Kingdom Keepers III(73)

* * *

“Those who seek the spirit of Norway face peril and adventure,” a Norwegian man’s voice cautioned from inside a dark tunnel.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Maybeck said.

“Me, neither,” Philby agreed. “Especially since it was Wayne who sent us here.”

The boat worked up a long incline, then leveled off, facing an Audio-Animatronic figure of a woman standing at the door of a cabin. She said something, but Philby missed it. Two men were working by a burning log.

“There!” Maybeck said.

Leaning against a rock were two axes with a sword in the middle.

Philby hadn’t been expecting it so soon.

Maybeck stood.

“No!” Philby cautioned. “The alarms!” He’d studied Maelstrom. It had dozens of autostop features to keep guests from the danger of leaving the boats.

But Maybeck jumped anyway. It was a brilliant jump, nearly straight up. He came down four feet into the display. By jumping so far, he avoided tripping the light beam that would have caused an autostop—if the autostop was even in effect after hours, which Philby wasn’t sure of.

Maybeck grabbed for the sword and pulled, but it didn’t come free. Philby and the boat continued moving, now pulling even with the two men by the log. Maybeck would soon be left behind.

“It’s wired to the rock!” Maybeck struggled to free it, pulling the sword and then untwisting the wire.

Philby heard the ring of metal, like the sound of a sword coming out of its sheath. Maybeck, sword in hand, came running around the two male figures, vaulted over a pile of logs, and landed on a large boulder. He timed it perfectly, sliding down the rock and back into the boat, onto the same bench where Philby sat.

“Ta-da!” he declared, making the sound of a brass fanfare.

They passed more rocks, and some guy with a cape holding a horn. The horn sounded.

“That isn’t supposed to happen,” Maybeck said. “That’s not part of the ride.”

Philby looked worried.

They approached another gateway into the next scene.

“That was way too easy,” Philby mumbled, half expecting the next Audio-Animatronic mannequin to spin around and challenge them.

“Agreed,” Maybeck said. He passed the sword to Philby, who took a quick look at it, then passed it back.

“We’ll deal with that once we’re out of here,” he said.

As the bow of the boat passed the gateway a creepy voice called out.

“What’s this?” came the voice from a white-bearded old man in white clothes. He didn’t look like any robot; he looked real. “How dare you come here! Stop! This is Troll Country. Begone! I cast a spell…”

At mention of “a spell” Maybeck snapped his head around to check with Philby.

“I heard it,” said Philby.

The scene’s events were happening quickly now—too quickly.

An incredibly ugly troll appeared at the old man’s side.

“Yes, yes. You’ll disappear. Disappear! Bye-bye!”

“It’s them,” Philby said, for it seemed to him the script had to have been written by the Overtakers themselves. Spells. Disappearance. Everything the Overtakers wanted for the Kingdom Keepers.

“‘Bye-bye,’” Maybeck quoted the man. “That can’t be good.”

The boat suddenly spun around to face backward.

They fell away fast, falling down a surging waterfall.

“I hate going backward!” Philby announced.

“Makes two of us,” Maybeck said.

“GURR-OWLLL!” roared an animal from behind and above their left shoulders. Maybeck instinctively ducked. “I am not seeing this!” Philby declared as a live polar bear slashed his huge paw through the air—right where Maybeck’s head would have been.

The bear came back the other way just as Maybeck found the wherewithal to lift the sword. He sliced the bear’s left arm nearly in half. Smoke rose as sparks zapped from it. A bunch of wires dangled from the stump.

“But I could have sworn it was real…” Philby said, realizing the bear was no longer alive, but just an Audio-Animatronic.

Another roar, ten times as loud as the first. Philby dove into the bottom of the boat. Maybeck leaned away.

A second polar bear, standing eight feet tall on its rear legs, bent over and shoved its teeth right into Maybeck’s face and snapped, trying to get a bite of him. Maybeck screamed and dropped the sword. It rattled around in the bottom of the boat, and Philby grabbed hold of it.

The bear’s mouth bit into the side of the boat and stopped. The bear’s left paw grabbed the boat as its right clawed for Maybeck, and caught his shoulder.

Maybeck screamed horribly and reached for the wound. Philby reacted instinctively, doing the one thing he’d always been told not to do: he stood up in a moving boat. In part, he was trying to save Maybeck. In part, he was trying to be Maybeck.