Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [84]
He was frantically seeking efficacious lyrics as the train bore down on them. The engineer saw the wide-eyed trio running in front of his engine and threw on the brakes. An ear-piercing screeee! echoed from the walls of the tunnel. Too little, too late.
Jon-Tom found himself stumbling, going down. As he fell, he saw something directly beneath him. It was not the empty candy wrappers or stubbed cigarettes or torn, useless lotto tickets that drew his attention. It was a flat circle of softly seething black mist, lying neatly between but not touching the tracks or the center rail. He let himself fall, hoping his companions would see what was happening to him, hoping they would follow.
Of course, it might simply be a lingering patch of black fog, rising from the heat of the tracks.
He felt himself thankfully, blissfully, continuing to fall long after he should have struck the ground.
Seeming to pass directly over his head, barely inches from his ear, the roar of the train faded. He hit the ground, rolled, and opened his eyes. They were still in his head, which was in turn still attached to his shoulders. These were good signs. Sitting up, he rubbed the back of his neck and winced. Reaching around behind him, he found that the precious duar had taken a battering from the fall but was still intact.
Nearby, Mudge cast a pain-racked eye at his friend. “That’s it, mate. I’ve bleedin’ ’ad it, I ’ave. Gimme me share o’ old Wolfham’s gold and I’ll be quietly on me way.” Behind him a groaning Stromagg was just starting to regain consciousness.
Looking away from the angry otter, Jon-Tom found himself staring. “Don’t you think you ought to have a look around, first?”
“Why? Wot the bloody ’ell should I…” The otter broke off, joined his friend in gawking silently.
Namur Castle rose from a narrow ridge of rock surrounded on all sides by sheer precipices. A wooden bridge crossed from the mountainside on which man and otter found themselves to a small intervening pinnacle, from where a second, slightly narrower bridge arched upward to meet a high wooden doorway. Towering granite spires rose on all sides, while a tree-lined flat-topped plateau dominated the distant horizon. Jon-Tom and his companions were enthralled. It was an impressive setting.
The London Underground, bemused pedestrians, and wild-eyed pursuing costumers were nowhere to be seen.
Starting across the first bridge, a cautious Mudge glanced over the single railing. Like a bright blue ribbon dropped from a giant’s hand, a small river wound and twisted its way through the deep canyon beneath. They reached the intervening pinnacle and crossed the second bridge, whereupon they found themselves confronting a massive, iron-bound door.
Tilting back his head, Mudge rested hands on low hips and muttered to his friend and companion. “Wot now, Mr. Spelltwit, sor? You goin’ to sing us up a key, or wot?”
An annoyed Jon-Tom contemplated the barrier. “Give me a minute, Mudge. I got us here, didn’t I?”
The otter snorted softly. “Oi, that you did—though one might complain about the roundaboutness o’ the route you chose. ‘London,’ it were called?” He shook his head dolefully. “Give me Lynchbany any day.”
While man and otter argued, the silent Stromagg approached the impediment, spent a moment contemplating the wood and iron, then balled both paws into fists the size of cannonballs. Raising them high over his head and rising on tiptoes—a sight in itself to behold—he brought both fists down and forward with all his considerable weight behind them. The center of the door promptly imploded in a cloud of shattered slats and splinters. Dust rose from the apex of the destruction.
Approaching cautiously, Mudge peered through the newly made opening. “So much for a bloomin’ key.”
The interior of the foyer was dim, illuminated only by light shining through high windows. Nothing moved within, not even a piebald rat. Mudge’s sensitive nose was working overtime, his long whiskers twitching.
“Sure you got the right towerin’, forebodin’ castle ’ere, mate?”
Jon-Tom continued through the high vestibule,