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 b
een 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.”
8
THE WAY OF THE SWORD
E vents at school the next day seemed to conspire to steal away every chance Aidan and Antoinette had to talk. Mrs. VanDerEyck put them in separate groups to work on a series of math problems. The school counselor called Antoinette to the guidance office during lunch. And an assembly ate up the time they would have normally spent together in art. When Aidan and Antoinette finally climbed into the second seat of Mrs. Reed’s truck, it all came out in a rush.
“I have something to tell you!” they said simultaneously.
“Last night I-” Again, speaking at the same time.
“You go first,” Aidan said.
“Okay,” Antoinette replied. She pushed aside her long red bangs, exhaled a deep breath, and said, “I saw you last night.”
“What?” Aidan stole a glance at Mrs. Reed to see if she’d heard.
“Mom’s cool, Aidan,” Antoinette said. “She believes, remember?”
“I know. But, Antoinette, what do you mean, you saw me?”
“I had a vision,” she replied. “But it wasn’t actually you. I think it was your Glimpse.”
“You know about Glimpses?” Aidan exclaimed.
“Of course, silly.” Antoinette laughed. “I’ve believed in the story of Alleble since I was seven. My parents told me all about Glimpses a long time ago. Kind of cool, don’t you think, to have a twin?”
Aidan was speechless.
“But, Aidan, none of us have ever been to The Realm,” said Mrs. Reed from the front seat. “And none of us have ever seen a Glimpse.. . until now.”
“He looked just like me?” Aidan asked.
“Well, not exactly. He looked older, his skin was superpale, his hair was longer, and he kind of floated there, flickering in the air. But other than that he looked just like you.”
“All Glimpses have skin like that. It spooked me too,” Aidan said.
“You look pretty cool in armor, you know.”
Aidan blushed, and he was reminded of Gwenne, who also thought he looked handsome in armor.
“Aidan, why would I see a vision of your Glimpse?” Antoinette asked after telling him all about her vision.
“I think King Eliam wants to see you,” Aidan replied.
“What?” Antoinette and her mom exclaimed at the same time.
“Didn’t you say my Glimpse said you’ve been called?” Aidan asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have your copy of The Story with you?” he asked.
“It’s at home, but-the poem!” Antoinette exclaimed. “You think the poem will be there.”
Aidan, Antoinette, and her parents sat staring at the poem in the back of an old leather-bound copy of The Story.
TheRe aRe passages and dooRs And Realms that lie unseen. TheRe are Roads both wide and naRRow And no avenue between. DooRs Remain closed foR those Who in sad vanity yet hide. Yet when belief is chosen, The key appeaRs inside. What is lived now will soon pass, And what is not will come to be. The DooR Within must open, FoR one to tRuly see.
“What’s it mean?” Mr. Reed looked at Aidan for an answer.
“It’s a riddle,” Aidan explained. “I didn’t get it at first either. Grampin, uh, my grandfather, had to explain it to me. It means-”
“When belief is chosen…” Antoinette interrupted, thinking out loud. “The key appears inside. I’ve got it! It means for people who choose to believe, they already have a key. The key is inside us. Of course, if it’s The Door Within, then the key has to be within us too!”
Aidan couldn’t believe it. He knew without Grampin’s help he never would have figured out the poem. But Antoinette didn’t need any help. She just charged ahead. Was there no end to what this girl could do?
“I guess this means you are going to Alleble!” Aidan said.
Antoinette turned to Aidan. Her glad blue eyes glimmered through tears, and her smile held a thousand thank-yous. Then she turned to her father. “Well, Daddy, can I go?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t think this is something you can rush into,” he said, leaning back on the sofa and running fingers through his sandy brown hair.
“But, Dad-”
“No, Antoinette, he’s right,” Aidan interrupted. “Alleble is at war, and you may find yourself in the middle of it.”
Antoinette looked indignantly at Aidan. “I can take care of myself.”
“Your father and I need to talk, Antoinette,” Mrs. Reed said sternly. “And before you go boasting again about what you can handle, I think you should listen to Aidan. He’s been there, remember?”
Aidan saw the wounded look in Antoinette’s eyes. He looked away quickly.
“Why don’t you take Aidan downstairs and show him the gym,” Mr. Reed suggested. Antoinette perked up at the idea.
“C’mon, Aidan!” And the next thing Aidan knew, they were headed down a steep flight of basement stairs.
“Wow!” Aidan said. “Your basement looks like a boxing ring.”
The floor was a padded blue mat, and a battered red heavy-bag hung from the ceiling in the room’s center. And around the perimeter of the room were racks of wooden staffs, crates of boxing gloves, and mannequin torsos dressed in what looked like a baseball umpire’s mask and pads.
“What’s all this?” Aidan asked.
“This is where we work out,” Antoinette replied. “My whole family’s into kendo.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s Japanese. It means ‘the way of the sword,’” Antoinette said, slowly drawing a long wooden blade from one of the racks. “We actually do spada-kendo, which is a European form. It combines medieval combat with Japanese fencing. It’s sword fighting, basically.”
Antoinette gracefully sliced the air a few times with the long wooden blade. “You said you were trained to be a knight in Alleble, right? Are you any good?”
Aidan grinned. “I’m okay,” he said. “How about you?”
“I’m okay,” she said, grinning back. “Grab a shinai.”
“A what?”
“Shinai. It’s a wooden sword for training.”
“Oh.” Aidan walked over to the rack and found a wooden blade that seemed about the right weight. It wasn’t Fury, but it felt good to have any sword-even a wooden sword-in his hand again.
“My dad likes that kind,” Antoinette said, grabbing some black pads. “Most of the time we spar down here, but let’s go outside. There is more room to move around.”
Antoinette unlocked a sliding glass door, and they walked up an areaway into Antoinette’s backyard. It was flat and wide, like Antoinette
said, with plenty of room to move around. Aidan wondered what to expect from his new red-headed friend.
The sun rained down through the trees, painting the unshaded patches of the backyard golden. Antoinette handed Aidan a harness of black pads. “You should put these on,” she said as she put some on too. “Just in case I slip.”
“That’s not very comforting,” Aidan replied. He quickly pulled the harness over his head. It fit like a life preserver.
“Remember, no shots at the head. Shinais may be wooden, but they can still do some serious damage.”
“That’s not very comforting either.”
Antoinette laughed. “Ready then?”
Aidan shrugged. “I guess.”
Antoinette held her wooden blade with both hands vertically out in front of her. Her back and neck were upright, perfectly straight, mirroring her sword. She flexed at the knees, one foot a pace in front of the other. She stood very, very still.
Aidan was about to speak, when Antoinette lunged forward with lightning quickness. Her wooden blade swept down with tremendous force. Aidan blocked it just in time. He sidestepped, but Antoinette pursued the attack. A combination high left chop followed by a low sweep at his right ankle. Aidan blocked and leaped, but the blows kept coming. Her sword moved with dizzying speed. Aidan didn’t have time to think of a counter. All he could do was block.
She brought the blade down again and again. And all the time, she pressed forward. Aidan backed up a step.
Antoinette slashed left, right, and left again. Then she drove forward with two thrusts in succession. Aidan stumbled and found himself on his back with the tip of Antoinette’s blade pressed into his chest pad.
“That is called kakari-geiko,” Antoinette said, helping Aidan to his feet. “You charge forward with multiple strikes, never letting up, so that your opponent must abandon his own plan of attack.”
“Well, it worked!” Aidan said, shaking his head. “And you said you were just okay.”
“So… maybe I’m pretty good. Go again?”
The Rise of the Wrym Lord tdw-2 Page 4