The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1)

by Stephen H. Provost

  I’m afraid the chances of us ever seeing each other again are remote, at best. My new home is so far in the future that our paths are unlikely to cross again. Please know that I have loved you like my own mother, and that I still do! Take good care of Alex, and of yourself. I know you will because you always did with me.

  Eternally,

  Elizabeth

  Miss Howell read the letter, then folded it up and put it in her coat pocket. Alex regretted not having read it; it hadn’t seemed right to do so when Elizabeth had given it to him, but now he was very curious indeed.

  Miss Howell, however, did not seem inclined to indulge his curiosity.

  “Very good,” she said. “Now come with me.”

  She escorted him into Ridley Manor, which, from that day forward, became his new home. Miss Owl took him under her proverbial wing, and looked after him until he came of age. He read all the books Elizabeth had read in the extensive library at Ridley Manor. Not only did he read them, he memorized them, the same way he had memorized the back of every baseball card he’d ever owned.

  This, he supposed, was that talent that made him what King Nicholas had called a Memory Master.

  Miss Owl, on the other hand, had a different gift. Alex learned, not too long after arriving, that her name really was Miss Owl—and with good reason: She was a Shape Changer, whose particular skill enabled her to take on many different forms. Her favorite of these just happened to be the long-eared owl from whom she took her name.

  He also learned that Elizabeth’s parents had been extremely wealthy, which came as no real surprise considering the size of Ridley Manor. They had left a trust significantly larger than what was needed to cover the cost of Miss Owl’s services. They had intended to fund Elizabeth’s education when she came of age, and to support whatever adventures she might decide to undertake in adulthood.

  But Elizabeth had chosen to remain at the manor, and most of the funds her parents had left for her had remained unused.

  Miss Owl shared these facts with Alex when he came of age and it became clear that Elizabeth herself would not be returning. She sat down beside him and, producing the letter Elizabeth had left for him, finally allowed him to read it. She pointed, in particular, to the words “Give him everything you would have given to me.”

  “Elizabeth was left with a significant inheritance,” she said. “But she is not here, and she wished it to pass to you. It is up to you to decide what to do with it.”

  Her words took Alex by surprise. He had not considered that he might come into such a windfall, and his first thought was to go out and buy all the baseball cards in the world. Then he remembered that there were no baseball cards in Yorkshire, and such collectibles were only just now starting to be produced in America. The first sports cards came in packages of cigarettes and loose tobacco, and Alex had no particular love for tobacco.

  Then he remembered his other dream, the one he had all but forgotten since he had come to Yorkshire.

  A school.

  The school he had attended in Moravia had never seemed quite right to him. The subjects seemed irrelevant, the teachers ill equipped to teach students with unusual gifts, and the campus itself. ... Well, it wasn’t as though there was anything wrong with it; it was a perfectly adequate facility, with desks and chalkboards, a playground and a cafeteria. But it still felt wrong to Alex.

  He remembered that feeling as he thought about it, and he realized that he had an entirely different feeling about where he was now. Ridley Manor, with its vast library of books, had become more of a school to him than his old elementary school in Iowa had ever been. It had no desks, no chalkboard, no playground and no cafeteria. But none of that mattered. It felt right. And it was such a vast estate that it was big enough to actually be a school.

  It would only take a little bit of work.

  “What if...?” he began.

  And Miss Owl smiled as he described his dream of a school for gifted youth, a dream that now took clearer form in his mind’s eye.

  What if there were a place for children with talents such as he and Elizabeth—and Miss Owl herself—possessed? He saw, in his mind’s eye, old bedrooms converted into rooms for instruction; the great central room as an assembly hall; the grounds being used for exercise; the kitchens, large enough to serve hundreds during a seasonal ball, serving the pupils at a grand country school. The labyrinth itself could be the ultimate classroom, where students could hone and master the skills they had been given, where they could carry on the work that had been entrusted to Elizabeth and Alex.

  The world had been in peril once. What if it were again?

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Miss Owl.

  “We could call it the Academy of the Labyrinth,” Alex said, as he walked over to the window overlooking the manor gardens.

  To his amazement, the labyrinth was gone.

  He turned around, a shocked and slightly panicked expression on his face. “What happened to it?” he said.

  Miss Owl came over and stood beside him, looking down on the fountains and flowerbeds below them.

  “I think it only appears when a Pathfinder has need of it,” Miss Owl said.

  A Pathfinder. “King Nicholas called Elizabeth the Pathfinder of Destiny.”

  Miss Owl nodded. “And it appeared to her when she needed it. I trust it will appear when you need it to, as well. There are four great gifts: the gifts of the Time Wielder, the Memory Master, the Shape Changer and the Dream Strider. A Pathfinder can possess any one of these gifts. Or more than one. Or all of them. It is entirely possible that you are a Pathfinder, as well. Indeed, I consider it highly likely. The labyrinth, I think, will reappear when you most need it.”

  Alex forced a smile but still looked worried. “Then perhaps,” he said at last, “we should call it the Academy of the Lost Labyrinth.”

  Miss Owl nodded. “At least until it is found again.”

  ...

  Elizabeth looked around her. Something felt wrong.

  “I don’t think we’re where we are supposed to be,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Illian. “I’ve never been here before.”

  The two dragons flapped their wings to cushion their landing as they descended from the sky. Their massive feet crushed corn stalks beneath their weight as they landed, creating giant footprints.

  “Wasn’t there supposed to be a corn maze here?” said Elizabeth.

  “I heard him say so, yes,” said Dreqnir.

  “I see corn, but no maze,” said Taradreq. “I didn’t see anything that looked like one from overhead, either.”

  Elizabeth felt uneasy and unsure of herself. King Nicholas had sounded so sure of things when he’d pronounced her the Pathfinder of Destiny; when he had told her that she simply needed to focus on the path before her, and she would get where she needed to go. She wished she were as sure of herself. She had never done anything like this before. What if she’d gotten it wrong? Something told her she had gotten it wrong. There should have been a maze here, but there wasn’t.

  “It looks like what Alex described as the place he was from,” said Illian. “Iowa, he called it.”

  Elizabeth nodded, then it hit her: What if the place were right, but the time was wrong? She turned around and looked behind her. They were near a hard-surface road, and across that road stood a building with a sign beside it. Maybe someone in that building could tell them.

  She beckoned the others with a wave of her hand, and they followed her as she started to cross the road, then jumped back as a metal carriage—moving without the benefit of any horses and much faster than any horses could travel—whizzed past. Other, similar metal carriages followed, some moving in the same direction and others the opposite way along the road. One of the drivers turned to look at them and, upon seeing the two dragons standing there, steered his car off the road and into the cornfield. It stalled there, and streams of white smoke rose from the front end of it.

  The driver go
t out and ran away.

  The sound of the crash must have been heard inside the building across the road, because several people came out the front door and looked to see what was happening. When they saw the dragons, they all jumped in metal chariots of their own, which made a whirring-wheezing noise before their wheels started turning and they departed, all in a very big hurry.

  Taradreq raised an eyebrow. “Some things haven’t changed.”

  Dreqnir sighed. “Some things never do.”

  When there were no more metal carriages to contend with, Elizabeth and the others crossed the road toward the building. They got there to find it deserted; not one soul had been brave enough to stick around with two dragons approaching. Looking in the window, they saw rows of colorful packages, and windowed cases, in the back, filled with bottles and cans. A few circular seats, without backs, lined a counter to one side, upon which sat a couple of plain-looking plates with half-eaten sandwiches and cups for tea or coffee.

  “What is this place?” asked Illian.

  Elizabeth shook her head and turned her attention to a metal box with a clear window in front, anchored to the ground beside the door. Inside the box were sheaves of folded papers with writing in large letters at the top: “The Moravia Union.”

  And there was also, in smaller letters, a date: “Monday, November 1, 1971”

  “Alex said he was from 1991,” she said. “If this date is correct, we’re twenty years too early.”

  ...

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Closing the Circle

  Elizabeth spent those next twenty years waiting for the chance to correct her mistake. She traveled back to Yorkshire, where she was astonished to find that Alex had transformed her former home into an academy for gifted students. Then he simply vanished, leaving her in charge. His disappearance seemed to confirm her worst fears: that she had made a horrible mistake by arriving in the future too early, and that this mistake had undone everything.

  It also left her feeling very much alone.

  The dragons returned to Dragehjem, but Dreqnir found himself restless. Much had changed since his last, brief sojourn there, and he had been away so long already—when he was bonded to Tar Kidron—that it scarcely felt like home to him. After a brief visit to the dragons’ mountain home in Scandinavia, he flew back to the Academy, where he became the first instructor Elizabeth hired during her tenure. His initial task then was to enroll in one of the courses himself: Changing Shapes and Changing Back. It simply would not do to attract attention to the academy by having a dragon in residence there. Elizabeth could only imagine what might happen if a traveling salesman or curious passer-by caught sight him.

  Dreqnir had to take the course remotely from a barn on the property that was converted into a residence, because he didn’t fit in the classroom, let alone behind one of the desks. Fortunately, he turned out to have an aptitude for shape changing (magical creatures being more naturally attuned to the gifts than humans are). He initially resisted taking human form, but warmed to the idea when Elizabeth suggested he could create a new persona of his own choice. He threw himself into the project then, scouring a number of movie videos before settling on a form that looked quite similar to Conan the Barbarian. Elizabeth insisted he exchange the leather crown and bare torso for a proper suit and tie, to which he—reluctantly—agreed.

  Taradreq did not return with him. She stayed on at Dragehjem, taking the new title of Dragon Queen Mother and advising her successor, Karanadreq. (Dragons, it should be noted, are known for their longevity and can live for hundreds of years. Although Taradreq was still fairly young by the standards of her kind, she thought it improper to unseat Karanadreq from the throne, particularly since she seemed to be such a capable queen.)

  Having Dreqnir on the faculty helped Elizabeth feel a little more comfortable in her new role. It was good to have a friend there, especially since Miss Owl was no longer with her. The Shape Changer has passed many years ago, Elizabeth learned. She had depended on the kindly governess to care for her ever since her parents’ deaths; now she was left to depend on herself—and care for the hundreds of students enrolled at the Academy, as well. It felt overwhelming, taking on such a heavy burden. More than once, she wished Alex had been able to remain at the Academy long enough to offer some guidance, but she held herself responsible for his disappearance. If she had appeared at the proper point in the future, he would not have vanished.

  At least, that’s what she believed.

  It felt no less overwhelming after twenty years had passed, even though she became more accustomed to her role. Some things had changed: She called herself Alamina now, and she had earned the trust and respect of her students. But others had not: She felt no more confident in her ability to time jump than she had after it all went wrong—when she left the labyrinth.

  And she dreaded having to go back in.

  ...

  When she emerged from the labyrinth for a second time, the first thing Alamina did was look around her.

  She breathed a sigh of relief to find the Academy was still there. The words “Ridley Institute” were still plainly visible over the front entrance, and students were still hurrying across the grounds to reach their next classes before the second passing bell sounded.

  But she had to be sure.

  She waved down Dreqnir, who was striding purposely across the lawn—in his Conan form—toward his next assignment.

  He stopped at the sound of her voice and jogged up to the place where she was standing, the three Romani boys and a few other students dressed in traditional Roma attire standing behind her.

  “Where have you been?” he asked. “We’ve been worried. The labyrinth appeared and you disappeared. So did some of the students. But I see they’re all accounted for, as well.” He nodded toward the students behind her.

  “A field trip,” Alamina said. “To show the brothers where they came from. Although at least one of them got himself in serious trouble.” She glared at Django, who shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “He was so proud that he had studied all about Likho before we left, but apparently, he didn’t study enough. He almost ruined everything by telling Alex not to give the map and compass to the girl. To me, that is. And after that, he nearly didn’t make it out of the labyrinth.”

  “Who’s Likho?” Dreqnir asked.

  “Someone nearly as scary as you!” Alamina said. She was trying to lighten the mood, more to ease her own anxiety than anything else.

  It didn’t work.

  “Dreqnir, what day is it?” she asked.

  “Friday.”

  “The date. I mean the date.”

  “November 1, 1991.”

  “You’re sure?” She held her breath.

  “I’m sure.”

  Alamina allowed herself to exhale. This time, she had emerged from the labyrinth on the proper date. Perhaps she had made the most of that precious commodity so many never get: a second chance.

  Just then, Mrs. Lightjacket came running up to them. A tall, slender woman with ghost-white hair, sunken cheeks and dazzling blue eyes, she was among the most senior faculty members, having begun her tenure a decade before Alamina’s arrival. She was, by the time she reached them, decidedly out of breath—and clearly flustered. This was very much out of character for the woman, who had a reputation among the students for keeping her cool no matter what. Her ability to do so had even earned her the nickname “The Unflappable Mrs. Lightjacket.”

  “Headmistress... I’m... sorry to... interrupt,” she panted. “But... there’s someone... to see you... in your office.”

  “Who is it, Emily?” Alamina said.

  “I think you’d better come and see. You too, professor Dreqnir.”

  Alamina dismissed the three Romani boys and the others who had accompanied her into the labyrinth, and followed Mrs. Lightjacket, who, despite being winded, had started running again, back toward the school entrance.

  “Who on earth could have affected her so?” Alamina
asked.

  Dreqnir just shook his head, jogging beside her.

  When they reached Alamina’s office, she opened the door and saw who it was with her own eyes. But she had to blink twice and rub them to make sure they weren’t playing tricks on her.

  “Headmaster?”

  “Good grief, Elizabeth. After all this time, you can certainly call me Alex.”

  “Nobody calls me Elizabeth anymore.”

  “Of course!” he said. “A rose by any name...” He started to bow and nearly lost his balance, catching himself by placing a hand on Alamina’s desk.

  She smiled and stared at the man in front of her, who looked exactly the way he had twenty years ago, when last she’d seen him. But how had he gotten here? Had he returned because she had succeeded in her mission? But no, that seemed impossible. He had been ninety-five years old then. Could he possibly have lived to be a hundred and fifteen?

  “How...?”

  “Don’t worry, Elizabeth. I don’t want my old job back,” he chuckled, leaning on his cane.

  Having said that, he moved around her desk and sat in her chair. “Just allow an old man to sit in his old chair one last time. It is the most comfortable seat in the room.”

  “So it is.” She sat down opposite him, and Dreqnir took a seat beside her.

  “Who’s your friend?” Alex asked, nodding toward Dreqnir.

  “Oh, do you like the new look?” Dreqnir said, puffing his chest out. “I guess my Shape Changing prowess has fooled even you!”

  “Dreqnir!” Alex said, pounding his cane once on the ground. “I recognize the voice. Good to see you, my friend. Is your mother here, too? And what of Illian?”

  “Mother returned to Dragehjem,” said Dreqnir.

  “And Illian is our chief of security,” Alamina added.

  “Interesting,” said Alex. “I never thought we’d need one of those.”

  “Some things have changed since you disappeared,” she said. “More people have come nosing around, and I worried that unless I undid the damage I had done by going back into the labyrinth, something really bad might happen. Other things started fading, the same way you did. But I must have undone it—the damage, I mean—because the school is still here. And now you are, too! Although I have no idea how you managed to live as long as you have.”