, and Arlo had the feeling they were taking their time. Meanwhile, the quanthor bounded along, panting heavily. Just ahead, trees beckoned. How many times had these docile creatures had to run for cover?

  “We won’t make it,” Arlo said grimly, judging the distance compared to the Skiff’s arcing trajectory. “We know it, they know it. They’re gonna fire for sure, because if they don’t, we’ll be in the trees before they come back around.”

  “We have to jump!” Emery urged. “We have to hide behind the quanthor. It’ll die, but we’ll be shielded.”

  He knew she was right. He felt terrible for the poor quanthor, though. “Ready?” he called as the Skiff began its final run toward them. “We’ll just fall off sideways, okay? Wait for it . . . wait . . .”

  And then something entirely unexpected happened.

  The ground opened up, and the quanthor plunged into darkness, taking its passengers with it.