Antoinette pushed the Paragor Knight halfway back up the hallway so she could see better and then ripped his helmet off.
“Owww!”
“Aidan!” Antoinette cried, hugging him. “It’s really you!”
“Yeah,” Aidan replied, bewildered by the sudden turn of events. “It’s really me. Antoinette, I was looking for you in a cell. What are you doing running around—” Then Aidan noticed a very old Glimpse stepping out of the shadows. “Who’s he?” Aidan asked.
“This is Zabediel. He was in a cell near mine.”
Zabed looked at Aidan very suspiciously. “A Paragor Knight from the Mirror Realm?” asked Zabediel. “Can thou be trusted?”
“I’m an Alleble Knight,” Aidan said. “I took this armor from a Paragor Knight so I could move around unnoticed within Paragor’s army.”
“When did you return?” Antoinette asked.
“Not long ago. I was with Robby fighting Count Eogan, and all of a sudden I just kind of got pulled in on The Thread,” Aidan said.
Zabediel moved toward Aidan, staring at him as if he was studying him.
“The Thread? Oh, I don’t care how you got here . . . I’m just glad you came,” she said.
“I had to come,” Aidan replied. “It’s my fault you got captured, isn’t it? I asked you to look for Robby’s Glimpse.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t tell me not to follow Kaliam’s orders. It is I who placed many in danger in my quest to find Robby,” she said sadly. “But I found Robby’s Glimpse. He’s Kearn!”
“I saw him too. Do you know where he is?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure, but I think Kearn just disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Aidan asked.
“Yeah. One minute, he was there in my cell, and the next—gone!”
“That’s what happened to me,” Aidan said excitedly. “But that would mean that Robby is . . .”
“Someplace in The Realm,” she said.
“Antoinette, we have to get to Alleble,” Aidan said, taking her hand and starting down the hall. “I’ve got to talk with Kaliam. Come on, I have two dragons I left on a balcony below.” They ran back the way Aidan had come, taking odd turns, and spiraling ever down.
“Wait!” Zabed’s strained voice came from behind. “I . . . I must rest.”
Aidan and Antoinette would not go on without Zabed, so the three rested.
Antoinette sat with her arm around Zabediel’s slight frame. “Even with your dragons,” she said, “I don’t know how we’ll get past Paragor’s forces.”
“Easy,” Aidan replied. “We’ll just fly above them.”
“Aidan, you don’t understand. We might get by Paragor’s ocean of soldiers, dragons, and catapults, but he’s set free terrible monsters also: giant wolf creatures called the Seven Sleepers and a powerful dragon called the Wyrm Lord. Oh, Aidan, you have no idea what he can do!”
“We have to try. I have something . . .” Aidan reached into his armor, unbuttoned a flap on his tunic, and pulled out the scrap of parchment he’d found in the Blackwood. He held it up and showed Antoinette. “King Eliam led me to this scroll, and Paragor wants it. I don’t know what it says . . .”
“The Scroll of Prophecy,” whispered Zabed. He gently took the piece of yellowed parchment from Aidan’s hand. “These are the words of King Eliam the Everlasting, uttered prophetically at the dawn of this world.”
Aidan and Antoinette stared at the old Glimpse. “How . . . how do you know that?” Antoinette asked.
Zabediel smiled. “I know, m’lady Antoinette, because I was there when King Eliam spoke these words.”
Aidan’s mouth fell open. “But that would make you—”
“Older than time,” Zabediel said with a laugh. “And so I almost am. I am in the line of Torin, Pureblood, the firstborn in all The Realm! I walked with King Eliam when all things were safe and beautiful, and I heard him speak the fate of this world. It was I who wrote his words down in the most ancient of tongues, and I alone of living Glimpse-kind can read all of what is written here.”
“What does it say?” Aidan blurted out.
“Such knowledge is a heavy burden to bear. It is because of this that Paragor ripped me away from my wooded refuge and subjected me to agonizing tortures. Ye see, this is but the final piece of the Scroll of Prophecy that Paragor now commands. He stole it from the heart of Sil Arnoth, the firstborn tree of all The Realm. But old Arnoth was more clever than Paragor supposed. Even in death, he would not relinquish it all. The longer portion that the enemy now holds is incomplete. He suspected this for a time, but I think—thanks to my own efforts and to Aidan’s—Paragor is now content with what he has. And we must hope that he will continue to believe that.”
“What do you mean?” Antoinette asked.
“The Scroll of Prophecy tells many things,” Zabediel explained. “For Paragor it tells what his itching ears want to hear: how final victory over Alleble might be achieved. He is wise in his cunning and well-learned in ancient tongues. Between what he was able to decipher on his own and what he was able to torture out of me, Paragor has unleashed the Wyrm Lord and the Seven Sleepers. They are a bane to this world, and two thirds of the final disaster that Paragor longs to visit on all Glimpse-kind.”
“Two thirds?” Aidan said. “I don’t understand.”
“No,” Zabediel said, holding up the parchment and smiling grimly. “And neither does Paragor. For he does not know what is written on this, the last part of the prophecy. And he does not realize how the end he foresees could be his own.”
“Will you tell us the prophecy?” Aidan asked.
“I will,” he replied eagerly. “For, unless my wisdom is far astray, the prophecy concerns you both.”
Aidan and Antoinette stared at each other and then back at Zabediel.
“‘Hear now, you called ones of the King,’” Zabediel read from the scroll. “‘Hear King Eliam the Everlasting’s prophecy—in its entirety—as it has not been spoken since the beginning.’”
Aidan and Antoinette lost all sense of where they were when Zabediel began to recite the prophecy from memory. The walls of the passage peeled back, and the flickering torch blazed anew and became a distant sun rising over a pristine green world. All was serene, but a bruised sky on the western horizon signaled a storm was coming.
Laugh and be glad, realm from my hand.
Wind and trees, sing songs.
Mountains rise and smile at the sky.
My children, grow and be strong.
Gifts I have given thee, and gifts will I give
To the firstborn and all of your kin.
A path of light I have laid out before thee,
And the greater prize, choose from within.
Alas, my children, among thee,
In the darkness, a deed will be done.
Covetous wyrm ire will burn like white fire,
And innocent blood will run.
Wind and tall trees will fall silent.
Mountains will scowl and shudder.
The sky will turn black and
My children will weep
For the realm torn asunder.
From Torin’s Keep, the dragon will fly,
Swift on the wing, away from my eye.
Into the deep forest where
The first wolvins dwell,
He will teach them his secrets and
Persuade them to lie.
No forest will hide, the blood-red stain
Of their unfortunate choices.
And though they lay quiet beneath the boughs,
I still hear their voices.
Traitorous wyrm! I see from afar.
The whole realm groans around thee.
In the Shattered Lands your
Consequence stands
Entombed beneath a molten sea.
I will call the Seven, out from their den,
And though they beg and weep,
A sepulcher of trees will be their doom,
And evermore they sleep.
From the sorrow, new hope will spring.
Glimpse-kind will fill all the lands.
Alleble will be my beacon.
Seven fountains where the waters dance.
All will know of my kingdom,
And I will watch over all.
From near and far and the Mirror Realm,
Many will answer my call.
I will choose my favored one
And give him the sword of the pure.
Yet his loyalty like a castle wall
Will but for a time endure.
His will be the black desire
To make the wyrm’s choice his own.
Innocent blood will spill again,
A fountain left as dry as bone.
The Betrayer will be cast out,
But in the darkness will reign.
He will prey on the weak and weak-minded,
And rule with a scepter of pain.
In secret, his armies will swell,
Bloated by vengeance and greed.
The firstborn wyrm will rise again,
And the Seven will no longer sleep.
In Alleble the bells will peal
When the Herald comes forth
And calls the name of Three Witnesses
In the kingdom’s darkest hour.
Heroes, seers of visions,
Travelers of both Passage and Thread,
Warriors of the Mirror Realm
Become The Betrayer’s dread.
The Child of Storms, the Dragonfriend,
The Seeker of the Lost,
Will raise their swords in battle
And dare to risk the cost.
They will charge into the darkness,
The Black Breath of the wyrm.
And shine like bands of sunlight
In the coming final storm.
But when all efforts have failed,
And The Betrayer has taken the throne,
The Witnesses will be brought alive
And two destinies will be shown.
They must face the offer
To see the victory in his eyes.
The Betrayer he must turn them
Or else must take their lives.
“That is the end,” Zabediel explained, and his voice returned to normal. “The end as Paragor knows it. I have gone through great pain to convince him that there is no more that could affect his rise to power and Alleble’s fall.”
The torchlight flickered and thunder rumbled ominously.
“The prophecy makes it clear that Paragor will capture the Three Witnesses. And as far as his arrogant imagination is concerned, he believes that when he does, his victory will be assured.”
“But the prophecy . . . it doesn’t end there,” Aidan said. “You haven’t read from the parchment I found.”
“No, it does not end there, Sir Aidan,” Zabediel confirmed. “And let all The Realm rejoice because it does not. There is more, and there is, I think . . . hope. I read it now to you. May you understand it well.”
When the Witnesses decide,
Former deeds may be undone.
The Seven Swords may be unveiled.
Worlds once divided become one.
“That’s it?” Aidan blurted out. “When the Witnesses decide? Decide what?”
“You will know when that time comes,” Zabediel answered.
“But it says ‘Former deeds MAY be undone.’ That doesn’t sound very certain.”
“I did not claim that the prophecy would guarantee victory,” said Zabediel. “To think that it does would be to err like Paragor. I only said the last part of the prophecy offers hope, and it does.”
“But what are the Seven Swords?” Antoinette objected.
“There, Lady Antoinette, my wisdom fails,” said Zabediel. “Perhaps that is a question for someone else to answer.”
Thunder slammed and reverberated in the stone walls of the hallway.
“The storm,” whispered Antoinette. “Zabed, can you run now?”
Zabed nodded. “I fear we must run or we all will perish.”
