Mr. Reed stopped by Antoinette’s room to say good night. Sweat trickled down his face and his sleeveless sweatshirt was soaked.
“Been working out?” Antoinette asked.
“The heavy bag,” he replied between deep breaths. “No matter how many times I hit the thing, it never falls down!”
Antoinette made a face. “Maybe you should try kicking it.” And then she did a side kick within an inch of her father’s chin. She let her foot hang there a few moments before slowly lowering it to the ground. She grinned.
“I think I’ve taught you too well,” Mr. Reed said. “That was nice.”
“So, what did you think of the twins?” he asked.
“Too cute, Dad,” Antoinette replied. “But they are so tiny.”
Antoinette’s dad smiled. After a quiet moment, he said: “Mom tells me you made a new friend at school today.”
“His name is Aidan. He and his family moved here from Maryland. And, Dad, he believes.”
“So I hear. But don’t sound so shocked. King Eliam is still very much at work in this world. I run into believers all the time.”
“I know,” Antoinette replied. “It’s just that there aren’t that many my age around here, I guess.”
“Maybe you and Aidan can do something about that.”
“Yeah, maybe we will.” Antoinette grinned. “Dad, what do you think of this?” Antoinette held up a dark purple knitted poncho. “I was thinking of wearing this tomorrow.”
“You mean you aren’t wearing black?” Her dad feigned shock. “What will your trench-coated friends think?”
“Daaaad, please don’t offend my friends like that,” Antoinette said.
“No harm intended, sweetie,” he said. “It’s just, well . . . they look rough, and some of them smoke.”
“I’m too smart to mess with cigarettes,” she replied, hands on her hips. “And the clothes, it’s a style. They may look a little different, but at least they’ll listen when I talk about Alleble.”
“I trust your judgment. I’m just protective of my little girl, that’s all.”
“I can take care of myself, Dad. You taught me. Now what about the poncho?”
“You’re not wearing it to impress this Aidan fellow, are you?”
“Daaaad!”
“I know, I’m being overprotective again. I think the poncho looks great on you, but since I clearly have no concept of fashion whatsoever . . . you should ask Mom.”
“Thanks, Dad. And anyway, I’ll wear a black tee and black jeans underneath.” They shared a laugh and said good night. Antoinette closed the bifold doors of her closet, turned out the light, and hopped into bed.
Ten minutes later, Antoinette was still awake. A storm is coming, she thought. Not long after, the curtains floated on a steady breeze. Soon, light flickered outside the window, followed by a long, low roll of thunder. Still a ways off though, she thought as she closed the window and got back under the covers.
Weather, especially severe weather, had always fascinated Antoinette, and as long as she could remember, she seemed to have the peculiar ability to sense when a storm was coming long before it arrived.
There had been a storm the night her birth parents lost their lives in a fire. A fire caused by lightning. If only I had known about that storm.
Antoinette shook her head. She had long ago accepted her parents’ deaths, though in bad times she often needed to remind herself that King Eliam’s plans always worked out for good. After all, it was her adoptive parents who first told her about Alleble.
Another flash of lightning. Thunder growled more conspicuously.
Antoinette closed her eyes, but they snapped right back open. Who am I kidding? she thought. I don’t even want to try to sleep.
She was afraid that the nightmares would return. Lately, they were always there. She wished she could escape them. She wished she could enter The Realm as Aidan had. Maybe there, in the presence of King Eliam, the nightmares would go away. She nestled under her down comforter, a steady rain began, and she began to feel drowsy.
Antoinette awoke with a start. Had someone called her name?
Lightning lit up the room, but the thunder was distant. The storm is leaving, she thought. How long was I asleep?
Her heart hammered. She hadn’t had a nightmare, but someone had called her.
“Dad?” she whispered urgently, sitting up. No answer.
Then she heard it.
“Antoinette . . .”
Her name faded in and out as if whispered by someone far away. She yanked the comforter up to her chin and scanned the shadows of her room.
The closet was open. But I’m sure I closed it, she thought. Even the hanging clothes within had parted to reveal the pale back wall of the closet. Antoinette thought of Aidan and the strange events that befell him just before he received the Scrolls. It was a sign, Aidan had said.
“Antoinette . . .”
The voice came from the closet.
“It’s a sign. It’s a sign. It’s a sign!” Antoinette repeated to herself. She rocked back and forth on her bed and stared at the back of the closet. It was as if someone had been walled up behind the closet in a secret room. But Antoinette knew that could not be. There was nothing behind the closet. It was on an exterior wall.
“Antoinette . . .”
This time, a small flicker of blue appeared in the exact middle of the back wall of the closet. Then it was gone. The voice was less garbled, but still sounded far away.
“Antoinette, hear me . . .”
The flicker reappeared. At first just a twitching finger of blue electricity, it quickly formed into a quivering circle. The circle began to grow, and it rotated slowly. It reached three feet in diameter, stopped growing, and flickered white-hot. Within the circle, the closet wall went dark as if a tunnel had opened, a tunnel that went on and on, forever into darkness.
Entranced by the vision before her, Antoinette stared, but did not scream.
“Antoinette . . .”
In the center of the darkness within the electric circle, a shape appeared. It was an irregular shape. It seemed to be growing. As it moved closer, it became more recognizable. It was a person, but pale—very pale, possessing an eerie light of his own. And suddenly he was there, floating just outside the closet at the foot of Antoinette’s bed.
Antoinette realized it was a young man. He was dressed in armor and had emblazoned upon his breastplate two mountains with a bright sun rising between them. An immense sword hung at his side. His skin, armor, and weapon were pale . . . ghostly. And he flickered as if he were struggling to stay visible, while an unseen force was drawing him away. But while his appearance was frightening, there was something about this being that was familiar and comforting.
“Antoinette . . . ,” he spoke. He raised his spectral hand and pointed to her. His eyes bored into her. They were dark but flickered blue. And then, Antoinette knew him. It was Aidan! His hair was longer, and his face looked older, but Antoinette had no doubt it was Aidan.
She started to speak, but the ghostly Aidan spoke first.
“Antoinette, you have been called.”
His image then began to fade and shrink. But all the while, his eyes beckoned, and he pointed to her.
The electric blue circle reversed course and shrank as well. Antoinette watched it disappear. It’s a sign, she thought to herself. But how could Aidan—
She never finished the thought, for suddenly she felt a chill as if the temperature in her room had instantly dropped thirty degrees. Wind gusted out of her closet. Lightning struck just outside her window. The thunder detonated like a cannon within a heartbeat. Antoinette screamed.
Aidan switched off his lamp. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a steady rain began. Another storm? He stared out the window and wondered if he’d see Captain Valithor again.
Masses of gray clouds enveloped the mountains. The pines in the front yard whispered as the rain fell, and though Aidan was not sleepy, his eyelids drooped. Aidan felt suddenly disoriented and shook his head. He reached clumsily for his bundle of scrolls, but missed. He fell away from the window sill and dropped like a stone.
Aidan felt like he was falling forever. There was no sound, no wind in his hair, but he knew he was falling. He saw only darkness at first. Then, as he began to level out, he witnessed the most alien landscape he had ever seen.
An ocean of great jagged shards of broken rock stretched out before Aidan. Volcanoes rose up on both sides of a path. Some belched towering plumes of black smoke. Some vomited streams of molten rock. And still others stood quietly smoldering.
And upon the wretched path were torch-bearing soldiers in dark armor.
Aidan zoomed above the path through ash, smoke, and fire, slowing only when the path snaked around the greatest of all the volcanoes. Like an immense beast waiting to spring, the fiery giant seemed to stand guard at the top of the world.
The scene sent tremors through Aidan, and he knew that he should not be there. He struggled against his momentum but could not reverse course. He floated slowly but inevitably down into the charred chasm.
The great volcano sent a deluge of molten rock into the valley, but by machinations that Aidan did not at first understand, the flow of liquid fire diverted. Had the natural flow of magma not been interrupted, the empty, charred hollow would have been a lake of fire.
As Aidan descended lower he could see thousands upon thousands of knights standing in rigid lines. Weapons—swords, pikes, and bows—held vertically at each soldier’s side. Their armor was black and polished. Their dark eyes glinted red. This army must be from Paragory, Aidan thought.
The pale knights in the dark armor did not notice Aidan. They were looking at a massive square excavation site. Layer upon layer of dark rock had been carved away. And by the guards’ torchlights, Aidan saw a staircase leading into the pit.
At the top of the stairway stood Paragor. He wore the same black armor as the others, but a burgundy hooded cloak draped his shoulders—and upon his breastplate, gouged red into the dark iron like a black widow’s hourglass, was the image of an inverted crown.
Once a powerful knight in service of Alleble, Paragor had betrayed his King. And as a consequence for his treachery, Paragor was cast out of Alleble and doomed to rule as a mere prince in a dark and hopeless land far away from the throne he desperately wanted.
Behind Paragor stood an attendant, nervously watching his master. Even from far away, Aidan could see the deep scars on the man’s face and hands.
Paragor removed his helmet and handed it to the attendant, who ducked and scurried away.
Paragor’s dark, dark eyes flashed red for an instant. He smiled at the approach of a second attendant who bore a case of black marble and offered it to his lord.
The Prince reached down, lifted the lid from the case, and removed a long, segmented piece of iron. He then held it aloft for all to see.
It was a key, and a loud murmur surged through the ranks of the soldiers. It seemed to Aidan that the key was something ancient, something powerful, and something dangerous in Paragor’s hands.
His mission accomplished, the attendant bowed and turned to leave. Then he abruptly looked up. His cold eyes flashed red, and in that moment, Aidan knew him. It was Robby’s Glimpse! And he was directly in the service of The Betrayer!
“Robby!” Aidan cried out. “Robby, no!” But with a flourish of his dark cape, Robby’s Glimpse disappeared into the mass of enemy soldiers.
A blazing torch in one hand, the huge key in the other, Paragor descended the stairs into the pit. Unable to resist the strange gravity that compelled him, Aidan followed. They traveled through several layers of striated stone that reeked of centuries of burning.
Soon the smell of char was overpowered by a smell so foul and sharp that Aidan struggled for breath.
Paragor paused at the bottom of the stairs. Before him was an enormous steel door. Two men high and four wide. Its frame was secured to the stone wall by dozens of fist-sized rivets, and there was no handle or door ring. It seemed that whatever had been locked behind the door was meant to stay there.
Aidan watched as Paragor held his torch to the door. He uttered words in a strange language and moved the torch slowly over the surface of the door. Suddenly, licks of fire leaped from the torch to the door and burned away a hole for a key.
There came a thunderous booming from deep within the rock, and slowly the door began to open. A mist of darkness swirled out like tendrils of smoke from inside. But it was not smoke, rather a purposeful, groping darkness that reached and curled around Paragor’s legs and spread up the stone walls like a black, creeping vine. Even Paragor stepped away from the door.
Then, unbearably slowly, Aidan began to rise out of the pit.
Suddenly, a hand emerged from the door and grasped the riveted doorframe. It was a huge hand, black and scaly, gnarled but sinewy and strong. There were long white talons protruding at the end of each finger, and they scraped along the metal as if trying to escape. The taloned hand and then a huge leathery wing emerged from the door, but that was all Aidan saw. He spiraled with greater speed upward into the night sky. Behind him he heard a hideous voice from the pit near the center of the emptied lake of fire.
The voice seemed ancient and harsh, as if it had not spoken for an eternity.
Aidan covered his ears with his hands. But it was in vain. The words pounded at his skull and roared into his mind: “They will all die.”
